BEYOND VICTORY

September 18th, 2018

The cultural image of Darwinian struggle might be summed up as two animals battling it out for life and death.  Naturally this betrays a lot of the nuance in his Origin of Species, and yet, this simple contest is an unfortunate benchmark of our society: for some reason, we crave the winner and the downfall of the loser.  Whether it be MMA fighting or the Olympics, War, or even a simple bet between friends, much of our thinking rides on this structure of victory.

If man were a more purely solitary species, like say a leopard, or a white shark, this would make more sense.  Most interactions of such species are an effort for victory in order to eat and nourish their bodies.

But man is first and foremost a cooperative species.  Our infatuation with being solitary opponents is clearly subordinate to this desire as evidenced by our sprawling, innovative, planet-encompassing culture and society.  By default, none of what we have accomplished can be built in isolation.

Dolphins and Orcas live in pods, wolves and some dogs hunt in packs, ants build elaborate structures to house their family, but we as humans take cooperation to a whole new level.  One never glimpsed before in the history of the planet.  Our drive to cooperate is so much at the forefront of our efforts that we even try to cooperate with a large number of other species, whether this be a depressed whale jumping in a pool or a dog running through wreckage looking for survivors.  But our cooperation with each other is tantamount.

Nearly every building, every manmade object we can see, the phone we read or listen to this on, the desktop computer, the books on our selves, the food we have in our fridge, even the language we use to understand this sentence was the harvest of vast amounts of cooperation and creativity between people.

In the light of this megalithic cooperation we’ve achieved, our near obsession with victory seems a bit out of place.  Surely competition has been a huge driving force for much of the success that society has achieved, but on such a small level, as say, a conversation, it seems counter to our deepest wishes to be so hell-bent on victory.

A simple argument is the most puzzling example, and we see it all the time and everywhere.  Whether it be a presidential debate, or a quarrel between lovers in the next grocery isle, we are depressingly quick to set up a rickety power dynamic scaffolding to see who gets to be king of the hill.  Perhaps we do this because a room full of leaders is no team at all, but this stark view of individuals does us a disservice once again.  A room full of true leaders would be an agile group, full of individuals who are capable of taking the lead when they can, or who can become a different, important aspect of cooperation.    Think of someone driving a car who turns to the passenger and says “Take the wheel for a second.”  The passenger jumps into the leading roll for a moment.  There is no bickering, no crushed pride, nor a desire to prove who is better because the aim of both people is clear:  to get farther down the road safely.

And yet in arguments of all sorts, we are quick to forget our common human goals in favor of the current pedantic flavor of this or that viewpoint, which may or may not be verifiable in a scientific way.

We would do well to ask: What is beyond victory in this argument?

Are we best served to dig a deeper trench for our threatened view point?  Or can we look at our ‘opponent’ as a kind of gold mine.  But one that has not been excavated.  One that requires some good questions and hard patience to find the goods.

The word conversation, from converse, simply means to ‘live among, and be familiar with’.

How are we working towards the point of conversation if we are hell bent on winning an argument?

It’s long been said that we should keep our friends close and our enemies closer.

A first glance at this adage makes one’s eyes grow thin with cynicism and we see humanity as a deceptive species, and because of this we need to watch out backs.  Keeping enemies close seems like an easier way to keep tabs on their movements and therefore increase our chances of thwarting their aims if we see their crosshairs nearing ourselves.

There is, however, another way to interpret this saying.

Perhaps it is asking us to become closer with our enemies, not so we can keep tight tabs on their movements, but so that we can actually get to know them better.  To converse with our enemies so that, in due course, they cease to be enemies.  Perhaps the saying is telling us that we have enemies because we have not gone through the difficult process of getting to know our enemy. 

The word ‘enemy’ comes from the Latin meaning literally ‘not friend’.

Perhaps the saying is indicating that some one is ‘not a friend’ because we have not brought them close enough to ourselves.

We’ve perhaps taken the word in a new and unwholesome direction.  According to the Latin, it’s more accurate to define enemy as a stranger.  Someone who we simply do not know, and such a definition makes this second reading of the old saying a bit more fitting.

We must ask, what if we did away with the current concept of enemy?  Even just as a thought exercise.  How would we reimagine our interaction with such people that are strangers, or not friends?

Perhaps we can redefine enemy as ‘not yet a friend’.

We need not even go this far as to try and convert enemies into friends.  We can look much closer to home.  To the arguments we have.  We can thoughtfully pause and ask ourselves: “what’s the point of this relationship and this interaction, at their core?”  Am I honoring it with my words and actions?  If not, how would we better honor the spirit of cooperation?

So that we can get a little farther down the road, safely…

This episode references Episode 23: Pause.  If you’d like to fully explore the reference, please check out that episode next.

