CONTROL

March 4th, 2019

It’s often observed and suggested that we cannot control others, only ourselves.  As a comparison, this makes relative sense, but this notion is highly problematic and inevitably: misleading.  Indeed we cannot imagine and implement some kind of dictatorial program for another person and have them follow it to the letter: though it ought to be noted that the hierarchy of labour in the workforce does a fairly incredible job at piercing this idea that other people cannot be controlled.  The incessant and accurate behavior of millions to wake up at specified times and arrive at work locations relatively on time and then perform particular integrated tasks for the majority of the day would seem to indicate otherwise.  Much of this activity is also done while inhibiting natural drives, for more sleep, for food, and curiosity for more interesting uses of time.  But this is only one problem with the adage that we cannot control others.  The larger problem with this notion of control is that we can control ourselves as fully as the word implies.   

Not a single human is unfamiliar with the experience of acting in a way that is counter-productive to our own benefit.  Whether this is shirking responsibilities, or mindlessly grabbing a tub of ice cream or failing to listen to someone we truly care about, all of us can only maintain a degree of control over what we do and how we do it.  Arguments about free will aside, there are straight-forward examples in experience that illuminate this point.  Staying up late to watch just one more episode for example, leaves us groggy and less able to perform the next day, and there are limits to what it seems we can control. 

The very prevalence of statements that start with I wish I hadn’t or I don’t feel like it, point directly at this lack of control, not to mention any kind of general dissatisfaction or disappointment when looking in the mirror or at a financial statement or thinking about one’s past accomplishments – or lack thereof.

Control clearly exists on a spectrum.  Some can maintain an almost robotic drive and productivity, while others wile away decades of life without ever really doing anything.  It’s incredibly short sighted and unrealistic to simply slap such people with a label of lazy and call it a day.  Surely the causes here are more intricate than such snap judgments imply. 

For example, the neuroendocrinologist Robert Sapolsky has written in depth about how the chronic stress of a life in poverty heavily influences people on the level of brain chemistry to make decisions based on short-term outcomes as opposed to long-term benefit.

A blunt and ultimately inaccurate way of translating this finding into a real world image would be like forcing a top CEO of a major company to take shots of vodka perpetually through the day.  Would it really be confusing if the company started to suffer from decisions being made at the top while under the influence?  This seems like a no brainer.  We have strict laws against what a person is allowed to do while under such influence, and yet the poor are often criticized for their bad decisions.  Meanwhile such bad decisions compound and add to the sort of stress that makes such bad decisions more likely.  The neuro-chemical influences here are far less obvious than a CEO who is knocking back alcohol at an alarming rate, and so, without the visibility, such people are often labeled as lazy.  We might wonder what label would be more understanding when confronted with a more intricate picture of what is going on.

Regardless of problems of category or empathy, what is overwhelmingly obvious is that control is far more elusive in practice than it is straight-forward in definition.

Long lasting changes are not likely to happen all of a sudden in the manner we might imagine some kind of miraculous religious conversion occurring.  Though, such a kind of miracle is very appealing and tempting: perhaps particularly so for those whose mode of short-term thinking is already geared towards quick results.  We might wonder –controversially- about a connection between poverty and religious belief, one of which broadcasts a salvation from the stress of the other?  Regardless of the sanctity of any particular belief, we might simply wonder about the statistical probability:  is a religious person more likely to be financially well-off and totally unaccustomed to financial stress, or is such a person more likely to have had encounters with such chronic financial stress?  We might further wonder about such institutions that urge their constituents to contribute in a way that adds financial burden thereby potentially increasing the emotional need for such religious beliefs, as opposed to looking for funding solely from sources that risk no such financial stress.  This starts to sound very much like a system with an insidious and invisible feedback loop.

Shall we blame the piston head for going down if it is perpetually being pushed into a sparkplug that ignites fuel in an iron cage?

Control is less about some imagined ability of ironclad will that we can call up within ourselves like a magical genie.

Control is about a sum of influences and their interaction with circumstance and situation.  A tub of ice cream sitting in the fridge makes it infinitely more likely that we will consume and regret huge dollops of sugar than if there were simply no ice cream in the house at all.  The mere presence of the temptation in our circumstance is exhibiting some kind of control.  If not on our actions in this moment, certainly on our thoughts, which is all an influence needs in order to have some degree of control.

We are better off to think about our selves, not as a free and independent agents that move through reality, but more as a sum of circumstantial influences.  The crucial point in this second image is that we can alter our circumstance, even if it’s just tiny portions of this circumstance, these changes will further have an affect on us and if that affect lands well, it may enable us to have the ability to make further changes in our circumstance that further have increasing effect on who we are. 

This is the incredibly difficult, counter-intuitive and rare task of cutting a feedback loop and feeding it into a new direction and better direction.

