A non-neurotic nitpicking conversation

Noticing differences really aids survival… up the point of diminishing returns. Continuing along this path is counterproductive and eventually leads to anxiety of some sort. Of course, in the wild, such discernment would seldom turn as worrisome.

Civilization, in taming the wilderness, removes natural stresses that would otherwise counterbalance us, and before we know it, we’ve become neurotic nitpickers in one way or other.

Noticing similarities (mysterious sameness) softens the glare and untangles the knots which effectively supports sanity. Knowing where we are on the ball curve of balanced awareness (not too much difference or similarity) helps in this. As in maintaining physical balance, noticing when we near the tipping point allows us to maintain a situation while it is still secure. For this, we must watch our own mind as circumspectly as possible. (I suppose that’s the weakest link in this chain.)

Okay, so far so good. Of course, if it that was all there was too it, who could fail? The heart of the difficulty lies in what we think we need. Desire (think + need) drives us to gloss over differences at times, and yet make mountains out of molehills of differences at other times. Simply said, we habitually think what we need to think; we habitually see what we desire to see. No wonder thinking that one knows will lead to difficulty. Seeing boundless examples of this constantly, leaves me continually on guard for this trap in my own awareness. Thankfully, by being alive to the difficulty I seem to avoid it… somewhat. Although, how do I really know? Impartiality is the lead indicator I use.

First, to review:

Consciousness is the foundation of knowing for all animals⁽¹⁾. To think that one knows places thinking ahead of consciousness, and we end up believing what we think is true. Consciousness, the source, gets short shrift; we take it for granted. Simple consciousness is impartial and that bores us. On the other hand, there is nothing boring about feeling certain that one’s thinking is impartial and true. The irony:  it is emotion that gives us this sense of truth and certainty. The more emotion, the more things will not be what they appear to be (i.e., the stronger the ‘truth’ illusion becomes).

Desire and insecurity (see emotion, need, fear, instinct) lie at the base of consciousness and drive thinking. Emotion drives the direction thoughts take, consciousness provides the space for thought to roam. When event-linked emotion ruffles the feathers of awareness, we re-think the event. This re-thinking feeds back and re-stimulates emotion, easily setting off a vicious circle. We maintain the unbalanced emotional state long after the stimulus that ignited the initial emotion has ended.

Next, on to the ‘new’:

Future, present and past are figments of imagination. We think these are real, because we think what we think is real. Time is simply the continuum of consciousness. The points, past-present-future, are simply the projections of our desire and insecurity (need and fear) that give us the illusion of time as we think of it. We are so habituated to clock time now that we think it is real… tick, tick, tick.

⁽¹⁾ Looking at the birds on the beach like these pelicans in front of me, helps me escape the trap of thinking. I imagine that is one of the prime benefits, besides companionship, that pet owners enjoy. For some reason I especially love that little long beaked bird. One of its kind is always there poking around in the sand looking for food.

A little one on one with my bird

I bought a caged finch in Japan years ago. I took it home and left the cage door open so it could fly around if it wished. It wouldn’t. It just stayed contentedly in its cage. Weeks or months (I forget which) passed before it ventured out. I left the window open too, and soon it would go out, fly about, and return home. The Bird stayed away longer and longer until one day it didn’t return.

I notice a parallel here between me and that bird. I spent years, more or less inside civilization’s paradigm, venturing out of society’s cultural cage from time to time.

I venture out more frequently now, and can’t image giving up the ‘freedom’ to return. However, truth be told, it is a toss up. There is also the ‘freedom’ of safety and comfort within the paradigm, while outside of it there is often a fearsome sense of awe and mystery. Which is the greater freedom? One offers freedom to feel safe and comfortable, the other offers the freedom to feel awe and, well, more tentative, as if fording a river in winter.

Personally, like the bird, I could never return to the freedom of my former safe and comfortable cage. On the other hand, I could never recommend someone giving that up either. In life we simply go with the ‘toss up’ we are given at the time. I guess, like that bird, we leave the ‘cage’ when we can no longer stay. To stay or leave, that is the question. As it happens (to paraphrase chapter two) staying and leaving  produce each other. Like  Australians says, “No worries mate”. It truly does happen to us naturally.

But sadder still?
“We’ve never succeeded, never, in having people recognize the irrational influence of incidental emotion,” Lerner laughed.
“Never?” Spencer said.
“And then to make steps, no. Never.”

Wow! “Never” she says! ‘Never’ sounds like a challenge worth sinking one’s teeth into, eh? I have found it’s possible to avoid the bio-hoodwink to an extent. Much of my writing here is aimed at just that challenge. Regarding all my perceptions as the perception of symptoms is a tool I use most. This, along with correlations, helps nip many hypocritical rationalizations in the bud.

This matches my observation that how I feel drives how I act, just like any other animal. The duck feels hungry, it goes and eats. I feel hungry, I go eat. Next, how I feel drives how (and what) I think. If a duck could think, that would be the same for it. As far as I know, we are the only species that thinks. And that, my friends, may be where the trouble begins.

Thinking feeds back on how I feel. This can turn into a really neurotic viciously obsessive circle. This is where our difficulty begins, as chapter 71 puts it,  Not to know yet to think that one knows will lead to difficulty. Thinking gets me into a mess, and aside from getting a total lobotomy, I know of nothing that can help me avoid the mess except thinking, or rather remembering. Writing this blog help reinforce my awareness and memory of where the trouble originates. Perhaps reading it can help do the same for some folk.

Making decisions, I believe, is what people get the ‘big bucks’ for. They don’t really have to be correct decisions; they just have to put them forth confidently, which accounts for much of the difficulty our species finds itself in (see also, The Decider).