ESTEEM

September 17th, 2018

In the late 60’s and 70’s some studies hailed a correlation between high self-esteem and a successful life.  The resulting thinking from this followed as such:  if we generate high self-esteem in kids, then they will be more successful.  And thus was born the precarious and doomed self-esteem movement where everyone is special.  The results of this experiment surely fall very short of the expectations incased in the good intentions that wrought such fanfare.

The whole debacle could have been avoided and redirected towards a more productive message if only the actual words comprising the idea had been more closely examined.

Mainly in this case, the word ‘esteem’ is problematic.

In the cultural milieu, the term self-esteem has a meaning akin to confidence.  The connotation evokes some sort of magical positive attitude that is somehow expected to manifest all the necessary thinking and skills to achieve things without any disruption in that positive attitude.  Unfortunately, such a connotative definition betrays the real definition of both confidence and esteem.

Just as Confidence 2.0 is something that we must systematically build, esteem is something that applies to the exact same situation, albeit viewing that situation from a different perspective. 

Esteem derives from the Latin meaning ‘to estimate’.

How much different would the self-esteem movement have been if it was titled the ‘Self-Estimation Movement’?

If we are asked to estimate our own worth of character and individual, would we focus so much on how we generally feel on a moment to moment basis, or would we look at other evidence?  How we act and what we do is a far more meaningful metric for getting a sense of what kind of value we offer other people.

The self-esteem movement was the equivalent of asking kids to estimate themselves when they had done little to nothing in life. 

Perhaps those studies have it backwards.   The conclusion was that self-esteem produces a successful life.  Perhaps the more accurate conclusion would have been: A successful life produces a person with high-self esteem.  And this makes more sense with regards to the actual meanings of the words.  A person who has been successful in life (regardless of how they define it) is going to estimate themselves to be of higher value than a person who does not think they have been successful. 

Phrased in such a spelled-out-way makes it seem blatantly obvious.  But to do so elicits just how misguided our thinking and actions can become when we tack on a meaning to a word that doesn’t fit so well with our aims and goals.  Moving the meaning of the phrase ‘self-esteem’ closer to something like positive mental attitude, instead of something that would come after the experience of accomplishment and overcoming obstacles is like trying to get a chicken without the whole process of INCUBATING an egg.  Or like having the cart before the horse.

We gain more self-esteem when we are forced to make a larger estimate of ourselves based on the behavior, the acts, and the accomplishments that we have worked hard to make happen.

Self-esteem is not free.  But this is what the self-esteem movement attempted to do.  It was an experiment lacking thoughtfulness that asked the question: if we just hand out fake self-esteem for free, maybe it will trick kids into becoming the sort of people who become successful.

This begins to sound like: fake it till you make it.  But in the case of the self-esteem movement, the kids were not being told about the faking part.  The important difference is that someone who if faking it till they make it knows they are faking it.  Whereas kids influenced by the self-esteem movement risk being confused and even betrayed by the identity given to them when things don’t work out the way they want.

When it comes to self-esteem, we want to make estimates that are as close to accurate as possible.  Like a carpenter or painter making a cost estimate for a given project.  If the estimate is wildly off from the final cost, word will spread about their lack of accuracy and they will find less and less work.

As with self-esteem, we would do ourselves much good to be honest in our estimates.  Doing so provides valuable information and a clue about how to level ourselves up, so that the next estimate we make is much bigger, and such is the way that we

increase our self-esteem.

This episode references Episode 38: Confidence 2.0, Episode 129: Positive Mental Attitude is just First Gear, Episode 5: Incubation, and Episode 42: Level-Up.

PROGRESS OR PERFECTION?

September 16th, 2018

Perfection, as a modern concept is an asymptotic illusion.  Something that cannot be achieved, and yet something we spend an inordinate amount of time fussing about.  The obscene amount of time spent retaking selfies comes to mind as a particularly superficial attempt to achieve this illusion.

But the word perfect, if we look at it from an etymological and historical standpoint, simply means ‘completed’.

Alas, the word has mutated far beyond ‘completed’ into some kind of idealized and unattainable state.

It’s this imagined ideal that hinders many people.  So much so that many potentially great projects do not even begin to see the light of day.

Perhaps part of this reason is that we occasionally come across products of culture that we admire so much that we regard them as perfect, or at least so far away from what we imagine our own abilities can achieve that such a thing might as well be in the realm of perfection.  In all of these cases, we do not even get the montage of progress that lead to such a final result.  We only see what the creators wanted us to see.  We would do well to remember that even if we were privy to some kind of summary montage of progress, the montage is still false.  Only by going on a similar journey of progress and development can we get the most comprehensive and intimate view of all the imperfect efforts that were required to achieve the end product.

