Tag: Self

The Rotten Habit of Black and White Thinking

Donkey
Black and white thinking makes asses of us. Image by 1691628 from Pixabay

When people ask me why 52% of the UK voted to leave the EU¹, I usually come up with the same answer: immigration. Brexiteers see immigration as an evil that is ruining the country, bombarded by childish memes that their thickheaded friends share on social media, and electrified by a shocking reel of Sun headlines that cattle-prodded them to the polls. They’re unable to comprehend the complexities of EU membership (few can), and cast their vote based on their racism, like frightened dogs yapping to protect themselves from the terror of the non-white hoards trying to find a better life.

Entertaining as it might be, this profile of a typical Brexiteer is untrue, falling victim to the same simplistic danger as it criticises. To make sense of something as chaotic and important as the vote of a Brexiteer, it’s much easier to discard subtlety and reduce it down to a single argument. When people ask me why 52% of the UK voted to leave the EU, I don’t consider a Brexiteer’s other potential reasons like economic regulation, trade, and sovereignty, I just choose the easiest and most common way to define them: immigration. To make sense of the carnage of Brexit, I pigeonhole 52% of the British population.

This is a common response when we’re faced with something important and complex. We feel an obligation to pick a side, but don’t want to do the research needed to better understand the situation, or people’s motives. So we simplify it down to something that resonates with us; something that we do understand, which doesn’t wobble us with cognitive dissonance, and protects our delicate egos. We engage in black and white thinking, forgoing our intelligence and becoming the very people we’re criticising.

Black and white thinking is bad for a number of reasons.

We make bad choices

We need an accurate understanding of the world to make good choices for ourselves, and for the people around us. But it’s a complicated place, and we’re all so busy, so when important events come along like Brexit, an election, or a political movement, we often get a shallow overview rather diving deep, because we’re lazy and don’t care enough to put the time in.

Continuing with the example of Brexit, if I were to make an informed decision about which way to vote, I might need to do the following:

  • Find out Britain’s immigration policies, and their economic implications
  • Find out how EU membership benefits British trade
  • Understand the government’s proposed human rights policies
  • Find out how much sovereignty Britain has as an EU member

…and much more, preferably from sources with little bias. Even if I did just one of those things, I’d be better informed and able to cast a vote that made more sense for the British people. But most people can’t be bothered, instead choosing one of a million mindless entertainments that the Internet is suffocating us with.

When we surrender to our laziness, we shrink complex issues down to a single emotional factor, ignoring all shades of grey. Our point of view is visceral, rather than grounded in fact, resulting in a bad choice that doesn’t reflect reality. Some of these choices will be innocuous, while others will tarnish our lives and the lives of our countrymen.

It’s also possible to go the other way and be a perpetual fence-sitter, despite having delved into the details of an issue. The challenge is knowing when you’ve done enough research to form a confident opinion. And if you’ve haven’t researched at all, you don’t need to pick a side.

We become stupid

When we engage in black and white thinking, we’re making a conscious choice to ignore potentially important information, and so we make fools of ourselves. The shades of grey are waiting to be discovered by those who want a more accurate and nuanced point of view, which is more difficult and time-consuming to obtain, but has the potential to make you smarter and better informed.

As we simplify an issue over and over again, casting aside all other possibilities and refusing to look deeper, we strengthen the neurons in our brains for the idea, until we become stubborn buffoons who find it impossible to perceive it in any other way. We habituate ourselves to a single simplistic assumption, and squash all creativity for the issue. We ignore nuance, and so we become dimwits.

Shaky confidence

“Black and white thinking masks itself in the disguise of certainty, and certainty feels good in an uncertain world.”

Dr. Christine Bradstreet

Black and white thinking does wonders for our confidence. It’s easier to settle on a point of view when we’ve limited the possibilities, allowing us to say “I’m right about this” with confidence. But you’re not right, you’ve just narrowed your scope, and when someone comes along with contradictory facts, your easily-won confidence is shown to be delicate as a spring daisy. Some people change their point of view when this happens, but many remain stubborn to protect their confidence/ego, and cling even harder to their daft perspective, like an intractable Flat Earther.

Simplifying the chaos of the world may fill us with self-assured certainty, but it builds a feeble confidence that can be shattered by someone willing to look deeper. Forming an opinion without looking into the details isn’t the act of a decisive leader; it’s the deed of a prosaic bootlicker.

We become predictable and boring

Rupert Murdoch’s monstrous web of media companies are an exemplar of black and white thinking. If you get your news from Murdoch, you’re in danger of becoming narrow-minded, cynical, and tedious. The primary goal of these kinds of media is to generate as strong an emotional response as possible, preferably a negative one, so that you purchase their newspapers and engage with their shows. They may harbour journalistic values and attempt to report accurately, but it’s often spun into something emotional that’ll draw you in. When you’ve spent decades reading a newspaper with headlines like YOU PAY FOR ROMA GYPSY PALACES and ‘MUSLIM CONVERT’ BEHEADS WOMAN IN GARDEN, you’re going to have trouble realising that not all Romanian Gypsies or Muslims are evil.

To have any chance of being an interesting, well-informed person, you need to delve into the details, question the validity of what you’re consuming, and engage with a variety of sources. Otherwise you risk becoming a frightened, obnoxious Fox watcher, whose imbecilic ideas are defined by sensationalism and outrage—black and white thinking that is easy to fall into if we allow ourselves.

**

As a species, we have a strong tendency to simplify complexity, so that we can understand. It’s easier to call a Brexiteer a racist than to understand his full rationale, and in this act of black and white thinking, we diminish our humanity and intelligence. To be smart, confident, engaging, and a good decision-maker, the shades of grey are where we’ll spend our time, refusing to fall into the rotten habit of black and white thinking.

References

  1. “EU Referendum Results,” BBC News

Idle Curiosity — Are You An Information Junkie?

Peeking through blinds
Man peeking through blinds with idle curiosity
Photo by Noelle Otto from Pexels

If I catch sight of a dark cloud, I usually check the weather radar for incoming rain. I’m rarely going anywhere—umbrellas and waterproof jackets aren’t a concern, I just really want to know whether it’ll rain, and check the radar with the frequency of an addict. Such is the strength of my idle curiosity, and desire to know whether the clouds on the horizon will wet my local area.

