A CONFLUENCE OF HABIT

October 7th, 2020

Many of the habits that we wish to incorporate are in fact a small network of habits, and our chances of success rise as we break off pieces of this network and build a habit in parts.  A meditation practice works as a very simple example. 

Anyone with no experience in meditation has the sense that this is a practice of the mind, it has something to do with stillness and some sort of control over the frenetic hodgepodge of thoughts that inundate our waking lives.  But before anyone starts a formal session of meditation, something else has to occur: sitting still.

What coasts right over the heads of everyone talking about meditation as a habit is that we first do something with the body.  While meditation can become an integrated part of a person’s life, regardless of sitting, position or movement, when starting and when in formal practice, there’s an enormous benefit to keeping the body still.  In simplest form, the explanation is that there’s just less to keep track of.

It runs to reason that individuals who attempt to begin a meditation practice are actually trying to pull off two tricks at once: there is the habit we hope to create for the mind, and then there is the habit of sitting still, which is so obvious, few if any seem to comment on it.

It stands further to reason that these two habits can be cleaved to leave one for a later date while the first gets properly installed.  The natural order here is to create a habit of the body before tackling the habit that has to do with the mind.

How does this look in practice?  Say, for instance, the first target habit is to sit for 10 minutes, everyday, with good posture, and perhaps to help aid this, a podcast is thrown on, or some music, or maybe even a video.  Then, after a few weeks, once the body has found it’s groove and the sitting posture is actually enjoyable as opposed to being just another thing to think about, then the exercise of meditation is introduced.

What’s the point of breaking up a habit into smaller bits like this? Why not just dive in head and toe at the same time? 

Breaking up a habit into consistent parts decreases the barrier to entry, it reduces the friction and makes it more likely that we can succeed in the longterm.  Instead of: this is so hard, I have so many thoughts, and my back hurts, and I’m just uncomfortable, it becomes, well, I sit in this posture every morning anyway, might as well start figuring out what it means to meditate since I’ve already got this nailed.

This might seem inefficient, but over the long run it can be far more efficient than a dozen failed starts.  It can also relieve some pressure about what it means to practice: it can be good enough to just sit, because just sitting can peacefully lead to a practice without the large foreboding that always accompanies a bigger task.  Much procrastination and motivation simply boils down to being unable to start because the task is too big, too complex.  Being unable to start is simply a euphemism for not knowing where to start.  Once we’ve found the thin edge of the wedge, it’s always much easier to move forward to the next piece.  Breaking up habits, as with sitting and mental practice for a full-fledged meditation practice can make the process of forming that habit a bit simpler.

SETTING THE TRAP

October 6th, 2020

This episode is dedicated to the individual who operates the twitter handle @IDreamOfYasmin who was curious about a particular idea and how it works.

Imagine for a moment being enmeshed in a mysterious puzzle.  Say for example, every few nights, a chicken is disappearing from the chicken coop.  The first time might be a surprise, and a disappointing one at that.  The second might cause even more frustration, but is perhaps likely to focus attention on what exactly might be going on.  To ignore the possibility that the theft might happen again is, naturally a mistake, but it’s this sort of mistake that many make very often.  We fail to set ourselves up for the future in a way that helps things most.  But even if we unconsciously fail to set ourselves up properly, we are still unconsciously settings ourselves up for potential misery.  To believe that chickens will stop disappearing might be fool hardy, though many problems do clear up if left alone.  What’s truly fool hardy is to get upset about it without doing anything.

Though it might seem particularly apt in recent time, it’s likely a perennial flaw of people that we get bent out of shape over things that we consistently fail to change.  We take passionate action feeling certain that something will change, but this is nearly always due to the experience of being passionate: it feels sure, it feels impactful, but, it is only a feeling. 

