Philosophy – Page 8 – A millennial's musings

Addicted to headphones

As soothers are to toddlers, headphones are to anyone who has given up their soother. As someone who’s trying to incorporate as much mindfulness as possible into my life, I was wondering why listening to music is so addictive. Anytime I leave the house I get a little rush – mmm, headphone time! The gym is great for listening to music too. Weights seem lighter and the treadmill moves in slow motion to David Guetta.

Having learnt about the rush on dopamine that’s associated with anticipation and how it makes our daydreams addictive, I’ve become intrigues as to what behaviours of mine are affected by this. I think my craving for the bass to drop is the same.

It all began when I started exercising. As well as being phenomenally good for me, it has turned into an exercise in escapism. When I hear my favourite tracks, my mind always wonders to the good times I had with my friends and all those associated daydreams. Essentially, listening to music has become an augmented day dream for me.

It seemed near impossible to leave my phone behind as I went for my evening walk. It genuinely felt like saying goodbye at the airport as your best friend is leaving for Australia (that would be a remote location relative to me!) I did. And it was a very nice walk. I noticed the shops that I passed by, I noticed some cool constellation – still no idea what it is – and I even helped someone with directions. Most of all, however, I was able to think more clearly.

My yearning for the headphones is a case of classical conditioning. Once the music is on, my thoughts are off to a nice place – away from here. They go in a circle and never reach anything. This time – walking without headphones was different – I was more aware of what was around me – and in my own head. I came home and wrote some interesting notes down about a question that had been bothering me before hand. All of these occurred while I was walking – in relative silence.

I would argue that it is good to give up the headphones once in a while. Maybe even most of the time. Listening to music is different for different people, but for me it is a way to run away from my current state into a safe place. It’s necessary sometimes, but most of us probably overdo it.

On the value of stress

Being a big fan of Nassim Nicholas Taleb, I read his new article today. It relates to the significance of extreme events. In short, Taleb says that it’s not the high rep low intensity exercise that builds strength, but rather the extremely high difficult exercise. He compares it to assessing the strengths of a bridge: you need to test it using the heaviest vehicles – rather than driving a normal car back and forth on it lap after lap.

In his book Antifragile, Taleb discusses the useful of stress. He talks about how people create great things by, in the best possible sense of the word, overcompensating for their shortcomings.

Taleb’s concept of the usefulness of stress is really helpful when you are experiencing stress. It won’t all have been for nothing. People often bring up Nietzsche: What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. The disheartening thing about this quote is that it’s out of context and misunderstood. Nietzsche said that if you manage to make it through, it means you were strong to begin with.

Stress does make you stronger, up to a point. Rather than resenting the fact that I am going through stress, this thought helps me focus on the way in which it will all make sense in the end.

When the going gets tough

A few days ago, for the first time in years, I found myself in a horrible mood – completely out of the blue. On reflection, I got into it through comparing myself to someone else, being inflexible and impatient under the pressure of my own big dreams. Had I not known better, I would have thought I was suicidal. I was thinking of how I owe it to the people who love me to keep going. I knew that I felt like this before. Because of that, cognitively, I knew it would pass. Cognitively, I knew that the kind of words that were floating around in my head were only words that clumsily tried to explain how much pain I was in. All the same, it was a really dark three or four hours of self-hatred and hopelessness. It was made worse by the vicious cycle of feeling guilty and weak for feeling bad.

Cognitively, I knew that the faster I interrupt this horrible mood, the better. Bad moods beget more bad moods. At this point, I stopped judging myself for feeling bad, acknowledged that this is simply the way it is – good or bad – and it’s time to get myself out of this horrible state. But how? How do you get yourself out of this mood swamp? Common wisdom would say: look for support. I couldn’t fathom talking to anyone. I know now that it’s silly, but there was no arguing with the upset-me. Common wisdom would say: try and feel grateful for what you have rather than feel bad about what’s missing. That just seemed like some kind of evil joke.

The answer, as always, came from asking the right question. The question I asked was: What’s useful about this? I knew this lesson from before. I’ve even written about it here. It just goes to show that these lessons aren’t only cognitive. It takes time and iterations to learn them. Even with all my knowledge, it took me a bit of digging around to find where the right button was.