This and other experiences in Asia over the years gave me intimate insight into the lives of peasants. I was virtually one myself, at least financially speaking. Although I never worked long days in the rice fields, I had settled into what amounted to a peasant life style.

Fast forward about a decade to Sweden. There I settled into an area of Stockholm inhabited by the wealthiest Swedes (the King also lived in that area). I never settled into a Swedish life style though, my more peasant-like one being more comfortable. I couldn’t help notice and compare the lives of the upper class folks I came to know there, with the peasants I had lived among in Asia. One thing stood out like a sore thumb: these wealthy folks seemed no happier than poor Thai peasants. Odd to say, if anything, they even seemed a bit less so.

Looking back, I understand it better. Living creatures (including us) live out their days struggling against the inevitable (i.e., the entropic path in Buddha’s First Truth”…birth, growth, decay and death” ). The instinct to struggle (the survival instinct) is built into life’s DHA. In the case of peasants, the struggle instinct is fully engaged in the simple operation of basic survival. Not so for wealthier folk. On what does a rich person’s struggle instinct struggle? It certainly isn’t engaged in practical down-to-earth survival!

On the other side of this struggle instinct, in life’s equation, is the innate drive to seek ‘happiness’. I’ll call that the contentment instinct. Like the ‘fight or flight’ equation, each must find balance between struggle and contentment. On one hand we stir, move forward and work; on the other, we are still, return and rest. So far so good. When our struggle instinct engages itself in down-to-earth challenges, it is operating closer to the hunter gatherer circumstances of its evolution.

Wealth (i.e., more is better) promises us an escape from nitty-gritty challenges. Surly then we can live struggle-free, content in comfort and security. Actual success in achieving ‘more and more’ (we call it progress) has unintended consequences: What, pray tell, will one’s struggle instinct strive for then? Changing circumstances doesn’t delete DNA. The acquisition of wealth doesn’t neutralize the struggle instinct. Oops. Woe to him who willfully innovates while ignorant of the constant.

The striking thing I remember from Sweden was how wealthy folk worried about trivial things, like the selling of South African grapefruit in Sweden, while Thai peasants worry about practical challenges like the price of lard with which to cook. It appears that being spared from struggling on practical basics can easily lower overall contentment and happiness. Actual wealth delivers profoundly less than it promises. This more-is-better illusion is one of nature’s most potent hoodwinks. Instinct overrides reason, and we take the bait even though we think that we know that ‘money doesn’t bring happiness’⁽²⁾. As Christ said, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God“. So, be aware and beware!

⁽¹⁾ I had planned to settle down in Thailand. When money ran really low I went off to Vietnam to work and save money. The plan was to return with a grubstake and upgrade the bakery. That plan changed, but that’s another story. Suffice to say, at that tender age I lacked the experience to know that plans are little more than visions based on past experience. Life, on the other hand, flows out moment to moment into what is called indistinct and shadowy.

⁽²⁾ Wealth is relative! If you are starving and you find food, you are profoundly wealthier, at least until your food runs out. The Thai peasants were wealthy relative to the many folks I saw in India, Ethiopia, Niger, for example. A truer definition of wealth is found in the Tao Te Ching’s, He who knows contentment is rich, or as Henry David Thoreau put it, “A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone”. From this standpoint, Mother Theresa’s view that America was ‘poorer’ than India holds more water. Mind you, it is not that people in India don’t want to be rich; they do. And when they succeed, they will be as ‘poor’ as us.

By the way, among other things, wealth ‘frees’ me to struggle at writing down as coherently as possible what I see. By the same token, wealth ‘frees’ you to struggle to see if there is anything coherent, even useful, in what I say. The struggle continues and we’re happy.

“We have learned how to use our words. It’s a fantastic thing – we humans are so easily trapped in our own words. The word time, for instance. We run into puzzles about the concept of time and then we say, ‘Oh what a terrible thing’. We don’t realize we’re the source of the puzzle because we invented the word.”

Of course, that applies to everything we are puzzled about, which is essentially everything in the end (isn’t it?). For more on the puzzle of time, see this recent article in Science News, Law & Disorder . One part stood out especially…

In this way, the high-entropy empty spacetime that existed before the Big Bang can always increase its entropy even more — by giving birth to a baby universe. Although the baby would have low entropy, the total entropy of the system (mother de Sitter space plus baby) would be higher, preserving the second law. After pinching itself away from the mother space, the low-entropy baby will expand and the second law will drive a direction of time as the baby’s entropy rises. Eventually, the baby universe’s entropy will reach a maximum, becoming just like its timeless de Sitter space parent. And then it could give birth to baby universes of its own.

“As time evolves, you pop universes into existence — a baby universe comes into existence, expands and cools, and for a moment, there’s an arrow of time,” Carroll said. “The moment is several trillion years.”

I see here a few telling parallels with the Taoist view. Here are a few examples: (1) The way is empty, yet use will not drain it; (2) It is empty without being exhausted; (3) Great fullness seems empty, Yet use will not drain it.

Although, my favorite is this one…

Turning back is how the way moves;
Weakness is the means the way employs.
The myriad creatures in the world are born from
Something, and Something from Nothing.

Sure, these ancient thoughts lack the rigorous details of modern science. In the end though, all we will ever see through science is the reflection of our own mind – how could it be otherwise? The benefit of the scientific process lies in how it favors a high degree of impartiality. The beauty of the Tao Te Ching lies in the impartiality achieved through means other than modern experimental science. Yet, they are both well in sync with each other in the big picture. Honestly, I suspect science is playing catch-up. The parallels will only increase over time, especially as science increasingly proves / recognizes the power of Nothing!