Suppose you’re in an argument or debate with someone, and they dismiss your ideas without providing valid reasons in return — what do you do? Assuming the debate is real — in other words, both parties are conversing in order to get to the truth, and not for the sake of winning an argument — you can easily focus the discussion by asking the other party to state your case for your: ask them to repeat your own argument.
This will ensure you’re talking about the same thing and the other party understands your position clearly. If they don’t, you can correct them. If they do, they’ll have to refute your idea at some point using a valid reason. Of course, if they’re not interested in the truth they likely won’t do this, especially if they doubt their own position. If this happens, don’t waste your time — in the words of HAL:
Dave, this conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Goodbye.
- HAL9000, 2001: A Space Odyssey
Robert Greene wrote about this and I wish I could find the passage that put it so succinctly but it appears to have escaped me. Anyhow, it’s like this:
Life is a game. It’s a game for power. When you’re playing a game, say chess, do you have a habit of listening to the opponent and shaping your strategy based on what they say they’re going to do? In Poker, if your opponent says he’s got a full house, do you believe them and fold? Of course not. They’re not on your side, you’re playing against them, and as such, you cannot trust anything they say. Your strategy is based solely on what they do. It’s based on their actions.
So next time somebody lies to you, do you really have a reason to be hurt or disappointed? The only person you should be disappointed at is yourself. Why? Because you've been led down the path they chose for you — you've been led by their lie. Words are meaningless, it’s action that matters. It doesn’t matter what people say to you or when they lie because it’s not their words that should speak to you, it’s their actions.
People live their lives in a state of chaos. Every little distraction pulls them away from their path. The distraction itself is nothing at all, like a tiny dog barking, but they will still stop what they’re doing and go to fight and chase it. Of course the little dog will run away and the angry fools chasing it will just tire themselves. They gained nothing, but a lost a little more of their most valuable resource: their time. By the time they get back on the road they’ll spot another distraction and start chasing that.
Enlightenment is achieved when the noise of the barking dog ceases to exist. You can see the dog, but you can’t hear it — it doesn’t affect you in any way. It may jump in front of you trying to get your attention but you simply push it away, it’s just a tiny thing, it cannot stand in your way. You can see the path ahead clearly — you can see the real obstacles that you must go around to reach your destination, the hills and mountains, and you focus on that. Petty distractions don’t exist, you focus on what really matters. While everybody around you is running around you make ground.
These distractions come from two sources. Some originate internally: impulses that drive you towards quick pleasures, or fear that drives you away from the path. While these things may give you a little value, they will usually steal a lot more behind your back.
Others originate externally, usually in the form of other people colliding with you in some way. You’ll always interact with incompetent, rude or simply malicious people — there is no way around that — what matters is how you handle yourself. Do you get involved? Do you bring yourself down to their level and engage with them? Again, the action is impulsive, driven by anger, and while it may have originated externally, it is you who is a lead actor in this act.
Why not elevate yourself above all this? Look down on the situation from above and figure out what’s really going on. You’ll see that all these people are simply obstacles that you must go around — or break down, for ignorance isn’t always the answer, although it usually is for most of them. If you’re walking along a country road and see a big puddle of mud up ahead, do you walk right through it or walk around it? Do you stop in-front of it and curse it believing your words make any difference to it? It is the same with such people. Engaging yourself with them is dragging yourself through mud, or worse, being angry at it. Instead, realize the situation for what it really is — think strategically and employ the right interaction technique in each situation. Most of the time this is simply ignoring the troublemaker.
It's silly to try to escape other people's faults. They are inescapable. Just try to escape your own.
- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
But how can I do that? The troublemaker is trying to hurt or annoy me in some way — how do I block that out? Well, are these people on the same level as you? Do you really consider them your equals and love them as much as yourself to give them all this respect and attention? Of course not. They already lost your respect through their actions. What’s left for them to pillage from you is your attention. Don’t ever surrender it to them.
I've just finished reading the War of Art book by Steven Pressfield and for the most part is it very good. The book is split into three parts. My favorite parts are one and two, in which Pressfield first identifies and personifies Resistance — the force that prevents us from breaking through the creative block and actually finishing our work.
Resistance manifests itself in different forms — fear of failure, fear of success, rationalisation of why you should be doing something else — all aimed at preventing you from actually sitting down and doing the work you really want to do. But Resistance also acts as a compass — when you feel it towards something then this is something you should probably do. It means you care about it and that it’s important. We don’t feel Resistance towards doing pointless things, which is why it’s so easy to procrastinate.
