SHARPENING STONE

March 1st, 2019

For those who like to engage in discourse of any kind, whether this be philosophical, practical, or even fantastical, the kind of reaction people have to disagreement is a window through which we can understand much about such a person.

We must of course be mindful of situational differences.  There is a vast degree of difference between someone stonewalling several dozen frenzied journalists who are hounding a person with questions as they try to get into a car and someone who stonewalls a single person in calm debate, as often happens in lover’s quarrels.  The person confronted with dozens of questions from dozens of sources is in a completely unwinnable situation and stonewalling such confrontation is not only forgivable, but probably wise.  Stonewalling a single person, however, speaks volumes about such a person’s inability to process their own emotions and give productive words to unravel internal and external conflict.

A large problem that skews our view of people and their arguments is the manner through which they deliver such messages.  Jordan Peterson, for example, seems to speak in a way that seems perpetually on the verge of yelling while simultaneously evoking the notion of a passionate desperation to get a message across.  Regardless of what he says, such a method is bound to find success for the simple reason the people relate to emotion far more readily than they do an analytical deconstruction of the message.  We might draw the uncomfortable connection between such a speaker and Hitler who was perhaps a master orator when it came to the method of oration as opposed to the message through which such oration was delivered; simply put, Hitler had a bad message but he had a compelling and emotional way of packaging it.

Severing the emotion evoked by a tone from the actual message meant by the words is extremely difficult, especially when the message touches on inherently emotional subjects.  The levels upon which emotion can be provoked in the hearts of listeners multiplies the more ways such emotion is engaged.

Often, the method of oration is used as merely a delivery vehicle for something far less convincing, like coating a bitter pill or poison with peanut butter and feeding it to some unsuspecting victim. 

Sussing out the core of a message from it’s emotional resonance is an extremely difficult thing to do, requiring a high degree of emotional regulation on the part of the listener.  There is, however, another way to find out if a speaker is trying to communicate in good faith:  And this is when they are actively met with calm and level-headed disagreement.

If such a source of disagreement is stonewalled, the evidence starts to point to the probability that our impassioned speaker has themselves intoxicated with their own message and is riding their own high more than they are trying to find some better way of thinking and being.

If, however, such a speaker listens intently and is willing to tarry out into the new territory opened up by such disagreement, we know our speaker is at least acting in good faith, if not actively looking to change for the better.

It is an uncomfortable truth that a better way of thinking that we have not yet discovered is going to be –to some degree – at odds with the way we currently think.

However, this need not be a battle of winning and gaining, defeat and victory.  Our thinking can morph to hunger for such disagreement for the benefit of two simple reasons:

Either the counter-argument will become a stone upon which to sharpen our point.

Or

The counter-argument will embody some superior way of thinking that we can adopt and in so doing be equipped with a more powerful tool.

In this sense, argument can become the opposite of violent battle.  Whereas in war the victor takes the weapons of the vanquished and thereby gains strength, in argument, the “defeated” can usurp the tools of their opponent and expand their territory of thought.

It all boils down to a simple question: when faced with disagreement, do we entertain fear or do we invoke curiosity?

Only one of these equips us more fully for tomorrow.

SEARCH AND DESTROY

February 28th, 2019

We think of the killer robot, the terminator, the sentinel, or the quiet assassin.  In some ways it’s the worst sort of villain, the last sort of opponent you’d want, but also one of the most satisfying to watch.

Why?  Because each and every one of us can relate to this kind of drive.  Even if we can’t look back on our life and point out a time when we were impelled with such laser focus, such single-minded drive, such thirst to find the next step towards a goal.  But we have this capacity.  We like to harbor a secret kind of faith that it lies dormant and waits for a time of true need. 

This is what we like to think.

In all honesty the truth is more like we don’t exercise this capacity. A lazy, reptilian part of our brain constantly rationalizes things into less important and less pressing categories, requiring less and less effort.  Which in turn leaves our search & destroy program left dormant, unexercised and unfulfilled.

The two words here, search & destroy are of different orders.  The second – destroy - is iconically specific and tailored to the villain.  But the use of the word ‘search’ speaks to a higher order of abstraction and ability.  If we were to extrapolate the word destroy up to the same level of abstraction, we’d replace it with something like ‘Accomplish’.

Search & Accomplish

The directive search & destroy fits inside this larger form.  But so do a whole variety of other things we might do.  Zooming out through levels of abstraction and then Zooming back in allows us to change the end goal of destroy with something else while still maintaining the intoxicating drive epitomized by the driven killer.

