Anti-fragile

The concept of fragility and anti-fragility is useful for looking candidly at ourselves and our relationships with others, and thereby at least indirectly enhancing deep happiness. In the prior two posts I introduced the framework and showed fragility’s connection to us at the personal level. In this one I want to talk more about anti-fragility and why it is beneficial for us to understand and acquire, and how we might do so. But, first, let me review emotional fragility a bit. 

The fragile person has an excessive investment of focus, energy and emotion in a particular desired state, one that MUST happen. This needful state could involve a job, idea, person, car, or vacation. Or it could be the “fulfillment” of a deep personal need, such as to be right or to be certain. Or it could be really simple---irritation at the computer not working or needing to overwhelm someone who disagrees with us. These fragile states pop in and out constantly through the day, temporarily knocking us off balance, and causing suffering for us and those around us.  

Anti-fragility does not mean being unaffected by challenges, disruptions, and disappointments. The world often intrudes in ways that upset us, and we cannot plan for these or avoid them. These intrusions can cause fear, anger, anxiety, uncertainty and a host of other emotions, normal reactions to unanticipated or undesirable events or other people’s behavior. The difference between a fragile person and an anti-fragile one is the reaction to the stressor.  

Anti-fragility is also not necessarily about being robust, which Taleb, the author of Anti-fragile, says is being impervious to injury. A ceramic cup is fragile to rough handling and very fragile to falling on concrete. A steel cup is not at all fragile to the same concrete; it is robust.  For humans, a bit of robustness is not a bad thing unless it gets in the way of being anti-fragile, as it would with an excessive desire to “armor-up” to protect us from experiencing stressors. Such an effort actually causes greater fragility. Healthy robustness and anti-fragility arise as we learn (grow) how to take hits without being knocked off balance.  

A key aspect to developing anti-fragility is accepting stressors as information that encourages us to see things differently. Each disappointment, set-back, or interaction with a disagreeable person is a chance to practice our new understanding of how stressors impact us, and how we can better respond to them. Each is a chance to grow, to achieve equanimity and inner harmony, the “rewards” for understanding our fragility and acting to reduce that every day. And, I cannot over-emphasize the need for continued practice, forever.  

What are some characteristics that we could adopt that will help becoming more anti-fragile? The most important is self awareness---“… having a clear perception of your personality, including strengths, weaknesses, thoughts, beliefs, motivation, and emotions.” (ref:pathwaytohappiness.com) Without self awareness, there is almost no possibility of becoming a truly emotionally healthy person. More self awareness equals more anti-fragility. 

Curiosity is also vital because without it we will not examine our behavior and its adverse outcomes. Taleb says that curiosity is anti-fragile because through it we come to know and understand more about ourselves and the world. As we inquire, we become reservoirs of options that we may need in case of a stressor, which can often be as simple as someone disagreeing with us on whether Ayn Rand’s philosophy has any merit to it. Simply, the more options we have in dealing with a stressor, the more likely we are to respond healthily to it. As George Leonard said in his superb book, The Way of Aikido, “…the health of an individual…is generally directly proportionate to the number of perceived options at (his) command.” Options are anti-fragile. 

A very simple example regarding options and their benefit: imagine another car cuts me off, and I get angry, in the past my usual emotional default when things don’t go right. I have no options, and am clearly fragile to the situation. I am off balance. But what happens if I have options, such as intellectually analyzing (without judgment) what the driver did, extending compassion to that person, or ignoring the whole thing? Clearly my path to greater anti-fragility is enhanced by having these options. 

Fearlessness is clearly a vital ingredient in developing anti-fragility. Lacking it, any curiosity and self-awareness will be short-circuited. Fear may be the largest and most serious hurdle that we have to overcome in the search for greater emotional health, for greater anti-fragility. 

As I have noted in other posts, the BIG problem with acquiring the anti-fragile characteristics (or others related to changes in behavior) is that we are legends in our own minds, having constructed positive, and often false, stories about who we are and how we interact with others. I know any number of folks who are sure they are self aware, when their actions clearly indicate the opposite. And the same is true of being curious and fearless. Thus, while many might agree that the characteristics I describe are helpful, such folks are unlikely to make much progress in developing them. The blindness or denial costs them---there is no free lunch in trying to make ourselves what we are not. Being fragile has a price. As George Friedman says in his fine book, Flashpoints, “There is always a price, and nothing is more dangerous than not knowing what the price is, except perhaps not wanting to know.” 

