METHODS OF MEANING

October 16th, 2020

Consistent effort over a long enough timeline makes the subtle become obvious.  For example, that leading sentence which just opened this episode - it has a certain cadence to it, a certain crispness of finality.  It’s got the sort of structure and sharpness that would make a decent tweet in the corner of Twitter where platitudes and updated wisdom are peddled everyday.  But what exactly does that first sentence even mean? Consistent effort over a long enough timeline makes the subtle become obvious.  What exactly is the subtle thing that becomes obvious?

If you believe the self-aggrandizing description of the sentence in terms of the way it sounds, then this works as an excellent example of an insidious fact about our communication as a species, which is encapsulated by a far more meaningful aphorism:

It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it.

Politicians, CEO’s, used-car salesmen, snake oil peddlers, we liken them to liars, but this is always after the fact.  All of them can be truthful without actually having the words register, making the listener believe they’ve heard something totally different.  A powerful orator can speak complete nonsense, but if it’s delivered with powerful emotion and a physical display of conviction, much of the audience will be lulled into the notion that this speaker really knows what they are talking about.

Now to return to that nearly meaningless sentence that began this episode of Tinkered Thinking:  Consistent effort over a long enough timeline makes the subtle become obvious. What this sentence refers to most specifically is itself.  After 900 some-odd days or writing these episodes for Tinkered Thinking, some trends in the way words arise for this daily effort have become obvious.  For example, the tendency to try and start off with a strong sounding sentence, or the plethora of questions that have populated the opening paragraphs of many episodes.  These were subtle aspects of the process that become almost annoyingly obvious after so many days of writing.  The feeling of the words, as they bubble up starts to feel formulaic.  Of course, this isn’t always true, some episodes are better than others and the best carve their own form and structure in a way that doesn’t feel forced, but feels like a genuine exploration.  For the plateaus in the effort and the lulls in inspiration, the brain seems to default back to relying on more formulaic ways of producing something, and after enough time, these default structures become more and more obvious, which is at first a bit annoying, even disappointing, but more importantly, these structures reveal themselves, and in so doing, they leave themselves open to conscious editing.

Uncovering these elusive structures is certainly one of the key benefits to a consistent practice, regardless of the skill.  The desire to get better gets ahold of that new area to explore and begins to develop new methods for discovering new ways to communicate.

CALM MIND; RESTLESS SPIRIT

October 15th, 2020

Direction has little use without the ability to move in that direction; movement has little use without a direction in which to move.

In this simple juxtaposition both movement, and the ability to navigate have complimentary and inverse roles.  For an individual who is constantly looking forward to Netflix and the next meal, the roles are still complimentary, but each side has the wrong quality: constrained motivation and wandering attention.

In the absence of a good direction, motivation is converted into anxiety, and such feelings are often quelled with mindless consumption which dulls our overall energy, deflating an anxiety that could have been motivation, drive, an edge.  In essence, when we lack a clam mind, and our focus is frenetic and restless, we seek to dull the spirit.

If we think of our selves as these two basic components: fuel or drive and focus or direction, they create an equation that is constantly balancing itself.  The issue is that our lives benefit far more when this equation is balanced one way as opposed to another, and unfortunately, much of modern times primes us for the later.

Everyday we are allocated an amount of energy.  For those sleeping well and making efforts to charge up for the next day, this can be a lot of energy.  But even for those who aren’t optimizing in this way, there’s still an ability to get up and do something. The energy we are given is fungible, meaning that any given day, we can get up and do something completely new if we so choose.  The energy doesn’t decide what we do - it may limit what we can do by simply being less than we’d like, but regardless of how much energy we have, it’s up to another system to direct it: the mind.

Unfortunately, the mind is not something we receive much training about.  It comes with no user manual and many cultures allocate little to no effort to this idea.  Our minds are then left to the vicissitudes of culture and society, shattering against social medias and further fragmenting along fault lines of tv shows and text messages.

What many are left with is an aimless source of energy coupled with a distracted and fragmented focus.  The two parts are too alike, hence the continual efforts to dull the spirit with consumption.