In the second part Pressfield talks about how to fight resistance, the main idea being that you should graduate from an amateur to a pro. This means turning your passion into a profession. Do the work you love in a setting where you can sit down to work a set number of hours — don’t finish until you’re done. Professionals don’t just work on projects, they finish them. Whether your project will be a success or failure doesn’t matter to a pro, all that matters is you get it done, because that’s the only way you’ll find out anyway.
The last part is quite interesting. Pressfield talks about muses and angels and presents a theory that creativity and ideas don’t really originate inside you — they come from the outside. Invisible muses that live around you want to give you those insights, ideas and revelations and they do it when you’re listening — when you sit down to work, or sometimes at other odd times. The artist thus becomes the conduit through which otherworldly powers manifest their creativity into the physical world. There’s a TED talk by Elizabeth Gilbert on exactly the same thing.
This is why artists are modest. They know they're not doing the work; they're just taking dictation.
- Steven Pressfield, The War of Art
I think that’s a bad way to look at it. When you create bad stuff that nobody likes — that’s you, that’s your work, right? Angels don’t dictate bad work. But when you create something wonderful that really strikes a chord with your audience — this then is not your work, it’s a work of a higher power that simply used your body as a channel through which to transmit it?
What kind of view is that? Why rob the artist of recognition for their greatest accomplishments while attributing all those failed attempts to them?
I can see clearly why this philosophy would appeal to many artists. It takes away the responsibility for your work — it takes away the stress and the pressure. You just have to sit down and work, and some day you’ll just produce really good work, whenever the powers decide to dictate it. You don’t have to worry because it’s not under your control, it’s out of your hands. This same outlook can, and is, applied to life in the form of religion. People surrender their lives to God — whatever happens does because this is the wish of a higher power.
This is foolish and misleading, and while it might actually work to alleviate stress, it’s not real — it’s not true. Of course the artist is responsible for their work. They’re responsible just as much for their failures as for their success. Breaking through the creative block isn’t easy, but you don’t need to fabricate reality to do it, you have to develop a stronger work ethic and focus on the stuff that matters, discarding all the meaningless distractions.
Your accomplishments are your own — you've earned them.
In one of his letters, Seneca writes about a famous Spartan boy who was taken prisoner. The boy was to be turned into a slave, yet he resisted. In his native Doric he kept shouting: “I shall not be a slave!”. When the boy was given orders to fetch a disgusting chamber pot he leaped up and smashed his head against the wall, breaking his skull. In this way he defied his masters, he never became a slave, not even for just a moment.
The boy’s situation was the worst possible — he was physically imprisoned without any hope of escape. The only possible outcome for him was to become a slave — or so his captors thought. It’s likely your situation is different, and yet many of us are slaves to other things — things that suck up all our most precious resource: our time. They are money, impulses, fear, anxiety and other people’s petty dramas. You need not surrender you time to them. Your life lies in your hands and freedom from slavery can be obtained instantly should you choose to take it.
Surely you can adopt the spirited attitude of that boy and say, 'No slave am I!' At present, you unhappy creature, slave you are, slave to your fellow-men, slave to circumstance and slave to life (for life itself is slavery if the courage to die is absent).
- Seneca, Letters from a Stoic
In his book, The 50th Law, Robert Greene gave a good example of this level of defiance in modern times. In 1966 a successful middleweight boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter was arrested for murder and sentenced to three consecutive life terms. He maintained his innocence and was released 19 years later. Those 19 years could have been completely lost to him and could have broken him down, but he chose to defy his captors. Greene writes:
He decided that he would defeat the system -- he would use the years in prison to develop his self-reliance so that when he was freed it would mean something. For this purpose he devised the following strategy: He would act like a free man while surrounded by walls. He would not wear their uniform or carry an ID badge. He was an individual, not a number. He would not eat with the other prisoners, do the assigned tasks, or go to the parole hearings. He was placed in solitary confinement for these transgressions but he was not afraid of the punishments, nor of being alone. He was afraid only of losing his dignity and sense of ownership.
- Robert Greene, The 50th Law
Rubin Carter spent those 19 years reading books. He wrote his autobiography and taught himself law, which helped him fight for his case. He spent this time to develop himself, his skills and his self-reliance, and when he was finally released he came out a stronger man.
The self imposed prison of anxiety, fear, impulse and anger makes slaves of all of us. But these things are all internal and are all under your control (and even should the slavery be external, remember the Spartan boy — you can end that too). Defy them and set yourself free.
Today I escaped from anxiety. Or no, I discarded it, because it was within me, in my own perceptions -- not outside.
- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
"This is what you deserve. You could be good today. But instead you choose tomorrow."
- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations