WHERE'S WALDO?

March 27th, 2019

The most difficult question and task of daily life is to ask: what should one pay attention to?

A young student of driving is on alert, paying attention to every little detail on the road for the main reason that such inexperience doesn’t know what to ignore.  As we develop proficiency in a task like driving, we figure out what to ignore and what is important to pay attention to.  Experienced drivers do not pay attention to a stray movement of a coffee cup behind the window of a Starbucks, but a similarly small object like a child’s ball bouncing on the sidewalk towards the road will – hopefully – evoke a sense of alert for the fact that there might be a child chasing it out into the street.  This intuitive filter of attention is something that fine-tunes over time, and in such cases it seems reasonable to think that such a filter is attempting to pay attention less and less in order to ease the cognitive load.  Of course, if this filter ends up filtering out too much information, important details might be lost.

Such a concept of important details overlooked or zeroed in on applies to any and all aspects of our life, especially those to which comprise the path of our goals.

Figuring out what is important may be the simplest and most basic question that confronts anyone with an aim and a goal.  So often goals are thwarted by attention and effort paid to the wrong thing.  Like barking up the wrong tree, we waste time and resources trying to make our aims happen with a concentration on the wrong details of our goal.  Spending oodles of money on promoted Instagram ads for a product that doesn’t really translate well to the domain of photos might be a good example of this misdirected attention and effort.  This is somewhat like searching one small section of a ‘Where’s Waldo’ picture where he doesn’t exist and failing to search the rest of the picture.

Knowing what to pay attention to is somewhat like playing where’s Waldo, but without having any idea what Waldo looks like.  In fact, it’s even worse than this: on top of not knowing what Waldo looks like, he’s also a shape-shifter who turns into anything and everything else.

Phrased with this image, what exactly one should pay attention to in any given moment may in fact seem like an impossibly tall task.  The enormity of options is why we constantly filter, though our filters can grow in dangerous directions that begin to filter out important details.  This is where mechanisms usually decried as negative, such as self-doubt, hesitation and a lack of confidence can be incredibly useful tools.  If we entertain no doubt about the way we filter the world.  If we have supreme confidence in such a filter, and if we never hesitate with our interpretation, we are no better than a charging buffalo in the middle of a herd headed for a cliff.

The unfortunate and thrilling part of life is that time hauls us forward against any counter-wish, like a buffalo in the middle of the herd, unable to stop.

But even while moving forward inexorably, we can Zoom out on our own situation, as though taking a bird’s-eye view of the situation and ask: are we moving in the right direction?  We might spot some new detail, a Waldo trailing off from the herd in a better direction, away from danger, and towards some better future.

While we cannot pause time, such an effort still requires that we pause our activities and rest our mind of the business.  If we don’t exercise this ever-present opportunity often, our ability to zoom in and zoom out gums up and gets stuck, making it less likely that we’ll be able to shift perspectives, locking ourselves into some track of undecided end.

This episode references Episode 340: Discovering Details, Episode 54: Well-Oiled Zoom, and Episode 23: Pause

SOLEMN OPTIMIST

March 26th, 2019

William James defined ‘solemn’ as a state that includes some amount of its opposite.  A solemn joy is a happiness that does not forget the existence of sadness.  The solemn grief is a sadness that does not ignore the joy of past times and times to come.

This use of solemn is a useful default to develop because it safeguards against the vicious cycles that can quickly grow to dominate our thinking in unhelpful and detrimental ways.  A negative thought about a person or situation that is balanced by some countervailing positive interpretation does not spin out of control and steer our mind into a Rut. 

Such an attitude of mind might be interpreted as level-headed, but there is a significant difference between remaining always neutral and having the ability to entertain extremes of thought without getting lost on such slippery slopes.

This is the difference between being level-headed and being equipped with an Even Keel.

So many motivational speakers are merely attempting to pump people up with a blast of positive mental attitude.  Which, like a joke, or reading an incisive and clever quote, feels good and most likely delivers a short term blast of dopamine.  Rarely are such enthusiastic provocations long lasting, unless such experiences are turned into a daily exercise where such positive outlook is systematically replenished.  Even so, such mental attitude is just first gear to get a person going.

An evolved flavor of such optimistic leanings would be in line with William James’ use of the word solemn.