There isn’t a person on earth who could tear me away from my beloved radar. It’s one of countless services that the Internet has bombarded me with, instantly accessible, and satisfying my craving for information. It strengthens and encourages my idle curiosity—the desire to know something that has no use; pointless information that I’m compelled to consume, despite it having no apparent value.

Why are we such junkies for this kind of info?

Jumping back 2,000 million years in our evolutionary timeline, when we were mere bacteria, 5,000 times smaller than a pea¹, the first information we needed was about our environment, which allowed us to move away from danger, and towards food. As bacteria, we got this information by developing an ability to detect chemical changes—our ancestors’ first ever sense. The information we needed back then was a matter of life or death, and as our species evolved into weirder and more complex creatures—sponges, fruit flies, salamanders, shrews, howler monkeys², and more—our senses and brains developed too, allowing us to detect and control our environments with incredible precision, eventually placing us at the top of the food chain.

As a Westerner in the 21st century, I don’t have to worry about being swooped and carried away by a bald eagle, or mauled by a flash of black and orange. My need for critical information has lessened, but the survival needs of my evolutionary ancestors is entrenched in my brain, and so regardless of being a modern human with a respectable job and a taste for Japanese whiskey, I still crave information because for 2,000 million years, information has been a way to predict and control my environment. My species evolved in a world of razor sharp teeth and claws, so I want as much certainty as I can get.

Enter the World Wide Web—an unfathomable amount of information made accessible by Google. Our ancestors never had access to such a treasure of novel curiosities, and when it was thrust into our world in the early 90s, we could hardly believe how incredible it was; how useful and endlessly stimulating it was. But information is only good if it improves our lives in some way, and the dopaminergic reward system in our brain doesn’t account for this distinction. It views information in the same way it views money and food:3 valuable, and worth seeking. Information enhances prediction and decreases uncertainty (helping us become better survivors and procreators), so we’re given a squirt of dopamine to propel us towards the “reward,” regardless of whether the information is valuable.

“Just as our brains like empty calories from junk food, they can overvalue information that makes us feel good but may not be useful—what some may call idle curiosity.”

Professor Ming Hsu, neuroscientist

Now, defining whether a piece of information is valuable is stepping into murky philosophical territory, where subjectivity reigns as king. After god’s timely death, assigning meaning and value has fallen to the individual. Our consciousness allows us to reflect on our decisions, and write our own commandments. What you value now falls within your responsibility, and that includes deciding whether a piece of online information is helping to improve your life, or whether your dopaminergic reward system is luring you into the boundless novelty of the Web, trying to make you “safer,” but making you more anxious.

I look up a ton of information to satisfy my idle curiosity. It isn’t difficult to identify—for example:

  • Checking IMDB to find out where I know an actor from.
  • Checking the social media account of an old colleague to see how well he’s doing compared to me.
  • Obsessively checking my Medium stats.

The list goes on. None of this information helps me. All it does is satisfy my idle curiosity; my burning desire to just know, so that my environment feels a little more predictable and certain. It’s nonsense, of course—the modern equivalent of a Neanderthal constantly peeking out of his cave to check for a tiger, except today, there’s a hell of a lot more for us to check. The reward system in our brain doesn’t know the difference between death and triviality; between tiger and actor. It just seeks, seeks, seeks, driving us towards as much information as possible so that we become masters of our environment. But with boundless curiosities at our fingertips, we instead become senseless slaves whose existence is defined by an appetite for the shallow and thoughtless, unaware that our freedom has been taken from us.

There’s no value in knowing for the sake of knowing. It fragments our attention, scatters our brain, and steals our time, while training us to be mere consumers—lab rats pushing levers for so-called rewards. As we slip into a constant state of foraging, satisfying our idle curiosity over and over, we strengthen the neurons for the behaviour in our brains, making them ever easier and favourable, and replacing neurons once used for challenging and worthwhile tasks such as reading books. Books seem laughable in the age of the Web—why read a book, when I can read a snippet? There’s no longer any inclination for the long-winded or difficult. We’ve plummeted to the abysmal reality of the information junkie, stalking the hollow pages of social media for our next hit of mindless stimulation.

Curiosity is a wonderful thing, helping our species invent technologies that extend and improve our lives. Idle curiosity is a peril that steals our attention and damages our collective intelligence. Our digital addiction has us drowning in a sea of worthless information, still desperate to satisfy our craving even as we gasp for breath.

For a lifejacket, we need only to log off.

References

It Sucks Being Average in a Meritocracy

Dunce cat
Image from Kidkanevil

In 2012, a skinny boy joined the software company that I was working for, ten years my junior, but twenty years smarter. Within a few hours he was suggesting fixes for my lousy code. I felt immediately threatened, resentful but too proud to show it. He probably noticed anyway.

He’s a close friend today. And thank god, such natural forces are better as allies. But I can’t be chums with every clever bastard, and in a meritocracy, where people are rewarded on their intelligence and achievements, the rest of them are my enemies. The office is a carpeted battleground where my disadvantage is apparent. I lose limbs from the skillful feats of my opponents, and my own dismal failures. I’m chopped away bit by bit, reduced to a disabled and bloody stump, little worse than before.

A meritocracy takes the brutal competitiveness of nature and turns the dial up. Perform, or be outperformed. Be smart, or be outsmarted. Was it created by some clever demon who wanted to torment those of average intelligence? I seem destined to struggle in a system that illuminates my mediocrity; abandoned at the foot of a ladder too slippery to climb.

“They are tested again and again … If they have been labelled ‘dunce’ repeatedly they cannot any longer pretend; their image of themselves is more nearly a true, unflattering reflection.”

