Musings of a Lynx

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[lynxmuse]

Mindfulness Moment

Sometimes, not only is it that a/the scapegoat is not to blame, but that is that it is actually a smokegoat.

As in, it is smoke bomb lobbed by the real culprit, trying to ninja their way out of our gaze and scrutiny.

If we fall for it, not only do we get stuck in the suck, but we get used.

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I will forever love Rocket in these PJs. :)

by mercysstrap

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The Talstation Unterwasser by Herzog & deMeuron

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by butterfish8199

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Mindfulness Moment

“You are allowed to think about the worst possible scenario.

But you got to go out there and do something about it.”

— Jalen Brunson

In that great way of separating out our thoughts (and their automatic and already nature) from both the act of thinking and also of who we truly are, this reminds us that hey, our calculating self will, perhaps often, probably regurgitate a bunch of bleak things, but it’s a mistake to automatically collapse it with who we are and what will likely or actually happen.

In other words, just because we have the thought, it doesn’t mean we’re incapable, afraid, flawed, or that we’ve already lost.  Nor, just because we had the thought, does it mean its true.

It just means we had that thought.

It is still our central selves who gets to choose who we will be in this moment.  And, out of that being, what actions we will take.  The agency remains all ours.

(This is also a great complement to this post from a couple of years ago.  While that previous post focused more on the realm of “if I have a terrible thought am I a terrible person?”, this one is more “if I have this terrible or bleak thought am I already sunk?”  No.  No you/we are not.)

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The Embassy of Norway by Snøhetta.

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by sadness hao

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Mindfulness Moment

“Show me the incentive and I’ll show you the outcome.”

— Charlie Munger

While clearly expressed as an absolute for literary effect, I think there’s a lot there as an excellent window and entry point to look into both our personal lives and in our communal/societal worlds.  Because while views and culture and all that certainly play a role, there are still results that don’t seem to have a strong cultural impetus driving them, and even more so there are also often things that happen that seem counter and even hypocritical to what those views and cultures might profess.

Which is where that power of incentives comes in.  Especially given that our calculating self loooooooves incentives/rewards.  If it thinks something is “better” for itself, then it’s going to go after it hard.

So we can ask the big questions:  What’s lauded by the attention of others?  What’s celebrated by our stories?  And, of course and of extra importance, what’s rewarded by our economic system?  Those are going to be enticing;  especially when they reinforce each other, like in some cultures where what gets you money (and money itself!) is also what gets lots of celebratory stories and lots of attention and adoration.

Inside of all those incentives and rewards, while they may not fully dictate the outcome, they most certainly and seriously put their thumb on the scale of the outcome.

Like the escalator we talked about a couple of weeks ago, it takes something/effort NOT to automatically go there.

And thus we see deleterious and harmful things happening all over, over and over again.

So, when we see things occurring that we’d rather not, rather than immediately going towards pure admonishment towards ourselves or an individual or group, it pays (pun intended) to look at what incentives are at play.  Because if we really want to alter the course then we need to alter (or at least greatly diminish) those incentives.*

(And all of this doesn’t even begin to get into how often there exist perverse incentives!  The kind where the rules and rewards and punishments and etc produce the opposite effect of their intent, as people work to exploit the rewards and/or avoid inadvertent punishments…)

* Again, it’s not the only angle/aspect that is required, there is also our views and stories and morals and ways of being and all of that as well that need to be addressed.  But the incentives are very much a part of the mix and often a big part of our blind spots that keep us hemmed into these deleterious paths.

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Out for a stroll...

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St Mary’s Cathedral Tokyo by Kenzō Tange

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Haha, I could totally see Rocket having that reaction...

by Frank Humphrey

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Mindfulness Moment

This may seem like an odd one… but there’s this interesting thing that I bet many of us have experienced where we made some poor-outcome choice and yet somehow are at peace or at least not all that upset with having made that choice.  I say that it’s interesting and odd because I doubt it, happens all that often, at least for many of us and certainly not often for me by default.  No, usually my internal monologue / calculating self will first point itself towards self-recrimination and shame until my mindfulness catches it and I interrupt that unproductive path.

But yet it does happen, and so… why?

It could be because we are not necessarily happy or satisfied or at peace with the choice itself, but rather that we are at least satisfied with the process (and the information) that led to that choice.  Which includes, at the end of that process, being in a place of choosing freely.

Which means that we weren’t hoodwinked (either by others or by ourselves) along the way.  That while we may not have known everything*, we did the work to gather what we could gather.  That we were mindful and clear headed, that we did some actual thinking, and that we considered what we knew and learned at the time.

All of which gives us quite a lot of grace and agency and power.  Hence the satisfaction. We did the work and did our best, we learned, and since we freely chose we can equally freely choose a more effective path next time.

The power was already and always ours.  And since we own that choice through our power and the whole process that led us to the choice, we don’t need to catastrophize and don’t need to blame.  We can go alas!  Crap!  Yet be fine and go clear-eyed into the next one.

Now, this is all stream of consciousness thinking/musing here, so what’s the upshot?  Mainly I guess that if we want to grow peace of mind in our life (and why wouldn’t we want that?), then shifting focus to the process of our choices and the way we make our choices may be more fruitful than trying to perfectize the choice itself (ie, if the choice and the outcome isn’t perfect then we consider it and ourselves a failure.)  And also to look at our process to ensure we’re not being sabotaged by hoodwinks, incomplete information or disinformation, by shortchanging ourselves during the process, or of leading ourselves into situations where we do not choose freely.

So, yeah, to get ourselves to a place where we can be satisfied with more of the processes that lead to the choice.  Which, I’m quite sure, will likely lead to better choices and better outcomes as well.  Double satisfaction win!

* And given the enormity of the world and the people and everything it is not actually possible for us to know everything… there can and likely always be something so far outside of our view that it doesn’t even occur to us that it’s something that we don’t know and/or need to account for.

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Spaziu Davia Franceschini by A FABRiCA Architettura

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