De kracht van selectieve onwetendheid

man in een museum kijkt op zijn telefoon - foto niek de greef

Er is een interessante logica te vinden in de Buddhist Noble Truths. Ik parafraseer:

Suffering is caused by desire, attachment, and general craving. Eliminating craving reduces our suffering.

Verlangen neemt af door de oorzaak ervan weg te nemen. Onwetendheid is de hoofdoorzaak. Onwetendheid is een diepgewortelde cognitieve en perceptuele blindheid die ervoor zorgt dat wezens de werkelijkheid verkeerd interpreteren.

Onwetendheid is een interessant woord als je deze context in ogenschouw neemt. Er is onwetendheid in de zin van niet weten, wat de negatieve connotatie heeft van dom zijn, en onwetendheid in de zin van negeren of geen aandacht schenken.

We kunnen dingen negeren die we willen bezitten, interesses negeren die we hebben, zodat we ons kunnen concentreren op de essentiële dingen, en dingen negeren die we denken te moeten weten – waardoor we de meest letterlijke vorm van onwetendheid bereiken. Deze daad van selectieve onwetendheid kan bevrijdend werken en ons bevrijden van de last van onnodige informatie.

Dit concept van onwetendheid kan ook positief worden geherformuleerd als ‘selectieve onwetendheid’: kiezen waar je je op concentreert en wat je negeert om mentale rommel en lijden te verminderen.

Focus en onwetendheid

In onze ambities vergelijken we onszelf met anderen. We observeren en benijden hun prestaties en oordelen. Geen van beide is nuttig.

Robert Greene schrijft in Mastery over hoe de meesters in hun vakgebied – de mensen over wie hij in zijn boek schrijft – zich concentreerden op hun sterke punten. Deze focus op persoonlijke sterke punten geeft hen kracht en het vertrouwen om hun doelen na te streven.

…ignore your weaknesses and resist the temptation to be more like others. Instead… direct yourself toward the small things you are good at.

man jogging on deserted island - foto niek de greef

In Advice for Living deelt Kevin Kelly zijn wijsheid over zorgen over de mening van anderen:

Ignore what others may be thinking of you because they aren’t thinking of you.

Aandacht, media en onwetendheid

In de wereld van vandaag zijn we verslaafd aan nieuws. Als we naar het nieuws kijken, voelen we ons machteloos tegenover de daden van een klein aantal slechte mensen. We verlangen naar beter nieuws, meer updates. Nieuwsagentschappen reageren net als sigarettenfabrikanten: ze stemmen hun producten af op onze verslavende behoeften met een negatieve inslag, sensationele koppen en continu breaking news.

Oliver Burkeman overtuigt ons in Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals dat de media onze aandacht stelen:

The unsettling possibility is that if you’re convinced that none of this is a problem for you-that social media hasn’t turned you into an angrier, less empathetic, more anxious, or more numbed-out version of yourself-that might be because it has. Your finite time has been appropriated without your realizing anything’s amiss.

We zijn verslaafd. Maar we kunnen onszelf helpen door onwetendheid na te streven. We kunnen meldingen negeren en uitschakelen, en minder vaak nieuwsbronnen raadplegen.

Misschien zijn we beter af met een nieuwsbron die niet gedijt op actualiteit, maar op een langetermijnperspectief. Dat zal niet gratis zijn, want het is niet onze aandacht die voor deze diensten betaalt, maar de waarde die ze bieden voor ons geluk, waarvoor we in ruil daarvoor geld betalen. Deze verschuiving in perspectief kan geruststellend zijn, wetende dat we onze aandacht investeren in iets dat er echt toe doet.

All the Lovers in the Night: On Isolation and Connection

All the Lovers in the Night
Mieko Kawakami

A strange mix of loneliness, connection, and love come together in All the Lovers in the Night by Mieko Kawakami.

Fuyuko is a reclusive proofreader at a publishing house. She has virtually no social life.

One day, Fuyuko comes into contact with Hijiri, who persuades her to go freelance. Fuyuko more or less befriends Hijiri and is somewhat taken out of her isolation by this friendship. Fuyuko learns to drink alcohol, but without any measure.

