Buddha Bike

  • Past and potential lives

    February 28, 2021 @ 6.12pm – Canberra, Australia

    Don’t fear fear.

    Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo

    I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

    Frank Herbert, Dune

    You wouldn’t be reading this sentence if you and your ancestors didn’t feel or act on fear from time to time. But there’s a lot less to fear nowadays. Direct threats to our life are thankfully not a daily occurrence. We don’t need to sleep with one eye open, ever-vigilant for a bear or that blood thirsty love-rival. Instead, the majority of the fear and anxiety we experience is a sort of psychological kind. We are scared of thoughts and memories more than anything else. We are fearful of imagined events in the future or trivial things in our past. To avoid fear, we act in certain ways or bias toward certain things. Fear-soaked memories from decades ago can influence everything from our job to our coffee order.

    Fear also narrows down our choices. Our future becomes predictable. When we are scared, we make choices very quickly. “I want to go home right now” sounds like a choice, but in a way, the choice has been made by fear, not us. If we feel uncomfortable wearing a brightly coloured shirt, we’ll say “I’d prefer this white one instead.” Habitual, familiar choices feel attractive in comparison with something that elicits fear. And when we are really scared, there’s hardly any deliberation at all. Ultimately, fear strips away your agency. Because if your choice is driven by fear, are you really choosing?

    We also feel fear about the future itself, like when we have an upcoming race we’ve been training for. As the big day gets closer, we try to picture what will happen and problem solve potential disasters. We might think “I’m not ready for this race.” Or “this is a waste of money.” These thoughts are usually dramatic and simplistic but they usually contain some truth. It’s useful to plan a little about the future. But if we are overly anxious, we can start to over-think. With fear, excuses can quickly become actions. All of a sudden we’ve pulled out of the race before even experience it.

    These excuses are like little glimpses of potential futures. If you believe the story you are telling yourself, that future becomes a reality. And it’s happening all the time. In any given moment, you are living with decisions that were largely decided by fear, hours, days or years earlier. We find ourselves scrambling to catch a hastily booked flight or struggle with a test that we avoided to study for. In many ways we don’t relate to our future self, even though we are the same person who has to live out those consequences. 

    So are you doomed to live out the fearful decisions you and all your ancestors have made? Not quite. Even though fear narrows down your options, there’s always lots of available things you could do. If we are walking home from work, we could take any number of different paths home. We could skip. We could walk backwards. We could call a cab. You may not think you’re the kind of person who would do any of those things, but would has got nothing to do with could.

    In myths and folklore when someone is granted a wish, they almost invariably mess it up. We are not very good at knowing what we want. We listen to deeply ingrained beliefs rather than our intuition. We spend a lot of our lives doing what we think others will like, rather than what we really want. And worst of all, we tend to crave impossible things, like for people to change, a ‘perfect’ partner or never getting old.

    Figuring out what you truly want might take a lifetime. But you can start interrogating your current choices today. Questioning our intent can help us to recognize and embrace the options that are always available to us.

    • Why are you doing what you are doing? Next time you lace up your runners (whether its for an Ultra or a walk around the block) ask yourself why you are doing it. The answer doesn’t matter, it’s simply about checking in with yourself. You might answer something like “I’m going for a run so that I can see new parts of my neighborhood” or “…so that I’m in a better mood when I talk to my family.”
    • What do you want to get out of it? For any upcoming event, ask yourself what you intend to get out of it. If you’ve jut bought a book, what do you intend to find out from this book? What do you want to know?
    • What are you going to do about it? When faced with a problem, obstacle or challenge, ask yourself what are you going to do about it? If you are going after some goal, why? And how strongly do you want it?

    Intentions, purpose, goals are all interesting things to think about once in a while. Most of the time we forget they even exist. But when we aren’t making choices out of fear, we can start to consider what we actually want.

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  • The Importance of Being Earnest

    March 3, 2020 @ 5.34pm – Twin Peaks, San Francisco

    Man would rather have the void as purpose than be void of purpose.

    Nietzsche

    It was a cold winter evening in New York, one of those nights when it feels like the sun has drifted off backwards into the universe forever. For the past twelve months or so I had settled into the American way of life and work. The hours were longer, but there had been more intensity, competition and unfiltered enthusiasm than I had ever experienced before. This atmosphere leaked out of the offices and into the streets, the subways, the packed and sweating bars.

    Compared to Australians, I found many Americans more straightforward, enthusiastic and earnest with how they worked and approached life. This earnestness was a sort of non self-conscious doing or being with no strings attached. Sitting at my desk, thinking about this, I pulled out a blank piece of paper and wrote ‘cynical’ on one end and ‘earnest’ on the other, with a long black line between the two.

