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Stop Being a Machine

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Read this tweet today:

I truly believe the most subversive thing you can do today is spend as much of the day as possible nurturing what is not machine-like in you

— Austin Kleon (@austinkleon) June 25, 2016

I think that the point, to seek the truly human things about yourself and to make them grow is key to being happy.

Many movies with machines portray them as “becoming human” when they start having feelings, emotions, or impulses.

But really, response to stimulus is precisely what we share with machines. Our impulses to eat, to feel anger, and to be hurt or offended are all good but these are no different from what we could program a machine to do or at least to emulate.

The difference is that we are not only consious of these stimuli (a feat no machine could ever match)*, we can also intend.

Underneath our actions is intention. Even the person who through no brain damage has become a zombie on the treadmill of T.V., crappy jobs, and unhealthy food has at some level intended for this to be so.

What makes us different from machines is that we can intend which means that we can reason (even machines only reason when they’re told to), we can create, and we can imagine.

So to be less machine-like in your life would seem to center around what you intend. As a consequence creating and reasoning make you distinctively non-mechanistic because they can only be done through choice.

 

 

Class Rules

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Today I was working on the list of classroom rules/slogans I’ll be using to help my students stay on track this coming school year. Here they are with the explanations I’ll give to them on the first day of school.

  1. Do the thing to have the power.
    This from a powerful quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The law of nature is, Do the thing, and you shall have the power: but they who do not the thing have not the power.” It is similar to Proverbs 14:23, “In all toil there is profit, but mere talk tends only to poverty.” The idea of course is that if there’s something you want to achieve, gain, or become you have to start heading that way.
  2. Every problem is an opportunity.
    My boss at my programming job told me that there are no bad problems. Instead, every obstacle, failure, and problem is an opportunity for a better solution. In my classroom difficult problems are opportunities. They aren’t excuses to give up. They are reasons to learn more, try harder, or find a better way. As Marcus Aurelius said, “The obstacle in the way becomes the way.”
  3. Act the way you want to feel.
    Gretchen Rubin is the origin of this pithy directive. Many people wait for motivation or energy to get going. I agree that managing your energy is wise. Get sleep, eat good food, and exercise. But waiting until you’re energized to do a task will leave you never doing it. Refer to rule one. If you want to feel like you’re awake and alert, sit with good posture. If you want to feel successful and studious, act successful and studious. If you want to feel smart, ask and answer questions.
  4. Better to give than to receive.
    This is a shortened version of Jesus’ claim that “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” Consistently think of ways to bless those around you with your talents, resources, attitude, and words. If you can bless your parents, teachers, or classmates by what you do at school, do it.
  5. Struggle makes strength.
    The principle of progressive resistance in sports science is the principle that steadily increasing the demands on the body’s muscles will steadily make them stronger. This principle holds true in all matters. Doing difficult things is definitely worth it. Arm yourself with this mentality. It’s Biblical, scientific, and you will prove it in your own life if you put it into practice.
  6. Leave it better.
    At my great grandfather’s funeral, my dad observed that everywhere he went he would pick up trash, talk to somebody who looked lonely, literally sweep the sidewalk, rake leaves, or take out a mower from his trunk and mow the grass. My dad said, “He left everywhere he went better than it was when he got there.” I want you to treat my classroom, your house, your parents’ car, the school, and everywhere we go this way. But not only so, nearly everywhere you go is an opportunity to learn, grow, observe something new, and otherwise to improve. So in my classroom you will leave it better, both ways.

Charm the snake before it bites you

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Many people, because they aren’t Christians, miss out on the Bible’s clever stories, wise observations, and lack of -”ism” based ideas.

Many contemporary Christians miss the same simply because they don’t read the whole Bible.

An enigmatic Old Testament character named “The Preacher” made these observations:

Ecclesiastes 10:8-12 He who digs a pit will fall into it, and a serpent will bite him who breaks through a wall. (9) He who quarries stones is hurt by them, and he who splits logs is endangered by them. (10) If the iron is blunt, and one does not sharpen the edge, he must use more strength, but wisdom helps one to succeed. (11) If the serpent bites before it is charmed, there is no advantage to the charmer. (12) The words of a wise man’s mouth win him favor, but the lips of a fool consume him.

One of the fun things about saying collections observing the various connections between the sayings.

In 10:8-9, hard work seems to be fraught with danger.

In 10:10, wisdom makes work easier as a sharp ax makes splitting logs easier.

In 10:11, wisdom, used at the right time can also protect you from the serpent. The charms of the snake charmer being the metaphor for wisdom.

In 10:12, the words of the wise win them favor, like the words of the charmer win them safety.

But I want to focus on verse 11.

Wisdom can keep you from danger but there are two conditions:

  1. Have the skills in advance, snake charming won’t help those who haven’t practiced.

  2. Use them when the opportunity strikes (or when you don’t want it to strike as the case may be).

Scott Adams talked about this:

Success isn’t magic; it’s generally the product of picking a good system and following it until luck finds you.1

By system he means a collection of habits, thought patterns, and useful skills at which you improve regularly.

Snake charming (not a real skill) seems silly unless you live in a world where snakes hide behind walls. Similarly, investing seems silly for somebody with low income until they suddenly have more income and have learned the ropes.

References

1Adams, Scott. How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life (p. 95). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Wisdom Wednesday: Proverbs 22:13

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The slothful man saith, There is a lion without, I shall be slain in the streets.
(Proverbs 22:13)

Passages of scripture like this pose one of the greatest challenges for risk averse people. Many of us think we are wise for avoiding risk. And indeed, Proverbs itself says that the wise hides himself when there is obvious danger (22:3)*. This piece of good advice, as with all wise practices, can become a shield from personal responsibility (see Matthew 6 for Jesus’ discussion of this fact with regards to prayer, fasting, and even alms).