If however, the mind can draw itself together and shove away the roiling chaos of the world for even just a little while, the mind can then, like a set of lenses, arrange itself to concentrate, focus and direct the energy of the day.

Then the opposite of our usual solutions for anxiety occur: instead of consumption, we begin to create.  The most fulfilling days occur when we find that opportunity or take it, and with the fuel of a restless spirit, and the calm direction of a mind in order, we make something new.

INTELLECTUAL FAITH

October 14th, 2020

Some things are desirable just because we don’t have them.  In fact, most things that are desirable might be so because of this odd facet of human psychology.  It’s somehow both a very boring realization and a perennial astonishment to many that happiness doesn’t somehow become a permanent fixture once a certain goal or status or material compilation or situation is achieved.  And this includes the near certainty that such people have heard about this counter-intuitive phenomenon.  How is it that we don’t integrate the idea into our view effectively?

As with many things that defy intuition, it requires a specific leap of faith to direct actions based on clear thinking as opposed to the more accessible and persuasive emotions of the moment.  Another example of such a counter-intuitive phenomenon is our understanding of exponential growth.  This can be illustrated with a very simple grade school challenge.

Say we are dealing with a pond, and this pond has lily pads growing on it.  Each day the number of lily pads doubles, and on day 50, the lily pads cover the entire surface of the pond.  The doubling of lily pads represents an exponential growth.  Now the question is: on which day do the lily pads cover just half of the pond?

We tend to think linearly.  There are very few instances in nature where we get a sensory experience of exponential growths despite the fact that we are quite literally surrounded by the phenomenon.  Most people, when asked about the lily pad scenario will say that the lily pads cover half of the pond around day 25, or sensing that there’s a trick to the answer, perhaps the answer will be earlier or a bit later.  For those who haven’t sat down and thought this through recently, it’s surprise to hear that the day when lily pads cover only half the pond is actually on day 49.  But of course it makes perfect sense.  If the lily pads double once every day, then they go from half the pond to the whole pond in just one day.  What’s a bit eerie and strange about this situation with lily pads is that for the first 45 days, it’ll barely look like anything is growing.  The growth rate will look and be far less than a linear growth that we’d be able to perceive.

Truly understanding the implications of exponential growth requires a bit of a rewire between what we can know, and what we feel.  There’s a certain sort of faith that needs to be rigged up in order to hack our system from sliding down into the normal set of assumptions.  It’s perhaps a trivial exercise to wonder if we can ever actually develop a deep intuition about exponents in this respect, but it’s certain that we can develop a bit of an alarm system to pause and consider what’s going on deeply when we recognize that something is or might be demonstrating exponential growth.

Another example of this counter-intuition is far more relatable, and it has to do when we come into a subject that is very difficult.  Be it a brand new language, or a skill like learning to code or what have you, the first dip of the toe can make it seem that it’s impossible and that there’s just no way to figure it out.  Then, of course, it takes a similar strange bit of faith to believe that the realizations, breakthroughs and eureka moments will come if only a consistent effort and attention is applied.

In so many areas, our emotions lead us astray.  This is what our intuition is: it’s an often poorly tuned set of emotional reactions that is supposed to equip each of us with stellar navigational skills.  But, there are many pockets of circumstance and subject when counter-intuitive mechanisms function like a magnet held next to our emotional compass.  Our sense of direction and prediction is totally warped and we can be easily misdirected.  Certainly that emotional compass gets better with time and experience, but there are most definitely some areas where it will be reliably wrong, and in those instances, it’s the intellect that can provide the correct set of directions, but of course, this is only if we can take the time and develop some faith in the process of thoughtfully thinking through what’s going on.

SILENT VICTORY

October 13th, 2020

The moment arrives, the fact of achievement crystallizes, the possibility is now a reality and so the instance becomes good news.  What is our first impulse in this situation? As clear as we are a talking, socializing animal, our first impulse is to share the news. 

Look what I did!

Guess what happened!

I have to tell you something!