We can usurp helpful tools from unsavory places.

We don’t have to take the whole villain as a role model, but we can admire the flexibility, ingenuity and relentless effort that some of them embody.  And we’d do well to practice implementing it in mindful ways in order to ensure that it does not become some new autopilot.

Simple tasks that must be done.  Like low reps and low weight when starting out at the gym.  Get a chore done as efficiently and as determined as possible.  Keep exercising that muscle and then when it comes to something potentially important, execution will be a habit we can turn on.  And this is important because we cannot wait to be convinced by something truly important in order to exercise these abilities.  Frankly there is no way to know the results of any given path of effort.  The future is unpredictable, and success and fulfillment requires a certain amount of engagement with risk.  Being able to execute fully on things we aren’t totally sure about is how we find unexpected treasures.  But the important part is the combination of die-hard execution and uncertain outcome.  This is, in essence a kind of contradiction in the process that seems like a perfect pair in retrospect once something great is accomplished.  Once the accomplishment is billboarded for everyone to see, it’s easy for everyone to say that an individual was smart to be so determined.  But when things are still in process, few people can walk the tightrope of contradiction to muster so much motivation regarding something that is not a sure-thing.

But this is exactly the sort of contradiction that we need to practice.

This episode references Episode 54: The Well-Oiled Zoom, and Episode 76:  Unlikely Mentors

BLURRY MIRROR

February 27th, 2019

Emotions are at the core of what gives rise to our experience.  This is true  as far as this word ‘emotion’ can encapsulate the concept and phenomenon it attempts to describe and name. The reasons why we do anything boil down to one emotion or another.  In one sense they are reflections of our reaction to what’s going on and based on their message we take further action.  They are indications in a similar way that a compass needle indicates something about our orientation in any given place.

In the same way that we can have an inaccurate interpretation of our orientation while looking at a compass that is being affected by an unknown near by magnet, so too do we misinterpret the signal of our noisy emotions.

Nothing is more detrimental than this misalignment between the reason an emotion is occurring and what we actually take away from it.

The way negative emotions are spoken of in such an ill light is a good example of this.

There are the comments about anger being a knife that is held by the blade, or being a hot coal that we hold while waiting to find someone to throw it at.

Such sentiments are generally good guidance regarding what the consequences will be if we act upon such negative emotions in the quickest way that seems to create the densest short-term pleasure.  Such sentiments are accurate in the same way that almost any field has long-term detriment at the cost of short term benefit.  This is obvious in finance, nutrition and physical health.  Eating the donut has a short term benefit in the sense that we feel good for a few moments, but at the cost of longer term health.  The same is true of anger.  Acting on it in the moment feels great for those few fleeting moments, but doing so almost always leaves a carnage of situational problems that require a lot more work. 

Tens of thousands of years ago that urge to eat the sweet, calorie dense food had a very useful place in our physiological repertoire.  Such pleasure was actually a positive motivation because it meant more energy which afforded more physical ability in the environment.  The alternative was spending an entire day chewing foods with far less density when it comes to calories.

In our new and highly altered environment, that hard wired urge to grab for the sweet thing is now a detriment.  This strange reversal is something our biology is not well suited to deal with.  But our executive minds are versatile to handle this reversal if that executive function is exercised and healthy.

We might then wonder about anger.  A cursory understanding of evolutionary biology might lead us to the conclusion that we’ve been given nothing that did not at one point in the process benefit us in terms of survival. This may then in turn lead to the question: why anger?  why jealousy? why depression?

Juxtaposed with the example of the urge to eat a donut might lead to the superficial conclusion that these emotions are also out of date vestiges of a time when they had some good use.  But perhaps not. 

Despite all the swirling controversy that surrounds such a hot topic as depression: it may be entirely accurate that such an emotion is an indication that something needs to change.  Depress literally means to ‘push down’.  We might think of stepping on a blade of grass.  Lifting one’s foot almost always results with the blade of grass springing back up to some partial height and over some course of minutes returning to it’s former orientation.  Keep that foot down on the grass, however, and given enough time, it’ll die.  Such a simple visual image of a live organism being literally depressed is not terribly far from the emotion of depression.  Something feels hindered, unexpressed, in the wrong orientation, not fulfilling it’s function, not being able to get the sustenance it needs in order to thrive.  These describe the depressed person and the biological state of a blade of grass pressed down by a boot.

