There seem to be two major motivational tracks in the brain: pain-avoidance and enjoyment. The first is more instinctual, involving pain-avoidance and survival needs. This operates by an evolutionary logic of lack. The message, essentially, is, “Don’t lack too much for too long,” whether we are talking about air, heat, water, calories, nutrients, or bodily integrity. When a species, as a group, can increase population size, they provide an evolutionary or special (as species-al rather than meaning something extra good) surplus. By the time we get to mammals, such a surplus of mental energy exists that this sort of energy-and-reproductive surplus can be felt by individuals as well. Mammals experience this as playfulness–especially when they are young and learning, but also when they are older and relatively content at the moment concerning basic survival needs.
In other words, mammals in total do not lack too much for too long. Humans have become the dominant species of our size, so–again, as a group at least–we do not lack too much for too long. This energy-reproduction surplus shows up, partially, in comparatively massive cortical structures that soak up a lot of oxygen and food energy. In dolphins, whales, great apes (chimpanzees), and humans notably, these cortical structures are large and active, producing more attention than survival requires. Corresponding to physical exuberance, then, is a certain degree of mental creativity. Because this attentional energy interacts with mammalian emotions, we experience a type of motivation that reptiles do not.
Without considering attentional surplus, we could understand emotions as primarily working in energetic service of instinctual survival responses. We see this in the well-known fight-flight response. It can actually be considered a fight-flight-freeze-sex response. When this area of the brain is triggered, it produces a potent form of energy, an action potential we could say, that is very directed or focused attentionally (while offering a wide array of behaviors). Emotions correspond to whatever situational response our brain (and sometimes mind) “believes” to be appropriate. So, if we think we should fight, we feel anger; flee, fear; freeze, anxiety; and sex, well, you probably know what sorts of responses this results in. If we don’t “choose” one of these tracks as primary, we may end up experiencing hilarity, a potent religious sort of ineffable experience, an intense sense of dislocation felt to be “crazy”, or some mix of these responses. Because these different responses all basically “originate” in the same brain structures, the motivations, behavioral responses, and emotions from each of these “tracks” often overlap; we can experience and conceptualize them as unique, but they often combine or bleed into one another. If we're startled, we may initially feel a flash of fear but habitually respond by feeling angry at whatever startled us, with a tinge of fear coming along for the ride.
Because it all happens in the same space and involves a flush of various neurotransmitters and hormones, we might create a higher sense of arousal before sex by fighting with our spouse, for example. Looking at this energetic surplus from another angle, we might say that, following a fight, we look for some way to release or express the potent energy which has been triggered that we experience as emotions and physical arousal (of one form or another). We find the same with playfulness, fear if it doesn’t go as far as terror, etc. What’s more, we also often feel easily anxious about sex, fearful when someone else is angry, some of us are likely to feel anger triggered when others seem inappropriately or just irritatingly anxious or fearful, etc. So not only do these motivations interact within each individual, but they also interact between mammals–people included. The point is, if enough food and oxygen are there, the reaction potential is present. If the reaction potential is triggered, it becomes action potential or energy. Once we feel that energy, it must be expressed in some way.
This energy potential is potent, so we have a fascination with it. People tend to be both attracted to it and also fearful of it. In a sense, it lurks in us. We have a very basic sense that this action potential is not something we necessarily control well, so we find that there are plenty of situations when we try to keep it from being set off. If we can’t stop it, we might feel inappropriately, embarrassingly, even dangerously “turned on”. Besides the social expectations we might screw up, there is also a physical need that can essentially turn back on us. If we do not act out this action potential, if our bodies and minds can’t get together on choosing one of the behavioral-expressive tracks, we will eventually default into a stuck or bound mix of these responses. That means we spiral into: anxiety and trauma, hilarity or confusion and perhaps a feeling of insanity, unexpressed anger which will often lend itself to some chronic habit and blaming and tension, etc. There is, then, also a certain type of flowchart or expressive algorithm that we apply. Most people prefer to feel laughter to anger, anger to fear, fear to anxiety, and a mix of fear and anxiety to outright traumatization. These "preferences" are largely subconscious, but we can all think about it and watch how we actually respond when we're pressured, startled, or excited. You don't have to take my word for it.
This algorithm is a potent motivator of surprising eventual effects when we look at group activities in hierarchical, highly technological societies. Traumatization or the specter of traumatization affects everyone because, when one person feels something, we experience ripple effects. Ripple effects are probably the main point, evolutionarily, of emotions. Emotions help coordinate group behavior. And because emotions are so fundamental to who we are and how we live, if we become either too detached or too confused about our emotions, we suffer as individuals and as a group. We are so interconnected at this point in history, that it is senseless to consider that humans are more than one group, although it make s a lot of sense to consider a large number from a wide variety of subgroups.