What was useful about it? I knew that I need time to look after myself. In and of itself, that was useful information. I looked back and wondered what upset me – I learn from that too. It wasn’t the first time that being super focused and not flexible enough got me into trouble like this. However, rather than judging, I will just take this is another data point and another note to self: be more flexible. This is high level theory, but I’ve already implemented measures that would make it easier for me to be more flexible. I also realised that today wasn’t a good day to do any work. My alarm bells went off – I am glad that I don’t have to work?! Rather than accusing myself of laziness, I dug deeper. I was doing something important, repetitive – and boring. It was super easy. I am sure many people don’t mind those kind of tasks, but I can’t handle them at all. My relentless focus on doing what needs to be done got me into a situation where I couldn’t play to my strengths. So here’s another lesson: doing things that don’t come naturally for too long isn’t sustainable. I think that’s valuable as next time I will be able to assign who does what and when better.

As I am writing this, I am able to not just hope that that horrible feeling never happened – I feel grateful that I learnt from it. I really mean it. It’s all about learning, progress, small wins and getting closer to the person you want to become. And not judging.

The truth is, it’s highly unusual for me to get upset. I wasn’t just born this way though. There was one thing that made me go from super sensitive to where I am now. When I say super sensitive, I mean if the person who poured my coffee in the morning looked at me wrong – I would feel uneasy for hours. What made the difference for me wasn’t some sort of soul searching or even mindfulness – it was straight up physical exercise. I don’t know whether it is just the flood of endorphins, but it really helps with the art of just not giving af when appropriate. Exercise is the one thing that makes the biggest difference to both mental and physical health for a healthy person.

There was some cognitive work too, but it would never have happened without the initial boost through exercise. The cognitive work was something like this: the barista doesn’t care about you, you are just a person with an order and a wallet. They are in their own world. It’s not personal. They are just trying to get through the day the best they can. I think there’s a word for that – it’s called empathy. Exercise isn’t known to cause empathy, what’s going on here? Exercise requires focus, so in a sense, it requires mindfulness. Maybe that’s part of it. In any case – in my unblinded non-randomised non-controlled trial of n=1, it works.

Trust and likeability

What is trust? I think it is a feeling. It’s not an objective measure of how reliable somebody is.

I have many friends who are incredibly unreliable, incompetent at times – yet I still trust them because I somehow know that they will be reliable when it will really matter.

I think it is about having coherent values.

Belonging to one tribe – however you chose to define it. The reason we have tribes is probably deeply rooted in our DNA. A long time ago we were conditioned to know that if we lose our tribe, our survival chances are lower. It is the very reason why public speaking is so difficult for so many people. They feel that getting up on stage with a high risk of embarrassing themselves would lead to their audience – their tribe – to alienate them. It is one of the many examples where our brains are scanning for survival situations when really they would do much better to chill out a bit. It is one of the things that mindfulness really helps with: instead of assuming things and following the same scripts, it allows to take a step back and perceive a situation from a different standpoint.

In this day and age we have learnt to pay less attention to the superficial: race and socioeconomic background. Values lead the conversation on trust and exposing authenticity and vulnerability strengthens it. Trust makes us feel remarkably good. It is one of the things people value most in life: the goodwill of other people.

Trust emerges in the strangest situations. We seem to always restrict the group that we trust.

Having a common enemy automatically builds trust among complete strangers. Nostalgia is a phenomenal marketing strategy because it immediately builds references for values we all accept and love – hence it builds trust. This means trust is scalable.

You don’t need to know much about the person: just pick up on the relevant markers of trustworthiness – and there, you are best friends. Our brains sort of skip over the whole due diligence process required to build trust.

Celebrities always say that fans feel that they know them personally – that’s the power of the illusions that trust can create.

One of the key reasons why social media have changed the world is because it trades in trust. Social proof – knowing that our friends, whom we trust, trust ABC brand – that causes us to trust the brand too. It’s like human link juice.

Being transparent is hard.

It takes courage as we run the risk of being rejected – that’s what the survival brain thinks about first. “Always budget for the downside”.

A better strategy would be based on the realisation that by being transparent we will be able to find the people who share our values. They are out there.

The easier it is for them to find you – the better life will be. Haters will be there and they won’t accept you even if you try and deceive them into believing you.

In the words of Elbert Hubbard: To avoid criticism, say nothing, do nothing, be nothing. Don’t stand for anything. Make unfalsifiable claims – like the multinationals that none of us have any time for. It seems that to get trust, you need to be directional.

After all, making a decision means, literally, cutting off other options. And we all know that being indecisive is worse.

I can think of an exception to that rule: when somebody takes a strong position in a conflict averse environment. Certain societies value a lack of extreme statements. When my friends started expressing their opinions on Brexit on social media, people were reluctant to engage either way. Sometimes having a strong opinion in and of itself is against the values of a given environment. It seems to be a mantra we now have in the West. What if being agreeable and non-directional has become a value? Or is it simply the easy way out? Is it just a special case of the Stanford Prison Experiment?

There is one situation where strong opinions should definitely be held back – and that is in anything you don’t know well. Most commonly, this appears to be geopolitics. People who know nothing about politics make black and white claims. Obviously, this will garner support and trust from some parts of society, but a low quality signal is just that. Over time it will become clear whether you know anything about the thing you are preaching about . Trust is a long game.

Mindfulness: must I practice acceptance?

The concept of acceptance has been a tough one for me to grasp when it comes to mindfulness – for a long time. The term acceptance is hugely common in guided mediations and among yoga practitioners. Accept reality, accept how you feel, accept how others treat you, etc.

Maybe I am a finished type A, but I am not about raw acceptance, I said. I want things to be better, I said. There’s more to life than just accepting what’s there in front of me. To me human nature is all about agency, about having a direction and doing things that I feel will be good for those around me. Acceptance and growth seemed at odds. It’s some kind of nihilistic concept that Nietzsche’s last man would appreciate. I am much more about Nietzsche’s will to power. Will to power is another misnomer. It sounds like something a megalomaniac would be after. In actual fact, it is the will to overpower yourself and your circumstances in order to do something meaningful. I think we will all agree that’s a pretty important force. In a sense though, we are resisting reality rather than accepting it when we are moving in a chosen direction.

I think I am not the only one misunderstanding the term acceptance. In fact, it nearly put me off the whole mindfulness thing. I don’t want to wallow in the sometimes pathetic present with no prospect of things being better. I had this anxiety that if I accept things, I will lose my drive to grow. From what I gather, that’s a very common thing among people who are driven to achieve. Then I figured it out.

It’s an order problem. You need to accept things before you can figure out what you want to do about it. Frankly, I think acknowledge is a better term. You need to acknowledge reality before you can change it. Mindfulness is all about being closer to reality. It’s about breaking down assumptions and models and coming back to the hard data of what’s around us.

Our desire for things to be a certain way may cloud our perception of how things actually are. The point isn’t tolerating bad things and hoping that the universe will put things right. The point is being fearless to examine reality and not run away from it. To see the wood and the trees. To not take it personally when you realise that things aren’t perfect.

I am not sure that’s how Buddhists approach acceptance. However, it doesn’t really matter. I am not here to practice a religion or do things as instructed by some high priest – no matter how en vogue they may be. I am much more interested in figuring it out for myself – and for the rest of us who are trying to make a change for the better.

Technology and human interaction

Some worry, even fear, that technology may surpass human interaction. This is exactly what I would call a Promethean fear: the fear that a new technology will somehow lead to our demise or change human nature. Human nature seems robust. Things like running water, central heating – even money and fame – only expose and amplify what was there to begin with. There’s no significant change in human nature during any person’s lifetime. We live like the royalty of a thousand years ago, but still believe that we don’t have enough. We still crave the same things: love, meaning, safety, exploration and growth. When I see a guy sitting across from a girl in Starbucks looking at his phone – that’s boredom that has become socially acceptable whereas it wasn’t quite as “normal” before. It is the fundamentals of their relationship exposed – and it is obvious that something isn’t right. In days gone by it would have been a yawn – or simply staring into space. Now this is emptiness filled up with the instant gratification of likes and shares on social media and the lovely cats on YouTube. The ancient Egyptians would be proud.

It’s not that things don’t change. They change gradually. Human nature appears to remain fairly constant. What if technology gets a sprinkle of human nature when it comes to artificial intelligence. When machines can properly learn and execute without our approval – that can get scary. We may fall in love with AI – the way that was shown in the film Her. Something interesting happened today when I went running. Naturally enough, I procrastinated right up to the point of when it became dark as I was finishing my run. I went to turn on the flashlight on my iPhone only to realise that the latest update has changed the layout of the place that the flashlight button is normally in. It took some fiddling, but I found it. For about three minutes I was let down and disappointed by Apple – stranded in the dark. I was afraid that I’d step on something. In a way, that’s kind of the fear of AI: they will sabotage us by taking control. It’s happening already, in 2016. I never asked for my phone to move the flashlight button. Have my interactions changed? I don’t think so. In the 1990s, parents were terrified of adding phone lines into their kids rooms – because that would finish them. Video games. TV. Radio – before that. Nothing has really changed the fundamental needs we have. Do people actually spend less time in the pub? I think they do. However, they are spending more time at festivals – taking snaps of their tents and dirty boots – and surely to God, they are interacting with other people.

