Bring Back the Good Old Dollar
by Basil Gala, Ph.D.
In Search of Meaning
In 2010 so far we have seen the U.S. dollar rise in value in exchange with the euro and other currencies. Investors holding euros fled to the dollar because they feared the collapse of the European currency, not because they admired the dollar's purchasing power; gold also rose in tandem with the dollar as a safe haven for cash in the hands of wealthy individuals, companies, and nations. Foreign currency reserves are now over 62% in U.S. dollars, below 28% in euros, 4% in pound sterling, 3% in Japanese yen, and all others 3%. The Japanese economy is the second largest in the world, and the Chinese the fastest growing, yet people don't hold large quantities of the yen and yuan (renmimbi) as reserves. Why? What makes people hold a currency in reserve? Why is a currency strong, weak, hard, or desirable and for whom? France and Germany want a strong euro, while Italy, Greece, and Spain would prefer a weaker one. The Chinese have pegged their yuan 25% to 45% below its free market rate versus the U.S. dollar. What are the Chinese up to? Their government denies they manipulate the yuan to keep it weak; the Chinese finance minister claims that a strong yuan would hurt the U.S. Why are people buying gold in 2010 at over $1,200 an ounce when it costs about $300 to get it out of the ground? Do we want a weaker U.S. dollar and a stronger yuan to help export more goods to China and reduce our trade deficit with the Chinese? Shall we seek a still stronger dollar against the euro, say 85 U.S. cents for a euro as it was ten years ago? In Greece this summer of 2010, I find that my dollars buy here about half of what they buy in the States. The strong euro is keeping many American tourists from visiting Greece. The euro is still way over valued. Bring back the good old strong dollar.
Can a currency become too strong for a nation's economic welfare? Yes, at some point a high exchange rate for the dollar would be bad for exports, although cheap imports would benefit consumers. What good are cheap products for the people when they are out of work? Retired persons, or wealthy consumers are happy with their purchasing power, but workers who produce goods in America cannot find jobs and have no money to spend on the low-priced merchandise. Japan has a super strong yen, which has stymied the Japanese economy, causing deflation and practically no growth for two decades. Yet, a currency which is too weak is worse. The exchange rate for the dollar should be just right—not too high, not too low, like many parameters in life, like sugar or pressure in the blood. For reasons on which I'll expand, I lean towards a strong dollar.
I have other reasons for wanting a strong dollar besides my desire to increase my purchasing power in Greece where I live summers. A strong dollar is good for America, because a strong dollar demands reducing the national debt, balancing the federal budget, building productive businesses that turn out high-quality products efficiently, and shrinking of the welfare state while checking inflation with a measured supply of money.
I am fascinated by the subject of money, although I've never desired to possess more money than I have needed. As a youth I read Thorstein Veblem's “The Theory of the Leisure Class” on conspicuous consumption, and I heartily shared the author's contempt for money grabbing and spending. I determined to seek in my adult life the riches of imperishable ideas found in truth, beauty, and justice, their source divine. In a previous essay of mine, “Money: The Source of All Evil?” I examined the concept of currency inside the issuing nation, only briefly broaching money exchanges. In this essay I'll be examining our currency outside the nation, exchanged with the currencies of other nations to trade, invest, lend, give, and bribe abroad, the dollar benefiting from great strength.
You are entitled to ask, what am I smoking in my pipe? Do I dream of a return to the fifties when the U.S. was the only industrialized country of size with undamaged factories, roads and rails, the world's largest oil exporter with gushers in Texas, Oklahoma, and California? The U.S. dollar ruled the world, and our products were flooding world markets. When in 1953 I immigrated to America from Greece, a loaf of white bread, a gallon of leaded gas, and a neighborhood movie ticket were all about 25 cents. Television sets, black and white, were in every home, as well as refrigerators, ovens, toasters, and heaters, all American made, and made to last. Big cars with strong, heavy iron bodies, were lining the streets. Back then we had a tiny glass of orange juice with our breakfast of ham and eggs, and at daybreak the milkman, in white uniform and cap, placed glass bottles of creamy milk on the porch, next to the local paper the neighborhood boy had tossed earlier.
In 1953 Eisenhower settled the Korean war with an armistice and a demilitarized zone at the 38th parallel, and the nation was set to coast for eight years in the euphoria of Ike's presidency, secure and unchallenged except by the Soviet Union in the military sphere only. The U.S. dollar ruled supreme. Do I want that? No, those days are gone, never to return. We live these days in the world with a united and industrialized Europe, with the giant Japanese export machine, with the manufacturing dragon of China, and the services
elephant of India. Russia and Brazil are claiming their rightful share in the world economy with raw materials and manufacturing. The Canadian dollar has become more valuable than the U. S. dollar thanks to natural resources, oil, gold, also grains and industrial products. Australia too has become an export power with its iron, uranium, and other minerals feeding the Chinese industrial maw. The U. S. has lost stature in the world economy, but more importantly, other nations have emerged as big players. America can still lead in the world economy, as it can in the military arena, but America cannot command as in the Eisenhower years. Commanding is not the way to bring back a strong dollar.
Do we want a strong dollar as a nation? Europe, led by Germany and France, supports a strong euro. The strong Deutchmark morphed into the euro. Why? Germany and France export technically sophisticated and expensive merchandise. These two countries, as well as the other European nations, import raw materials, especially oil, traded in dollars. Although a strong euro makes exports more difficult, the likes of Mercedes, BMW, Siemens, Channel, Michelin, and Vuitton are not greatly affected by a somewhat higher price for the euro—these companies and many others in medicines, paints, electrical and electronic equipment find markets for their products with those rich buyers in the world who want high-quality and prestigious merchandise. Keep in mind, no nation is totally poor, even Bangladesh or Haiti; they have among them many wealthy families who buy high-quality merchandise at high prices. On the other hand, a strong euro buys more oil and other raw materials outside of Europe. The Japanese too have a strong currency in the yen, because they produce Toyotas, Hondas, Nissans, Nikon cameras, and other sought after products of high technology, while they import much oil and other raw materials for their industry.
A currency with a high exchange rate, a strong currency like the euro inhibits tourists. Europe, however, has such great places to visit, with historical and cultural values, that tourists still come to Europe, although in fewer numbers now.
In 2010 the euro has credibility problems because countries in the southern tier (Portugal, Italy, Greece, and Spain--named PIGS) have different cultures and economies from the northern tier of Germany, France, Belgium, The Netherlands, and Finland (Ireland is a special case). What happened when Greece with a weak drachma joined Germany with the strong Deutchmark in a common currency in 1999? The Greek government lied in the statistics for the nation's deficit and growth. If I lied the same way on a loan application to my bank, I could be prosecuted for fraud. But, luring investors with high interest payments, Greece gained access to loans both for public and private uses. The Greek government, businesses, and private citizens took advantage of the easy financing to borrow to the hilt. Politicians build roads, bridges, airports, and mansions for themselves, and to win the public's support provided jobs and higher wages. Business people refurbished plants with loans, but also invested abroad, bought yachts, and kept paid lovers. The booming Athens stock market raised billions in capital, and much of it was misused or stolen. Private citizens got used to credit cards and consumer financing for car and furniture purchases. Whereas in the past Greeks bought and sold homes for cash, now they financed expensive residences, sometimes with no money down. When its state of finances was finally disclosed early in 2010, little Greece with 3% of Europe's GNP became the epicenter of the sovereign debt crisis.
The other PIGS acted similarly to Greece. Things could have gone differently with the PIGS. The southern tier could have been the sunbelt of Europe, attracting new residents, high-tech industry, and capital invested in productive enterprises. What stood in the way? Corrupt politicians, citizens seduced by advertising and easy credit, short-sighted labor unions, commercial syndicates, and the well-entrenched culture of fiestas, siestas, and maňana.
China and India in the meantime issue the yuan and rupee which are cheap. These countries generally sell cheap merchandise and services. China and India ( Pakistan too) like weak currencies for themselves, because they can find markets for their low-quality exports. Their currencies discourage their citizens from buying foreign products, so their people turn to local producers for their needs, allowing only the wealthy to splurge for the luxuries of German, French, and American producers. Moreover, cheap currencies and wages attract investors in these countries, companies build factories, marketing outlets, and service branches, speculators buy equities and bonds in the local stock markets that finance established and new enterprises. China, and other developing countries are at the same time forcing foreign enterprises to form partnerships with their own business people, and see to it that some of the foreign technology transfers to them. This was the history of development in Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Indonesia--the little asian tigers--purr, purr, good pussycats. Now we deal with the dragon--roaring flames, and the elephant-- stomp, stomp. Will the dragon and elephant be good and obedient to America, Europe and Japan?