    Reflecting on how I saw myself at that point in time, I drew a dot close to 100% cynical. That was my attitude. I felt uncomfortable throwing anything more than I had to into my work. Everything was about damage control, clinging onto whatever gains I could get. I hated the idea of failure. Rather than put my hand up for new experiences, I felt overwhelmed enough living in a new country and wanted to keep my head down. I couldn’t say that I had strong interests or opinions. It was easier to poke fun at things than believe in anything. Camus would have described me as ‘bored’.

    Why was I drawn to acting earnestly? Was it a cure for alienation and the banality of modern life? A subconscious counterbalance to my nihilistic perspective? Or just an exotic, intriguing, all-american personality trait of New York City that was growing all around me like wild mushrooms? Perhaps earnestness served as a beacon, an intuition about the future and what had not yet been realised in my life yet.

    It’s unlikely that earnestness resonates as much as it did with me, at that very specific time and place. But in 2024, where everything is a dumpster fire and a meme at the same time, we could all probably be a bit more earnest:

    • Act: It’s not what you do, it’s the fact that you do anything at all. Working towards anything requires action.
    • Commit: I used to think it was a waste of time to take things too seriously. Instead, whatever you do, do it with your full heart. Don’t do things stingily. Doubt and compromise kills earnestness.
    • Don’t hesitate: If you spot an opportunity, don’t look the other way, take it. “If you see evil, and don’t speak evil, you do evil.” – Nassim Taleb
    • Motive matters: If you act from some sort of selfish desire or revenge, the action is spoilt isn’t it?
    • Forget results: Doing your best doesn’t mean it’s actually that good. Results don’t matter when you honestly, earnestly apply yourself. Earnestness is not about being perfect. It recognizes perfection is impossible.

  • Draining the tide pool

    December 21, 2021 at 3:57pm – El Zonte, El Salvador

    You’re not who you think you are. But you are condemned to be who you think you are.”

    Sam Harris

    Maladaptive schemas are patterns we habitually play out. Early in our lives, these patterns might have served a purpose. For example, a strong belief we must ‘be good’ helped protect us from the fear that something bad will happen if we aren’t. But most of the time, they operate like a poorly coded computer program. When a situation invariably triggers the schema, it can explode in unhelpful ways. The thoughts are rigid, simplistic and skew negative. The emotions are dramatic and destructive. And the point of view distorts our perspective of reality to fit its narrow bias.

    Imagine you’re hanging your feet in a rock pool. The water is dark and murky and you can’t see clearly into the water. Anything could be lurking down in the depths. When something touches your foot, your mind races with fearful possibilities. But once the tide drains the water out, you see there’s just a bunch of rocks and seaweed. You might not like what you see, or prefer it to be sparkling white sand, but it’s infinitely more manageable than the unknown. The same applies to a schema. Recognizing the typical thoughts, emotions and general ‘shape’ of a schema makes them a lot easier to deal with. Objectively, a schema becomes less claustrophobic and overwhelming. Rather than someone or something driving you crazy, you can observe a schema (with its associated thoughts, feelings and twisted perspective) going crazy.

    The stink of a schema response is hard to miss. Here are two characteristics that you can look out for.

    Habitual: Maladaptive schemas are usually set off by the same stuff, over and over again. Once they’re up and running, they spew out the same simplistic, negative thoughts and destructive emotions. And maladaptive schemas “lead us to neurotic solutions”1 as our desperate minds seek ways to ignore, deny, resent, numb, dodge or dismiss these uncomfortable reactions.

    Over the top: Probably because of its early-life origins, a schema attack can be characterized by a childish, inappropriate, out of proportion reaction. We might suddenly become enflamed with smoldering anger when we are told exactly what to do or “we may isolate ourselves on the edge of a party in reaction to someone’s frosty tone of voice”2.

    Disorienting: Once a schema kicks in, it’s difficult to make calm, considered decisions because our perception of the world is “tainted”. It’s like orienting with a map with no labels. In a way, we’re possessed. “We have to speak from it. We speak as though we are it.”3 Like a panic attack where it really feels like the walls are closing in, attention, memory and perception are all impacted. In a fog of confusion, basic things we know are true are suddenly cast into doubt and we can easily convince ourselves that this “twisted version of reality is how things actually are.”4

    It’s not possible to unpack and de-fang these ingrained beliefs overnight. But once identified, we must deal with them directly rather than push them away or pretend they’re not happening.