A solemn optimism is an outlook that believes the future can be better but also holds in mind that it won’t necessarily be so, and could in fact be quite a lot worse than our present state of affairs.  Such balanced extremes comprise the complete opposite of a neutral and inactive mind frame which is typified by salve-esque statements like It’ll be Fine.

The difference here is like walking a Tightrope with the extreme of falling to each side in balance, and taking a slide to some unknown place.  The neutral mind frame characterized by statements like It’ll be fine willingly abdicates agency in order to be lazy.  The Tightrope walked by the active optimist, on the other hand, is like a line pulled tight between reality and a dream of what that reality could be.

It’s curious to note how difficult it is to imagine solemn pessimism.  Would this be like someone getting sucked down into a whirlpool of negativity while still looking back up at a bright sky?  Or is a pessimism that keeps in mind optimistic possibilities a paradox?  A person who identifies with such might claim to be more realistic, but the most realistic thing we can do is manipulate reality as a way of calibrating our imagination to the limits of reality, and flexing reality towards our better dreams.  The mere act of doing and trying arises more in the optimist than in the pessimist, and by such the actions of the optimist certainly seem more concerned with what is and isn’t real, for the optimist tests for such.  Then there’s the solemn optimist, who is never disappointed when something doesn’t work out, but notes the result, and steadfastly, moves on.

This episode references Episode 125: Rut, Episode 309: Even Keel, Episode 129: Positive Mental Attitude is Just First Gear, Episode 316: It’ll Be Fine, and Episode 88: Tightrope

CHERISH THE CHALLENGE

March 25th, 2019

The simplest reason is that there’s nothing else to cherish.  Life is a challenge, and this applies to all parts, not just the difficult or unpleasant parts.  For many it’s an incredible challenge to simply sit and enjoy a moment.  This simplest of challenges is one that requires constant practice, otherwise, our ability atrophies and worry, anxiety and restlessness encroach upon us.  To cherish the challenge is in effect to turn all in life that seeks to undo you and get the best of you on it’s head.

I bet you can’t do it.

This accusation could easily be at the heart of our existence.  And yet, is there a more provocative and motivating accusation?  How many times have we done something, and when asked why, we report: they said I couldn’t do it, so I did. 

This is the lineage of the word ‘challenge’.  It comes from the Latin ‘calumnia’ via French which means to make false and defamatory statements about someone.  This etymological heritage is best summed up in the above challenge: bet you can’t do it.

For some this kind of underdog mentality comes easily, riles them up in aggressively productive ways.  For others who are all too willing to defer, submit and admit lack of ability, it would be immensely useful to explore how this kind of reaction to a challenge exists within others.  We need only make the challenge more acute to bring out the underdog in a demure person.

This is where an activity like martial arts can help.  A person who has never felt this desperation to act will find it quickly when physically pinned and stressed to the point where alarms of survival start to ring in one’s psyche.  Regardless of how someone find this bulldog spirit within them, it’s a necessary gear to have ready to employ.  Not only does it help us meet the challenge, it can enable us to enjoy and even cherish the challenge. 

The swaggering spirit of smiling at a challenge can, of course, lapse into hubris - the folly of heroes in the Greek literary tradition.  But while this attribute was seen as a mistake, it can – if reframed be seen as a mechanism for self-regulation that creates a higher level of challenge.

For example early on in the Homeric epic The Odyssey, we have Odysseus held captive by Polyphemus, a Cyclops who tends a flock of sheep which he eats and who also happens to be a son of the god Poseidon.   Odysseus, popularly known as a clever and cunning hero, easily outsmarts Polyphemus and escapes.  It’s at this moment that high school English teachers will label Odysseus’ next action as a mistake of hubris.  As Odysseus is sailing away, he yells at Polyphemus and tells the Cyclops his real name as a way of affixing an egotistical signature to his clever success.  Polyphemus, in turn, calls upon his father Poseidon to make Odysseus’ life difficult.  And indeed Poseidon does.

Our modern focus on luxury and comfort is ill-equipped to see what is actually happening in this exchange.  The modern eye sees this move as Odysseus’ mistake, and implicitly engages in the time-old game of – if only he hadn’t done that… he would have had an easier time.  But times are slowly changing and we are beginning to recognize the inherent good in difficulty.  Whether this be in biology via research about the stress of exercise and fasting on the body, or in pop culture, such as in the popular show Billions where a character recently says “The very difficulty of it is why you must.” 