What did people do before the radio? Before this so called technology? After all, we are still using electromagnetic waves to communicate, so the radio is a closer relative of modern technology than it might initially appear. They read books and newspapers. Is it really that different that reading something online? For sure, there’s no instant feedback, but you are still finding out what people did miles and years away from where you are. I think that reading a book by Seneca or Tolstoy is a human interaction. It is deep, meaningful – it is life changing. Sometimes it is like getting advice from a grandfather you never had. To further emphasise that point, I remember having a brief imaginary love affair with Prince Andrei from War and Peace. Am I that different from the poor chap in Her? I have a bit more insight, that’s all. Human nature will drive us to find answers in whatever place is available – nature, books or social media. We seek and find human interaction no more and no less than we did before.

I honestly can’t be sure what the world was like before the printing press. I guess people were just bored more. I guess they craved each other’s company more. I am not sure that they had that luxury as going back even 200 years ago putting food on the table was a real struggle. Is it possible that people interacted more in the past? Possibly. However, if that is the case – that ship has sailed a long time ago.

If anything I would argue that my mother in her 50s has the opportunity to be connected to her classmates that she hadn’t seen in 30 years – an option she would never have had had she been born 30 years earlier. Technology gives us opportunities to be social or to hide from human interaction. The choice is down to human nature – the nature of any given human. It is tempting to blame technology. We all know that it’s not the development of advanced weapons that leads nations to be more aggressive. It’s not the development of social networks that causes people to give terrible anonymous comments. It’s the other way around. The problem is that blaming technology is just another way to hide from our own choices.

The overflowing cup

I heard this Asian parable today. A student wanted to learn from a master. He already considered himself a good student and quite intelligent. The master sat him down for tea. The master started pouring him tea. He filled the cup, but did not stop. The tea was spilling and running down the students legs. Eventually, baffled, the students exclaimed – what are you doing?! The master explained: you cannot fill a cup if it already full.

Asian culture is so interesting. Modern day Asia and the US value achievement. Modern day Europe and history book Asia value savouring and contemplation. The culture of letting go that is so central to the teachings of Asian religions and meditative practices seems counter-intuitive at first. Will you learn if you let go? Are you giving up? What is the difference between letting go and giving up?

It’s not like we are as finite as a cup. However, the most accessed memories are references are probably quite a small portion of everything we know. I think that above all it is letting go of stuff that’s not relevant any more. There’s learning and then there’s going around in filtered – not tinted – filtered glasses. Past experiences create distorting filters that add meanings to things that aren’t necessarily there. Staying in touch with reality is our biggest job. It is the one thing that allows people to figure out how to make their dreams come true: you need to always be aware of the ever-changing direction of the wind so that you can adjust the sails in order to get to where you need to be. You also need have a map, however. You need to learn to predict the weather – as much as it is possible.

The trick is to constantly reassess what should be in your cup. Beliefs shouldn’t just be formed by your own experiences, but constantly change with incoming information. An awareness of outside data is important, but an awareness of your own internal software is equally as important – that’s what mindfulness is for. It’s not just garbage in – garbage out. It is good data in – garbage out if the software is garbage. Every day is an iteration in testing both perception and our inner workings.

Why we do the things we do

I recall listening to a podcast with Naval Ravikant. He struck me as a super intelligent guy. He spoke about fear a lot – how so many seemingly diverse emotions are all just different forms of fear. I have come to agree with that view wholeheartedly. Anger is a form of fear – someone is breaching your borders and rules. Sadness is a form of fear – that something this good will never happen again. Anxiety is pretty close to being the same thing as fear. Then there’s the fundamental fear of not being good enough or deserving of a place in other people’s lives.

He also said: “Desire is a contract you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want.”

At first, it seemed to make a lot of sense. It’s quite a mechanical definition: we couple outcomes with feelings and manipulate ourselves to accomplish the outcome with the nicest feelings. It is pretty obvious to me at this point that we are always after an emotion we will enjoy.

