Human Complexity

If I could go back in time, I would like to help my younger self understand that human beings are a whirl of complexity. We tend to categorize people as friend or foe, good or bad, eat or be eaten. We too often interact with people as though we were a small primate in a tree in the jungle having to make a split decision for our survival.

I would encourage my younger self to enjoy the wondrous dimensionality of every person she will ever know. Even the worst person will have some good part to their personality. Even the best person will have aspects that are not so admirable. Over the years I have had people I thought were my friends turn into utter jerks—to use a kinder, gentler term. It was only later that I discovered that they were in physical or emotional pain. I wish that I had been aware enough to begin to look at that, to perhaps probe, or at least not to take the interaction so personally. Even the most aggressive person can be passive at times. Even the most passive person can have an aggressive side. Even the most dependable, loving person will at times disappoint us and let us down. At the same time, some person we dismiss as not friend-worthy will come to our rescue. Every friend, colleague, family member will have a part of them that irrigates the heck out of us. If we look hard enough, everyone we meet will have a side that is utterly charming.

Of course, the same is true of ourselves. Sometimes we are jerks, sometimes wonderful individuals. In some situations we are aggressive, at other times we may surprise ourselves with our passivity. At times we are generous, at other times selfish. For people who are depressed, it is too easy to only see the times they didn’t behave according to their ideal. Others feel misunderstood when people imply they ever behaved other than admirably.

I would give my younger self a “prism” so that she could see all the colors within each person she meets and within her own self.

Failing and Succeeding

I was brought up on a steady diet of “Don’t make mistakes,” “Don’t fail,” “Don’t do anything foolish.”

Seth Godin writes in his December 21st 2009 blog entry: “Painters, musicians, entrepreneurs, writers, chiropractors, accountants--we all fail far more than we succeed. We fail at closing a sale or playing a note. .… But we succeed far more often than people who have no ideas at all.”

A similar discussion between Mary and Lurt takes place in Humans, by Robert J. Sawyer, a story about discovering a parallel universe where Neanderthals are the “human” species. Mary, a human as we know it, falls in love with Ponter, a Neanderthal.

…when your life is ending, will you regret not having tried to make a relationship with Ponter work? .... Listen carefully to my question, friend Mare. I am not asking if you would regret not pursuing this relationship if it were to succeed. I am asking whether you would regret not pursuing it even if it fails.

Lurt goes on to tell about trying to become a fiction writer and failing at it.

But I do not regret having tried and failed at fiction writing. Of course, I would have preferred to succeed, but on my deathbed I knew I would be more sad if I had never tried, never have tested to see if I might succeed at it, than I would be had I tried and failed.

Changing my thinking about success and failure has been like trying to turn around a team of a dozen Clydesdales. I am beginning to ask myself the question, “How can I increase my probability of succeeding?” Slowly, I am finding that I am changing my everyday behaviors.

New Year's Resolutions

Last year my New Year’s resolutions were to read at least 52 fiction books and new (to me) authors with last names beginning with each letter of the alphabet. I checked that off my list by early fall and had a lot of fun in the process.

This year I have three resolutions for 2010: to write 50 entries in Kata Chimes In, write 100 entries in Kata’s Cadence, and to do some stretching every day. After walking three miles yesterday, half of that carrying groceries, and hacking at ice on the sidewalks for half an hour, my back has insisted I add the last resolution to my list.

Happy New Year to all!!

Icicle

These past few weeks I have been struggling with the idea of head knowledge verses applied knowledge. Some ideas make so much sense when I read them or think about them, but when I need to apply them to a problem in my life, I don’t feel very smart.

A tangible way to illustrate this is to talk about my experience trying to make a beaded icicle. I knew that I needed to gradually increase the circumference of the icicle, create some sort of spiral effect, and have variegation. After my first attempt, I also discovered that I needed to make my object stiff. Even thought the finished icicle is fairly abstract and freeform, I needed four attempts to come up with something that “worked.”

I am beginning to believe that much of life is an artistic endeavor. My parents were so hell bent on “getting it right the first time.” In truth, most of life is just stringing one bead at a time, with a few basic principles in mind, and seeing how our efforts turn out, knowing that we can try something a little--or a lot--different the next time.

Multiple Levels of Change

I become frustrated with people who are condescending toward their charges who need to make changes in their lives. Often I think that people misjudge where the real change needs to take place. Robert Dilts, in Beliefs, does a wonderful job of describing change:

Change is a multilevel process…
We make changes in our environments; Changes in our behaviors through which we interact with our environment; Changes in our capabilities and the strategies by which we direct and guide our behavior; changes in our beliefs and value systems by which we motivate and reinforce our guidance systems and maps; Changes in our identity of which we select the values and beliefs we live by; Changes in our relationship to those things which are bigger than us, those things that most people would call spiritual.

Metatropolis

A few weeks ago I mentioned that I wanted to see what the country would be like in the future. In some ways, my request was answered in the guise of Metatropolis, five short stories edited by John Scalzi. Five authors created a not too distant future, where the governments of the United States and other major countries have collapsed. What are left in their places are pockets of cities centered on green technology and high tech communications.

Several concepts fascinated me. I have been interested in the concept of memes. One of the stories describes a city that is disbanded so that its ideas can be transmitted around the world. Conversely, another story describes “turks” for covert activities. Basically people are paid to do one tiny task, such as walk a package a few blocks, without knowing their part in the larger scheme. They can never be successfully interrogated or held accountable, because they just don’t know. Another concept is mobile societies, like the nomads of old except connected by technology. My favorite concept was a virtual world laid over a physical world using technology embedded in glasses. It begins as a sort of video game, but towards the middle becomes much more complex, representing a true society.

The world the authors created was fascinating to me, neither bright nor dreadful. It did open up my mind to new possibilities, which to me is the reward of enjoyable science fiction.

Priming

Counter Clockwise by Ellen J. Langer is a provocative book on health. Langer encourages us to question our assumptions about health diagnosis and aging, as well as about other areas of our life. She introduced me to the concept of priming. According to Wikipedia:“Priming in psychology occurs when an earlier stimulus influences response to a later stimulus.” Here is Langer’s description:

Much of what we have learned…was learned mindlessly as we uncritically accepted information without thinking about it, often because the information was given to us by an authority or was initially irrelevant. Even if it is to our advantage to rethink the information at some point, it simply doesn’t occur to us to do so. This makes us vulnerable to the effects of priming….The way priming works is to trigger ideas we have mindlessly committed ourselves to without awareness…