Everywhere, we are finding instances where the harder road is ultimately the better road.

We can reframe Odysseus’ hubris as a self-regulating mechanism that snaps reality into a new level. Like with a videogame, success on one level grants one entry to the next level which is more difficult, requiring not just the skills of the previous level, but new ones that will be acquired in the midst of new challenge.

Odysseus may not be consciously making his life more difficult, but we can see his egoism or hubris as a trait that arises when life has become too easy.  This model of ineptitude growing into bloated ability and then popping even maps onto the boom-bust cycles that we can see in economics, or the feast and fast mechanisms that have arisen in the body throughout evolutionary history.  The inherent assumption of mapping over these domains is that the result is stronger than it was before the cycle, which is not necessarily always true, just as hubris and ego can drive a person off a metaphorical cliff from which they never recover.  One of the points buried within the Odyssey is that if a person can survive such metaphorical falls and rise once more, they will be far better equipped than if they had never risen and fallen from such egoist heights.  

The rest of the epic is perhaps the primordial example of the underdog spirit.  Odysseus grinds through challenge after challenge, and though he finally enters his kingdom looking like a poor and decrepit beggar, he is, at that point stronger and better equipped than he ever was as a magnificent war hero thanks solely to his willingness to entertain the dangerous spirit of hubris within himself.

Nietzsche once wrote something to this effect: Be careful in casting our your demons, lest they be the best part of you.   Through this lens we can identify Odysseus’ demon as hubris, which ultimately did him a great service by channeling his life down a more difficult corridor.  He is, ultimately, willing to flirt with the dangerous parts of the human psyche in order to discover some greater good. 

Whether it be technology or even something as basic as emotions, the great mistake is to label something once as good or bad and fail to see the gateways that exist in the border between these two concepts.  It’s easy to elucidate this fact with something as simple as a knife: holding the wrong end is bad, but holding it correctly makes it useful and good.  This sounds like a simple and dumb mistake, but the point may in fact radiate to all that we propound to be good or bad, and the real trick is to at least wonder what good could be rendered from something that looks wholly bad, and what bad might lurk in the heavenly situations we create and come across.

The one who can cherish the challenge can flip flop perspectives of good and bad to one’s own benefit and growth, and in so doing it’s possible to find the satisfying grist inherent in all the problems of life, let alone finding solutions to those problems.

As with so many things, this solely requires a shift in perspective and nothing else.

But,  I bet you can’t you can’t do it.

This episode references Episode 42: Level-Up

A LUCILIUS PARABLE: ARBITRARY DOMAIN PREFERENCE

March 24th, 2019

Lucilius was wrapping up a day of work with a friend.  The two had begun to develop a project several months prior and had formed a good habit of meeting up and working.  As his friend sat in final concentration, solving and executing one final task for the day, Lucilius was lost in thought, reminiscing about the process they’d gone through over those months.

The whole thing had developed from the casual chaos of conversation – the good grist of friendship - and eventually found its way onto a white board, where they tossed around ideas and directions, details and possibilities to which they might pivot.  What good living it was then and now, in that cacophony and mess of ideas, each brightening to the ideas of the other, pinning some, tossing many, and slowly pulling an order from the disarray.  And then as they narrowed in and began to actually build their project, their focus sought out and zeroed each little problem, as Lucilius’ friend now did one final time before they called it a day.

“Got it,” Lucilius’ friend declared with a bright smile.  Lucilius looked over the work, seeing the tiny issue of the project solved and smiled. 

“Nice, I think we can call it a day.”

Lucilius’ friend checked the time.  “Absolutely, and -”  He looked at Lucilius “You want to come over for dinner with the family?”

“That’d be great.”

When the door opened, the shrieks of children pierced the air and Lucilius could hear a mother fretting over some new debacle of childish chaos.  Lucilius watched the bright spirit of his friend drop a little as they entered.

“What now,” he mumbled.

The children filled the home with a cacophony of screams and yells, the mother trying to herd their disarrayed emotions into some kind of order while managing a kitchen in full operation.

The woman smiled at the sight of them, took a lingering moment to greet Lucilius and then looking at her husband, her expression flipped to exasperation.

“Can you look after the kids while I finish up dinner?”