With a weak yuan China does pay more for the oil and other raw materials it imports from Russia, the Middle East, Australia, and Africa. The Chinese counter this problem by arranging for advantageous long-term contracts with their suppliers, such as Iran, in exchange for political favors, loans, and technical assistance. China also scours the world to buy companies in commodities and negotiates leases and other deals in Venezuela for oil, Peru for copper, and other South American countries, in Africa, such as the Sudan for oil (ignoring the genocide in Darfur), in Central Asia, such as Afghanistan (one of the world's largest copper mines being developed by the Chinese while the U.S. pours treasure into the country to fight Taliban), in Russia for coal, iron, and timber, and in Australia, where China gets much iron ore, uranium and other mining products.
Whatever the course of the emerging economic powers of China, India, Brazil, and Russia, we don't want to go their way, even if we could. Yes, Europe, Japan, and the U.S. are deeply indebted as governments, but they're still rich and technologically advanced. We want to stay that way and get further ahead with education, training, automation and robotics, investments in high technology and products of culture in entertainment. Our failures are consequences of being too liberal with our riches. Our welfare activities should be largely curtailed; let our people be challenged; let them provide for their own future and retirement, instead of allowing them to depend on government largess, inevitably bloating our nation's debt.
We have a paradox in the world today: poor countries, like China, hold the debt of rich countries, like America. Japan has the highest debt of any rich nation, but held, however, mostly by Japanese citizens, interest income staying in Japan. The yen is a strong currency, but only 3% of international reserves. The yen keeps strengthening because of Japan's trade surplus with the United States and other nations, causing deflation in the country, an unusual phenomenon with money. Deflation is a serious problem, making debt repayment more difficult for borrowers. Also, consumers are not eager to spend their yen, expecting further reductions in prices, resulting in economic stagnation and a low growth rate for the gross domestic product. Deflation can be cured quickly by printing more money, so why does deflation persist in Japan? The central bank officials don't want Japan to pay more for oil and other essential raw materials, including soybeans from America and Canada.
In the United States by comparison, we keep getting inflation. The Federal Reserve Bank has an official target of 2% for consumer inflation. I disagree with Ben Bernanke and his fellows. The target for inflation should be zero (0%) over a lengthy enough period of time. Shocks to supply and demand of products will always occur, shortages, droughts, fiscal crises, disasters, wars, more competition from abroad, or less competition from our trading partners. But the homeostatic target of 0% inflation should be maintained, by applying positive or negative feedback to fiscal policy. And the 0% inflation target should apply to the area under the curve of prices times the GNP over several years, not to monthly, quarterly, or annual values, so that the purchasing power of the dollar would remain constant in the long term. Such an economy would lower interest rates dramatically for long term bonds, making more investment money available to business and government.
To cure inflation, however, it would help for us to reverse the cycle of dependency in our population which our policy makers have entrenched and which has contributed to our national debt; otherwise, an economic and political collapse will do it for us.
Other factors have contributed to the national debt also. Among these are foreign wars (Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq), military bases in over 185 countries around the world, foreign aid (buying friends and influencing people), and investments by corporations, funds, and individuals in Europe, Asia, South America, and Africa. Companies set up plants abroad, employing locals and transferring jobs outside America. They rake in profits, but even more wealth goes to other nations, especially China, factory to the world. Government in the U.S. ends up with fewer tax receipts from workers and a larger caseload of unemployed people on welfare. Over twelve million illegal aliens work in the U.S., many of them paying no taxes, sending billions of dollars of their earnings to relatives in Mexico and other countries. We buy oil and other raw materials from other countries, which we mostly waste. We import cheap merchandise from China and other countries which doesn't last, ending up in our dumps, or back to China for recycling. The national debt is ballooning. The debt will become impossible to finance when baby boomers reach retirement and the bill for national medical care comes due.
I say, stop all of the above policies and save the dollar before it becomes worthless through inflation or default of the debt--inflation is a form of default. Stop foreign wars with foot soldiers. If we're attacked, as we were on September 11, 2001, punish the aggressors from the air or space. Close our bases abroad, bringing our troops home; build alliances with nations willing to shoulder their share of the cost of mutual defense. Stop trying to buy friends in foreign governments; that doesn't work and we're taken as suckers. Reward companies and wealthy people for investing at home, rather than for pouring their money in other countries. Put tariffs on shoddy imports, or set up other bars against imported products that fall apart quickly. Secure our borders against illegal entries; mining and random machine gunning at the border fence will accomplish this. Require a national I.D. card, as most nations do, gathering up and repatriating illegal residents. Raise the retirement age for able-bodied men and women; they live much longer now than when the social security system was set up in the thirties under FDR. It's better for the health of older people to work if able, rather than sit on the couch watching television and guzzling bear. Switch the government medical care system to a system of wellness clinics, staffed mainly with trained nurses and specialists in natural therapies. Concentrate on health maintenance and the prevention of disease. Control tobacco, alcohol, junk foods, unnecessary drugs or surgeries and you cut the national health care bill in half.
If the U. S. Government quits spending more money than it collects in taxes we will have a strong dollar again. President LBJ spent too much on the Vietnam war and the war on poverty printing dollars, which forced the Nixon administration to leave the Bretton Woods system in 1973 when an ounce of gold sold for $44. Had Nixon not taken this step, our entire hoard of gold at Fort Knox soon would have been shipped abroad in exchange for devalued dollars. In 2010 an ounce of gold is worth over $1,200, a measure of inflation since 1973. Inflation means that your dollars are worth less, buy less in products and services. Worse still, inflation forces people to spend their cash quickly, before it loses value, further aggravating inflation; people tend to buy land, buildings, other tangible assets causing price bubbles beyond their utility in such commodities, as in China today; inflation discourages people from saving part of their income (not happening in
China so far), thus decreasing capital formation, the force behind economic growth and advancement.
Another historic point for the dollar was 1933 when gold certificates were abolished and declared illegal. Before 1933 gold certificates (notes redeemable in gold) were freely traded and imposed a limit on the money supply.
There's nothing wrong with fiat money, government notes for commercial transactions, if the government prints only enough for the nation's needs. The government, including the Federal Reserve Bank, can't resist printing money. Of course, in 2010 most transactions are electronic, debits and credits in computers, cash and coin in circulation being a small portion of the money supply. Electronic money is okay too, provided it does not over expand. Matters get complicated when a currency (the dollar, the euro, the yen, or the sterling pound) becomes international, held by other governments, companies, and individuals in reserve accounts. Now the issuing government has less control over the supply and demand of its own currency. Speculators and hedge fund managers turn currency exchanges into casinos, betting one currency against another.
When panic in the exchange markets ensues, because of loss of confidence in the dollar or euro for example, speculators all run for the exit, dumping dollars or euros, driving the value of the currency down precipitously, causing havoc in business and finance. In 2010 the betting is against the euro; in 2011 the tide could turn against the dollar. Certain firms and individuals with enough cunning, skill, or luck can turn huge profits in currency trading during such panics, leveraging purchases of their target currency with bank loans and fund assets. George Soros, today's philanthropist, managed such a currency trading fund in his younger days, making himself into a billionaire. If you want to make money trading currencies, don't believe a government's official pronouncement they want a strong dollar, euro, or sterling. Look at the government's balance sheet instead; the government's income and expense will tell you for how long the currency will be used in reserves.
Is it good for America then to own the world's premier reserve currency? Yes, at least initially the U.S. can buy products without paying exchange commissions, a small advantage. Yes, the U.S. gets the purchasing value of the dollars pumped out to the world, but that advantage has a limit depending on the demand for dollars. Yes, the U.S. can have easier access to borrowing from foreign sources, governments (such as China these days), banks and individuals, but borrowing cuts both ways, having its big down side in a possible loss of confidence for the American economy. Then everybody runs away from our debt (as it happened to Greece in 2010), causing our borrowing costs to soar. I conclude, it's best for our country to get out of the reserve currency business, although the business is very tempting for the government.
The dollar is free-floating and adjusts to the demand for our products and the interest we pay for our loans, unless foreigners use it for reserves. That's the catch. Our people, government and citizens, will exercise better self-discipline in finances, if the dollar is truly free from investors and speculators, and is backed by precious metals, platinum, gold, and silver.
If we get out of issuing the world's reserve currency, what takes the place of the dollar? SDR's have been proposed by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), supported by China and Russia. SDR stands for special drawing rights issued like money by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), based on the dollar, euro, yen, and pound. SDR money would facilitate trade, but still rely on the strength of the four major reserve currencies. All four of these currencies could stumble badly in the future because the issuing governments are heavily indebted, especially Japan with debt about 200% of its annual gross national product.