Creating more anti-fragility is wise for at least two reasons. One of those, the possibility of growing from stressors and uncertainty, I have already mentioned. The other is that anti-fragility reduces our inappropriate emotional or dependence on things, including ideas, people and events, and thus assists us in living a more harmonious life.

 

 

Personal Fragility

In the prior post I opened the discussion of anti-fragility and fragility, focusing for the most part on large entities like nations and economies. In this post I want to address how the framework tells us why we as individuals (and small groups like families) are fragile. The next post will continue the discussion and suggest how we might become more anti-fragile and what that means for us and for those around us. 

We know that a system or organism is anti-fragile if it can grow or improve when subjected to certain types of shocks or stressors. Being fragile, on the other hand, refers to an entity that responds poorly to stressors or disruptions. We also know that entities (humans for this post) can be anti-fragile in one arena and fragile in another, and can be either in degrees. A person might be anti-fragile toward investment disruptions because she has spread her wealth over a wide number and types of financial opportunities, possibly including gold under the bed. But she might be fragile in her relationships with co-workers because she has a high need to be liked. I am some degree less fragile to my anger than I was before I started working on the issue. But at a deeper level this really means that I am less fragile to not getting my way, which is what much anger is all about, protestations of angry people to the contrary notwithstanding. 

What does it mean to have personal fragility? As mentioned, mostly it is being harmed and possibly diminished by challenges from people or events. This harm arises mainly from our need to have things work exactly as we want them to. Since nature generally does not oblige, we suffer, and we generally inflict that on others.  

Where does this fragility come from? Two big sources are the views, beliefs and attitudes we have about ourselves and the world, and our emotional needs. As I have mentioned in previous posts, some views we have about ourselves, such as that we are objective, fair, inclusive, compassionate and tolerant, may well be partially or totally false. Views about the world are often similarly dubious, such as that there is a single and simple Answer to everything; that humans are infinitely perfectible; that things can be seen and understood solely in black and white terms; or that a lot of or no government will solve all societal problems. These simplistic nostrums clearly make a person or group fragile. Even if these views are not outright wrong (I happen to think they are), they are at best incomplete. Held as correct or complete when they are neither pushes the one holding them into fragility because reality will win out, one way or the other. 

Personal needs are also a huge factor in our fragility. People with high emotional needs are very likely to be fragile since they MUST have a certain outcome in stressful  situations, and respond unhealthily if they do not get it. Examples of these include the need to be right, for certainty, to win, to be loved, to precipitate conflict, to be secure, for order, to control, to be appreciated, or to be admired. At some level we all have needs like this, but they only become problematic beyond a certain point, different for each person---and for those who think they have no such needs, it’s best to lie down until the thought goes away. This needful state dictates that only one outcome is possible---a fulfillment of the need. But since the need is primarily the result of inner emptiness, it can never be fulfilled from outside. It is insatiable. For that reason, absenting great personal inner work or therapy, the person’s futile efforts never cease. Fragility is “institutionalized.

 

For those with high personal needs, each encounter with a stressor brings emotional upset, especially if it is from another person. I know a very bright and charming man whose sense of self is so delicate that he is endlessly on the look-out for slights and criticisms, most of which he manufactures. He is fragile to his very high need for validation and that creates unpleasantness in interactions with others. His need, like all such, is based on fear (terror?), in this case that someone will call into question who he is, which in his view they do constantly with their “insults.” 

Beyond the big fragility-inducing aspects such as false beliefs and major needs, simple everyday upsets are the main contributors to fragility. Some examples: The man in the market check-out line who wants to chat with the checker, distracting her. The driver who cuts you off. The spouse who sulks whenever he is offended. The diner near you whose voice could not get any louder if she were screaming. The friend who, in any discussion, liberally uses sarcasm. The person who, under the guise of righteousness, allows his anger to dictate his responses. A person who uses the counter-punch technique to vanquish others. The guilt-tripper. The list is endless, but the point is clear. We will encounter situations like this all the time, and if we respond poorly to them we have fragilized ourselves, and we pay the price. 

But there is more to these stories. People acting in these ways are clearly fragile themselves as they respond badly to difference or to upset, or who act in ways that ignore the well-being of others (loud diner). They all want something that they think or feel they can only get if they misbehave, often using the highly manipulative techniques mentioned above. Of course, there is no conscious recognition of this misbehavior. If there were, the positive stories they tell themselves would prove false, and that is unacceptable. 

This is not to say that all emotional upset indicates chronic fragility. Situational fragility can often be perfectly normal and even healthy. The loss of a loved one does not call for stoic pretending that all is well. Not feeling loss and great sadness is unhealthy, and, paradoxically, an indication of fragility. 