Part of the social logic–which is a little less determined than the instinctual logic–is that it is better to feel laughter than anger, and if we don’t feel that we can laugh together, it is better to be angry than afraid. With anger, we feel like we possess the one-up position or dominant position. So if shit is going to hit the fan, it is better to be able to hold someone else between you and the shit than to have someone forcing you between them and the shit. If we can’t be happy together, most people will prefer anger over fear. But, if we separate other people from our sense of in-group (in a one-up/one-down sort of way), we will tend to feel some anxiety around those others (because we know it is reasonable for them to not want to shield us from whatever shit may be headed this way). That anxiety might easily trigger the arousal response which we will then tend to want to interpret as a “fight” situation if we think there is any chance we can win, or if there is no perceived chance of winning, we will want to avoid a fight and escape. This happens on an individual level, but it becomes more pronounced at a group level. At a group level, too, this action potential (once arousal is triggered) must be expressed in some way. If the energy cannot be discharged, it feeds into: anxiety and trauma, hilarity or confusion and perhaps a feeling of insanity, unexpressed anger which will often lend itself to some chronic habit and blaming, etc. And, the same as with individuals, that relatively immediate response spirals further into long-term types of stress, depression, confusion, and divisiveness.
The first two pages so far have mostly been introduction. The major message of this paper is: action potentials that are not expressed momentarily and in a straightforward manner twist in unhealthy ways. The greater the twisted action potential (energy), the worse the after-effects. Or, said from a different angle: action potentials that are expressed momentarily and in a straightforward manner are experienced in healthy ways. The greater the straightforward action potential, the better the feeling. Unfortunately, while we can directly affect our feeling about a particular moment or action potential, we can’t as directly affect the world around us. So we can be sure that great energy expressed in an unhealthy way will have correspondingly great negative effects, but great energy expressed in healthy ways may only have great effects concerning our feelings. Our feelings, then, will have an indirect–but by no means unimportant–influence on the world at large by directly affecting what we do and how we do it. In other words, we affect our feelings by how we relate to our energy, and those feelings affect our actions; these actions noticeably affect our world.
By most philosophies or worldviews, energy as it relates to emotions and eventually actions has not been adequately understood as to be as pragmatically workable as is possible. When our self-identity and awareness do not relate directly and coherently with our fundamental vitality, we diminish our sense of vitality and confuse our sense of self-identity. In other words, besides feeling that our energy is stagnating or twisted, we feel that our awareness seems dim in comparison to what we see in kids and animals and also in comparison to what we want to believe to be optimum or possible for ourselves. When that happens, the ways in which we pay attention and think negatively influence our relation to our emotions.
I know there is a lot of causal chaining and interaction here, but this is important. When cultures present worldviews that are inadequate to our actual potential or when we accept personal philosophies that are inadequate to our vitality and potential, we dim our vision and act accordingly (accordingly dim). Then, we feel like we are less than we could be, like we do less than we should (accurately in my opinion). One type of thinking about how to correct this imperfect situation is to notice emotions and try to do something to interact better with emotions. This method is doomed to failure, not because it is hard to directly influence emotions (although, it is hard to control emotions), but because it is the nature of healthy emotionalizing to flow and change momentarily. When we want emotions to last longer than works in their way, we set up a demand characteristic with our emotions, trying to railroad them into longer-lasting moods. But moods are by their nature unduly influenced by habit, meaning–less responsive and in touch with each instant than emotions are. When we are dimly or indirectly in touch with any given moment, we feel somewhat out of touch (again, this out-of–touch feeling is accurate, fitting for this way of thinking and acting). While we don’t want to control our emotions, then, we can begin to control our habits and feel more alive by interacting consciously and directly with a sense of vitality or basic life energy.