Two images can help to illustrate this concept in practical ways.

We can imagine the smoker who consciously decides to stop smoking by responding to the urge to smoke with a different behavior.  Instead of tapping out a cigarette, the smoker goes for a run.  This is incredibly difficult, literally counter-intuitive in the sense that it’s counter to our feelings on the subject, and it’s rare to pull this off because engaging the executive function like this with a high enough consistency for the habit to change is not an obvious process that we can feel our way through.  We literally can’t feel our way through this process because our feelings are geared towards the prior behavior.  We have to think our way through it and consciously decide that our feelings on the matter are incorrect and should not have as much influence on the situation. 

The second image is the person in a state of chronic poverty who decides to start meditating.  The stress of not being able to pay bills is ever present and the general feelings that arise are going to be in the vicinity of restlessness and agitation.  Such a person is likely to look at meditation as a waste of time that could be used to some benefit, however, this is a short-term mode of thinking that is driven by scarcity.  A thoughtful consideration of the situation might lead a poor person to realize that one of the contributing factors is the experience of stress itself.  Regardless of the causes, meditation, if maintained with enough consistency can become a partial antidote to the stress caused by poverty.  This reduction in the neural-chemical expression of stress opens up the brain to a slightly better ability to make good decisions.  These good decisions can slowly begin to improve the innately stressful situation in tiny ways that ideally compound and add up.  Again, like the smoker, this is counter-intuitive because the stressed person is not likely to think that meditation is a good use of time since it has no obvious and direct correlation with the causes of stress.

Both situations sever a feedback loop and introduce the influence of a seemingly unrelated factor.  With enough consistency, or enough nudges in these better directions, a virtuous cycle can being to form where before there was a vicious cycle. 

A LUCILIUS PARABLE: GOT THIS

March 3rd, 2019

Lucilius was sitting at a bar reading, when he was joined by one of the very best of friends.

“Sorry I’m late.”

“No sweat,” Lucilius said and smiled, turning to his friend.  The two embraced and sat for an evening together.

“So how goes it with the new job?”  Lucilius asked.

“Putting in extra hours everyday.”

“They pay you for that?”

“Nah, they can barely pay me regularly right now, but we’re working on something interesting that I think we’ll work.  I could make more somewhere else like at my last job, but I think this could work out more in the long-term.”

“That’s exciting.  Wine or what do you feel like?  Cocktail?”

Lucilius’ friend looked around at the bar.

“What do you recommend?”

When the barman came around to take their order, Lucilus inquired: “Can you make a Last word with a heavy dash of Absinthe and grapefruit, easy on the Maraschino?”

The barman nodded.  “Sure, sounds tasty.”

The two friends caught up while they waited and when the drinks arrived they both fell silent, tasting in communion. 

“Nice,” Lucilius’ friend commented.  Lucilius smiled and as they tasted again in silence, they overhead as two ladies paid up their bill next to them.

“Ok, so you’ll owe me 12.67 for next time, ok?”

“Sure, yea, sorry about that.”

Lucilius and company tried to take in the situation discretely.  The barman wore a strained expression as he processed the payment for the young lady and when the women had left he looked at the two guys and shrugged his shoulders.

Lucilius’ friend turned back and said, “reminds me: I know exactly the moment when I knew we would be good friends.”

“What was that?” Lucilius asked.

“One of the first times we hung out we went to a convenience store and when we were at the cashier, I pulled out my wallet and you just waved your hand and said ‘I got this’.”

“Really?  That’s interesting.”

“Yea, everyone around here keeps such weird tallies like those girls and it drives me nuts.”

Lucilius shrugged, “eh I never really thought about it.  What goes around comes around, I guess.”

“Ha, yea, I wonder what that girl’s got coming her way.”

“Apparently 12.67”

The two laughed and moved on to more interesting topics, talking late into the night.  As they were wrapping up, Lucilius’ friend excused himself to the bathroom and Lucilius took the chance to get the barman’s attention.

“You mind if I get the bill for the both of us?”

“Too slow McFly, your buddy already got it.”

Lucilius smiled. 

“Son of a bitch.”

SLEEP ON SEND

March 2nd, 2019

It’s emotionally very satisfying to write a heated text or email or letter and rocket that dense packet of wrath off towards it’s target.  The ensuing carnage is never as satisfying and merely works to multiply our problems.  This either leads to a race to the bottom where anger compounds on anger with diminishing emotional returns and compounded problems, or we must make a larger effort in the opposite direction, swallow anger and communicating in a diffusing way.

Luckily the technology of language beyond a merely verbal form has enabled us to hack this problem:  We can write that text or email or letter, and then simply not send it.  The emotional satisfaction is still there, or rather, this should be redefined.  Acting on anger is not really satisfying, it’s merely the fastest way to get rid of the emotion.  No one really likes to be angry, and someone who seems angry all the time is more addicted to the momentary relief that comes once anger is acted upon.

