Paying to be 'me' – affording our discomforts

It has been rather interesting thinking about this. What is it to be 'me'? How do I pay for that?

What I mean is that each one of us (extrapolating from myself) has a fairly good idea about our likes and dislikes. So we gravitate to certain things, and we avoid certain other things. We like certain things and activities, and we detest other ‘things’ and ‘activities’. The stuff we like to do, we do them quickly, we prioritise so that they are taken care off with greater efficiency. The things we do not like we avoid, and leave to one side as much as possible.

However, the way we make our life’s preferences carry certain costs. Those costs may be tangible in terms of material things e.g. money, or the things money can buy - or intangible in terms of what cannot be quantified e.g. stress, disappointment, loss of opportunity.

For example, someone may dislike intensely the stress of moving home. So, either consciously or unconsciously that dislike is factored into decisions about a new job offer. Because ‘stress’ is the thing to be protected from - the dread of adjusting to a new town, influences decisions - the person might say “Well for £10,000/yr more, it doesn’t make a big difference to me.”

Perhaps a more down-to-earth example is dieting – which is difficult for many. It is easier not to diet. “What’s a few pounds or kilogramme more..you only live once” – some say.

Which of us truly wouldn’t want an extra million (in any of the big 5 currencies)? People in general crave for money – that’s the truth. Few admit it. But strangely there is an amazing contradiction i.e. those who need money the most,  do not work the hardest or the smartest in order to achieve greater financial security.

What, for example, is the cost of disorganisation? Everybody needs to be more organised. Yet we have people who live in utter chaos and mis-prioritisation. They convince themselves that the chaos surrounding them is organised, and they know where everything is. Not true! I’m not talking about the average disorganisation, I’m talking serious disorganisation.

Or take examinations. An important examination (or similar decisive event) is approaching, but the priority becomes larking around with friends.

Which of us have never been in any of those kinds of situations? Few.  So my observation is that many of us make choices and decisions that do not match a hierarchy of priorities in our lives. This costs us in tangible and non-tangible ways – yet we are content to pay. So basically we afford our discomforts!

Confused and primitive to the core.

I was motivated to write this having reflected on my interactions with the human species recently.

They pride themselves as being several notches above other animals. They have built very large and complicated structures. Their intelligence has allowed them the privilege of creating weapons that could destroy the whole planet they live on. They have sent men to the moon and spacecraft to very distant worlds. They control large amounts of energy. They can produce lots of food. They can fight off very serious illnesses.

Yet they are ruled largely by emotions and primitive instincts that lurk deep in the substrata of all that intelligence. Ruled? Sure. When they do something that happens to be in conflict with their intellectual prowess, what do they do? They tend to become emotionally upset. That may or may not show itself. But whichever way, it frequently takes hold of their cognitive processes and steers them in a pathway aimed at defending the ‘integrity’ of the emotional being living deep inside. The endpoint of that is that they then feel justified in their actions both at cognitive and emotional levels.

The cognitive aspect is seen in the processes related to rationalisation. The emotional aspect of justification is observed by a sense of satisfaction – a feel good factor. Therein lies the seeds of what is commonly referred to as evil. The conscious mind can be directed by this unconscious stratum, to rationally seek vengeance in its various forms. The latter provides the emotional justification. But extending that further they can easily arrive at terrorism.

The emotional being gets in the way of progress and can produce chaos:

1. It slows down two way communication pathways destined for the cognitive being.
2. Communicators have to exert greater energy not to upset each other in order to maintain a clear conduit of communication – seen so often in political, legal, crime, and business negotiations.
3. Envy is part of the emotional being. It drives people to madness.
4. Avarice – drives individuals to exploit others.

The cognitive being is capable of great feats of logic and understanding, too many to mention here. If only  this being could be unshackled.

I feel sad for me and this human race. We are so slow and so primitive. So intelligent and so stupid. I feel powerless. I wish I did not feel.

Looking away

Recently I was on the way into a supermarket. Nothing special about that you might think. But as I was about to enter I spotted a former work colleague – one of my own batch of professionals, who I trained with. I hadn’t seen her for about a year.

It was a Sunday – about 14:00. This colleague walked past me, about 5 feet to my right. Her gaze was focussed at some point in the distance. So at first I thought she did not see me. As you normally do – I look in her direction. And all this is happening in microseconds - I’m thinking she will catch some bloke (me) looking her way and look my way, and I’ll say ‘Hi good to see you again’.

But no – she keeps the gaze straight ahead. “Hmmm…” and you might be thinking, “Nothing strange about that. It happens all the time people don’t see each other because they are so busy and wrapped up in their own thoughts.” Well as I’m writing this I’m seeing her passing by in my minds eye. I could replay that video clip a thousand times. And when I do, I see her eyes focussed in the distance and not moving from left to right even in the slightest. Its a look straight ahead.

I have no reliable way of verifying what is in anybody’s consciousness. So I cannot know with absolute certainty what she was looking at and why she did not see me looking straight over to her in passing. But what did that gaze in the distance mean? It clicked – and here it is. I’ve done similar. When I’ve seen some person I do not want to take notice of, I’ve deliberately looked in the distance – just like that. And when did that I would not have been focussing on anything in particular. I’d just look ahead just to avoid eye contact.

So, here was I on the ‘receiving end’ I now think. I could never know what was in the mind of the other, but the closest approximation, is to look at myself first i.e. when I did that sort of thing – and make some kind of extrapolation.

Now some might be thinking that that was the only such incident. No – it wasn’t. The same happened about a year ago. A male professional colleague who knew that I thought he was a plonker passed within 3 feet of me. I always look plonkers in the eye, because I have nothing to fear. So I looked over to him. Guess what. It was that same kind of robotic gaze – at some amazingly interesting ‘non-object’.

What I realised is that when you wilfully avoid the gaze of another person you really do not focus on something of interest. You simply look ahead, like a robot. If you’re truly distracted by something interesting in the distance and miss sight of a familiar face, then your eye movements would not be blank and straight ahead. You’d be looking at the ‘thing’ that has grasped attention but also vary your gaze to surrounding objects. I’ve also checked that I can pick up very easily if someone within a cone of 5 feet from my eyes looks at me.

Well – in the case of the plonker avoiding my gaze, that’s understandable. But when it’s someone who has nothing I know of ‘with me’ – it now puts me to wonder again about human nature.