Tag: contemplation

It should be about Choices not Goals

Akshat Rathi3 Comments

Previously, I have written about why I was unconvinced with Leo’s philosophy of living without goals and expectations. It was the logic in Leo’s arguments which had a flaw and not the concept. In the light of a new way of looking at the same problem, it seems to me that there may after all be a way to incorporate this way of living without ‘adverse’ consequences.

A Different Perspective

Instead of looking at what you want to do as goals, think about them as choices. For example, instead of considering ‘living a healthy life’ as a goal, treat is as a choice. Or consider ‘writing a book’ a choice not a goal. In doing so, attach value to the whole activity and not the just end point.

It’s a fundamentally different view of we tend to call goals. When we treat something as ‘our choice’, we are able to attach much more value to it. In a liberal society, we value other’s choices because we value our own as much. Even evolution supports giving choices more value because those who are able to make better choices are those who will survive longer.

Goals, on the other hand, don’t seem that personal and thus, less valuable. They seem to be something we conform to.  We should have goals because everyone else has them. We should have goals because that is the only way in which we can achieve great things.

The point I am trying to make is that choosing to do something without it being your ‘goal’ is a much more powerful motivator.

Goals: The Stressful Motivators

The idea of living without goals is scary. We create goals to motivate ourselves to do the work which we deem important. But there is a problem with this kind of motivation, it causes stress.

The stress of not achieving your goals (within the time frame) can motivate you to ‘get on with it’ but that kind of motivation can only last for so long. Where as choosing to do something means that one is doing that only because one derives pleasure from doing it. I think this kind of pleasure is greater than the pleasure of just achieving goals and thus can sustain one to not only complete what they started but also do better work. The pleasure may even help one achieve more than what they would’ve set a goal for.

Philosophically Speaking

Isn’t living without goals a goal in itself?

Unfortunately, the movement of ‘living without goals’ lacks the ability to counter that attack. A better name to this movement would be ‘living only by your choices’. But that’s not controversial enough for it to market well.

People ‘choose’ to live by goals. So what is it that I am claiming people should do that they are not already doing? 

Everyone lives by their own choices, of course. I am arguing for choosing to do something because you like to do it rather than choosing to do something that you do because it’s your goal. Even if people choose goals for the pleasure that they derive on achieving them, it’s a much more powerful motivator if you do something because you derive pleasure in the activity rather than in just finishing it.

Becoming a Strategic Self-Deceiver

Akshat Rathi6 Comments

A few weeks ago David Brooks of the New York Times asked his many readers for a gift, “If you are over 70,  I’d like you to write a brief report on your life so far, an evaluation of what you did well, of what you did not so well and what you learned along the way.”

His reason to make such a request was clear, “These essays will be useful to the young. Young people are educated in many ways, but they are given relatively little help in understanding how a life develops, how careers and families evolve, what are the common mistakes and the common blessings of modern adulthood.” From the many essays that he received, he tried to extract a few general life lessons. One of those many fantastic lessons took me somewhat by surprise.

Beware rumination. There were many long, detailed essays by people who are experts at self-examination. They could finely calibrate each passing emotion. But these people often did not lead the happiest or most fulfilling lives. It’s not only that they were driven to introspection by bad events. Through self-obsession, they seemed to reinforce the very emotions, thoughts and habits they were trying to escape.

Many of the most impressive people, on the other hand, were strategic self-deceivers. When something bad was done to them, they forgot it, forgave it or were grateful for it. When it comes to self-narratives, honesty may not be the best policy.

Self-development is something I am passionate about and self-examination enables me to pursue that passion. Even though I won’t call myself a self-examination expert by any length, reading the above made me question what is it that I exactly do when I work  on self-development. I don’t want an obsession to improve myself to lead to an unhappy life!

But, while re-reading the paragraph, I realised that the more impressive people were ‘strategic self-deceivers’. So they selectively chose to lie to themselves about certain mistakes they made or about certain faults they had and moved on with life, eventually living an impressive life.

So was the route that I took for self-development through self-examination wrong? Not entirely. To be able to successfully deceive oneself would require one to know themselves well enough. Self-examination is then a necessary tool.

What I seem to be able to gather from this reflection is that self-examination can be a double-edged sword. It can lead to giving us the exact information we need about ourselves to enable us to build our confidence or, if over done, it can lead to reinforcing the very thoughts and habits that one wants to overcome.

But now let’s come to the more interesting part of the lesson – strategic self-deception.

Philosophers argue that one cannot, in principle, be successful at self-deception. The reason being that one can not try to convince oneself of something being false when they know that it is true. But leaving the philosophers aside, there are practical ways in which we employ self-deception, I would argue, everyday. I am ready to bet that any of you reading this is probably deceiving yourself of multiple truths right now (of course, if you are able to recognise what exactly it is that you are deceiving yourself about then you will have failed at self-deception!).

An example of self-deception is when we try to forget the pain associated with a certain event. It could be a break-up or the passing away of a loved one. We may be capable of accepting what happened and moving on but the shorter, faster route is to lie to oneself. It may also be an intermediate step in acceptance (when unsuccessful at pulling off this self-deception, we are supposed to be in denial).

