Achilles & Aristotle

Relevant Complexity 5) Age

Talking to someone at work, she said she’d been surprised that a very experienced chap in his late 50s had come on a training course.

We concluded that age shouldn’t matter in deciding who gets training. I know plenty of pig-headed twenty and thirtysomethings who’d have got less and will give less as a result of that training course – it’s openness to new ideas that matters.

It dawned on me that nearly all the people I most enjoy conversation and contemplation with, are at least ten years older than me. And many much older. When it comes to thinking about things, you can’t beat the right sort of older person.

Contemporary society glorifies youth. But younger people haven’t always got much to say. Of course there’s freshness and simplicity but relevant complexity in people takes time to grow.

Openness, curiosity and the experience of age are key attributes of the Aristotelian ‘friend in contemplation’. Aquinas’s ‘prudentia’ – practical wisdom – is not innate, it is learned. Wisdom takes time. Forget youth, when comes to interesting people – the oldies are the goodies.

Life, Music

Train Strains

Bejesus it’s hard work not to be bothered by folk on public transport. Keeping sane on a packed train is a formidable test of the mind. As a friend pointed out, its all just sensory data. But we are hardwired to react.

My virtual friend Rohan – on his Buddhify meditation App – describes travel as pulling your attention all over the place. And my consciousness is being jolted and jostled as we begin to rattle along.

The respectable older lady next to me is assailing me with her ageing Burger King and fries. What’s she doing eating that? Then there’s a sweaty backpacker attempting to impress his girlfriend with mild boorishness. Ah the naiveté of young love. And of my own choosing – in a desperate attempt to block them out – Saint Saëns Symphony no 3 in my headphones.

Saint Saëns has it by a nose. But the fries are fighting hard up my nostrils. The carriage strip lighting is pretty penetrating too. It’s a good test of whether I can rest.

But the right classical music, at the right time is a lifesaver, I increasingly discover with the passing of the years. If in doubt, screen it out with a decent bit of orchestral – now there’s something I’d never have thought I’d say 20 years ago. Music maestro please.

Art, Life, Psychology, Sport

Sport as Life

The thesis: truly great sporting skill and self-expression come best when not too structured, not too investigated, not too explored.

The counter: nearly-great performance is helped by study, stats, practice and heightened professionalism.

Stimulated by a cricket ground conversation with a good friend – and his kindness in buying me Ed Smith’s ‘What sport tells us about life’, I’m pondering the balance of thought and action, impulse and impact, standing up and standing out.

Csikszentmihalyi’s ‘Flow’ comes from matching high challenge with high skill. This suggests a linearity – progressive improvement. Perhaps for some things and some people it’s more non-linear: in life, as well as sport.

A great work, a stunning goal or a pivotal intervention – are they more likely as a ‘moment of genius’? Or perhaps as likely a moment we could potentially judge as ‘madness’, depending on the outcome. Do our greatest interventions come where we ignore risk and just ‘act’, with no conscious consideration of the chances or consequences.

There is a fate and fatalism side to these moments – whether in politics, war, life or sport. The sense that the script has already been written and destiny calls – a feeling that life stands still, the world is watching and it was meant to be.

The best goal I ever scored – volleyed low and unstoppable from a zinging cross – had that sense of time standing still. There are moments in working life too, I can recall, of almost out-of-body otherworldliness when the stakes were high, but ignored, in favour of speaking-up and speaking out.

Of course you remember the moments it came off – not when it didn’t. There’s lady luck and ‘confirmation bias’ to thank in ‘memorable’ moments too.

Perhaps what we call ‘genius’ is simply the product of a self-belief which ignores the situation and unconsidered – sometimes lucky, but often skilful – action. How many times you pull it off determines how history judges the ‘actor’.

But the ‘average’ means many must fall below, for a few to soar above. Heroes ignore the odds. Most of us consider them. But maybe we should all ignore the odds too – at least once in a while.

Life, Science

Facts and Data

Stone me, or rather half a stone me. It transpires that our bathroom scales couldn’t be more wrong. A combination of old age (theirs) and youth – the kids jumping on them – means they turn out to be massively misleading!

Looks like I’ve been convincing myself that my slightly wobbly belly was one step short of emaciation, when the truth is it’s half a stone of unnecessary blubber!

Like ‘faster than light’ neutrinos at the Large Hadron Collider, the measurements were wrong. My theory of thinness has been falsified by new experiments – the missus has bought some shiny new bathroom scales.

I’ve been following my own personal satnav into a bowl of empty calories. It’s amazing how we blindly follow instruments in modern life.

So the hard work of shedding the pounds begins. But like a good scientist, I’m mainly glad to have corrected my error. New data, new knowledge, new understandings. Bang go the ice creams this summer…

Philosophy, Psychology, Work

Sat on my Ass

Buridan’s Ass is a famous thought experiment which features a perfectly rational ass rationally stuck between two equally attractive alternatives.

Tragically equidistant between hay and water, the ass lies down to quietly die – as it would be irrational to pursue either over the other.

At work I’m more Speedy Gonzales than Buriden’s Ass at times. And at my worst Wile E. Coyote – hatching complex schemes for simple problems.

I’m often at my best when I slow down a bit. As I wrote today:

Better sometimes to lie down between, than run needlessly and heedlessly between both seeking a carrot.

Perhaps I should treat myself to the odd sit down.