Often in life, we who are risk averse take the slothful route and claim that the time isn’t right for action because things aren’t perfect. My karate instructor said that the most common excuse he received from people skipping karate after a vacation was “I need to get back into shape first.” Some people won’t go to church because “I need to get right with the Lord first.” If you’re super risk averse then you’re probably waiting for circumstances to be exactly right, but you’ll actually be in the process of waiting when good circumstance pass you by. Check this actual sloth out:

I suppose he could have died crossing the road, but there is simply no such thing as a “perfect time” for a sloth to cross a road because it’s just gonna take him an hour to do it and during that time a car is gonna get him. No, I don’t know why he’s crossing the road; maybe he’s got a lady friend. Maybe he’s rescuing other sloths from a sloth villian. But the fact remains that the circumstances for good action would have passed him by if he’d waited too long to cross the road.

*The prudent sees danger and hides himself, but the simple go on and suffer for it.
(Proverbs 22:3) This verse is important for people who’ve ever said YOLO.

On Pedagogy: Transmission and Revision

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I’ve written a few posts that overlap with themes concerning education. But I think that, over all, good education has this main goal: it supports human happiness.

Of course, everything humans do is “for happiness,” just like every arrow is aimed at a target. But like arrows, decisions and processes can miss their mark. Education is no different. And just like how we do everything for happiness, we should make sure we define it happiness in terms of our specific nature as human beings. Happiness requires virtue (goods of the mind and soul), wealth (goods of the body and mind), and friends.

So, what makes education different from other activities of human happiness such as eating, sex, or meditation?

Education is Transmission

Education, perhaps more than any other domain of human activity relies upon the transmission of knowledge. This, is where people get confused. Knowledge is typically perceived as merely that which is accepted as true or mere cognitive content. But knowledge is actually more than this. The skills of civilization (virtues, customs, etc) constitute knowledge, attitudes and habits are learned, and one’s vision of the goal of humanity (hardly what many consider knowledge) is also a form of knowledge. Knowledge is certainly cognitive content, but it also includes “know-how,” bodily, emotional, social, and habitual information which can be difficult to put into precise words (because it is non-verbal in nature).

In this sense then, if the purpose of education is human happiness/flourishing and the nature of education is the transmission of knowledge and information it must be said that education is the transmission of knowledge that tends toward happiness in a way that tends toward happiness. Observe that while “getting a job” or “making money” are not the chief end of education, happiness includes have the goods of the body and therefore having money/food are part of the purpose of education. In other words, education is the transmission of tradition for happiness.

Education is Revision

But education cannot merely be the transmission of a settled body of information for several reasons: human beings find new knowledge, the world changes in ways that old knowledge cannot always anticipate, and human beings have different callings, personalities, and skills. Education must be attuned to the individuality of each person and to giving human beings the capacity for finding the limits of older knowledge in order to add to it, reapply it, and reformulate it for whatever present situation exists. In this sense, education must be personal.

But if education is in its nature personal and for the purpose of happiness, then it must be personal for the purpose of happiness. Education cannot be personal with respect to allowing tradition to die (for traditions survived a process of natural selection that makes them robust and even antifragile). On the other hand, traditions must be questioned for their veracity, effectiveness, and applicability. An example of this might be the tradition claiming that everybody in the medieval era believed that the earth was flat. I learned some version of that claim every year I took history. Then I found out that it was absolutely false using the research skills I had gained in high school English. Another tradition is going to college right out of high school. This tradition, while at one point, made tremendous sense for some people is treated as a gold standard of life advice (knowledge). It really should be questioned by students because schools won’t question it for them…the survival of many universities often depends upon this tradition remaining intact.

In this sense then, for education to be truly helpful for human happiness, educators (and students themselves) must aim to create a sense in students that while they should be grateful and try to benefit from the past, they must be willing to be independent of it in order to seek truth and virtue.

Conclusion

True education it seems has three elements:

  1. The transmission of knowledge and habits.

  2. The building up and equipping of individual persons for their unique circumstances in light of their personalities and potentials.

  3. The intended goal of human happiness.

Mental Models

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There are many models we can use to understanding the world. When I took college history my professor told us that there were several paradigms for interpreting the events of history: economic, philosophical, national, geographical, and religious. He would say that some of these paradigms are more appropriate to a situation than others, but that none of them were right or wrong because every major human event involves all of these paradigms. Outside of academics there is still significant need for good mental models. Most of us just use one.

It’s important to have more than one model because if we try to simple view things as they appear to us we’ll inevitably reduce our experiences to the model most convenient to us or believe whatever our brains make up to bring sensibility to a world too big to interpret.

What I mean by a mental model is a sort of simplified way of interpreting things that, alone would be a distortion of reality, but is necessary to think of exclusively in order to see the insights it offers. An example would be seeing the world as a machine. The world is manifestly not a machine. But to see it as a machine helps physicists find efficient and material causes of things.

Other models include:

  1. Everything is sales.
  2. Everything is tribal.
  3. Everything is sex.
  4. Everything is true or false.
  5. Everything is economics.
  6. Success is having energy.
  7. Everything is moral.
  8. Everything is spiritual.

None of these are complete and life is more than each of them. But your brain cannot interpret the whole universe at once. But it can interpret more of the universe at once through an incomplete filter.

What mental models have I left out?