She meets Mr. Mitsutsuka, an older man, when she attempts to enroll them in a course. She starts meeting him more frequently after an initial reluctance. They have special and increasingly intimate conversations. A strange, affectionate relationship develops.

Not saying a word, just standing there, Mitsutsuka looked like he was waiting patiently for my tears to settle. I heard a car go by, not very far away from us. Using my palm, I wiped the tears dripping down my chin, then rubbed my eyes, covered my face, and started crying again. Mitsutsuka lifted his free hand and rested it on the crown of my head. I thought I could feel the heat of his hand entering my skin. With his palm still on my head, I asked Mitsutsuka if he would spend my birthday with me, in a voice that was almost all sob. Will you walk through the night with me? And will you listen to that song with me, just the two of us?

The character Fuyuko bears resemblance to the strangely named Natsuke in Earthlings by Sayaka Murata. Women who cannot ground themselves in this world, or at least in Japanese society, and live socially isolated lives. Where in Earthlings an unbearable burden develops in the protagonist Natsuke, Kawakami’s story is more loving, and Fuyuko manages to maintain a certain lightness and optimism.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb on the artisanal and techno-dissatisfaction

Nassim Nicholas Taleb - antifragile

Douglas Coupland predicted that the crafted object might become the emerging “technology” of modern art. Analog experiences are where art is enjoyed. In Antifragile, Nassim Nicholas Taleb explores technology and art from the perspective of fragility.

Technology Wants to Replace Itself

Technology is designed to replace older, inferior technology.

Technology is at its best when it is invisible. I am convinced that technology is of greatest benefit when it displaces the deleterious, unnatural, alienating, and, most of all, inherently fragile preceding technology.
…
So it may be a natural property of technology to only want to be displaced by itself.

But not all technology disappears. The Lindy effect applies to technology.

For the nonperishable, every additional day may imply a longer life expectancy. So the longer a technology lives, the longer it can be expected to live.
…
But in general, the older the technology, not only the longer it is expected to last, but the more certainty I can attach to such a statement.

The Treadmill Effect

People experience new technology like a treadmill effect.

People acquire a new item, feel more satisfied after an initial boost, then rapidly revert to their baseline of well-being. So, when you “upgrade,” you feel a boost of satisfaction with changes in technology. But then you get used to it and start hunting for the new new thing.

But Old Tech Survives: downgrade

Taleb states that this effect does not apply to classical art, as well as to analog and physical experiences. These experiences appear to be exempt from men’s hedonic decline in satisfaction.

But it looks as though we don’t incur the same treadmilling techno-dissatisfaction with classical art, older furniture—whatever we do not put in the category of the technological.
…
I have never heard anyone address the large differences between e-readers and physical books, like smell, texture, dimension (books are in three dimensions), color, ability to change pages, physicality of an object compared to a computer screen, and hidden properties causing unexplained differences in enjoyment.

The big differentiator, according to Taleb, is the infusion of the maker’s love in the created art object.

But consider the difference between the artisanal—the other category—and the industrial. What is artisanal has the love of the maker infused in it, and tends to satisfy—we don’t have this nagging impression of incompleteness we encounter with electronics. It also so happens that whatever is technological happens to be fragile. Articles made by an artisan cause fewer treadmill effects. And they tend to have some antifragility—recall how my artisanal shoes take months before becoming comfortable.

Taleb’s recipe: downgrade to analog. Not because technology is bad, but because it never gives us enough. It wants to be replaced. Artisanal objects don’t.

The old shoes. The wooden desk. The physical book. The vinyl record. They don’t get better with an update. They get better with use.

Maybe that’s what Coupland meant: craft isn’t becoming the “new” technology. It’s becoming the answer to technology.

Beyond Time Management: Oliver Burkeman’s ‘Four Thousand Weeks’

Four Thousand Week – Time Management for Mortals, by Oliver Burkeman, is a book about what Burkeman calls “the paradox of limitation.”

All of this illustrates what might be termed the paradox of limitation, which runs through everything that follows: the more you try to manage your time with the goal of achieving a feeling of total control, and freedom from the inevitable constraints of being human, the more stressful, empty, and frustrating life gets. But the more you confront the facts of finitude instead—and work with them, rather than against them—the more productive, meaningful, and joyful life becomes.

