1 . The question of whether it is possible to dissociate the artist from their work has been debated for a long time. Even though positive critical reviews about an artist’s behavior can improve their artistic accomplishments, people should treat artists as individuals who have lived apart from their work.

One of the reasons is that even artists have shortcomings. Like any other human being, an artist can err, and we cannot be severely judgmental of every person that falls into error. Cancel culture with endless criticism is concerned more with how we should disregard the artists when they make mistakes than with how their weaknesses can be used by the artists to create art that is unique.

Perhaps Kevin Hart’s words support this thought. He asks, “When did we get to a point where life was supposed to be perfect? Where people were supposed to operate perfectly all the time?” When people start seeing artists as human beings, they’ll see them for who they are and review their behavior not on the basis of their art but on the basis of their humanity.

It should be also noted that there are works of art that are inspired by the artist’s experience. For example, the themes in the Harry Potter books are so connected with J. K. Rowling’s wicked worldview that it is virtually impossible to distinguish the two from each other. Since canceling artists based on their worldview would mean the reception to their art will suffer, artists become tense and unwilling to express themselves, which will kill creativity, eventually leading to the death of art. Comedians, singers or painters who should be integrating contemporary issues with their works become boring, and art stops functioning as the social mirror it ought to be.

An artist who makes mistakes still has art with intrinsic (内在的) value, benefiting entire communities or cultures. For instance, when Kendrick Lamar launched his album and frequently used the F-slur in one of his songs, there was much-heated discussion. He was entirely mistaken in using the F-slur, but as an artist, he still had a wide-reaching impact on society. Similarly, one can respect the late Michael Jackson because of how he impacted pop music and the inclusion of black musicians in mainstream media despite his personal weaknesses, opinions, worldviews and associations.

While these artists may engage in their terrible behavior, the art they produce today may serve as an example for others to produce outstanding work in the future. Some would refer to this process as a cycle. Good art should, therefore, be judged due to its value and not the value of the artist.

With society’s high pressures to achieve, it’s understandable that individuals prefer to hide their weak points—but doing so comes at a cost.

I learned that lesson when I participated in a hiking expedition. As a new hiker, I struggled. The trip was difficult to me even without needing to carry my heavy camping packs. I was slowed down, yet I refused to tell my teammates in hopes that I would seem perseverant. To my delight and surprise, one of the more active members requested that we stop for a break. I quickly realized I wasn’t the only one hiding my weaknesses after noticing the rest of the team’s apparent relief.

For many of us, authenticity, or behaving as one’s true self in daily life, is quite challenging. As social beings, we’ve learned to adapt and fit into our environment, making it challenging to display who we are at times. Yet, the advantage of authenticity is evident, driving its recent popularity among thought leaders. Authenticity even improved my hiking experience—the moment my group admitted to our shortcomings was when we started working better as a team. So, can being ourselves not only help us work better, but help those who workaround us?

The truth is, it can.

Researchers have found that not only did authentic workers have higher work engagement and lower work tiredness, but their teammates had the same results, regardless of whether they were genuine themselves. The results suggest that the benefits of authenticity go beyond the individual, and spread to teammates as well. So, we can improve our teammates’ work behavior by merely being ourselves.

Why does authenticity boost our teammates? This is because authentic teammates do not prioritize protecting themselves at the cost of their work or relationships. Instead, they recognize the interests of both themselves and others when making decisions. This allows those they work with to feel safe while being themselves at work. By focusing lesson appearing hard-working in hopes to get ahead—and more on trying to be better all-around individuals—authentic teammates can make a great impact on their work environment.

3 . Enlightening, challenging, stimulating, fun. These were some of the words that Nature readers used to describe their experiences of art-science collaborations in a series of articles on partnerships between artists and researchers... Nearly 40％of the roughly 350 people who responded to an accompanying poll (民意调查) said, they had collaborated with artists; and almost all said they would consider doing so in future.

Such an encouraging result is not surprising. Scientists are increasingly seeking out visual artists to help them to communicate their work to new audiences. “Artists help scientists reach a broader audience and make emotional connections that enhance learning,” one respondent said.

One example of how artists and scientists have together rocked the senses came last month when the Sydney Symphony Orchestra performed a reworked version of Antonio Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons.They reimagined the 300-year-old score (乐谱总谱) by integrating the latest climate prediction data for each season — provided by Monash University’s Climate Change Communication Research Hub. The performance was a creative call to action ahead of November’s United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, UK.

But a genuine partnership must be a two-way street.Fewer artists than scientists responded to the Nature poll. However, several respondents noted that artists do not simply assist scientists with their communication requirements; nor should their work be considered only as an object of study. The alliances are most valuable when scientists and artists have a shared stake in a project, are able to jointly design it and can critique each other’s work. Such an approach can both prompt new research as well as result powerful art.

More than half a century ago, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology opened its Center for Advanced Visual Studies (CAVS) to explore the role of technology in culture. The founders deliberately focused their projects around light — hence the ”visual studies“ in the name. Light was something that both artists and scientists had an interest in, and therefore could form the basis of collaboration. As science and technology progressed, and divided into more sub-disciplines, the center was simultaneously looking to a time when leading researchers could also be artists, writers and poets, and vice versa.

Nature’s poll findings suggest that this trend is as strong as ever,but to make a collaboration work,both sides need to invest time and embrace surprise and challenge. The reach of art-science collaborations needs to go beyond the necessary purpose of research communication, and participants must not fall into the trap of stereotyping each other. Artists and scientists alike are immersed in discovery and invention; challenge and critique are essential to both, too.

4 . As we enter a period of profound economic uncertainty, presaged (预示) by recent high-profile layoffs and a culture of “quiet quitting”, thinking about the future of work might well seem a daunting (令人生畏的) prospect.

