Asking Questions

In the film Equilibrium (2002), John Preston (Christian Bale) is the best enforcement officer. The best “cleric”. In a future world that outlaws feelings and artistic expression, to maintain the peace. A fight with the second best isn’t even a fight. A play on 1984, Father is the leader. Except he isn’t. He is just a story that is maintained even after the original Father’s death. Businesses, like Father, are legal people. We speak of them using human words. We anthropomorphize. A merger occurs when two separate entities join to form a new one. An Acquisition is when one company becomes part of another. Time passes. Colleagues leave. Management changes. The nature of business changes. Nokia was founded as a Pulp Mill in 1865. Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway started as a textile manufacturing company in 1839. Institutions change. They are there to serve us, not the other way around. When Preston skipped a dose of emotion suppressant, he started asking questions. And as the best, did something about it. Always ask questions.

Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity

I managed to catch up with a friend yesterday who is a big fan of the writing of David Foster Wallace. I had watched most of (the plane landed) 'The End of the Tour' recently and asked him what he thought. Movies have to create a story. One of the themes of Wallace's thinking was the 'Double Bind' that some writers have. They want to write about normal things and not appear to pretend to have things sorted out, or to be putting themselves on a pedestal, and yet to say something helpful or useful or meaningful, you have to put yourself out there. Put views out that may be a solution. The spinning wheel of self-reflection will mean you always think you are wrong, but have to carry on. 

My friend spoke of life being a combination of uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. We need to accept that we simply aren't capable of understanding everything. Of finding an answer. We can't always know in advance what 'the right thing to do is'. There aren't simple links of cause and effect. Things are never clear. There are always tradeoffs, advantages, disadvantages, costs, benefits, doubts, hopes, fears, opportunity costs and difficulties. 

I like that way of describing it and would add the idea of noise. There are lots of things that happen for no reason. That happen simply because they can. That aren't part of a narrative. Often those things are wonderful moments that come and go. That can be savoured and released. Often they are painful. They happen parallel to the story. They bump the story off course.

Patterns are fun. Patterns create stories and I think they are the only way we can view the world. It is how we are wired. Life is a combination of fact and fiction. We can join the dots in the way that we find most amusing. Most meaningful. We can create the life we want through our stories with occasional reality checks.

We will never understand. That doesn't really matter. No one will. Just keep on keeping on.

Better than the Book

The book was better. The book was probably better. The book gets more time to build the characters and can add more information. It isn't on the clock. If you have read Game of Thrones or The Lord of the Rings, and then watched the TV Series or Movie, you will see how plots have to change slightly. Characters get joined. The 'facts' largely stay the same, but to make the story flow, things have to change. Conn Iggulden does the same thing with his historic novels about Genghis Khan, Julius Caesar and the War of the Roses. In the appendix, he explains the changes he has made to make the story flow. The combinations. The alterations. The ordering of events.

Life is better than the book. There is more space to add details. There is less need for consistency in order for the story to flow. We tend to add the story afterwards as we explain our lives. As we talk to our friends. As we justify what we have done. As we plan what we are going to do. 

While looking for the way things are connected, I am also trying hard to let go of plot. To let go of pattern. To let go of connections that don't matter. To revel in glorious inconsistency. There is a lot of noise. A lot of things happen for no reason. There isn't always a string of causes. There isn't always an intent. Sometimes things just are.

We are natural story tellers. Life is far more interesting than that. It can let go of narratives. It can do things out of character.

Life provides the tools. We create our own stories.

Nature without Narrative

Birth Pains

In South Africa, we talk about the birth of democracy in 1994. I still find it odd calling limited enfranchisement in other countries democracy. So, when watching the Suffragette movie on the plane to Chicago (I binge watched four movies... the last being cut short by having to land), it seems equally odd that we don't talk about democracy being only being about 100 years old. New Zealand led the charge in 1893. Women only got the right to vote in national elections in Switzerland in 1971! It doesn't seem like democracy when half the population can't vote.

Broken Windows, Lives Interrupted, Forcing Attention

David Graeber argues that our re-writing of the birth of democracy to Greece misses the universal idea of building societies with concern for all. It also misses the flavours that have been given by various cultures. He talks about the idea of Federation coming from Native American groups working together when required. It wasn't popular at all in the West to be 'ruled by the mob'. There has always been a more deeply wired idea of superiority. The vote given to those who could fight. Armed and propertied. And male.

Watching the Netflix series 'Narcos', about the war on drugs, is also an illustration of a push back on the 'superiority idea'. The Colombian politicians and Americans both wanted to end the violence, but there was a big push back on needing the help of the United States. I don't like being condescended to. I like working with people, but not being a subordinate. This extends to most groups. The idea that someone is superior by right, by assumption, by anything, is deeply grating.

