A LUCILIUS PARABLE: WEIGHT OF QUESTIONS

September 2nd, 2018

An old Lucilius sits beneath a grand tree in his garden, remembering when he planted the small seed.  An attendant to the old teacher brings in a visitor through the garden to the old teacher.

“Lucilius,” says the attendant, “this one has travelled from very far to ask you a question.”

Lucilius kindly nods and the visitor approaches, while the attendant retires to another part of the garden to pick herbs for the night’s meal.

The attendant listens to the visitor speak to Lucilius and ask their question.  A silence follows.  A silence the attendant has known well during his time in the garden, a silence where he feels he can hear the old teacher think.  But the silence draws longer, and the attendant hears the visitor, confused, ask another question.  The same silence follows, but it does not end, until the visitor, frustrated, asks Lucilius yet another question.

Lucilius’ attendant turns to see the old teacher staring off, paying no mind to the visitor, and worries if the teacher has finally begun to descend into the difficulties of life’s end.

The visitor asks another question but soon leaves, frustrated.

The attendant watches after the visitor, then, as he approaches the teacher, he sees the same clear focus in the old man’s eyes and knows the man is still as much as he’s ever been.

“You have answered so many questions for people who have sought out your counsel.  Why did you not answer this young girl’s questions?”

Lucilius smiles, looks to his good friend.

“How rarely do I give an answer that is not simply another question?  I listened to her questions and it was clear from her questions that she does not need answers.  Her questions are already moving in good directions.”

REGRETTING CATEGORICAL MISTAKES

September 1st, 2018

While the original human super-power of language has an infinite capacity for growth by adding words and categories which may increase our agency and possibility as people, the resiliency of words and the categorical prisons they form can create prisons for the mind.

The word ‘mistake’ is a good example.  While the word may be very useful while making a movie and a particular ‘take’ of a scene can be flawed by an unexpected interruption or other myriad mistakes, and therefore require a retake, life does not allow us the opportunity to stop, rewind and retake.

And yet we use the word where it is not perhaps helpful.

For a moment, think about a life where the word ‘mistake’ did not exist.  Anything that we previously categorized as a mistake would have to be re-categorized as something else.  Is it possible that we would find a healthier category for the events, decisions and actions that we had previously labelled as mistakes?

The word ‘Regret’ falls into the same category.  What would happen if we simply did not have this category available when we think about how to interpret our life’s past?

Is it possible that the fear of regret holds us back from taking chances and undertaking endeavors where we might fail?

If the concept of regret was unavailable, would we have a greater sense of freedom?

Does an infant regret trying to stand up when it falls for the hundredth time?

No, and a big reason might be the unavailability of the concept.

Indeed, it may be a mistake that we created the category of ‘mistake’ and ‘regret’ in the first place.

While they might be useful for explaining some feelings that we experience as humans, their usefulness probably does not equal the damage done by such words when they hinder our agency.

Just as we have the CATEGORICAL AGENCY of creating new words and new categories that might expand our agency, we must remember that we have the ability to reject categories that have been handed to us from our ancestors.

It brings a whole new meaning to the cliché phrase of ‘living without regret’ if we think about our life without the concept of regret.

In this way we can actually fix a mistake in language

and move forward without any need for a retake.

This episode references Episode 139: Categorical Agency

CATEGORICAL AGENCY

August 31st, 2018

Since the dawn of language, we have sought to categorize everything.  Objects, places, people, plants, animals, experiences – nothing that can be spoken about has escaped categorization.  Indeed, this is the life force of language: the juxtaposition of categories to create meaning.  Each of the words in all of these sentences resides within a category and in essence become their own final subcategory when regarded in isolation. 

These categories shape and control all these ways in which we interact, behave and interpret experience.

Indeed, man’s first and only task in the Bible is to give names to things – in essence, our first and only job was to create language.

And language has proved to be an infinity tool.  Meaning, it can always be added to. 

Any course of study in a university is essentially simply just a giant vocabulary lesson.*

Whether we study Literature, Neurobiology, physics or business, everything is communicated through language, and everything boils down to how we consume, ingest, interpret and manipulate the language of these subjects.

As we discover and learn more, it becomes necessary to add new categories and the subcategories that constitute the jargon of any new subject.

This is the original tool upon which –it might be argued- that all the innovations of society rest upon.

We must use this gift to any and all benefit that we can squeeze from it.

If we are constrained by the categories within which we currently live, we must remember that we don’t’ just have the ability to switch categories, we can invent new ones.

One’s job for example is a major categorical candidate for switching when we are dissatisfied with life.

“I’m sick of this profession, I think I’ll try that one.”

This is the traditional thinking, but we must remember that while some jobs disappear, other jobs are  literally created out of thin air…. all we need is a word for it.  And if that word can have a viable juxtaposition within the language of society, then there’s probably a way to make money doing it.

By using our language in innovative ways, which is really to say, if we can think of some kind of innovative solution to a problem, then we can increase our agency in the world. 

Language is the original engine of human agency

and most of the time it is squandered with complaining or meaningless jabber, when all the while we know that the right conversation with the right person, carried out in just the right kind of skillful way can put us on track to a much different experience of living.