Indeed, an ever-increasing digital skills gap threatens to stop businesses adopting the game-changing technologies that will help to power growth in the months and years ahead. For instance, with each exciting new technology comes a growing concern about whether we have a digitally savvy (精明的) workforce ready to take advantage of it. After all, keeping the workforce up to speed with the latest advances is a key element of the digital transformation process, which will prove essential if we hope to improve business productivity and efficiency alongside our efforts to achieve sustained growth.

Likewise, at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, the cybersecurity skills gap was named as one particular area of concern. There’s good reason for this focus: if businesses can’t protect themselves against external threats, they risk going backwards. And that’s before they even start thinking about achieving growth. This is why we need to address the digital skills gap urgently.

Well, we should start by changing the narrative to help us recruit and retain from a more diverse pool of talent, giving businesses a far better chance of finding the up-to-date digital skills they need. And, when it comes to engaging and empowering the current workforce, learning and development opportunities will be key, helping employees to improve their skills for the benefit of both themselves and their employers.

To make this all happen, leaders and employers must demonstrate a commitment to teaching their workforces digital skills by setting clear expectations and providing all the resources required. One approach, for example, would be to focus on the potential in the existing talent pool by identifying those already skilled in digital capabilities and supporting them to upskill their colleagues. Creating a culture of learning, with an emphasis on personal growth, can be an impressive motivator in the workplace.

Of course, it’s all well and good saying that digital skills are vital, but a workforce with purely hard skills will not future-proof a business. There’s a need for soft skills that support the broader goal, so as not to neglect the other competencies required in a digital transformation: communication, critical thinking, creative design skills, and leadership. To exploit the technology to its full potential, such qualities are equally important.

Fundamentally, getting the interaction right between humans and technology will be paramount if businesses are to succeed. As a result, human skills must not be underestimated. Every business will need a range of people with a variely of skills — not only those well-versed in math, engineering, and science, but also those with creative minds and leadership qualities.

5 . The coronavirus pandemic has created an environment for research on social connection. One of the most common areas of inquiry over the past couple of years was how our sudden mass shift to digital communication — away from face-to-face — affected overall social connectedness. Researchers studied nearly 3,000 adults during the pandemic’s early months and found that email, social media, online gaming, and texting were not fungible for in-person interactions. Voice and video calls, were somewhat better.

Social connectedness is a key to happiness. Lower it, and you will be worse off — and so will your loved ones, especially your kids. One 2014 survey revealed that 62 percent of U.S. children thought their parents were too distracted to listen to them. The No. 1 reason was parents’ phone use.

It is clear that scrolling or surfing will reduce social connection: You do them instead of interacting. Virtual communications such as texting are by design interactive and should theoretically be less harmful. However, text messages can’t convey emotion very well, because we can’t hear or see our conversational partners. These technologies are to in-person interactions what a black-and-white, pixelated (像素化的) version of the Mona Lisa is to the real thing; identifiable, but incapable of producing the same emotional effects.

With communications on line, we tend to hop from person to person and thus swap depth for breadth. However, research has shown that deeper conversations bring more well-being than short communications. Meanwhile, in a recent study, teens who texted more often than their peers tended to experience more depression, more anxiety and poorer relationships with their fathers.

It might seem strange that we would voluntarily adopt technologies that hurt our happiness. One of the explanations is convenience. Vegetating (无所事事) in front of a screen is simply easier than talking with a person, and virtual communications such as texting are faster and easier than a visit or a phone call. Think of these technologies as grab-and-go food at a convenience store: It’s not great, but it sure is easy — and after you eat enough microwave foods, you forget what the real thing tastes like.

In all, for most of us — especially people who grew up with it — the internet is an unquestioned part of the ecosystem of life. Quitting the virtual communications from our life is clearly not the answer. Since we’re not going back to life before this kind of technology, we can and should use it mindfully in service of love.

7 . Newspapers, advertisements, and labels surround us everywhere, turning our environment into a mass of texts to be read or ignored. As the quantity of information we receive continually increases and as information spreading is shifting from page to screen, it may be time to ask how changes in our way of reading may affect our mental life. For how we receive information bears vitally on the ways we experience and interpret reality.

What is most obvious in the evolution of reading is the gradual displacement of the vertical (垂直的) by the horizontal—a shift from intensive to extensive reading. In our culture, access is not a problem, but proliferation (激增) is. And the reading act is necessarily different than it was in its earliest days. Awed by the availability of texts, the reader tends to move across surfaces without allowing the words to resonate (共鸣) inwardly.

Interestingly, this shift from vertical to horizontal parallels the overall societal shift from bounded lifetimes spent in single locales to lives lived in wider geographical areas amid streams of data. This larger access was once regarded as worldliness—one traveled, knew the life of cities, the ways of diverse people…. It has now become the birthright of anyone who owns a television set.

How do we square the advantages and disadvantages of horizontal and vertical awareness? The villagers, who know everything about their surroundings, are blessedly unaware of events in distant lands. The media-obsessed urbanites, by contrast, never lose their awareness of what happens in different parts of the world.

We may ask, which people are happier? The villagers may have found more sense in things owing both to the limited range of their concern and the depth on their information. But restricted conditions and habit also suggest boredom and limitation. The lack of a larger perspective (视角) leads to suspiciousness and cautious conservatism, but for the same reason, the constant availability of data and macro-perspectives has its own decreasing returns. When everything is happening everywhere, it gets harder to care about anything.

How do we assign value? Where do we find the fixed context that allows us to create a narrative of sense about our lives? Ideally, I suppose, one would have the best of both worlds—the purposeful fixity of the local, as well as the availability of enhancing views: a natural ecology of information and context.