Lucilius’ friend could barely hold his eyes from rolling.  “I brought company.”

The woman’s shoulders slumped a little further, but before she could muster a counter-argument, Lucilius interjected.

“I’ll hang out with the kids.  You two get settled.”

The woman looked instantly relieved, but her eyes grew wide as her husband protested.

“Oh no, you don’t have to do that.”

“Honestly, it’ll be fun, you two catch up.”

The mother introduced Lucilius to the kids, who grew shy in their introductions, their inner spirits bubbling at the social constraint.  And then Lucilius went down the rabbit hole of their game world, entertaining their ideas as they tossed them out, realizing he could give them more agency, lifting one on his shoulders so they could be Godzilla for a few minutes, then being their wings when they both wanted to fly, holding each round the middle and zooming them round the room.  From their huge amount of energy, he slowly unraveled the narrative of their imagination.  And when dinner came time, the tired hungry children ate and sleepy with full bellies went quickly and quietly through their nightly routine, leaving the adults plenty of time to enjoy one another’s company.

PHONING THE VOID

March 23rd, 2019

Boredom is an underrated activity in the restless, fast-paced world we find ourselves in.  Boredom must be separated out from leisure time or relief.  Doing nothing due to exhaustion from the day’s activities does not qualify for this subject.  Leisure time comes closer, but there is actually too much freedom in such a phrase.  Leisure time can be filled with anything: social media feeds, T.V. shows and mindless eating.

Boredom is actually a more concentrated effort: one that displaces all pleasure and distraction to other times and forces the mind into a kind of dark tunnel.

The myth of Writer’s block is a good image but a bad example.  For those who wish to do creative work, staring at a blank page often degenerates into a kind of passionate masochism – which is inevitably a totally useless rollercoaster of emotions that helps one embody the chic identity of a starving artist.  (This short hand is a rather brutal assessment, and one should refer to Episode 6 of Tinkered Thinking for a more thoughtful discussion of the topic).  For those who do not fall into this category, the activity of staring at a blank page might sound like a kind of weird torture, especially if it is compounded with memories of student life when one was under duress to produce some writing on some topic - school certainly does seem to have an uncanny ability to strip down such activities to their least enjoyable parts.

Regardless of the attitudes towards such strange behavior, there is ultimately a great utility in the constraints such a situation creates. 

The blank page creates a far more pure form of boredom than leisure time which is more like a buffet of entertainment and distraction.

The fact is, pure boredom is not sustainable.  This framing might hint at some kind of meditation practice where one might imagine the goal to be no thinking – a kind of pure boredom, but such a discussion of focus and attention – while related – will be more fully explored later.  Any person who has attempted meditation for any length of time knows just how difficult it is to keep thoughts and memories from arising.  It’s from this very wellspring that the artist sifts for honey and gold.  But not everything that sparkles in the flow of our consciousness is a rabbit hole worth exploring.  Like a prospector who sifts mud only to find a broken piece of glass instead of a diamond, this game is initially about traversing a large quantity of thought and memory and then zeroing in for quality.

Reliably making this connection, however, is a practice and a kind of art with regards to shifting one’s perspective.

It’s somewhat similar to the phenomenon of an optical illusion.  Particularly the images that look like static, but if viewed at with the right angle, at the right distance and with slightly crossed eyes, suddenly an image of Bugs Bunny or Mickey Mouse pops out as though it exists in front of the surface upon which it emanates.

This allegorical image is nearly perfect when mapped onto our own internal train of thought.  We can see it as an uncontrollable cacophony.  A static noise of consciousness which requires distraction to drown out.  Or, with a shift in perspective on such a phenomenon, we can see it as that prospector’s stream in which lies gold.

It’s the shift in perspective which is the trick, and which often requires practice.  What many people think of as a terrifying void while staring at a blank page is actually a roiling vat of memory and thought that we can pull from if only we know how to connect to it.  Whether we think of it as sifting a stream of consciousness or throwing a baited line into that roiling vat, it’s of no matter.  These are merely analogies that cannot supplant the necessary practice required to fulfill such analogies.

This is where boredom comes in as an infinitely useful tool.  Only by sitting without distraction, constrained by our own intention to somehow connect with this mess of memory and thought do we actually develop the muscle which enables one to make that connection on command.

This episode references Episode 6: What’s Your Passion?