STUPIDITY WISDOM

October 18th, 2018

Wisdom is simply the act of making a better decision based on past experience.

Somehow, this is an incredibly difficult feat, and often requires not doing things that we have done in the past.  It begins to sound like a sort of stupidity when we examine the simple things that would make life much better.

Don’t eat that donut.

Don’t go to bed so late.

Don’t see that toxic person again.

Don’t go to that website.

Don’t dwell on this negative thought.

A large part of what keeps us from levelling-up our own lives has to do with shooting ourselves in the foot over and over and over with habitual behaviors that continually drag us down.  Nutrition is an obvious one.  The body is constantly trying to achieve a healthier state, but we drag down it’s ability to achieve such with that donut or that cupcake or that candy bar or that beer.  Watching just one of the endless documentaries about food shows just how eager our bodies are for regaining and maintaining a healthier state.

It might be possible to build an igloo with Lego shaped sugar cubes, but building a complex fighter jet with Lego sugar cubes is bound to look like a wreck.  So too is the case with our bodies. We’d be best to think of food as a kind of tool and building block as opposed to the colloquial analogy of ‘fuel’.  Considering how much high-energy food is available in this day and age, our bodies need ridiculously little ‘fuel’ and mostly crave better tools and better building materials for the job at hand.

But such is the trap of stupidity wisdom.  Our dopamine pathway keeps those bad choices well-oiled.  While such a shortcut-searching mechanism of our biology served us well before the agricultural revolution, it certainly functions far more like a gun aimed at our own foot in today’s world.

Wisdom is the act of mindfully making a somewhat painful choice for a better outcome.  Our dopamine mechanism ensures that making a different, wiser choice is going to be more painful.  Such is the cause of cravings.  The better choice is often so obnoxiously obvious it’s rather stupid, but the design of our biology makes this stupidly simple choice rather difficult.  Nothing is more powerful in this case than a mindful, thoughtful pause.  Cravings pass.  They spike like difficult emotions, but if we can experience and then remember the fact that they do not last, they do not endure, then we can remind ourselves when they occur: This too shall pass.  And every time we succeed in doing so, it will be easier the next time, and the craving – the downright stupidity – will pass faster.

Unfortunately it’s not overly simplistic to say that wisdom can be achieved by simply not making the stupid choice.

However, if the bad choice and the bad outcome is the only thing we know, we must also create room in this psychological equation for the fact that the brain is simply incapable of thinking of a true absence.  Thinking about not giving into the craving of eating a donut, is still a thought that has a donut as it’s subject.  We might develop a strategy of thinking about some other particular thing every time such a craving arises, such as doing ten pushups every time the craving arises.  This is far more effective than merely thinking about resisting a craving. 

But what is also available is an undistracted presence of mind.  This can be developed through meditation and can enable a person to mindfully disengage from a thought like a craving for some shoot-me-in-the-foot-food.  The craving itself can become an object of meditation in such a way that diffuses it of it’s power.  This might seem paradoxical and contradicting of the precept that the mind cannot think of an absence, but just as the sun heats up the surface of water and draws the water up into the air closer to the sun to form a cloud in the sky, such concentration on the part of the sun inevitably blocks out a view of the original water with the cloud.  The cloud is a different form of the water that has been brought closer through the directed power of the sun, and this altered state seems to relinquish whatever power the original thought had over the minds.  Such mindful concentration on any object seems to increase the mind’s power, like the sun’s rays being reflected back by the white albedo of the clouds it creates.

It might seem stupidly obvious to state, but our success with regards to anything is merely a process of choosing the right thing to concentrate on, but training our ability to make the correct choice is what builds wisdom out of the pieces of stupidity we carry around.

This episode references Episode 35: You Are Not All of You.

IATROGENIC GASLIGHTING: ARE YOU OK?

October 17th, 2018

When misfortune befalls a friend or loved one, we all ask the same thing:

Are you ok?

The intentional origin of this question is a good one:  We are trying to show we care and trying to suss out anyway that we can help.  Often the response to such a question is simple and ambiguously short, like ‘yes’ or ‘I don’t know’, and rarely might we get the surprisingly honest ‘no’.  This is an unsatisfying ending for the urge to help, and so such an urge can often prompt the exact same attempt.  After a few moments, we see a flash of dismal thought or memory across the face of a friend or loved one, and we ask again:

Are you ok?