We see this phenomenon as a general characteristic of much human activity.  Enduring work, or waiting in line, or listening to some boring lecture is not so much painful as the cessation will be an enjoyable relief.  The token travel vacation is the ultimate epitome of this.  Just as we plan the vacation and look forward to that relief, anger is actually functioning in a very similar way: we act in accordance to relieving ourselves of such anger.  The phrase acting out of anger merely describes the fastest way of dealing with this unpleasant sensation.

As long as we are not in the same room as the person or circumstance that has generated our anger, written language affords us an invaluable tool in this situation that is not utilized nearly enough in today’s age.

Abraham Lincoln had a practice of writing two letters when angry.  Sometimes, more letters were needed.  The first was simply to relieve the anger.  Get it all out on the page so that it wouldn’t further taint or destroy the relationship or interaction.  The second was the actual productive response that was free from the poison of anger.

Written language as a technology here allows us to have our cake and eat it too.  We get to indulge in every flying nasty thought tipped with the most wretched poison.  The act of writing it is emotionally satisfying.  The act of pressing send, or ‘Tweet’ is entirely too brief to account for any satisfaction.  Unlike verbal language that lands as it’s created, the modern ‘send’ button or the ‘tweet’ button or the ‘post’ button is a potential stop-gate where we can Pause, enjoy the emotional relief from anger and then take further action that is actually in accord with our long-term benefit.

We can easily wonder how many people wish they had not hit the ‘Tweet’ button on some number of Tweets, or how many people wish they could take back clicking ‘Send’.

These actions need not be like the final punctuation that releases the flood gate of anger for relief.

If this is not convincing, we can easily imagine what might happen to our behavior if we were confronted with two buttons, one that says ‘Send’, and another that says ‘I probably shouldn’t send this’.

Clicking the second button would put some sort of timed freeze on our ability to send anything through this particular channel.  Hours or days later, when we are prompted with an opportunity to send our message, we might find our message a bit hyperbolic without the experience of anger that helped generate it. 

Instead, we go into a kind of edit mode, and quickly distill out what is actually necessary and useful.

Unless some sort of chronic stress exists that makes it seem like anger is a perpetual feature of our existence, anger as an experience is actually rather short.  It requires an enormous amount of energy to remain in a heightened state of anger for a long period of time.  The inevitable and ironclad circumstance of just sleeping within the next number of hours is somewhat proof of this fact.  Our minds are engineered to pull the plug on emotions, even if it seems like they reignite in the morning.  There is even a growing theory that one of the main functions of sleep is actually to decouple our memories from their emotional resonance. 

Culture has clued into this knowledge with the suggestion “Why don’t you sleep on it?”

We generally can think through things with a clearer mind given a little time and a little rest.

This is an easy habit to initiate with huge long-term benefit.  We need only write the angry letter and not send it once in order to see how beneficial this can be.  The added benefit here is that we can let loose while writing that first draft.  Instead of enduring the further constipated experience of trying to lessen the rancor of our message while we write, since we usually have the notion in the back of our mind that we will actually be sending the message, we can simply let loose and let all manner of malice spew forth onto the page with the full knowledge that it’s expressed only for it’s own sake.  Otherwise, if this anger is not fully expressed, some residual could still spill over into our next draft or interaction.  Best not make a half-assed effort, do everyone a favor and make sure that every last drop of anger makes it onto the page.  A page that will forever live in a drafts folder.

Leaving our better selves free to take actions that will create a better tomorrow.

This episode references Episode 23: Pause

SHARPENING STONE

March 1st, 2019

For those who like to engage in discourse of any kind, whether this be philosophical, practical, or even fantastical, the kind of reaction people have to disagreement is a window through which we can understand much about such a person.

We must of course be mindful of situational differences.  There is a vast degree of difference between someone stonewalling several dozen frenzied journalists who are hounding a person with questions as they try to get into a car and someone who stonewalls a single person in calm debate, as often happens in lover’s quarrels.  The person confronted with dozens of questions from dozens of sources is in a completely unwinnable situation and stonewalling such confrontation is not only forgivable, but probably wise.  Stonewalling a single person, however, speaks volumes about such a person’s inability to process their own emotions and give productive words to unravel internal and external conflict.

A large problem that skews our view of people and their arguments is the manner through which they deliver such messages.  Jordan Peterson, for example, seems to speak in a way that seems perpetually on the verge of yelling while simultaneously evoking the notion of a passionate desperation to get a message across.  Regardless of what he says, such a method is bound to find success for the simple reason the people relate to emotion far more readily than they do an analytical deconstruction of the message.  We might draw the uncomfortable connection between such a speaker and Hitler who was perhaps a master orator when it came to the method of oration as opposed to the message through which such oration was delivered; simply put, Hitler had a bad message but he had a compelling and emotional way of packaging it.