Gold and silver are far better vehicles for an international currency in the form of gold certificates on paper or computer memory entries at banks. One objection liberals have against a gold standard appears to be reasonable. We don't have enough gold in storage at Fort Knox to back our currency with it and our miners don't produce enough of it for commercial transactions in an expanding economy. Perhaps, the American economy and the world economy should not be expanding that fast to avoid booms and busts. But we can import gold from Russia, Mexico, and South Africa for our needs. And we certainly produce plenty of silver in America. When America again produces good stuff the world wants, we'll have the means to buy precious metals. If the whole world doesn't have enough gold, then the price will rise to the needed level for domestic and global commerce, at the same time stimulating greater production from less fertile veins. Sure, gold producers will benefit for some time while we accumulate the metal in the same way we are benefiting from printing the world's reserve currency on paper, but at least they'll be digging for the gold.
Gold and silver have served well as currency for thousands of years. You can trust gold far more to retain value than fiat money issued by any government, even the Swiss one, which is very trustworthy. (The Swiss franc is hard, stable in value, but not much of a reserve currency because Switzerland is small, and not too strong to inhibit exports. Wise and rich are the Swiss because they are good at saving their money.) So, why did we abandon gold in 1973, 1933, and even further back in 1896?
In 1896 at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, William Jennings Bryan made his famous speech against a gold standard proposed by Republicans, ending as follows:
“Having behind us the commercial interests and the laboring interests and all the toiling masses, we shall answer their demands for a gold standard by saying to them, you shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns. You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.”
As a consequence, the dollar was cheapened to make life easier for debtors, causing moral hazard: letting people get away from their
responsibilities encourages irresponsible behavior in the future.
Gold was abandoned for political expediency, to appease the mass of people who lack the ability to reason. Nixon even tried price controls in 1973, a move doomed to failure in all places, all the time. 1933 was the peak year of the great depression. Franklin D. Roosevelt had to deal with 25% unemployment in America, people rioting, and communism on the march. He appeased people with easy money and socialism. In the long run, socialism or communism don't work for a large society in the modern world.
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Gorbachev said the world had not been ready for communism. The world will never be ready for communism or socialism because they run contrary to human nature. Most people don't mind working hard for a living; but when the fruits of their labor are turned over by politicians to those who are lazy or incompetent, they quit trying to produce more and better goods, or to save some of their earnings to invest. Ayn Rand was right on the issue with her “Atlas Shrugged” novelized thesis. Socialism may have worked somewhat in primitive tribes or kibbutz, where like-minded people voluntarily joined in a commune, but it doesn't work in a modern society and an economy of great size. The 2008 financial crisis was not a failure of capitalism as socialists claim, but of socialism's theory that every family should own a house, regardless of credit worthiness, and entitled to a good living whether they strive or not. Unfortunately, in 2010 the Obama administration is following on the same course of action with stimulus packages and government subsidies piling on the debt, which will inevitably sink the dollar and the U. S. economy.
Weak governments in weak nations rely on weak currencies. This is the way of the banana republics, Venezuela, Mexico, Argentina (Eva Peron tossing money to the people out of her train) or Greece before the euro. Let a currency lose enough value and public or private debt disappears. So does self discipline and hard work. When I decided to come to America 1953 my dad promised to send me some of my support money. While I was on the boat to the States, the Greek government devalued the drachma from 15 to a dollar to 30 to a dollar. In one day my support money was halved. What will happen to our savings and investments in paper assets (stocks and bonds) when the dollar is halved in value?
Debasing a nation's currency goes way back. When the Roman emperors waged wars they put less gold or silver in their coins stamped with the imperial mug to have more money to pay soldiers. The most common denarius (like the $20 bill) ranged in silver from the official 4.5 grams (nearly pure) to only 2% silver in the third century with the decline of the empire.
A strong currency which retains its value is the expression of a strong economy and a strong disciplined people, a people unwilling to coast along on government handouts, a people ready to work hard, to be creative, doing work of high quality, not faking what they produce. That's the kind of people the Germans became after World War II, bringing forth the Deutchmark, Europe's strongest money before the euro. The Germans tried hard to bring that spirit of effort and thrift to the rest of Europe by joining in a common currency. We in the United States should follow the example of the German people, boosting the dollar's value and reforming our welfare system to a smaller size as the German government has been doing. On the other side lies the abyss.
Andros, Greece
June, 2010
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Machine Perception
Machine Perception
by Basil E. Gala, Ph.D.
In Search of Meaning
Machine perception, often called machine learning, is a term we usually associated with robotic functions in industrial automation, as in machine vision, recognizing parts, sensing defects. We also call machine perception the computer recognition of faces, signatures, and fingerprints. More often we call these operations pattern recognition, such as speech and writing recognition by computer systems that perform classification of different inputs. Generally, all these innovations are called artificial intelligence or AI, which also includes the programming in computers of cognitive functions and linguistics, for example, decision making and analysis of data, chess playing, and other gaming decisions. In this connection, a new term and discipline is data mining, which involves extracting relevant or important facts from a large mass of data scientists or businessmen have collected with automatic devices. Whatever you prefer to call these artifacts, the question is: Are we going to be able to design systems that will approach or exceed our human capacity to perceive, classify, and make fitting decisions, doing such tasks unassisted, with the great speed of electrons or photons, and at low cost, thus replacing human labor in many jobs? Yes, we will be able to do it; and I intend to contribute to this effort as I did some years back working on my dissertation.
First, should we do it? Should we go ahead and build intelligent machines just because we can? Would not that development imperil our species, even replace it? That may happen, but it's not going to stop researchers in AI. We might as well say, let's not design nuclear devices, or do genetic engineering, or explore space, or go over the oceans, or invent fire--all dangerous ventures. It's not our nature to hold back from exploring, experimenting, or building things for fear of danger. Danger only stimulates our sense of awareness. We just need to proceed with caution and due respect for safety measures. AI will outsource many jobs, eventually most jobs, to machines. Computers are already replacing many workers. The danger does exist we'll lose control over our intelligent artifacts; perhaps we have already lost some control to computers. A stealth plane would quickly crash without several on- board computers in control of steering. On May 7, 2010 the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 1000 points in a matter of minutes and Procter and Gamble, a giant, very stable, basic consumer products company lost half its stock value, because of a glitch in automatic trading by computer. But the opportunties in AI to expand our vision and reach in the universe are enormous and irresistible. We'll go into these opportunities later in this discourse.
Second, are we really capable of designing and building smart machines with computers or other devices? Some people think cognition is a strictly human function, never to be implemented in our artifacts. They argue that mental activities are God-given or natural abilities that we cannot impart to machines, because we are spiritual beings rather than material objects. Such critics often confuse what we can do in building machine intelligence with whether we should build it or not for ethical or other social reasons. If the critics are right about their ethical considerations, then let's bury our computers, telephones, cars, and other equipment that have caused layoffs of workers, noise, and pollution, all the way back to the steam engine and the cotton gin. If our nation does this, other nations will not--and we'll be left behind in competing for business and military defense. What was the point of barring support for stem cell research under President G.W. Bush when that research went on elsewhere? If any action is taken to restrict research and development in any field, it must be with international agreements, such as the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.
In the absence of such a treaty on artificial intelligence, are we able to design smart machines that perform human functions? We are. We already have computer programs that recognize human speech, after some training, and record it as ASCII eight-bit (byte) codes in computer memory. I own such a program made by Dragon. We also have a variety of optical character recognition systems (OCR) which can read characters in a variety of fonts. IBM makes a good OCR system. Fingerprint and face recognition systems are also available for machine identification. Are we there yet to AI, or getting close? Not really.
Forty three years ago, in 1967, when I got interested in pattern recognition as a Caltech graduate student in computer science, I thought we would have AI in a few years. We were working then with what we saw as the powerful IBM 360 main frame computer, getting access to it with terminals, punched cards, or magnetic tapes. A British statistician, I. J. Good, was forecasting super intelligent machines by the year 2000. Later, Arthur C. Clark, physicist and science fiction writer, imagined HAL 9000, Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer, smart but flawed, in his novel 2001: A Space Odyssey, beautifully rendered on film by Stanley Kubrick. Incidentally, we also had a moon colony in Clark's 2001, following the Apollo landing in 1969.