We generally fail to think about what the effect of such a repeated question is in the mind of our listener.  From our own perspective, we are simply acting once again on an urge to be helpful, but from the perspective of such a friend or loved one, we must wonder: what’s it like to be asked if you’re ok repeatedly?

Instead of sparking a productive conversation, it’s more likely that such a repeated question will land and spur the thought: Am I ok?  Maybe not?  Especially if they keep asking.  Maybe they see something that I don’t.  Maybe I’m really not ok.  Wow, what’s wrong?

Such a short internal dialogue is deceptively insidious because at face value it seems to fit the situation perfectly.  Some misfortune has occurred, there is reason to feel below normal.  But unless the misfortune is of the nature that can be worked on, like a problem that can be solved, asking ‘what’s wrong?’ can result in looking for a problem that isn’t solvable.  It can become a psychological fool’s errand that leads someone off on a totally unproductive and potentially damaging set of thinking. 

The most effective argument is often the one that is simply repeated more often than any other argument.  We might imagine, for example the nightmarish situation of trying to go about our day as normal and having every single person we try to talk to or work with look us straight in the face and say ‘you’re crazy’.  Who wouldn’t eventually go nuts in this situation?  We have a bad tendency to believe what most other people believe at face value, potentially even when it comes to the state of our own minds.

The well intentioned person merely asking if someone is ok has hit a far different target.  A mindful pause is often all that’s needed to realize that perhaps just the company of a caring person is far more effective than asking “are you ok?” for the zillionth time.

Likewise, we might do well to remember for times when misfortune befalls ourselves and we are peppered with such a gaslighting question: are you ok?

Perhaps we can respond.  “No, I’m not, but I will be.  Thank you so much for asking.”

Such a response puts a pin in it far more effectively than the usual one-word answer.  Remembering such is definitely more difficult in times of trial, and certainly a strong moment of mindfulness is required for this sort of wherewithal. 

WILL POWER

October 16th, 2018

If we crack these words open a little, it results in a deceptively simple formula for how to generate more will power.

The word will comes from high German and simply means ‘wish’.  This makes a lot of sense if you think about it in the sense of a person’s last will, or their legal will.  Such a document is a record of their wishes about what should happen.

Power is simply work divided by time, or rather, power is defined by how much work we can do in a given amount of time.  If we can do a lot of work in a small amount of time, then we might be described as having ‘power’. 

At first glance, such a definition of power does not seem to be in accord with our cultural definition of power which seems to indicate something about someone’s ability to yield their will over other people.  But, someone who is willing to work a lot and efficiently, can with time gather the resources that enable them to hire and direct people to do their will, say, in a growing business.  Such an occurrence without the initial luck of some kind of capital inevitably requires some hard work on any individual’s part.

Power on a local, individual level as defined by doing more work per unit of time can eventually lead to the sort of power that is more colloquially used.  (though this need not be the only way to obtain such power, nor does it guarantee the acquisition of such colloquial power.)

However, on the level of the individual, we can use this definition of power and combine it with our understanding of the word ‘will’ and see that will power is a formula that indicates: if we can do more work in shorter time with regards to the things we wish, then we have more willpower.  In this little equation, which parts do we have the most agency over?

Our wishes need not be of huge concern with regards to effort.  It’s not terribly difficult to sit down and thoughtfully look at one’s life and decide how it could be better, or any other wishes we might have that can be written down.  That is perhaps the easy part.  Time is also a fairly fixed variable, unless we start thinking about how we are forced to allocated it, say with a time-consuming job, or bad habits that consume lots of time.  Regardless this has to do more with how we spend that time and not so much about how much time is ultimately available, such a quantity is relatively fixed day to day no matter how we spend it.

Work is the big variable in this equation that we can substantially change, but in order to do so, it may be useful to answer the question: what is work?  Work can further be cleaved in to the amount of force that can be exerted in a given unit of time.  What this ultimately breaks down to is how much energy we can spend in a given amount of time.

At the root of the will power equation is the one lever that we can mindfully toggle with different strategies: how much energy we have available every day that we can expend in the direction of our wishes.