Imagine a different sort of individual who sits down and has a talk with themselves.  This person decides to take an action to fix a problem, say by reinforcing the chicken coop, but also decides that the likelihood that this solution will actually fix the problem is small, and that it should be no surprise if another chicken goes missing.  Most people don’t think this way.  Most people reinforce the chicken coop and smile in self-satisfied glory that they’ve done something, and that something solves the problem.  Often, such misperceived efforts only add fuel to the next emotional fire that erupts when yet again, another chicken goes missing.

But the individual who doubts the curative powers of their own solution will be unsurprised.  We might call this person pessimistic, but when the time comes and another chicken is missing and this person is calm and ready to further contemplate what the issue might be, does this still smack of pessimism?  Or does this hark of a subtle middle road?  Most pessimists are hard pressed to even take action in the first place, because action is inherently optimistic: it encases a faith that something new might work.  Most, however, take the hope involved in action a bit too far and twist it into a faith that something new will work.  But of course, this hope and faith sets up an expectation, and expectation is both mother and father of disappointment.  Without expectation, we sidestep disappointment, and without the emotional experience of both, we see things through a lens of calm and peace.

Whether we do a good job or a piss poor mindless one, we set ourselves up for the way we react to the future.

Setting ourselves up in a way that’ll not just be more pleasant but also allow for faster progress through a more tempered demeanour, requires having an incisive understanding of one’s emotions.  It’s the ability to forecast answers to the question:  how will I react if this or that happens? And then further prompting one’s self with the subtle follow-up: how do I want to react regardless of whether this or that happens?  With this second question we cast ourselves into an active role as opposed to a merely passive one that is forever at the whim and will of fate.  By asking how we’d like to react to all manner of situation, we can begin to explore the wide field of possible answers.

One answer is simple pessimism:  it won’t work and it’ll be bad.

Another is jubilant optimism:  this’ll surely do the trick!

And then there is a middle way - a form of optimism that seems as though it’s tempered by pessimism but in fact derives it’s even keel from a deeper insight:  problems rarely concede to the first solution we throw at them, and so what will help the hopscotch from attempt to attempt to solution be as unencumbered and effortless as possible?

Surely boisterous emotions don’t do much to clear our minds in order to see the details we need to notice to piece together what’s really going on?

We are best to think of ourselves as traps that we set to be sprung by future circumstance.  Some carelessly leave this trap set on a razor’s edge, ready to snap at the slightest disturbance.  Others, however, recognize who this trap is set for.  We are a trap set for ourselves.  We become caught by our own sprung trap.  Those who see this, start looking for ways to dismantle the trap as opposed to setting it.  But of course, such individuals are quick to find that their initial efforts to dismantle their own trap have not succeeded, and again, anger wells up with surprise, and this is when anger can suddenly collapse into laughter.  An individual who is mindful of their mind’s state can never feed anger for very long, and having decided long before to watch out for such things, can only smile at the predicament of being caught in their own trap.  It’s that smile, that subtle laugh that eases the trap’s jaws, and after enough run ins and attempts, slowly, the trap is dismantled, and it’s pieces used to assemble the calm smile of an even temperament. 

COGNITIVE FEUDALISM

October 5th, 2020

For about 6 centuries, Medieval Europe was organized in a system that is often referred to as feudalism.  Not only was the term coined long after the age of feudalism, but as with many terms, there remains the usual debacle of debate and nitpicked nuance about what it is, what it means, and if it even refers to the thing it was invented to define.  Roughly speaking, the most common use and understanding of feudalism becomes useful when we think of the current age of cognitive feudalism.

In Medieval Europe, people fell really into just two classes: those who worked the land, and those who owned the land.  There are, of course a smörgåsbord of terms to define nuanced relationships within and between these two classes, but for modern relevance, this one relationship is most important, and what’s most important to realize is that these two classes of people had no overlap: meaning, those who owned land didn’t work their own land, and those who worked the land never owned that land.  A more extreme version of this relationship between people as communicated through land and it’s products is slavery in the first century of United States history.  Those who worked the cotton fields never owned those cotton fields.  Outright slavery takes it one step further and makes the workers of that land property of the owner of the land, in addition to that land.  The economic relationship is one of predation.