As we saw in the last post, fragility is exportable. In the personal realm responding badly to those acting inappropriately, as cited above, is illustrative. A particularly interesting example is raising children. Over-protective parents raise fragile children, ones who cannot deal well with distress or setbacks, whether those are physical, emotional or intellectual. Less protective parents raise children to be anti-fragile by ensuring that those children experience and learn from normal life challenges and disappointments. The latter are anti-fragile because they have reserves of energy and response (options) that take into account often difficult situations that they might experience. The fragile children have no such reserves.  

The challenging thing for parents is that they have to accept or even encourage in their children randomness, adventures, self-responsibility, mistakes, hurts, messes, uncertainty, and self discovery. But some do it anyhow, meaning they are anti-fragile (not uncaring) to their children’s troubles and development. Fragile parents, on the other hand, live in endless anxiety knowing they must be constantly on guard for the next challenge from which they must protect their child. Since this is impossible, they live a life filled with fear and anxiety.  

Most people have no idea that they are fragile, or that they are exporting fragility; they just know that things often do not go right. They maintain their fragility by assigning the responsibility for all things that go wrong or upset them to other people or bad luck. But some people are aware that they are on the receiving end of exported fragility. It could be from a spouse, life partner, other relative or friend, and I am familiar with a number of people who are in this situation. They have consciously accepted that they will be the target of an occasional unpleasantness. While I still see this acceptance as unhealthy for both, and indicating often significant fragility for the receiver, at least the latter is making a deliberate and informed choice.  

So where are we? Some readers will recognize the connection of being fragile to the Eastern concept of attachment. Both reflect the need to have things exactly as we want them, a futile condition. It is clear that chronic or inappropriate situational fragility is very undesirable, as we are constantly emotionally unbalanced and upset, prohibiting attaining deep happiness. It is also clear that we all have some fragile aspects. Deny them and we (and others) pay a big price. Acknowledge them and try to develop equanimity, and all is open to us. The prescription is to think, feel, and act in ways that express deep-rooted anti-fragility. Easier said than done, by a long shot, but I’ll take a stab at it in the next post.

 

 

Anti-fragile

No, I did not make this word up. Nassim Nicholas Taleb coined it in his book of the same name (he is also the author of the excellent The Black Swan). He needed a word that would express a unique and very important aspect of how complex organic systems function, including us.  

Anti-fragile refers to a system or organism (including humans and their societies) that can grow or improve in response to certain kinds and levels of shocks or stressors. Such systems are not vulnerable to challenge, disruption, or uncertainty, at least up to certain points—they actually benefit from them. At the personal level---lifting weights judiciously is an example of how the body can absorb stressors and actually improve in response, or getting low or mediocre grades on a composition is a stressor that helps some students become better. At the organizational level---planes do on occasion crash, a significant stressor that fragilizes the plane and the passengers. But since the airline industry and FAA use the crash information to make plane travel safer, the overall system is anti-fragile. 

Redundancies are a way to ensure anti-fragility, at least to some degree. Economies that have many new business start-ups have considerable redundancy. While many of these will fail, they are fragile to the risk, the economy itself will be healthier as many are successful. It will be anti-fragile. As Taleb says, “Restaurants are fragile; they compete with each other, but the collective of local restaurants is anti-fragile for that very reason.” The start-up and loss of these small entities ensures the continued dynamism of the local or national economy. From the above example, planes have a number of redundant systems that help with anti-fragilizing. 

Fragility, on the other hand, is the condition of responding poorly to stressors---being vulnerable to and harmed by shocks, disorder or uncertainty, even if of a small order. It is a function in part of having few or no options when disruptions hit, or in having the wrong ones. Anti-fragility is rare, but fragility is quite common on both the personal level (later post) and larger societal level. 

For fragile systems to survive, they require that all goes according to a “plan,” formal or not. Most governmental programs, for good or ill, are predicated on the assumption that the effort will pan out as described if many conditions (those of the plan) are met. Since these programs are initiated as part of complex interactions, and are implemented in complex settings---other agencies, groups or individuals, including opponents---the chances that the plan will work as intended are remote. Complex conditions always produce unexpected, for the most part unpredictable, and often undesirable, consequences. Thus, these programs are fragile to the unpredictability of human systems complexity. 

