BORING WORKS BUT ANXIETY IS EXCITING

July 24th, 2019

The words Excitingand Nervousform a Rivalnymic pair.  In short they are essentially the same thing with polar opposite emotional identities. 

Anxiety as word describes much the same that nervous does.  The emotional identity of anxiety is just more concentrated, distilled into an affliction, one for which medications can be created and sold for.

Now, to be clear, just about no one who feels anxiety is going to claim that is it excitingor that it’s something they are creating and somehow enjoying in some kind of perverse way.

But the curative tools that most effectively battle this state of excitement are simply the opposite of anything exciting:

a well managed to-do list

meditation,

routine exercise

consistent sleep

Excitement, whether positive or negative, simply tries to breed more of itself.  We try to cure anxiety by going out and having a good time, when really, this merely replaces one excitement for another, and inevitably, the slip back from some positive sort of excitement to a negative one is just as quick to arise.

Doing the boring things is counter-intuitive, even if it seems like a logical no-brainer.  But that’s the thing: what is intuitive is already not using that executive thoughtful part of the brain.  Intuition is more about emotion.  Emotions like excitement, and the intuitive solution to a negative excitement is a positive excitement.  Hence the counter-intuitive realization of slowing down and concentrating on the boring things.

We can rephrase these ideas in simpler, grander and primordial terms:  chaos & order.

Chaos breeds more chaos, not matter how good or bad it feels.

The answer to chaos is sorting it out. Creating order.

The answer is, well, kind of boring.

This episode references Episode 293: Rivalnym

EXHAUSTED BATTERY

July 23rd, 2019

Allowing a battery to go to 0% damages the battery significantly.  It’ll be possible to get the battery fully charged again, but it will run out much quicker.  At the same time, charging a battery to 100% isn’t that great either and also injures the life of the battery.

People are in some sense, quite similar.  We do best with daily sprints of work and nightly rest in order to recharge. 

It doesn’t take much putzing around in this world to experience just how haggard and hindered it feels to burn the candle at both ends for too long.

But likewise, most all of us know that strange phenomenon of feeling tired after getting an extraordinary amount of sleep.

Like the battery, one is certainly worse than the other.  Best to oversleep than overwork.

But even better is to keep the equation balanced. There’s always tomorrow for more work, and if we overdo it today, our ability to stay consistent tomorrow drops. 

CONQUERTIZE

July 22nd, 2019

Priority as an idea has bloated into something it doesn’t really mean.  We think of a to-do list, an order of importance, but priority refers to just one thing, the only thing, the priority, the prior.

A funny and useful little word that has been hopping around the last few years isconquertize.  A simple way to interpret this word is to think of

prioritizing the things we conquer.

This may relate to an order of operations.  An easy way to think of the order of operations is that socks go before shoes.  To attempt the reverse order is, well, ill-advised.

If we can conquer our to-do list in the right order, this also frees up the lost meaning of priority.  For example, if having as much freedom of attention and timeis our priority, which gives rise to the more enjoyable parts of life: spending time with family, working on side projects we are curious about, reading, etc, then this priority gives rise to a logic in which we can conquertize the problems we tackle in life.

Money often comes into sharp focus at this point. Most people make a big trade-off with time in order to have enough money to sustain some standard of living.  It’s an ironic tragedy of the modern age to have a lovely standard of living and no time to actually live it.

Establishing time as the priorityinstantly recalibrates the logic of conquertizing our problems.  Suddenly the eternal question of “what should I concentrate on?” has a clear and present answer.

Conquertizing can be more than an odd replacement for the way we use the word ‘prioritize’.  How exactly can we prioritize if we haven’t actually established the priority?  Conquertize can be a word that electrifies our logic of operation, aligning an order of operation with our most important desires.

This episode references Episode 352: Order of Operations and Episode 10: Priorities.

A LUCILIUS PARABLE: SHUFFLING PRIORITIES

July 21st, 2019

Lucilius was on a silent retreat, deep in the woods at a quiet monastery, meditating in the company of others who sought the experience.  All who took part and even those who ran the monastery were forbidden from speaking in order to honor the wish of the man who had built the monastery, knowing full well that this silence would aid the journey of all those who sought a better mind.

After many days in silent contemplation, sitting with all the rest in the great hall, Lucilius sensed something amiss and opened his eyes.  One of the others had entered the great hall and the man was frantically waving his hands with an incredible look of urgency.  Lucilius quickly got up and followed the direction the man indicated.  Lucilius turned a corner and saw in the kitchen a fire had started, growing from the oven and licking the ceiling as it grew and spread.

Lucilius quickly turned back to the great hall where dozens of others sat in meditation and yelled, “fire!”

COMEDY CANCELLED

July 20th, 2019

This episode relies heavily on Episode 173: Wisecrack Canary

Today, we live in an environment where comedians are held to higher standards of behavior than world leaders are. Presidents seem to have a license for everything while comedians, strangely, seem to be vying for places in heaven while tempting the devil in everyone.

But it may be silly to think that anything has really changed.  The origin of the standup comedian originates, presumably, with the court jester whose job it was to make fun of the king for the amusement of all. 

But if the jester failed in this task and angered the king with his jokes, it was the king who executed the jester for going too far.

Now, there exists no king to execute the comedian when the joke fails to land well.  But the power to cancel a comedian has not evaporated, but merely moved.

