SET SAIL

September 27th, 2018

Imagine for a moment being on an unsinkable boat that has no sails and no engine.  What would life be like?

Calm days on the sea could very easily be wonderful.  But then when storms come, the boat would toss and roll in the huge waves and chances are the experience would be miserable.

Let’s add something to this image.  Below the deck in the main cabin is an endless supply of raw materials.  There’s wood, there’s fabric, there’s metal and machine tools, saws, drills, it’s a complete workshop that, given the right knowledge, anything could be built.  We could do nothing, and just drift.  Sure the storms would be uncomfortable as the boat would roll down the face of huge waves over and over, but storms pass.

Or we could get busy.  With the right knowledge, an engine could be built and attached to the boat, and if we could find some way to power it, we could get on our way in any direction no matter what.

Or, we could build a mast and affix it to the boat.  Cut and sew sails, raise them, and then slowly learn how the wind pushes the sails and how we must trim and steer the boat.  Waves would no longer be random events that push the boat this way or that way.  With sails and some wind and some slowly growing know-how, we could cut those waves and steer in some direction, course correcting as we go.

This unsinkable boat with infinite resources is the human mind.

We can dilly-dally doing nothing and drift through life, letting the storms of life throw our minds into chaos, waves tossing us this way and that way.

Or we can get busy.  We can discover or invent any concept we need to get our mind sailing in a better direction.  We can hone our ability to question ourselves, and create motivation, create wind to fill whatever sails we’ve fashioned.

We can see what works, and then make improvements.  Add another mast, more sails, different shapes, and trim them with more sensitivity, with a greater intuition about the waves and the wind.

Our ability to course correct can become fine-tuned so that we can steer calmly through storms or avoid them altogether.

Perhaps we managed to build some measly little sail, but we’ve got the steering wheel hard over and stuck.  Perhaps we’re just stubbornly sailing in circles because we’re unwilling to learn more about how to steer and what to look for, and maybe what better sort of set of sails we could make.  Perhaps we’re too afraid to set more sail and see what will happen….

Imagine someone admirable.  What would they look like in this circumstance?  Would they have one dinky sail up and the wheel hard over and unattended?

Or would they look like the saltiest sailor alive, with a boat heeled over from the largest set of sails they could get the boat to handle filled with wind, cutting the water furiously, flying towards some beautiful horizon.

We might go back below decks.  Back to the drawing board and wonder.  What else can I do to get myself where I want to go?

MOVING THE WHIRLPOOL

September 26th, 2018

In many of these episodes, the whirlpool has been used to visualize vicious and virtuous cycles, as with regards to habits both good and bad.

Habits compound on top of themselves to create both momentum and substance.  The Tinkered Thinking platform, for example, started from a mere habit of writing daily. Now, in terms of word count, it is larger than a five hundred page book.  Such is the result of a virtuous cycle.

As for vicious cycles, we all have enough experience with bad habits to know what it’s like to go down the drain in some respects.  And this whirlpool is a tidy and beautiful way to see a process that exists as behavior in a more abstract way.

Since good and bad habits both have the same basic structure of compounding repetition, and therefore both can be visualized as a whirlpool, meaning we do not need two different structures to understand or visualize good and bad habits, it’s worth wondering how to move or alter a habit.  Often we think improvements are made by ripping down an entire structure and building a new one, and while this can be a valid way to make improvements, it need not be the only one.  It begs the question, can we move existing habits around? 

If we go back to the image of the whirlpool, what sort of answer begins to materialize if we pose the same question:

how do you move a whirlpool?

To begin thinking about this odd question, we are first faced with another question: what exactly is the whirlpool?  We cannot exactly pick it up or push it without the risk of destroying the whirlpool.  We realize quite quickly that the whirlpool is not just the exponentially V-shaped cone that cuts down into water.

The whirlpool that we see is the cumulative result of much larger forces and movements occurring around the whirlpool.  The whirlpool is just the intersection of these forces.

