05 - Lighten up

I would like to take you seriously, but to do so would be an affront to your intelligence.

- George Bernard Shaw

It’s a particular characteristic of Homo sapiens to take ourselves and the events that concern us, a little too seriously. Those of us, who are inclined to lead others, are usually full of certainty in the value of their ideas and the importance of their position - and how important it is for others to understand their place, so the leaders can get on with the job at hand. This probably originates in some social and historical evolutionary necessity. Without this kind of attitude we'd probably be still culturally in the Stone Age, resolving conflicts with pointed sticks and palm sized rocks. So I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing. But I am certain it's a self serving thing if applied by leaders indiscriminately and by default.

We all kind of agree that if someone wants a thing badly enough then they can have it and some people just love running the show. But if human experience teaches us anything it’s that those who are most inclined to lead us, rarely have the best personality profile for the job. And by that I mean, because they usually have attributes that help them get the job, they don’t necessarily develop the capacity to be good at it or to sustain the effort required by the job, or to navigate the troubled waters they find themselves in having achieved their ends. Of course, someone has to do it. And in the culture we are living in, administration is key. And since the rest of us would probably prefer to nail our heads to the table than have all that garbage to deal with, then it’s left to those who are most organizationally skilled to assume leadership positions. People with bad ass committee chairing skills, not necessarily an original thought in their head - And we wonder why the landscape is so paper clogged and tedious.

Moreover, in the context of that social agreement between the leader and those who have little choice but to participate in the society they lead, a deeper perspective on things is not particularly useful since it is likely to make the leader second guess him or herself and it is likely to make the citizens more dangerously and subtly challenging. And no leader wants to feel confused by the people they purport to lead. This makes the leaders job a lot more difficult. It's hard to take their position in society very seriously if you have trouble seeing the society and its structures as anything other than a useful construct for collective organisation and action. And moreover, if you acknowledge how diminutive any given culture is, and indeed the entire history of human culture is, in the context of the universe and its massive and utterly indifferent structures, which rationally speaking, must to take precedence in the hierarchy of existence, once you accept the essentially peripheral importance of humanity in the wider scheme, then it’s pretty difficult to buy wholeheartedly into whatever that culture and its elites are selling. And this in not even taking into account the possibility of otheruniverses, which may or may not exist depending where you fall off the superstring caboose. It just becomes really difficult to take what amounts to amoebae darting around a raindrop, too seriously. And to take nothing too seriously, is a very good thing to do, because nothing is really all thatserious in the end. Everything that is or will be is impermanent and will certainly pass. Even the universe we live in. And we only occupy a tiny speck of matter, in a tiny portion of time. And we can only discern a tiny portion of even this with our meagre equipment. So why worry?

Well, the obvious answer to that platitude is – because we have responsibilities. And worry is the spur that drives us to persist and not permit everything to fall down around our ears. I suspect this is the hidden agenda of every worrier to exhale carbon dioxide. And there is merit in this. But perhaps there might be more useful mechanisms to spur us onward. There are less draining ones certainly. Worrying has as much merit as a chicken in a tutu. It probably achieves even less. At least a chicken in a tutu might be funny depending on the context.

I have an instinctive knee jerk response to the phrase “Don't worry, be happy”. The automatic implication is the absence of worry equates with happiness. But it doesn't – It just equates with the absence of worry. I'd be more inclined to keep the two of those quite separate. Mine would be the considerably less snappy, but I think more accurate and useful, “Don't worry – try and angle your activities and perspective towards the foundations that most nourish your odds of experiencing enjoyment in being and perhaps in sharing this in whatever way best suits your proclivities”. But I can't see a Bobby McFerrin song in that particular mouthful.

Consider the idea that everything that contributes to my existence was ultimately made in a star. The iron in my blood was forged in the heat of a supernova. Exploding stars seed the universe with iron, uranium and other heavy elements. They end up permeating my blood. This is mind-blowing information, (at least the first time you encounter it). But from the point of view of someone who comes from this culture, despite bordering on extreme access to this kind of knowledge, and a great deal more mind-blowing information, we tend to be more interested in the dating habits of football players and the throat clearing exercises practiced by a trainee dentist in a television karaoke competition. A more than statistically significant percentage of the human population is more interested in distraction than comprehension, either because a) they don’t believe they can understand, imagining this understanding is only for the special few – and that they never can manage this incredible feat and/or b) they don’t want to bother putting in the effort when social trivia is much more accessible and pleasantly (or unpleasantly) pre-occupying.

And they may well have a point. Who am I to judge? Though I would like to point out to those predominantly in group a) – that the only true obstacle to understanding is not being engaged enough to find out the right questions to ask. Because once you understand the truly productive questions in context, the answers more often than not become more accessible, and even if there are no answers for your questions then if the questions are properly understood then you are at least in a position to comprehend the answers if they ever do become available. Knowing the right questions is half the equation. But if you’re not even asking the right questions you’re not even participating in the real process. And to group b) – Each to their own. Enjoy.

