Psychology – Page 25 – Achilles & Aristotle

Aristotle, Death, Life, Psychology, Science

Note to Self

I came upon a terse description of ‘identity’ this week in a longer piece by neuroscientist Terrence W. Deacon of USC Berkeley:

An intrinsic tendency to maintain a distinctive integrity against the ravages of increasing entropy as well as disturbances imposed by the surroundings.

He was describing the way molecules come together in sympathetic, then symbiotic relationships to form ‘auto-catalytic’ processes – where one chemical reaction feeds, and is fed by another. But deliberately he was defining ‘self’ in a way which embraces chemicals, bodies and minds.

I watched a chilling piece on the news last night about Alzheimer’s, with an awareness raising TV ad portrays sufferers fading through transparency to invisibility. Another of Deacon’s definitions – intended for chemicals, is as true of minds:

To be truly self-maintaining, a system must contain within it some means to ‘remember’ and regenerate those constraints determining its integrity which would otherwise tend to dissipate spontaneously.

Which leads me to the conclusion that:

After Aristotle, as moral animals, we are what we repeatedly do.

After Aquinas and McCabe, as linguistic animals, we are what we think, say and write.

And after Deacon, as forgetful animals – sometimes helpfully, sometimes tragically – we are what we can remember against the ravages of entropy, the environment and time.

All the more reason to write the odd reminder I think.

Aristotle, Life, Psychology, Work

Against Idleness

A friend and I discussed yesterday whether ‘perpetual activity’ is simply a function of my work and life stage – or is it my underlying temperament. In a previous conversation, he put to me, that the ceaseless activity I observe in my daughter might suggest ‘the fruit never falls far from the tree’.

I think of myself as basically liking my rest. I’m just not allowed any. My family all seem to feel me sitting down means they need to spur me to action. Sitting down for them is me signalling a desire to be reactivated. I routinely stay on my feet at home, to keep them from ‘tasking’ me further.

Similarly at work, keeping busy is my way. If things are in good order, I instinctively seek some ‘new’ things to make happen – at times to the chagrin of those around me.

I blame the Emperor Vespasian as quoted by Montaigne in his essay ‘Against Idleness’ which I read the other day:

The Emperor Vespasian, being sick of the disease whereof he died, did not for all that neglect to inquire after the state of the empire, and even in bed continually despatched very many affairs of great consequence; for which, being reproved by his physician, as a thing prejudicial to his health, “An emperor,” said he, “must die standing.”

A fine saying, in my opinion, and worthy of a great prince. The Emperor Adrian since made use of the same words, and kings should be often put in mind of them, to make them know that the great office conferred upon them of the command of so many men, is not an employment of ease; and that there is nothing can so justly disgust a subject, and make him unwilling to expose himself to labour and danger for the service of his prince, than to see him, in the meantime, devoted to his ease and frivolous amusement, and to be solicitous of his preservation who so much neglects that of his people.

Never sitting down and avoiding any whiff of ‘ease’ or ‘frivolous amusement’ in my domestic and working life have become habits. We are what we repeatedly do. Just need to keep standing.

Psychology, Work

Pain

Interesting to read, this week, that our recollection of painful surgery records only two coordinates – the peak of pain, and how much it hurt at the end. Duration is curiously absent, as a significant part of our recollection of pain.

This certainly fits with my memory of the handful of times I’ve been operated on. All I remember is the ‘peak pain’ of the sharp, intense – and after several repeats, increasingly unbearable – pain of multiple local anaesthetic injections going in, before they start to work.

As for the end, just a curious mixture of dull and sharp pain – like a cross between a paper cut and a bad bruise. It is as if we remember the horror moment. And how the story ends. But nothing in-between…

I was talking to someone this week about painful relationships between organisations – and I wondered out loud, if it’s the same. You remember the worst they did to you, and how it was last time you saw them, but – as with pain – not much in-between.

This is an interesting thought. At work, is it your worst behaviour – personal or organisational – which scars the deepest? And is how you ‘are’ next, your considerable opportunity for major salvation.

It might mean worrying a lot less about situations and relationships which have been bad for ages. Only attend to them when you can do something significant to change how the ‘story’ ends.