Michael Young, The Rise of the Meritocracy

I’ve worked with some blockheads over the years, their actions a sharp reminder of my own shortcomings. Once, a guy from our sales team received the contact info for a lead, and dialled 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9, believing it to be their real phone number. I can still feel my cheeks burning on his behalf. He’d learned to gloss over his repeated stupidity with roars of laughter, but his eyes brimmed with sorrow. Floundering was his default mode, like he’d been born into an ill-fitting world, where confidence is as durable as a fart in a hurricane.

In a meritocracy, self-esteem is a precious reserve controlled by our leaders, who like gods, release it at their leisure. It might be granted as a smile, a touch on the shoulder, or an awkward thumbs up, at which point we’re thrust skyward, breaching the altitude of the high-achievers, who are visibly aggrieved, but satisfied as we plummet back to inadequacy—our rightful place. Inadequacy is the destiny of the unexceptional. Gold stars aplenty, just not for us. And as we witness the effortless confidence of our glorious colleagues, every accolade received, every favourable look, every round of applause intensifies our jealousy.

Meritocracy is meant to eliminate the luck of feudalism—success purely on merit. But luck wasn’t removed, just altered. With feudalism, luck is status at birth—kings, nobles, nights, and peasants. In a meritocracy, luck is intelligence at birth. Today’s kings are determined by their brain power, not their castle-shuffling parents. Also, the luck of status remains in a meritocracy: being born into a wealthy family leads to better education, and greater intelligence. Though a meritocracy teaches us that we’re entirely responsible for our own success, it’s still highly influenced by luck.

The system makes my head spin. Every fibre of me protests. I want to clothe myself in black and storm Parliament; seize the scheming pollies by the scruff and demand something better. How can the average Joe be confident in a society that rewards intelligence, and scorns the ordinary? We’re commanded to be exceptional, yet unequipped for the job. Like American Beauty’s Angela Hayes, we realise that there’s nothing worse than being ordinary. It’s failure. Ordinary is the rule, not the exception. Most of us have to live with that.

Social media makes things worse, with its curated streams of colourful perfection, stark against the humdrum grey of our own lives. Every post reinforces our pathetic, flawed existence, until our eyes are flooded green, and heads horned. Here’s a video of a Japanese man with eight perfectly obedient Welsh Corgis, and all I have is a wily cockroach with an appetite for bin scraps. The washboard abs plastered across my news feed are cutting reminders of my own burgeoning paunch. Everyone is exceptional except me.

The solution? Break the rules. A meritocracy is just a game invented by a society that values intelligence, with victory counted in cash. There’s other values to live by: kindness, courage, humour, wisdom, fortitude, temperance, compassion, loyalty, and a ton more. Some degree of intelligence is required to earn a living, but it doesn’t have to be priority number one. If the rat race is exhausting, and you’re too fat and slow to win, there’s other races.

Our worth isn’t defined by our IQ, economic rank, or position in a company. It’s defined by whatever we merit. The beauty of Western freedom is that we don’t have to play by society’s rules. We can write our own, creating a place where status anxiety is quieted to a murmur; where the average Joes and Janes of the world can flourish in a game of their choosing, and realise that there’s nothing shameful in having an unexceptional brain.

Why Boredom Can Be Profoundly Useful

Bulldog
Photo by meredith hunter on Unsplash

Boredom is a state of mind that makes most people horribly uncomfortable. When all occupations temporarily leave us, and we’re left floundering alone with our thoughts, we might bear witness to a creeping sense of lethargy that seems to enclose our very souls, spawning an instinctive desire to liberate ourselves from the grievous tedium of nothingness, away from the intense feelings of apathy, depression, weariness and languor. Escape seems the logical solution to such apparent ghastliness.

Some writers would even have us believe that boredom is the consequence of a flawed character, claiming listlessness to be wholly unacceptable in such a fascinating world as ours:

“There are no uninteresting things, only uninterested people.”

G.K. Chesterton

I’m assuming that Mr. Chesterton was never forced to attend Sunday church as a child, or to spend the day watching Test cricket. Despite existing in a universe comprised of a magnitude of wonder, the shine of its splendour is still easily dulled by the bored human mind, and to classify this as a flaw seems a grave injustice.

For German philosopher Martin Heidegger, to face raw, unadulterated boredom is to stare deep into the foggy abyss, all sense of meaning obliterated, with nothing left but dreaded existential anxiety:

“Profound boredom, drifting here and there in the abysses of our existence like a muffling fog, removes all things and men and oneself along with it into a remarkable indifference”

Martin Heidegger

Boredom has a terrible rap, it seems. But despite being universally maligned, boredom has a multitude of latent benefits, like precious jewels waiting to be unearthed. As with every other emotion that we experience, boredom was developed for an evolutionary benefit: to discover what interests us, and then to motivate us towards it. It serves as a mechanism for seeking new, beneficial experiences. As one sits in a bored funk, mind devoid of focus, appealing ideas may start to emerge from the darkness, and given that doing something seems better than doing nothing, we find ourselves on the receiving end of little zaps of energy, lighting us up with intention. Many significant human advancements may have been the result of bored geniuses.

“Something’s got to happen—that’s the explanation for most human undertakings.”

Jean-Claude Baptiste (Albert Camus—The Fall)

The self-reflection and daydreaming that occurs during periods of boredom are teachers of our own desires, educating us on what we want, and then motivating us to get them. Our instinctive and immediate desire to escape from boredom—whether with social media, television, video games, or whatever else in your escapism arsenal—drowns out these valuable, insightful teachings, in favour of something entertaining, but bereft of meaning. Boredom can force us to start on the difficult and valuable thing that we’ve been putting off for years. It’s an opportunity to tend to our own requirements; to be temporarily introspective, rather than mindless content consumers.

“Boredom makes people keen to engage in activities that they find more meaningful than those at hand.”

Wijnand van Tilburg

The more we employ the numbing tactics of escapism, the greater our alienation from our true selves; those soft whispers that echo in the chambers of our minds.

“Like the trap of quicksand, such thrashing only serves to strengthen the grip of boredom by further alienating us from our desire and passion, which provide compass points for satisfying engagement with life”

John Eastwood, boredom researcher

Few people like to be alone with their thoughts, particularly the difficult ones. But running away only exacerbates them; they grow in your mind like a rapacious virus, goading you into inevitable combat. The beasts that we bury deep within are but temporary prisoners. Every attempt at distraction swells their strength, until they burst forth with a violence that cannot be ignored. Embracing boredom can help you to identify the things that truly bother you, so that you can face them head on, and with a bit of luck, defeat them.