If you follow our genealogy back far enough, we are quite literally children of stars. When I think of that my whole experience of being is transformed, becoming simultaneously smaller (ego) and larger (holistic interconnectedness) than before. This is the kind of feeling that inspired religions and science and the first storytellers. It has a strong and convincing probability of truth. And having some sense of understanding of the human position in the scheme of things has the distinct advantage of inspiring a certain sense of awe and reverence, that shifts the centre of gravity of my experience away from the self-construction that is often too busy co-opting that experience for itself.

If I am suffering from some experience of social humiliation or exclusion such that I feel unconnected and vulnerable, the slow calf trailing behind the herd, then it becomes very difficult for me to maintain a flexible perspective, since I am likely to be in a persistent state of anxiety. And while I might well be aware of my loneliness, the other emotional context, the vulnerability to predators and the anxiety that results from excessive adrenaline production etc, is misidentified as a function of that loneliness. For the most part, in the thick of that feeling, I am unaware that I am simultaneously anticipating imagined tigers rustling the long grass. This is why it’s a good thing to leaven the intensity of my own experiences and the over-identification with the content they generate.

When I am in a state of anxiety then my internal experience is of some imagined exterior force, judging me and what I have done or the lapses in my social skills that led me to make an utter fool of myself or what have you. I experience the sense that everyone is watching me. And this social pain depends for its existence and validity on the social value of its cost – It may seem intrinsic to the social structure but it also depends on the configuration the brain has acquired and contributes to. So feelings of social rejection are only painful when there is some value attributed by me to that lost or broken social connection. If it is valueless to me then this intensity of feeling won’t arise. Thus it is likely that I can reprogram what it is I value to protect myself from experiencing this kind of pain and the consequent danger of psychological entrapment. In such cases the attitude of stoicism can be fruitful. To understand things as fundamentally transient and temporary is also helpful. It means I can avoid becoming trapped in my own experience and have at least the opportunity to benefit from a wider and deeper perspective on the world.

To illustrate this point, think of the example of the martyr that experiences widespread social rejection in the services of what they see as a greater good. It is a very long time ago (or perhaps the near future depending on your optimism), he is trundling in a vegetable cart towards some horrible execution. Rotten eggs and tomatoes rain down upon him. He looks upon the sea of broken faces, filled with hatred and rejection. He feels contempt for their ignorance and malfeasance. He is pure. He holds the higher ground and will soon find himself wrapped in the warm embrace of Thor (he has a lisp). Because his experience of the rejecting group is framed in this way, it is possible for him to find pleasure in this social rejection. This is because of the low value attributed to that particular form of social acceptance. “To my mind these are contemptible people. Their acceptance would be an insult to me”. Our vulnerability to social rejection and the value of it is entirely dependant on our perspective of it. And it has power over us only while we agree to its terms.

Of course, the social consequences of our actions and their value to us, serves an important purpose as a natural modifier of individual behaviour. It encourages more harmonious collective activity. But in my mind, it is a far better thing to act properly simply because you recognise that it lies in your own best interests to encourage civil intercourse. Fear of censure is one of the least enlightened and enlightening social spurs. It seems like a terrible waste of energy to spend my time fretting over imagined dangers, especially when there really are plenty of real ones in the world. I’m not sure what’s the use of tensing up in anticipation of potential threats that might never occur. What’s the worst that can happen?

Well – I could die.

That is the one thing that’s absolutely certain - I will soon enough pass from this earth. And I will soon after be utterly forgotten. And a part of me might lament this notion. The important part of that equation is not the lamenting or the fear, it’s the questions, “What part of me is actually doing the lamenting? And for what is it lamenting? What part of me has this poor judgement about the relative importance of my own experience? What is it that fears that particular consummation so much?”

I would suggest that the thing that is afraid of death is a misunderstanding of self that masquerades as the self. And how can a mere idea of a thing assume such a convincing leading role in my interior play? And the answer to that question that I’ve so conveniently posed to myself, is “that is its nature”. My “self”, as it is habitually and unreflectively conceived and experienced, is no more than a partial answer to a complex question. It probably doesn’t even exist in the way I routinely imagine it does, especially when I am reflecting on its true nature. It is a network of ideas that is always accumulating its own mass from whatever source it can draw from. Often it engineers new sources so that it can propagate itself.

The constructed self that is as much a social interface as any kind of personal identity, knows itself but slenderly, and understands the deeper layers and truths of self, if at all, merely as ciphers or clichés. As much as we are anything, humans are learning machines, knowledge acquisition devices. And as such we know ourselves quite a bit better than we think we do. It just depends on which “I” is doing the knowing. If I trust and engage with this capacity, all the while persistently seeking for better understanding, If I am willing and even delighted when I learn something that undermines my present point of view, celebrating the fact that through this new illumination I can now get a better handle on what actually is, as opposed to what I imagine to be, then my odds of achieving a clarity sufficient to generate enjoyment in being improve immeasurably. Basically, I am the owner of this equipment, and I understand it quite well. I just have to get better at getting out of the way of that understanding. I have to stop blocking the light.

And here it must be noted that I am speaking about myself as if it were an object that is separate from me, with its own will and agenda. An “I/Thou” split with both sides of the equation being I. And that is exactly what I am saying. Our powerful brains manufacture a wide variety of voices and imperatives, some of which are singing from the same hymn sheet and some of which are singing in an entirely different choir or a rock band or a jazz trio or a drum circle. The functional success of the brain lies in its ability to influence the greater bulk of its forces into a broadly coherent whole. For the most part humans do this without any particularly apparent effort. It’s like an emergent property of the activity of the brain. Some of us instinctively understand our own divergent impulses keenly and are better at handling them than others. But the less perspective we have on ourselves, the less skilfully we are able to manage this. And if we are unlucky enough to have a powerful, or a number of powerful interior voices dominant in our interior hierarchy without adequate buffers, then it will indeed seem like a powerful other person(s) living in our head.

Often these more dominant forces in the interior landscape become almost synonymous with the self. This internal setup takes a lot of investment to maintain, an investment which the process of habituation persistently provides. This mistake in perceptual application can begin very early in life, long before we are in any position to discriminate or to choose how to best use our equipment. Moreover, it can persist until we take the trouble to convince ourselves that this framework we have invested in so heavily, is an illusion which has been woven into the fabric of our being by the natural activity of the human cognitive equipment in a culture that doesn’t urge comprehension of the process or management of its output.

When I am armed with a healthy perspective and I think about the fact that that I will pass soon enough and be utterly forgotten, I think what abeautiful thing this is. If we did not pass then we could have been afforded no opportunity to live in the first place. If my ancestors didn’t die then I couldn’t be here having this fine experience of being. This is because in the absence of death, the overwhelming weight of the population would mean more and more people competing for less and less resources. It wouldn’t be possible for evolution to take place in the absence of death, since the survival imperative which implies death by its very existence, is one of the main engines of natural selection. This culture would have fallen long since or would be utterly unrecognisable in the absence of death, since death has defined its shape to some considerable degree. And the implication of death has defined human consciousness. If I don’t die then the same applies to future generations who have as much right to share in the warmth of our excellent star and I ever did. So why should I care? The thing that fears death will no longer be there to experience its own absence, since its own absence by definition, negates its existence. So why should I, who will not be in any position to suffer death when it does occur, fear it?

A significant part of my being understands that I am a finite machine. Nothing is more certain than the fact that the exit door lurks around some corner or other. But the part of myself that calls itself a self and abstracts the world and relates it to itself, doesn't want to die. Every day above ground is a good day. I will live only for the merest fragment of a blink in geological time. And I will be gone for the rest of eternity. But neither of those frames of reference is useful beyond the thought experiment they provide, and the emphasis they place on my being here and being as present in that experience as possible while I persist. Mortality is a part of the experience, so that too should be embraced according to its true weight. And in the context of life, death is really very light since death and life are utter contraries. The one means the other is not present. So to life, death is not a possibility, since when dead, life is an impossibility. The living being fears this state that it cannot possibly comprehend with any facility. It can certainly project some notion of what death means to a living being. It can give that notion characteristics apposite to death but it cannot be accurate about that. Any more than a dead person might speculate about life. But while, in this moment, I am alive and experiencing this thing. I cannot imagine a better way of using this gift than to be busy appreciating it.

I'm all for bursting our particular species shaped bubble of entitlement and assumption, and it's all very well to come to some understanding of our relative insignificance in the scheme of things, but I think that we can lay a legitimate claim to being a pretty impressive emanation of the universe. Consider how adept we are at making the universe aware of its own particular dimensions.

Humans find it soothing to project their own habits of mind on the universe. We started practicing this habit back in the infancy of our collective memory, when we still knew no better and the attribution of personality traits and relatable characteristics to impersonal phenomena such as war and drought and thunder and evil might have made sense and made impersonal and frightening natural phenomena more relatable and therefore manageable. But this is one of the most primitive impulses we know of. “The god of thunder is angry. And if we pray loudly enough to him then our prayers might build an invisible shield and force him to transfer his wrath to our neighbour’s roof”.

And, over time, as we evolve different ways of looking at the world, this habit of rendering the mighty forces of nature that is obviously impervious to us and our suffering, evolved also. So we didn't believe in the God of thunder anymore, but now we have constructed an all knowing father figure, or a mother figure, or a falling sperm-whale and a bowl of petunias. And so on and so forth. But personhood or some analogue of same, such as will and motivation, require the necessary equipment to generate that phenomena. There are probably a great many manifestations of being that are beyond my comprehension, but there is little or no point, in my opinion, in projecting human phenomena onto a universe that might manifest humans through its particular mechanisms, but in no way can meaningfully be considered an analogue of humanity. Neither can humanity be meaningfully considered an analogue of the universe. These are just more idle projections on the cave wall. More mental constructs that are useful only through the perspectives they serve to illuminate. It’s good practice to avoid seeing things in this way.