Angels and demons are not useful in the story we tell because we can’t see them. There is no evidence to support their interference with our lives. And yet, they still persist. Because that is how powerful a story can be. Ideas rarely need evidence. What they need is to evoke a powerful enough emotion within ourselves. Over time, ideas can even insulate themselves: classify themselves as sacred, have laws around them, become addicting…they persist only cause of our beliefs. These ideas clearly need humans to survive. But do humans need ideas?
Some aspects of tension I am thinking about:
The Marshmallow Effect: The Marshmallow Studies showed us that putting off the now for later has enormous psychological benefits. Of course, if you live where marshmallows are not readily available, taking what is in front of you may make a lot of sense. The analogy is still useful. Being faced with tension and learning to dance with it is a much better approach than someone who constantly wants to have it resolved. However, we must understand that there is context in every decision people make. If you lived as that person lived, learned what they learned, and were immersed in the culture they lived, you would make the same choice, too.
Discomfort: No one ever says we will go through this life without dealing with tension. Often, the adult temper tantrums we face are precisely because of this tension. “I didn’t get what I wanted” isn’t as healthy an outlook as “I didn’t get what I wanted today.”
Weaponized: This tension is now being used against us. Whether we want the tension of doom scrolling to go away by continuing to scroll or to pornography and online gambling, that tension is always present in our culture. And with our dopamine-hit culture, which we have prioritized and added to our world of convenience (one-click shopping), we have a massive problem dealing with tension as it arises. Having a smaller capacity to deal with tension and shortcut the reward dopamine system is causing severe harm to all of us.
Magic Tricks: A 6-year-old sees a magic trick in wonder. A 12-year-old will bug us to show them how it is done. We know magic isn’t real. And neither is theater. But if we are unwilling to suspend disbelief, we will never leave room for surprise.
What do I do next? Our culture prides itself on doing what we did yesterday to spec, doing what we did faster and cheaper. Following the simple set of instructions is a great way to build Model Ts but not create a life of significance. We can’t make art this way. Art isn’t based on following the industrial model. Art is following your hunches and seeing where they take you.
Shortcuts: Shortcuts are great. I love shortcuts. When there is a faster way to fill out a TPS report, let’s do it. However, I had heard that the average time someone spends on the Utah Avalanche Center’s website to read a daily report is 8 seconds. We have developed the attention span of goldfish. Wanting the answers instantly. Don’t show me how to fish, just give it to me. How can we become experts in anything if we can’t hold our attention span long enough to read a book?
There is clear data that the use of smartphones is bringing down literacy scores across the globe. The problem is that most Americans were already reading at a 6th-grade level, and on average, college graduates read only one book a year. This is a serious problem. Our attention has been mined and hacked to the point where we cannot hold the suspense long enough to figure things out. Now, we are introducing AI. What is that going to do? It is obviously a fantastic tool that can synthesize all the information we have to get an exact answer to complex problems. But if we use it to create more convenience in our lives, we will miss a gold opportunity towards something better.
There is a boundary between self-reflection and external factors. If an oracle came down from the clouds and showed us how many of our problems could be fixed by our own hands, we would become eager to look in the mirror and ask what else could be changed?
Humans are emotional creatures and constantly get in their own way. If we reach out and try to fix this, but it still doesn’t work, something can still be done within ourselves.
And that is all we can do. That doesn’t mean it is easy. But it could be the best that can be done. Self-awareness can lead to better action–when the opportunity presents itself.
Baseball today is optimized. In 2003, when the Oakland A’s implemented advanced analytics, they had a clear advantage over the rest of the league. Now, everyone uses advanced analytics. So, where is the next advantage going to be found?
The same is true with many technologies and industries. At first, you can create an edge, and then it becomes the standard for optimizing. As we see, every corner becomes optimized, and what will be in less demand is human effort. Someone else has already taken care of it for us.
There comes a point, however, when we must realize that the goal isn’t optimization. The goal should be towards better. Towards dignity. Towards meaning. When all we are focused on is doing things faster/cheaper, this is what the results look like. But are we satisfied? Shouldn’t baseball, you know, be fun?