The busyness and distraction habits that we’ve built for ourselves can have a tendency to make our brains feel as though they’re brimming with worthless clutter, and travelling with such speed as to put Speedy Gonzalez to shame. Consuming hundreds of memes, photos and videos with frantic flicks of the thumb might leave you feeling even more stressed than before. By allowing yourself to be bored on occasion, you may find that you’re less tired at the end of the day. Submitting to the odd bout of boredom is like drinking a cup of coffee without the elevated heart-rate.

Having mustered the fortitude to withstand a little boredom, the valuable thing that you decide to do may be suffused with more creativity¹. Innovation often comes from daydreaming, when your mind is in a directionless, wandering state. Only by doing nothing is there room for something to emerge. When we’re in such a state, our brain’s Default Mode Network is activated, a core component of creativity. Incidentally, this network is also activated when taking psychedelics. The empty space of boredom makes room for wondrous creativity.

“So we might try to find that stimulation by our minds wandering and going to someplace in our heads. That is what can stimulate creativity, because once you start daydreaming and allow your mind to wander, you start thinking beyond the conscious and into the subconscious. This process allows different connections to take place. It’s really awesome.”

Sandi Mann

On the surface, being bored seems a waste of our precious time; a devilish rascal to be avoided at all cost. But digging a little deeper reveals the truth: it’s a driving force of creative thinking, allows golden moments of self-reflection, and compels us towards what we value. Escaping into the glow of a screen while sucking our thumbs for comfort isn’t necessarily the best option. By relenting to our boredom, we may just stumble onto something important.

“When hit by boredom, let yourself be crushed by it; submerge, hit bottom. In general, with things unpleasant, the rule is: The sooner you hit bottom, the faster you surface. The idea here is to exact a full look at the worst. The reason boredom deserves such scrutiny is that it represents pure, undiluted time in all its repetitive, redundant, monotonous splendour.

Boredom is your window on the properties of time that one tends to ignore to the likely peril of one’s mental equilibrium. It is your window on time’s infinity. Once this window opens, don’t try to shut it; on the contrary, throw it wide open.”

 Joseph Brodsky

References

  1. Peter Enticott, ‘What does boredom to do your brain‘, Deakin University

The One Reason to Complain

Angry cat
Image from Pixabay

Complaining is mostly a toxic behaviour. Many of us can bear witness to the gloominess that washes over us when we’re in the company of a serial whiner—we’d tear down walls to escape the situation. Every self-righteous word seems to vanquish a little bit of your soul. Suggesting a fix for the thing being complained about is futile, because that isn’t the desired outcome. Incessant whiners just want to whine, making the mustering of our own empathy nigh on impossible. People of this kind are often infected with deep-seated bitterness—their lives don’t match their expectations, and instead of having the courage to fix what’s bothering them, they relinquish the responsibility and complain instead. It’s much easier, after all.Th

There’s lots of reasons that people complain, with most them being counterproductive to our mental health. For many of us, the hardest one to resist is physical pain. Hurting is horrible, and it comes with a tendency to vocalise the experience, whether it be groaning, grunting, or divulging to our partner in monotonous detail about every unpleasant sensation. Emotional pain is just as extreme, and carries similar effects. Others may grumble for its bonding power—many a friendship has been forged in the fires of Mount Gloom; our judging and whining is met with nodding heads, and we become a little bit closer. We simply can’t believe that so and so would do such an awful thing, and by stating this fact, we’re elevating ourselves above them, dismissing the possibility that we’d ever act in such an animalistic way. Nothing is more self-congratulatory than a high horse. We’re recruiting an army of like-minded whiners—together we can set this crooked world straight!

Being spoiled is another major factor. A hungover barista forgot to put chocolate sprinkles on our cappuccino, and we can’t find the words to express how much of an idiot he is. He has one job to do. Later on our flight is delayed by an hour, and it’s literally the worst thing to happen to anyone, ever. Never mind the fact that air travel is one of the greatest of human inventions, and we’re incredibly fortunate to have it. This type of spoiled demeanour is often paired with a lack of control, fuelled by our desire to direct everything so that it works out exactly as we want it to. The instant our expectations aren’t met, a complaint flies from our lips.

Uncomfortable silences can also act as complaint enticers. If you’re with friends and an extended spell of silence falls over the group, it’s common for someone to whine or gossip about something in order to extinguish the awkwardness, particularly for older people, who tend to mop up complaints like leftover gravy. Whining feels good—it’s infinitely preferable to the tension of silence. Every complaint strengthens the neural pathways dedicated to complaining, making the road more likely to be travelled. Before you know it, you could be a serial whiner.

So should complaining be avoided at all costs? Not entirely. We all experience strong negative feelings from time to time, and bottling them up isn’t a good strategy. You may be depressed about your tedious career, and need to talk about it with your partner. If we’re to retain our sanity, we absolutely must talk about such things. Our position the most important consideration— are we playing the role of the victim? The poor helpless individual who can’t get ahead in life no matter what we do? Or are we venting our frustrations in order to make things clearer to ourselves, and our partners? Are we having a conversation which leads us down the path to a solution? If you’re complaining about something and you have no desire to improve it (or it’s outside of your control), your whining will probably make you feel worse in the long run. The next time it pops into your head, you’ll be more likely to complain about it again, because you’ve trained yourself to do so. 

The next time you catch yourself opening your mouth to complain about something, you might want to consider your position. Do you actually want to fix what you’re whining about? Or are you just assuming the role of a whimpering victim? The difference is crucial.

“See if you can catch yourself complaining, in either speech or thought, about a situation you find yourself in, what other people do or say, your surroundings, your life situation, even the weather. To complain is always nonacceptance of what is. It invariably carries an unconscious negative charge. When you complain, you make yourself into a victim. When you speak out, you are in your power. So change the situation by taking action or by speaking out if necessary or possible; leave the situation or accept it. All else is madness.” 

