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- Jan 24, 2021
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- 2,079
All around the world, on every media platform and in every corner, there is information on self improvement. Much of it focuses on a sort of background self-work. Do this habit, do that habit. Do this when you get up, do that when you go to sleep. Eat this, eat that. Read this, read that. Stop doing this, stop doing that. It implies a continual state of preparation, of ordering and reordering, buffering and storing certain resources, jumpstarting and re-jumpstarting the engine of motivation, trying to get it to run faster and better.
But what are we doing all this for? Are we sick, have we fallen out of a state of normal functionality? And if so, what was the original path upon which we enjoyed that functionality, from which we have so grievously strayed?
I’ve always been fascinated by animals and the way they respond to the events of their lives. Sometimes their lives are easy – get up, eat, sit around, maybe go for a walk, go to sleep. Other times their lives are not so easy – they hunt and are hunted by other animals, in a world where life could end in a few seconds, with little or no warning. Yet, regardless of how easy their lives are, they seem to respond in functionally the same way. Their ability to smoothly transition between the natural states of existence - resting, sleeping, eating, exploring, hunting, pursuing or being pursued, mating – it remains intact, almost effortless.
Why can we not do the same, when our lives are so much easier? Are our lives really that complicated that we are constantly at a loss for what to do, or are continually unprepared for it?
The more I’ve reflected on this question, the more I have understood something about the human mind. It is not difficulty, pain, challenge, or hardship that we fear – what we fear is to be changed, for the world to act upon us and shape us into something we are currently not.
All that preparation that comes out of the self-improvement environment, all those tangential habits and routines espoused by the self-improvement gurus, it is not preparation for a specific event or challenge, nor is it really about improvement per se. It is about preparing psychically for the possibility of being changed by the world, for that moment when we step outside and suddenly, unforeseen circumstances surround us and we don’t know who we are, or where we stand. We are trying desperately to feel ready.
But is all this activity and effort necessary, and are our preparations effective? Well, in short, it’s not necessary, and not effective. Most of it is pseudo-activity, a charade for the entertainment of our conscious mind, to feel like we are taking ourselves to a better place, when in fact we are simply coming to terms even more with doing nothing of substance. In fact, what we really need is for the world to act upon us and show us who we must be.
…
The more you read about neuroscience, the more you come to the realization of how little effect our consciousness has. We say things and promise things to ourselves that, no matter how earnestly we proclaimed them, never happen. We make big plans and are then led away from them immediately afterward by our impulses. We think about the things we want to be, but then continue to be the way we always were. We are full of intent, just waiting for the moment when opportunity arrives to combine with it into action ... and we wait. And the sands of time pour themselves out as we wait, until there is none left.
Yet, during that time, barely noticed to us, we went through all sorts of challenges and transitions. People we love die, we get sick or injured and recover (or deal with a permanent set of limitations), we finish university and get a job, we get married and have kids, we grow older and start to come to terms with the finiteness of our lives, in short we go through all sorts of life path altering events … and we navigated them more or less without any ‘preparation’, without having done any cold plunges or red light therapy to get ready for them. And in fact, many of these things are a lot scarier to think about as eventualities than the things we struggle to coax ourselves into doing.
What gives? How come, as mechanisms optimized through millions of years of evolution, we malfunction so badly? Is our consciousness just there to make us aware of how useless we are at directing ourselves?
Well, I don’t think so. I can’t imagine a conspiracy theory so profound that it can account for a hundred million years of becoming more and more useless.
No, there is nothing functionally wrong, but there is a failure to understand the mechanism that we are, and use it effectively.
…
It is one of the core principles of any of the deeper insights of psychology that our conscious and unconscious minds are, in some ways, like siblings. In turns they compete, suppress, or inhibit eachother, sometimes even attack eachother, and sometimes work together in peace and harmony. Although we feel as one, the conscious and unconscious halves are not contiguous, nor does one rule over the other.
We would like to think that our conscious mind is in charge, but some basic self-awareness will put paid to that notion very quickly. At best, the control our conscious mind has is like the control that a tiny rudder provides to the captain of an oil tanker. Hoping to point the tanker where you want to go at a moment’s notice by kicking that rudder around is a fools errand.
Then for what are we conscious? How come we are aware of so much, can see so much and think so many things, if we cannot really control ourselves?
Well, the answer is in fact quite simple, and it has to do with the intended role of consciousness. Our conscious mind is there not to tell our minds what to do, but to give us the ability to choose the circumstances in which we place ourselves, so that the world might act upon us, so that we might be changed.
