SILENT MIND

March 11th, 2021

As a species we don’t seem to have any provisions about sound.  Fact is: if there are people around, chances are, it’s loud.  Cities are enormously noisy, but even the eerie silence of a lifeless suburb is daily destroyed by the infernal buzz of some landscaping device.  The only structural prohibitions regarding sound have to do with either professional recording, movie theatres, or ironically, libraries - ironic because when libraries first came into existence they were very noisy affairs.  Apparently it took mankind a while to figure out how to read silently.

The forceful lack of silence in urban areas begs an interesting question: are we simply careless about silence, or are we purposely trying to drown something out?

If it is silent, what exactly is left over?  We often seek company, even if it’s just the TV blabbing nonsense in the other room, and the reason for many is due to a horrifying vulnerability.  If it’s truly silent, then we are forced to hear our own selves: our thoughts.

For some who purposely seek out silence, it’s often because listening to their own thoughts is a pleasant, interesting and fruitful experience.  For others it’s an anxiety to avoid, perhaps because thoughts are dominated by negative self-talk, or simply because there’s a fear about what might be there, or what may not be there.

Our relationship to silence is a gauge of our relationship with ourself. 

This dual quality of existence is perhaps an accurate way to look at it.  While we can’t multitask with a dozen things, attention can be safely divided into two.  Just think of a pianist that is doing two radically different things with each hand simultaneously and in concert.  Or someone who is driving a manual car and working the stick shift with one hand while turning the wheel with the other.  Our brain itself is famously sectioned into two symmetrical hemispheres, each with their own manner of attention. 

So when it comes to this experience of the ‘self’, it can very easily slide into the form of a friendship.  The brain will think it’s thoughts and we can - perhaps with a bit of training - sit back and just listen, as we would with a good friend.  

There is the widespread misconception that meditation is the absence of thoughts.  People seem to imagine a silent mind.  But this is far from the case.  If anything, much of what meditation achieves is a different relationship to this internal, buzzing, talking self.  The connection of meditation to compassion is no accident.  After enough effort toggling attention and exploring the mind, a compassion arises as it would for a good friend who we have come to know.  Now certainly there are other aspects of meditation that are beyond the scope of this episode which aide this transformation of attention and compassion, but the idea of a self-contained friendship is not inaccurate.    The larger point is that the mind is rarely, if ever silent.  Like a city of consciousness, it’s rarely quiet, and even when it is quiet there is still something going on, be it the feel and smell of soft spring air, the ache of a knee unaccustomed to the sitting posture, or an electric jitter from a cup of coffee taking effect.

Unfortunately, much of the external world is designed with little consideration for this internal world, and we are constantly pulled away from our own internal world to be overwhelmed or lost in the stimulation of brightly coloured apps, honking traffic, screaming engines and of course other people, haggling, complaining, bickering and trying in vain to extract from others what they f

CORE OF COMMERCE

March 10th, 2021

Supply and demand is the golden equation that underpins all of commerce and economics.  Right?  If so, then how exactly does innovation fit into this funny little equation?  Because, with innovation there’s an inherent property that is not exactly available for our economics equation.  The point is best illuminated by a question:

How can there be demand for something that doesn’t exist?

Or better yet,

How can someone demand something they don’t even know they want?

The first question is more manageable.  An obvious problem begs of a solution, and even if a solution isn’t currently imaginable, the demand is still real, hence the pressure on supply to manifest the solution and put it into practice.  But what about things that don’t necessarily solve an obvious problem but turn out to be incredibly desirable?  How can you want something you can’t even imagine yet?  And for which solves no current and obvious problem?

Here, the world of business enters the holy sanctum of success: the new and the innovative.  And one way to talk about this unknown space is with a surprise party.

What exactly does it take to plan the perfect surprise for a friend or a loved one?  Certainly we can do the token party or get together, which just really involves coordinating a bunch of people for a particular time, a little secrecy and of course the food, music and decorations.  But what does it take to make it really special?

First and foremost, you have to know the person really well.  Only then is it possible to imagine something that might delight them in a singular way.  It’s a bit like an inside joke: it’s unique and situational, it’s tailored specifically for the person involved.  To do this sort of thing really well requires a combination of two things: creativity, and empathy.

