Eh Too?

Madame M:

I disagree that we disagree. :)

Yes, grit, and its companion, determination.  The comparison between US and Chinese students?  More than a little foreboding.  Now, perhaps US students just get more determined about different things, and one could hope that is the case, but time and again sociologists and anthropologists have identified how SOFT—physically, mentally, emotionally, psychologically, to name just a few—we, and especially what should be the very hardy young—have become.

Although we don’t know how to instill grit into people, we do know something of the seedbeds, or at least a faint sense of its occurrence rate among some.  Immigrants—high rate of grit.  Scientists—high rate of grit.  Military members—higher rate of grit than general population.  Special Forces—one of highest rates of grit.

Might it be that well-discernable TRUE OPPORTUNITY in front of an individual or a culture elicits a higher probability of grit?  Legacies—cultural or otherwise—probably increase or decrease such probabilities.

And if that is correct, then might it be that there is some deficiency of TRUE OPPORTUNITY here, as well as a debilitating effect of a diversionary, denying, self-enfeebling culture? 

All those things you talk about that people should do because they are good for them—DO they truly know they are good for them? Or do they make a quick and shallow (“undiscerning”) surface assessment about things—perhaps even just an unexamined short-term emotional one—that acts against their better interest, never figuring out (at least for a while) the benefits they are missing and how and why things fit together? 

For SOME things, we have the INTELLIGENCE and reasoning to be pretty certain of what is right to do.  Yet we may lack the WISDOM to actually choose to act (and especially fully) on that knowledge and understanding.  For others, our faulty (and often shallow) reasoning results in poor decisions, and our unwillingness to, in Benjamin Franklin’s words, “doubt a little of our own infallibility” means we do not 1) reconsider those decisions, or 2) weigh them anew, or 3) make attempts to correct in time.  And because we don’t, enough, we become easy, unwitting prey  for those who cleverly manipulate us to act against our own true self-interests and collective interests.

George Will’s column of a few weeks ago reminds us, via a professor emeritus,  “that humans are the only animals that do not ‘instinctively eat the right foods (when available) and act in such a way to maintain their naturally given state of health and vigor.  Other animals do not overeat, undersleep, knowingly ingest toxic substances, or permit their bodies to fall into disuse through sloth.’”  We are making bad choices, sometimes with little thought, and certainly with few considerations of wisdom.

Reasoning without wisdom is perilous enough.  Faulty reasoning processes without wisdom translates into grave danger to individuals, families, societies, governments, and civilizations.  Shakespeare’s Caesarian line echoes vividly to us these many centuries later: “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves…”

We will get better, or one day a future people will read about a nation, citizenry, and civilization that is no more.

The Nitty Gritty

Professor J,

Discernment-- how to get people to know that they need it let alone try to cultivate it? Whenever I hear the story of Solomon I think to myself that he must have had a lot of wisdom already to even know that it was the thing he should have been asking for.  Someone who is basing their criteria for happiness on various external goals or acquisitions will have a hard time grasping the value of a rich internal life.

I recently watched a TED Talk that shed light on something else at play in life, grit. Here's the video:

It reminds me of a study my daughter recently shared with me that she'd read, in which they gave Chinese students and American students very difficult math problems to solve. American students worked on the problems an average of 3 minutes and then gave up. The Chinese students? They never gave up. The people conducting the study literally had to take the test away from them.

How in the world to instill that in people? As you can see from the video, we don't know. 

The world's major religions have been advocating lots of things that turn out to be pretty good advice now that we study what makes people happy and leads to physical and emotional health. That assembling in churches or temples? Well, now we know how healthy social connections are for us. Separating yourself for times of prayer and meditation? Turns out that's pretty good for us too. Singing and chanting? Good stuff. The compassionate care of others and living beyond yourself? One of the keys to living a truly happy life and having a feeling of significance. Fasting? Self control? Moderation? Very healthy advice.

So it isn't that we don't necessarily know what to do. The trouble comes in the doing. The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.  Every day. All day. Or maybe that's just me. :)

Which brings me right back around to those endless every day choices...

Discern Meant

Madame:

As usual, you are far more practical than me.  Readers, inculcate “the power of everyday” into your lives!  If you are fretting about what you may or may not be able to control, at least be in control of that!

In a topic that may be related to what you’ve just written, I think we Americans largely have a deficiency.  Am not referring to a vitamin deficiency, or sleep deficiency, or any of the other things we may or may not be deficient in. 