Another common mistake is to try to break down this sense of basic energy into all sorts of anatomical and chemical sources or contributors to vitality, as if we're looking for some Holy Grail. While this makes perfect sense scientifically, it fractures a personal sense of experience. This is very important: there is a difference between what is perfectly reasonable, even helpful, scientifically versus what is healthy or reasonable phenomenologically or holistically-phenomenologically. Even though we are capable of thinking all sorts of things that other animals are not, feeling fractured is not a natural or necessary state of being for us, and if we believe too much in the atomistic quality of scientism (as opposed to just good science), we introject atomism; translated into phenomenological experience, that atomism feels like a fractured or fragmented self. Feeling fractured is the necessary result of practicing mistaken and incomplete worldviews. While this perspective may seem arguable to some, and while it does involve a few caveats, this is how it is. It is unnecessary to feel fractured or fragmented. In fact, it is unnecessary to feel forced to choose between a holistic awareness of oneself and one’s world or, on the other hand, to choose science and healthy skepticism. It is simply important to get one’s priorities straight so that we can clear our shared vision of unnecessary and detrimental views. Skepticism itself taken with a grain of salt and accurately prioritized is a wonderful thing. Science, in the hands of smart people rather than smart people in the grip of scientism, is another wonderful thing.
The same goes for culture. Every “ism” provides a certain view. We can consider any inanimate or unmoving view or perspective to be an “ism” rather than being a healthy and alive view. Just as science can become scientism when people relate with it stupidly or lazily, every single cultural view and personal view can become a disordered or rigid “ism”. Almost everyone suffers from multiple sorts of “isms”. When we work within these rigid and reductionist perspectives, we experience things phenomenologically but not holistically-phenomenologically. This fragmented or partial sort of experiencing, lacking phenomenological holism, occurs when a personal sense of conscious intention grows beyond an infant’s ignorance of others as important in one’s world. We can talk about this as the development of ego. The awareness of otherness is usually accompanied by a feeling of separation, with separation comes ego or individuality, and with ego comes fragmentation of understanding and experience. This development of ego can be seen as something troubling or as a surplus of attention–it is unlikely that crocodiles have a sense of egos and sharing, but dogs might, for instance. So there’s an evolutionary progression as well as individual development as we age and hopefully mature.
Children eventually begin practicing things like sharing with others, which can be very difficult in the beginning. It has been hypothesized that the advent of nightmares occurs because of the strain of learning to share around 2-3 years of age. (Perhaps learning to share was just harder for that psychologist than for the rest of us, who knows?) Anyway, we know that teaching kids to think about and enact intentional ethics takes effort–from them and from adults. Well, “God gives burdens–also shoulders.” Another example of attentional surplus, besides our difficulty in learning to share (our development of egoisms and intentional ethics), is monkeying around, literally. Curiosity–killing cats or motivating scientific exploration–is an example of attention existing in amounts that exceed survival demands. Monkeys and apes fleshing out possibilities for playfulness, socialization, and curiosity is a close evolutionary comparison to our own development. Chimpanzees use of tools and the cultural difference between separated clans are a good mirror for not only how we differ culturally but also for how we may check our personality differences. Sometimes we don’t have a strong and fully formed grasp of what different personalities really offer at their optimum potential, so we’re lucky that we’re curious about ourselves and our world at large. See how the surplus and the need for application fit together?
Monkeys can’t avoid monkeying around–they have too much energy, attention, and exuberance; we can’t avoid developing individuality, egoism, and eventually intentional ethics. It’s similar even though the nuance in all the abundant diversity is amazing. We can’t help it. We can’t not develop egoisms, but we can be curious about how it all works. And just like monkeys monkeying, there’s no absolute need to feel like there is something wrong with people developing egos and wills and ethics–it’s just humans humaning. But, as I mentioned earlier, there is also no way to avoid that doing so introduces fragmentation and a particular sort of difficulty into our lives. That’s okay; monkeys face difficulties in their lives, too. Once we learn how to face the particular feeling of separation that egos introduce, we can learn to overcome that feeling.
The “isms” allow us to practice taking different perspectives in a rudimentary way. Primatologists who study the chimpanzee groups that have learned to use tools to crack open nuts say it takes about six years for the average chimp to master the process. It’s like apprenticing in something difficult, taking six years to get a Ph. D. in cracking nuts. Luckily for the primate apprentice, there are adults who have mastered the process. They encourage continued practice as well as exemplifying the benefits of grasping the process. They also provide a certain stabilization so that the apprentice can eventually recognize how today’s mistakes relate to yesterday’s mistakes, potentially building in the direction of mastery and perhaps even the ability to teach. “Isms” work in a similar way. They seem rigid to those masters of human attention and emotion who can remain mindful in various situations, alive to each moment. So humans need to practice an appreciation of the mindfulness such masters exemplify as well as appreciating that there is a process for the uninitiated to follow. Yesterday’s mistakes are built upon not by immediate mastery today, but by advanced mistakes which eventually lead towards mastery. So while isms seem clumsy at first, they actually structure progress in a way that is obvious enough for beginners to interact with. We like to think, then, that we are more able than chimps to be aware of the process–better primate apprentices and masters–but the actual learning process, the mistaking process if you will, is the same. We start off clumsy but have the possibility of getting better as we go along if the situation is supportive.