Well, we made excellent progress in other technologies: transistors and integrated circuits (following Moore's law), software design for personal computers and Microsoft, cell phones, the Apple i-Phone, the Internet and Google, as well mapping the human genome, bioengineering products and Genentech. Designing electronics with human intelligence, however, is going to be much harder than these achievements. We need to come up with a breakthrough in our thinking about the problem, a new kind of mathematics. A new logic was proposed in 1965 by professor Lotfi Zadeh, at Berkeley, which he named fuzzy logic. That differs from ordinary logic where an element is or is not a member of a set, by having an element possess a degree of membership in the set. Fuzzy logic gives rise to different mathematics and Japanese researchers have designed pattern recognizers with such a logic, as opposed to our customary digital on-or-off circuits. I'm waiting for smart robots sailing out of Japan to conquer the world, as Toyota and Honda cars have done. The Japanese already have tens of thousands more robots working in factories than any other nation. The Chinese produce factory workers in more traditional ways, as does the U.S. with the help of Latinos.
Enough time has elapsed since 1965 for us to test the power of fuzzy logic and design smart machines with this tool. We may need a different breakthrough, such as calculus, invented by Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz independently in the late seventeenth century. The ancient Greek mathematicians had worked on the problem of squaring the circle of radius r, i.e. Finding 2 л r, and had difficulty with the concepts of the infinite and infinitessimal, which Newton and Leibniz used adroitly in their calculus. With calculus we can derive the value of л to any accuracy we desire after 3.14. For AI we need a breakthrough concept like calculus, or like probability and quantum mechanics that allow us to deal with random events, previously thought to be inaccessible to reasoning, left to gods and astrologists.
Ever since John von Neumann and Alan Turing invented the modern stored-program computer at the end of WWII, researchers have been hammering away at the problem of machine perception with a variety of tools: statistics, inference theory, estimation theory, correlation, regression, cluster analysis, information theory, syntactic theory, linear programming, Bayesean probability decision theory, matrix theory, perceptron theory (discriminant functions), neural nets, and just plain heuristic programming. Neural nets made a buzz for a while—layers of elements trained to receive and recognize patterns, evolving somehow into a perceiving device. Upon analysis they turned out to be implementations of linear discriminant functions, Rosenblatt's old perceptron from the fifties.
In the fifties popular books came out with titles such as, Giant Brains, Thinking Machines, Intelligent Computers. A classic science fiction film, The Day the Earth Stood Still, appeared in 1951 with an elegant humanoid alien, played by Michael Rennie, who landed with his saucer spaceship in the company of a huge, intelligent, powerful, but silent robot; the alien chastised humans for their violent ways, and warned us we would be destroyed at the hands of the robot, for the sake of a peaceful galaxy, if we didn't mend our ways. The robot was irrevocably programmed to destroy violent aggressors anywhere. Now that robot required very astute discriminant functions in its programming.
I have my doubts about giving a robot, even a very intelligent robot, so much power and discretion. I can appreciate, though, the great value of really smart machines for scientific exploration and engineering design. Many of the designs we have today in products would not be possible without the use of modern computers. More sophisticated computers are designed using existing models. In the same way, once we have a machine that can perceive well, we can use that to develop even better perceptual devices. We end up with a rapid evolution of machine intelligence, leading to a super-intelligent artifact, according to I.J.Good.
Our intelligence is limited by the size of our skulls, which was limited by human evolution to the size of the opening through which humans pass to be born. Since neurons, for a good reason I'm sure, don't reproduce as a rule after birth, ten billion or so had to get packed in the skull within convolutions of the brain. But even convolutions can serve only so far. By comparison, a computer brain has no such limitations; it can grow indefinitely in its evolution. With integrated circuits that means a lot of transistors even in a small chip. A supercomputer is designed with many chips working together to process information.
Once we have programmed or otherwise eqipped a supercomputer with perceptual ability, it will visualize patterns, structures of sensory inputs or any other data in any number of dimensions. We humans can see patterns, figures, structures in two dimensions quite well and in three dimensions with some difficulty. But many data environments have more than three dimensions, such as the economy, for example. The economy depends on hundreds of variables. Economists linearize these variables and use matrices to calculate outcomes, but the economy is not linear. We don't know its shape really. An very intelligent machine would be able to see the structure of the economy and make much better predictions.
Much the same situation exists in every science, such as medicine. Doctors do their best to diagnose an illness given the symptoms you describe, lab tests, a physical examination, and your health history. The human body and mind, however, are much more complex and non-linear than doctors can perceive. Today's computers can help with the diagnosis and recommend a treatment, if a doctor wants to use available programs, but our computers are not great perceivers of patterns so far. The doctor prescribes some medicine or surgery, but that may not work because of side effects not taken into account by the model of the disease assumed by medical science.
In every field of science, physics, chemistry, biology, sociology, psychology intelligent computers would enable us to make rapid and fundamental discoveries, greatly accelerating our scientific progress. Food production would go to factories, instead of farms subject to the vagaries of the weather. Space exploration would propel humanity to other planets near and far from Earth. Our lifespans would be extended indefinitely, allowing us to create more, explore farther, and solve many fundamental problems, war, poverty, disease, and death itself.
Andros, Greece
May, 2010
by Basil E. Gala, Ph.D.
In Search of Meaning
Machine perception, often called machine learning, is a term we usually associated with robotic functions in industrial automation, as in machine vision, recognizing parts, sensing defects. We also call machine perception the computer recognition of faces, signatures, and fingerprints. More often we call these operations pattern recognition, such as speech and writing recognition by computer systems that perform classification of different inputs. Generally, all these innovations are called artificial intelligence or AI, which also includes the programming in computers of cognitive functions and linguistics, for example, decision making and analysis of data, chess playing, and other gaming decisions. In this connection, a new term and discipline is data mining, which involves extracting relevant or important facts from a large mass of data scientists or businessmen have collected with automatic devices. Whatever you prefer to call these artifacts, the question is: Are we going to be able to design systems that will approach or exceed our human capacity to perceive, classify, and make fitting decisions, doing such tasks unassisted, with the great speed of electrons or photons, and at low cost, thus replacing human labor in many jobs? Yes, we will be able to do it; and I intend to contribute to this effort as I did some years back working on my dissertation.
First, should we do it? Should we go ahead and build intelligent machines just because we can? Would not that development imperil our species, even replace it? That may happen, but it's not going to stop researchers in AI. We might as well say, let's not design nuclear devices, or do genetic engineering, or explore space, or go over the oceans, or invent fire--all dangerous ventures. It's not our nature to hold back from exploring, experimenting, or building things for fear of danger. Danger only stimulates our sense of awareness. We just need to proceed with caution and due respect for safety measures. AI will outsource many jobs, eventually most jobs, to machines. Computers are already replacing many workers. The danger does exist we'll lose control over our intelligent artifacts; perhaps we have already lost some control to computers. A stealth plane would quickly crash without several on- board computers in control of steering. On May 7, 2010 the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 1000 points in a matter of minutes and Procter and Gamble, a giant, very stable, basic consumer products company lost half its stock value, because of a glitch in automatic trading by computer. But the opportunties in AI to expand our vision and reach in the universe are enormous and irresistible. We'll go into these opportunities later in this discourse.
Second, are we really capable of designing and building smart machines with computers or other devices? Some people think cognition is a strictly human function, never to be implemented in our artifacts. They argue that mental activities are God-given or natural abilities that we cannot impart to machines, because we are spiritual beings rather than material objects. Such critics often confuse what we can do in building machine intelligence with whether we should build it or not for ethical or other social reasons. If the critics are right about their ethical considerations, then let's bury our computers, telephones, cars, and other equipment that have caused layoffs of workers, noise, and pollution, all the way back to the steam engine and the cotton gin. If our nation does this, other nations will not--and we'll be left behind in competing for business and military defense. What was the point of barring support for stem cell research under President G.W. Bush when that research went on elsewhere? If any action is taken to restrict research and development in any field, it must be with international agreements, such as the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.
In the absence of such a treaty on artificial intelligence, are we able to design smart machines that perform human functions? We are. We already have computer programs that recognize human speech, after some training, and record it as ASCII eight-bit (byte) codes in computer memory. I own such a program made by Dragon. We also have a variety of optical character recognition systems (OCR) which can read characters in a variety of fonts. IBM makes a good OCR system. Fingerprint and face recognition systems are also available for machine identification. Are we there yet to AI, or getting close? Not really.
Forty three years ago, in 1967, when I got interested in pattern recognition as a Caltech graduate student in computer science, I thought we would have AI in a few years. We were working then with what we saw as the powerful IBM 360 main frame computer, getting access to it with terminals, punched cards, or magnetic tapes. A British statistician, I. J. Good, was forecasting super intelligent machines by the year 2000. Later, Arthur C. Clark, physicist and science fiction writer, imagined HAL 9000, Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer, smart but flawed, in his novel 2001: A Space Odyssey, beautifully rendered on film by Stanley Kubrick. Incidentally, we also had a moon colony in Clark's 2001, following the Apollo landing in 1969.