Eckhart Tolle

The Magical Power of Small Talk

Small talk
Image from Preply

Throw unacquainted humans into a close-knit social gathering, and observe the plentiful, awkward small talk. Though often uncomfortable, such events can be important to one’s social life, so we must trudge through them, in the hope that we’ll exit the building having skilfully skimmed the surface with our conversation, never diving too deep, committing social taboos, or generally upsetting people with overly-intimate topics.

Small talk has a reputation for being banal, and for good reason. Pointing out the fact that it’s raining seems as ridiculous as pointing out the fact that you have a head—you’re fully aware of both things, and don’t require an outsider to confirm them. But despite being obvious and often painfully dull, small talk has an important role to play, allowing us to leap over a number of social obstacles towards improved, meaningful interaction.

“It would seem that the variability of the weather was purposely devised to furnish mankind with unfailing material for conversation.”

Emily Post, Etiquette

Humans can be sensitive souls. We each have our boundaries and lists of potential upsets, which when breached, cause us to either gently back away to an alternative position in the room, or become angry at the infraction. Small talk is first and foremost a way to test the waters with an unfamiliar person, so that you may better understand their temperament. When finding yourself positioned closely to a person who you know little about, it’s much safer to point out the rain-soaked sky than to launch into a political tirade about your views on transgender pronouns. Until you know the person more intimately, heavier topics should probably be kept under wraps, lest you find yourself on the receiving end of a cold, offended stare.

“[Small talk is] the human equivalent of dogs sniffing butts.”

Intrapersona on the Philosophy Forum

Though trivial, small talk still has great revelatory power. When talking with fellow humans, much of our soul is exposed through non-verbal communication, despite our fear of being vulnerable. A response to “how was your weekend” can unveil much about the person’s character. The length of their response might indicate their level of confidence; the tone in their voice an indication of friendliness; their slightly lowered head–as if protecting themselves from attack—a exposé of a regrettable history of bullying. As a species we’re excellent communicators, and though small talk might seem bland, it’s the ideal way to learn about a person with who you’re uninformed.

As more of a person’s character is uncovered, we have the insight needed to determine whether to broach more meaningful topics—the things that we actually want to talk about. Few of us have passion for banal small talk; as soon as we understand someone more intimately, our inclination is to talk about subjects that are meaningful; questions that latch onto our soul and don’t let go. Conversation is a great educator, and deep conversation creates lasting bonds with our fellow humans, forging precious friendships that paint our lives with vibrant colour. Such friendships begin with small talk.

“What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies.”

Aristotle

We cannot conceive of a new person fully without modest first steps; the necessary, cautious introduction to somebody’s soul. Great friendships have small beginnings— profundity is preceded by much insipid natter, whether it be about the city-darkening rainclouds, the football results from the weekend, or the latest remarkable idiocy from Donald. Shallow topics are an invaluable stepping stone to greater things.

“Thomas’s mistake, like most of the behavior he leaked into the world, had been avoidable: to join another human being in a situation that virtually demanded unscripted, spontaneous conversation, and thus to risk total moral and emotional dissolution. Death by conversation, and all that.”

Ben Marcus, Leaving the Sea

Small talk is also a way to communicate that you’re interested in somebody—idle chat that reveals a desire to understand the person a little better. This may be painless for an extrovert, but for those crippled with shyness, the process can be formidable. In light of the importance of friendship and meaningful connection, those of us naturally blessed with confidence should always make the effort with introverts, despite them often coming across as coldly closed-off. Underneath the restrained exterior is a lion wanting to roar.

Then there’s awkward silence to consider, a vacuum so dreaded that we’ll say anything to fill it, sometimes with amusing consequences:

“Have you always had a moustache?”

Abigail’s Party

We abhor silence around others because it seems to communicate the following: I’m not interested in what you have to say. When we’re thrust into a cramped situation with another human being, with nothing else to entertain us, not saying anything seems rude. We’re making a conscious choice to stay silent, and that decision can be interpreted as antipathy, or even animosity, towards the other person. Deep down we all want to be liked, and to be surrounded by caring friends. Small talk provides the initial steps towards this goal. Our hopeless, 21st-century addiction to mobile phones acts as a deadly poison to friendship-forming—it’s so much easier to assume the role of an unsociable screen-zombie, staring blankly at our devices instead of having the courage to ask about somebody’s day.

For some people, small talk seems the summit of their capability; a result of a lack of education, exploration, and daring in their lives. Progressing to meaningful topics is impossible if you aren’t aware of them. We need to read books from insightful authors; consume penetrating, thoughtful YouTube videos, and board sky-bound Airbuses towards remote and exotic destinations, if we want our conversation and personality to progress past mundanity. Rarely does Facebook, Instagram, or any other insipid social media platform offer us the content we need to become more intriguing.

“He was permanently impressed by the most irrelevant banalities and impossible to impress with real novelty, meaning, or conflict. And he was too moronic to be properly self-loathing–so it was my duty to loathe him instead.”

Jonathan Lethem, Motherless Brooklyn

Most of us become guarded when encountering unfamiliar people, in order to protect ourselves from hurt. Their personality is obscure from the outset, and though there may be potential for a deep, meaningful relationship, until we know them better, we keep them at a safe distance. Small talk offers us the means to be necessarily vulnerable, at a slower, more agreeable pace. It’s the precursor to treasured human connection. So the next time you find yourself in close proximity with an unfamiliar person, commenting on the weather might be one of the most valuable things that you can do.

Why Longing For The Weekend Can Make You Unhappy

Watching the clock

weekend-funny.jpgIllustration by Roberto Mangosi

It’s almost the weekend.

Those words can be heard from legions of employees across the globe, from colourless, drab offices, to arse-crack abundant construction sites. They’re often responded to with nodding, relieved heads, as though this week of miserable servitude has been more torturous than a spell at Auschwitz. Just one more day of the unassailable grind, and we’ll be blessed with meadow-prancing freedom.

