How Our Primitive Human Desires Cause Social Problems

I wrote earlier this week (and also here) on how technology can negatively affect our lives. In truth, the cause of these problems isn’t technology, but our inability to utilize it effectively. This is due to technology advancing exponentially while the human organism has remained virtually the same for tens of thousands of years.

The same is true of human society. Civilization has covered the earth and organized itself into hundreds of nations, managed by complex systems of government and international bodies, while the human mental makeup remains best suited to tribal society. Read the Rest of This Article »

Finding Meaning in Life

Scott Adams of the Dilbert Blog wrote a great post titled The Meaning of Meaning. It’s about finding a higher purpose in life and how success alone isn’t satisfying. Scott provides some great examples from his personal experience. This is my favorite passage:

I remember when Dilbert hit it big and it became clear that I would never again have to worry about money. It was a wonderful feeling, but it didn’t last. I went from happy to hollow with no warning. The first moment that I could afford any car I wanted, I lost interest in having a nice car. I simply couldn’t see the point, if there ever was one. Success is surprisingly disorienting.

One day, about ten years ago, I was alone in my office, sitting on the couch and reflecting on the fact that I had managed to become rich and famous in my dream job. For the first time in my life, I had no goals. And for a goal-oriented guy, that’s an empty feeling. Success was supposed to feel good and stay that way. But it tricked me. There was a huge hole in my soul. I sat in my office and sobbed.

This immediately reminded me of an article I wrote a ways back about the power of a Life Lie. The lie isn’t believing that you can reach your goals, the lie is believing that reaching your goals will solve all your problems.

As you can see from Scott’s experience, becoming wealthy in your dream job won’t make you happy forever. It’s actually depressing. We’re happiest when we’re on our way towards a goal. It follows that actually accomplishing our goals isn’t essential. The most important thing is making positive progress and having a higher purpose.

Are we REALLY making any progress?

It is generally assumed that advances in technology lead to the improvement of society. With technology we can do things earlier generations couldn’t imagine. We can travel vast distances in a short time, do incredibly complex calculations, and spread ideas around the world within seconds.

Surely these advances make us more able than our ancestors, who had a hard enough time finding food to survive.

But is this really the case? For all our forward progress, do we leave something equally valuable behind?

Consider this passage from Emerson’s Self-Reliance:

Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. It undergoes continual changes; it is barbarous, it is civilized, it is christianized, it is rich, it is scientific; but this change is not amelioration. For every thing that is given, something is taken. Society acquires new arts, and loses old instincts. What a contrast between the well-clad, reading, writing, thinking American, with a watch, a pencil, and a bill of exchange in his pocket, and the naked New Zealander, whose property is a club, a spear, a mat, and an undivided twentieth of a shed to sleep under! But compare the health of the two men, and you shall see that the white man has lost his aboriginal strength. If the traveller tell us truly, strike the savage with a broad axe, and in a day or two the flesh shall unite and heal as if you struck the blow into soft pitch, and the same blow shall send the white to his grave.

The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet. He is supported on crutches, but lacks so much support of muscle. He has a fine Geneva watch, but he fails of the skill to tell the hour by the sun. A Greenwich nautical almanac he has, and so being sure of the information when he wants it, the man in the street does not know a star in the sky. The solstice he does not observe; the equinox he knows as little; and the whole bright calendar of the year is without a dial in his mind. His note-books impair his memory; his libraries overload his wit; the insurance-office increases the number of accidents; and it may be a question whether machinery does not encumber; whether we have not lost by refinement some energy, some vigor of wild virtue.

Do these same conclusions apply to modern technology? I think they do.

Consider an advance in communication, the cellular phone. We’re no longer forced to make phone calls from a set place, allowing spontaneous communication. As circumstances change, we can make calls from anywhere at any time to adjust our plans.

The benefit is clear, but closer examination reveals drawbacks. Now that we have cell phones, we don’t plan ahead anymore. Why bother when you can make a call later? So we wait until the last minute, thinking organization doesn’t matter.

The result is confusion. If there is a missed call, loss of service, or malfunction of equipment, we’re left without a plan. Even if everything works perfectly, we still engage in ‘phone tag’ that wastes more time than it would have taken to create a decent plan to begin with.

Even if we wanted to go back to the pre-cellular way of doing things, I doubt anyone remembers how.

The same could be said of the internet. We can hear a million voices, but have no way of knowing which ones are worth listening to. Millions of new articles are published every day, so we neglect the literary masterpieces passed down to us.