Well, we made excellent progress in other technologies: transistors and integrated circuits (following Moore's law), software design for personal computers and Microsoft, cell phones, the Apple i-Phone, the Internet and Google, as well mapping the human genome, bioengineering products and Genentech. Designing electronics with human intelligence, however, is going to be much harder than these achievements. We need to come up with a breakthrough in our thinking about the problem, a new kind of mathematics. A new logic was proposed in 1965 by professor Lotfi Zadeh, at Berkeley, which he named fuzzy logic. That differs from ordinary logic where an element is or is not a member of a set, by having an element possess a degree of membership in the set. Fuzzy logic gives rise to different mathematics and Japanese researchers have designed pattern recognizers with such a logic, as opposed to our customary digital on-or-off circuits. I'm waiting for smart robots sailing out of Japan to conquer the world, as Toyota and Honda cars have done. The Japanese already have tens of thousands more robots working in factories than any other nation. The Chinese produce factory workers in more traditional ways, as does the U.S. with the help of Latinos.
Enough time has elapsed since 1965 for us to test the power of fuzzy logic and design smart machines with this tool. We may need a different breakthrough, such as calculus, invented by Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz independently in the late seventeenth century. The ancient Greek mathematicians had worked on the problem of squaring the circle of radius r, i.e. Finding 2 л r, and had difficulty with the concepts of the infinite and infinitessimal, which Newton and Leibniz used adroitly in their calculus. With calculus we can derive the value of л to any accuracy we desire after 3.14. For AI we need a breakthrough concept like calculus, or like probability and quantum mechanics that allow us to deal with random events, previously thought to be inaccessible to reasoning, left to gods and astrologists.
Ever since John von Neumann and Alan Turing invented the modern stored-program computer at the end of WWII, researchers have been hammering away at the problem of machine perception with a variety of tools: statistics, inference theory, estimation theory, correlation, regression, cluster analysis, information theory, syntactic theory, linear programming, Bayesean probability decision theory, matrix theory, perceptron theory (discriminant functions), neural nets, and just plain heuristic programming. Neural nets made a buzz for a while—layers of elements trained to receive and recognize patterns, evolving somehow into a perceiving device. Upon analysis they turned out to be implementations of linear discriminant functions, Rosenblatt's old perceptron from the fifties.
In the fifties popular books came out with titles such as, Giant Brains, Thinking Machines, Intelligent Computers. A classic science fiction film, The Day the Earth Stood Still, appeared in 1951 with an elegant humanoid alien, played by Michael Rennie, who landed with his saucer spaceship in the company of a huge, intelligent, powerful, but silent robot; the alien chastised humans for their violent ways, and warned us we would be destroyed at the hands of the robot, for the sake of a peaceful galaxy, if we didn't mend our ways. The robot was irrevocably programmed to destroy violent aggressors anywhere. Now that robot required very astute discriminant functions in its programming.
I have my doubts about giving a robot, even a very intelligent robot, so much power and discretion. I can appreciate, though, the great value of really smart machines for scientific exploration and engineering design. Many of the designs we have today in products would not be possible without the use of modern computers. More sophisticated computers are designed using existing models. In the same way, once we have a machine that can perceive well, we can use that to develop even better perceptual devices. We end up with a rapid evolution of machine intelligence, leading to a super-intelligent artifact, according to I.J.Good.
Our intelligence is limited by the size of our skulls, which was limited by human evolution to the size of the opening through which humans pass to be born. Since neurons, for a good reason I'm sure, don't reproduce as a rule after birth, ten billion or so had to get packed in the skull within convolutions of the brain. But even convolutions can serve only so far. By comparison, a computer brain has no such limitations; it can grow indefinitely in its evolution. With integrated circuits that means a lot of transistors even in a small chip. A supercomputer is designed with many chips working together to process information.
Once we have programmed or otherwise eqipped a supercomputer with perceptual ability, it will visualize patterns, structures of sensory inputs or any other data in any number of dimensions. We humans can see patterns, figures, structures in two dimensions quite well and in three dimensions with some difficulty. But many data environments have more than three dimensions, such as the economy, for example. The economy depends on hundreds of variables. Economists linearize these variables and use matrices to calculate outcomes, but the economy is not linear. We don't know its shape really. An very intelligent machine would be able to see the structure of the economy and make much better predictions.
Much the same situation exists in every science, such as medicine. Doctors do their best to diagnose an illness given the symptoms you describe, lab tests, a physical examination, and your health history. The human body and mind, however, are much more complex and non-linear than doctors can perceive. Today's computers can help with the diagnosis and recommend a treatment, if a doctor wants to use available programs, but our computers are not great perceivers of patterns so far. The doctor prescribes some medicine or surgery, but that may not work because of side effects not taken into account by the model of the disease assumed by medical science.
In every field of science, physics, chemistry, biology, sociology, psychology intelligent computers would enable us to make rapid and fundamental discoveries, greatly accelerating our scientific progress. Food production would go to factories, instead of farms subject to the vagaries of the weather. Space exploration would propel humanity to other planets near and far from Earth. Our lifespans would be extended indefinitely, allowing us to create more, explore farther, and solve many fundamental problems, war, poverty, disease, and death itself.
Andros, Greece
May, 2010
Praxis: The Art of Virtuous Action
Praxis: The Art of Virtuous Action
by Basil E. Gala, Ph.D.
In Search of Meaning
For thousands of years in all cultures and every place on earth, our ancestors have sought to find out what is virtue, good behavior, and how to attain it. Much of the search for goodness has been clothed in religious terms, the practice of piety and the avoidance of sin. The rest of the search and findings were philosophies in weighty volumes, or in simple sayings of ordinary people with folk wisdom. We have known for a long time what it takes to achieve a measure of peace, happiness, and a fruitful life for ourselves and our societies. What we have lacked has been the will, the capacity to act with reason carrying out what we know is the right course of action. We often ask ourselves when we mess up our lives, why or why do I do these things that are bad and why don't I do this thing I know is the right thing to do for me and my fellows? For example, why do I smoke, drink too much alcohol, take this illegal drug, or why do I sometimes hurt people I love? Why don't I work harder to succeed, instead of wasting my time with trivial pursuits? My answer is because we don't stop long enough to think as we pace our habitual dog run; we don't pause in our pursuit of comfort and pleasure; we don't listen to the source of our being; we don't deliberate, but rush ahead with what we have always been doing. We tend to react, distracted by others, friends or adversaries, to do what we have been acustomed in doing, with little conscious thought, planning, and foresight. For nearly all of us the problem is not ignorance of how to act, but the drive to act virtuously. How do we find the will to do what's right? I propose to you praxis, the art of virtuous action.
Praxis balances ataraxia, inner peace, coping well with whatever happens to us, a stoical stance. Ataraxia says whatever disaster may befall me, I can handle it, even relax and enjoy it, because my happiness is up to me. Praxis, opposed to relaxation, is action towards my goals; it's the application of theory to practice, the realization of plans for success, the fulfillment of dreams, the contact with what religious people call God.
Parents, teachers, bosses, and preachers, and all the gurus of success from Napoleon Hill to Anthony Robbins have lectured us on how to succeed. Now you and l will search for the secret of praxis using our own peculiar reason and intuition. We're after that which connects-controls-couples what we desire and intend with what we actually cause to happen. We want to cause an effect, the same way gravity causes water to flow in a channel. We want a strong coupling of our purpose to our desired action, so that action is free to flow in the channel of our intention, without events or people interfering or blocking the flow.
Suppose, for example, we're fat and want to be lean, which is going from a given state A to a desired state B, the statement of any problem. We want to cause the effect getting lean, which cannot be done overnight except with liposuction. We need to reduce this problem so it's subject to the inevitable of laws of nature. We know that taking in more calories than we can burn adds fat to our bodies and taking fewer calories reduces fat. We set up a calorie budget to that effect for each day, say 1400 calories; now we have reduced the problem to changing our behavior so that we stay within our calorie budget. Over time, we'll inevitably reach our desired lean state.
Wait, you say, changing our eating behavior, that's not so simple. Aye, there's the rub. How do we make this change in behavior inevitable? We rely on an established behavior which is inevitable in all of us except in thieves. Don't we always pay for a meal at a restaurant? Put 14 pennies in your left pocket when you wake up in the morning, each penny worth 100 calories. When you eat, for each 100 calories put one penny in your right pocket. The right pocket is the restaurant's money; it doesn't belong to you until tomorrow morning when you will put the 14 pennies back in your left pocket. When your left pocket is empty, you have no more money to spend on food today. You have effective control of your behavior on eating.