I am trying to read more about Rhodes to be in a better position to think about the #RhodesMustFall debate. It isn't really about Rhodes. Rhodes is a symbol. The broader idea is how do we unwind the idea of superiority that is so deeply wound into most cultures. Not just about race. About gender. About religion. About pretty much any world view you hold. The idea that we need to go on a civilising mission to convert people to our superior way of thinking.

The Shadow of Rhodes

The first book I have read on Rhodes is laced with very racist language. The irony is that it is a book that pitches Rhodes as a liberal. The racism is with a tone of righteousness. I have no doubt that for the time, a time when women couldn't vote, he was. Liberals were people who thought about enlightenment issues, but also about the idea of spreading civilisation. By force if necessary. Rhodes was an imperialist who believed in the superiority of British Civilisation as embodied by the throne. At the same time, he managed half of his land conquering by having the gift of the gab. In the initial descriptions of him I read, the images of some of the current politicians of the day spring to mind. Those people who can walk into a room and turn heads. Who can make their enemies heads turn. Who can 'have at it' with people and be hard not to like.

One of the reasons I think many people have a problem with the idea of 'Rhodes must fall' is that he isn't as obvious a villain as Mao, Stalin, or Hitler. It isn't like the cartoons we grew up with where there is a clear bad guy twisting his moustache or stroking his cat. People will recognise dreams and aspirations in Rhodes. Ideas like founding universities so that people from different groups can come together to study in the formative years of their lives. Then go out to the world with deep friendships. That is like learning that Hitler was an artist. Or that he liked little children. Pure evil is easier to deal with. How was Jameson made an Induna by Lobengula? Why was Rhodes able to negotiate peace where others couldn't? This is the same man that saw civilising as a thousand year mission like the raising of the druids in Britain. This was the same time as believing women needed to be looked after because they couldn't look after themselves.

The truth is the #RhodesMustFall project is an internal one. There are lots of studies going on showing just how implicit our prejudices are (Almost all of us are racist). Instead of a McCarthy like finger pointing, the project of whittling away at superiority starts with ourselves. The painful process of birthing a better world.

Cumulative Emotion

You have to own your own irritation. We can also allow others to own theirs. I am an overly sensitive chap. Always have been. I hate getting on the wrong side of people, and I often read more deeply than I should into what people say, and what they do. One of the problems with this is that I tend to elevate my importance in someone else’s emotions. I have no idea what is going on in their day, their month, their dreams. More of the way we interact with others is built from our own cumulative emotions than we care to admit.

'Run Lola Run'

I love the movie ‘Run Lola Run’. It plays the same scene over and over again, but each time with slight variations. In it there are flash backs and flash forwards of the people the lead characters bump into. Like their few minutes plays out differently, so does everyone else’s. When someone is rude to you, it may have nothing to do with you. They may be going through something awful. They may be irritable in general.

The idea of ‘listening to what someone is feeling’ is a powerful one. Most people are driven by their mood, and this can drive ‘rational arguments’ too. There are plenty of ways to fit alternative logics to the same set of circumstances and come up with different conclusions.

A friend recently pointed out Derek Sivers’ article on advice (sivers.org/advice). He uses the metaphor of an echo chamber for how we should consider feedback. Whenever we hear someone’s views, they are coming from that person’s perspective. They will not apply directly to us. But we should listen. By listening, we will be able to slowly build a better picture of our world by the way we interact with others.

The way we interact with others defines who we are.

Drop the An

I am on route to Newcastle to watch South Africa play Scotland in the Rugby World Cup. Last night I watched 'Hector and the Search for Happiness'. I had to place large chunks of its generic summary of world cultures in its 'Bull Quota' box. China = Money Culture + Monks. Africa = War Lords + Rural Families + Safari. Ignoring that, there were some interesting bits. One was a tweak of a common idea. Happiness is an emotion. Happiness is emotion. Drop the an. Rugby sometimes makes me very sad. Perhaps that sadness is happiness.

Given the choice, I wouldn't undo the experience of a few traumatic 'they shall not be mentioned' punches to the stomach sport has delivered. Bats being dropped. Balls not being kicked out. Silly silly rain. These moments are awful. 

If happiness is emotion, it includes being afraid. Being sad. Being lonely. Being homesick. Being irritated. Being angry.... And being excited. Being grateful. Being loving. Being loved. Being World Champions.

Perhaps happiness is being. I wouldn't change past punches, but please Bokke... be Scot beaters today!