Forgetting events, overcoming fears, facing danger and taking risks, all to a certain extent involve self-deception. We know, at some level, that we are very bad at analysing risks and to be able to do something risky (like bungee jumping) we have to convince ourselves that it is not as risky as it seems. In that self-deception enables the person to take risks that he would not normally.

A strategic self-deceiver is one who is able to trick themselves about the right things. Of course, knowing the right things is the more difficult part.

The future of our materialistic selves

Akshat Rathi7 Comments

“I need a computer”, I told my dad in 2005. I was finishing the first year of my degree and none of my hostel friends had a computer yet. He knew that.

“Why do you think it’s necessary?”, he asked me. That was what he always asked when I made a demand. It was his way of testing me on whether I knew why I wanted what I wanted.

I told him that I had seen my seniors in college use it for many things that would be beneficial for me. Yes, there were many who wasted their time watching movies but that is not what I wanted it for. I wanted it because I wanted to tap in to the power of the internet.

A guy named Edgar, a computer whiz in my dad’s office had taught me how to use Windows ’95. By 1998, using the Internet Explorer, I had created myself a Yahoo! Mail account (I don’t know what I used it for because I had no friends who had email back then!). But more importantly, I had found Yahoo! Games. I used to love being able to play with random strangers. By the time I had finished high school, I had excelled at using Windows XP and I knew how to use Google to help me with small things.

When I started my degree in 2004-05, I knew there was a lot more I could do with a computer and I explained it to my dad. He was convinced. He bought me an expensive and powerful IBM desktop with a flat screen monitor. My mum thought he was splurging for no reason. That purchase, which costed my dad plenty of money, left me with two important lessons

  1. Buy only what is necessary
  2. If you decided that something is necessary then do your research and buy a version of that thing that serves your purpose the best. Even if it is a little more expensive.

In 2005 in India, we had desktops on offer from the big companies like Dell, IBM and HP. But there were also many computer shops that sold ‘assembled’ desktops. These assembled desktops were usually much cheaper than the branded computers for the same specifications because the shop keeper purchased cheaper individual parts and charged much lower amounts to put it altogether.

But my dad had done his research. He knew that ‘assembled’ computers often broke down and although the shop keepers fixed the machine for free most of the times, it would usually take some time to get it repaired. He preferred to buy me an IBM computer even though it was much more expensive because at least it won’t need repairing that often.

He also realised that I did not have much desk space in my hostel room and wanted to make sure that I could place the screen on my desk and still be able to use the desk (if I had one those CRT monitors, it just wouldn’t have been possible and laptops were too expensive to give to an undergraduate student then). So he bought me something because it was necessary and he did not think twice before spending money about buying only that things which served my purpose the best.

I’ve bought things for myself without having to ask my parents only since I left India but I’ve stuck with the lessons that my dad left me with. These thoughts about purchasing things came rushing back to me when I heard this talk by Bruce Sterling.

Sterling is a science writer and his talk is anything but organised. But if you are patient enough (or just skip to 26:01), he gives our generation some advice on how we could make a real difference to our environment despite consuming what we have to. Although, I don’t agree with everything he says, I cannot disagree with his take on our materialistic lives.

He says that, “You have to think about stuff not like, ‘Oh, this is a nice pen and I must keep it’. But in terms of how much space and how many hours you spend in using that thing.” He calls it a ‘good design approach’. One in which we pay a lot of attention to the purpose of the things we use and how well do those things solve that purpose (very similar to my dad’s philosophy on purchasing anything).

He also goes on to give advice on how we can think about our materialistic lives in a way that will help us improve our lives and cause a lower impact on the environment. “Buying cheaper things or organic things is not the way forward”, he says. We probably make a lot more environmental impact by choosing to buy cheap everyday objects thinking they will solve our purpose. When doing that you don’t think hard enough whether you should buy it or not because it’s cheap.”

He says, “Buy the best possible most commonly used everyday objects. Like a bed. You spend a third of your life in that thing. On a per hour rental basis, the most expensive bed would still be worth it. Get a good chair, especially if you spend a whole day sitting on it. There are great ergonomic designs out there. Use them. Don’t spend time whining about your wrists or your back.”

Makes complete sense to me and I have partly lived by that advice. For my next purchase, I will not forget this advice. He goes on to talk about how to get rid of things that you don’t need and not fall in the trap of buying things you won’t need (35:40 onwards). He asks us to categorise everything in to four categories:

  1. Beautiful Things: Will you be driven to share it?
  2. Emotionally Important Things: Does it have a narrative?
  3. Tools/devices/appliances (things that efficiently perform useful functions): Have really high technical standards for this.
  4. Everything else.

Only recently, I helped a friend move. Now she had so many things that had accrued over the years. Stuff that she hadn’t even seen since the years that have passed in between purchasing it and now. But she held on to those things. Even if it meant that she had to spend extra on the moving van or that she will have less place in the new place she was moving to. In that context, I find those categories above useful to be able to reduce the material clutter in our lives.

There really isn’t an end to our materialistic lives unless we make a conscious choice. Big businesses have spent billions of dollars and years of effort in to making us the perfect consumers. To break out is hard but it is the only sustainable way forward.