It’s almost the weekend is another way of saying our lives are tough, and we need a break; a declaration that resonates for many people. Adult human life – with obligations to shelter, clothe and feed ourselves – can feel depressingly arduous, so the weekend becomes a highly anticipated hiatus in which we massage away the stresses of full-time employment. Weekends were invented for this reason, and help to keep us an acceptable amount of sane.

There’s nothing wrong with enjoying the respite of Saturday and Sunday, but the commonplace utterance of it’s almost the weekend, while seemingly innocuous, is a damaging attitude to take. Whenever we make this proclamation, or find ourselves on its receiving end, we’re openly stating that we’re displeased about the time we spend at work, and that we cannot wait for it to be over. While this may be true, it’s reinforcing the idea that employment is something to be avoided at all costs, further tarnishing our attitude towards a mandatory practice in which we’ll spend the majority of our time on Earth. The more we whine about something, the worse it becomes in our minds. It’s almost the weekend is just a sorrowful, victim-like whinge, which serves to strengthen the idea that employment is an abomination, and that we should all be able to live in the woods like daisy-wielding, unwashed hippies. Until the boffins of this world construct super-robots who can safely do our bidding, or unless you’ve decided to spend your life shamelessly sponging off the government, work isn’t going anywhere soon. The woeful sufferer who oozes it’s almost the weekend commands respect from nobody, themselves least of all. It’s a defensive, miserable attitude in which life just isn’t fair.

You might have a truly dreadful job, or work in a toxic environment with psychotic, scarlett-faced managers who would remedy you with a cane if they could. If you’re in fortunate enough circumstances, dusting off your CV is an obvious response to hating your work. It’s certainly easier to be a forlorn coward, continuing on with your sorrowful employment while meekly declaring that it’s almost the weekend, but this does nothing to better your situation.

If you have responsibilities that forbid you from finding superior employment, or are restricted to a tiny pool of jobs, then for the time being the situation is out of your control. Similarly to those with fewer restrictions, dismal utterances of it’s almost the weekend are doing nothing but reinforcing your role as a deplorable victim, whose sufferings are worsened by the role you’ve assumed.

It’s almost the weekend is a desire to escape from your life, to flee from an uncomfortable situation instead of valiantly confronting it. We can learn a great deal from pain and discomfort; taking flight the moment it appears is relinquishing an opportunity for personal growth, in which valuable lessons may be unearthed. Railing against wretched situations (such as abuse) is required in order to effect change, but most of the time it’s better to say yes to the happenings of our lives. Escapism is an outright rejection of the present moment, the eternally ongoing instant in which we all live. It’s almost the weekend is a futile attempt to break away from the inescapable now, into a future that only exists as an ethereal concept in our brains. While there’s nothing wrong with occasionally looking forward to something, consistent mental projections of the future, and how grand it would be when we finally have some relief from the difficulties of the present, is no existence at all. It’s wishing our lives away until we finally reach our expiration date, at which point we might wonder why the hell we didn’t actually live.

“Tomorrow and plans for tomorrow can have no significance at all unless you are in full contact with the reality of the present, since it is in the present and only in the present that you live. There is no other reality than present reality, so that, even if one were to live for endless ages, to live for the future would be to miss the point everlastingly.” —Alan Watts

In addition to dragging you downwards, it’s almost the weekend is dreadfully boring. You could be asking your colleagues about their weekend away with their family, or harmlessly teasing them about their obvious coffee addiction. Whining about the fact that it’s almost the weekend will earn you few friends, which are a commodity more valuable than gold.

Surviving can be tough; we all have to earn our keep. There’s a choice to make when it comes to our mandatory employment – bristle and complain about it with utterances of it’s almost the weekend, escaping into a future that doesn’t technically exist, or face your hardships head on with heroic courage and fortitude. Only the latter can bolster your chances of happiness and fulfilment.

Why White Lies Aren’t as Innocent as You Might Think

Melted pinocchio
Image from postanonym

If somebody you dislike invites you to their house for drinks, is it morally acceptable to blankly refuse, ruthlessly stomping all over their feelings by doing so?

Lying is a near-universal sin among humans. As selfish animals for which some kind of personal gain is usually the priority, society would cease to function if nobody told each other the truth. Trade agreements would fail, employment would become untenable, and personal relationships would crumble like a squeezed croissant.

It simply isn’t possible to get along with each other unless we’re honest. And yet, white lies—those little deceptions that are usually for the sake of the recipient’s feelings—are considered by many as an appropriate and just action. Why upset someone unnecessarily when we can express a small white fib?

Though seemingly innocuous, white lies can be equally as insidious as their black counterparts, for a number of reasons.

Erosion of trust

“I’m not upset that you lied to me, I’m upset that from now on I can’t believe you.”

Friedrich Nietzsche

Trust is the foundation of all human relationships, which when taken away, totters like an alcoholic during a bender, heading for an inevitable crash.

Any kind of lie, white or otherwise, comes with a risk of being discovered. If that happens, trust is diminished, weakening the relationship. Having a conversation with somebody after you’ve found out that they’ve lied about something is unpleasant, and soon enough, you probably won’t want them around at all. Every word that leaves their lips has become tinged with doubt; every action a little more questionable. Their once stellar credibility has been darkened.

Over time, lying destroys human connection, even when acted out of supposed beneficence. Every time you tell an obvious white lie, the person is forced to reevaluate how trustworthy you are, causing serious damage to the relationship.

While you may not want to form a relationship with certain people, lying to them is still a bad idea because they might squeal to others about your lack of authenticity, tarnishing your reputation. It’s tempting to make up a false excuse in response to the unwanted drinks invite mentioned above, but if the little white lie is recognised, your good social standing may be at risk, which is an absolute requirement for survival in our socially-driven species.

You’re depriving people of the truth

White lies can be imbued with arrogance. What makes you so confident that the recipient of the lie can’t handle the truth? Deceit takes away their freedom to make an informed decision about the matter concerned—it’s hardly fair that you make that decision for them, assuming the role of an unrequested parental figure. Their choice may be entirely different to yours.