It’s a completely natural impulse to do this, but how many people slow down and think about whether or not it’s actually satisfying to share such good news?  This may seem a bit odd and antisocial, but entertain the idea for a moment.  How often does the sharing of good news lead to re-sharing it almost immediately because the reaction we hoped to get didn’t arrive and it seems like the audience simply hasn’t grasped the magnitude of amazement and joy that is supposed to accompany this new development?  Is this not almost always the case?  There are unfortunately very few people who know us well enough and feel for our circumstance deeply enough and a similar enough way to have precisely the sort of reaction we imagine when we think of sharing the good news.  

Fact is: there’s only one person who can understand our reaction as deeply as we imagine, and that person is of course, our own self.  That reaction is so often muted by the superficial or mindless reaction of others.  This might seem pessimistic - it’s not, and it’s only to set up curiosity for an experiment:

The next time an achievement is fully grasped, the next time a hopeful possibility becomes a reality, the next time there’s cause to celebrate, just take a bit of time alone before letting anyone know: let yourself simmer in fact and enjoy it unblemished by anything else.

Then maybe tell someone else.

ATTENTIONAL FORTRESS

October 12th, 2020

Pay attention! 

That’s the command.  But is it a directive or is it something that gets our attention?  It’s both of course, but if anything, when the teacher or spouse or friend says this, it’s in order to distract our attention from whatever it’s focused on, so that we may, in turn, refocus on the correct subject at hand.

Though the word is used often, the concept of attention is a bit slippery.  Is attention something we generate and project?  Or is attention something that generates in order to project toward us?

Does attention grab our focus, or does focus aim our attention?

One way to begin making some sense of all these questions, each which seek to define attention in some way, is to look at the concept of sources of attention, and how this phrase is used.  We do not, for example say that the source of attention was in our mind, and from that source we become able to focus on the subject at hand.  It is, in fact, the opposite.  When the phrase is used, it’s always referring to something outside of ourselves.  It’s effortless to try and imagine the news anchor saying it:

The White House became a source of attention today when it was announced….

Language has some contradictory habits in this area.  It’s the source of attention that gets our attention to focus on that source.  The odd part of that idea is in the word ‘source’, which usually denoted the place where something comes from, and in reference to attention, it would seem to make sense that our mind is the source of attention we have to grant to different things in our day.

Another phrase that pins attention down a bit better is when someone does something for attention.

She’s wearing that just to get attention.

‘She’ becomes the source of attention, or rather the source which gathers and directs attention.  These two phrases encasing attention in meaning work well together to tease apart where exactly attention exists.

Ponder for a moment just what an astonishing source of attention the phone is. The phone lights up, it dings, it rings, it vibrates, and for what?  Each accords to a sense that we have.  (Indeed it’s imaginable that if we could easily replicate pheromones, the creators of smart phones would make those phones release smells so that we could be come even more attracted to using our phones.). That’s precisely what a ‘source of attention’ is - it attracts attention.

The sound explodes from the phone in a tiny blast, shooting out, riding the vibrating air, slipping into your brain and sliding along that short well-oiled tracks to the dopamine center where it lands its barb and then tugs you in the direction of your phone, like a whale harpooned and dragged back to the ship for slaughter.

In the age of superphones and social media, sources of attention abound, and they have grown to be very very efficient with the task of grabbing our attention and sewing it into their frameworks and business models.  It’s perhaps not hyperbolic to say that our limited attention is under assault and siege - the image which gives rise to the idea of defence.  Other than the belittling implications of the modern school system regarding discipline, there is no formal teaching regarding the nature of focus and how we might shepherd our precious attention in ways that will benefit ourselves first and foremost. 

This is a big reason why Tinkered Thinking is in the process of developing a meditation app.  Yes, there are plenty out there, but there still seems to be an opportunity specifically designed for beginners and skeptics.  (Follow @thetinkeredmind on Twitter for updates.)

A big aspect of meditation is simply being able to notice what is happening with one’s own attention.  Simply noticing not only empowers an individual to redirect attention, but the whole process becomes a fortress for attention against the deluge of distraction that many companies are trying to flood our skulls with.

Do you have the ability to sit without reaching for the phone contently and calmly?  Or is the antsyness unstoppable?  What does it say if we don’t really seem to have the ability to choose what we want to pay attention to?