Some people seem to covet an imagined fact of depression like an identity which is a huge danger.  This is a class="internal-link" href="http://tinkeredthinking.com/index.php?id=7">The Identity Danger to a T.  And it may be a perfect example of misinterpreting the signal in the noise of such negative emotions.  Depression has it’s healthiest interpretation as a signal to try and change anything and everything that might result in a life where one thrives.  Instead, all sorts of other things are ascribed to this state, and many narratives have been created to give life to these identities and perpetual states.

We may do anger the same injustice and interpret it far more simply:  perhaps it’s a kind of disappointment in one’s self that we did not understand how our reality is composed and how it will unfold.  We can imagine the manager who gets angry at employees for not doing things in the way the manager imagined.  Or the lover who expected a partner to act in a different way.  Anger is a common response.  The development and realization of such situations merely indicates that there were flaws in the way we imagined how the world works.  Interpreted differently, we might move forward and realize that our mental map of reality needs some updating, and our ability to edit that map perhaps needs a bit more flexibility. 

We might phrase this bit about anger in an allegorical image.  Anger is evidence that our ability to edit our mental map of the world becoming brittle and breaking.

Meditation practices like mindfulness are invaluable tools for sifting the noise and intensity of such emotions in order to find the real signal of such immersive and intoxicating experiences.

Our effectiveness as people is ultimately determined by how much we act upon the signal of emotion instead of the noise.  The signal is of course, the real underlying cause of the emotion, whereas the noise is the loudest, quickest and most ostentatious way we can resolve this emotion.

Ultimately, these emotions are a reflection of who we are and what we want to be.  Within this paradigm of noise and signal the conclusion is formed from nearly a mechanical logic: misinterpreting these reflections and acting on them in unintended ways is most certainly going to lead us away from the better future we dream of, because these hot emotions are arising from the same brain that has spawned such dreams.  And emotions, however blunt and inaccurately read are ultimately trying to help guide us towards these dreams. 

This episode references Episode 135: The Conductor’s Orchestra and Episode 17: The Identity Danger

TRICKSTER MISSILES

February 26th, 2019

In the mythology of most religions there is a trickster god or entity of some sort.  Shakespeare reincarnated the concept as Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  In the Hindu Pantheon, this trickster is Ganesh, the elephant-headed god.  In Navajo Mythology the Coyote was the trickster, in Norse mythology there’s Loki and perhaps in the Christian system we might identify the trickster as the serpent or Satan.

Regardless of affiliation, validity or any other pedantic angles that can be brought to such traditions, the widespread allegory of the trickster god is useful.

Videogames – to switch gears for a quick detour – are in essence puzzles constructed for the player to solve.  We might think of the designers of such videogames as another incarnation of these trickster gods who design difficulties for delight.

As games become more and more realistic we may wonder about the possibility that our reality could be a simulated game.

Thinking of this life as a videogame might at first suggestion sound irreverent, but as with all mental models we must only use them in the context and the situation when appropriate. 

Using a hammer when we need to drive in a screw is a very unwise use of one’s tools.  So too with mental models.

Becoming obsessively convinced that life actually is or might be a videogame is bound to make a person nuts.  But entertaining the idea for a little while at the right time can prove very useful.  Not only can this model work to take some harmful seriousness out of our perspective, help us relax and see new possibilities, but we may even see a way to have fun with our difficulties.

Imagine for a moment if the most stressful part of your life was actually the design of some trickster entity who knows you very well, who constructed this difficulty - tailored it custom just for you because this trickster knew just how well it would get under your skin.  Imagine further those moments when frustration and anger and even depression are wreaking havoc on your mindset and somewhere in some observational dimension, this trickster is rolling on the floor with laugher, having duped you with their trickery.

This might sound like one sick nightmare, but if we employ that video-game-life model of things, our eyes might narrow, our face pulling to a scowl, our mind racing towards some new stratagem. 

Just as a videogame eggs a player on to overcome obstacles, we might hold the secret knowledge of this trickster in our mind as a kind of fuel, One that helps us look at life and it’s difficulties differently and ask:

How can I out-trick the trickster?

So many stories and movies are about some underdog rising up to topple the top dog in some clever way that the reigning power of the moment didn’t see coming. 

People talk about ‘life hacks’ as in things that people have figured out that bring results in a counter-intuitively efficient ways.  We might take this concept a little further and think about how we can hack not just reality to greater effect but even our own mind.