As naturally subjective creatures, our understanding of the truth isn’t always accurate, but it’s a damn-sight closer to the truth than a lie. Though white lies can have the benefit of preventing hurt feelings, as adults we should be fully aware that life is tough, and sometimes pain is required in order to learn and grow. Lying to protect someone’s feelings is treating them like a child who doesn’t have the mental capacity to deal with adversity.

In addition to this, a person who discovers that they’ve been lied to might start regarding themselves as someone who doesn’t deserve the truth, instilling a destructive unworthiness in which they doubt their own ability to make decisions.

Lies persist

“If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.”

Mark Twain

“No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar”

Abraham Lincoln

White lies aren’t told and then conveniently forgotten. They remain for a lifetime. If you’re a consistent white liar, you’d better have an amazing memory, otherwise you’ll eventually be caught. Having to quickly remember and repeat lies can be a stressful experience; worse still, more lies may be needed in order to support the original, creating a gargantuan, sticky web that requires more and more work to maintain. Telling the truth requires none of this.

You’re acting like a fraud

“Every liar says the opposite of what he thinks in his heart, with purpose to deceive.”

Saint Augustine, The Enchiridon

We each have our desires and preferences, and going against them feels inherently wrong. Truth, on the other hand, is like swimming with the current. Forgoing a white lie can be undoubtedly uncomfortable, but at least you’re acting in the way that is most agreeable to you; in a manner that is 100% you.

The soul that resides in your fleshy ensemble is beautifully unique, giving rise to one-of-a-kind expression and behaviour. Lies impede your originality, slowly turning you into a boring conformist, living a life that everyone else is happy with aside from you.

Lying also burdens us with cognitive dissonance, that disagreeable feeling we get when our actions don’t match our beliefs. Routine liars are likely to experience this unnecessary, guilt-ridden discomfort whenever they lie, with each deceitful sentence being accompanied by a jolly good bit of mental self-flagellation.

Self corruption

Bad habits are easily formed. One small white lie, seemingly harmless, leads to another white lie, eventually assembling an unstoppable 2-tonne snowball of destructive deceit. Indulging in wrong-doing becomes quickly comfortable, making other types of immoral behaviour effortless. Slowly but surely, your once grand character is warped into that of an unloveable scoundrel, with whom nobody wants to take on a lovely dinner date.

We’re being selfish

Though lying is often distressing, telling white lies can also be extremely uncomfortable, because you’re revealing a potentially unpleasant truth to the recipient. We might selfishly decide that we’re prefer the discomfort of the lie over the discomfort of the truth.

The truth might also have drastic, life-changing consequences, which we’re not willing to undertake. Consider the wife who has long fallen out of love with her husband, yet continues to declare her love for him daily, because she doesn’t want to destroy his feelings or face the reality of a painful divorce. Though this is perhaps a little extreme to be classified as a white lie, some part of the deception is to protect the husband’s feelings, while deterring an agonising breakup. She’s selfishly lying in order to achieve her own purpose.

Society suffers

Honesty is the glue that holds society together, and lying the crowbar that can pry it apart. We learn what’s acceptable from others, so each lie becomes tacit approval to copy the behaviour. With enough people lying, nobody can truly trust anyone, and society crumbles into non-cooperative anarchy, Mad Max style.

Given the complexity of our world, it can also be difficult to predict the full effects of a lie. Every situation contains a plethora of factors and outcomes that cannot be determined and calculated by our paltry brains. A small white lie might result in detrimental long-term effects that can’t possibly be guessed.

**

Lying, white or otherwise, can have far-reaching and devastating effects on our lives. The only time that lying is acceptable is to deter a serious, immediate threat to somebody’s life, as when an axe-murderer asks whether you’re hiding their intended victim, or when a ledge-skirting, suicidal stockbroker asks you whether their life is worth living. Aside from these extreme and (hopefully) rare situations, it’s better to tell the often uncomfortable truth.

White lies are a short-lived solution, with the potential to diminish your integrity, and the integrity of society as a whole. Honesty, though difficult and requiring a good deal of courage, is truly the best policy.

The demon of task-switching

Smile drawn

sydney-sims-519706-unsplashPhoto by Sydney Sims on Unsplash

Ask someone how their work day is going, and they’ll probably tell you that they’re busy. It’s the default small-talk answer; a less boastful way of saying that they’re a productive, valuable employee, despite the fact that they constantly have Messenger discreetly open on their screen. The busyness claim isn’t necessarily a lie, many of us genuinely feel this frantic sense of rushing throughout the day, as though there aren’t enough hours to accomplish what’s important. We often leave the office with a frazzled brain, with Netflix and the warmth of our partner as the only remedies that can haul us from the brink, until morning rolls around and we have to go through the same stressful process again. If Sisyphus happens to be a colleague of yours, he’ll be watching on with mournful, comprehending eyes.

Busyness does not equate to productivity, not by a long shot. We’ve all had unquestionably busy days, and felt like we’ve achieved nothing. Productivity is burdened by a nefarious snake lurking in the shadows, which strikes regularly and with great force – distraction. It’s a defining 21st century problem, with entire industries dedicated to seizing your attention and holding onto it for as long as possible. We have smart phones; smart TVs, smart watches; flashing and buzzing with alluring notifications that are almost impossible to ignore. How can you be expected to maintain your focus on what’s important when your wrist is constantly purring at you? Forget about holding an engaging, valuable conservation with another human if you both have your phones on the table – you’re communicating that the most important thing in your bubble is the sinful black device that you’re secretly praying will light up, to distract you from the uncomfortableness of human interaction. Reading a message on your phone is less awkward than trying to adequately communicate with the person sitting opposite you, but the latter is a profoundly more effective way to interact, because it includes vocal tone, and body language. Not only are the technological distractions of our era making us less productive, they’re fucking with our ability to communicate as well.