But what's to stop me from borrowing pennies and spending the borrowed money? Nothing will stop me except my will to succeed, to get lean. Yes, I depend on my will, about which thinkers debate whether it exists or not.
I say the will exists, because I can feel it when it's on, the same way I can feel anger, sadness, or love. When expressing my will, I may appear to others as stubborn, obstinate, unreasonable--a bulldog. I'm like the English in 1941 facing the Nazis. I define the will as the emotion which moves me to do what's right even when I'm alone, uncomfortable, pained, or terrified acting this way. It's the same emotion of the will which stops me from doing something pleasant, enticing, even enthalling when it's not right, harmful to me or others. My will is tied to my moral sense, a strictly human trait, and it's my connection with the source of life and consciousness deep inside me and beyond.
If you are new to the will, it will be uncomfortable for you at first. Activating the will is stressful, producing tension, even anxiety. Preparing to act under the force of the will can even be painful, as it is when we make up a list of things to do, meet deadlines on the way to our goal, or face the necessity of changing our long-entrenched habits to succeed.
Life runs on fundmental habits, inherited or grown mostly by the age of five. Habits lead us to inevitable actions. You can rely that people will behave according to their basic habits, their characters. People are predictable in what they do if you know their characters. Study a person's character well and you'll know how that person will behave with a high degree of confidence. People as a rule don't change their habits, the good habits, the indifferent ones, or even the bad habits which they see as such. Only under great internal or external pressure will people change habits with great difficulty and slowly, if at all. Acting contrary to habit is uncomfortable, sometimes even painful, requiring much effort and concentration.
People don't like to stop, think, and concentrate on changing, life rushing on them as it does these days, demanding money and gratifications. They tend to avoid breaking long-held habits ; they slip instead into old grooves, especially when they find pleasure in the actions. You can bet profitably that people will not change their ways.
Still, people need to change sometimes; it may even be a matter of life and death for some people to chuck a bad habit, like smoking for example. How do you change?
First, when a habitual routine is coming on, be on the alert and stop or hesitate before moving into it. Hesitate and become deliberate, choosing to recall your goals in life, and decide if your habitual routine will help or hinder your goals. If your habitual action serves these goals best, then continue with it; otherwise, re-orient yourself like the captain of a ship checking the stars, compass, or GPS. Listen to your inner voice; if you cannot find a better way, then do nothing but meditate. Then deliberate. To deliberate means that you slow down your thinking, feeling and action, slow down enough to move surely to the next step in what you want to do. It's like parking your car in a difficult place, where you don't want to hit anything. You'll not move fast this way, but you'll do it right.
Second, you can change by strengthening your will, confronting temptation, letting the intellect engage in the struggle and call on the emotion of the will to counter the temptation. You can feel the emotion of the will stirring, stiffening like cold anger in your heart. If you're a smoker quitting your habit, you feel the cool anger of your will when you put out a cigarette you just lit. Once you have experienced the will, you can call it up as needed and nurture its growth. Each time you activate the will, you make it stronger. Each time you act with the will to counter a bigger temptation for pleasure or greater fear of pain, you make your will more potent.
Intellect alone is impotent; the emotion of the will links what you know must be done with what you actually do. Feel the rise of the will then when it's needed and let it run with full strength to change your behavior in critical times. When you have done this long enough, you will have extinguished a bad habit or reinforced a good one; thereafter, you'll run free in the right direction without effort under the force of habit. As Verdi might say, la forza del destino is the force of habit.
Third, you can change habitual behavior by blocking and channeling its flow before it occurs. For example, if, like me, you're prone to overeating, keep little food in your refrigerator and pantry; use a small plate, fork, and spoon; shop food less frequently; avoid restaurants, especially buffets, and engagements where the hostess serves food too lavishly; wear tight pants and belt; go to bed early to skip night eating; eat slowly, chewing thoroughly, setting your fork down after each bite until it's gone down your gullet; drink water one hour before sitting down to a meal; don't sit down to a meal, but grab a snack, and so forth. You can devise similar tactics for other habits you want to change. These tactics are cheating the will, but they work in the long run, because a habit is a repetitive action, and if not repeated it's bound to become extinguished. Similarly, you can set up channeling of desirable behavior, reinforcing a good habit. For example, if you want to get up earlier to attend to your duties, set a loud alarm earlier, and out of reach unless you get up from your bed.
We have found how to couple what we want to achieve to what we are doing, praxis, the exercise of the will, the force of life itself.
Now, let's think about life's purpose. Our purpose is to serve: to work and serve ourselves, our family, our community, our species, all species, Nature, God if you like. If we are children of a Creator, our purpose too is to create, to work, to build, to design, produce new interesting patterns, and to reduce the chaos, the disorder (entropy) in the world. Seeking pleasure, even happiness itself, is a lowly goal, unfit for us. Even less of a worthy goal is avoiding discomfort, pain, even agony if necessary in doing our work. Not that we want to seek out pain, damaging our bodies, beating our backs with chains like religious zealots. We want instead to enjoy as best as we can whatever comes from doing our duty; that's fine and good. On our deathbeds, we shall accept the utmost pain and carry on with our work if possible.
In our work we have primary goals: to achieve success in our chosen career, making enough money to feed, clothe, and house ourselves, to marry and raise a family, to win and influence people enough for social acceptance or even fame, to help cure the evils in the world and promote justice. We need to observe a number of supporting goals also: to promote our good health and fitness, to keep learning new skills and knowledge needed as the world changes, to save money and property for our security and retirement, to perform our civic duties, such as voting, tax payments, jury duties.
I want every year of my life, every day, every hour, every minute to be dedicated to my goals and actually be used to further these goals. How about rest and recreation? Some time should be given over to R & R, scheduled for that purpose as needed and no more. When tired, rest; when rested, work. Needed fun for relaxation is helpful to a career; excess fun is damaging. What should I do about the arts--literature, drama, cinema, music, dance, painting, sculpture, interior and exterior design? Art can enter every phase of life--work, family, society—because art is an emanation of the life force, invigorating everything we do. I would like to integrate art into my activities as much as possible, into my eating, exercising, traveling, sleeping, socializing, loving, and work. How about laughter, adventure, and spontaneity? I will allow for these also, otherwise, life becomes boring, but I don't want the pursuit of trifles, pleasure, comfort, happiness even taking over my life, distracting me from my purpose.
Felicity follows function follows fulfillment. Fulfillment, my life's purpose, determines how I function, how I behave, and such behavior makes me happy, joyful, and serene.
I expect fulfillment in experiencing sensations and feelings, as well as thoughts in exploring on the surface of planet Earth. I see myself as a robotic probe on Earth, my consciousness a transmission from another place, another dimension. My body is very valuable, a complex mechanism at my disposable to get around on the surface, much more sophisticated than the surveyor craft on Mars. But my body is not I. I belong elsewhere and will go there again to join my transmitter and be debriefed fully after my body has ceased to function. My body is like a candle holder with a burning light. When the candle is used up, the light goes out to infinity like all radiation. Seeing myself thus, I have set my goal while living here to learn as much as I can--skills, knowledge, wisdom, right behaviors—to explore the world, seeking adventure without terminating my body too soon, experiencing all the activities this body is capable of tackling: swimming, dancing, loving, singing, playing, laughing, knowing other human beings intimately, and accomplishing things of value to me and others.
Primarily, however, my goal in life is to think, with the sharpest reasoning my brain is capable of exercising, about the fundamental problems of existence and the universe. And to write down my answers to the big problems with the best art and artistry I can muster.
That is the purpose of my life. I hope my work is of value to other people. In any case, my efforts are valuable to me. What is the purpose of your life?
A definite major purpose in life, perhaps some secondary goals also, enable praxis, the control, the wheel and rudder in steering your body in turbulant seas. Your purpose must be concrete, definite, and well defined. You cannot tie effective action to a vague, tenuous purpose. Your purpose must be vivid, foremost in your mind when planning and executing your actions. Repeating frequently to yourself and others, in writing and speech, what you want to accomplish, reinforces your vision for the success you want. Detail your goal, embelish it, picture it in your mind's eye often; it will help couple your goal to your daily activities and you'll be less likely to be thwarted by adverse events and people.