What this means in terms of phenomenology is that the fragmentation which ego brings is both troubling (as difficult and frustrating as learning to crack nuts with chimpanzee fingers and rocks) and potentially progressive. Intention-competency, or agency, is the pivot point. We get the phenomenological meat (movement towards holism) or the nutmeat (for determined chimps) if we persist and learn. Persistence in terms of mindfulness is unlikely if we do not encounter the exemplars of developed mindfulness as well as practice the techniques which develop mindfulness. I bring up mindfulness because it is the next step in understanding and experience beyond the fragmentation ego brings on. Developing mindfulness takes no less attention than developing ego and ethics takes–or learning to crack nuts for that matter. What is different is that we can learn mindfulness in a way that is less rudimentary than how most of us have learned ego and ethics, less rudimentary than how most nut-cracking chimps learn to crack nuts. In fact, it’s possible that we have to learn mindfulness in subtler ways because mindfulness is simpler or subtler than egoic persistence. (As Marshall McLuhan said, “The message is the medium.”) Correspondingly, the usage of language and conceptual thinking that goes with it to develop intentional ethics may be somewhat less rudimentary than most nut-cracking chimpanzee educational programs. The ways in which we teach ethics and sharing may be somewhat subtler than the ways in which chimpanzees teach one another nut-cracking, and the ways in which we might potentially learn mindfulness may be somewhat subtler than the ways in which we teach one another perspective-taking and intentional ethics.
It seems that the major obstacle to going beyond the rigidity of isms is the reliance on isms itself. This reliance is an important part of how we learn to mediate impulsive desires. We simultaneously have the desire to be loved and included in whatever social group we are in as well as the desire to have things how we want them to be individually. Practicing taking different perspectives helps us learn to empathize with others and compromise behaviorally; maybe we take turns playing with a firetruck in preschool. But, since we are integrated beings from the beginning, behavioral compromise is most often accompanied with a feeling of emotional compromise. We feel something like, “Oh, I wanted to have the firetruck all to myself whenever I had the impulse to have it all to myself, but sometimes I have to override that desire and share.” What’s more, the impulse to smack Tommy when he just takes the truck from me is even harder to relinquish than the sense of loss I feel in those instances when we have a negotiated compromise and I agree to share (hard enough in itself).
The nice part is that we can also enjoy the feeling of sharing and friendship when we do share. If we look at the whole situation, then, from a rudimentary perspective, there seems to be a paradox between wanting to be selfish and wanting to be friendly as well as a fragmentation of personal experience: to share or not to share? Compromise, accept adult oppression when they say I should and perhaps must share, or violent revolution or attack against Tommy? Decisions, decisions. This is where an attentional surplus can be helpful. We can consider different perspectives and different possibilities because we are not so evolutionarily limited as to be able to only react instinctively to whatever our genetics respond to. We have the attentional space or energy to check out different perspectives, a luxury crocodiles do not necessarily enjoy. I want to raise the question as to whether we need to feel paradox, conundrum, or fragmentation just because we have a surplus of attention. Do we? Crocodiles most likely get by without self-criticism and rumination about self-esteem. They most likely do feel a basic sense of hunger, impulse towards survival and mating, sometimes even a protective mothering instinct. But I doubt that they worry about whether their asses look fat or whether other crocodiles think their body odor is offensive.
Checking out different perspectives comes to a conceptual climax with the ability to manipulate “formal operations” cognitively–truly abstract ideas–during our teenage years. When we take this new ability and run with it, we exaggerate the idealism as a way to push towards the outer conceptual boundaries. Towards the end of our teenage years, there is great development in the prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain that helps deal with inhibiting impulsivity, sorting through complex decisions, and other abilities called “executive functioning” by psychologists. Essentially, intentionally developing the potential this growth allows brings the extreme idealism of early teenage years under control (or, if you dislike the word control, "into a sense of proportion"). But, as Abraham Maslow has said, “Capacities are needs.” As that applies here, if we don’t intentionally develop this potential, something feels to be rotten in the state of our Denmark. In other words, just as smart and active kids chafe in most school systems that are felt to be uninteresting, when we do not incorporate this extra brain potential into our self-identities and lives, we psychologically notice that something is unsatisfying. Our bodies are feeding new growth and creating new mental possibilities that we don’t know how to use, and we find this somewhere between disconcerting and dissatisfying, just as bright and energetic kids find too much time sitting in school to be disconcerting (when they wonder if this is the best society can come up with for them) and dissatisfying (sucks!).
