WHAT THE FOOL BELIEVES

September 25th, 2018

If we look at the archetypical ‘fool’ we will see a contradiction.  The fool derives from the court jester. A funny man who was simultaneously laughed at but also had the singular power of making fun of the king to his face and in front of everyone else.  This contradictory dichotomy should never be far from our minds when we think of someone as stupid.  Inherent in the very thing we laugh at, might be a power and a knowledge that is beyond our abilities.

With the court jester, we may ask what’s easier: to follow all the rules of the court and ‘get by’, or to be smart enough to make fun of the king to his face and get away with it?  Actually both require a humbling amount of self-debasement, however the jester’s is more obvious, it’s on display in a ridiculous way which at once nullifies it and grants him powers beyond anyone around him.

The mask of the fool provides a perfect camouflage, like a great white shark that can dress up like a harmless flamingo, we do not necessarily realize what we are looking at.

We might be reminded of Yoda’s crazy old-geezer act when he first encounters Luke.  He acts like a fool on purpose in order to demonstrate an important lesson: things are not always as they appear and the very thing you are seeking might be in the place that you spurn.  Luke realizes that he himself is the real fool.

Or we might think of the Beatles singing about the fool on the hill who can see the big picture but who is listened to by no one.

The fool as an archetype represents in a mythic way what the psychologist Daniel Kahneman elucidates about human nature: that our instincts and our impressions of things are often very wrong.

It’s the moments when we realize we are wrong that the whole concept of the fool turns inside-out.  We realize that we have been the fool all along for thinking a certain way, and with such a realization we become a little less foolish.  It appears that a fool is simply a person who believes he is not a fool.

Luckily there are plenty of stupid fools walking around that should serve as reminders of this counter-intuitive tendency of life.  But to remember this appropriately is to be wary of all those stupid fools.

The only fool in this case might be one’s self.

ON THE PLATE

September 24th, 2018

Think of the sort of times when we say “I have too much on my plate right now.”

We do not say this when we are sitting before a plate full of hot delicious food after a day of anticipation for a big celebratory feast, even though this is probably the only time when it’s practically true.

We say it when we are perhaps over committed in our activities and responsibilities.

Each person seems to have a particular capacity for how much they can have on their plate, figuratively speaking.  But just as a person can stretch out their stomach by eating increasingly larger portions, the capacity for activity and achievement for a given person can change.  We can fit more on our plate by becoming more efficient, using previously wasted time, realigning priorities, and so on and so forth.

In the figurative world of the phrase “I have too much on my plate,” what would it mean if you had little to nothing on your plate?

In the real world, this would probably mean poverty, malnutrition, lack of energy, and more generally a default setback for any endeavor a hungry person might want to undertake.

The physical, literal meaning actually translates well into the figurative world.  It’s more rare to hear, but sometimes someone will say “I don’t have too much on my plate right now.”  Such a person is usually entertaining a new task, a new project, a new endeavor. 

There’s a counter-intuitive catch for the person who is fulfilling the mundane duties of job and home life but still feels a lack of zest, some boredom and generally tired in the in-between moments.  It may not be that some restful vacation from the humdrum of life is needed.  It may be that there’s not enough on the plate.  Perhaps not enough diversity.  Just as a well balanced diet requires a fairly large array of nutrients, some figurative nutrients might be missing from life.  If the morning donut was swapped for ten minutes of breathing and meditation.  If volunteer work was snuck in after work on a Tuesday.  If a project got an hour a day before bed.  If a book was read for two ten minute stretches throughout the day.

If we are feeling impoverished, perhaps it’s a bit like the person suffering from malnutrition with little to nothing on their plate.  Perhaps we need to fill the plate up, until our life is piled high and bursting with activity.

A LUCILIUS PARABLE: INFINITE GAME

September 23rd, 2018

Lucilius walks into the hospital and finds on the map the appropriate wing. He takes the elevator and walks the busy corridors and finally finds the room where a good friend is bed ridden from sickness.

Lucilius approaches his friend, bends over and kisses his friend on the forehead. Eyes gently open and the widest of smiles greets Lucilius.