It may not seem obvious but creativity and empathy become superpowers if well combined in the business world - it’s at the core of much innovation.  The aspect of empathy enables a designer to imagine how a total stranger might perceive and interact with the new product being developed.  So many products induce only aggravation and confusion, and this is clearly a result of the fact that such a product was designed by someone who assumed the entire world would perceive the product in the same way they do… which is obviously a magnificent mistake.

Any product or service, when being designed can benefit immensely from exercising the empathetic power of imagining what it would be like as a total stranger to come across this product or service.  Would it be confusing and incomprehensible, or would it be a delight? Would it be intuitive and fun?

Notice how money hasn’t entered this discussion of commerce and innovation at all.  Money, in this case, is simply the byproduct of a job well done, an indication that the product or service has enough of the required components, whether that be simple utility or also creativity and the hospitable and intuitive quality of empathy.

While money is often decried as the root of all evil, perhaps this perspective on the core of commerce can peel back that ugly veneer to reveal a world that is grinding away to become more cooperative as opposed to a mad game of king of the hill.  While innovators can amass unreal fortunes for their creations, none of this would be possible without the cumulative involvement of all playing this great came we call civilization.

INACCURATE GUT

March 9th, 2021

Everyone says follow your gut. Personally, I’ve done this plenty and distressingly often found myself in some less than ideal situations. So what’s the deal? Can you have an inaccurate gut feeling?

There is something a bit frou frou about gut feelings and how confident we are in them. It’s easy to have faith in a gut feeling because it lacks all specificity, like astrology. We can read pretty much whatever we want into a horoscope and they apply pretty much evenly to anyone who is willing to look for meaning. Is the same not true of gut feelings? Perhaps if you’re a person who has faith in both, you’re either done exploring this point, and perhaps also in dire need of exploring it further…

We gravitate to this idea that there is some kind of eternal order, some ‘higher plan’ that we get little glimpses of through things as squishy as horoscopes and gut feelings. It’s comforting to think that at the grandest level, something sort of has our back. This is also the same root for many conspiracy theories. Though they are negative, it’s perversely reassuring that humans would be capable of such difficult high-wire acts of cooperations in covert circumstances. Believing in a conspiracy theory is an odd way of saying “we can actually do that!”

All of these things, whether nonsense or not hinge upon our ever present need for some certainty. The urge is understandable. Uncertainty can often be a difficult, nervous entity to deal with. Certainty is the exact opposite, it is comforting and relaxing.

But, the detriment comes from being certain about something which is wrong. Then all the uncertainty and chaos heaps on all at once and the situation is even harder to deal with than a constant smaller stream of uncertainty.

So what would be the tempered, more rounded version of a gut feeling?

A hunch.

What exactly is the difference between a hunch and a gut feeling? At first glance they seem to be the same thing. They may come from the same place in terms of sensation, but they fork and venture off into importantly different directions.

Whereas one person might steam headfirst into a situation based on a gut feeling, another person tentatively explores based on a hunch.

Whereas a gut feeling can justify a certainty about one’s behavior, a hunch designs in a skepticism by injecting curiosity.

This is, most certainly the best way to deal with uncertainty and to explore the unknown productively: by tossing out stepping stones formed of curiosity, based, on a hunch.

RIVALNYM: PASSION & ADDICTION

March 8th, 2021

If you are unfamiliar with the concept of a Rivalnym, it is a name coined here on Tinkered Thinking to address a certain class of word pairs that fall in a strange place between synonyms and antonyms. A rivalnym is a pair of words that are somewhat synonymous in literal meaning, but opposite in terms for the emotional valence we ascribe to the thing being described.

One example is ‘nervous’ and ‘excited’.

One is generally positive. Excited. And ‘nervous’ is generally the more negatively valenced. And yet, what registers our excitement? Our nerves. And when we are nervous, is it not because our nerves are in an excited state?

Certainly that description is undergoing a sneaky change in context, expanding and re-narrowing in on other details in order to create meaningful bridges, but it’s undoubtedly an accurate description of the words and the connections to their meanings. The curious phenomenon of the rivalnym arises only when we line them up against one another.

So what happens when we line up passion and addiction?

