Part 1 was on the OS of my life, Part 2 the professional version, both written in 2022. This one is a little more ambitious – civilisational!
The thought stream started thanks to one of my favourite newsletters, which gave me an insightful metaphor – “Religion is the operating system of a civilisation” – attributed to Rudyard Lynch.
One of the other insights that has taken up quite a lot of space in my mind is courtesy Ernest Becker (via The Worm at the Core) – that the awareness of our own mortality is the hidden engine of human thought, emotion, and culture. Humans apparently invented symbolic systems – everything from soul to religion to nation to art to legacy as a means of managing the terror of death.
A theme has been emerging, even more stronger since I wrote “Living a life of Intentionality“. Pithily summarised as “At this age, I prefer an identity that provides the least friction and regrets in the life I want to lead.” How do I get there? A key factor I identified for myself is acknowledging the difference between my wants and likes, and deeply questioning my wants. Where does that get me? From that post, Intentionality helps you have your needs and considered likes as anchors. When that happens, a whole lot of clarity emerges – what you spend time and money on, people whom you will go overboard for, how you plan your days, weeks and months, and what can get you out of those lil twinges of envy and seemingly deep pools of a mid-life crisis.
But while I was trying to get there, I encountered a strong opponent – myself, or rather, my identity. I first brought it up in Marshmellowing. The key point in the first was how in my approach to getting what I needed/wanted, my larger desire for ‘freedom’ led me to optimising for optionality – a huge bias for scenario planning. I think the identity I created thanks to this is aptly called the Marshmallow mind (by Frederik Gieschen), and its best expression is a poem I read in Poor Charlie’s Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger, attributed to A.E. Housman
The thoughts of others
Were light and fleeting,
Of lovers’ meeting
Or luck or fame.
Mine were of trouble,
And mine were steady;
So I was ready
When trouble came.
In Marshmellowing – The Prequel, I wrote about my path to this identity/self image from childhood. A great description of it appears in Robert M. Sapolsky’s Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers. In the personality section, Sapolsky practically described my (former) Type A personality down to a behavioural “time-pressuredness” (research by Meyer Friedman and colleagues), default hostility, and a persistent sense of insecurity, the last being a predictor of cardiovascular problems. Add to it disciplined, discomfort with ambiguity, and (formerly) repressive in terms of emotional expression, and you have my profile! Damn!
My self image, and increasingly my identity was the kind of person who thought in a certain way and behaved in a certain way. While its origins was my ‘responsible child’ identity that possibly repressed my freedom of emotional expression in favour of (parental) attachment, in adulthood, it transformed into a “responsible adult” self image that ironically optimised for freedom and optionality, and underplayed the need for attachment. It became an identity, and many of my decisions were biased in that direction.
It is only in the very recent past – through reading and reflection, that I have begun to be at least a little fine with unplanned-ness. As I wrote on LinkedIn, the universe’s tendency is randomness! An excellent read in a different context was The Tao of Physics. I realised that In both quantum field theory and eastern philosophies, physical phenomena (including us) are mere transient occurrences in an underlying entity. How humbling that is!
I think I have made progress by moving from fixed goals through fixed strategies to fixed goals through flexible strategies. I hope, after we are confident of financial freedom, that I can move to flexible goals and flexible strategies. Meanwhile, the biggest task in all this is the mindset. Mindset made the identity, and now it has to dismantle it. Erich Fromm wrote this a long time ago – “Life, in its mental and spiritual aspects, is by necessity insecure and uncertain…The psychic task which a person can and must set for himself, is not to feel secure, but to be able to tolerate insecurity without panic and undue fear“. Decades later, we have a pithier version.
“You can either be judged because you created something or ignored because you left your greatness inside of you. Your call.”
James Clear
In an earlier post – An impulsive path to freedom – I had identified my own self image as a barrier to the freedom I desire. I wonder if it’s because it’s something I constantly think about, but I saw interpretations of it across a couple of pop culture phenomena I consumed recently.
Clever tees have been an attraction for quite a while now. Less generic, and more fun mashups. This one is an example from a few years ago.
Once, when I wore this while out in a group, one kind soul complimented the design. Another person in the group immediately commented that people wore such tees to send a “look how smart I am” message. My views was that at least for me, it was less vanity/personality and more a means of expression and identity, which served as a conversation starter, given my less-than-gregarious nature. But it did stay with with me, and make me wonder whether he had a point. (more…)
..and finally, I got myself to see the last episode of Mad Men. I’d been putting it off because the series was the kind I enjoyed so much that I never wanted it to end. The last few episodes were quite ‘meta’ in the sense that through Don Draper, the show’s protagonist, the show itself was searching for a befitting ending.
<spoiler> These episodes saw Don getting rid of his possessions, until all he had left was an envelope with some money (and a ring) and a cover with a change of clothes. He had lived the previous few years of his life as Don Draper – a name that wasn’t his. The idea of Don Draper though was all his, but somewhere in him, was also Dick Whitman, his original name. Every time he made the confession of taking another man’s name, you could sense his guilt, and relief. Maybe that was the freedom he was looking for, when we was getting rid of all the paraphernalia attached to Don Draper. (more…)