    Let it cook: At base, even caustic self-beliefs like “I’m a failure”, or “I’m not doing anything worthwhile with my life”, are thoughts – “poor and weak”5 and “utterly without force”6. We actually don’t have to do anything about them. It’s not easy, but by simply letting these thoughts and emotions “come in and go out”7, we are building new, less reactive responses.

    Talking back: We can’t blame our minds. When we are overcome by a schema, our minds are unable to take a nuanced, holistic view of a problem or situation. It’s a bit like a small child or a drunken teenager who’s telling us the same nonsensical story again and again. We’re not going to get far with rational conversation, but we can show some generosity and compassion. Challenging recurring, panicky thoughts might sound like “it sounds like you’re worried about failing?” or “I understand what you’re saying, but I don’t want to feel guilty about that.” Yes, talking to yourself might sound crazy, but it’s a lot saner than flying into a rage when someone points out an honest mistake or asks you for a favor.

    With appropriate distance, objectivity and gentleness, we can get a clearer picture of the bogus stuff we are saying about ourselves and open up to a saner view of reality.

    Disclaimer: I’m not a psychologist… and I don’t play one on the internet. If you’re interested in exploring this subject further, talk to a professional. 

    1. Bennett-Goleman, Tara. Emotional Alchemy. ↩︎
    2. Bennett-Goleman, Tara. Emotional Alchemy. ↩︎
    3. Riemersma, Jenna. Altogether You ↩︎
    4. Bennett-Goleman, Tara. Emotional Alchemy. ↩︎
    5. Bennett-Goleman, Tara. Emotional Alchemy. ↩︎
    6. Harris, Sam. ‘Take a Moment’ audio reflection (February 11, 2024).” ↩︎
    7. Bennett-Goleman, Tara. Emotional Alchemy. ↩︎
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  • Determined

    December 25, 2023 at 4:27pm – Zhonghe Village, Taiwan

    You shouldn’t damn ’em. Don’t judge ’em. Just forgive ’em for they know not what they do.

    Max Cady (Cape Fear, 1991)

    Belief is a toxic and dangerous attitude toward reality.

    Terrence McKenna

    In Determined: Life without Free Will, Robert Sapolsky sets off on a generally thankless journey to convince us that there is no such thing as free will. Taking energetic, impressive leaps from chaos theory to criminology, he keeps returning to the same conclusion. He can’t find a neuron (or a brain) “who’s generation of behavior is independent of the sum of its biologically past.”1 In other words, he can’t demonstrate that free will could exist, at least not in an important way like we think it does.

    Sapolsky urges us that seeing through the illusion of free-will can be liberating and in doing so, we could be more humble, forgiving, self-compassionate and grateful for whatever fate has served us. Sounds lovely. Yet, we wake up every morning faced with the urgent feeling that we have choices to make. And although these choices are causal states of the brain, they “lead to specific behaviors, and behaviors lead to outcomes in the world.”2

    Personally, I recognize the long list of luck that I have enjoyed so far in my life. Yet, I feel to my core that things could go differently if I don’t make considered choices about how I eat, move my body and generally conduct myself. In other words, I deeply, deeply believe I am keeping my car in the lane and I’m responsible for keeping to the speed limit and not crashing into a brick wall or flying off a cliff.  So if everything from our destructive emotions to our good intentions are ‘determined’ like Robert demonstrates to us, how should we live? 

    Sapolsky likes to use an example of a college graduate and a garbage collector to show how environment & genetics can deliver vastly different outcomes. Let’s look at a less extreme example – diet. We have two sisters, Fat Sally and Thin Sarah. Both are 20 years old, and live fairly idyllic if uneventful lives in a middle class home in Atlanta, Georgia. Very similar human beings. But they do differ in one important way. Sally eats a lot of junk food, and is twenty pounds overweight. In comparison, thin Sarah is careful and considered with her diet. She thinks it’s important to eat healthy, and has spent years developing habits and a level of discipline to maintain them. She has what Angela Duckworth would call grit. But no matter what values or judgement you place on either of these women, Robert Sapolsky argues persuasively that neither can be blamed or take credit for what’s on their plates.

    Determinism is explained to both women. They learn how very small changes in their psychology and life experiences have led to differing attitudes, diets and waistlines. They had no important agency after all. Although they still feel like free agents, they agree that there’s no way things could be any other way than they turned out.

    Their reactions are interesting. For as long as she can remember, Sally has felt like ‘the fat one’, and largely out of control when it comes to her eating choices. The idea that this was determined feels freeing and she stops blaming herself so harshly. With more self-compassion, she starts eating healthier and quickly drops her weight. Conversely, Sarah, who is proud of her ‘gritty’ character, feels her agency empty down the drain along with meaning in her life. She doesn’t know who she is anymore and slides into a depression. She gives up salads and instead binges on fried chicken and Netflix. Or maybe nothing changes at all. They shrug and continue doing what they were doing. Whatever the reaction, it was bound to happen.  

