Dr. Kentaro Fujita

So sort of expands us to include more people in us.

And I'm really interested in this idea that we can draw sacredness from these mundane tasks.

Again, this is all speculation.

My colleague,

Shira Gabriel, she's at SUNY Buffalo.

She studies what's known as collective effervescence, this idea of these magical experiences that we have when we're in a crowd, all kind of doing the same thing.

So like if we all go to a football game and we're all cheering at the same time, or we go to a concert and we're all singing Taylor Swift together, like whoever your singer of choice might be, that there's sort of like a magicness where we become, we're doing something that's fairly mundane, but it feels sacred and special to us.

It's infusing it with meaning.

Just going back to your point, you know, I wonder for some people doing the simple tasks might just be a way of connecting to the essence of the science itself or the essence of the task itself.

So when I was doing martial arts, you know, you're supposed to tie your armor on in a certain way, you're supposed to bow in in a certain way.

And in some senses, it's like, well, there's a stupid set of traditions.

And again, you could just go through them perfunctory manner.

But if you did them with meaning,

It's not just the task itself, but it's the connection that we have to people that came before us and the people that came after us.

Again, as I mentioned, social belonging is one of the most powerful human motivations.

If we can create these bonds through these simplistic rituals,

Again, these are all speculations that I'm drawing, but it could potentially be really, really powerful.

And this idea that there might be sacredness in the mundane is an idea that I think really interesting to me.

So perhaps, you know, this PI that you're talking about felt more connected to the lab by doing these mundane tasks that I personally would not want to do.

But, you know, perhaps it was a way of sort of saying like, I'm still part of the science when I'm pushing paperwork at the higher levels of administration.