He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t comment on the situation, the setting, the ailments of his friend, just lifts a boxed game he’d been carrying.

“Brought a game. Let’s play.”

The groaning motor of the bed spins into action and Lucilius’ friend is slowly hoisted to a sitting position while Lucilius unfolds the board and places the glass beads in their respective places.

His friend, having never played, listens as Lucilius explains the simple rules.

They play a couple rounds until Lucilius’ friend has fully grasped the game. They set up another board and begin.

Lucilius looks to the clock in the room, thinking about the appointment of another loved one. He wonders how things went. Wonders when he might hear, and Lucilius’ friend watches him note the time.

After a few more moves, Lucilius notices his friend make a curious decision. He did not make the most advantageous move.   Nor was it a terrible move.

Lucilius thinks it’s a fluke, until he notices his friend make a similar move. It’s easier for Lucilius to win with these sorts of moves and he wonders if he’s explained the game thoroughly enough, but curiosity keeps him quiet and he continues to play. He watches his friend undermine his own chances at victory again and again, making good moves only when Lucilius starts to inch towards victory.

Then Lucilius understands. His friend makes a few bad rolls losing the well balanced advantage he had with Lucilius, so Lucilius undermines his own advantage.

They both play like this for some time, neither gaining on the other, each keeping a vigilant balance against the other with no focus on winning, but only to play, and to continue playing.

Lucilius works into a sort of meditative state with the game play, rolling and moving glass beads, keeping the board balanced, the movement never ending, until Lucilius hears a sniffle.

He looks up and there are tears in his friend’s eyes.

“What’s up?” Lucilus asks.

His friend nods towards the clock. “It’s ok if you have to go. You don’t have to stay.”

Lucilius smiles. “Can’t leave in the middle of a game.”

“But neither of us are trying to win.”

Lucilius picks up the dice once more. “I know,” he says. He rolls them again, looks at his friend.

“it’s kind of nice, isn’t it?”

CROOKED CROSSHAIRS

September 22nd, 2018

It’s one thing to go about achieving your goal in the wrong way.  It’s quite another problem to have the wrong goal and not even know it.

Imagine having the wrong goal and going about achieving it in the wrong way.  Now we’re really screwed.  It’d be like using a hammer on a screw and expecting the piece of wood to become cleanly cut in half.

Using such literal visual images makes it sound ridiculous and silly, but when we extrapolate the analogy up the ladder of abstraction so that it fits with our all-too-human endeavors and mis-endeavors, we do not react with the same amusement, though that would be the best response.  The sunk-cost fallacy is one psychological phenomenon that keeps our crosshairs trained on some outcome even when we realize that our crosshairs might be crooked.  We would be best to laugh it off and head in a new and better direction, but instead we think “But I’ve come so far!”  So we keep banging away at the screw with our hammer.

Identifying the correct problems to tackle is perhaps the most important skill to acquire in order to live a good and productive life.

Obsessing over sales and cutting coupons when there’s half a million in the bank and limited free time might not be the best use of time.  It might be a vestige of earlier times when spending some free time cutting coupons and hunting for sales was actually a useful and helpful endeavor.

For this reason we need to constantly Zoom-out and take a look at the big picture to ensure that we are wandering in productive areas.

When it comes to the crosshairs on our zoom, we might realize that even if they are a little crooked, zooming out makes this misalignment less of a problem.  Crooked crosshairs becomes more and more of a problem the more we zoom-in.  We must adjust these crosshairs at every level of zoom to ensure that when we are most zoomed-in, when we are most concentrated on the nitty-gritty aspects of a project with a focus so narrow we might as well have horse-blinders on, we can be confident that we are focused on the right thing.

One way to help align these crosshairs is to zoom out to the big picture of one’s life and ask, does this seem like a useful direction in a productive area, and then zoom in and ask the question again, and then repeat this process until we are at a single task. 

This is part of the reason why we must keep our zoom well-oiled, because we might find that we have zoomed in and found the answer to the question is ‘no’.  At that point we need to zoom back out and look around to see what other options curiosity has waiting for us to pursue.  We test each by zooming into them, investigating them, interacting with them and then asking if they are useful while keeping in mind what we know about the big picture. 