Progress merely means to move forward, deriving literally from, ‘to walk forward’.

If we wish to accomplish or complete anything, we would be much better served to concentrate all of our mental efforts on this second concept.  The idea of progress, or merely generating forward motion, or rather any motion at all.  Some progress may reveal that we are actually moving in the wrong direction, and even that revelation is far more productive than doing nothing at all because an mental obsession with perfection has our mind stuck in a RUT of circular thinking.

The first few efforts with regards to any project often shows just how out of touch our minds are with the reality of any given project.  Details we worried about can turn out to be nothing at all, while obstacles never imagined pop up and surprise us.

Any project, is a projection of our own mind upon reality.  To project something means to throw something forward.  The word means something very similar to progress, and this would do us well to remember.

We cast efforts upon reality and see how they land.  We tailor our next effort based on the impact our previous effort had, and when we have done this enough times so that reality has changed enough so as to look like what we initially imagined, then we might say that our work is completed.  Technically we could say that the result is perfect, merely because we succeeded in completing our efforts.  Of course almost no one would label a finished project as perfect, but it might do us some psychological good to haul the word back to its roots and do away with the modern idealized concept it now inhabits.

This new incarnation of the word perfect could very well be a categorical mistake.  One that has hindered untold numbers of people who have had an inkling of an idea that was never acted upon for fear of falling short of the ideal.

We must examine our own relationship to the word and pull out the screwdrivers and wrenches if necessary.  Perhaps even a sledgehammer.  It begs the question:

Can we have an unhealthy relationship to a word? 

If there’s any chance the answer is yes, then we might be best served to try and change that relationship. 

We may want to find some way to haul the word perfect a little closer to the word ‘completed’ in our mind.  Or we may want to forget about perfection all together.

Any attempt to subvert the concept of perfection will probably lead to some progress.

Progress that might even spread to all sorts of areas of our lives.

This episode references Episode 125: Rut, Episode 139: Regretting Categorical Mistakes, Episode 21: The Montage is False, and Episode 8: Tiny Steps and Leaps

QUOTES LIKE JOKES

September 15th, 2018

There is an interesting connection between these two meme groups. 

They both titillate the brain.  And they do this quickly.

The components of each are always already in the brain.  I.E. we know the language and all the words required to understand the joke or quote.

What the joke or quote does is draw a connection between parts of the brain in a specific pattern that the brain has never used before.  Otherwise, we’d have thought of the joke or quote first.  

Perhaps enough of us have had the exceedingly rare experience of thinking of something clever first and then hearing it used by someone with an actual audience who then gets the laugh or the applause for the quote.  In these circumstances the brain is not titillated.  No humor or delight is present.  A vague sense of being robbed appears and the desire to tell those near that you thought of it long ago, as if to discredit it’s validity somehow, or scrape together whatever pride might be squeezed from any admiration of those willing to listen. 

Both quotes and jokes are ‘collected’ in similar ways.  Those who feel the need to make people laugh pay extra attention to jokes and remember them for later use.  Those who collect quotes may do so for different reasons, but the urge to collect is the same.

Both quotes and jokes are like emotional enzymes.  They are ways to quickly evoke some kind of emotion in another person. 

At least with quotes, we imagine their use extends beyond this quick and ephemeral emotional lightening.

But like a forgotten good idea we know we had the other day that cannot for the life of us be recalled. . .

Quotes are of little use unless we have repetitive exposure and seek to change behavior based on the wisdom of the quote.  This requires some work.  Figuring out what the behavioral ramifications of a good quote might be. Sussing out the potentially complicated methods and processes required for making those behavioral changes, and much more.  Far more work than the dopaminergic surge that comes for free with a smile and laugh from a joke.

Given the work,

Quotes can be far more useful than jokes.

YESTERDAY AND TOMORROW

September 14th, 2018

Neither exist.

This is a very strange thing to wrap the brain around.  We speak and think and dream so much about the past and the future.  But neither actually exist.

No one can get up and go get yesterday.  We can get artifacts that might have to do with yesterday, like a photo, but a photo is not the past.

Likewise with the future.  Tomorrow does not exist.  By the time it comes around, it’s the present.

It takes some time to wiggle the brain into a space that grasps the idea that the day when we turned 9 years old simply doesn’t exist.  Having artifacts from that time, in particular, our own self makes it feel as though that past day still exists somehow, but it doesn’t.

This fact can be very freeing.

It means we are not beholden to who we were yesterday, or last year.

It also means that when we plan, we are not planning for tomorrow, because we will never exist in a time ahead of ourselves and our current experience. 

What this means is that when we plan, and act for the future, we are in fact planning for the present – a present that – when we experience it – won’t feel the least bit like tomorrow.  It’ll feel like Now.