Current within the theory of evolution is that rise of predation among early organisms lead to a biological arms race between species.  Eyes, and ears developed because they were useful, not just for predators looking and listening for prey, but also for those preyed upon looking out and listening for predators.  The general energy relationship between predator and prey is very similar to the energy economics of feudalism or slavery.  Prey generally consists of herbivores, and what do herbivores do?  They spend nearly all of their time eating and digesting because leafy greens are pretty skimp on the energy quotient, or rather, leaves aren’t very fat, so in order to get a fat cow, that cow has to eat a monumental amount of grass.  Put another way, the cow labors nearly constantly in order to become energy dense.  Then a predator comes along, whacks the cow, and gets all that juicy energy in a tiny fraction of the time, this excahcnge can also be referred to as gravity cost.  Unlike prey, a predator doesn’t have to spend all it’s time eating.  We can swap out the nouns and verbs here to show just how similar this energy exchange is to the economic exchange of feudal Europe: Unlike the peasant, a land owner doesn’t have to spend all their time working the land.  It’s the same relationship, and it’s trading in the same currency.  The predator eats up stored energy in the form of fat.  In the feudal relationship, this stored energy, in the form of farmed goods - which is quite literally what herbivores would eat to concentrate energy in fat - is sold in order to convert that energy into money and loyalty - a different form of stored energy.  Nobles in feudal Europe were supposedly entitled to their rank because they were called upon as a warrior class when danger threatened the overall state.  

Fast forward to the modern day and much of the physical labor of feudal days is now done by huge machines driven by single individuals: combine harvesters and seeders.  Much of the manual labor has transformed into things like truck driving and serving, manning cash registers and of course, pushing paper.  In short, there is an absolute cornucopia of occupations which fall into a feudal-like relationship.  A boss directs and benefits from the effort of a large group of underlings.  We might even liken the feudal lord to the modern CEO, and of course CEO’s are entitled to their rank because of their supposedly superior insight regarding how a company should be steered.  (As an aside, perhaps founders deserve more credit and trust by default: they gave birth to the original vision which has likely created a new way of creating value, or rather translating some meandering convoluted path of energy into money, i.e. we have time to scroll our feeds because we no longer have to spend out time feeding pigs and scrolling through rows of crops.)

People in such top positions gain in a similar way that feudal lords and predators do.  They gain very quickly and efficiently from an underclass of workers that spend all their time actually doing the work. This relationship is lately hyper charged by the explosion in salary for many top tier positions at the expense of employee salaries.  

As an individual enmeshed in this elaborate macramé patchwork of such cognitive feudalisms, that we call society, it does well to consider privately where one’s cognitive efforts are best directed.  To throw the entire feudal relationship out the window would result in a system collapse.  There is no such thing as a company without a founder, and there’s no such thing as a founder without people who are willing to help bring a vision to light.

You only have so much time to think about anything.  Is it perhaps a better use of the little free time we may have to try and think of ways to increase the amount of free time we have to think in our own directions, instead of dedicating our brain power to the implementation and realization of someone else’s vision outsourced?  In the modern world, the prey can’t think for themselves because their brains are busy trying to figure out how to make someone else’s vision become real.  If one’s job is unfulfilling, than thinking of the boss as a cognitive predator is likely apt, but there are grand things we can achieve that can’t be achieved without teamwork, and teamwork as directed by a thoughtful and visionary leader requires some cognitive feudalism.  One of the differences though is that given a grand vision of optimal complexity and difficulty, it’s more than possible and even inspiring to lend your abilities to the cause.  The mission becomes a form of feudalism when we don’t believe in it, and that’s when it’s perhaps time to dedicate that precious free time to think about how to increase how much time we have to think.