If our crosshairs are misaligned from the start, all of our questions may be misdirected, and we may be misidentifying the problem as though we mistake a nail for a screw or vice-versa.

We should always be on the look-out for such a possibility, and when we sense and suspect that such might be the case, its best to zoom-out again, take stock of where we are and start the process over again.

This episode references Episode 54: The Well-Oiled Zoom, Episode 133: The Right Track, and Episode 159: Hammer and Screw

HAMMER AND SCREW

September 21st, 2018

We have all witnessed an argument that we felt was going in a ridiculous or unproductive direction.  Perhaps we were compelled to take part, and try to right the course of both straying minds.  We have all found ourselves in such arguments, holding our ground on points that – in the long run – don’t really matter.

Somehow, when the resistance of an enemy is at the forefront, the energy and determination (or stubbornness, depending on how you’d like to look at it) comes so easily, whereas that same tenacious drive seems impossible to call to our aid when we are alone and contemplating some project we’d like to start.

But if we were able to switch the activities and the drive we have in each and compare the outcomes, how would we feel?  If we were able to walk away from the meaningless argument, or simply not engage at all in the first place, chances are we’d feel better about that behavior in retrospect than we do becoming a fool by arguing with a fool.  So too with the other situation.  How would we feel in retrospect if we were able to manifest a strong stubborn drive to ‘get our way’ regarding a personal project.  Chances are good that the project would be completed and we would have a sense of accomplishment lingering around, not to mention any additional benefits the finished project produces.

For whatever reason, we are more likely to argue with the fool and squander our time.  We use the wrong tool for the wrong situation.

We pick up the hammer to use with a screw, and then wonder why the nail doesn’t work when we apply a screwdriver.

Each behavior that we witness ourselves perform is driven by some kind of emotion.  In the examples above, we might say that the wrong emotion is popping up at the wrong time and driving the wrong kind of behavior.

Just as with tools like hammers and screwdrivers where it is necessary to learn how each works and for what situation, so to with our emotions.  We must learn which ones are best for which situations.  But unlike tools that might be arranged in an orderly fashion in a workshop for anyone to easily see, pick up and use, our emotions are not so quaintly organized.

Our emotional tools might be arranged more like a toy box, or a hastily packed box.  It probably requires some work to find which tool we need because, like the procrastination-plagued person squandering their time, we don’t know where that tenacious feeling that arises as stubbornness in the face of an enemy actually lies within ourselves.

Notice how in this analogy of a toy box, or hastily packed box, we might eventually find the tool we are looking for by rummaging around for it, but even then, it does not achieve an organization of all our tools.    This is akin to the late night manic cleaning spree we might go on after finally being fed up enough with the clutter of our living space.  After everything is put right we might feel finally accomplished.  But then the mess starts to creep back to life and increases until the situation reaches the necessary pitch to go rummaging through that tool kit again because we are unpracticed with calling up the emotion to deal with such situations before such situations arise.

By honing our only real tool – our ability to form a better question that we may pose to ourselves, we can slowly organize that tool box.

While sitting down at a bar, we may ask: “is this going to be the best use of my time right now?”  The answer may be ‘yes’ if we’ve brought a book and just need a little rest and relaxation from some other deep concentration, or if we are meeting much-missed friends.

Or if someone says something particularly aggravating that we feel the need to argue with, we can ask “Is this the best use of my time?”  Probably not.  To engage is to misidentify the problem.  To see a situation as an important problem that we need to solve, when it is anything but. 

The easiest rule-of-thumb in these cases is to ask “is this easier?  Am I engaging in the easier thing?  What would be harder right now, in the short term, but more gratifying in the long-term?” 

The results of almost all of our behaviors fits into this little paradigm, and we can use it to help organize our emotional toolkit. 

It can boil down to an even simpler question: “is this useful?”

We might ask the same exact question of the hammer and the screw?  Is the combination useful?  No, not at all.

And neither is a screwdriver plied to a nail.

This episode references Episode 3: Determined vs. Stubborn, and Episode 30: The Only Tool