…
The only true sculptor is circumstance. When we try to sculpt ourselves, it melts and washes away as soon as the sun shines on it. We are simply not powerful enough to make shapes that last. The only way to create a form with edges that can withstand all the seasons and events of life, is to put ourselves out where pressures and forces exist that are much more powerful than the weak directives of our conscious minds, so that they can sculpt us.
The reason animals can live such a range of different lives without apparent difficulty is because they live at the mercy of circumstances far beyond their control, pursued by famine and predators, propelled forward by hunger and the will to live. They do not consult themselves as to whether they feel ready or prepared, they simply face everything as it comes, as best they can. And, as it turns out, this is a pretty good way to become ready.
But this change, this sculpting in the forge, is what we fear more than anything else. It paralyzes us. Not because of the pain, not because of the difficulty, but because of the risk of existential annihilation. Because the ease of life has made it possible, our ego has made its bed with a complex array of ideas, illusions, and rationalities, and we lie enshrouded in it, listening to the roar of the thunder and the pounding of the rain and the screaming wind outside, and we wonder what would be left of us if we were to do nothing more than take a few steps outside the door and it were all ripped away from us. And so we do not move.
But in doing so, we do great damage to ourselves. The human mind and body, much like other animals, is more than anything else an adaptation machine. That is what nature spent so much time creating. Everything within it is built to absorb forces and stresses, extract important information from noise under all kinds of pressure, and to coalesce and pull with great energy toward objectives upon which the immediate continuation of life rests.
90% of what we are is activated only by circumstance. All of our most powerful drives, engines that can warm us (and others) in the coldest nights of our lives, and propel us through overwhelming misery and confusion, lie dormant, because we do not put ourselves in any context within which they can be used. Instead, the other 10%, our tiny, fragile ego, coopts our entire sense of reality with its fears, cutting us away from the truth of what we could accomplish or endure if only it were a necessity, so that all the depths of our capabilities vanish, to be replaced by the window through which we look out fearfully at everything outside.
Remember, the role of your consciousness is not to bark orders or preach sermons or put you to work doing pseudo-activities. Instead, its role is this:
First, to find and go to the place where circumstances can create, of necessity, the person you want to become;
Second, to observe your adaptation to those circumstances and optimize them;
Third, to take care of your rest and recovery between challenging, shaping experiences.
Everything else is, in a word, bullshit, and a waste of the great adaptation machine known as the human being.
If you want success, all you have to do is go and meet it in the place where it has always been. The price you pay is that it will change everything about you.
But what are we doing all this for? Are we sick, have we fallen out of a state of normal functionality? And if so, what was the original path upon which we enjoyed that functionality, from which we have so grievously strayed?
I’ve always been fascinated by animals and the way they respond to the events of their lives. Sometimes their lives are easy – get up, eat, sit around, maybe go for a walk, go to sleep. Other times their lives are not so easy – they hunt and are hunted by other animals, in a world where life could end in a few seconds, with little or no warning. Yet, regardless of how easy their lives are, they seem to respond in functionally the same way. Their ability to smoothly transition between the natural states of existence - resting, sleeping, eating, exploring, hunting, pursuing or being pursued, mating – it remains intact, almost effortless.
Why can we not do the same, when our lives are so much easier? Are our lives really that complicated that we are constantly at a loss for what to do, or are continually unprepared for it?
The more I’ve reflected on this question, the more I have understood something about the human mind. It is not difficulty, pain, challenge, or hardship that we fear – what we fear is to be changed, for the world to act upon us and shape us into something we are currently not.
All that preparation that comes out of the self-improvement environment, all those tangential habits and routines espoused by the self-improvement gurus, it is not preparation for a specific event or challenge, nor is it really about improvement per se. It is about preparing psychically for the possibility of being changed by the world, for that moment when we step outside and suddenly, unforeseen circumstances surround us and we don’t know who we are, or where we stand. We are trying desperately to feel ready.
But is all this activity and effort necessary, and are our preparations effective? Well, in short, it’s not necessary, and not effective. Most of it is pseudo-activity, a charade for the entertainment of our conscious mind, to feel like we are taking ourselves to a better place, when in fact we are simply coming to terms even more with doing nothing of substance. In fact, what we really need is for the world to act upon us and show us who we must be.
…
The more you read about neuroscience, the more you come to the realization of how little effect our consciousness has. We say things and promise things to ourselves that, no matter how earnestly we proclaimed them, never happen. We make big plans and are then led away from them immediately afterward by our impulses. We think about the things we want to be, but then continue to be the way we always were. We are full of intent, just waiting for the moment when opportunity arrives to combine with it into action ... and we wait. And the sands of time pour themselves out as we wait, until there is none left.