And to clarify, the specific version of the word ‘passion’ here would be ‘a passion’ . As in, something someone likes to do with intensity and regularity. This is not to make a specific comment on all the possible uses and definitions of the word ‘passion’.

One is certainly positive, and the other far from, but at the same time, there is an eerie similarity between the two. One thing to point out is that addiction has been studied far more specifically than passion, and so addiction as a word, a concept and a phenomenon is laden with an extra layer of medical, biological, and neurological associations. It would, however be a mistake to assume that such a detailed and studied set of associations couldn’t exist for passion. They are both phenomena of behaviour, meaning they both have a robust set of biological and neurological correlates. We just don’t know as much about those associations for passion.

There is a third word that aptly links up these two words and could perhaps replace one of them to create a somewhat equivalent rivalnym:

obsession.

We might say that passion is a long-term obsession, since an obsession can and is often fairly fleeting. And we may say the same about addiction - that it is a long-term obsession. Though perhaps not an agreeable nor even willing obsession. And this may be the core difference. While people who are unwaveringly dedicated to their passion might invoke the choiceless associations of an addiction to underscore some sort of ethereal notion that it is ‘their calling’, ‘their purpose’, and what they were ‘designed to do’, there is still a much greater degree of freedom and choice between a passion and an addiction. Even if a passion is getting in the way of personal relationships and responsibilities, the difference between this occurring with a passion and an addiction is that presumably the passion will yield some kind of positive long-term result, whereas an addiction in the truest sense of the phenomenon has neither good short-term results nor long term ones, even though both are typified by an urgency to displace that can displace other things.

While the differences between a passion and an addiction v very well have drastically different compositions in the function of the brain, perhaps the relatable difference is best captured by a question:

What would happen if I sincerely wanted to stop?

The difference isn’t necessarily in whether or not the behavior can be stopped, but rather what that process of change would look like.

A LUCILIUS PARABLE: WAITING FOR NOW

March 7th, 2021

Lucilius held the hand until it grew cold.  He closed his eyes, his mind awash in memory, each coming to him as though gently touched and treasured as though the mere hope might keep them from fading in the scrapbook of his mind.  Eventually, he put the cold hand down, leaned over and kissed the forehead, and whispered, 

“Goodbye old friend.”

He left the room and the nurse noticed from looking at a clipboard.  A flat and loving smile pressed to her face, and Lucilius gently nodded.  Her eyes closed a moment and her smile deepened, seeing Lucilius’ care.

He was adrift in the odd sensation as he wandered randomly the halls, paying no attention to direction.  Eventually he found himself sitting, looking out high windows at the world out there, far away, it’s little goings like some mute and microscopic movie.

The squeak of a wheelchair rolled near and the viced squeal of a breaks clamped on.

“I’ll be back in a bit, ok honey?” The nurse whispered.

Lucilius looked over to see a boy, bald and frail, small in the wheelchair, his tired skinny arms propped up on the rests.  His face was blank, but it was something beyond boredom, something  resigned and inevitable. 

The two stared steady out the window, quiet until the boy spoke.

“Coming or going?”

Lucilius slowly looked over, unsure if the boy was talking to him, but there was no one else within earshot.

“What do you mean?”

The boy looked back at him.  “Who you’re here for.  They’re either coming or going.  I mean, you’re a civi.”

“Civi?”  Lucilius queried.

The boy pinched his hospital gown and then raised the hand with the I.V. taped in.  “You don’t have a combat uniform.  You’re in civies, obviously you’re a civilian.”

Lucilius smiled.  He nodded.  “Dead give-away.”

“So?” The boy continued, “are you waiting for someone who is coming or going?”

Lucilius breathed deeply and sighed.  “Not waiting on anything now.”

The boy thought for a moment about the unusual response and then pieced it together.  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

The two shared a moment in silence before the boy picked up the thought again.  “Did you have to wait long?”

Lucilius gave him a bit of a puzzled look.  “I wasn’t really waiting.”

The boy looked instantly skeptical.  “Everyone is waiting here.  That’s all anyone does in this place.  They even have a room named for it.”

Lucilius laughed. “You have a point.”

The two returned to their peaceful movie of the grey scene outside and Lucilius mulled over the idea. His eyebrows raised in realization.  “You know, you might be more right than you realize.”

