SPECIAL ANIMAL

May 31st, 2021

Is humanity special among all the creatures and organisms that we share this planet with and which have come before us?  Some would say yes, and others would hatefully disagree.  But even for those that would disagree, what can’t be denied is that we’ve achieved a range of accomplishments and abilities that far outstrip other animals, even those species that have specially evolved for one particular ability.

Take for instance a cormorant. The cormorant is a neat little bird.  It can fly, albeit not too well, it can walk of course, and it’s an excellent swimmer.  It seems to have the best of all worlds.  But as mentioned, it can’t fly very well, very high or very far for that matter.  It’s swimming abilities are a bit more impressive, but other than that, even though it exists in a the center of a Venn diagram of abilities, the cross section it has is still quite small.  

We can compare it’s flying abilities to an eagle or a falcon which is far more capable in the air.  Or we can go even further and compare the cormorant to the now extinct Quetzalcoatlus, which was the size of a Cessna aircraft and could presumably fly at altitudes of 15,000 feet for 7 to 10 days and cross more than half the globe.  Very impressive.

But now enters humanity.  We have figured out how to dive to the bottom of the deepest ocean canyon on the planet and we don’t just soar higher, faster, father… we have gone to the moon, and we have imminent plans to go to Mars.  The Venn diagram of our accumulated abilities is a set of completely overlapping circles that each represents the extreme capability of any creature that has ever existed.

It’s been examined previously on Tinkered Thinking that perhaps the key element that really separates humans from other species is our ability to plan long-term.  One cannot simply go to Mars.  Such a project and such capability requires a vast network of billions if not trillions of tiny plans that are all formed and undertaken with a much larger long term goal in mind.  No animal seems mot be able to plan in such a diverse and imaginative way, and especially not in terms of several years, or decades.

For those who think we are making a mess of the planet, it’s good to remember that cleaning up a mess often requires an initial stage of making more of a mess.  

Any successful species is defined by it’s inevitable decline as engineered by it’s success.  We can see this in a simply experiment.  If we put yeast in a pristine environment of sugar water, the yeast will thrive, multiply, and expand.  This is what all organisms do.  But as is natural, resources become exhausted, population growth hits a wall and then falls disastrously.  Many believe that we are headed for the exact same fate.  But there is one crucial fact that separates this familiar instance from all the rest, and it’s best captured by a question:

For all the species that have run this course of boom and bust, were any of them aware of the process?  Could any of them see what was going to happen based on the observation of the same phenomenon in other species?

The answer could perhaps be yes, but in all likelihood it’s no.  We certainly don’t have any evidence of a species noticing it’s own impending doom, whereas if humanity messes up this one chance, some Alien civilization could find the remnants of our civilization in the future, decode our language and discover that yes, we were in fact painfully aware of what was probably about to happen.

Of course we squabble over this issue, but it’s highly doubtful that flocks of Quetzalcoatlus were debating what latitudes they should fly at based on the idea that an asteroid might hit the planet and cover their main territory in a cloud.

The question isn’t whether humanity is special or different from other animals.  It’s a matter of whether we are special enough, or different enough so that we will be able to escape the fate that has befallen every other ‘successful’ species that has come before us.

A LUCILIUS PARABLE: COMPETITOR'S EMBRACE

May 30th, 2021

Lucilius rubbed his temples and sighed deeply.  He loosened his tie aggressively, as though he hadn’t fixed it that tight himself.  He swivelled around in his chair and looked out at the city scape below, through his office window.  He’d just had a very unsuccessful meeting with a competitor and he was at a total loss about how to move forward.  He’d yelled all of the lawyers out of his office just so he could be rid of their yammering about legal technicalities.  Lucilius didn’t like pedantic solutions.  It was fine if a solution was complex and dynamic, but winning by some snivelling pedantic round-about strategy just wasn’t his style.  Plus, even if he won this fiscal battle, the competitor would still be there, polluting their realm of business.

His phone buzzed, and he wondered what other bother had just landed on his radar.  He enjoyed one last breath while looking at the silent buildings and then reached back and lazily grabbed his phone.

It was a friend’s request to watch their child.  An anniversary his buddy had forgotten about, who was scrambling to pull a night out of the hat.

For the briefest of moments, Lucilius was bitter that his friend had failed to remember just how powerful and busy Lucilius had become.  But it passed, and Lucilius was filled with gratitude.  He was not yet lost to the perilous realms of self-aggrandizement.  

