Bassam Salem: Against the Herd @bassamsalem - Tumblr Blog

My Last Post Here...Please join my new community site

Dear friends: I’ve so, so appreciated all of the support over the years. It’s because of this that I’ve revamped my blog to include much more content that’ll be added over the coming weeks. Please join me by joining my community at http://bassamsalem.com/join. JOIN Bassam’s CHARACTER CODE Community All my best. Sincerely, Bassam.

Contemplating the Meaning of Life

The Sense of Memory: Feeling Special Moments

This is What Memory Fees Like The human mind, and its nervous system, are staggeringly impressive.For those of us with typical sensory access, this framework is familiar: 1. Sight 2. Smell 3. Hearing 4. Touch 5. TasteBut I only recently came to appreciate that neuroscience recognizes at least five more: 1. Proprioception – the awareness of body position and movement without looking (e.g.,…

The Politics of Grace: A Plea for Kindness

Over the past few years—and especially in recent months—sociopolitical divisiveness has become nearly unbearable.It’s no longer just disagreement; it’s grievance, cruelty, dogma, and tribalism.It’s grown so sharp, it now slices through friendships, families, workplaces, and communities.It’s in my feeds. It’s in my DMs. It’s in our conversations.It’s exhausting. It’s corrosive. And it’s hurting…

Life's Four Books

Given my inclination to overplanning, most won’t be surprised that I spend my Decembers evaluating and learning from the current year while, more importantly, contemplating and planning the following year. But, it feels different this time; the 2024 to 2025 transition feels more significant, even monumental, to me…and, after some contemplation, I understand why. If I think of my life as…

My Personal Culture: The 5 Hs

It’s a bit of a preview of the rubric I’m using for the book, adding a fifth H to create “personal culture”. These 5 Hs (Happy, Humble, Hungry, Healthy, and Horsepower) extend the team culture we built at Atlas, and form the basis of a playbook of habits, best practices, and tools that guide my personal progress.I’m very excited about this project coming together over the coming year. It’s so…

20 years: 2004 to 2024

Our little family in 2004… It’s hard for me to fathom that, 20 years ago, I was already an adult. After all, I was in my thirties, I was married, I had a two-year-old son, I was working an adult job, and I had adult responsibilities. Oh, and I even had a little hair back then. Boy does that feel like a lifetime ago. 20 years ago, we had a plan and we were executing it. We had aspirations for…

Chapter 6: The Mentor

A career is a living novel consisting of written chapters that capture the past, a current chapter being written, and future chapters with endless possibilities.Each chapter is meaningful because it’s enabled by the preceding one and makes the next one possible.And each chapter eventually comes to a close so the next one can be written.Today, I’d like to share with you that my 5th chapter, The…

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Deliberation Over Debate: On the Importance of Civil Discourse

I posed a question this weekend as part of an intellectual exercise to explore a question I find fundamentally important: Do we become increasingly committed to and invested in our deeply-held beliefs as we grow and, if so, is it worth it to “debate” these beliefs with others, especially if doing so can hurt important relationships? After a great deal of dialogue on and consideration of this…

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Closing A Special Chapter

Looking back at life is like reviewing a multi-dimensional series of chapters organized by changes in location, career, and perhaps most vividly, family. One chapter in my own life, as organized by family changes, has been open for nearly twenty two years: having children at home. I’ve loved this chapter so much. Being part of the development of a new human is fulfilling beyond description.…

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History of Immigration

History of Immigration Immigration has a curious history. For the vast majority of human history over hundreds of thousands of years, our identity was “hyper-local”, defined by our family units and thus our tribes. Geographic location was much less relevant as we roamed and migrated in search of natural resources and protection from seasonal weather and predators. But that changed just 12,000…

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The Wisdom of the Fisherman

We were taking a walk near the Pacific coastline when, crossing a bridge over an estuary, we noticed a solitary fisherman navigating his way barefooted through the rocky shore and into the ocean. All of the other fisherman were clustered together on a nearby pier; our fisherman stood apart and away from the majority. All of the other fisherman were using fancy fishing poles, lines, hooks, and…

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AI & the Nature of Human Intelligence

In the past year, many of us have come to realize the profound impact that advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) may have on technology and likely on society as a whole. Yet, what might still be underappreciated is the significant influence such breakthroughs could have on our comprehension of the fundamental nature of humanity, articulated around three key points: 1. Intelligence: The…

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How AI "Sees" the World

It’s our first winter in rural Summit County, Utah. I’m certainly used to the scenes of snow after spending the last quarter of a century living in Park City. But I’m not used to the serene but rustic sights, sounds, and scents unique to the mountain-valley countrysides of Summit County. The setting was was so inspiring today that I decided to capture it in a picture (left side). I then…

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A Post-Centralized Media World: Citizen Journalism

As those who’ve known me for some time will understand, mass media has long troubled me. Having been raised in rather socially-minded circles, as a young student of geopolitics, I grew up appreciating how mass media was a critical and dangerous weapon capable of convincing “the masses” of just about anything: it could divide a population among itself around emotionally-charged domestic issues,…

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Day 1 of my 50th year: From Education to Impact

1. I am my IMPACT on the world around me, including my friends & family, my community, and my environment. 2. My impact is the sum of my ACTIONS, including my words, my choices, and my habits. 3. My actions are dictated by my PHILOSOPHY, including my goals, my plan to reach them, and my principles. 4. My philosophy is shaped by my KNOWLEDGE, including my understanding of my world, my mind, and…

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Symmetry of Expectations

Today, I had a conversation with some young people (late teens/early twenties) who had incredibly strained relationships with their parents. First, it was strange to realize that I was inclined to step in and represent their parents’ absent perspective (I guess I’m officially a parent). But, second, the conversation was incredibly enlightening to me as to a fundamentally flawed position that…

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Bassam Salem: Against the Herd