Time and Space

I like myself least when I am in a corner. When I feel like I am forced to make a decision where I don't like any of the alternatives. Many of the social graces you can have when there is space to breathe fall away. A lack of time or energy to take into consideration feelings forces someone, whoever it is, to impose themselves on others. Most of history seems to be the story of who gets to impose themselves. Whether it's hereditary monarchy, democracy (the majority imposing themselves) or meritocracy (those with skills), at some point someone takes a decision and gets things done through force. If there is one thing that really messes with most people's mojo - it is being forced to do something.

A lack of time can force Zero One Thinking. The idea that that things exist in opposites. It stops the ability to understand, protect and empower the subtleties of all the interests involved. Time solves lots of problems. Marginal tweaks can have a huge impact when you throw 100,000 years at the problem. But we think in much shorter periods and in much bigger jumps. We don't live very long and we want to experience the change for ourselves. Big jumps have both consequences and unintended consequences. Understanding consequences is time consuming, and perhaps impossible.

In 'Ex Machina', there is a scene where the two characters are discussing a Jackson Pollock painting. Pollock is my all time favourite. My art teacher at school effectively (lovingly) bullied me into putting my rational thinking aside and tapping into something else when I was painting. My first few paintings were full of emotional, naive, teenaged angst. I would construct the painting in my head first. I would plan what the painting meant and what it would be trying to say. The composition and the colours would be carefully selected. Pollock did something different. He pushed into 'automatic thinking'. In a scene in the movie 'Pollock' (starring Ed Harris), they show him sitting for hours just staring at a blank canvas. Not planning. Waiting. For a feeling. Then he got stuck in and connected with the paint, the canvas and the elements. He painted. If he had tried to plan the painting, he wouldn't have made a single mark.

Jackson Pollock, Lavender Mist

The Ex Machina discussion is on the balance between rational thought, the type computers are good at, and emotional thought. Rational thought is about algorithms, rules, logic, problems and solutions. Emotional thought starts somewhere else. It starts with connections. It starts with the way we see, smell, hear, and feel the world. It isn't hardware or software. It is wetware. It makes mistakes, but not in a right or wrong way. Since every single moment matters, a mistake is in fact the reason for many of our best subsequent moments. If we hadn't had that trauma... If we hadn't failed at that task... If we hadn't stumbled... Then we wouldn't have met/started/found/seen the thing that led to where we are now.

Decisions matter. But corners are creations of the mind. There is always time. There is always a solution that takes people into account. There is never a need to impose ourselves. We don't need to work for people. We don't need people to work for us. We can work with each other as Partners. 

If we rethink time. If we add space.

Zero One Thinking

Given the incredible power of computers, it boggles the mind that essentially they boil down to strings of instructions based on zeros and ones. Yes and No. Left and Right. Light and Dark. On and Off. Rationality is all about providing rules and process for deciding the optimal decision. But what is optimal? Most of my formal training has been in rational, logical, statistical, mathematical thinking. It has been a search for strategic mistakes and errors in thought. The study of making better decision. This is the way I have been taught to view Science. That if you can't state something in a way in which you are making a useful prediction, that can be proved wrong, it isn't Science. It may be beautiful. It may add value. But it isn't Science.

Obviously Scientists don't own language. People use the word 'Science' to mean various things. People who refer to themselves as Scientists mean various things. Lay people mean various things. It may simply be used interchangeably with knowledge/fact/rigour/systematic study. The definition I use when using the word comes from Karl Popper and 'Conjectures and Refutations'. Specifically a quote I love.

'These are men with bold ideas, but highly critical of their own ideas: they try to find whether their ideas are right by trying to find whether they are not perhaps wrong. They work with bold conjectures and severe attempts at refuting their own conjectures.' Karl Popper

Last night I watched Ex Machina. It sent my mind spinning, and is an awesome look at what intelligence actually is. One interesting part is the discussion of Hardware, Software and Wetware. Our minds are effectively ridiculously advanced computers, but computers that makes lots and lots of mistakes. We forget things. We struggle to focus. Our decisions depend on our moods. There is no right and wrong, there is just different. If a mistake is made, there is always a next decision that matters more. The computers we currently have are great at doing mundane boring things. We want to automate mundane boring things. We want computers at toll booths and cleaning toilets so that the people who were doing those tasks can spend the time visiting old age homes, calling their Moms and Dads, or Kuiering. A lot of out time is wasted on stuff that isn't interesting. Computers are great at boring. Interesting is where we rock, and interesting is wet. Interesting empowers rationality by adding emotion, relationships and context. Interesting removes the ability to generalise and opens the ability to learn.

Happiness may lie in decisions, but not in the way we think. Not in the Zero One Thinking. The making of the decision may be the interesting bit - the raw, messy, individual, connected, moment as things change.