Why do we shy away from developing such skills with language and thinking? 

If we can stop looking in the REAR-VIEW mirror, forget the past, and walk the present’s TIGHTROPE effectively, then we can fearlessly fumble through our mistakes as we experiment, and slowly ITERATE towards being a person who has more agency in the world…

and the more agency we can acquire, the more freedom we can enjoy.

*Physical skills, such as martial arts or sculpting or dance might be precluded from this vocabulary-lesson-designation, however the instruction of any physical activity has language to aid it, even if language is not entirely necessary for progress.

This episode references Episode 32: Rear-View, and Episode 88: Tightrope.  If you’d like to fully explore these references, please check out either episode next.

PEDANT

August 30th, 2018

A pedantic person pays an annoying amount of attention to details that may or may not be significant in the long-term.

Such a person may defend this aim with the noble desire for precision and accuracy.  And certainly precision and accuracy have a time and a place where obsessive focus can be a good thing: with, say, the design and build of a rocket ship, or with brain surgery. 

Strangely, we rarely hear about a rocket engineer or a surgeon being pedantic about their job.

The word is used in areas where attention to detail may have a self-defeating effect,

in conversation for example.

We must ask what is the point of conversation? 

Is it a nit-picking battle to prove superiority?  Does such an aim ever result in a net-positive?  Or does it merely create more enemies?

If we can be more generous with our aim of conversation: we might say that the point is for both parties to advance themselves via interaction with the other.  This is a non-zero sum game, and a much better game compared to the petty king-of-the-hill arguments that so often take place.

Certainly we should strive to be precise with our language and accurately represent our ideas, so we must ask, when does such precision and accuracy lapse into pedantry?

An honest examination of language cannot exist without the admission that it constantly changes.  Words organically shift in their meanings, often slowly, and sometimes quickly.

Pedantry comes from a fear of these shifts and changes.

Such shifts and changes force a constant degree of uncertainty into our language, and it is this uncertainty that people can easily grow to fear.

The pedantic person seeks to arm themselves against this uncertainty with an intense attachment to the particular meanings.  Another way of saying this is that the pedantic person seeks to arm themselves against uncertainty with an intense attachment to a particular way of thinking.

While the pedant seeks to have an accurate and precise understanding of reality, the error the pedant makes is thinking a certain snapshot of language and the concepts we abide by is somehow the ultimate reality, when really most of these concepts are merely pieces of the human imagination, built on a shifting, restless language that often defies the attempts to categorize things in some kind of ultimate way.

A pedant thinks of language like a mathematical formula that is solved in the same way over and over, when really most of the concepts we use to communicate and the language we use to communicate such concepts operate  like a painting that we are constantly repainting on top of itself.    Though the resemblance might always hold to some degree and shift slower than we can notice, we would be a fool to think we have the exact same painting.

Pedantic statements are borne from a fear, and an unwillingness to engage with the changing nature of our very human reality.

The pedantic person is someone who’s thinking is structurally stuck in a RUT, which makes such a person little better than a one-track mind.

CEO OF SELF

August 29th, 2018

Most people have had the frustrating experience of getting orders from a boss that clearly show the boss has no idea what is going on.

Do we speak up? Probably not.  And when we do, do those suggestions and protests land on deaf ears?  Maybe.

We can imagine an entire corporation with a board of directors who all have different opinions and a CEO who only has the faintest idea of the situation on the ground floor of operations.  We all know the frustration of the little guy who sees a better way things could work, but who’s hands are tied by the powers that be.

Imagine if a pancreas could talk to the conscious part of a person who is utterly addicted to sugar.

What would such an over-worked pancreas say?

It would probably sound like an over-worked postal worker who is ready to snap.  What happens when a person is so sick of being over-worked at their job?  Usually they quit.

Should we really be all that surprised when the pancreas quits it’s job after years of producing huge amounts of insulin to deal with all the sugar in the diet?

If the body is a corporation, then our thinking, conscious self would most readily be likened to the CEO.  And all those little guys that don’t have a say in the direction of the corporation but have to do all the grunt work might be likened to all the parts of our body.

For many people, a heart attack can be a wake up call, in much the same way a CEO can realize that some changes need to be made when an entire division of the corporation goes on strike.

Perhaps the division on strike feels under paid, knowing the CEO is taking home an enormously unfair paycheck.  The bodily equivalent of this might be that pancreas who goes on strike knowing the CEO is just eating donut after donut for that short term gain of momentary pleasure. 

Just as we should cultivate empathy for the CONDUCTOR, we would benefit as the CEO’s of our selves if we could have empathy for all the little parts of our body that allow us to live.

Next time we want a donut, or a giant bowl of pasta, or ice-cream, we might opt for a jog and a salad because we are thinking of the little guy.  Those small, integral parts of our body that have to do all the difficult, dirty grunt work and deal with our decisions as people.

Chances are solid that if we can develop such empathy for our bodies, we will be rewarded in the long-term with a better state of mind and a more robust sense of contentment that will eclipse any and every limp moment of pleasure we get from something as empty as a donut.

This episode references Episode 135: The Conductor’s Orchestra.  If you’d like to fully explore the reference, please check out that episode next.