Josh Allred's Blog

Something happens and our first natural instinct is to justify our actions to protect ourselves.

We often don’t realize that there is an apparent reason why we behave the way we do.

You were less patient with our co-worker because you were feeling frantic after battling traffic.

Of course, you wouldn’t have been stuck in traffic if you left for work on time.

And you would have left for work on time if you got up when you were supposed to.

Then again, the reason you had a hard time getting up was that you were celebrating your anniversary.

And on, and on, and on.

There is no cause, just effects.

Effect, effect, effect.

I mean, who else would we believe in?

As Crash Davis points out that the difference is minor. But when you add it up each week, it is an extra hit. That one extra hit is the difference between a career and a flash in the pan.

While I don’t agree with Crash’s assessment of talent, I do believe there is something to be said about working in the margins. Getting up at 5:30 in the morning to go on a run one day doesn’t really do much. Do that three times per week for three years, and you will be a proficient marathon runner.

The margins add up over a long period of time, not in the short run.

Tip: This is why you don’t always start a graph at 0. When compared to zero, there doesn’t seem to be much difference. But when you zoom in on the data points, it tells a different story.

In 1982, German alpinist, Reinhard Karl, had made multiple unsuccessful attempts on the Supercanaleta, Fitz Roy in Patagonia. Anyone who climbs knows this is a very serious route, especially in the 80s. His last attempt apparently was so scary and dangerous that when he finished the descent Karl buried all of his climbing gear in the glacier and promised never to climb again.

But then a couple weeks later he was at the base of the Supercanaleta again, digging up all his gear so that he could go climb again.

Sadly, Karl ended up dying a few months later on Cho Oyu.

The running joke for alpinists is that they have short-term memory. Because when you put yourself through 20+ hour straight attempts, you get done saying, “I’ll never do this again.” And yet, soon enough climbers are back out there. There seems to me a few lessons to pull:

1. Having a short-term memory can be an asset. When all the aches and pains go away and when we focus on the best parts, we remember why we put ourselves through adversity in the first place. And…
2. When we don’t learn our lessons, they can be fatal.

That is really the game for more serious climbing. But really valuable application in other aspects of one’s life.

J.S. Ondara is a singer/songwriter from Kenya. Growing up he was introduced to musical greats like Radiohead, Nirvana, Death Cab For Cutie, Jeff Buckley, Pearl Jam, Guns N’ Roses, and Bob Dylan. His family couldn’t afford to buy Ondara a guitar so, instead, he focused on writing songs and poetry despite not having anything to play to. In fact, this is how Ondara learned English. He wanted to know the meaning behind the lyrics he was listening to. His example stands as a reminder that you can make your art despite your limitations. Simply begin.

“I heard all these songs and developed a kinship for a long time, and used them to study English because I wanted to understand what Cobain was saying, or [Radiohead’s] Thom Yorke or [Death Cab’s] Ben Gibbard,” he says. “I was curious about the language and the spirit and that spurred me to learn English, and I built my vocabulary listening to these songs.”

The more at threat we feel, the more we feel a need to draw boundaries.

Property.

Neighborhoods/Cities/States/Countries.

Duties and responsibilities.

Even citizenship.

“What’s mine is mine,” as they say.

Yet, when we are operating with a fixed mindset, we are drawing boundaries thinking they are permanent. Forgetting in the process, that it is all arbitrary. It is all invented.

What if we instead didn’t draw boundaries that were more open to possibility? That invited people instead of excluding them. What if we considered a more inclusive approach?

No one said the way things are is the way things have to be.

We believe so much in the character we play. We make self-fulfilling prophecies come true. We justify and rationalize any decision we make.

That is the role we choose to believe. That we think we know what is going on and therefore can predict what happens next. Even though we operate without a crystal ball.

Genies are not real. Yet, the irony is if we had three wishes many of us would ask for more wishes. As if three isn’t enough?

Yep, instinctually, people want more. Always.

Which teaches us something that even with an opportunity to escape the here and now, we will eventually get bored and want to escape again.

Instead of spending all the brain power wishing, we can be somewhere else, we can shift our perspective and find joy in the place we are.

Part of the problem with the discourse on this subject is that there is a gap in knowledge. Since none of us were alive during the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, we have to imagine what it was like. For example:

“By 1800, 10 to 15 million blacks had been transported as slaves to the Americas, representing perhaps one-third of those originally seized in Africa. It is roughly estimated that Africa lost 50 million human beings to death and slavery in those centuries we call the beginning of modern Western civilization, as the hands of slave traders and plantation owners in Western Europe and America, the countries deemed the most advanced in the world.” – Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States

I wept when I read this. To think of all the families torn apart. The echoes we still hear and see today. And the generations of people have been ripped apart.

The natural questions that comes next from this type of information are:

How do you begin to repair something like this?

Should reparation be involved, and if so how should it be done? Is money the answer here? Is money even enough? What else could be done?

The countries that participated in the slave trade became extremely wealthy, what is the responsibility of these countries to make amends that benefitted from such egregious acts? How do you raise the floor for others?

How do we grieve and honor the victims? Or does this deplete our moral energy for the present?

How can we fix the narrative so that future generations can get a more accurate view of history? After all, we still celebrate Columbus Day, and not that many years ago, I was taught in elementary school that he was a hero, not a mass murderer.

History teaches us that the lines are blurry. It isn’t always clear who the “good guys” were. What is right or wrong. What people were thinking or how desperate they were. We don’t have a complete picture (even today). And we certainly can’t distinguish what is good for humans in the short run or the long run. (After all the advances and comforts of capitalism, can we actually say we are happier? Is the planet on an irreversible course to be destroyed?)

All tough questions with no clear answers. And this is why we must not accept the narratives we are given but instead use the compass we can develop to navigate tough challenges ahead.

There are no easy answers but I think we can ask the tough questions to begin the conversation.

Humans can’t draw one. But we can design something that can.

The question is when do we want tools to intervene to make something more polished and when do you want the rough edges exposed.

After all, you just have to ask AI to generate any work of art now.

Handmade or made by a robot? Does it matter? Does it change the story we are telling?