The greater the fragility of a system, the easier it is to knock it off balance. Highly fragile systems are very sensitive to even tiny shocks, which throw them quickly and sometimes deeply into disarray, if not into disintegration. A firm whose sales and profits have declined, and which has past-due obligations, is far more fragile than one whose financial condition is better. A relatively small shock to the first, say a letter from a lawyer for one of its smallest customers, could precipitate many bad things, with bankruptcy being only one. 

The collapse of mining in Africa has seriously damaged the well-being of a growing middle class. As global mineral demand has declined, particularly from China, Nigeria, Angola and South Africa have been hit hard, but Zambia has experienced some of the worst outcomes, with much higher unemployment, sharply increased inflation, a currency worth half its value, and higher suicide rates. Since each miner’s salary supports 15 dependents, loss of a job has a devastating impact. The nation and those workers, families, and companies dependent on the mineral industry are fragile to the decline in demand. Those at the top politically or otherwise  are anti-fragile to the demand change by virtue of the money and power they have acquired, legitimately or not. 

From our recent credit bubble of 9 years ago comes a similar story. All states were hit by the recession, but two states took particularly huge hits---Arizona and Florida, mainly because their growth and success depended primarily on the housing market, which tanked big time. Once again, high dependence on one sector means fragility when the shock arrives, and it always does, eventually. As is the case with all complex systems, when a shock will arrive and its magnitude are completely unpredictable. This construction disruption, like the African examples, led to significant unemployment and difficulties for workers and families, not to mention state revenues. 

California’s current tax structure depends greatly on the wealthy and super wealthy---around 50% of its budget comes from sources like income taxes and capital gains taxes from the top 10% of the population. When times are good, California reaps the reward and when they are bad, it pays a significant price. Its revenues are thus subject to roller-coaster-like trends, and during low points funding of many of the state’s programs is jeopardized. The state is thus fragile to its own tax structure and to the ups and downs of the state and national economies. Naturally, when revenues decline, cuts have to be made even in programs that are of great benefit, with the state’s fragility exported to those most needing those programs, and often to the average taxpayer.

The US and the EU currently have economic sanctions against Russia. Nonetheless, the people at the top in Russia are getting richer and richer while the average Russian is suffering from cuts in health care, interest rates not far from 20%, the flight of capital leading to higher unemployment, and from higher inflation generally. Anti-fragility at one level, encompassing very few people and companies, and fragility at another, involving great numbers of people. 

It is not just economies that are subject to fragility. Politics is as well. Two of those running for president, Sanders and Trump, are one-trick ponies. For Sanders, his pitch is that nearly everything is the fault of Wall Street, and more taxes on it will solve the nation’s troubles, especially if we give away all kinds of things for free. For Trump, he is selling himself as the end of all America’s problems. Neither Trump nor Sanders has much knowledge beyond his very (one might say astonishingly) limited domain, indicating fragility because national and international shocks (things not going as planned---practically guaranteed) will seriously upset either’s tiny apple cart, leading to poor, if not disastrous, errors in response---fragility. But their fragility would also be exported to the American public, who will pay the eventual price for mistakes resulting from either one’s singular and simplistic view of the world. 

These examples only hint at the expansiveness of the anti-fragile/fragile concept. Fragility and anti-fragility are evident in all human activities and processes. The examples also inform us about the complexity of the anti-fragile/fragile relationship. It is seldom that a system or entity is either anti-fragile or fragile. It can often be a mixture of both. Even with the Russian sanctions, because Putin has stopped importing much Western foodstuffs, this has meant a great boost to the local farming communities, which are thus anti-fragile to the sanctions. In our immune systems individual cells will die---fragility---in order for the system itself to grow stronger---anti-fragility. Our bodies, like many systems, thus have characteristics of both fragility and anti-fragility. In addition, comparisons indicate differences in degrees of fragility/anti-fragility. Although affected adversely by the decline in mineral demand, South Africa’s economy is more diverse than Zambia’s and is thus somewhat less fragile than the latter. 

What can we learn from understanding fragility and anti-fragility? One big thing for sure---that anti-fragility is a more desirable state than fragility. Expecting things to go as we want is a prescription for fragility. This is as true for individuals and families as it is for nations, governments, economies, religions, stock markets, and businesses. If anti-fragility is a desired state, what can we do to create more of it, at least for ourselves if not for larger entities? That will be the subject for the next post.

 

 

The Poem and The Path

We stand shivering at the door,
terrified and panicked
that we have lost the key.
We waste lifetimes
in the waiting
because in the haze,
the painted fog
of our fear, we forget
to check the handle
and discover
it has never been locked
at all.

