Monday Happens

Behaviours get embodied. When we respond in a certain way for years, we can cease to be aware. Our minds and bodies are ruthlessly focused. 

If you do press-ups, they will progressively get easier. If you aren’t exercising, then you go for a run... you will be sore, because you have told your body those muscles don’t matter. 

Regularity allows deep soaking. If you learn superficially, then the knowledge can disappear. Explaining or teaching is one method to allow you to constantly re-engage and not forget the steps. 

"The Curse of Knowledge" is when we forget what it is like not to know. 

If the steps suddenly stop working, it can be hard to fix the problem if you have been on automatic pilot. 

In Jonathan Haidt’s analogy, the elephant is in charge even if the rider looks like they are holding the reins. 

The elephant is our habits. The rider is our perspective of the decision-making. The rider can point, and even believe they are in control, until the elephant wants to do something else. 

You can train your elephant, but it takes work, consistency, and time. I believe in Free Will. But it is incredibly hard. You don’t just have life-changing epiphanies in a weekend away, or by reading an article online. 

Monday happens. Repeatedly. Do the work to create the meaning you want. Invest in the resilience and endurance needed to hold space for you to create.

Galileo's 1616 drawing

of the phases of the moon

Feeling Decisions

Free will exists. It is just incredibly hard work. Free will is not simply deciding. It is training yourself to decide. It is creating the environment where it is possible to decide. Where your decisions are not forced. Where the constraints within which those decisions are made are chosen, dismantled, or changed consciously. 

Computers don’t know what the 1s and 0s mean. They just apply the algorithms, and something happens. If there is a glitch... a coder has to consciously find it and change it. For that to happen, they have to become intimate with the code. Open it up. Unpack it. Understand the steps, consequences, and connections. 

The further decisions are from consequences, the more information is lost because of oversimplification, and the length of time till feedback is felt. 

This is David Attenborough’s case for biodiversity as a response to climate change. Increasing the capacity for local reaction. Feeling decisions. The ability to adapt to conditions rather than the monoculture of distant central decision-making behemoths. Building flexibility and firebreaks for when (not if) things go wrong. 

The unintended consequences of big decisions may have conspicuous results, but they often hide until it is too late. Free will requires you to pay intimate attention, and do the work.

Maintaining Firebreaks

Broad Framing

Every day we are presented with choices. We have a set of eyes and ears, a nose, a tongue, a whole body of touch sensitive skin, a mind, and thousands of relationships. We are aware. We absorb information. We are conscious. We act. But we cannot keep everything in mind when we do. What we experience soaks deep. Influencing the embodied way in which some choices become automatic. Memories, beliefs, arguments, loved ones, goals and desires disappear from our peripheral vision. Still, we choose. In “Thinking, Fast and Slow”, Daniel Kahneman uses 'Narrow Framing' to describe the way we tend to see each decision in isolation. They become life defining in our mind. 'Broad Framing' incorporates the context of all the other decisions. 'If you need to take care of something, the worrying will make you less rather than more effective' says Tyler Cowen. Broadening the frame gives things their proper place and stills the waves of worry.

"The Frame" Frida Kahlo

A Grave Man

“Science progresses one funeral at a time,” pointed out Max Planck. One way of looking at science is formalised trial and error. Bold statements followed by rigorous testing. Knowledge progresses not by confirming what we thought we knew, but by finding out ways we were wrong. Through surprising results. Death of an idea becomes a feature rather than something to overcome. Our bodies largely replace themselves every 7-10 years. We quite literally, are what we eat. The way we interpret the world depends on what we know, and that changes as we learn. We are what we think. But even these “are”s are temporary. If we eat tomorrow. If we think tomorrow. The reason I think of Finance in Yogic terms is money is not about you. You are something deeper. You cannot base your identity on temporary things. Money is about problem solving, and if you are genuinely interested in actually solving the problem rather than making yourself irreplaceable… then you don’t want to define yourself by your job. You are not your job.

Max Planck's Grave

Seen and Unseen

“Drsta nusravika visaya vitrsnasya vasikara samjna vairagyam” Yoga Sutras

"Vairagya, or non-attachment, is that state of consciousness in which the cravings for objects both seen and unseen are controlled by the mastery of will."