Yet, during that time, barely noticed to us, we went through all sorts of challenges and transitions. People we love die, we get sick or injured and recover (or deal with a permanent set of limitations), we finish university and get a job, we get married and have kids, we grow older and start to come to terms with the finiteness of our lives, in short we go through all sorts of life path altering events … and we navigated them more or less without any ‘preparation’, without having done any cold plunges or red light therapy to get ready for them. And in fact, many of these things are a lot scarier to think about as eventualities than the things we struggle to coax ourselves into doing.
What gives? How come, as mechanisms optimized through millions of years of evolution, we malfunction so badly? Is our consciousness just there to make us aware of how useless we are at directing ourselves?
Well, I don’t think so. I can’t imagine a conspiracy theory so profound that it can account for a hundred million years of becoming more and more useless.
No, there is nothing functionally wrong, but there is a failure to understand the mechanism that we are, and use it effectively.
…
It is one of the core principles of any of the deeper insights of psychology that our conscious and unconscious minds are, in some ways, like siblings. In turns they compete, suppress, or inhibit eachother, sometimes even attack eachother, and sometimes work together in peace and harmony. Although we feel as one, the conscious and unconscious halves are not contiguous, nor does one rule over the other.
We would like to think that our conscious mind is in charge, but some basic self-awareness will put paid to that notion very quickly. At best, the control our conscious mind has is like the control that a tiny rudder provides to the captain of an oil tanker. Hoping to point the tanker where you want to go at a moment’s notice by kicking that rudder around is a fools errand.
Then for what are we conscious? How come we are aware of so much, can see so much and think so many things, if we cannot really control ourselves?
Well, the answer is in fact quite simple, and it has to do with the intended role of consciousness. Our conscious mind is there not to tell our minds what to do, but to give us the ability to choose the circumstances in which we place ourselves, so that the world might act upon us, so that we might be changed.
…
The only true sculptor is circumstance. When we try to sculpt ourselves, it melts and washes away as soon as the sun shines on it. We are simply not powerful enough to make shapes that last. The only way to create a form with edges that can withstand all the seasons and events of life, is to put ourselves out where pressures and forces exist that are much more powerful than the weak directives of our conscious minds, so that they can sculpt us.
The reason animals can live such a range of different lives without apparent difficulty is because they live at the mercy of circumstances far beyond their control, pursued by famine and predators, propelled forward by hunger and the will to live. They do not consult themselves as to whether they feel ready or prepared, they simply face everything as it comes, as best they can. And, as it turns out, this is a pretty good way to become ready.
But this change, this sculpting in the forge, is what we fear more than anything else. It paralyzes us. Not because of the pain, not because of the difficulty, but because of the risk of existential annihilation. Because the ease of life has made it possible, our ego has made its bed with a complex array of ideas, illusions, and rationalities, and we lie enshrouded in it, listening to the roar of the thunder and the pounding of the rain and the screaming wind outside, and we wonder what would be left of us if we were to do nothing more than take a few steps outside the door and it were all ripped away from us. And so we do not move.
But in doing so, we do great damage to ourselves. The human mind and body, much like other animals, is more than anything else an adaptation machine. That is what nature spent so much time creating. Everything within it is built to absorb forces and stresses, extract important information from noise under all kinds of pressure, and to coalesce and pull with great energy toward objectives upon which the immediate continuation of life rests.
90% of what we are is activated only by circumstance. All of our most powerful drives, engines that can warm us (and others) in the coldest nights of our lives, and propel us through overwhelming misery and confusion, lie dormant, because we do not put ourselves in any context within which they can be used. Instead, the other 10%, our tiny, fragile ego, coopts our entire sense of reality with its fears, cutting us away from the truth of what we could accomplish or endure if only it were a necessity, so that all the depths of our capabilities vanish, to be replaced by the window through which we look out fearfully at everything outside.
Remember, the role of your consciousness is not to bark orders or preach sermons or put you to work doing pseudo-activities. Instead, its role is this:
First, to find and go to the place where circumstances can create, of necessity, the person you want to become;
Second, to observe your adaptation to those circumstances and optimize them;
Third, to take care of your rest and recovery between challenging, shaping experiences.
Everything else is, in a word, bullshit, and a waste of the great adaptation machine known as the human being.
If you want success, all you have to do is go and meet it in the place where it has always been. The price you pay is that it will change everything about you.