I’m not saying that technology is bad or that society is declining. But we’d be intelligent to abandon our modern vanity. We’re aren’t any smarter than our ancestors. We’re actually dumber in many ways. It’s time to stop thinking of technology as a cure-all and recognize it as a double-edged sword.

George Orwell’s 5 Rules for Effective Writing

In our society, the study of language and literature is the domain of poets, novelists, and literary critics. Language is considered a decorative art, fit for entertainment and culture, but practically useless in comparison to the concrete sciences. Just look at the value of a college degree in English versus one in computer science or accounting.

But is this an accurate assessment of value?

Language is the primary conductor between your brain and the minds of your audience. Ineffective language weakens and distorts ideas.

If you want to be understood, if you want your ideas to spread, using effective language must be your top priority. Read the Rest of This Article »

The Danger of Playing it Safe

It’s human nature to avoid risk. We don’t want to embarrass ourselves. We don’t want to diminish our credibility. So we stay near the center. We censor our words and disguise our true thoughts.

Besides, who are we to tell other people they’re wrong? How can we really be sure of ourselves?

We can’t. But we have to risk being wrong if we ever want to really be right. This quote from John Irving explains why. His example deals with writing, but it applies to any creative endeavor.

If you don’t feel that you are possibly on the edge of humiliating yourself, of losing control of the whole thing, then probably what you are doing isn’t very vital. If you don’t feel like you are writing somewhat over your head, why do it? If you don’t have some doubt of your authority to tell this story, then you are not trying to tell enough.

Thanks to Screw You! for the quote.

Does Being Labeled As Gifted Undermine Personal Growth?

Stanford psychologist, Carol Dweck, has spent her career studying the mental phenomena that lead to success. The Effort Effect provides an overview of her findings.

Why do some people reach their potential, while others with equal or greater talent fail?

The answer, according to Dweck, is attitude. In fact, Dweck has observed that believing in fixed intelligence can undermine a person’s ability to succeed.

Many people who believe in fixed intelligence also think you shouldn’t need hard work to do well. This belief isn’t entirely irrational, she says. A student who finishes a problem set in 10 minutes is indeed better at math than someone who takes four hours to solve the problems. And a soccer player who scores effortlessly probably is more talented than someone who’s always practicing. “The fallacy comes when people generalize it to the belief that effort on any task, even very hard ones, implies low ability,” Dweck says.

This fallacy leads people to view set backs as personal failures rather than opportunities for growth. Read the Rest of This Article »

If You Need Something Interesting to Read

Rummage through Paul Graham’s collected essays. I wrote about his piece on startups a week ago. Since then I’ve realized his writing covers a broad range that goes far beyond the tech industry.

Graham writes with an informal, meandering style that questions accepted beliefs and leads to surprising conclusions. When reading him, I don’t feel like I’m being preached to or instructed. It’s more like sharing a conversation with an old friend. Ideas are shared without egotism. The conclusion doesn’t matter, only finding the truth.

This style differentiates Graham from other writers. He isn’t trying to sell himself or an idea. He isn’t trying to build authority in a niche. This is a guy who’s already made it and just wants to discuss what’s on his mind. Read the Rest of This Article »

Are Ambition and Gratitude Mutually Exclusive?

Continuing the Discussion

When I wrote this post about achieving happiness through a lie, I wasn’t sure what type of reaction to expect.

The discussion that followed in the comments exceeded all my expectations. It made me realize the real value of this site:

Sharing ideas.

A single person’s perspective, no matter how well expressed, is necessarily incomplete. It comes from a single mind, with a single set of beliefs, and a single human experience. Perspectives are neither right nor wrong. They simply exist.

Understanding isn’t determined by what perspective you have, but by how many different perspectives you are aware of and how you relate them to each other. Read the Rest of This Article »

Reducing Unnecessary Motion

Have you ever wondered why short basketball players tend to be better shooters than tall ones?

It isn’t that they’re inherently less skilled. Tall players actually have a physical disadvantage in this area. Tall bodies means long arms and long legs. When shooting this translates into more motion. More motion means more can go wrong. Small errors are magnified. The result is less accurate shots.

This concept applies to everything. If you want to be more productive, eliminate unnecessary motion.

Think of your work process. Every single day is filled with hundreds or thousands of actions. How many of these actions are really necessary? How many could be avoided? How many distractions could be eliminated?

Avoiding unnecessary actions gives you more time to focus on the tasks that really matters, the tasks that lead to happiness and success.

The key to being more productive isn’t doing more. It’s doing less, better.