In the same way that physical food energy must go somewhere, the physical brain energy that we create–that our bodies create–must “go somewhere” or move in our brains. This means it moves in our minds; we feel it. Now, while we recognize the need and possibility of developing formal operations in teenagers (like doing algebra and developing political ideals and maybe even planning a career), we do not generally realize the potential and need for developing executive functioning abilities to their full extent. This leaves young adults with a feeling in their bodies and minds that there is a meaning gap, that something is incomplete, and a sort of hard-to-pin-down malaise can develop. (This particular malaise is somewhat less driven and obvious than one's ideological rejections of various aspects of current society.) Now, if we distract ourselves from the reality of this undeveloped potential, we can ignore that general malaise or lack to a degree. We can dismiss that this is actually happening. Another option is to pour our time and energy into something like a career, extra study, drugs, raising a family, etc. Throughout history, people have developed this executive functioning and mindfulness potential more directly in connection with local environments, with each other, and with raising families. The current economic and social expectations around raising families put us in a unique situation–along with a general discouragement with religious and political leadership as possibly providing a bigger sense of meaning. So we have this attention surplus along with a generally-felt dearth of direction and overall meaning.
In the same way that developing egos produce a certain sort of evolutionarily advanced problem in advanced societies (feelings of separation and/or fragmentation), extra prefrontal potential without direction also produces very high-level problems. In the same way that developing egos allow us to develop intentional ethics, developing executive functioning potential within an attentional surplus allows us to develop intentional mindfulness. In both stages of human development, it can be helpful to know that there are possibilities for further development and greater satisfaction that arise concurrently with apparent problems. Because the need for solutions is not apparent before we experience a problem, people of a particular age group or historical cohort (like generations) tend to be more aware of the problems at their developmental stages (or historical moment) than they are of the value and actuality of “solutions”. We usually only begin to check out solutions after we have personally and saliently experienced the problems. That’s normal and healthy–it means we don’t just go running off looking for inapplicable stuff all the time; we usually want what we do in our lives to count in some way, to be tangible. But if the problems become too intense or last too long–especially if one’s society denies that there is a problem or denies that solutions exist–then the normal interaction with common developmental circumstances becomes pathological. (There are slightly different measures for correcting pathology than those for simply supporting health–every health professional worth their salt knows that prevention is more effective than treatment, so I am suggesting understanding of this situation, acceptance that problems can develop around ignored potential, and action towards educating ourselves concerning what can be done.) We can see the same heuristic in a more obvious situation when we look at frustrated adolescent males who have little prospect of gaining social status, economic opportunity, and sexual contact. If a normal drive is not expressed straightforwardly, healthily, and appropriately, then it will twist into an unhealthy and inappropriate expression. Capacities are needs, and we develop generally unrecognized psychological capacities in late adolescence and early adulthood.
The economic surplus that industrial-technologized nations enjoy, the degree of separation in our societies, the complexity of multiculturated globalization, and this unrecognized psychological capacity create a particular sort of feeling of need that defines our time period in history. The same age-old human developmental influences are playing out in a new situation. Is this population, economic, and attentional, human surplus a problem? Well, it provides certain capacities and needs. For instance, we now have scientific evidence of prefrontal cortical growth in young adults. Maybe earlier societies interacted with this potential somewhat easily, unconsciously, or “naturally”, and that is well and good for them if so. But just as evolutionarily more primitive solutions don’t solve evolutionarily more advanced problems (crocodiles have no suggestions for treating depression), solutions from different historical periods do not show us directly how to handle our problems now. Jesus Christ may have been a great guy, but he left no clear directions on how to address DNA testing in solving crimes, stem cell medicine, or fiber optic communications. Of course, being the intelligent animals that we are, we can extrapolate. Just as elders had an obviously important role in traditional societies, our historical predecessors have left us valuable suggestions on how to live with our human potential now. To some extent, we only need to translate in a meaningful way, but to some extent, curiosity, innovation, and exploration have always been part of being human all too human. What's nice for us is that we can lean on the past and take the perspective that we are just applying traditional meaning systems (like philosophies and religions) or we can take the perspective that we are doing something creative or innovative (in which case we will still have to interact with those traditional systems to some extent anyway.)