Entertaining the idea of some personal trickster who constantly tries to befuddle you for entertainment is a mental hack for looking at life’s difficulties with the curious, crafty mind of a child at play in a game.

The unpredictability of life ensures that we cannot find hacks for everything, but imagine that trickster god’s laughter cutting short, sitting up quick with rapt and worried attention.  The latest difficulty and trick did not land as it usually does.  Instead of getting the best of you, the newest disaster seems to evoke only a pleasant and calm smile.

The trickster god, annoyed, goes back to the drawing board and dreams up something even more painful and frustrating. 

The new difficulty steamrolls through life, but this time, instead of just a calm and ready smile, we await hungry.  We catch the launched trickster missile and gobble it up like some kind of Godzilla, usurping the explosion and savoring it like a hot sauce fit only for monsters.

Imagine looking at life’s problems like some kind of fuel that we need, like a hungry man for food, we await them and dive into them immediately, not simply solving but savoring.  Laughing in pure delight as we do, imagining the trickster god going insane with failure to get the best of our better selves.

This episode references Episode 159: Hammer and Screw.

IT'LL BE FINE

February 25th, 2019

In a world with so many variables and such an unpredictable tomorrow, we might think that any indication or hint about future events would be sniffed out immediately, gobbled up and used to fine tune our direction and efforts.  Certainly in the world of Stock Trading this is what most traders think they are doing, though on a long enough time line most traders do little better than a monkey throwing darts at a dartboard.  In this micro-exaggerated context, every single change is often over-valued.

While in other parts of life we perpetually ignore things.  We have a plan, a goal, an ideal of the future that we’ve decided on and with a few initial efforts, we fantasize that it’ll eventually happen.  But a tiny red flag shows up.  What’s our response?  Do we calmly reassess the whole picture and analyze how much weight we should give such a signal from reality?  Or do we simply say,

It’ll be fine.

This is the self-defeating butter knife of effective action.  Instead of giving the honest signals of reality their due, we pass the lawn mower over that signal one more time.  Though reality be trying to constantly show us the mistake in our thinking and action, the course still looks smooth.

This is the unsettling power of language.  Though we are equipped with two eyes that function with fairly high fidelity, we can blind ourselves with a way of thinking.

In essence any way of thinking or mental model is a kind of filter for all the information that is coming our way.  If we can filter this information effectively, we can navigate a manipulation of it in order to change reality into a form that was formerly only imagined.

But these mental models - by default - are cutting out potentially significant portions of information in order to be useful.

When we hear ourselves say something like It’ll be fine, we can Pause and take a moment to wonder what the function of such a statement is.   Important information might be steamrolled in such a statement and ultimately risk the goals which we seek.  The inherent laziness  of the human mind that seeks comfort and stability generally thirsts after this kind of default because such a conclusion about new information requires no further work.

However, if the statement It’ll be fine, is replaced with How high is the probability that this information will effect the final outcome?  We might actually start delving into a detail that could derail our plans, or if effectively dealt with, we might discover something that could function like a springboard for progress, moving us faster and closer to our accomplishments.

A general metric for the statement It’ll be fine is how often it has been said with regards to any one thing.

Generally if we are saying this to ourselves over and over, we are likely ignoring important information.

If however, a level-headed and thoughtful person is saying this in response to the constant worries and fears of other people, such a butter knife may be well used.  The underlying test as to whether it’s being used to good effect or to detriment is whether a question and a thought has probed beyond it into the realm of possible ramifications. 

Simply put are we using such a statement to ignore important information or is it evidence that we’ve integrated this information and we’ve followed in imagination the potential effects of such information and returned from that analytical journey with no real conclusion of harm.

To put it even simpler: are we merely reacting, or are we drawing a thoughtful conclusion?

Running our modes of thinking, behavior and language through this kind of analysis fine tunes our processes.  Such questions sharpen our questions about specific goals and this is inevitably the only tool we have available.

It might seem pessimistic to question the idea that everything will be fine, but a neutral look at the past for the history of humans and all sorts of other species underscores the irrevocable fact that: sometimes things really don’t turn out well.

As a species with a growing capacity of forethought, we do best to thoughtfully pause when we hear ourselves say,

It’ll be fine.

This episode references Episode 23: Pause, Episode 307: Derailed,  and Episode 72: Persevere Vs. Pivot