Just as someone’s emotions are not merely the movements of muscles on their face, the facial expressions they make are merely a part of the cumulative result of much deeper processes that are occurring in the brain behind those expressions.

To move a whirlpool requires first Zooming-out and looking at a much larger context that includes the large moving forces that eventually intersect and result in a whirlpool.  We may discover that there are multiple forces acting upon one another that result in this whirlpool, and just as a puppet master controls puppets from a distance, we would have to concede that moving a whirlpool would require altering these forces.  We would probably have to alter these forces simultaneously in order to maintain the integrity of the whirlpool.

Naturally there might be limits to how far we can move a whirlpool based on the nature of these different forces.

We may even find that we can swap out one of these influencing forces with a totally new one and achieve a different sort of whirlpool.

Take the common bad habit of biting one’s nails for instance.  It’s a simple habit, a whirlpool that actually isn’t too hard to move.

Often we look at such bad habits and think the answer is the cold-turkey approach: to just stop doing it, to just have more willpower, but this ignores the fact that our nails still continue to grow and there’s something that needs to be done about that.

Moving this whirlpool can be as simple as carrying a nail file around all the time.  It’s much easier to stop biting one’s nails the instant we notice if we have the option of pulling out a nail file to finish the task.  Otherwise, we risk being reacquainted with the all-to-eerie and unsettling experience of noticing we are doing something we wish we wouldn’t but simultaneously finding we cannot stop ourselves.

Note also the difficulty of totally killing off a real whirlpool. It might be small enough, say in a bathtub where we can destroy the whirlpool by passing our hand through it, but if the larger forces responsible for the whirlpool remain active, chances are that whirlpool will materialize again, and again. 

It’s like hacking at the leaves of a problem instead of recognizing the root is where we should be striking.

As with the small example of biting one’s nails, carrying a nail file constantly is akin to redirecting one of the forces that creates the bad habit, therefore moving the whirlpool into a different place, a better place where we can turn a bad habit into a virtuous cycle.

This episode references Episode : The Well-Oiled Zoom.

WHAT THE FOOL BELIEVES

September 25th, 2018

If we look at the archetypical ‘fool’ we will see a contradiction.  The fool derives from the court jester. A funny man who was simultaneously laughed at but also had the singular power of making fun of the king to his face and in front of everyone else.  This contradictory dichotomy should never be far from our minds when we think of someone as stupid.  Inherent in the very thing we laugh at, might be a power and a knowledge that is beyond our abilities.

With the court jester, we may ask what’s easier: to follow all the rules of the court and ‘get by’, or to be smart enough to make fun of the king to his face and get away with it?  Actually both require a humbling amount of self-debasement, however the jester’s is more obvious, it’s on display in a ridiculous way which at once nullifies it and grants him powers beyond anyone around him.

The mask of the fool provides a perfect camouflage, like a great white shark that can dress up like a harmless flamingo, we do not necessarily realize what we are looking at.

We might be reminded of Yoda’s crazy old-geezer act when he first encounters Luke.  He acts like a fool on purpose in order to demonstrate an important lesson: things are not always as they appear and the very thing you are seeking might be in the place that you spurn.  Luke realizes that he himself is the real fool.

Or we might think of the Beatles singing about the fool on the hill who can see the big picture but who is listened to by no one.

The fool as an archetype represents in a mythic way what the psychologist Daniel Kahneman elucidates about human nature: that our instincts and our impressions of things are often very wrong.

It’s the moments when we realize we are wrong that the whole concept of the fool turns inside-out.  We realize that we have been the fool all along for thinking a certain way, and with such a realization we become a little less foolish.  It appears that a fool is simply a person who believes he is not a fool.

Luckily there are plenty of stupid fools walking around that should serve as reminders of this counter-intuitive tendency of life.  But to remember this appropriately is to be wary of all those stupid fools.

The only fool in this case might be one’s self.

ON THE PLATE

September 24th, 2018

Think of the sort of times when we say “I have too much on my plate right now.”

We do not say this when we are sitting before a plate full of hot delicious food after a day of anticipation for a big celebratory feast, even though this is probably the only time when it’s practically true.