Our waves of anxiety don’t deal just with what is in front of us. Worries come from within, from our dreams, and from conscious ideas about what we want, should want, what can happen, what might happen, what we expect, what we expected that didn’t arise, and all the flavours in between. Yogis explain the types of waves through the three Gunas. Tamasic thoughts are the ones that bring us down. Like periods of being unemployed or struggling to find clients. Rajasic thoughts are like periods of being too busy, with no space for self-care or focusing on what is important in the long term, because you are putting out short term fires. Sattvic thoughts are the ones in between. The ones we want to pay attention to. Even though they are also temporary. Thought waves and problems (should) come and go. With changes in the supply of and demand for solutions.

The Eye of a Red-tailed Hawk

Wiggle Room

You are not your job. Your income doesn’t determine your quality of life. Your success is not signaled by how much you consume. We are not cogs to fill specific and managed roles defined by a path we set out on as kids. You can love languages as an adult when you hated Afrikaans as a kid. You can discover a passion for Music late in life. Coding. Investing. Running. Whatever. You can unlearn. You can relearn. You can reflect on who you are, and who you want to be. Free Will exists. It’s just hard. Detaching from your circumstances starts with wiggle room. If you live hand-to-mouth then there is no breathing space for change. We have the most control over our mouths. Our consumption. If you can let go of signaling to others your place in society, you can gain control over your choices. Slowly. Over time. With work. Emergencies often make our choices for us. Build an Emergency Fund. Space between your hand and mouth. 3-6 months of spending requirements. Then look up. Look properly. And make a choice.

Space to Wiggle

Hard Questions

You can’t expect someone to change their mind if their core belief is what sustains their livelihood and community. Max Planck said, “Science advances one funeral at a time”. Not just science. We live in a world where we define ourselves by our jobs and our incomes. We spend so much time with the people we work with, they become our community. Can you really expect someone to ask the really tough, existential questions, if the true answer would tear down the whole illusion? If the hard questions will point out the little fellow behind the green curtain, the emperor waving his bits in the wind, and the man in the high castle fretting over alternate realities? Our lives, and particularly our working lives, are too short to wait till the evidence is in. The evidence may never be in. So we commit. Then we die. It may be up to the next generation to ask the really hard questions. Which may include creating new communities. Communities built to ask hard questions.

Can you ask the hard questions?

Resonance

The ideas of Free Will and Identity are closely tied. I am increasingly trying to identify with multiple simple connections, multiple relationships, rather than the 'unit' Trevor Black. I am witness to the conflicting emotions, and thoughts that drive my decisions. I know that life has far more control over me than I have over it. How I respond seems far more significant than what I plan. My resilience, or ability to respond, in a way that resonates with the connections I have made appeals more than the idea of self determination. That requires making time and space for those relationships. Building triggers to keep their music part of the moments that make up my day. Spending time remembering why what matters to me does. So that when my emotional cocktail kicks in, it is supportive rather than disruptive.

Decision Making

I am a creature of habit. I like processes and patterns. Things I can understand. When I am part of a team, two things that drive me nuts are a lack of clarity around decision making, and unjustified superiority complexes. Unjustified by who? By me. We don't operate in a functional meritocracy.  I am more than happy to take instructions from someone when: 

1) I am learning from them, 

2) I don't feel like they are simply outsourcing the jobs they don't want to do to me,

3) We like each other, 

4) We share a common purpose

When there are structural reasons why any of these rules don't work, my inner elephant goes on the rampage. I can intellectually try pretend I can carry on doing what needs to be done for other reasons, e.g. money, expectations, patience, accepting that is the way the world works. I know I will fail. Inside me is a raging righteous indignation when I feel like things aren't the way they should be.

Freedom isn't a lack of constraints. Good rules can make the game far more enjoyable. Freedom isn't even free will and the ability to make the decisions. Freedom is a feeling that I am part of something bigger that I believe in. Not just a cog. An integral part of something that matters.

Long Grass

I am comfortable being lost in the grass. A lot of my thoughts are scattered, confusing and unrelated. Instead of trying to see the path in advance, I try and connect the disconnected. If there is a path in advance, it is that creating enough connections will create a path. Even if I was bold enough to plan in advance, we don't control the unintended consequences. There is a  big disconnect between our plans and the way things play out. Even if by chance the two rhyme. We fit a narrative to how things happened, as if we were in control of the cause and effect. The world is complex, ambiguous and uncertain. It is also incredibly beautiful and I love those connections. If I love enough connections, a path will take care of itself.