We have a deficiency of:

Discernment.

We do a poor job of discerning what’s best for ourselves, our families, our communities, our society, our nation, our world.

Not only do we give up the hard thinking to “experts” and demagogues, but the patterns of our thoughts are often sub-optimal.  And one poorly thought through decision often builds (or rather, undermines) another until we have a cascading effect.  When those effects interlink with others, it then becomes an ocean full of tsunamis for ourselves, our society, our nation, our world.

And when we fail to analyze our poor decisonmaking, and fail to analyze the patterns of our thoughts and processes which contributed to that poor decision, we retard ourselves and most everyone and everything directly or indirectly connected to us.  When we operate on sheer emotion for too much too long, we make our free wills a delusion, and give control to those who know how to manipulate or take advantage of that.  When we reward, via spectacle or diversion, our poor decisionmaking, we imprint denial on ourselves, and when we take false comfort that many others are doing it as well, we become carriers of institutionalized denial.

Decisions matter.   Failing to decide also matters.  Decisions and indecisions about things our inner selves understand are important for our communities, society, world, matter even more.

We should give most of them more than a little thought.

Why Who You Marry May Be Less Important Than What You Had For Lunch

Professor J,

Do you ever wonder if we spend an inordinate amount of time focused on the wrong things? 

There are a few very big decisions to make in life. Where to go to college or what to study, who to marry, what you want to do for a living, whether or not to have kids. People fret endlessly over them. We read books to help us decide, get counseling, enlist any number of advisers to walk us through the deciding process, and often look back and wonder if we made the right decision. Lots of other decisions cascade from these big ones but I wonder if we don't over think them and under think smaller decisions.

We should probably be more concerned with what we had for lunch today, or if we sat on the sofa for more than 4 hours watching television, or got a meal from a drive through. Because those decisions about our health, and other decisions we make many times a day, day in and day out for years have powerful cumulative effects over the years. They have a few things in common:

You make them several times a day.  What to have for dinner, whether or not to walk the dog or get up during commercials or read a book or buy a five dollar coffee are the things that make up ordinary days.

On the surface they look unimportant. They look so unimportant, in fact that if we were to give them the same amount of decision making effort we give other things, we'd look crazy. We'd also get very little done every day.

They aren't overly difficult. The hidden power of these decisions is that everyone else is making them every day. If your friend calls you and says he's thinking of proposing to his girlfriend, you aren't likely doing that today as well. But lunch? What's the big deal, right?

Here's the big deal:

They have a powerful cumulative effect. The myriad of tiny little decisions you are making each day work on the same principle as the law of compounded interest, which Albert Einstein described as "the greatest mathematical discovery of all time."  One of the things that makes it so powerful is that while you may not be using Algebra in your every day life you can apply the law of compounded interest. It's the everydayness of it and the added interest that makes it more important than a one time windfall or extra big tax refund.

Let's apply that principle to health instead of finances. Every year on New Years Eve we all plan our resolutions for the coming 365 days. We start big. We join a gym buy exercise equipment. We get excited and want to change. Soon after, something usually happens. We lose our motivation often because we don't see immediate results and the power of old habits lures us back to the sofa with a bag of chips. The long term effect of our big resolution is basically zero. I think it's because no one has taught us the power of a lifetime.

They are not easily undone. If you are 70 and have smoked and eaten a hamburger every day for 50 years, drastic change will not have the effect you want. Damage done to your lungs, heart, and other major organs will not be quickly reversed and is too often irreversible. But on the positive side daily exercise, a healthy diet, and focus on fitness will not be undermined by the occasional hot fudge sundae or margarita. The power lies in what you are doing over and over again.

It's not that difficult to get divorced and start over alone or quit your job to start your own business. Messy maybe, complicated--for sure. But it's not impossible. It is impossible to un-eat your last thousand meals,  un-smoke hundreds of packs of cigarettes, or un-spend money frittered away on things you bought on impulse.

What would be the difference between 20 years of taking Xanax and 20 years of meditation?

I call it the power of everyday. It's the tsunami of the thousands of tiny decisions you make over the course of a lifetime that have a cumulative effect on various aspects of life. You can  be building a powerful wave of good decisions or bad ones.

This Is Not The World We Can Make

Madame:

Political scientists rarely talk about eventualities, but they do talk about probabilities, and at certain points there become increasing levels of probability.  For example, one could say at a certain point in the 1770s, it was increasingly likely there was going to be a revolution in America.