    And this is where talking about determinism leaves us every time. In a determined world, a response to a book that says that free-will isn’t possible is no different than responding to any other event that happens to us. In the same way that it’s a shame that someone’s mother drank alcohol while they were a fetus, it’s a shame that the persuasively argued concept of determinism might cause thin Sarah to give up her healthy habits.

    Free will can’t be found in our brains because it’s a concept. And because it “emerges from felt experience”,2 it’s an especially salient concept, that’s not going anywhere. Like all the other concepts we’ve invented, free will can be useful, freeing, distracting or totally cast aside for us to live our lives the best we can.

    1. Robert Sapolsky, Determined: A Life Without Free Will ↩︎
    2. Sam Harris, Free Will ↩︎
    3. Sam Harris, Free Will ↩︎
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  • An hour is always an hour

    December 27, 2023 at 1:51pm – Dazhu Village, Taiwan

    I have occasionally… lived a whole life between my first alarm at 5am and my second alarm, five minutes later.

    Oliver Sacks

    You really don’t own anything. It all disappears. When you die there’s nothing left. The only thing you own, is time.

    Robert Greene

    A 40 hour time-blocked work week, I estimate, produces the same amount of output as a 60+ hour work week pursued without structure.

    Cal Newport

    Life is filled with constant change, and no certainty, aside from death, at some point in the future. But that’s a tough truth to swallow, and it’s no surprise we find ourselves hanging on dearly to our health, wealth and happiness, no matter how fleeting they are. When Barbie is reminded that life in the real world is “all change” she responds as we all do, with fear: “That’s terrifying. I don’t want that.”

    But there’s one thing we do get to keep for ourselves. It’s invisible, slippery, and never moves the way we want it, but we all get it for free. And you’ll always have it, until you die, which you can’t say about your hair, your wit or your best friend. Time.

    Time is a strange thing. When we are stressed, it rushes past us at dizzying speeds. When we are bored it oozes like glue. When we are unhappy, unmotivated or depressed, author Robert Greene describes our experience of time as ‘dead’.1 Worst of all, when we see visual representations of our lifetimes, it never feels like enough.

    It can be easier to ignore the clock and kill the time we have to spare, but to use your time properly, you’ll need to look at it directly. Once you admit to yourself that you do in fact have a bit of time up your sleeve, the next question is a tricky one. What should you do with it?

    The people with only a sliver of time left usually urge us to recognize our own self-worth and live life on our own terms.2 Good advice, but hard to put into practice. These aspirations feel honorable, but like time itself, abstract and hard to pin down.

    The following activity aims to do the opposite. It makes us objectify time, making it feel more real, practical and easier to make use of. It does so by getting time out of your head and onto paper. Here’s how it works.

    • Take out a blank 3 by 5 inch index card. This card represents a day. If you’d like, write down the day of the week at the top.
    • Look at it. That’s a days worth of time. 12 hours or so while you are awake. You’re going to plan it, so that you don’t waste it.
    • Write down all the hours in the day, in hour increments (eg. 9am – 10am, 10am-11am.
    • Next to each hour-block, write down what you need or want to do. Sum up how you are using that hour, like “lunch with Ben” or “take kids to school”.
    • If you’d like, you can also write down the most important things you need to do that day, on the right-hand side of the card.
    • That’s it. 

    Writing this down can feel boring or pointless. Your day might look dull and uninteresting and you might prefer to wing it. Writing down how you plan to spend your hours also won’t tell you what you should do, which is something most of us wonder. But there’s no need to take it too seriously, or even do it more than once. The only value in this activity is the acknowledgement that you have a certain number of hours in the day and you intend to think about how you should use them.

    When I have taken a few minutes to plan out my day I’ve noticed some of the following things:

    • My baseline sense of time is way, way off. To realize this, all it takes is writing down all the things I’d like to get done in a day. I can’t find the time for them. It’s like I think I have an extra 4-5 hours up my sleeve.
    • How we intend to use our time is really weak. That’s how we get distracted. Writing might help make you a little more accountable.
    • Learning that you only have an hour free might sound depressing, but starts an important conversation about priorities. What are you doing that’s less important? What can you drop?
    • Writing down some hours on a piece of paper makes time less scary. There’s no hourglasses and skeletons in capes. An hour is an hour, and that’s the way it should be.
    • Paradoxically, you realize there’s both more and less hours than you think in a day.
    • In order to get something done, it needs to be given time. “Show me someone’s calendar and their spending, and I’ll show you their priorities.” – Ramit Sethi
    • When you do something matters.3 Of course, there’s no need to overly optimize this, but maybe you shouldn’t be eating a massive dinner at 11.30pm just before bed.