I don’t like the way he used the word “unhappy.” Maybe that’s not the best word to express his actual sentiment – after all it was a podcast and you don’t really have time to craft the exact sentence you want when you are talking. He didn’t strike me as a happy guy, neither does Tim, the host of the show. I think that betting your sense of happiness on outcomes is a bad strategy. In theory, it will make you work harder. However, if you look at yourself in the mirror and – regardless of what you actually look like – tell yourself that you are a fat bast*rd and the only way to not feel this bad about yourself is to exercise – then you’re not going to exercise, are you? If you promise yourself chocolate cake after a session in the gym, you are more likely to exercise – a bit of operant conditioning works wonders and has little to do with feeling bad. So it’s not putting yourself in an unhappy state with a promise to be happy given that you fulfil a condition one day, it is something else.

Naval also said this: “I actually think happiness is the absence of suffering. It comes from peace. That comes from being careful about desire, judgment, and reaction.” This makes more sense, supporting the hypothesis that he wasn’t very careful about his choice of words in the first quotation. Aristotle, Epictetus, Seneca, Confucius, Aldous Huxley, Victor Frankl, to name but a few, agree on one thing: that your emotions should not be directly dependent on what happens to you. Emotion, the word, means something that stimulates action. So these clever men tell us not to leave ourselves at the will of circumstance and stand for something independent of that. On a practical note, of the best books I’ve ever read in the business genre, What they don’t teach in Harvard Business School”, postulated that one of the most important things was to act, not react. Obviously, there is a time and a place for being reactive – mostly in survival situations. Fear is our friend here. However, while our brain constantly scans for these situations, they aren’t all that common, thankfully!

So the question arises: Why do we do the things we do? If we are happy already – because we chose to be – why should we bother putting in effort to strive towards things that are currently outside our reach? The only explanation is that happiness should have nothing to do with it. Everyone is motivated by slightly different things, but it is ultimately down to meaning. For some, a happy undisturbed life is meaningful. For some, it is a life of service – to their family, nation – or whomever they identify with most. Meaning is hard to measure because it is internal. I am sure there lived many a housewife who brought up 2 kids and probably felt as much or even more meaning than a military general who made it into history books. I think that’s why we do the things we do – we don’t chase after happiness, we chase after meaning.

Psychopathy vs control of emotion

I recently learnt that I have the val-val variety of the COMT gene. This piece of information means I respond to stress pretty well – the weight I attribute to it is tiny, but it is also characteristic of the ENTP personality type, so I will roll with it.

Looking at other women freaks me out sometimes – they are so emotional. Everything seems to matter. I feel like I have the full range of emotion, but being around these super intense women sometimes makes me feel like either a man – or a psychopath. I just can’t relate – and it makes me feel isolated. Furthermore, I never thought of myself as being super-empathetic (though I still cannot watch A Christmas Carol even without crying.) So I don’t know what to make of it and am starting to wonder if I am a tad psychopathic.

Controlling emotion, being aware of emotion and using it rather than allowing it to use you is fundamental to getting anything done. I struggle sometimes to understand the difference between controlling emotion, suppressing emotion and being a psychopath. In the words of Robert Frost, the only way out is always through, but sometimes it seems that the drama just passes me by.

So let’s say someone hurls an insult your way.

A number of things can happen:

A. You feel that the only thing you can do is react. [Stupidly reactive]

B. You are in tune with your emotions, you will feel the anger as a response within you. Having this awareness will allow you to then decide: ok, there has been an insult, now I feel angry, but what am I actually going to do? [Zen master]

C. You know that this person’s opinion isn’t everything, so you don’t care, so you don’t get angry. You respond is an entirely calculated way. [? Psychopath]

D. You feel the anger, feel offended, but you are the bigger person, so you delay the response – and think of a way to respond while feeling vulnerable and under attack. [Suppressing emotions]

B and C seem like good options. The problem with C is that most people would regard it as psychopathy. But what if you control your emotions from a cognitive perspective? If you develop a belief that a person’s opinion isn’t important – that’s not psychopathic. And the fact that it diminishes your emotional response to the point of not existing – is also understandable. As a baby you could be afraid of the loud noise that the hoover makes, but when you get a little older – you understand that there’s nothing to be afraid of, and so the fear that had previously made you cry – goes away. Similarly, not every person is entitled to an opinion on every subject. **A conscious decision to not care with good reason is different to being someone who is unable to care, i.e. a psychopath.**