Where does this king exist in the age of democracy where presidents fall short of the powers of a dictator?  The quick, assuming answer is the president, as with a country like the United States, but this immediately harks of a dictatorship and democracies are built as a direct and blatant alternative to fascism.  The power is distributed, naturally, as is the hallmark and hope of democracy, and the seat of power in this instance seems still sensitive to the job of taking out the jester when behavior is deemed…

too far.

This cleaved power, as divided between a leader like a president and the people who presumably enable the power of such a president still seems somewhat at odds with itself, as though the perspective of the distributed people and the ability for such distributed power to make sensible decisions has not yet matured.  Perhaps its even likely that it’s impossible for such a group to mature to some ideal state. For the time being it’s best we hope otherwise.

It is interesting how quickly and adeptly positions of power acclimate to missing limbs when the distributed nature of democracy lops off another ability previously reserved for a king.  The boon of laziness is that we long to schluff off responsibility to others.  Perhaps this human foible allowed for George Washington’s superhuman refusal of dictatorial powers to persist beyond the man.  How lovely would it be if laziness could account for some of the improvements in society?  No president has really ever made a meaningful attempt to wrench back powers from its distributed form.  Everyone wants the grandeur that comes along with the responsibility of power, but no one actually wants to put up with the hassle of responsibility.

What’s perhaps a surprise to ponder is that the jester is still functioning much the same way he was in the days of the court. He (or she) pokes fun at the seats of power.  But what is new is that the seat of power has ramified.  The seat(s) of power are now occupied by world leaders, business people and the population at large…. not to mention the comedian themselves given a certain threshold of success both in terms of popularity and financial horsepower. 

All of these groups are regular and valid sources of humor for the comedian.  They make fun of world leaders, they make fun of other rich people, they make fun of the common person, and then of course, comedians make fun of themselves.

Even more curious is where the power to silence a comedian has wandered off to.  A world leader of a democracy would be generally shunned for attempting such a thing.  A business leader would probably add fodder to the fire where they are the butt of the joke. 

But the masses are relatively untouchable in this regard and can cancel someone’s career with a swiftness that was hitherto reserved by the guillotine. 

And unlike comedians, business leaders, or world leaders, the masses cannot be cancelled out.  They are untouchable in this regard because the masses are by default distributed.

But there lies within this steaming, heap of mass an important caveat.  ‘The masses’ are spoken of in this respect as a singular but untraceable unit.  But this usage lacks the necessary granularity. 

Here enters The Minority Rule.  Within the masses, those who inflict and succeed with this cancel culture do not actually ever comprise a majority.  In the rare case that the masses are actually unified, then constitutional amendments occur. Otherwise, the cancelling power of the mass culture can be attributed to a much smaller, stubborn and very vocal subset.

While everyone has an opinion, few have an opinion strong enough, or a temperament attuned to the volume necessary to be a part of this subset of the masses that kicks and screams until they get their way.

If everyone in the room is silent aside from two or three people speaking, then that group has the loudest voice by default.

Power has transferred to the minority rule. And an easy way of thinking about this rule is to think about a single drop of ink being dropped into a vat of water…. it’s quite difficult to pick out any part of the vat that is not representative of the ink because it diffuses… its nearly impossible to pick out some water in the vat that isn’t influenced by the ink, unless we get down to an exceptionally granular and difficult level.

As Margaret Meade once wrote:

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

She could not be more correct, but the dark side of her realization is not apparent in her rosy, inspirational verbiage.

Thoughts can be ones of anger, and ‘thoughtful’ can have a very unexpected meaning in this sense.  A small group of angry, committed people can turn off the humor for everyone else.  And this has been the case in several circumstances. 

It’s the unfortunate tendency of the majority to tolerate the intolerance of a minority that inevitably leads to the decapitation of the majority. 

This is simultaneously why it seems so unbelievable when tiny factions come out of left field and grow to dominate, and also why it’s entirely possible.

The only sensible and practical response is something that exists between stubbornness, patience and determination.

As Tinkered Thinking has explored previously, Stubborn and Determined form an essential Rivalnym.  Patience is the unifying fuel that powers both of these positions. 

What mistakes and apologies boil down to is essentially a declaration of intention.  Honest mistakes will be made, must be made and certainly have been made. The only thing that reveals such mistakes as honest is the intention described around the event.  If that intention, combined with a thoughtful interpretation of the event’s results leads to a change in behavior, then we as a species have nothing to worry about.  This becomes more complicated as we make room for people who must learn slowly through repeated mistakes.  There incurs a point when we as a society ask how many infractions we are willing to field before the connections between intention, retrospection and behavioral change are clearly not strong enough to move forward productively.  The questions that may arise in this framework are numerous, fascinating and should be the foundation of any correctional institution, like the prison system.  But for now, the correctional facilities that make up the majority are totally blunt to these nuances.  So blunt in fact, that it mirrors the often ill-guided instant reaction of the vocal minority that inevitably imposes its will on the majority.

Our discussion must inevitably land back on laziness.  It’s the inactivity of the majority that allows for the minority rule to dominate. The problem is that the minority rule can create great damage.  This is how terrorists can achieve such success with guerrilla warfare, which epitomizes the minority rule in a physical and violent way. 

The change needed is for another minority – it need not even be the majority – to react to the unwise assumptions of the minority trying to impose their will, and to simply say, ‘no, perhaps mistakes were made, but all is still good, chill out.’

This episodes references Episode 293: Rivalnym.