“Sure,” he texted back.  He got up and went to a full length bureau that was in his office.  He changed into some shorts and a tee-shirt, slipped his feet into flip flops and left the whole mess of his suit on a chair.  He threw on some aviators and just waved off everyone who tried to lance him with a question when he finally emerged from his office.  He said nothing, but just smiled and shook his head, barely holding in a laugh.

The wind whipped through his hair as the light of the sun grew rusty.  It was a perfect drive, far south of the city, along a winding road, carved into the coastal cliff.   

The look on his buddy’s face was full of tension swirling with relief.  It seemed Lucilius’s timing was perfect as his buddy mouthed the words “thank you.”

“He’s a bit of a handful today, but you’ve never shied away from a challenge now have you Lucilius?”

The woman wore a knowing smile as she spoke about her child.  The two embraced and kissed each other on the cheek and she quickly whispered “thank you,” concealing the fact that she knew about her husband’s impromptu attempt to throw together a nice evening for the two of them.  

Lucilius waved the two off and then retreated to the house.  The kid was probably sulking somewhere, and Lucilius knew he’d show up sometime. In the meantime he went to the kitchen and fixed himself a sandwich.  It had been such a long, strange day and it was so good to be transported to this different life, one like a mirage, a hiatus inside the lives of his good friends.  He set down a perfect triple decker sandwich on the living room table and slouched back on the couch and clicked the T.V. on.  He cracked a beer, took a sip and then picked up one monstrous half of the glorious sandwich.  

It was at that moment, just as he was taking his first bite that the little boy screamed in the corner of the room and ran at full speed toward Lucilius in a rage, jumping and hurling his whole body at Lucilius, his fists outstretched in sheer anger.

The sandwich flew apart as it summersaulted from Lucilius’ grasp, busy as his hands and arms were to catch the infuriated kid.  The young boy flailed his fists at Lucilius landing tiny blows on Lucilius’s shoulders and neck.  Lucilius embraced the boy tighter, kindly, trying to calm the boy, saying over and over “Hey kiddo, it’s ok, it’s ok…”

Lucilius knew the boy well and was familiar with how upset he got when his parents left, especially with little for warning.  He gently, and warmly shushed the boy, until the boy was exhausted with tears, slumped on Lucilius’ shoulder.  After the boy had calmed down, the two ended up having a wonderful evening, playing games and having fun.

The very next day when Lucilius walked into the board room to meet again with his competitor, he was stiff with stress and anxiety about what his next move should be.  But when he finally sat down and looked his competitor in the face across the long table, he saw his friend’s son, angry and confused, looking to lash out, and suddenly Lucilius knew what he had to do.  He looked at all his lawyers.

“Leave,” he said.  They hesitated, looking at each other.  “Leave!” Lucilius aid with a big smile.

His competitor’s brow furrowed as he watched Lucilius’ Lawyers leave.  

“You can keep yours if you want,” Lucilius said, motioning to his competitor’s team of lawyers, “but I just had an idea that I think will work for both of us.”

HEAT OF HATERS

May 29th, 2021

1140: Heat of Haters

When thrown on the back foot from a competitor’s offensive attack, it’s intuitive and natural to try and strike back.  There’s a couple important considerations that are performed by default which could use a little reconsideration.

For example, just think of a small child getting angry at you.  It screams and yells and tries to hurt you by swinging their tiny fists at you.  Do you react as you normally would to competitor who has launched an attack?  

No, of course not.  

The clear and obvious advantage in strength and option that you have changes the situation drastically.  At the most you try to embrace the child, to calm it’s torrent of emotions and most of all, attempt to keep that child from accidentally hurting itself.

Now, to juxtapose the instance of a powerless child with a real opponent, where lies the real difference?  Presumably it’s in the strength of your opponent.  A strong opponent requires a far different and stronger reaction does it not?  Or does it?

What would be required to view an enemy as someone to care for, someone to nurture in conflict in order to save not just yourself, but both of you?  Ordinarily it’s a gigantic increase in strength that gives someone the confidence to have this perspective and take action in accordance to it.  But what’s lost in this assumption are the revelations and ideas that can pop up in the mind if you take this perspective regardless of huge differences in strength.  

Our perspective determines the kind and quality of ideas that occur to us.  If we are solely threatened, and our perspective is dominated by that idea, then all ideas about how to deal with the situation ramify from that initial condition.  If, however, we can manage to maintain a perspective that doesn’t see the competitor so much as a threat but simply sees the space between as one of unresolved conflict, then the ideas that are available to us are different than if we are consumed by the notion that we might suffer wounds.  Merely nurturing a different perspective breeds different ideas, and in the instance of a competitor, no matter how much stronger they might be, the right perspective can redirect the energy and effort of that formidable enemy into one of virtuous arrangement.  