We say it when we are perhaps over committed in our activities and responsibilities.

Each person seems to have a particular capacity for how much they can have on their plate, figuratively speaking.  But just as a person can stretch out their stomach by eating increasingly larger portions, the capacity for activity and achievement for a given person can change.  We can fit more on our plate by becoming more efficient, using previously wasted time, realigning priorities, and so on and so forth.

In the figurative world of the phrase “I have too much on my plate,” what would it mean if you had little to nothing on your plate?

In the real world, this would probably mean poverty, malnutrition, lack of energy, and more generally a default setback for any endeavor a hungry person might want to undertake.

The physical, literal meaning actually translates well into the figurative world.  It’s more rare to hear, but sometimes someone will say “I don’t have too much on my plate right now.”  Such a person is usually entertaining a new task, a new project, a new endeavor. 

There’s a counter-intuitive catch for the person who is fulfilling the mundane duties of job and home life but still feels a lack of zest, some boredom and generally tired in the in-between moments.  It may not be that some restful vacation from the humdrum of life is needed.  It may be that there’s not enough on the plate.  Perhaps not enough diversity.  Just as a well balanced diet requires a fairly large array of nutrients, some figurative nutrients might be missing from life.  If the morning donut was swapped for ten minutes of breathing and meditation.  If volunteer work was snuck in after work on a Tuesday.  If a project got an hour a day before bed.  If a book was read for two ten minute stretches throughout the day.

If we are feeling impoverished, perhaps it’s a bit like the person suffering from malnutrition with little to nothing on their plate.  Perhaps we need to fill the plate up, until our life is piled high and bursting with activity.

A LUCILIUS PARABLE: INFINITE GAME

September 23rd, 2018

Lucilius walks into the hospital and finds on the map the appropriate wing. He takes the elevator and walks the busy corridors and finally finds the room where a good friend is bed ridden from sickness.

Lucilius approaches his friend, bends over and kisses his friend on the forehead. Eyes gently open and the widest of smiles greets Lucilius.

He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t comment on the situation, the setting, the ailments of his friend, just lifts a boxed game he’d been carrying.

“Brought a game. Let’s play.”

The groaning motor of the bed spins into action and Lucilius’ friend is slowly hoisted to a sitting position while Lucilius unfolds the board and places the glass beads in their respective places.

His friend, having never played, listens as Lucilius explains the simple rules.

They play a couple rounds until Lucilius’ friend has fully grasped the game. They set up another board and begin.

Lucilius looks to the clock in the room, thinking about the appointment of another loved one. He wonders how things went. Wonders when he might hear, and Lucilius’ friend watches him note the time.

After a few more moves, Lucilius notices his friend make a curious decision. He did not make the most advantageous move.   Nor was it a terrible move.

Lucilius thinks it’s a fluke, until he notices his friend make a similar move. It’s easier for Lucilius to win with these sorts of moves and he wonders if he’s explained the game thoroughly enough, but curiosity keeps him quiet and he continues to play. He watches his friend undermine his own chances at victory again and again, making good moves only when Lucilius starts to inch towards victory.

Then Lucilius understands. His friend makes a few bad rolls losing the well balanced advantage he had with Lucilius, so Lucilius undermines his own advantage.

They both play like this for some time, neither gaining on the other, each keeping a vigilant balance against the other with no focus on winning, but only to play, and to continue playing.

Lucilius works into a sort of meditative state with the game play, rolling and moving glass beads, keeping the board balanced, the movement never ending, until Lucilius hears a sniffle.

He looks up and there are tears in his friend’s eyes.

“What’s up?” Lucilus asks.

His friend nods towards the clock. “It’s ok if you have to go. You don’t have to stay.”

Lucilius smiles. “Can’t leave in the middle of a game.”

“But neither of us are trying to win.”

Lucilius picks up the dice once more. “I know,” he says. He rolls them again, looks at his friend.

“it’s kind of nice, isn’t it?”