Will power is not really a matter of being able to call up loads of endless energy on some sleep deprived morning and throwing one’s self with herculean strength into the next activity.  Everyone has had the experience of being exhausted upon waking up and clawing their way out of bed with huge difficulty.  In such a situation, answering the question of what would give such a person more energy is probably fairly easy:  such a person probably just needs more sleep.  It’ll take more time, but if such a person’s ability to work is amplified with enough energy, such a person might get more work, and higher quality work done in a far shorter amount of time when compared to sleep deprived performance. 

Nutrition and exercise also come into the picture as the other primary ingredients for power performance.  Sacrificing an hour of work to work-out can go a long way to making working hours far more productive and efficient.  Good nutrition simply adds to this combo.

Breaking apart the words and the concepts they represent reveal that will power is not some mysterious trick of mental life that we seek like some kind of holy grail.  If some people seem to muster huge amounts of drive from seemingly nothing, we would not be best served to try and emulate such a model.  Most of us would be better served by thinking more practically about our days as a sort of energy model, one that we can properly aid and feed to allocate more energy for the day.  Levelling-up need not be some divine wish that we beg for, but rather a conscious and methodical set of strategies that we research, discover, implement and compare in order to see what works best. 

Looking at the body as a kind of machine that requires certain inputs, like sleep, good food, and exercise is a good start for hacking the mental part of life and opening new spaces of will power.

The owner of a Ferrari for example wouldn’t pour coca-cola into the gas tank and expect it to perform at it’s peak… or perform at all really, so why do we expect ourselves to perform at our peak without the exact right kind of fuel, rest and activity that most benefits our body?

NO CHOICE

October 15th, 2018

What if you had no choice but to feel good?

Arguments about the nature of free will aside, what if each and every day started with a wonderful surge of energy and motivation to get up and get at the day?

Is such a thing a choice?  We seem to attribute this sort of thing to will power, and how much we can muster to bring about this kind of mindset.

What about starting off the day miserably and continuing to have a miserable day?  Is this a choice?  Or have we created a situation where we have no choice but to feel this way when we wake up and think much the same way throughout the course of the day?

It might not be too much of a stretch to say that any situation we currently find ourselves in, we have no choice about.  We may have had a choice, but now that the antecedents to the present are gone and lost forever to the annals of history, that choice no longer exists, so we might in fact say that we have absolutely no choice about our present.

The trick here is realizing that the present is continually receding, and while we do not have a choice about the present, we do have a choice about the future.

For example, say someone challenged you with this:  if you can have five spectacular days in a row next week, you will get $100,000.  What would you do with such a strange challenge?  Would you just hope for the best and let those days come your way?  Or would we perhaps be inclined to prepare for those five days?  Would we maybe ask ourselves what causes us to have a great day?  Would we identify those things and start lining them up in preparation for those days?

If we wanted to leave as little as possible to chance, how might we manufacture our situation in the time leading up to those five days to leave ourselves with no choice but to feel fantastic?

For many who do not feel fantastic, the reverse challenge is constantly being met.  The situation for feeling miserable in the morning and throughout the day is being perpetuated in a vicious cycle fashion.  Such a statement may feel threatening, and even insulting, but such reactions surrender a sense of calmness in order to entertain such feelings, and a calm thoughtful pause can go a long way to unpack situations.  Mae West is famously quoted for saying that those who are easily insulted should be insulted more often, and such a sentiment begs the question: why exactly would such a person be threatened or insulted?  The core of such answer might have hidden within it a key for unlocking such a dismal situation, and opening up a sense of reality to something more expansive, generous, and enjoyable.

Such a feeling of being threatened or insulted may come from a suspicion of blame.  The no choice argument here is a double-edged realization that from one side puts blame on the person who feels miserable squarely on that person, which ultimately is probably not helpful, unless such a person responds well to the ‘toughen-up’ prescription.  The other side of the no choice argument relieves such a person of the blame.  Past actions cannot be changed so why would someone in the present be required to feel shame over the past since they still have the agency in the moment to create a future that is far better than the past?  A threatened feeling or a feeling of insult may be a form of embarrassment that both of these edges are the case, which many productive people would define as progress.  If you aren’t embarrassed by your past self, then you aren’t growing.  A feeling of insult or being threatened might be a sign of a realization that’s on the brink of happening, or possible evidence that such a realization is possible.