Ex Machina

Tipping Forward

One of the consequences of Social Media and the ease with which ideas can now spread is that the issues most nations are dealing with seem more common than diverse. America is struggling with racism in a country where whites are in the majority. South Africa, more famously, is struggling with racism where whites are in the minority numerically, but not economically. Same problem, just a different flavour.

The path of transition to a more tolerant world is important. One of the questions that people sometimes ask about South Africa is what happened to all the racists? Clearly the system was supported by a majority of white voters for a very long time. In the last race-based election in 1989, the Democratic Party only won 20% of the vote, up from 14% for the predecessor anti-Apartheid Progressive Federal Party in the 1987 election.

But then there was a rapid transition. Immediately it was simply not acceptable to be racist and public support for Apartheid became a fringe political view. Old South African flags mostly disappeared. Public support disappeared. There is no way that people change their inherent prejudices in private overnight. The difference in South Africa and America is that the transition was very tangible. Literally the only black people I came into contact with pre-1994 were in service roles. I can remember the discussions about an Iranian girl while I was at primary school. Was she white? Is Persian white? When I was 13, the first few brave parents were sending their kids to white schools. The transition was slow. I can't remember the percentages in my last year of high school, but I was still firmly in the majority (even though only c. 9% of South Africans are white). It was slow, but it was happening. I can imagine when the oppressed are in the minority, life can largely carry on in the same way. Prejudice may be private, but prejudice filters action and what we don't do matters as much as what we do.

What I find interesting now is the transition happening with the SCOTUS ruling in the US. The speed with which the change has happened over the last few years is mind boggling. Looking at other human rights struggles (it is amazing looking at how recently women got the vote in some countries) it shouldn't be that surprising how recently it was illegal, even in Britain, to be homosexual. The death of Alan Turing portrayed in 'The Imitation Game' is symbolic of the price we have paid for institutionalising and normalising prejudice.

Is this change more like the American racial transition than the South African racial transition? The majority of people look for relationships with the opposite sex. We have gotten better at empathy though. People who are oppressed in one way ideally should know what it feels like, irrespective of the cause of the oppression. The progress here is that all people get treated the same by the law and the government doesn't try to regulate something that doesn't affect other people.

People who have experienced the prejudice of the law enforcing no 'mixed-marriages' because they are sinful, should be able to empathise with those whose life is being restricted. People who get irritated with what Steve Hoffmeyer, Donald Trump or Nigel Farage should be able to see when their own words are hurtful.

There seems to be a tipping point. If your view, though wrong, is in the majority, Politicians will be able to pander to you. They won't call out your prejudice because in a democracy they need your vote. But as prejudice dies a slow death, there comes a time when it is no longer acceptable.  It is not acceptable to say calling something a sin and calling for laws that don't treat people equally is simply 'disagreeing with someone's life choices'. Free Speech means you can say it. Free Speech means people can respond. 

Being in the majority allows you to ignore reality. I think the tide is turning. I think we are reaching a tipping point. Our human rights progress over the last century isn't about one battle. It isn't about the battle that applies to you. Close your eyes and imagine a world where you don't know which character you are.

Human Rights is about the battles that apply to us. 

A Beautiful Model

When Economist build models of how the world works, they make simplifying assumptions. A character created for many of these models is Homo Economicus. These humans are completely rational and self-interested and so make it very easy to predict behaviour. Behavioural Economics studies the more psychological and emotional factors affecting economic decisions to try understand how we break away in reality. Often they do this by playing games to illustrate our biases. One of my favourite is the Ultimatum Game.

In this game there are two players. Call them Mmusi and Julius. Mmusi is given $100 and told that he must give some to Julius. If Julius accepts the amount, they both get to keep the money. If Julius rejects the amount, no one gets anything. They have to pay back the money. If Julius were Homo Economicus, he would accept even $1. Since $1 is more than nothing and he would have more. 

In reality, very few people accept $1. Concepts of fairness and justice kick in. Emotions kick in. Julius is likely to get very angry with Mmusi even if there is 'rationally' absolutely nothing wrong with what he has done. Unlike many of the fascinating list of biases, this doesn't appear to be a mistake in our thinking. Mmusi, in making his decision, will know that it was luck that gave him the choice. He won't know whether the game is once off or will be repeated. Part of his decision making will have to be affected by stripping his identity from the game. How would he want the participants to behave if he didn't know which character he was?

John Nash sadly passed away recently in a car accident. He is the real person behind the movie 'A Beautiful Mind'. One of my favourite scenes is in a bar, when Nash realises that the strategy of Homo Economicus is wrong. Or at least incomplete. We do indeed do better when we do what is in our best interests, but what is in our best interests may be something that takes both those interest and those of the group into account. The Nash Equilibrium.

