After a long quasi-haitus to get professional training (coaching, plus I’m nearly a certified Alexander Technique teacher!), I’m back.
The thing I’m most interested in is how the growth of knowledge works, and how to have more of it.
How do we make progress, instead of “horizontal advancement”—moving to something different, but not necessarily better?
How do we determine what to spend time on?
What scuppers this process? How is it that we don’t just know what to do, unconflictedly, at any given time?
‘Rationality’ could be the broad category of answer. But that makes people think of having better explicit theories.
Explicit theories aren’t very good at answering questions of what to do. They tend to offer mechanical suggestions. “In situation X, do Y.”
Most of the time, what we want is not a principle or rule, but a way of dynamically interacting with the world. Making creative choices in each moment.
Explicit theories can help a lot in answering what not to do! “Avoid errors P, Q and R” is great, because instead of directing you to something specific that you already know, it’s open-ended. It allows discovery.
(Incidentally, this is also how the Alexander Technique works: You have mental or physical habits you want to change. Instead of specifying a particular way to move or think, it asks, “What happens if you simply stop doing the wrong thing?” You make changes not by forcing yourself to be a certain way, but rather, by not-doing the things that get in the way, allowing your creative unconscious to give you something new.)
Since I could speak, I’ve believed coercion is the thing that impedes life.
Mostly not coercion as in of one person to another (though that’s how it normally starts), but coercion as in a psychological state of being conflicted, and forced to act before the conflict is resolved.
I think all “resistance”, in the psychological sense, can be framed this way.
When you’re resisting doing your creative work (à la Steven Pressfield), what’s happening is there is internal conflict. You’re implicitly afraid of what will happen if you do. Creative work is stepping into the unknown, and that’s scary for a lot of people. What if something bad happens that you don’t know how to deal with?
By avoiding this fear, we open ourselves up to a more insidious type of coercion: the monotonous drone of a life unlived.
Problems are inevitable. Bad things will happen. The only way to ensure stasis is to avoid problems, pretending like you don’t have creativity. That pretending happens when we’re following a set, known life path—when we’re doing what we know, what’s comfortable, what we have control over.
At least—what we think we know. What we think we have control over. Come to think of it, is it really that comfortable?
“The whole problem is to make the mistakes as fast as possible.” (John Wheeler)
We make the trade all the time of sacrificing conscious, known coercion (e.g. forcing yourself to work out) for unconscious, subtle coercion (e.g. mindlessly scrolling social media to avoid the initial discomfort of exercising).
Type A go-getters can also suffer from an insidious form of coercion: When you’re constantly forcing yourself to achieve, you miss out on the quieter voices/needs of your system. It’s a notoriously stressful state.
Type A
noun
a personality type characterized by ambition, impatience, and competitiveness, and thought to be susceptible to stress and heart disease
There is a skill to striking the balance.
It normally isn’t about trading one coercion for another, though, and getting the balance between those right. There is a real solution that doesn’t involve balancing unpleasant things. Instead, it fully addresses the underlying problem causing the trade-off.
That will be the subject of a future post.
Teaser: Avoiding certain feelings blocks the thoughts associated with those feelings. If you are okay with all emotional sensations, discomfort doesn’t stop you from thinking certain thoughts.