The Eight Invitations
The following are eight invitations, to the reader, of all my work, podcasts, blog posts, quotes, course material etc.
The inherent welcome in each, applies perennially to every person, who claims they would like their life to be better, who want therefore the world to be better, and who want to drive more fulfilment and meaning out of their own lives. Lives, which by definition, are reliant, in a greater part than we wish to acknowledge at times, to the vast weight of causality, which exists outside of ourselves.
In the cumulative math of all that there is, in terms of life, time, mass, will, energy, agency, intent and needs, the dividing line that makes up the self that we orientate the projects of our lives around, even in close relationship to others, is still a very very small measure, against the sheer enormity of what constitutes everything else.
The below are invitations, in so far as we all have the ability to consider their value and deliberately practice their implications. But they are also imperatives, because, in the absence of their consideration and practice, we get precisely the state of unhappy mess we face collectively, where, despite any indifference to the suffering of others, boils down, when we get to it, to the fact in history, and in life that some were free to actualize, and others, were not.
1. Cognitive Biases and Critical Thinking
If we ever get to the point as a society, where we stop chasing the media’s fake rabbit around the dog-track of disquiet and outrage for long enough to determine how we would prefer our society to run, which beliefs to re-think and which to enshrine as the most imperative, critical thinking has to be at the very top.
While humans have been responsible for expounding the most beautiful ideas and distilling the most profound philosophies, for the most part, our human brains have evolved to be efficient as we navigated originally through a hostile environment of growing complexity and only small networks of potential collaborators. This was done to favour reaction to signs of potential danger and possible demise, ahead of remembered ways to find and secure our needs and pleasures, in turn ahead of an attempt to preserve energy in the pursuit of the prior two.
The resulting effect was a set of evolutionary traits which we collectively refer to as cognitive biases, which are, in short, are the kinds of algorithms which our brains evolved, via trial and error, to allow us, not always perfectly, to survive by making quick decisions, which did not always need to be right, so long as they were right enough or most of the time.
Our inability to think critically is well studied, well understood by academics and scientists that have made it their life work to understand. For the rest of us however, this inability, or, our failure to factor in our own cognitive biases in our interactions with the world, is something we are vaguely aware of at best at an abstract academic level, almost never personally aware of and without exception, completely unaware of whilst in the act of doing it.
The reliability of our cognitive biases and the other predictable ways in which we think and behave as a species, is so well known that the social media giants and online markets of Silicon Valley, have, for the past dozen years or so, made it their business to bake the gamification of our behavior into the software platforms which they have given us for free, because we have become the product.
Through the same platforms they aggregate personal data and seemingly innocuous meta data and apply machine learning and other intuitive algorithms to analyse our behaviours and our demographics.
When applied to their understanding of our predictability, is used to manipulate us to either buy things impulsively, want things impulsively and react emotionally and impulsively to keep us engaged with their platform.
Furthermore these organisations sell this information and extrapolated understanding of us between themselves, to political parties and other third parties, either to influence our thinking and behavior, or other clandestine and equally dishonest purposes. The sheer size and success of those industries and that business model should be enough to convince even the most skeptical reader that the phenomenon of cognitive bias and impulsive human behavior is worth keeping in mind.
The reader is encouraged therefore, to keep this in mind, so that when the red flag of argument or annoyance invariably is raised involuntarily within, take this as a fairly reliable indicator that one of the many cognitive biases has subsumed our ability to think critically.
“Although dishonesty, lack of charity and presumption of fault are common, it still remains that conflation is responsible for more chaos ensuing within the crucible of well-meant exchange than any real dishonesty, or the lack of charity or a stubbornness born from the presumption of fault.”
R. Jarman, IG: @RocketSprocket Art Project
2. Trying to understand.
Truly bad ideas exist. We are facing a series of significant challenges as individuals and in every form of cooperating we are trying to rely on for connection, survival and meaning, and these are as a result of the unconscious, compulsive pursuit of what were originally well meant, but ultimately flawed ideas.
Trying to understand is an act of patience and courage. Trying to find fault for the sake of argument, is at this stage an intellectually bankrupt pursuit, which, outside the singular noble pursuit of attempting to moderate for outright falsehood or the danger of truly bad ideas, is tantamount to trolling. This is not to dissuade any healthy debate or mature and good faith challenge of these ideas, but to invite the reader to find the best compass of intent within themselves and use that to orienteer as much through the landscape of their own prejudices and fear, as through the landscape of ideas presented.
This book is attempting to float new ideas.
The value of these ideas are so critically important right now that the reader is invited, in the interests of successful transmission, to try and approach the ideas openly, wrestle with new ideas bravely, lest the treasure of the work remain locked behind a door of either guarded imagination or courage robbed by scorn or outrage, for both of which, the burden of unlocking, lies with the reader.
