Language and mores, Part VIII

 Part VII caps the economic, ethnic and social aspects of the gradual transition from earlier tribal merit-based to later rational principles-based systems, with older aspects still lingering today. Having lived and worked on three continents, and spent three decades recovering my identities of origin and now my spirituality — largely via rc.org summarised in an excellent précis here (private use only) no small thanks to my ex— let me share some pointers in my very personal experience of all of the above. Follow on Part IX here.

Centering

I learned this riding horses for thirty years until thirty years ago (Wikipedia). Emotionally it means mustering whatever works for each of us “to do the best we can with what info we have at that time”. It also entails a sense of self / confidence as well as responsibility / ethics “to always work on said info”. 

While fifty years ago that info was hard to get at, there remains today no excuse to avoid improving day-in-day-out. Especially with the developments from psychology to ecology, from the heavy- to the light-duty — everything is a spectrum, as for example autism is a spectrum (Wikipedia) — even our intelligence — not everyone is brilliant, and anyone who says that’s oppressive, is simply reacting to a hurt around that — “been there, done that”, see the précis mentioned above — but everyone has an opportinity to learn, and its extent will vary amongst us.

“Name it, claim it, and throw it away”

I call this “an oldie but goodie” from the self-help and recovery circles to simple confessions among confidantes or with priests, talking about sectors I know. That entails an actual awareness of the issue to hand — go to the above — but its a practice that can avoid many a societal trap.

Sure it feels good to unload on the nearest or weakest, but that crosses a line when there’s no prior agreement for others to accept that. And eventually either the hurt inflicted has consequences, or we feel bad and only accumulate it over time that increases its violence. 

If this sounds obvious reading this calmly, wait until you get into a “hot” situation and things quickly spiral out of hand: in the movie Breaker Morant (IMDb) about a court martial of British soldiers in the Boer War, the lawyer said something powerful, paraphrasing: “horrible acts are not perpetrated by horrible people, but by normal people under horrible circumstances”. Is one way to reduce “hot” reactions then not, over time, to “name, claim and throw away” behaviors?

rc.org mentioned above highlight the difference between a person (their inherent self) and their pattern (or behavior w.r.t. external stimuli). It helps me to remember that the person I want to hurt is a real human being, most likely hurt into doing what I react to. A mantra I learned from a teen ally we supported in ‘coming out’ is: “it’s not my stuff, my thinking is perfectly clear”, said respectively in a ‘down’ angry and an ‘up’ light tone. It helps remind me of ‘the individual behind the act’ in the heat of the moment.

“Two ears, one mouth... use proportionally”

Once we did some emotional house-cleaning, we may be ready for some “active listening” (Wikipedia): basically let the other finish, briefly pause to let it sink in, then paraphrase briefly to ensure we ‘got it’ and proceed cogently — this in fact part of Community Building (Wikipedia), Quaker Meetings I attended and even Robert’s Rules of Order (Wikipedia) even if not explicitly — how many arguments start without hearing or misunderstanding? By interrupting the other to hijack the ‘sound space’...

My blog (halfway down here) says some find it “part of their excitable culture, as a way to interact without meaning any offence”. If it seems to be generally agreed upon then, it’s hard to steer such interactions toward meaningful ends—if that’s the intent indeed—I suppose this is where the social and business aspects overlap. For example I was told that not playing golf in America was a career-limiting move... as the golf course is where deals are initiated! That is indeed a convivial environment away from the hustle-&-bustle, where potential partners can hear each other out without interruption.

“Learn on new thing a day, and you shall stay young”

... So said my late fave gran (on my mum's side). Also addressed in my Kuwaiti blog here, “[t]he more you know, the more you know you don’t know” is hard to countenance in our current “fake it ‘til you make it” society (likewise addressed here). It implies a level of humility taught in some religious circles and practised by some scientists (also addressed beginning a Medium series here), talking about sectors I know.

Sadly I found it not so much a question of intelligence, of education or even of willingness to learn: I saw more the situations our business, academic or activist worlds put us into; the afore-mentioned précis details the dynamics societies generate as self-organised cybernetics  (Wikipedia) [1]— rather than any nefarious intent many politics or philosophies imply — that results in forcing us a) to pretend to know more that we actually do, or b) lie when we’re unable to achieve (a), and thus c) to choose who are worthy to be told the truth or lied to. Disclosure: I learned this from my checkered career—I refused to lie for my employs—I was perennially shown the door, and pushed to forge new ideas and businesses.

The latter returns us in fact back to tribalism, or merit-based systems, where the truth is reserved for those who have earned one’s high esteem. This is expanded upon in my second-last and last postings here and here. As a ‘for example’, the ‘wild West’ of the internet addressed here the consequences of systems getting ahead of governance, with serious implication for the much-vaunted AI systems coming of age (start here) on my other Medium personal channel. 

Example

Katy Hopkins is a plain-spoken British media persona, who posts on YouTube to avoid powers-that-be's censorship - follow her to lose any illusion of free and cogent news media - but this clip is telling. Forget the news,  just listen to why she speaks out, and with humble perspective.

Contrast her w current fads in books, the internet and workshops that seek self-accomplishment using native American or West- and Southeast-Asian philosophies. Aside from a whif of  post-colonial appropriation (see also here), cultural differences make dodgy at best these facile techniques that skirt the "actual work" to build up courage and resiliance. Katy Hopkins has that courage... and not thru books & courses! Are all of the above not guideposts toward that?

Takeaway

Which do you prefer: "it's hard to be awake" or "it's complicated"? This series chronicles aspects gleaned from my travels and travails: This post teases out the personal, in the hope that you  benefit from &/or understand my experience; it isn't exactly normal as seen in my travels video...

1: as a note-taker in comp. sci. at Cambridge Uni. over 5 yrs. ago, I witnessed this cool experiment: In an amphitheatre seating about 100, each student had to tell their neighbors their age, and the youngest one did the same in turn. The whispers propagated until the last student left was the youngest—a strapping 17 year old!—"that", said the professor, "was self-organised process or", he quipped, "cybernetics with neither preconception nor conscience"... as the laughter eerily appeared to spread in the opposite direction (I'm sure I imagined it).