Severing the emotion evoked by a tone from the actual message meant by the words is extremely difficult, especially when the message touches on inherently emotional subjects.  The levels upon which emotion can be provoked in the hearts of listeners multiplies the more ways such emotion is engaged.

Often, the method of oration is used as merely a delivery vehicle for something far less convincing, like coating a bitter pill or poison with peanut butter and feeding it to some unsuspecting victim. 

Sussing out the core of a message from it’s emotional resonance is an extremely difficult thing to do, requiring a high degree of emotional regulation on the part of the listener.  There is, however, another way to find out if a speaker is trying to communicate in good faith:  And this is when they are actively met with calm and level-headed disagreement.

If such a source of disagreement is stonewalled, the evidence starts to point to the probability that our impassioned speaker has themselves intoxicated with their own message and is riding their own high more than they are trying to find some better way of thinking and being.

If, however, such a speaker listens intently and is willing to tarry out into the new territory opened up by such disagreement, we know our speaker is at least acting in good faith, if not actively looking to change for the better.

It is an uncomfortable truth that a better way of thinking that we have not yet discovered is going to be –to some degree – at odds with the way we currently think.

However, this need not be a battle of winning and gaining, defeat and victory.  Our thinking can morph to hunger for such disagreement for the benefit of two simple reasons:

Either the counter-argument will become a stone upon which to sharpen our point.

Or

The counter-argument will embody some superior way of thinking that we can adopt and in so doing be equipped with a more powerful tool.

In this sense, argument can become the opposite of violent battle.  Whereas in war the victor takes the weapons of the vanquished and thereby gains strength, in argument, the “defeated” can usurp the tools of their opponent and expand their territory of thought.

It all boils down to a simple question: when faced with disagreement, do we entertain fear or do we invoke curiosity?

Only one of these equips us more fully for tomorrow.

SEARCH AND DESTROY

February 28th, 2019

We think of the killer robot, the terminator, the sentinel, or the quiet assassin.  In some ways it’s the worst sort of villain, the last sort of opponent you’d want, but also one of the most satisfying to watch.

Why?  Because each and every one of us can relate to this kind of drive.  Even if we can’t look back on our life and point out a time when we were impelled with such laser focus, such single-minded drive, such thirst to find the next step towards a goal.  But we have this capacity.  We like to harbor a secret kind of faith that it lies dormant and waits for a time of true need. 

This is what we like to think.

In all honesty the truth is more like we don’t exercise this capacity. A lazy, reptilian part of our brain constantly rationalizes things into less important and less pressing categories, requiring less and less effort.  Which in turn leaves our search & destroy program left dormant, unexercised and unfulfilled.

The two words here, search & destroy are of different orders.  The second – destroy - is iconically specific and tailored to the villain.  But the use of the word ‘search’ speaks to a higher order of abstraction and ability.  If we were to extrapolate the word destroy up to the same level of abstraction, we’d replace it with something like ‘Accomplish’.

Search & Accomplish

The directive search & destroy fits inside this larger form.  But so do a whole variety of other things we might do.  Zooming out through levels of abstraction and then Zooming back in allows us to change the end goal of destroy with something else while still maintaining the intoxicating drive epitomized by the driven killer.

We can usurp helpful tools from unsavory places.

We don’t have to take the whole villain as a role model, but we can admire the flexibility, ingenuity and relentless effort that some of them embody.  And we’d do well to practice implementing it in mindful ways in order to ensure that it does not become some new autopilot.

Simple tasks that must be done.  Like low reps and low weight when starting out at the gym.  Get a chore done as efficiently and as determined as possible.  Keep exercising that muscle and then when it comes to something potentially important, execution will be a habit we can turn on.  And this is important because we cannot wait to be convinced by something truly important in order to exercise these abilities.  Frankly there is no way to know the results of any given path of effort.  The future is unpredictable, and success and fulfillment requires a certain amount of engagement with risk.  Being able to execute fully on things we aren’t totally sure about is how we find unexpected treasures.  But the important part is the combination of die-hard execution and uncertain outcome.  This is, in essence a kind of contradiction in the process that seems like a perfect pair in retrospect once something great is accomplished.  Once the accomplishment is billboarded for everyone to see, it’s easy for everyone to say that an individual was smart to be so determined.  But when things are still in process, few people can walk the tightrope of contradiction to muster so much motivation regarding something that is not a sure-thing.

But this is exactly the sort of contradiction that we need to practice.

This episode references Episode 54: The Well-Oiled Zoom, and Episode 76:  Unlikely Mentors