Being distracted/busy is easier than being productive, because often, the important work that we need to get done is challenging. The gentle rumble of our phones, the emails, or the Slack notifications are greatly anticipated, as it means we don’t have to feel dumb anymore, even for the briefest moment. Those few seconds of distraction add up to hours over the course of the day, and according to experts, the incessant context-switching might be stealing away almost half of your work day. Another study returned less drastic results – up to a quarter of your productive time. Each content-switch squanders a measurable amount of energy reserves, and damages your competency for the next task, especially if it’s a complex one. One experiment found that constant online distractions can be as damaging to your intelligence as missing an entire night’s sleep, or being a regular marijuana smoker, a staggering find. There’s also the flow state to consider – that elusive condition of getting into the zone, where your productivity reaches terrific peaks. You’ll never attain this state of mind without extended focus – it’ll take you 12 minutes to re-enter it, after every distraction. You’re depriving yourself of a bucketload of fulfilment if you continue to live a life of interminable task-switching. Science clearly tells us that we cannot physically multi-task – all we’re doing is quickly switching between work, and the moments that it takes our brains to re-align add up to precious hours. Personally, on days when I’ve been particularly distracted, I find that I’m more tired and infinity more irritable in the evening, to the chagrin of my suffering girlfriend.

If you’re exhausted from having your attention constantly and selfishly yanked away from you, try some of the following tips.

Do just one thing at a time. The more you task-switch, the more tired and stressed you’ll feel, in addition to being a great-deal less effective throughout the course of the day. Do whatever it takes to maintain your focus on a single thing, then move onto the next once done.

Turn off your notifications. This isn’t as traumatising as you might expect – whatever your colleagues are messaging you about can probably wait for a few hours, and your Facebook notifications can wait for a fucking eternity if you know what’s good for you.

Be proactive, not reactive. You don’t have to read every notification or respond to every message instantly. Your colleagues and friends aren’t going to cast you out like the heinous village rapist. Be proactive by taking some time at the start of each day to write up a list of what’s important to you, and set allocated periods for stuff like emails/messages. If you’re brave enough to resist the dopamine-fuelled buzz of distraction, you’ll likely achieve many great things.

Take the occasional 15-minute break. Studies have found that people who do this are more productive. You might consider adopting the Pomodoro technique, a productivity and time-management tool that can yield fantastic results. There’s free apps out there specifically for this method of working.

Invest in some good quality, noise-cancelling headphones. People are fucking distracting, and we’re just as blameworthy because we often want to be distracted. Drown out your pesky colleagues with some beautifully ambient sounds. Personally, my favourite is Rain on a Tent, it’s like camping and working at the same time. While you have your headphones on, politely ask your colleagues not to distract you.

Practice mindfulness. This may as well be a technique from the gods, it’s espoused by medical professionals, productivity gurus, health coaches, and every other well-being related profession the world over. All you really need to do is sit still every day for 15 minutes, and try to retain your focus on your breathing. Eventually, you’ll learn to recognise when your brain has wandered off, and to bring your focus back to what’s important. Meditation isn’t some mystical practice performed by orange-clad ninja monks, it’s a fantastically useful tool for everybody to use. There’s a solid reason for its popularity of late.

**

You can reclaim a good chunk of time that has been stolen by distractive task-switching, and become a much more efficient and fulfilled chimp. Hold a steady hand up to all those who would distract you, and take your happiness to new heights.

**

Enjoy this blog? Please share it using the buttons below, it’s a massive help 🙂

The positives of embarrassment

Embarrassed man

1_s7mWD-jN__vjdg_XufqYfwBy Omar Alnahi on Pexels

At some point in our lives, every one of us has done something so shudderingly embarrassing that we’d pay a good sum of money to reverse time and change it. Maybe you were the kid who called your teacher “mum” at school, and the sound of merciless laughter still rings in your ears today. Perhaps you completely lost your train of thought while speaking publicly, and revealed yourself as the idiot that your peers always knew you were. Maybe it was a wardrobe malfunction, in which a smidgeon of scrote was found delicately peeking through your unzipped fly.

Whatever the situation, being embarrassed fucking sucks, and the fear of experiencing such a situation influences our behaviour in negative ways. We avoid a range of potentially embarrassing situations, from something highly risky such as public speaking, to less dangerous circumstances like putting an unorthodox idea forward to our colleagues. Visual stories of what could go wrong appear in the back of our minds, zapping the courage that we need to act, and killing promising opportunities.

The evolutionary purpose of embarrassment is to clearly display regret to the people around us. We do something embarrassing, involuntarily reveal the emotion, and this communicates our repentance. If we committed a social-taboo and didn’t show embarrassment, our audience might think us heartless. As with every other emotion that we experience, embarrassment is incredibly useful. The problem occurs when our devlish, overzealous foresight causes us to avoid potentially embarrassing situations, which often contain the possibility of personal growth. We need to be vulnerable in order to live a fulfilling live. If you never put yourself out there, how will you ever achieve anything?

“Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it. Embracing our vulnerabilities is risky but not nearly as dangerous as giving up on love and belonging and joy—the experiences that make us the most vulnerable. Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light.” ― Brene Brown

Embarrassment is solely about being accepted in our social group, but ironically, those of us who get embarrassed are liable to be liked and trusted by others, making embarrassment a powerful social glue. Even though you may feel like a complete imbecile when you inevitably mix up your words while publicly speaking, your audience will be developing an increased appreciation for you, because vulnerability is fundamentally human and loveable. Nobody wants to be friends with a cold, stand-offish android who rarely reveals emotion, let alone gets embarrassed. Vulnerability is key to fitting in with your social group. We might imagine everyone maliciously sniggering at our embarrassing faux pas, but it’s actually making you more likeable.

“I’ve been embarrassing myself since about birth.”― Phil Lester

We worry so much about fitting in that we shuck and jive our way through life, making more laughable excuses than a schoolboy truant. Sure, there’ll be times when you take a risk and end up looking a fool, but your determination and fortitude will be strengthened, with your peers appreciating you a little more. Everyone makes embarrassing mistakes, we just need to learn how to accept them with grace, and remind ourselves that they’re necessary hazards on the road to improvement.

Don’t let the fear of embarrassment dictate your actions, even if you do fuck up, you’re still winning.

**

Enjoy this blog? Please share it using the buttons below, it’s a massive help 🙂