Burkeman shares a wealth of wisdom on how we can achieve more focus in our lives without getting overwhelmed by our social media addiction and how the media manipulates us for the sake of gaining more eyeballs on the media itself (the media is the message, as Marshall McLuhan concluded years ago).

The unsettling possibility is that if you’re convinced that none of this is a problem for you—that social media hasn’t turned you into an angrier, less empathetic, more anxious, or more numbed-out version of yourself—that might be because it has. Your finite time has been appropriated, without your realizing anything’s amiss.
…

It’s been obvious for some time now, of course, that all this constitutes a political emergency. By portraying our opponents as beyond persuasion, social media sorts us into ever more hostile tribes, then rewards us, with likes and shares, for the most hyperbolic denunciations of the other side, fueling a vicious cycle that makes sane debate impossible.

The book is a gem. I conclude with his advice for a more creative life.

In practical terms, three rules of thumb are especially useful for harnessing the power of patience as a creative force in daily life. The first is to develop a taste for having problems.
…
Once you give up on the unattainable goal of eradicating all your problems, it becomes possible to develop an appreciation for the fact that life just is a process of engaging with problem after problem…
…
The second principle is to embrace radical incrementalism.

When you accept that you probably won’t produce very much on any individual day, you will find that you produce much more over the long term.

One critical aspect of the radical incrementalist approach, which runs counter to much mainstream advice on productivity, is thus to be willing to stop when your daily time is up, even when you’re bursting with energy and feel as though you could get much more done.
…
Stopping helps strengthen the muscle of patience that will permit you to return to the project again and again…

The final principle is that, more often than not, originality lies on the far side of unoriginality.

This is the principle known as “Stay On The Bus”. You don’t find originality around the corner. It is in the depth of the work.

… it begins at all only for those who who can muster the patience to immerse themselves in the earlier stage – the trial-and-error phase of copying others, learning new skills, and accumulating experience.

Burkeman uses the metaphor of the long-married couple.

To experience the profound mutual understanding of the long-married couple, you have to stay married to one person; to know what it’s like to be deeply rooted in a particular community and place, you have to stop moving around. Those are the kinds of meaningful and singular accomplishments that just take the time they take.

Looking for Alaska – niet dat Alaska – door John Green

Looking for Alaska - book cover

Ik dacht op de een of andere manier dat Looking for Alaska zich ergens in de staat Alaska afspeelde. Dat is dus niet zo.

Miles is een verlegen, slungelige jongen die lijkt te weten wat hij kan en wat hij wil. Uit eigen beweging gaat hij naar een kostschool. Hij raakt bevriend met Chip, Takumi en het eigenaardige meisje Alaska, die ook kostschoolleerlingen zijn uit de armere lagen van de samenleving. Ze richten een club op om het op te nemen tegen de arrogante kinderen uit rijkere families.

Miles en zijn vrienden zijn een beetje buitenbeentjes op school. Ze roken en drinken en delen een liefde voor literatuur. Miles wordt verliefd op Alaska. Zij heeft een nogal gecompliceerde jeugd gehad nadat haar moeder op jonge leeftijd overleed.

Aan het einde van het schooljaar verongelukt Alaska midden in de nacht in haar auto op weg naar het graf van haar moeder. De vraag die de achtergebleven tieners bezighoudt, is of ze zelfmoord heeft gepleegd en, nog belangrijker, waarom ze dat zou hebben gedaan. In de tweede helft van het boek gaan Miles en zijn vrienden op zoek naar antwoorden op deze vragen, naast het pesten van Eagle, de decaan van de school. In het tweede deel mis ik de eigenaardigheden van het personage Alaska. Maar ze is dood.

John Green zegt in de epiloog van het boek dat dit verhaal niet zo succesvol was als zijn andere boeken, vooral omdat zijn vaste redacteur hem bij dit boek niet kon helpen. Ik denk dat Green een beetje zelfvertrouwen mist, want Looking for Alaska is gewoon een heel goed boek. In de stijl van Anthropocene Reviewed geef ik Looking for Alaska … 5 sterren.

Meer over John Green: The Anthropocene Reviewed, Turtles All The Way Down.