    Time can feel oppressive when we ignore it or try to force it to do things it can’t, like speed up, slow down or go into reverse. Getting time out of our heads and onto paper can help us use it for some purpose4, own it and make things happen.

    1. Alive Time vs Dead Time https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYW7oOTi5W0 ↩︎
    2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3377309/#:~:text=1)%20“I%20wish%20I%27,v). ↩︎
    3. Power of When, Michael Breus PhD ↩︎
    4. https://ryanholiday.net/will-you-choose-alive-time-or-dead-time/ ↩︎

  • Flat tire

    December 28, 2023 at 3:08pm – Lee Village, Taiwan

    Whether it’s a sunny day when you expected rain or finding a twenty dollar bill that you had forgotten about, it’s always appreciated when life feels a little lucky.

    But luck isn’t always easy to find. Like a spotlight randomly shining down from the heavens, it feels elusive and temporary. Gamblers get on a hot streak, tennis players find momentum, but then, as suddenly as it started, it ends. Maddeningly, when we can’t find it, it feels like everyone around us has it in spades. When we see someone doing well in life, we often grumble that ‘they just lucked into it.’

    Scott Adams is a moderately rich and famous guy who attributes a lot of his success to luck. But rather than shrug his shoulders and leave his next move up to fate, he thinks it’s possible to make luck for yourself. He says one of the best career decisions he made was to move from Wyndham, New York (pop. 2000), to the San Francisco Bay Area. His exposure to luck got a bit bigger. His career advice follows the same formula: “The most useful thing you can do is stay in the game” or “every skill you acquire doubles your odds of success.”

    But try telling that advice to someone growing up in a war torn country. They might have Scott’s same intelligence and ambition, but no green card. They might be a world class programmer but were forced to work in a factory or never had the money to buy their first computer. Everything from paradigm-shifting scientific theories to the recipe for Coca-Cola can be attributed to chance, luck and being in the right place at the right time.

    Accepting the influential role of luck in our lives should not prevent you from building resilience like the Stoics or increasing your chance of landing a high paying job like Scott Adams. But it should force you to be more compassionate, more humble and grateful that you’re awake, alive and that’s about as lucky as it gets.

  • Unadmitted thoughts

    December 29, 2023 at 6:45am – Ruixiang Village

    In the 1920’s, psychoanalyst Marion Milner had everything going for her. She had graduated with a first class degree in psychology, and had a promising career ahead of her. She was in love, married and had lots of friends. She was a young mother, but also found time to write, paint, enjoy the opera or sprawl in the Mediterranean sun. Externally, everything pointed to a happiness most of us could only dream of. But she wasn’t happy.

    Thus began her introspective journey which would later be synthesized and published as A life of one’s own in 1934. The experiment was simple. She took stock of the moments in her daily life which had been positive and wrote about them, hoping to discover who she really was and what made her happy.

    One of the major obstacles she encounters is something she called “blind thoughts”. She’s shocked to discover these childish, often inappropriate thoughts ‘chattering’ just below her level of consciousnesses. She makes an effort not to reference any psychological theories or frameworks, but this struck me as an illuminating and helpful example of what Jung called the shadow, our personal unconscious. Since the shadow is by definition the stuff your ego doesn’t want to acknowledge, it’s very hard to get a glimpse of yourself. Here are a few of Marion’s observations:

    • “The things I was prompted to keep silent about were nearly always the things I was ashamed of.”
    • “Whenever I was not aware of what I was thinking, then my thoughts were liable to be quite childish and unreasonable.”
    • “Worry, depression, headache, feelings of rush.. could all mean you are evading an unadmitted thought”
    • “Although I had no notion of their existence, (might these thoughts) posses the power to influence my feelings and actions?”
    • “I had been trying to drive the subject from my thoughts by will.”

    Jill Bolte-Taylor describes this part of ourselves as the emotional part of the left hemisphere, which determines our current level of safety by “bringing in information about the present moment and then comparing that stimulation to threats from our past.” This becomes clear when we are enraged and can’t resist insulting or blaming someone or when you feel guilty about not helping that little old lady across the road.

    Like Jung suggests, she finds it helpful to give a voice to these “unadmitted thoughts” and bring them into the sunlight.

    I decided to try this out. Recently, I noticed myself in an irritable, restless mood after work, which I had blamed on the hot weather but was still unable to shake. Inspired by Marion, I decided to let “my thoughts write themselves” and see if I could get some insight into what was spoiling my evening.

    I took a pen and paper and set a timer for two minutes. Sinking into the irritable feeling, I started to write. Once the timer was up, I reviewed the steaming pile of garbage and gunk I had found in the drain. A phrase stood out to me “brat”. I saw someone’s face flash in front of me, who I had met with a few hours before. I was stunned. This didn’t make sense. It was a perfectly fine meeting, nothing out of the ordinary. And the word brat was ridiculous, I would never think to use that language, or talk about that person like that! Or would I? In a daze, I wrote the word brat a few more times for the fun of it, and noticed my mood clearing.

    As Marion Milner discovers more and more about herself, I felt conflicted. For years, I’ve kept sporadic notes to myself on what makes me happy or miserable. I’ve never regretted writing to myself, as the act of writing is therapeutic in itself, but I’ve never really had the urge to re-read older entries, or methodically dig up themes, patterns and insights like Milner seems to effortlessly do. “Damn, I wish I thought of that” can feel both like a fist bump or a punch in the gut.

    Most people think of a hero’s journey as external. You fight a bully, win the running race, ace the test. But it can also be internal. As an introvert, I’m heavily biased, but I think there’s insights here for anyone who’s ever been distracted, had a bad mood or struggled to think of what their life’s purpose should be.

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  • Non-intended doing

    December 30, 2023 at 12:02pm – Shifen Village, Taiwan

    We’ve read the success stories. A disciplined person gets more done. A disciplined person doesn’t get distracted. A disciplined person is reliable, trustworthy and over a lifetime, can achieve incredible things.

    Discipline is clearly valuable to our health, our work and the people around us.

    Thanks to Joe Rogan, discipline also has a sort of cultural gravity these days, surrounded by cold plunge pools and grueling endurance events.

    When I see the word discipline, I think punishment. My mind associates the concept with school detention, fines and a vague feeling of shame. I’m doing something “bad” that needs to be given up, or else. There is also the sense of renunciation, or repression, giving up something that I might actually like to do.

    But is there another way to think about discipline? 

    Instead of an extreme act (breath-holding) or sacrifice (sobriety), could discipline be simply not-doing stuff I don’t want to do?

    Let me explain.

    A phone on your desk can be irresistible for a few reasons. It’s something you’ve likely developed a habit around. It’s rewarding. It’s easy to do, and what more, there’s a clear environmental stimulus; you can literally see it out of the corner of your eye.

    Let’s say, for the next hour while I’m working, I don’t want to pick up my phone, unless it’s ringing. Simple enough? No value judgments please, this is just something simple that I would like to not-do. 

    I fail. At the end of the hour, I have picked up my phone three times.

    I did something I didn’t want to do.

    What happened?

    We can look at my failure not to do something as a spectrum

    1. I didn’t want to pick up your phone, and I don’t.
    2. I notice myself glancing at my phone or even reaching for it, but stop myself.
    3. I notice I’ve picked my phone up. Interestingly, I have a strong urge to continue scrolling. Not too long ago, I didn’t want to do this.
    4. I pick up my phone say something like “what’s the harm…”

    Here’s a few other examples non-intended doing from my own life:

    • Tapping my phone to wake it from sleep
    • Hitting snooze on my alarm
    • Rushing chores like brushing my teeth
    • Fidgeting while I’m in a meeting
    • Stopping swimming before I hit the wall
    • Peeking in the fridge when I walk past it

    If we are doing these things we don’t want to do, it’s fair to say that it should be well in our power to not-do them. And not like a priest or monk might deny themselves something for the rest of their lives. No one wants to do that, or should want that. We simply want to make reasonable decisions that don’t make our lives worst. Essentially, we want to do what we want.

    This idea of pausing and placing down your phone sounds simple enough, but it’s basically the opposite of what we all generally do. There is value in doing things that satisfy our basic needs and wants, like a few minutes of reading the news or a sip of coke. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, but to only seek pleasure or utility is self-defeating, as we’ve all discovered a few hours into a Netflix binge. 

    Author Iain McGilchrist blames our culture. He says that when a civilization is at its height, it encourages values that transcend those of pure utility. Rome or Ancient Greece “inculcated a spirit of self-denial…a certain degree of bravery, courage, humility… moral consideration of the value of others.” This is reflected clearly in philosopher Max Shelers’ pyramid of values. 

    So until mankind collectively transcends our addiction to TikTok and sugar, see if you can catch yourself doing something you didn’t want to do.