John Nash died 23 May 2015, aged 86

A broader point is that models are just that. Models. You can't capture reality in a model. Models are best thought of as questions. In fighting to put them together, they help structure thought but they will never capture all the fuzziness. The reason you always get incredibly smart people arguing with each other, is because no one has the answer, we are just searching for more beautiful questions. Just like you should get worried if a coach stops giving you grief, you should get worried if you agree with everything someone says.

Normalising Suffering

One of the reasons we are uncomfortable with people sharing things that matter to them on Social Media is our inability to act when seeing a call to action. For all the accusations that people are selfish flying around, put in a situation where there help is required and they can help - most people I have come across in my life are pretty helpful. If they don't feel helpless. If something personal and difficult is shared in public, that helplessness can make us get a little annoyed. It isn't a fun feeling. Hasn't this person learnt to keep personal stuff to a small circle?

There are dedicated spaces where we feel safer, both to hear and share difficult stories. Gwyneth Paltrow, Mark Ruffalo and Tim Robbins star in a great movie about a group of people dealing with addiction. In a space specifically set up for people to share, where they receive mentorship and support, and we know all that is required is a kind word - we are okay with listening.

One of my Aussie cousins is a psychologist who specialises in people dealing with pain. He said one of the things he works on with people is the ability to accept, rather than fix, pain. Many of us have this in built call to action when it comes to stuff that sucks. I certainly fit that bill. The reason I find yoga so appealing is because it is so practical. It basically comes down to exercise, food, breathing, relaxing and positive thinking. You can do something about it. Sometimes it is not about the nail. It is just about listening. I find that really hard. I think that is part of why we struggle with sharing real life tough stuff on social media.

Why do we need to? Well although I think we are growing up, I still think there is a disconnect between the story we think everyone else is living and the story we are living. There is a wonderful movie about Alfred Kinsey. He was a scientist who studied bugs. A subject not many people follow. Then he got married and had sexual problems with his new wife. So he applied his scientific mind to the problem. The first step wasn't to have an opinion. It was to gather information and reflect life as it is rather than as we think it is. His works on male and female sexuality highlighted the chasm between the reality of people's sexual lives and what they thought everyone else was or wasn't doing. His work started conversations where people could realise they weren't weirdos. It allowed people to start sharing.

My cousin describes the need for 'normalising suffering'. Once we accept the difficult bits as part of what life has on offer, they lose their magic power. If we were able to share some of our challenging bits, along with an 'I am ok, you don't need to do anything'/'I have support, you don't need to do anything', perhaps it would be easier for others to read.

We can't be upset that social media doesn't reflect our lives if we don't do anything about it. Unless all we want is cheese with our whine.

Salma As Obama

Perhaps Salma Hayek will one day play Obama in a biopic? Although the movie wasn't actually that great, the idea behind the movie 'Simone' was pretty cool. That a movie star could be freed from physical form. In Simone's case, the character was completely computer generated but through Andy Serkis' Gollum and the young Brad Pitt in Benjamin Button, we are clearly freeing actors from flesh and bone reality.

I really enjoyed Salma Hayek in Frida. I think she is a fantastic actress, but it must be frustrating that the number of roles that are available to her must be limited to roles written for characters that remind casters of her. It would be wonderful if for any role, every actor and actress was eligible. It would certainly make for interesting method acting. I recently saw an interview with Julianne Moore where she spoke of the research she did into Alzheimer's for her movie 'Still Alice'. They showed a clip where she was describing what it was like to live with the disease. It was powerful, apart from her talented performance, because she had spent hours talking to real people who are struggling through real challenges. One of the great things of being human is that we can communicate what it is like to experience what we are going through. We can communicate lessons from mistakes. We can communicate emotional growth. Artists can share life lessons for us without direct experience of the pain. Our ability to share means we learn together.

You can't ever completely silence your perspective. You can't ever empathise fully. But you can try. Acting must be one of the most powerful ways to dive into someone elses experience, and be able to come back better. If technology can free women to play men's roles, young to play the role's of the old, old to play the roles of the young - I think we will open up a massive treasure chest of emotional intelligence. Imagine Helen Mirren or Judi Dench winning the Best Actor award. Morgan Freeman winning Best Actress.

Bigots have heroes too. It would be great if the face behind a heroic character of theirs turned out to be someone they despised. The human experience is a shared one.

Full Nana

One of my favourite movie scenes of all time comes from 'Limitless'. Able to see the world clearly for the first time, (almost) the first thing Eddie Morra does is tidy his flat. The scene is awesome, and whenever I decide things have descended a little too far in my living environment, belting out The Black Keys soundtrack from the movie gets me going. 

The sad truth is that while I am not the most useless cleaner in the world, I leave a lot to be desired. In my gap years between school and university I worked as a waiter and a porter for a while during the summer holidays of the school I was teaching at. On one occasion I was tasked with cleaning the glass of the display cabinets. I took ages, and on inspection my job still wasn't good enough. All I was doing was cleaning glass! Surely it is not that complicated? My cross line manager felt the same.

Cleaning can't possibly be a Usain Bolt style inborn talent. There have to be tricks to the trade. The problem is you often only get to do things once or twice and that isn't really the way to learn. It is a good thing many of us don't have to get subjected to army conscription. The tales I hear from my parents generation though is that that is where you really learnt to iron, make beds and peel potatoes.

Source: http://www.maccclean.co.uk/ironing-service/

Until deciding to go down the learning and blogging route and leaving my job, I have always felt very justified in getting help to do cleaning. I love a clean house, but cleaning isn't exactly my idea of a favourite way to relax when I wasn't working. I also figured I was 'contributing to the economy' by getting someone else to do the cleaning for me. My working time would be better suited to focus on my qualifications.

There is some truth to that. There isn't enough work to go around. When you are working full days in an office, cleaning can become a real bitterness inducing grudge chore. So paying someone else does seem a reasonable 'win win' solution. It does leave you as a less than complete human being though in terms of some pretty basic self-sufficiency skills. I have heard stories of high powered CEOs retiring and not knowing how to buy jam. They hadn't been in a shop for decades. Cleaning can actually be fun if you aren't in a rush and can add a touch of silliness.

Washing dishes can be fun if you add a little silliness to the mix

Embarrassingly simple tasks become something we just don't know how to do. I have a friend who defines cleaning in fractions of a Nana. His Grandmother was the Usain Bolt of cleaning. A full Nana is something equivalent to an end of tenancy deep clean of the home. The only way I could do a full Nana to his standards would be to buy a new build home. He regularly laughs at me when I ask him about simple domestic cleaning things that I have no idea about. I reckon I have trained myself up to about quarter Nana level when I have Black Keys belting out.

I like practical solutions to issues of happiness. I like the idea that if things aren't going well, you should start with the basics. Are you exercising? Are you eating right? Are you making time for proper relaxation? How is your breathing? Are you thinking positively? Then you can move onto more complicated things like building quality relationships and finding something you are good at that challenges you.

Before you do any of that. Clean up.

A Little Maya

The advantage of living in a world with so many different ways of doing things is that no assumptions go unchallenged. We need to pick a path and having nagging doubts about the forks in the road we didn't choose, we create stories that help us believe our way is the right way. Stories are awesome. Parallel stories keep us honest. Peter Menzel & Faith D'Aluisio tell a wonderful story in 'What I Eat' with photos from around the world of 80 Diets. I wrote in 'Triumverate of Yumminess' about a cunning diet that lets you eat whatever you want as long as you take a photo of it. We talk about pets and reflecting their owners personalities, it is amazing paging through this book how well it seems someone's story is told through a picture of what they put in their mouths.

I have some friends who are taking the story of what they put in their mouths quite seriously. They have started converting their garden into a pretty hardcore urban farm along with 5000 or so earthworms. One of my favourite movie scenes is from Sideways, where Maya explains to Miles why she loves wine. It is worth adding a little Maya to our own diets. She describes the story of the wine. She revels in it. By the time it reaches her lips she has already savoured each little characteristic that makes the wine what it is. Drinking the wine becomes a conversation with the entire life of the wine. It becomes a performance in which you participate. We have to eat and drink to stay alive, but clearly this level of enjoyment is more than about staying alive. It is about living. I think growing your own food has a similar appeal. To have dug the ground yourself. To have watched the food grow. To have a story to savour.

Beyond the romance, a book looking at the diets of people around the world also tells many other stories. They look at the age, height, weight and caloric intake of the various people and diets. From very simple diets that struggle to fill the gap to competitive eaters. Taking photos of what you eat is one thing. Placing those photos next to what others eat is food for thought. 

Hopeful Inconsistency

'There should be no boundary to human endeavour. No matter how bad things may seem, where there is life, there is hope.' - Stephen Hawking

I love great stories. 'The Theory of Everything' is beautiful. One of the things I have always admired about Stephen Hawking is that he follows what philosopher Karl Popper called conjecture and refutation. First, use a wild, uninhibited, creative imagination free from boundaries to come up with ways to understand the world around us. Then, have the ability to turn on your own ideas with no attachment. Be the loudest and most convincing in pointing out where you have been wrong. Steven Pinker believes this is why Free Speech is fundamental to progress rather than just one of many competing values that we trade off against each other.

Stephen Hawking

The emotional trade off is hard. I wrote a guest post for a friends blog called 'Trying to Unsquiggle'. It takes bravery to constantly be finding the holes in your thinking. I don't believe there is such a thing as a consistent thinker. We are good at solving individual problems. We are good at responding to individual wants and desires. But things get left out. The solution to one problem may be in direct contrast to the solution to the other. You then have a choice whether to ignore the inconsistency and live your life or dig. Megan asked some tough consistency questions in 'We need to talk about Charlie'. Megan is a digger.

Digging is emotionally difficult. Most people run out of energy and want to get a balance between shutting off and enjoying individually solved problems for a while. Even if it is just to build up the strength to have another go. Others prefer to let others do the digging for them. Others get annoyed if you dig in their general vicinity. You may have family and friends who don't want to know about your other competing thoughts. You may live in a society with two competing and inconsistent ideologies who would rather live separately or have their thoughts dominate than try figure it out. You may live in a society where there is no competition of ideas. The ideas are set and you live by them or get ex...cluded/ecuted.

There are few things that fill me with the sense of awe than of a universe with no boundaries. It boggles, inspires and seduces the imagination. And along with all of our inconsistencies, we give it hope.

Chew

It is good to chew. In 'Moonwalking with Einstein', Joshua Foer describes his journey as an ordinary journalist covering a memory championship and then over the course of a year becoming the US Memory Champion. It is tempting for us to outsource our memories now that it is so easy to look things up. Facebook will remind us of birthdays. Google will answer your questions for you. Foer makes the case for memory as a tool for awareness. Things are more meaningful to you when you can make a connection. If you have to look something up, those connections are harder to make. He also points out an additional silly reading rule many people have. We don't go back to the books we love often enough if at all. Before the printing press, there were so few copies of books available that when you got to see a book, it would likely be the only time. So you studied and memorised it. You could reread it in your head. Now there are books I know I enjoyed or were meaningful to me and yet if pressed, I can only remember a vague outline of what they were about. Since reading Foers comments, I have tried to always have a book I have read before on the pile. One that I keep coming back to is Josh Waitzkin's 'The Art of Learning'.

Artist Paula Wilkins looking to Google for the answers

Josh's approach to learning is fascinating. At age 11 Waitzkin drew a chess match with Gary Kasparov (Kasparov was playing 59 other people at the same time but don't mess with a good story). At age 16, he became an International Chess Master. Later, after a 1993 'Searching for Bobby Fischer'/'Innocent Moves', brought him fame that distracted him from chess he shifted to T'ai Chi Ch'uan and he won the world championship in the competitive sport of Tai Chi Push Hands in 2004. Waitzkin then went moved on to learning Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. What he realised he was good at was not chess or martial arts, but the art of learning. His book contains many gems that are worth chewing on. One read is not enough.

One chewable morsel is the need to unlearn. Once a certain level of skill has been reached, often learning is about refining. In order to refine, you need to be able to go back to first principles and often you have to train yourself out of things that you are good at. Good, but not great. In chatting with a buddy recently who loves swimming, a perfect example came up. He has come across a book called 'Total Immersion' which describes a technique to swim better, faster and easier. In order to do this, he has to swim slower first and effectively learn to swim again. He has a target number of lengths he wants to get through this year, which he won't do if he slows down now. In the long run he will be faster if he does what Waitzkin calls 'investing in loss'. So, he is chomping at the bit for the year to end. Short term targets often get in the way of learning. This one is temporary, but often in the business world there are always short term targets. The tyranny of quarterly reporting. Building in periods to slow down and relearn is a prerequisite for the good stuff.

From The Beginning

What do Reservoir Dogs and a Piano Concert for 6 year olds have in common?

Well, this Mr Black, once had to play at a concert. I was a Teaching Assistant for 18 months in between school and university and the school I was at was very musical with a very supportive teacher. When he found out I had always wanted to play piano, he showed me middle C and arranged for lessons. A few months later there was a parents concert for the students at my level, i.e. the 6 and 7 year olds. Now I presume this was an opportunity for the older, more mature, experienced 19 year old to show the youngsters that there was nothing to be worried about. Let's just say, I felt... Conspicuous.

When my turn came it started ok. I could play the pieces. I had practiced a lot. But I had practiced in the quiet of the music school after hours. Mid way through my first piece I froze. I looked down and all I saw was white and black. I had no idea where to put my fingers. I started again. Then froze somewhere else. Again, I couldn't push through as I was completely lost. Surely I couldn't start again... just push through. The embarrassment swelled and if my tear ducts weren't welded shut by toughness (and they weren't), my eyes would have welled up. I moved on to the next song which went a bit better.

Now being consoled when you are 6 is one thing. Being consoled by someone who is 6 is quite another. The whole next day I had very compassionate little people coming up to me and saying, 'Don't worry Mr Black, I thought you tried very hard.'

'Can I start again?' is something I have heard often. In public speaking, acting or any performance piece. We seldom learn things starting from a variety of places. Preparing for interruption. Preparing for things to go wrong. Forgetting the first line can basically mean forgetting the whole thing. Here lies the connection to Reservoir Dogs. Mr Orange has to come up with a story to convince the bad dudes that he is for real. An amusing anecdote.  He gets given some advice about how to make it his own. How to internalise it. When it comes to the performance, there were plenty of interruptions but he could not afford to look down and see just (Mr) Black and (Mr) White. He was not surrounded by compassionate 6 year olds. He did a great job.

So this time round as I relearn the piano, I am making a concerted effort to learn to deal with interruption and play on through. To be able to start from anywhere. To internalise the songs rather than just learn to play them from the beginning. One day, I hope to be able to play well enough to genuinely impress the little people.

(P.S. Don't watch the Reservoir Dogs clips if you aren't a Tarantino fan, or if you are 6)

Reeeeelax

Some jobs let you leave the work at work. They are contained. It does not mean they are unskilled, but there is nothing to worry about. The problems that present today are solved today, and you have the skill set to solve tomorrows problems. Other jobs are never finished. You are always working towards something. You are always planning, and by their very nature they will never be finished.

This makes relaxation difficult. We have weekends and seem to have settled on 20-25 days a year being sufficient leave for professionals. In most cases, a maximum of two weeks for professionals unless you are particularly skilled at sweet talking your boss. On Friday you are shattered. On Sunday you are preparing mentally for the week that lies ahead. So in truth you get Saturday. One day a week. Do you use that for relaxation? Not really. You use it for life. You use it for the stuff you are working for. Work hard. Play hard. It is not unusual to get back from a weekend or a holiday tired because we are trying to pack in as much as we humanly can.

On top of that, if the work isn't contained you get a 'Concertina Break' where all the work isn't put aside, it gets squished into the week before you leave and the week you get back when there is a mountain of stress to welcome you with open arms.

Source: Wikipedia

So we can't rely on those periods of not working to relax. Relaxation isn't really a luxury though. Without it we can't actually function, so we have to figure out some way to fit it in.

The Yogis talk of three types of relaxation*:

1. Physical Relaxation

Tension and relaxation are closely related. If you aren't exercising it does make it harder to relax. So this is why lying on the couch watching test cricket for a week doesn't leave you feeling relaxed. It just leaves you feeling awesome. Ok, I am getting distracted. We all feel better when we are fit and healthy. Yoga takes this a step further in gaining an awareness of all the muscles and learning to 'tense and release' each of them. It uses a process of 'autosuggestion' where you consciously go through the body tensing and releasing each part. The whole process helps relax those organs you don't consciously control either since they 'realise' everything else is relaxing. 'Yoga - Your Home Practice Companion' gives some very short routines that you can fit into your day. So that bit at the end of a Yoga class where 'everyone has a little sleep' is actually probably the most important bit. You are not sleeping, you remain very conscious but learn to completely relax.

2. Mental Relaxation

The physical battering we take or just the stress of sitting in a chair for hours on end, is much less of an energy sapper than the constant tension from worries and anxieties. Training yourself to be able to recognise the thoughts and put them in their place is goal of mental relaxation. This ties back to jobs that can or can't be left at work. You may leave the office but the office doesn't leave your head. There is a funny scene in the movie 'The Champ' where a reporter asks the homeless former boxer whether he has thought about his offer to write a story on him. He replies that he hasn't thought about it at all, he was 'saving that till later'. Controlling thoughts doesn't mean ignoring them, it just means giving the attention they deserve and not letting them be the boss of you. I couldn't find that scene, but this is another classic...

3. Spiritual Relaxation

I spoke about my concern yesterday that there are many moral leaders whose message gets restricted unnecessarily because of the groups we create. I think it would be great if we were able to have more platforms to share common ideas on happiness and how to live irrespective of group. Whether a minister, youth pastor, humanist chaplain, swami, imam or philosopher - there are huge overlaps where we have common ground. One of those is the relaxation that comes from identifying with something bigger than yourself. Spiritual relaxation is effectively a separation from your own issues - the ability to not identify with personal worries, sorrows, anxieties, fear, and anger which bring tension. This is not a religious thing or an esoteric thing. It is in my view one of the core reasons we search for those means of expression though. If through worship, watching videos of space, or meditation you are able to let go of your 'stuff' just for a bit, you end up having a whole lot more energy to get back into the game.

* See Page 202 & 203 of 'The Complete Illustrated Book of Yoga'