In short,

Don’t fight an enemy in whom you can find a friend.

HELPLESSLY HOPEFUL

May 28th, 2021

The endeavours of efforts that we embark upon come with a slippery trap: the hope that our efforts will succeed.  For the person who has taken a shot a many projects, the sting of failure dulls, and expectations temper.  We learn that there are far more factors that lead to success than are in our control, and regardless of how much we try it’s these unknown factors that can make the ideal outcomes of our dreams sink or soar.

For someone who has failed a lot, it can be a bit of mantra to remember that there’s no telling how things will pan out, and that failure is a reasonable and often realistic expectation to nurture.  This might sound defeatist, but the alternative is a far more destructive experience: hitching up all your hope on one aim and then being overwhelmed by crushing disappointment when it doesn’t happen.  Tempering hopeful expectations is simply an efficiency strategy.  If that crushing disappointment when something doesn’t go as hoped can be averted, than our recovery time is far shorter, we can get back to work and take another swing far sooner than if we have to wait for a devastating funk to pass.

But even the most seasoned failure who keeps trying harbours hope.  It’s unavoidable, because without that inkling of hope, we’d never try anything.  Wrapped up in that ideally small kernel of hope is the notion that something new might actually, just actually, work out.  We have to hope because of those unknown factors that we can’t see, anticipate, and take into consideration.  In this context, hope is the notion that despite what we can’t know, something might actually succeed.

It’s this small kernel of hope that creates the ups and downs of any entrepreneurial adventure.  As our efforts come into contact with unknown factors the fall out, the result of those numerous experiments are ripe for emotional resonance.  How we respond to unexpected results is likely the biggest factor in determining whether or not our vision will ever come to fruition.  The ability to pivot with new information is everything.

But still, there’s that pesky hope, constantly trying to grow, feeding on your ideas, your creativity, your plans and fantasy outcomes.  Hope is like a flame, and if it is given too much it will spread and destroy you.  Think for a moment about how fire exists in modern society.  It’s cloistered in fire places, bottled up in the piston cylinders of car engines and for the most part highly controlled.  But society probably wouldn’t exist had it not been for the discovery and use of fire.  Hope is like fire.  Keep is small.  Keep it contained.  But don’t let it go out.

THE ONLY METRIC

May 27th, 2021

Many ingredients are required to create the optimal conditions for good work.  Nutrition, exercise, low stress, and of course, a good night sleep.  A clear and focused mind is the ideal, right?  

What if it’s in fact the other way around?  What if the work has to be good enough to create optimal conditions for that work to be done?  

One of life’s truly great experiences is to be so immersed in some work, some project, some goal or mission that all those presumably necessary ingredients for good work become irrelevant.  Food?  A complete after thought.  Sleep?  A long lost fantasy.  Exercise? Ha, I have better things to do.  When the work is good, and the mission and it’s fruition are imminent, the work becomes our sustenance, if only for a short while.  Such stretches of sprinting are not sustainable, but they can persist for an impressive amount of time.

There is something so counter-intuitive about this phenomenon: it makes the rest of life and it’s offer of pleasures pale in comparison to the chance to…. Work more.  Humans are, for the overwhelming part, predisposed toward idle laziness.  In fact it’s probably accurate to say that all work and productivity is just a short break from our default activity of being lazy and just existing, something social media excels at aiding.  

So what’s the deal with that special type of work where we seem to get high on the challenge?  Such a phenomenon has many names: one’s calling, a passion, one’s mission, etc.  But the ting is we can experience this same frenzy of focus and productivity in multiple disparate domains of life.  The experience seems to be independent of the actual activity.  It’s a meta-mode of our cognition which can arguably take anything and maybe even everything as it’s object of work.

This is the primary insight of the autodidact who revels in the experience of moving from new skill to new skill looking for the common threads of learning and skill acquisition that lace through all human activities.  There is a kind of meta-cognition, a way of thinking that can handle a greater and greater variety of situations and problems more effectively.  This is, in essence, learning how to think, as opposed to learning how to do any one specific thing.  And the only metric for this process and goal of self-teaching is to hunt for that instance when the mind falls into it’s own rhythm of work on a new goal or skill.  The ability to concentrate on something totally foreign with single-minded, undistracted focus is the crown jewel of learning.  Often this happens when we are having fun, especially when playing a new game: we can fall into this state rather fast and the learning likewise occurs with increased speed.  This state, achieving it and being able to revel in it is really the one metric we need when it comes to any complex goal we seek to accomplish.