If such a threatened or insulted person asked themselves whether they had a choice about being threatened or insulted, it might open up the space for asking: How do I become a person who is not easily threatened and not easily insulted?  Would such a process require more of a change on the side of one’s self or the rest of the world.  Most focus on the later, but the whole crux of the situation might be indicated by a change that needs to occur on the former: a change that needs to happen within one’s self.

Regardless, any change that we make is sure to have ramifications in our future.  In some sense, our future self is a puppet, a sort of slave to the decision we make now.  We would be wise to think generously, and kindly, and lovingly about our future selves, because when such a future becomes the present, we will look back at our current actions and have absolutely no choice.

A LUCILIUS PARABLE: A DATE WITH BELIEF

October 14th, 2018

Young Lucilius was sitting in a diner with a young woman.  They had just ordered their breakfasts and Lucilius was pausing for the briefest of moments in anticipation of the smell and taste of coffee as he took a hot sip.  His date smiled, watching him.

“I’ve never seen anyone enjoy coffee as much as you do.”

“Ambrosia of the underworld,” Lucilius said in response.  “What’s the line about having fun with sinners instead of crying with the saints?”  Lucilius raised his mug of coffee to cheers.  The mugs clinked.

“What were you saying about belief yesterday?”  The girl queried.

“Hm.  I don’t know, what was I saying?” Lucilius asked, and laughed.

“You said that belief is like a symbol, and that it isn’t really the thing that you believe in.”

“I said that?”  Lucilius laughed.

“Yea, you said it was like a veil that we throw on things.”

“Oh yea, well, like, think of a stickbug for a second.  It looks exactly like a stick, and when it stays real still, it acts just like stick.  Why does it do that?”

“It’s camouflage, isn’t it?”

“Camouflage for what?”

“From birds right?”

“And why does it work?”

“Because the birds can’t see the stickbug?”

“They can’t?  Does it turn invisible when the bird looks at the stickbug?”

“Well no, they just don’t realize that they’re looking at a stickbug.”

Lucilius pondered for a moment, his gaze gently sliding off into the distance. 

“See that chair?”

His date turned around and looked at the chair he indicated.

“Yea.”

“What can you tell me about that chair?”

“It’s made of wood.  It has four legs and it has some fabric attached to the seat and back.”

“Are you sure?  Have you sawed into the wooden legs and looked at the grain pattern under the surface?  Have you touched the fabric and ripped it open to see what is stuffed underneath?”

“Well no.”

“Then how can you tell these things?”

“I can see them.”

“Just as the bird sees a stick instead of a bug.  Imagine if you walked up to that chair and once you were close enough it unraveled in some strange way and it tried to snap at you, and it was clear it was actually a creature, what could we say about your ideas about that chair before you realized it was alive?”

“Well they were wrong.”

“You believed it was a chair.  When you were a young little toddler, you investigated a few chairs quite closely, and once you decoded the similarities, then you stopped investigating all chairs and took their visual similarities at face value because the fidelity among chairs as being chairs is high enough that you can release a sense of curiosity or skepticism.”

Lucilius’ date pondered this.

“Here, this is the best example I can think of when it comes to belief being a sort of thing we put onto other things.”

Lucilius pulled out his wallet and opened it and feathered out some green bills.  He selected a single dollar and held it up.

“What is this?”

“A dollar.”

“What does it mean?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Well, what can I do with it?”

“You can spend it.”

“Yea, it’s fungible, I can spend it on a stick of gum or a lighter or whatever anyone else bleieves is worth a dollar, right?”

“Yea.”

“Here’s the best way I know to get a visceral sense of what a belief is, and what it feels like.”

Lucilius took the dollar bill between his fingers, paused, and looking at the young girl, he smiled.  Then he quickly, and violently ripped the dollar bill in half.  The girl jolted in her seat, gasping a little, her eyes going wide for a moment.

“What?” Lucilius asked.  “It’s just paper, or cotton really.  But the thing is you believe it’s something else.”