The world around us is often turbulant, chancy, even mad. People fail us, contraptions fail us, nature fails us. We begin by exercising ataraxia, complete inner peace. We submit for a time to the will of all-powerful, compassionate, and wise Jupiter, Jehovah, or Allah. We accept momentarily whatever fate dumps on our heads, we resign, relax, and remain calm in the eye of the hurricane. We no longer feel pain, have no need of pleasure, and enter a state of perfect mental tranquility. That's ataraxia, taught by Epicurus, another concept, taken up elsewhere. For now, we go the way of praxis, powerful action in the face of adversity. We want firm actions, day in, day out, hour in, hour out, to take us out of the storm to our port of call. Actions that inevitably follow from our intention, premise, or axiom, like a logical or mathematical argument, like the laws of physics: gravity, electromagnetism, and the nuclear forces.
Praxis is a method for controlling your time and life, directing your energies to succeed in your goals. Your day has twenty four hours, eight hours or so of which are given to sleep and dreaming over which you have little control. You still have sixteen hours remaining for goal-driven actions. If you use your waking hours effectively, you'll find your sleep and dreams may also be productive in ideas. Working effectively each hour you push towards your goals. What you may control is the push, the action you're able to take, not the result you want, although your aim is to hit your target.
In your daily schedule, do set up your target, but mainly plan your actions and later record what you actually did each hour. Stick to your planned schedule, unless you find a good reason to change course; don't vacillate. At the end of the day, study how you have deviated from your planned actions and how to correct your behavior next day. Praxis doesn't come at once without practice, like an epiphany; you perfect praxis gradually with constant and devoted training, like any other discipline. You may only control in the world what you feel, what you think, and what you do; the rest is up to the dice and toss of nature.
You can improve control of your behavior by rehearsing your planned actions enough times until what you're going to do is very vivid, certain, and real in your mind. Think of yourself as an actor preparing to go on stage to say your piece, because “all the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players.”
Unavoidably, some of the time you'll be busy with necessary supportive actions: dressing, eating, exercising, resting, cleaning and nursing yourself. Enjoy what you can of these activities, but fit them in the interstices of your work schedule by making them brief. For example, eating is something we do too much; affluence leads us to overindulge. The adult human body requires few calories and nutrients in a few snacks: each day, sixty grams of protein, thirty grams of good fat, thirty grams of fiber, traces of vitamins, minerals, phytochemicals, and anti-oxidants, which you can best get from delicious vegetables and fruits with complex carbohydrates for clean energy. Any excess food goes to waste or to body fat. We tend to eat too much too fast. Less eating will give you, paradoxically, more energy--also better health, and a longer life. Eat little, slowly, and enjoyably, focusing on fine, fresh, food for ten minutes between work periods of fifty minutes, like a psychiatrist's hours. If the needed materials, like ready foods, are available at hand, you can fit most of your support activities between your fifty-minute productive sessions.
Begin your work on the hour and take a break for supporting activities ten minutes before the hour. Even exercise can be fitted in ten- minute sessions; the health benefits are the same as for longer exercise periods. Next to eating, we allow too much time for execise if we are healh conscious. Sweating in the gym for hours to lose weight is a waste of time. You can lose weight best by eating less. For body building, you need to work out more; but as for staying fit, three ten-minute sessions of exercise a day are sufficient, if they include aerobics, weight training, and calisthenics for flexibility. You can set an egg timer to remind you of work and break intervals.
With regular breaks, you will have more productive work periods and more work stamina to work hard till the end of the day.
You need to work hard each day to achieve important goals. Praxis is a discipline of feeling, thought and action, empowering you to work hard, enabling you to do what promotes your goals in life and to avoid what is harmful or wasteful of your time and other resources. Why do we often neglect work we must do and indulge in actions that we should avoid? First, we seek pleasure for the sake of pleasure, instead of utility. Second, we run away from necessary discomfort or pain. Third, we lapse into apathy, even depression, neglecting what we need. Fourth, we submit to damaging habits, wasteful customs, or addictions, debilitating modes of behavior, such as overeating, smoking, gambling, drinking alcohol, shopping excessively, or fornicating indiscrimately.
Praxis will set you free from such chains of behavior, leading you to greener pastures, because praxis is a belief system, a faith not necessarily tied to religion.
To achieve, you need to believe in yourself, in nature, and in your ability to succeed in getting results you deem worthwhile. Motivational teachers have called this attitude positive thinking. Positive or constructive thinking, enthusiasm, motivates us to move, to exert ourselves, and to achieve. Certainly, negative or downbeat thinking does the opposite, but it has its place in life too; it's conservative. When you practice negative thinking you fall into a passive state, lethargy, inaction, sleep, conserving resources, sometimes your very life. That is the evolutionary advantage of feeling low, dejected, defeated, or depressed. Positive thinking, on the other hand, pushes you to expend resources liberally to get to your goal, because you believe you can reach it, sometimes risking your money, or your eye and limb. You may end up with irrational exuberance, or mania. Your nervous system firing neurons, your glands secreting hormones, and your muscles contracting all act together with positive feedback into larger and larger swings to resonance, causing sometimes a complete breakdown.
Negative thinking and feedback are beneficial when breakdown threatens. Go then into ataraxia with laughter, or at least a smile. It's all a game anyway to be enjoyed this sporting life, acting on the stage of the world, having our exits and our entrances.
But while forging ahead with your daily goal-directed schedule, be prepared to counter distractions from your body, your negative mind, your bad old habits, your well-meaning friends and relatives, as well as those who mean to waste your time and damage your life. You'll be working intensely, doing much good work, when suddenly sleepiness will hit you, a friend will call to chat, or a salesperson will pounce on you. Be prepared to firmly resist these intrusions, pushing ahead with the things you have scheduled to do. This is the time to be stubborn, obstinate, pig-headed, projecting your powerful will.
If you want to accomplish anything extraordinary, you'll run into opposition; it's in the nature of the world. The world is jealous of achievers because most people are not. You'll need practice to defend your time and other resources from those friends or adversaries apt to waste them for their own aims or no aim at all. You have to possess the force of will to overcome the enemy, most of the enemy being within yourself, your lethargic slothful self, demanding to be pampered, comforted, pleased. The core of praxis, cold anger (thymos I call it) drives you on; it's what they call in marketing circles agressiveness. You're not hurting anybody, but you extend yourself, projecting your objective on your own actions and those of others. Thymos, (aggressiveness or assertiveness) is that cool, calculating, controlled, enterprising push towards the goal, plainly seen in sports and business, but energizing the arts, politics, professions, and sciences too.
I'm not implying you should be devoting every hour of your day to your job, except for necessary rest periods. You have other goals and interests besides your career: family, friend, community interests. Give these interests their due--but no more, if you want personal success.
The desire for personal success will lead you to exercise praxis, part of which is the right self talk. What we think affects how we feel and how we feel affects what we do. Psychologists say that cognition does not usually occur in an affective vacuum; thinking is tied up with feelings. On the athletic field or in business meetings you get pep talk from the coach or the boss. As an independent performer, you need to supply pep talk to yourself. “I can do this.” “I can handle it.” “It's a piece of cake.” “I'm going to win this.” “I'm going to make it through this.” Keep talking to yourself like this until you have built up enough drive inside to act, unless it's time for conservation, and negative talk: “I need a little rest now before I begin again.” “Look out, you're over extending yourself.”
If pep talk fails to motivate you rightly to solve your problem, if nothing works for a time, relax, fall back on humor and laughter with the aid of praxis. Humor is an active process, another side of thymos, spontaneous and frank, a play with friends or enemies you approach lightly, with laughter the relaxing reflex letting go of tension and stress for a while until you recover your balance to press on.
Praxis, however, is mainly intentional living, tied to goals not amusement, leading promptly to fitting and efficient action, as opposed to a casual and passive lifestyle directed by others, in which most people indulge, settling in mediocrity. Spiritually, praxis is the immediate and personal contact with the divine, a taste of the source guiding our destinies.
My lifestyle is a simple one as dictated by praxis, dedicated to purpose, integrity, conscience, ethical and frugal living in a village community, respect for the environment, mostly vegetarian eating, beneficence to all people and living things, resistance to ostentation, commercial appetites, and excessive money making. Like you or any human being, occasionally I'm assailed by doubts, anxiety, even despair about my life, family, the whole world. Then I quickly respond with praxis, blocking such feelings and thoughts and substituting the mind set which leads me to thrive and to help others. The human mind can entertain one powerful emotion at a time; therefore, I bring on thymos, banishing frustration, self-pity, fear, or despair.
When praxis with thymos is on, I know that every moment is a kernel of the future, my destiny, which must not be derailed by a foul mind set. As a rule, thymos transforms me to act with fortitude and enterprise. If in doubt of my next move, however, I stop and meditate, doing nothing--better than making the wrong move. I seek guidance in the silence of my spirit. I know that each moment my actions should bring me closer to my goal, or else I pause and reset my mind. I may approach then people I know who can influence me in the right direction, or read a passage or two of wisdom from my favorite thinkers, Plato, Marcus Aurilius, St. Augustine, Descartes, Russell.