“It is easier to try to understand somebody, than to try and be understood by somebody. The problem is that the people trying to be understood, are doing all the work.”
R. Jarman, IG: @RocketSprocket Art Project
3. A debate can only be successful, if the object is to determine what is right, never who is right.
Debates devolve into arguments not for lack of facts or lack of participation, they fail for lack of goodwill.
If either party, deliberate or unconsciously, either out of fear of the consequences or an unconscious bias, cannot stand to yield a point, however well made, the debate will devolve into arguments.
The schools and practice of sophistry and rhetoric, which we get from Ancient Greece, were hugely successful in their time, but for all their success eventually got something of a bad name, as the footnotes of history attest.
The precise cause was the realization, in hindsight, that the speaking and debating skills they imparted contributed directly to a miscarriage of justice. An outcome that was of achieved in so far as a man responsible for cheating his neighbor in some way, could win the court case through the skillful unseating of his opponent, but any number of tactics. This was done by either undermining the character of their opponent publicly, the use of deliberate conflation, linguistic slights of hand, and other the reliable employment of various other techniques to impress the crowd. Under the rubrik of rhetoric and sophistry, debates then become a function of entertainment value.
No sane person in the interests of a fair outcome is genuinely interested in the whim of the crowd to determine fairness.
The reader is invited to remain mindful of the most reliable way to determine, even what might be uncomfortable and inconvenient facts, if in fact, the object of consideration is to determine what, rather than who, is right.
4. The poverty of language and the presumption of goodwill.
The reader should know that although as much care as could be mustered has been taken to find a balance between the subtlety of the message and the digestibility to a range of readers, which by definition at the time of writing is so phenomenally varied.
The reader should also be aware that as much care as could be mustered, given the short time available, was applied to ensure that absolutely nothing that is being said here, nor the reason this book was written itself, was done with anything but the deepest of love for the most disenfranchised voices of our time.
A rampantly dysfunctional social media and increasing levels of seemingly irreconcilable outrage, can easily attest to the fact that it is the very nature of language to be open to misconstrual. A state of suspicion which, if we are completely honest with ourselves, something that was not arrived at dishonestly.
So, for my part as the author, it is on myself do my best. The rest however, must fall on you, the reader then, to focus as little on what will be the inevitable failure of language to never trigger pain or suspicion.
Otherwise how do we pick up the thread of Theseus anywhere, to lead us through a maze of complex and novel ideas? How do we cross a dessert of misunderstanding on the backs of the stubborn mules of existing language as we meander between the oases of old ideas?
The ask then of the reader, is to forgive any linguistic dysmorphia which so delights the growing crescendo of ire that fate has conspired to outwit my limited skill with language, be it truly not through my lack of trying.
5. The two key kinds of questions, and the misplaced trust we have in our most effective systems.
In the sphere of all human endeavours, we seek, and have always sought to pursue two key kinds of questions.
How best to do a thing well; and
Which things to do well, and how to prioritise them.
One of our largest drivers of modern times is the shared ideology, practice and economics of the free or open market, which seeks to answer questions in the domain of the capture and retention of material wealth, primarily, at the cost of anything else that stands in its way. If a moral concern is encountered, this is raised, as an afterthought, always against a tide of momentum, going the other way, in favor of growing and protecting wealth.
While clearly flawed, it has proven to be inexhaustibly surprising regarding the level of ingenuity and effectiveness it has for addressing the first question, that of how to address challenges.
These flaws become compounded and exponentially accentuated, when the inherent flaws themselves are left unmitigated, specifically because of the oversight that our society shows in relegating to the same flawed system, the second kind of question, that is which problems to prioritise.
A similar economy is centered around the capture and retention of our attention, a set of drivers which have been expertly pursued by the media industry. The media have become efficient at the capture and retention of our attention, to such a phenomenal degree of success, that we can see the widescale derangement of politics, trust in expertise, dismissal of facts and polarization of humankind, along every conceivable axis of opinion and understanding. (Furthermore, the expert degree to which human psychology is understood and employed in the service of retaining attention, is precisely what can lead a person, down a rabbit hole of engagement on a medium such as YouTube.)
The core of the problem, again as with the free market, was while the current system is nothing short of adept at answering the first question, it has been given unchecked control to determine also the second question, for which it has literally no suitability.
The outcomes of both oversights have been becoming increasingly obvious, but in their effective capture of the collective imagination and attention of the masses, given the third such model, democracy, the fact that they might need to be challenged has become a problem for which the solution undermines the very value the models are ostensibly delivering well. Democracy, similarly is well designed to drive consensus on questions of the former nature, but in the wake of gamed values through the free market and gamed attention through mass media, the populace that need to exercise their say in the selection of options, have very little insights on precisely which options to advocate for.