The boy wore a satisfied and curious look as he turned back to Lucilius. “…go on…..” He said rather satisfied with himself.

Lucilius turned to look at the boy again.  “If you’re in a combat uniform you’re waiting to get out.”

“-or the other thing,” the boy interrupted with.

Lucilius nodded in slow respect.  “..or that.”  He let the gravity of the idea sink in before he continued.  “But when you get out you’re gonna start waiting all over again, just like all the other kids.”

Lucilius feigned as though he were finished speaking and turned his attention back to the grey and now rainy movie, as though he were satisfied with the end now passed.

“What do you mean?” the boy asked, now with real curiosity infused with confusion and urgency.

“Kids are all waiting for the same thing,” Lucilius said, his eyes locked on the distant sight of a tanker slowly drawing anchor in the harbour far out in the view.

The boy carefully felt out the next moment, sensitive to the possibility of ruining a continuation by saying something, but asked “what are they waiting for?”

Lucilius had the boy’s attention and he cherished an invisible smile.  Casually he looked again and held the boy’s gaze again.

“Kids are all waiting to be grown ups, because they think things’ll be different then.  That’s when they’ll really be able to doooo something.”

The boy grew more interested, his curiosity tempered by skepticism.  

“And you know what adults do?”  Lucilius asked.

The boy slowly shook his head, wondering where this would go.

“They wait too.”

“For what?” The boy blurted.

Lucilius shrugged.  “For the weekend, for five p.m. when they get to leave work.  For the vacation next month, for test results they’re nervous about, and eventually, they find they’re waiting for retirement.  And then, when an adult finally retires.”  Lucilius leaned toward the boy, drawing out the silent break in the story of his point.  “They realize they never really even knew what they were waiting for.”

He leaned back, pleased with his molding of the situation, the particular flavor of attention the boy now had.

“And then what?” The boy asked.

Lucilius shrugged, as though no answer now even mattered.  “Seeing nothing else, they wait for the next obvious thing.”

“And what’s that?”

Lucilius softly and seriously looked at the boy.  “They wait for the end.”

The boy was suspended in a sense of disappointment.  “That’s it?”

Half a smile raised on Lucilius’ face.  “A mistake made in youth has a decent chance of living a lifetime.”

The boy’s colourless brow creased, hooked with the hint.  “What’s the mistake?”

Lucilius deflected.  “I will remember this day forever,” he said slowly, magnificently.  “Not because it’s sad, but because I’m honored.  Honored because this person wanted to spend those last moments with me.”  He leaned closer to the boy.  “Wow,” he said.  “How amazing is that?”

“It’s sad,” the boy responded.  But Lucilius shook his head.

“It’s only sad because of all the good times we had together, so sadness is really an expression of happiness.  If we didn’t have those good times together, then I’d feel nothing.”

The boy’s eyes flicked away in thought, but he returned fast.  “Wait, so what’s the mistake?”

“The mistake,” Lucilius said, “is about what we are all waiting for.”

“What is it?”

“Now,” Lucilius said.

“Now?”  The boy said, confused and incredulous.  

Lucilius nodded.  He waved his hand out at the rest of the world.  “So few ever realize it.  They touch it, and taste it every once in a while, when life is intense, usually with happiness or pleasure, but they miss the meaning.  They fail to realize that what those experiences are doing is just brining them into the here and now.  They experience an immediacy that is truly amazing, but they think it has to do with that specific experience so then they start chasing it, trying to recreate it with weekends and vacations and what not, but the funny thing is that they’re always waiting for something that’s always with them.”

“The moment,” the boy said in a quiet, hushed voice.  “How do I do it?  How do I stop waiting for now.”

Lucilius smiled.  “It’s easy.  All those thoughts you’re having?”  He shook his head.  “Just let them go.  All your worries, your thoughts about the future, and the past, and even your thoughts about right now.  Just let them go.  Even what you’re experiencing right now.  The fact that you’re listening to my voice and understanding what I’m saying and looking at me, and this hospital room and the grey view out the window.  Just let everything go, and what you’ll find left over is what you’ve been waiting for.”

The boy held Lucilius’ gaze for a moment, and then, slowly, the boy’s face filled with a smile.