The surplus of basic resources which is driving population growth has also set us up, as a single global group, for overall economic surplus. Economic surplus allows us to explore a surplus of time and attentional energy. A surplus of time and attentional energy allows us to explore personal and cultural potential to a degree unprecedented in history. This surplus represents a capacity and a need. We have the capacity to explore this phenomenal potential individually and collectively like never before, and we have the need of coming to grips with our own potential like never before. We can find ways to express this potential straightforwardly and healthily or we will continue to express it in a conflictual manner. Either way, it will be expressed.
Part of what makes this current multicultural communications cacophony especially difficult is that we have such a smorgasbord of cultural influences to choose from if our individual personalities don’t particularly fit with our culture of origin’s typical values. But, for those who prefer other influences to a family or culture of origin, it can become increasingly difficult to connect at home. It can also be very difficult for older generations to incorporate not only the individualism of their up-and-comers, which has always been a source of friction, but there is also the current adjustment to the availability of information like has never before been experienced. So, on a global level, as a singular group, we have never really faced this sheer amount of possibilities for everyone involved. As a group, we have developed beyond any historical experience from which we might learn. Ha, ha, ha! That’s so often throughout history the feeling that people in changing times have felt.
The post-WWII generation developed the sense of nonviolent revolution and tolerance of diversity. This is similar to what it is like for adolescents to begin tempering their own idealism. We go from feeling like everyone is either a friend or a potential enemy to the recognition that some people are just going to be somewhat civil neighbors whether we interact much or not. And the revolution in electronic media and global distributions systems has simultaneously made us more connected than before while allowing us as individuals to separate from our next-door neighbors more than before. These capacities and needs tend to go together. Since we have, in some ways, more exposure to difference and more choice than at most times in history, we also have a greater responsibility for making lots of choices. In the past, many such decisions were made for people by their circumstances of birth or the influence of a culture of origin. At this point, the generation born now, their culture of origin is global and interconnected. While every relatively separate, traditional culture found a livable amount of information and custom to try to pass on, we are now exposed to worldwide human potential as individuals rather then being so directed by single separatist/tribal/national cultures.
What this means is that, not only do we have the scientific evidence to show young adults are capable of improved executive functioning, but there is also the demand (through availability) that we make an unprecedented number of decisions about how we want to live. At the same time, we also have the availability of information and goods required to be able to make a larger number of these decisions well. But we may have to do so with a slightly increased awareness and degree of wisdom. Lucky for us, we can rely on many human subcultures rather than trying to rely only on a single, traditional culture of origin and our individual creativity. We are so much more interconnected that the availability of worldwide creativity is literally at our fingertips. The question is very much whether we can take this into our hearts, minds, social institutions, professional organizations, and customs. Tolerance of difference won’t do it.
This is where the mindfulness fits back in quite nicely. When mindfulness is contextualized within normal family life (as compared to the religious settings in which it has been historically preserved and explicated), it fits with emotions and individuality as mindful appreciation. While monks and nuns may be dealing primarily with ultimate causes, most of us are trying to be happy more than trying to be ultimate in some way. Mindfulness ends up being a basis for meditation, as has been the case historically, but it is also a basis for connection and inspiration (a function that may not have always been so emphasized in the past). In pre-industrial societies, people are encouraged to be very mindful of how they interact with local environments and tradition (and be appreciative). In post-industrial societies with very dense populations and an offering of cultural diversity, we may have to put a little explicit effort and intention into being mindful of how we interact with people like ourselves, people who are very different, and also human potential itself (and be appreciative). This sort of mindful appreciation is a step beyond both tolerance of difference and beyond a conceptual understanding of what it means to be human. Whereas people in the past could perhaps more easily count on prescribed culture-bound meaning systems (those imperfect but functional worldviews I mentioned earlier), we have to face the fact that we are exposed to so much cultural potential that the best way to interact with that potential as living and relevant in each moment is to find ways that we can qualitatively feel that what we ourselves bring to each situation is living and in touch with any given moment, any type of cultural importation, or anyone.
Because we are exposed to so much potential, we simply cannot even come close to conceptually understanding what we will be dealing with in any given moment. Isn’t that fascinating? The problem is that, if we feel incapable of dealing with a flood of experience, we tend to withdraw and dull our attention, like we are trying to protect what we already know from an onslaught of exposure. If we can’t understand it all, what can we do? This is the part I fall in love with. When we are dealing with processes we can understand, it’s like playing an organized sport. We know the rules and the playing field, we can expect what our competitors will do, and we can either enjoy the dynamic interaction or not. Even if our competitors and playmates pull some interesting tactical move, it’s not hard for us to understand. We mostly know what we’re dealing with. When we are involved in processes that are so complex that they cannot be understood, strategizing changes. When the rules are unclear, we look for commonality on a different, more abstract level or in qualitatively different way. Rather than our understanding of the rules being common to everyone involved, our common ignorance of the rules takes precedence.