The reader, here, is invited to acknowledge that regards our trust of any ideology or system based on its apparent and proven effectiveness on how to solve for problems, a blind spot can exist of its absolute poverty of merits in determining which problems to prioritise solving for. (The perfect example of this is the phenomenology of Brexit.)
6. It might be relevant and worth arguing, if only it were true, and conversely, it might be true and worth arguing, if only it were relevant.
Neither party in a debate need to be seeking a mutually beneficial outcome. However, if at least one party is genuinely seeking a mutually beneficial outcome, the conflict is not removed because the ultimate values, while shared, may not be prioritized in the same way on both sides of the argument.
A single silver lining on the dark cloud of a time in our lives spent arguing with teenagers, is the final understanding, which is not obvious at the time, that the source of genuine discontent in a debate or a conflict of ideas, arises not because two people have innately clashing values, but rather our subjective series of wounds and triggers, and the misalignment, through differences in maturity and perspective, of where the shared values should be prioritized.
In arguments which play out on a stage set this way, even the good-faith actor may lose the whole argument because of the common blind spot we encounter on that back of an assumption. The assumption of course is that all parties are invested in good-faith, or hold good-faith as the primary merit worth investing in.
In short, where the person you are arguing with, needs to win, not out of a sense of sophistry or rhetoric, but just because they cannot trust our good-faith and cannot argue the facts on our level.
In this event, the surest way, in managing the debate, is to run every counter argument through the twin gauntlet of those two conditions:
What you say is true or may be true, but either way, is it relevant to the material question or issue being debated, or, what you say would be relevant and directly impact the material facts of the debate, if only it were unfalsifiable.
The reader then, is invited keep this gauntlet in place, and let each of their own arguments and misgivings be checked accordingly, before too quickly standing to join the internal crowd of opinion which would dismiss the thesis unfairly.
7. Supervenience and the simplicity on the far side of complexity.
Arguably, the success of media, and social media, is the ability to capture attention in the most efficient and effective ways possible. In the silver age of press media, this was an art that was developed and hugely advanced over time to make use of some combinations of the following.
Reasons to look, reasons to pay closer attention and reasons to invest time, and finally something approaching the steady or sudden devaluing of reason, all done as subtly as possible to not alert the reader to the way in which their own psychology is being reliably gamed.
Placement, on the page and within the publication.
Visibility, that is to say Typeface, and colour and size of font so as to stand out from the rest of the text.
Emotional hook, the primary emotional drive being stimulated to get the reader to engage with the full article, to follow the link, to take notice.
All of which, if presented and executed well, results in the reader quickly and effectively, becoming and remaining emotionally engaged. The aim then is speed, to achieve the goal, before the evolved and learned behavior of the internal talent scout of our errant minds, scanning the field of available options and stimuli, both internal and external, is lost to another engrossing prospect.
The side effect of all of this, is a casualty of context and complexity, which, through the learned behavior, is the expectation for content to be short, sharp and in a word, simple.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. was an American jurist who served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, is credited with the following quote:
“For the simplicity on this side of complexity, I wouldn't give you a fig. But for the simplicity on the other side of complexity, for that I would give you anything I have.”
Wendell Holmes, Jr.
8. Caveat on the failure to value connection.
The final ask, is for the reader to consider the caveat on the failure to value connection.
There is potential impact of dismissing the aforementioned requests.
Our compulsive habits, if left unconsciously unchecked, have a proven and predictable side effect of almost guaranteeing the kind of short-sightedness which has in the past, and is likely in the future, to guarantee us increasing levels of discomfort, in the form of an increasingly disordered society, or a gradual or sudden cataclysmic world event that we cannot undo, for lack of the kind of co-ordination that can only be facilitated through collaborative co-operation.
Specifically our reliability to remain immature, as individuals and collectively as a species, until discomfort visits us all equally in turn can be moderated only by a shared valuing of the value of connection with and to other human beings and ultimately the entire ecosystem on which we are so inextricably dependent.
Some of the most dire challenges that face the world’s societies and civilization as a whole, given the sheer amount of people and the implicit effort required to affect change, can only be done at something approaching a global level of co-ordination and co-operation.
Critical mass, in any system is required to affect change, and at that order of magnitude, it is no longer sufficient to simply not have bad intent in order to avoid harm. A critical mass is required to consciously and deliberately engage with the co-operation effort, and that requires a level of trust, if not in shared beliefs, but at the very least in shared values.
“Sooner or later one of the hurricanes of moral panic that hits the coasts of our collective psyches, with the floods of outrage they drive ahead of them, is going to break the outdated levies of our social order, which were created in simpler times, to weather far smaller storms.”
R. Jarman, IG: @RocketSprocket Art Project, An Excerpt from poem The Coming Storm