Untitled by Tyler Knott Gregson

I very much enjoy poems that have lessons for living. Ones that do so through metaphor, as this one does, are even more pleasurable. We hardly think of metaphors except as used in poems and prose, as Shakespeare did, copiously. But we employ them constantly in everyday life. He has the heart of a lion, the interview went swimmingly, in our company he is king of the mountain, are just a few mundane examples. 

There is an interesting story about Houdini, which could be apocryphal, in which he tried to escape from a prison cell without success, only to find at the end that the door was never locked. True or not, the image is compelling and this poem somewhat echoes that story. Houdini’s mistake was not based in fear, which is the driving force in the poem, but in his failure to conceive of an unlikely alternative because he was certain he understood the game. Although not identical to Houdini’s situation, the poem also addresses the failure to examine, and perhaps pursue, life options or alternatives. 

Fear as a driving force is something I have mentioned in a number of earlier posts. My goal in those examples was to address the many ways that fear, whether on the surface or in the unconscious, controls our behavior, often to our detriment. This is not an argument for being reckless, or for ignoring the need for caution. Nor is it an argument for not feeling fear, or the anxiety it often produces when lodged in the unconscious. It is a comment on the importance for us to see when our fears are getting in the way of our becoming better human beings.  

The poem begins with a reference to possibly having lost the key to a door. Clearly, the key is not literal, nor is the door, and there are many ways to interpret this situation. In simple terms, the door can be considered a hurdle or barrier to some aspect of personal progress. The key may be seen as the way to get by that hurdle. The implication is that we had something before (the key) and lost it, misplaced it. That may well be true. But we can also see the key as something we never lost because we never knew we had it---the spirit of fearlessness and openness, with the courage to open any door. That spirit has been part of us from our beginning and (re)discovering it is the way we move beyond our fear and the suffering that often accompanies it.

So what happens when we find the key, when we divest ourselves of our fears and open the door? The path awaits us, surely. But is there a path? A saying in Taoism refers to “the pathless path.” Although appearing to be senseless, the saying embodies a great truth. The paths that matter aren’t straight lines, nor are they defined in any way in the world. When we see the path as something real, we run into the problem of seeing it as an Answer---if only I could find my Path, all will be well. Sadly, this is a lost cause. Seeing the Path as a way to an outcome, a destination to be arrived at, misses the essence of pathless---it is the journey that matters, not the arrival. But the journey to where? Like the key we always had and may not have known it, the path was always there, and there is nowhere to go. The journey is realizing what we knew all along---who we really are, still, silent, and present.

 

 

I Am Effective!! Or Am I??

Like most people, when I think about whether I am effective at something I am the one who makes the judgment. If it were not, who would it be?  

Effectiveness in the general sense is about getting a job or task done, whether it’s repairing a computer, developing a budget, learning Spanish, supporting a loved one, or engaging in self-reflection. And it need not imply a final completion, although it certainly may. Finishing preparing a budget represents a final outcome, but learning Spanish does not, unless, of course, one becomes totally fluent. I progress in learning a language gradually---achieving incremental levels of effectiveness over time. 

Some people confuse effort with effectiveness, a distinctly unwise view. Effort, regardless of quality, is an input. It is often vitally necessary, but cannot be seen as the end point. For example, I know people who say they are on a path to self-awareness---surely an admirable goal. Unfortunately, the inputs are as far as they seem to get. I asked one of these individuals what his goals were, and he stated that he wanted to better understand himself and the things that motivated him. I asked how he thought that was going, and his response was, “excellent.” Inquiring further, I wondered how he was measuring that, and his answer was simple---I am doing all the right things. That is, he is reading the right books, attending the right lectures, belonging to the right groups, etc. Not a thing wrong with what he is doing, but in 15 years he has made essentially no progress in understanding himself, if his behavior is any judge. It is as though he has mistaken the inputs (his efforts) as being equivalent to the actual outcome, greater self understanding. The really important effort, the very hard work of disciplined practice for years, is thus unneeded.  

All effectiveness is determined by the comparison of an outcome (even if partial) with a standard or goal, which can be informal or quite formal. I assess my improvement in learning Spanish on my own very informally, and quite casually, while a boss may assess the work outputs of an employee using various strictly defined methods. In the first case I decide how effective I have become, and in the second the boss (for the most part) decides the employee’s effectiveness. 