That just means that we can’t win by the old game’s rules for deciding who wins and who loses. The rules now, if they exist, are not what they used to be. Well, in getting into these sorts of situations, we can still play and compete in some ways, but we look for commonality in different ways. It’s more like little kids playing improvisational games than having an organized and practiced sporting competition. Quality becomes more important than any particular rule or measurement of quantity. Because this happens within a context of cultural and economic surplus, it helps to become more explicitly appreciative of one another within this playspace; play is not merely tolerant. If we do not do so, we try to hold onto rigid and limiting worldviews that no longer function as well as they used to. We might play by those rules, but we feel confused and frustrated because the rules no longer seem to hold. In psychology, when individuals get stuck in such habits, we call it personality disordering. The same happens when worldviews on a societal level are made rigid and unworkable. We end up with disordered cultures. The interesting thing about disordered worldviews–besides the fact that they can be corrected, opened, enlivened–is that they are felt from within to be rigid or inappropriate as well as seen from without as being rigid and inappropriate. This lends a new meaning and extremism to intergenerational differences.
At this point, education is obviously partially about content and rules for dealing with content, but it is becoming overwhelmingly about process. We either educate youngsters into some set of boxed rules that are appropriate when we actually know what game we’re playing, or we teach them something along the lines of balance, flexibility, and curiosity rather than an emphasis on stable rules. It’s like teaching athleticism rather than a particular game. The same can happen mentally and emotionally. While it used to be the case that sports scientists in the USSR might try to hold onto their secrets or esoteric members of various religions would try to hold onto their secrets, with the breakdown of certain political and communicational barriers, we can actually open and engage athletic and psychological education with the best of any group we come across. Sure, a number of folks are still trying to hold onto their secrets rather than play with the rest of us, but the game is passing them by. Even as many of the old rules have fallen away, the global awareness of HOW people are playing has increased in the amount of attention paid, quality of critique, and communication of results. China is finding this out with quality controls on various industrial and consumer products and also with criticism of the quality of “controls” they use within their own political domain (see the news commentary on the Free Tibet protesters against China sponsoring the 2008 Olympics). Hell, even in America we have a black man and a woman competing for the Democratic Party’s nomination for Presidential candidate. Who knew?!
Process over content, quality over quantity, appreciation over tolerance. All of these signal the same general shift. It's not revolution; it's reform. We could call it progress if we don't ally ourselves with content, brute quantity, or tolerating one another rather than going as far as to appreciate one another.
As the media influence changes, the economy does too. It used to make sense to set up your guild and keep your trade secrets somewhat controlled when individual societies had less permeable boundaries. Now though, global renaissance is pushing not only particular businesses or industries but whole societies. If your business doesn’t interact with folks in your nation who want interaction in that business niche, someone else’s will. It is fascinating to me that the best thing for the worldwide spread of Tibetan Buddhism, for example, was being forced out of it’s home country and into the world as a whole. It is up to the Tibetans and their new friends to keep up the quality of what they bring because each of us will continue to become better shoppers and critics. It is up to the Americans and their friends to keep up the quality of what they bring. It is up to the Chinese...well, you get the idea. Once it becomes possible for the Chinese and Indians to compete in information technologies (and that time has come), they are no longer stuck only in focusing on quantities of particular solid goods. (Colonialism and its mercantilism is over, although many of the economic and political-cultural influences are not played out yet.) The same goes for cultural characteristics. Once our cultures begin interacting at a certain degree of interconnectedness, quantities and contents do not disappear but they do become only one of many measures of importance and value rather than being the only or primary measure. Creativity, inspiration, and the ability to communicate (American students, check your foreign language, mathematics, science, and engineering abilities) take center stage.
Economies used to be based on agriculture and the ability to conquer; then, they moved on to trade and distribution; further, we have industrialism and mechanized production; later still, people have been talking about research and development and Information ages. Well, as each level of technology becomes easier to produce (food surplus, trade surplus, production surplus, information surplus), each becomes less esteemed as valuable. Not that they ever totally lose their value. In a practical sense, food will always be important. But in terms of value on an open market, when there is a medium of exchange, each subsequent step forward “steals the thunder”, so to speak, of the previous step. Information is currently falling behind interaction and innovation. Information is cheap. But just as highly specialized food still garners a good market price, the same will always be true for highly specialized information.