A LUCILIUS PARABLE: THE DAY'S LESSON

October 4th, 2020

Lucilius hung up the phone, checked the time and then propped the door of his apartment open so he could keep an eye out.  He pulled the fridge open, stared idly at the meagre contents, then waved the door shut, thinking limply about delivery.  It was too much of an effort.  He walked back to the couch and slumped down.  His computer was sitting open on his desk, a window of unfinished work, broken code waiting infinitely for his attention.  He looked momentarily at his bookcase, seeing many titles he’d purchased but hadn’t yet read.  Instead, he just clicked on the TV.

It wasn’t long before he heard the elevator doors clank open.  Lucilius kept his eyes on the tall rectangle of hall he could see through his door.  

A little kid walked past, and Lucilius quickly jumped up and trotted to the open door.  He stepped half out and saw the kid fiddling with keys to the next apartment.

“Hey Kiddo,” Lucilius said.

The boy looked, slightly wary. 

“Your mom just called me, wanted me to let you know she’s gonna be late tonight.”

The little boy stared a moment.  “My mom has your phone number?”

Lucilius was taken aback a moment.  He’d only exchanged short pleasantries with the young mother, in the elevator, when running into one another at the entrance, but it was suddenly odd - they’d never gotten so far as to exchange numbers.

“I guess so.  Maybe she called the building manager?  Asked him for it?”

The little boy contemplated this a moment and then decided it was believable.

“Ok, thanks” the boy said, pushing the door open.  

Lucilius too started to retreat back into his apartment, but quickly thought better of it, and stepped half back out into the hall.

“Hey”

The boy stuck his head out.

“If you get bored or want food or something, you’re welcome to hang out over here.”

The boy paused thinking about this, and then nodded.  “Ok, thanks.”  Then the door shut and Lucilius was left to retreat back into his own home.  He thought of kicking the door wedge out, but thought better of it - to leave the door open in case the boy got lonely.  He didn’t want the kid to have to face another closed door.

He slumped back on his couch, and stared at the inane image on the TV.  He clicked it off and then just sat in silence, looking out the window, at the city sprawl.

“Hey,” came the boy’s voice as he walked into Lucilius’ apartment.  The boy was carrying a box of Mac’n’Cheese.  “Can you help me with this?”

“Yea, of course,” Lucilius said.  Lucilius got up and took the box and pulled out a pot and started filling it with water.

“Just get home from school, I’m guessing?”

“Yea,” the boy said, standing in front of Lucilius’ bookcase, looking at all the titles.

It had been a while since Lucilius had really spoken with a kid.  He felt a bit awkward.

“Uh, learn anything today?”

The boy looked another moment at the bookcase and then walked over to the couch and sat down.  

“Yea, I learned that school isn’t really for learning.”

Lucilius paused, watching the tiny bubbles hugging the bottom of the warming pot of water.  He looked over at the boy.

“How’d you learn that?”

“I got in trouble cause I shared some answers with someone who sits next to me.  He just has trouble paying attention, and then when we have to do work, he doesn’t know what to do.  I was trying to show him, but the teacher said it was cheating.”

Lucilius considered the story, impressed, then poured the pasta into the boiling water.

“Maybe if they taught us how to pay attention to boring stuff before trying to teach boring stuff, he’d do better, but they never went over that.”

Lucilius laughed, then nodding to himself.  “Yea, that would be pretty useful.  Been a long time since I was in school, but I seem to remember the same.”

“What did you learn today?” The boy asked, looking at Lucilius.

He was taken aback.  Lucilius thought over his day as he watched the pasta swirling in the hot water.  He’d woken up late after a late night spent watching some dumb show that had kept playing and playing without end.  He’d made coffee and then briefly tried to take a nap, and sat at his desk and barely looked at the code overwhelmed  by the immense task of even trying to start, and before he knew it, the boy’s mother had called him.  He looked at his mind - the bland malaise of thought that had barely mustered enough substance to even be thought.  It was like the opposite of a zen state, a sort of mindless decay.  