  • A conversation about free will

    December 29, 2023 at 7:10am – Ruixiang village, Taiwan

    A puppet is free as long as he loves his strings.

    Sam Harris

    I was nearing the end of my bike ride when I arrived at an intersection. I needed to make a choice. I briefly considered turning left, which would involve a little more climbing and returning the way I came, or right, a downhill ride to the coast, which would be more scenic. I chose to go right. As I coasted home, I wondered if I had been in control of my choice. I couldn’t prove it. I couldn’t even explain why, or exactly when, I had started to deliberate about left over right in the first place.

    There’s smart people laying out persuasive arguments that we indeed have no choice, but it’s a confounding, unsettling concept to wrestle with. That’s why I decided (or did I?) to talk about it with someone else. The following (lightly edited) conversation touches on free will and related topics like dreams, consciousness, ego, suicide, law and religion. 

    S: Free will has been encoded into every philosophical approach, even religion. Our whole legal system hangs off of it. The idea that you had a choice to kill or not and therefore you choose heaven or hell or freedom or the gallows all by yourself. Capitalism depends on the idea that you have the choice of excelling in life and if you don’t you fail.

    J: I think choices still happen, and choices have consequences that could really impact our lives and others.

    S: How? If there is no free will how do we have choices? If my choice was determined, how could anything different have taken place? 

    J: Even if your choice was determined, there’s still a consequence to it. It’s impossible for us to know how our hand actually moves or a thought appears in our head. A decision to choose something might as well have come out of a black box. But I think we can hold our hand back from striking someone. I believe in determinism, but also that we must take responsibility for our actions.

    S: How far do we have to work our way up the tree of life to get to animals that do have free will? Dinosaurs had tiny, tiny brains, do we have to wait for mammals? When did it turn up in humans? Did it just appear one day?

    J: I think free will must be bundled together with our feeling of self-consciousness. We have this impression, for some reason, that we are in control of our destiny. This idea actually causes a lot of suffering. We get extremely upset when the cascade of events from the beginning of time (which couldn’t really be anything different), does not behave or create an outcome that we are happy with. I would guess that most animals don’t really suffer problems like existential angst or anxiety like we do. I think we are the only animals that think they have free will.

    S: The notion of free-will must have popped into existence at the same moment of self-consciousness. Otherwise wouldn’t you feel trapped in a body doing stuff you feel you have no control over? “I have no idea what’s going to happen next! Will I attack the wooly mammoth or run away? Who knows? Hold on this is going to be scary!

    J: I think that’s a likely explanation. It’s developed at some point fairly recently in the scheme of things. Along with the ability to see yourself as a separate person to other stuff. Here’s a thought experiment. Imagine if you have had no control over your life until this very moment. You get to wave a magic wand that gives you the power of agency and the power to make choices freely. What do you think of that? How do you feel?

    S: I think that might have happened! One day, an early man got the sensation he could choose between two options and that he was in charge of that choice. That required self-consciousness. As a child you didn’t have the notion of self-consciousness for some time after you are born. It happened to you! The moment the thought “I am thinking something” comes into your head it includes the idea (or illusion) that you have some control. “I chose to think this and in a moment I will think of other things and I am doing this”. Without free will there is no “I”.

    J: At some point in our lives we started to identify with an “I thought” (“I am thinking, I am free.”) and boom. Free will. It’s like the notion of free-will comes bundled with self-consciousness. It’s like the same software package. There is a parallel here with dreaming. In a regular dream, we are dead certain that a monster is chasing us and we are going to die. It feels so real, that we never question it, unless we recognize that we are dreaming. 

    S: If we truly don’t have free-will… now what?

    J: Let’s say there’s a farmer, working in the fields. He’s never heard of free will. Robert Sapolsky rocks up and explains to him that he has no control over what he is doing, and science proves this without a doubt. What does he do? Does he lose his mind? Lie down? For his whole life, and before Robert showed up, the farmer had never heard of this idea and was doing his job perfectly fine. I wonder, that if the idea of free will or the self as an illusion makes you miserable, maybe it is better not to think about it.

    S: I’m sure many people do kill themselves faced with this knowledge but our survival instincts are too powerful. Sam Harris believe embracing the notion of no free will makes life better. Camus argued that life is ultimately pointless and suicide seems reasonable yet the answer is to find some meaning to your futile endeavor. Maybe accepting the lack of free will helps. Life is pointless, but you don’t or can’t choose to search for some sort of meaning as you slide towards the void. You have to accept it.