Dysfunctional relations between organisations and people are part and parcel of the world of work. Treating them like pain might be an interesting approach – mitigate the worst pain, worry less about the duration of discomfort. And attend to them, only, when you can make things a lot better.

Odysseus, Poetry, Psychology, Work

Misty Mountains

Monday – Morning – Early – Start –
Car – Troubled – Children – Missed –
Four – Big – Days – At – Work –
Many – Meetings – People – Buzzing –
All – Day – Long – And – Beyond –
Thursday – Evening – Nearly – Done –
Literally – And – Figuratively –
Peaks – Scaled – Views – Good

A week of hard work, with people from many places wrestling with the challenges of achieving an ambitious future – in an uncertain world. Two thoughts helped me along.

First, self-deception. I read in the New Scientist the other week that humans are masters of self-deception. It’s an important survival adaptation. The fact we can kid ourselves, helps us kid others and cope with life.

It’s obvious that when you’re looking several years ahead, there are lots of imponderables. So, as I said to several people this week, the art of conceiving and believing a vision of the future is to render it like Disney’s ‘enchanted castle’ – glowing, magical and distant.

The huge mistake is to seek to describe it in too much detail. Do that and Disney’s Castle dissolves in detailed questions about how the sewers will work. Drawing on our natural gift for self-deception – as a force for optimism, enthusiasm and positive change – requires that the future keep some of its mystery.

My second thought comes from ‘cross cultural’ training which I did when I was first sent East in the early 1990s. Eastern cultures, in general, value cohesion and alignment more than Western, where individualism and drive are more prized. The heroic leader and tough minded strategy can feel good in our hemisphere. But as President Bartlett said in the ‘West Wing’: “Leadership when no-one follows is just taking a walk”.

Back to that training. If you think of people as ‘bar magnets’, the Eastern view is that time spent aligning is vital to getting the whole moving sustainably. If all your magnets are pointing in different directions, that’s a lot of dissipated energy.

I’ve found, in recent years, sharing more context invariably nudges ‘magnets’ into better alignment. People are rarely persuaded by specific arguments, but always become more aligned by more shared context.

Disney castles and bar magnets are two good reasons to spend time sharing stories and context. But not too much time. Spend too much time and the vision gets unpicked in its details. And subsequent attempts at persuasion leave the magnets askew again.

Magnets, magic and misty mountains are an important part of the art of seizing today and coping with tomorrow, I reckon. That, and taking time – but not too much – to come together.

Aristotle, Ethics, Life, Philosophy, Psychology, Work

Crystallisation

At the core of Aristotle’s account of ethics and virtue is ‘Prohairesis’ – the central moral character.

I increasingly think of it like a copper sulphate crystal growing on a piece of thread. When you do the classic school experiment, knotted threads provide the core around which a copper sulphate crystal can form, from a saturated solution. But you often get several smaller crystals and imperfections in the main one.

In my thesis, the central moral character forms – like a copper sulphate crystal – when choice and actions start to cohere around a central narrative of who we are and what we stand for. The sub-crystals are alternate versions of ourselves and the imperfections are just that – out of character behaviours, foibles and failings.

Last week I gave a talk where I owned up to once having ‘presentational positions’ on most aspects of work. They were largely free floating from any common ethical foundation. I had ethics ‘in the mix’, but no core crystal.

Expedience, presentational benefit and plausible deniability were as likely to inform my public utterances as beliefs, values or virtue. Not these days. I have Prohairesis – a central moral character which, on my better days, informs and guides my choices.

But to meet Aquinas’s test of virtue I have one major challenge left – slowing down. Talking to a friend at the weekend it transpires that one of the strengths of ‘clever’ people is they are quick. This means they can quickly weigh options and decide on the best action. But the challenge to ‘capable’ people as they progress in life, and into more complicated situations, is to use this processing capability to judge more wisely – not more quickly.

Aquinas has it that a man can make ‘good’ or ‘bad’ moral choices without any guiding core moral character, but they cannot be truly ‘virtuous’ without ‘Prudentia’ – practical wisdom – as the unifying prism. As Herbert McCabe says deliberation should be long and considered, action sharp and decisive. Sometimes I am too quick to decide.

I have Prohairesis forming in a nice crystal on the thread of my life. I’m not bad on Prudentia these days either. But like copper sulphate crystals these things take time to grow, so I should take my time too.