I have not seen that Matt Damon movie.  I’m guessing it sets off well the economic pressures against the eco and social continuities—and all the human emotions, drives, needs, failings, and temptations therein.

Your story is kudos-inspiring—and a telling demonstration for all people on the value of reading.  To paraphrase Socrates, when one profits in a short amount of time what has taken another a lifetime to acquire, the profit therein (or the “rate of return” in today’s economically-fixated lexicon) is extraordinary.

One of the greatest frustrations of today is the promise.  Never before has there been such PROMISE for civilization.  People the world over WANT to participate in a prosperous world village, want to make a livable wage, and want others to do the same.  The martial desires of ages past are largely gone, and only the failures of leadership, of vision, of resource allocation, of fairness, of good sense, bring forth their flaring. 

We live in a time of such INCREDIBLE possibility.  This world could truly be one of excitement, pride, confidence, and anticipation.  But it is hammerlocked by plutocrat manipulation.  They are much better strategic thinkers, and they use their material advantages to the near-utmost.  And because we let them, because we are easily manipulated by them, the world of awesome possibilities does not unfold, but instead, only this malformed travesty—parts appealing, much unappealing or even self-destructive—is unveiled for us and we are spectacled into accepting it.

We can do better.  We can do SO much better.

A Movie, a Book, Some Pondering

Professor J,

Electricity was restored eventually and we survived, but alas, with wicked colds. I'm generally a fan of the colder months but winter has outstayed his welcome and is free to move on. Daffodils in the garden are waving goodbye to him as I write. :)

Your answer was thorough and informative although you were correct in saying that some of your examples were problematic. Is it your opinion that after a certain point (you might want to guess at the tipping point) peaceful political solutions are unlikely or even impossible?

Our Finnish friends continue to set forth a good example.

Watched an interesting movie the other night, Promised Land. Have you seen it? Co-written by Matt Damon (who's passionate about the water issue) it is the fictional story of a small town and what happens when a huge natural gas company comes to town to buy the land rights from farm owners for fracking.

I just finished, How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big, by Scott Adams, the creator of the Dilbert comic strip. I've read lots of self help style books and this one is a practical easy read that would be perfect for a young person just starting out. I read it on my Kindle and then ordered my son a copy.

A couple of his ideas that are a twist on conventional wisdom are having systems instead of goals and managing your energy instead of your time. If a person's goal is to lose 20 pounds they often revert to old habits once they reach it. If your system of eating is a healthy one and exercise is built into your day you are building a lifetime of good habits that will have a bigger impact on your overall health. Likewise most people try to manage their time but he recommends trying to figure out at what times of the day you have the most energy and planning your activities accordingly.

Now, I've just done the "what have I been watching/reading" thing, so I'll follow my own advice and share what I've been thinking/pondering. :)

For years I read a variety of books. I remember one day several years ago I was reading a book by a well known businessman about leadership. My daughter, about 12 at the time,  asked me why I was reading it, as she didn't see the use I could get out of it as a stay at home mom. I think I responded along the lines of "you don't ever know what life will throw your way" or something. Which has turned out to be true. When life has handed me unexpected things both good and bad, because of the reading on all those different topics I've had a basic knowledge of lots of things and when I was thrown real curves I had a deep well of information to draw from. True stories about people who not only survived tragic and terrifying circumstances but over came helped me keep perspective and hope on bad days. On good days I utilized all the reading I'd done about managing money wisely. On the string of ordinary days that make up the majority of life all the other reading I'd done gave everything layers of deeper meaning.

Sometimes I wonder--who would I be if I hadn't read all those books?

The Short List of Cultures and Nations

Madame:

I am certainly hoping that by now the modern life juice (electricity) has been restored to you.  Four days!  Penelopean patience you have!

The failures by cultures and nations are legion, the successes exceedingly rare.  However, the Japanese, during the Meiji Restoration and thereafter, did (at great social cost and some cultural ruthlessness), go from the daunting looming certainty of feudal failure to modern success in little more than 30 years, an amazing Herculean accomplishment—and one unmatched by any other culture in breadth, scale, and timing. 

It took a bit longer, and was different in character (while also recovering from disastrous or insane forays), but modern China, since it “stood up” in 1949, is a similar success story, albeit with darker initial energy bursts and one enforced with draconian ruthlessness, particularly earlier.

Modern Turkey threw off disastrously sickly empire-thinking to become a secular-focused modern nation.