He looked at the boy who -in the absence of a response from Lucilius- had taken a book from the bookcase and was flipping through it.

“I guess I learned something I’ve always known.”

The boy looked up.  “How can you learn something you already know?"

Lucilius shrugged as he drained the hot pasta and then tore open the packet of powdered cheese.

“Well, everyone knows the things they should do, but I think you only learn it when you can do it.”

Lucilius added butter and mixed the tasty mess together.

“So what did you learn?” The boy asked.

“That no one can really teach you anything.  Learning is really a matter of where your attention is.”

The boy frowned a bit as Lucilius walked with two steaming bowls of Mac’n’Cheese.

“Isn’t that sort of what I said about school?”

Lucilius smiled as he handed the bowl to the boy.

“Well, sometimes we forget to pay attention and need a little help.”

“But you just said we can’t teach each other stuff.”

“True, but we can nudge each other’s attention.”

“Isn’t that what teaching is?  Or should be, I guess.”  The boy said.

“Maybe, but who is the one paying attention?”

PEDDLING PLATITUDES

October 3rd, 2020

The word platitude comes from the French meaning flat.  Platitudes are generally perceived as stale truths - they fall flat.  They’re a bit like boring common sense that seems to deserve more of an eye roll than any serious consideration because, the sentiment has already been taken into consideration on account of the fact that it’s grown stale from overuse.

But are platitudes good for us?  And why do they grow stale?  

Even more importantly, if a platitude communicates something sensible that would be beneficial if turned into a behaviour, but currently isn’t something that our actions reflect, then would repeated exposure be good, despite our eye rolling?

Perhaps platitudes are a bit like eating vegetables.  Despite it being good, most of the time it just feels like a chore: 1 part healthy, 2 parts annoying.

The analogy can be developed a bit further: that new posh restaurant opens.  The chef is amazing, and the top recommendation is the brussel sprouts.  Wait.  The brussel sprouts?  This happens so often in the world of cooking.  The food we eat hasn’t really changed much if we ignore the speciation that’s occurred with the onset of the chemical industry half a century ago.  Aside from that experiment which is probably best typified by the birth of Twinkies and Cheez Whiz, most innovation in food - that is tasty food - is a continual reimagining of how time-tested staples can be remixed.

Sometimes the cover song turns out to be better than the original.  But is it a different song?  And are those brussel sprouts any less good for you if they’ve been artfully reimagined with a new set of ingredients to frame their flavor?

Those aphorisms that might be regarded as platitudes are often the mental version of the vegetables that we can grow so bored of - if not spiced up in a modern context.  This happens all the time with classics translated from other languages.  The times change, the culture changes, and even so does the language, and with those changes, an old translation grows stuffy and less accessible.  Classic texts from different languages benefit from new translations so that the original can properly fit within modern parlance.  This is exactly why it can take a few scenes of Shakespeare before the language clicks.  We are so far removed from Elizabethan English as it was spoken and written in Shakespeare’s time, that it’s akin to a dialect that takes a bit of effortful listening to get the hang of.  And naturally, it would be a gross poetic sin to try and ‘translate’ Shakespeare into modern parlance.  When this is done, the point of the play is quite lost, because Shakespeare didn’t really write original stories - they were all themselves adaptations of previous stories that he updated into a modern parlance with such poetic skill that it must be considered within it’s native context.  Otherwise the result is a Heath Ledger movie that has little if anything to do with Shakespeare.

General Insight, in a modern context is most often and most likely going to be an updated platitude that is worded and remixed in such a way that it resonates really well with the current shape of language and culture.

Peddling platitudes can easily devolve into just that.  It is, first and foremost an exercise in language.  The idealistic aim is to understand old principles deeply but within the flavor of a modern context so that when reworded, they sparkle like something new.