I don’t think most will complain about an efficient healthcare system. But when we forget that we are treating humans and not just numbers on a spreadsheet, we have lost something. Effecient systems may be really good at producing Model T’s but won’t create significance in our lives. And we have very much missed the mark if we think we can outsource this out.
When are we to simply ask, “At what cost?” Is this really the world we are going to build or can we imagine something better?
If we accept that our actions are ours, we must also accept that other people’s actions are theirs. Rather than spending all this time assigning blame, we can instead blame no one. That things do just happen. Accept it with responsibility and grace if it is in our control. If it is someone else’s, then set it straight. If it isn’t possible, then repair what you can. And if you still can’t repair it, where does blaming someone help the situation? Blaming is an easy lever to pull when our efforts to fix things go unnoticed. But it is a poison that only negatively affects our outlook on people and the world around us.
Lying is easy to do. But after a while, we can understand that when we act “wrongly,” we can damage or harm ourselves. Because once we tell ourselves that lying is okay to get out of poor decision-making, then we can’t possibly get better at decision-making. You just got out of taking responsibility, providing immediate relief of dealing with the tension of consequences. Of course, this isn’t just about lying. There is a hidden cost in any decision we make. We don’t just short-circuit the feedback mechanism for growth but also make those around us question our motives. A more productive question is, why do we feel like we need to lie in the first place? This makes me question whether you feel safe in the environment you are in? Because it isn’t normal to feel the need to lie when safety isn’t in question.
Part of the difficulty of solving climate change is that humans often see themselves as separate from nature because of our ability to master and domesticate it. We built roads to travel across the dirt, boats, and planes to cross the ocean. We are on top of the food chain and fear no animal. The fight to defeat microscopic organisms, such as cancer or other diseases, is underway. Progress indeed happened at the speed of which because we previously believed nature was external and, therefore, could be conquered.
And yet, our fundamental issue with our mindset of building and conquering begins to hit limits when the environment fights back. With sea levels and temperatures rising and carbon emissions growing, it is no wonder the planet is reacting the way it is. Nature doesn’t work to accommodate human plans. As a result, we have created a massive blind spot. We can’t be synchronous until we act in harmony with the environment (and for future generations and animals who occupy it).
It is tempting to simply segregate what happens to us as “good” or “evil,” “right” or “wrong” “pleasure” or “pain.”
Evil is often reserved for the actions of men. No one sees a house burning down caused by an electrical issue as “evil.” We call it an “accident” or a “tragedy.” Only until we find out that the electrician who set up did a lousy job do we say it is “evil.” Rarely do we look at the fact that an electrician hasn’t been hired in 10+ years to look at your old system to update it. In fact, too often, we craft a story that something isn’t our fault. It is the component of human behavior that changes the story we tell.
We fall into this trap, and it is me against the world. We think it must be someone else’s responsibility to fix our problems. We will even go as far as to blame God/fate/the universe to preserve the stories we tell.
The most straightforward story we can tell ourselves about causality and responsibility is that we are responsible for what happens. We have no idea what will ever work out in our favor. We constantly underestimate what time will teach us. Moral simplification will prevent us from growing from our actions. Once we recognize the complexities of life, we can now act accordingly.
The Greeks saw the logos as the intellectual part of our consciousness where we can find the intersection of perception, action, and will. And while it is unclear how much agency or choices anyone has, it is clear that some of us do have more agency than others. Yes, sometimes that is because of title and position. However, many with no such title or position demonstrate an ability to act in their environment better than their peers.
When we feel like we can exercise our ability to shape the world around us, it positively affects our psyche. When we feel good about our choices (despite the outcome), we can develop the kind of posture to tackle things in this world. Even if the options we have in front of us are primarily perceived, we can still have a positive outlook despite the limitations of what one person can do.
The answer isn’t to remove the guardrails to be more powerful but to feel more powerful.
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