A small number of modern African nations also exhibit steps away from ruinous paths, but the time is too early to tell how well they will turn out.

However, all of these cases (and there are a few more) would be deemed various levels of “problematic” in meeting the criteria I think you’ve laid out. 

It’s undoubtedly biased, but I think that my favorite foreigners, the Finns, have demonstrated a great deal of what you’re suggesting.  After having fought bravely, but being forced to come to terms, in two exhaustive wars with the Soviets within five years, and having to accede to culturally hurtful demands by the Soviets, the Finnish people as a whole saw the abyss of ruin of continued fierce opposition and instead embraced a new mindset of not just peaceful co-existence but mutual friendship and cooperation (while still maintaining national independence).  They probably harbored a great deal of anger and resentment inwardly against the Soviets who had done them such wrong, but they swallowed it soberly and went on, taking the long view.  They dampened Soviet fears and suspicions, and charted a new course of relations, thereby setting an example for others to follow.  And in the end, they were still around, and the Soviet Union had collapsed.

The Finns are a rare people, of course—fiercely individualistic while at the same time with very strong senses of communal responsibility.  An unusual combination.  If and how their membership in the EU transforms that remains to be seen.

I see “Professor Windbag” held forth too long on all this and any additional topic must wait until next week! :)

Needed: Herculean Efforts

Professor J,

First, at our house we are on our 4th consecutive day without electricity. So I'm doing a bit of outpost blogging today (an ode to brevity). I'll expound next time...hopefully from a well lit and toasty warm writer's loft. 

Apart from cataclysmic events, the erosion of old thinking and an influx of new ideas, and realizing that something isn’t right and addressing it, it seems that you are saying: 

That we need to ask people what they’ve been learning or pondering lately (and wait for blank and/or confused expressions) instead of just what they are reading/watching.

 Focus and stop multitasking and wasting time.

Constantly question our own thinking as well as everyone else’s as well as work hard to recognize our own biases and other things that might skew our opinions.

      And how to get people to do these things, when, as you point out, our culture worships busyness to such a point that people who should have leisure time to think deeply and discuss important ideas as well as invest in others are caught up in an endless cycle of activity? Activity that is either diversionary or necessary.  How to go about such a complete shift in thinking and culture? 

Must we not start with the individual? Even then the task as you’ve outlined it seems Herclulean.  Might you give a historical example of people in similar circumstances doing the necessary things to prevent ruin? Individual examples are easy enough to come by but what of nations and cultures?

Think Changing

Well done Madame.

In this historian’s assessment, the things that most influence a change is people’s thinking are 1) personal or societal catastrophes or traumas with lasting effects, both personal and societal, 2) slow transformations that wear away at ungrounded, ill-thought defenses of  previously accepted “thinking,” and 3) the unsettling feeling that something or somethings aren’t quite right, that the established culture is deceiving itself, and then, especially where it concerns the individual directly, that breakthrough where it is all articulated right at the time that inner turmoil about those things has reached critical mass.

The above can be either slowed or accelerated, depending on the type, character, insularity, etc. of the influential people in a person’s life.

What one fills oneself up with also plays a strong part, especially if the true things are absent (what fills a vacuum is often not good).  That pattern-disrupting question, “What good book/movie/article/talk have you absorbed lately?” is a ready formula for fruitful personal growth.

Resistance to excessive diversion, or at least balanced assessment and discernment, is important in avoiding the excessive busyness you so aptly condemn, for one must both make time to truly think and value it enough to do so.

Of course, as you so well point out, a questioning mind is the building block of a critically thinking mind, and there is little better bulwark against being deceived, manipulated, diverted, or deflected than a critically thinking mind.  It may not be foolproof, but independent true-thinkers are feared and hated by demagogues and the manipulative.

What rich and powerful people and organizations are able to do does become harder to resist when they are in control of much of the basic portions of Maslow’s hierarchy.  More than one person has sold his or her independent thoughts due to economic necessity.  And a whole lot more have sold them due to greed and avarice.

And legions are kept at the survival level where their thoughts are often swallowed up by exhaustion and the hardships of eking out subsistence every day. 

And what happens when resentment builds among the impoverished?  It is most often evaded or diverted by the selfishly rich and powerful.  They are long experts in diverting emotion, constructing false narratives, and fashioning hapless scapegoats.  It is an unfortunate historical pattern we must first recognize before we can do anything about it.