There is a basically inexorable march. We look for enough quantity and when we achieve that, we look to improve the quality. It has happened with everything else, and it is happening with information. It is happening with culture as well. The great fear and danger is that we will lose a sense of appreciation for the previous steps that are not so sensational or sexy. But since we are moving into awareness of attentional surpluses, we are very aware of our connections to the earth, we are reintroducing ourselves to industrial production in a global market with a focus on quality of goods and also quality of the overall production process (including labor relations and industrial waste). So we are applying some of our attentional surplus and high quality awareness to previous economic developments or steps. The question very much becomes whether we can handle our population and cultural surpluses. As I’ve already said, the capacities and needs seem to fit together. I think we are fully capable of meeting our needs.
There is an interesting change in people’s relation to wealth when affluence reaches a certain level. Not only does population growth tend to flatten out but there is also a certain boredom with any life that is not connected enough, not in touch with something meaningful and tangible. As money becomes more often transferred electronically, it seems more and more to younger folks that exchanging bills is more ritualistic than meaningful. Paper money is becoming obsolete in many places. Having one’s bills paid directly from an electronic connection to one’s “checking” account allows a certain flow by removing the need for actual checks even. The end of the Cold War has also eroded a certain emphasis on capitalism within America and deconstructed the false dichotomy between social values and economic production. Just as Russia found it increasingly burdensome to dominate other countries, China and America are finding similar problems. It will be interesting to see some of the differences between China’s more centralized leadership and what we have going on here.
I can’t say that anyone really knows where all this is headed; I certainly don’t. But I do recognize some very interesting influences that seem not to be generally recognized. We seem to have a difficult time, when we focus primarily on the past, recognizing where future social processes will get to various qualitative shifts. But we do know that, whenever people are involved in large-scale processes, intention is involved. Further, we can mark out some common developments in people’s ability to intend and attend–we can notice significant and basically universal shifts on individuals' lifelong (at least potential) development. The interesting thing is, when we get to a relatively advanced point (which we’re at), development must be intentional (chosen) to continue. We’re there globally. Most people are more interested in advancing their lives and the lives of their children and neighbors than in conquering barbarians or heading off to some war intended to prove the dominance of one tribe over another. Most.
Just as every student must advance beyond what his teachers knew at his age if he is to further any particular field, we are at a point where we get to choose whether or not to advance our personalities and cultures beyond what has been accepted and acceptable in the past. It is not really much of an option to try to abstain from this choice because communications systems and global population density have reached a point where not only is no man an island, but no island is an island anymore, either. We have this time and culture surplus, and we must decide what to do with it. When we have gained enough with other quantities–food, medicine, mechanized production, etc.–we have looked to improve the quality. The same has been happening with culture and with individual experience of life.
While this may seem somewhat removed from a discussion of the interior life of crocodiles, one thing builds upon another, multiple qualitative shifts are reached and moved beyond, and we arrive at a point where intention becomes unavoidably important as we become–as evidenced by functional MRIs–more explicitly aware of our ability to be mindful as well as the universal desire to enjoy a meaningful and social life. In other words, when we can mostly handle the evolutionary injunction, “Don’t lack for too much for too long,” when we cover the basics, we look to improve our ability to enjoy. Even if we haven't agreed on a name for this yet, we are looking to appreciate mindfully; that's like taking a basic ability to enjoy and maturing it by adding in wisdom, diversity, education, and mindfulness. This progression happens along economic, technological, and personal lines of development that continually interact. Because it is such a complex dynamic, it is helpful to be able to rely on common desires and background while exploring difference and potential. We share common aspirations concerning multiple qualities even when we want to see those qualities play out in different ways.
While Jesus gave the injunction to, “Love your enemies,” there may be a reasonable point of compromise somewhere between trying to love foreign-feeling others and simply trying to tolerate them with a politically distanced civility. At the very least, we can appreciate our competitors if we don’t make them enemies, and we can respect our enemies even if we must fight. As we progress, it becomes increasingly difficult to avoid recognizing just how much fighting hurts ourselves as well as others. As that occurs, we learn to focus on qualities of interaction rather than quantities of status and materials because the ability to measure winning and losing becomes more systematic, intertwined, complex, and subtle. The focus on quality opens up a certain playfulness and communion that may not quite be love, but it ain’t bad. When we take care of the basics, the sky is the limit.
Copyright 2007 Todd Mertz