This last example addresses the role of others in the determination of effectiveness. Certainly there are aspects of life where I can determine my effectiveness without reference to others. As mentioned above, if I self-study Spanish, I need only please myself. And if I repair my computer, the virus is either gone or it is not. The input of others is not needed to determine if the problem is solved. But many aspects of life call for others to have a role in the effectiveness determination, something we may well dislike because it can contradict how we see ourselves.  

If I have a Spanish teacher, he may have a view of my language progress that does not match mine. Or, consider a real-life example. In the past I offered to help my wife make the bed after the sheets had been washed and dried. She took me up on this, but soon dispensed with my help. My concept of effectiveness in doing the bed did not match hers; in fact, she saw mine as distinctly inferior and, upon reflection, I saw that it was. 

As a consultant to organizations over many years in the area of leader behavior, I have witnessed many examples related to who determines if a particular manager is a good leader. Most managers, regardless of level, think only they (and possibly their boss) determine if they are a quality leader. It is clear on the face of it that this is incomplete at best, and destructive at worst---destructive because the manager may be living an illusion, and he acts on that in dealing with his staff. Without the input of others, mainly those who report to him, he exists as a legend in his own mind. In the minds and hearts of his employees, however, he may be a walking disaster. Managers often discount the opinions of employees, but they do so at their peril. A misbehaving manager, even if good at his job, will not generate the commitment and loyalty needed to produce great outcomes---he will not be a quality leader.  

A question of significant personal import is whether I determine if I am a good husband, an effective one. Surely I cannot unilaterally decide that. Imagine I tell my wife that I am indeed a fine husband, and imagine further that she has decidedly different views. If I insist that my view prevail, I have likely confirmed her view just by that simple act---an undesirable outcome. What happens in many cases with this question? Simply: How can my wife possibly see me as a flawed husband, when I see myself as the pinnacle? I uncritically accept my laudatory view of myself, to which I am deeply attached. She, obviously, has to be wrong. This means that my wife must be led, by any means needed, to see the “correct” view. You can imagine where this little effort is going to go! But that is what happens when we cannot stand the light of reality, when we are unable to give up our precious, and often biased, opinions of ourselves. I cannot become a better husband unless I accept and deal with my wife’s views. That does not mean she is unilaterally correct. But the perceptual difference does mean that something is up between us, and the only way to get at it is for me to let down all the protective barriers. 

You and I, but only to a modest extent, determine our effectiveness when others are involved, whether those are life partners, friends, relatives, or colleagues. But those others usually play a significant role in the determination because they have a vested interest in our behavior. I am not suggesting that others automatically have a more accurate view of our behavior than we do, but the chances are very good that they have an edge on us, mainly because we are remarkably resistant to a true understanding of our own motives and actions, some of which look rather unpleasant.  

Inputs from others, even flawed ones, are vital to becoming a better person. But it takes considerable courage to behave properly when we are the receiving end of undesirable news. Thus, before we can become a more effective spouse or leader, we have to become a more effective listener.

 

 

 

 

 

 

You Can't Get There From Here

"Once you have found the center
and achieve harmony,
heaven and earth will take their proper places
and all things are fully nourished."

The Second Book of the Tao, by Stephen Mitchell.  

Who can disagree with this? Certainly not anyone I know. And there are good reasons for our welcome and acceptance of such wisdom. At its best, Eastern wisdom like this encourages us to unflinchingly look at ourselves and how we interact with the world, with the eye of developing within us the ability to flow with the world and not against it---the essence of Taoism.  

This short passage emphasizes the importance of harmony, a state that most of us surely aspire to achieve, but which relatively few of us actually achieve. Disharmony is clearly visible in individuals, families, offices, churches, governments, and nations. Simple observations of what is happening today point to a profound sense of dis-ease among people in Western societies, especially the US. Structures and moral systems that provided some sense of certainty and support have been uprooted. Young people seem lost and without much sense of reality, often living in social media and looking for continued affirmation as they struggle with their identities. Civility is disappearing and dis-respect on the ascendance. Violence is increasing. Poverty and racism remain disturbing aspects, as does hunger. 

Many well-intentioned people want very much to solve these problems, and often are active in efforts to remediate them. Unfortunately, despite all their efforts, and those of the government as well, progress has been spotty at best. Why the intractability?  

Clearly there are many reasons why we have not eliminated poverty or racism, for just two of many societal problems---from entrenched attitudes or beliefs to inadequately designed or implemented governmental programs. Important though those may be, I am going to suggest another causal factor, one that perhaps gets at the root of intractability for at least some of these large challenges. 

The Tao quote seems to be referring to us as individuals---to our own personal harmony. And it is fair to read it that way, but there is more to it than that. “Heaven and earth will take their proper places” also says that harmony can be about more than just us. If our actions are in accord with the Tao, “all things will be fully nourished,” meaning that aspects of the world beyond our immediate existence can be positively impacted. The quote permits a linkage between the personal and the general, or the societal, and this is the key to my suggestion. 

The idea is very simple: a person or group will have little luck transforming certain societal problems if he has failed to first transform himself. In other words, making a true impact on societal problems often depends on a pre-existing condition in which the person is working on his own tendency to misbehave. My belief is that all greater (local, national, international) dis-harmony arises from each individual’s disharmony. Large-scale socially detrimental things such as racism, homo-phobia, incivility, intolerance and violence will not be successfully addressed until individuals heal their own malfunctions. I believe that the origins of all these distressing and very challenging societal problems are in each of us, not in the large-scale society, which only picks them up after the fact as we collectivize our dis-harmony. 

What matters most are not the grand, mega-societal efforts to change people or solve problems, although those can be useful, but the day-to-day way in which we interact with those we don’t like or with whom we disagree. Before we can truly help with the large-scale societal challenges, we must do a bit of work on ourselves. As David R. Loy says in his fine book, A New Buddhist Path “…we cannot expect either the economic or the ecological transformations we need to succeed without personal transformations as well,…” Failing to make the fundamental personal change means our intentions and motives are open to serious question. In our minds, unfortunately, we are paragons of virtue when in reality we are acting at cross-purposes.  

An example involves the decline in civility and the efforts good people want to make to improve it. But a person who has not mastered his own incivility, and yes plenty of well-intentioned folks have failed, will be fostering good at one level---the societal---and diminishing it at another level---the personal. That is not in sync with the Tao and will mean that the person is actually sabotaging his own efforts. This self-defeating aspect is also vividly evident in the idea of tolerance, a subject I have mentioned a number of times. Just like the civility issue, we cannot be tolerant of some and intolerant of others and expect that our efforts to improve tolerance overall will succeed.  

This post addresses the challenge of getting from “here” (our current personal condition) to “there” (correction of a social problem) when the “here” is flawed by our own less-desirable behavior. Essentially, you can’t get “there” without a changed “here.” Thinking so is an illusion, and results in little to no good coming from considerable effort. 

A further problem is that work done at the societal level is often that of form, as opposed to substance, or outcome. Committees are formed, debates are held, admonishments are tendered, bills are passed, celebrities add their names, and administrative structures are constructed. Well-intentioned people admirably commit their energies to these activities.  

Yet if even well-intentioned people fail to hold themselves and others who group with them accountable for inappropriate behavior, it is clear that the inputs, as good as they might be, will prove essentially useless. Political discourse, for one arena, is a disgrace today (each side often arguing maniacally, and uncivily, that it is the other side that is uncivil---I have earlier discussed illusory existences). And the reason for this disgrace is very simple. For politically prominent people (anyone, really) to change their awful tactics they have to be held accountable by their very own. How useful is it for a Republican to hold a Democrat accountable, or the reverse? Not at all. But when both Democrats and Republicans hold their own members and partisans accountable, well then we might have some action. Unfortunately, given the wildly irrational state of our society, don’t count on much on any large scale. But as individuals, we can take up the effort, both to reform our own mis-behavior and to hold our friends and associates accountable for their unpleasant and undesirable behavior. It all starts at home, and that is where the leverage for large-scale social change is.

 

Utopiates

The title refers to folks whose view of the world is driven by a need, of desperate, to have an Answer---an enormously powerful preference which I addressed a bit in the last post on order and disorder. Each individual (or group) with this need has the Answer to which he subscribes, which brings order to his life, and to which he clings with a death-like grip. I call these people Utopiates because they seek a utopian existence or utopian-like Answers that will solve all human problems and mysteries, and because they seem addicted to the view and its potential accomplishment. But this view is not just a good idea to such folks---it MUST happen! It is mandatory that their Answer be implemented at all costs. Failure cannot be contemplated and deviants will be punished.

In the last blog I mentioned political partisans as a group, regardless of views, having a very high need for order in the form of litanies that explain absolutely why they are good and right, and why the "others" are bad and wrong---a singular Answer with many sub-sets that leads them to making outrageous statements and acting out in particularly vicious ways, all completely justified by their view, their Answer.

Another group is social utopians, people who believe that the world and humans are amenable to alteration to such a degree that they can be made nearly perfect---the Answer to the world's problems. With the right social and psychological engineering---see Aldous Huxley's Brave New World---there will be no wars, no racism, no bad corporations, no global warming, and no conflict of any sort. We will all be happy and polite, if likely sedated, individuals.

An interesting group also falling into the utopiate classification is Darwinists, scientists many of whom are espousing what in physics is called the Grand Unified Theory (GUT), one that unites all the main forces in the universe. The Darwinists' GUT is that evolution will explain every organic thing on earth, most particularly human behavior and consciousness and, perhaps most importantly, human morality. This view is exemplified by the philosopher and cognitive scientist, Daniel Dennett, who says that natural selection is the GUT of biology that unites "...the realm of life, meaning and purpose with the realm of space and time, cause and effect, mechanism and physical law." No grandiosity missing here.

Theodore Dalrymple, a retired psychiatrist with the British health care system, has a view I find more intriguing and informative than Dennett's. In his delightful short book, Admiral Evasions: How Psychology Undermines Morality, he says regarding evolution and its connection to human morality: "If evolution is a directionless, purposeless, natural phenomenon that is all explanatory, then human behavior just is, it is neither moral nor immoral; if, on the other hand, it is moral or immoral, then either the process of evolution is directed by a moral intelligence in the direction of greater morality (precisely the view that Neo-Darwinists wish to escape), or the process of evolution is not all explanatory, and has led to something that escapes it, as a rocket escapes the earth's atmosphere, namely human conceptions of morality."

Speaking of science, a view held by many with great rigor is that science will eventually explain everything, a position known as scientism. It is as comprehensive and as firm a view that one can hold, right along the lines of Dennett, and another example of the search for the Answer. The amusing thing is that such scientists (and lots of lay folks as well), who properly value proof and falsification, haven't a single bit of proof backing up their claim. It is totally a matter of belief. The fact that science has indeed explained a lot of things says nothing about whether it will be able to explain everything since, for one, we have no idea what everything entails.

Another group, in a vein similar to that of the Darwinists, is the neuro-scientists. Many of them believe that they will eventually be able to completely account for consciousness and all the things that make humans unique, such as meaning, transcendence, purpose, and belief through understanding the brain as they might understand a washing machine. In their minds, everything human is reducible to neurons and their connections.

The arena of cosmology is not without its Answer adherents. An interesting idea in this realm is floated by Rupert Sheldrake in his terrific and provocative book, Science Set Free, and is addressed to cosmologists. The latter properly allege that the universe is not static and is evolving, although the nature of the process is not clear. We have some evidence that the universe is "moving" in more than one sense. At the same time, these scientists think that the laws of nature, referring mainly to the cosmological constants, are in fact unchanging, a view Sheldrake finds incompatible with an evolving universe. There is some measurement data that might confirm Sheldrake's view that the constants may not be.

Some climate scientists and fellow-travelers are so taken with their view of climate change---the grand Answer---that the mere thought that another scientist might question their measurement techniques or models (not that climate change is not occurring, but why and what can we legitimately predict) is enough to send them into paroxysms of agitation amazing to behold. They insist, with terminal absurdity, that the "science is settled." Near the end of the 19th century the great physicist, Lord Kelvin, in a rare moment of hubris and gargantuan error, stated: "There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement." Tracking along this frame was a contemporary of Kelvin's, the astronomer Simon Newcomb, who said, "We are probably nearing the limit of all we can know about astronomy." Both of these statements are laughable today, except for those for whom the science is settled, a condition that says a great deal about them, and virtually nothing about the issue.

To show how utopiates can act when they feel threatened, consider Senator Whitehouse of Rhode Island and other political and scientific personages (yes, even scientists!). They have recommended using the RICO statutes to prosecute climate change "deniers," including some of the reputable scientists who question the efficacy of the proponents' models. Naturally, some corporations are indictable as well. Given that science proceeds in part on disconfirmation and falsification, this is truly astonishing. But it does demonstrate what utopiates will do to get their Answers. Shortly after jail, of course, comes "off with their heads." As I said above, deviants will be punished.

I am not arguing that searches for more humane societal arrangements or for new scientific advancements in understanding the world and universe are bad. It is entirely possible that some aspects of these various utopiates' views will prove correct, although I doubt very much that any of them will yield an Answer. Certainly in the realm of science, if not in the social world, as more answers are provided, we are faced with more questions. This may be the ultimate mystery of existence---the are no Answers, but there are answers, temporary weigh stations that lead to yet more discoveries which lead to yet more questions. I see no End, and prefer that by a long shot to everything being answered.