    J: Suicide is like the ultimate resistance to fate. When you commit suicide you’ve gone so far away from accepting your fate you’ve used your “free will” in the most extreme, final way you can to resist life.

  • Compulsion

    December 29, 2023 @ 6:11pm – Jiaoxi, Taiwan

    A decision, an action, are infallible omens of what we shall do another time, not for any vague, mystic, astrological reason but because they result from an automatic reaction that will repeat itself.

    Cesare Pavese

    Wherever we are at. Old. Young. Happy. Sad. If we are breathing, we are making choices. Which thing should we pick? Which way should we go? What should we eat for dinner? People around us keep doing stuff, triggering us and demanding us to take action. Stimulus sets off a response. We are bound up together in this cascading stream of events. We can drag our feet. We can complain. We can give up. We can delegate.

    But the question of what do next keeps blinking on the screen of life.

    And how exactly should we respond?

    Our habits can change for lots of reasons. We can work on them consicoulsly, or we can simply grow out of them with age. But generally, a compulsive reaction means we really can’t act in a different way. It’s rigid and fixed. If we are terrified of the colour black, or we are obsessed with colour pink, our shopping selections will narrow down a lot. Our likes and dislikes are so familiar to us that it’s hard for us to step back and consider that they dominate how we make decisions. If you applied that preference for pink to someone who is not fussed about any particular colour, it would suddenly sound insane. “You’re saying I have to pick pink stuff for the rest of my life?” But that’s the condition under which many of our choices are made.

    The Stoics recognized a long time before modern science that “there are no separate events” and that the present moment is the inevitable outcome of fate. When we act compulsively, it’s likely that what we want to happen will clash against what is actually happening. I mean, what are the chances that fate would match our (usually maladjusted) preferences? Hippolytus illustrates this resistance with a simple comparison: “When a dog is tied to a cart, if it wants to follow it is pulled and follows, making its spontaneous act coincide with necessity, but if it does not want to follow it will be compelled in any case. So, it is with men too: even if they do not want to, they will be compelled in any case to follow what is destined.” No matter how challenging the present is, it couldn’t possibly be any other way. Relax.

    Actions have consequences. A decision made compulsively, like when you are immersed in anger or when you are triggered by some old memory, could have a real impact on your life. If I’m trying to lose weight, my habitual rush to the fridge for more food when I’m bored or lonely does not help me. Compulsively reaching for your phone when you are riding, causes your friend behind you to crash.

    Epictetus said that “if your choices are beautiful,” he said, “so too will you be.” I’m not sure about beautiful, but I’d rather respond (or face a response) that has been considered calmly rather than blindly. And luckily, we don’t have to go through life constantly triggered by everything. In a very small, poorly lit gap between stimulus and response, we can find space to choose more reasonably, fairly and objectively.

    Here’s what that response might look like:

    Accepting

    The sensation in your legs during a hard climb and the rain that has started are both things that the Stoics would say are out of your direct control. You might really suffer. But that suffering is yours to deal with. It’s an “interior matter.”1 Rather than freak out, your response should recognizes this fact.

    Equanimous

    You’re riding your bike and suddenly a big truck swerves in front of you, cutting you off. You feel a surge of anger. That’s natural and normal, but what do you do next? Equanimity recognizes that the event that has just happened is neither good nor bad. Blaming, judging or acting as that emotion will not help us a tiny bit. From this position, instead we can pick a response that’s “well founded”2 and do what’s required, to the best of our abilities. Equanimity helps us do this.

    Flexible

    You’ve said to yourself you are going for a run ‘no matter what’. But just as you’re lacing up, you get a phone call that a family member is getting rushed to the hospital. What do you do? The answer is obvious, but we often remain fixed and unwilling to change our minds. As much as possible we need to be able to stop, reconsider and reverse or change course. If we made the decision in the first place, we should feel empowered to change it. Epictetus gently reminded a man dead-set on killing himself that he had the ability to do something different: “Good thing someone else didn’t make that decision.”3

    Responsible

    If you are concerned about the impact of your action, that’s great, it means you are making a considered choice. All your actions have some consequence, so simply recognizing this fact means thats some level of responsibility is now visible to you too. Depending on the size of our decision, we could be impacting our own wellbeing, the people close to us, our community, the world, or all of the above. 

    Whether we like it or not, we are involved in life. And the question of what to do next is always confronting us. This doesn’t need to be a bad thing. With a little effort, we should aim make calm, considered choices rather than letting habit do the job for us. 

    1. Johnson, Robert. Inner Gold ↩︎
    2. Epictetus. Of Human Freedom ↩︎
    3. Epictetus. Of Human Freedom ↩︎