Contact with good minds leads to good actions. I always seek to guide my steps with logic, sound reasoning, taking into account what I feel, but never to follow my emotions blindly. I program my actions towards my goal, visualizing each step in detail, in full color, rehearsing my movements enough times to completion; then I stop again, listen, attend, and repeat the sequence of actions in my mind, never allowing distraction, until I'm satisfied my course is right, firm, and inevitable.
The core idea of praxis is self discipline, a very different concept than discipline imposed on us by others. Self discipline leads to true freedom of mind and such success in life as is possible for us mortals in an indifferent often hostile world, ruled as much by caprice as by law.
Andros, Greece
May, 2010
by Basil E. Gala, Ph.D.
In Search of Meaning
For thousands of years in all cultures and every place on earth, our ancestors have sought to find out what is virtue, good behavior, and how to attain it. Much of the search for goodness has been clothed in religious terms, the practice of piety and the avoidance of sin. The rest of the search and findings were philosophies in weighty volumes, or in simple sayings of ordinary people with folk wisdom. We have known for a long time what it takes to achieve a measure of peace, happiness, and a fruitful life for ourselves and our societies. What we have lacked has been the will, the capacity to act with reason carrying out what we know is the right course of action. We often ask ourselves when we mess up our lives, why or why do I do these things that are bad and why don't I do this thing I know is the right thing to do for me and my fellows? For example, why do I smoke, drink too much alcohol, take this illegal drug, or why do I sometimes hurt people I love? Why don't I work harder to succeed, instead of wasting my time with trivial pursuits? My answer is because we don't stop long enough to think as we pace our habitual dog run; we don't pause in our pursuit of comfort and pleasure; we don't listen to the source of our being; we don't deliberate, but rush ahead with what we have always been doing. We tend to react, distracted by others, friends or adversaries, to do what we have been acustomed in doing, with little conscious thought, planning, and foresight. For nearly all of us the problem is not ignorance of how to act, but the drive to act virtuously. How do we find the will to do what's right? I propose to you praxis, the art of virtuous action.
Praxis balances ataraxia, inner peace, coping well with whatever happens to us, a stoical stance. Ataraxia says whatever disaster may befall me, I can handle it, even relax and enjoy it, because my happiness is up to me. Praxis, opposed to relaxation, is action towards my goals; it's the application of theory to practice, the realization of plans for success, the fulfillment of dreams, the contact with what religious people call God.
Parents, teachers, bosses, and preachers, and all the gurus of success from Napoleon Hill to Anthony Robbins have lectured us on how to succeed. Now you and l will search for the secret of praxis using our own peculiar reason and intuition. We're after that which connects-controls-couples what we desire and intend with what we actually cause to happen. We want to cause an effect, the same way gravity causes water to flow in a channel. We want a strong coupling of our purpose to our desired action, so that action is free to flow in the channel of our intention, without events or people interfering or blocking the flow.
Suppose, for example, we're fat and want to be lean, which is going from a given state A to a desired state B, the statement of any problem. We want to cause the effect getting lean, which cannot be done overnight except with liposuction. We need to reduce this problem so it's subject to the inevitable of laws of nature. We know that taking in more calories than we can burn adds fat to our bodies and taking fewer calories reduces fat. We set up a calorie budget to that effect for each day, say 1400 calories; now we have reduced the problem to changing our behavior so that we stay within our calorie budget. Over time, we'll inevitably reach our desired lean state.
Wait, you say, changing our eating behavior, that's not so simple. Aye, there's the rub. How do we make this change in behavior inevitable? We rely on an established behavior which is inevitable in all of us except in thieves. Don't we always pay for a meal at a restaurant? Put 14 pennies in your left pocket when you wake up in the morning, each penny worth 100 calories. When you eat, for each 100 calories put one penny in your right pocket. The right pocket is the restaurant's money; it doesn't belong to you until tomorrow morning when you will put the 14 pennies back in your left pocket. When your left pocket is empty, you have no more money to spend on food today. You have effective control of your behavior on eating.
But what's to stop me from borrowing pennies and spending the borrowed money? Nothing will stop me except my will to succeed, to get lean. Yes, I depend on my will, about which thinkers debate whether it exists or not.
I say the will exists, because I can feel it when it's on, the same way I can feel anger, sadness, or love. When expressing my will, I may appear to others as stubborn, obstinate, unreasonable--a bulldog. I'm like the English in 1941 facing the Nazis. I define the will as the emotion which moves me to do what's right even when I'm alone, uncomfortable, pained, or terrified acting this way. It's the same emotion of the will which stops me from doing something pleasant, enticing, even enthalling when it's not right, harmful to me or others. My will is tied to my moral sense, a strictly human trait, and it's my connection with the source of life and consciousness deep inside me and beyond.
If you are new to the will, it will be uncomfortable for you at first. Activating the will is stressful, producing tension, even anxiety. Preparing to act under the force of the will can even be painful, as it is when we make up a list of things to do, meet deadlines on the way to our goal, or face the necessity of changing our long-entrenched habits to succeed.
Life runs on fundmental habits, inherited or grown mostly by the age of five. Habits lead us to inevitable actions. You can rely that people will behave according to their basic habits, their characters. People are predictable in what they do if you know their characters. Study a person's character well and you'll know how that person will behave with a high degree of confidence. People as a rule don't change their habits, the good habits, the indifferent ones, or even the bad habits which they see as such. Only under great internal or external pressure will people change habits with great difficulty and slowly, if at all. Acting contrary to habit is uncomfortable, sometimes even painful, requiring much effort and concentration.
People don't like to stop, think, and concentrate on changing, life rushing on them as it does these days, demanding money and gratifications. They tend to avoid breaking long-held habits ; they slip instead into old grooves, especially when they find pleasure in the actions. You can bet profitably that people will not change their ways.
Still, people need to change sometimes; it may even be a matter of life and death for some people to chuck a bad habit, like smoking for example. How do you change?
First, when a habitual routine is coming on, be on the alert and stop or hesitate before moving into it. Hesitate and become deliberate, choosing to recall your goals in life, and decide if your habitual routine will help or hinder your goals. If your habitual action serves these goals best, then continue with it; otherwise, re-orient yourself like the captain of a ship checking the stars, compass, or GPS. Listen to your inner voice; if you cannot find a better way, then do nothing but meditate. Then deliberate. To deliberate means that you slow down your thinking, feeling and action, slow down enough to move surely to the next step in what you want to do. It's like parking your car in a difficult place, where you don't want to hit anything. You'll not move fast this way, but you'll do it right.
Second, you can change by strengthening your will, confronting temptation, letting the intellect engage in the struggle and call on the emotion of the will to counter the temptation. You can feel the emotion of the will stirring, stiffening like cold anger in your heart. If you're a smoker quitting your habit, you feel the cool anger of your will when you put out a cigarette you just lit. Once you have experienced the will, you can call it up as needed and nurture its growth. Each time you activate the will, you make it stronger. Each time you act with the will to counter a bigger temptation for pleasure or greater fear of pain, you make your will more potent.
Intellect alone is impotent; the emotion of the will links what you know must be done with what you actually do. Feel the rise of the will then when it's needed and let it run with full strength to change your behavior in critical times. When you have done this long enough, you will have extinguished a bad habit or reinforced a good one; thereafter, you'll run free in the right direction without effort under the force of habit. As Verdi might say, la forza del destino is the force of habit.
Third, you can change habitual behavior by blocking and channeling its flow before it occurs. For example, if, like me, you're prone to overeating, keep little food in your refrigerator and pantry; use a small plate, fork, and spoon; shop food less frequently; avoid restaurants, especially buffets, and engagements where the hostess serves food too lavishly; wear tight pants and belt; go to bed early to skip night eating; eat slowly, chewing thoroughly, setting your fork down after each bite until it's gone down your gullet; drink water one hour before sitting down to a meal; don't sit down to a meal, but grab a snack, and so forth. You can devise similar tactics for other habits you want to change. These tactics are cheating the will, but they work in the long run, because a habit is a repetitive action, and if not repeated it's bound to become extinguished. Similarly, you can set up channeling of desirable behavior, reinforcing a good habit. For example, if you want to get up earlier to attend to your duties, set a loud alarm earlier, and out of reach unless you get up from your bed.
We have found how to couple what we want to achieve to what we are doing, praxis, the exercise of the will, the force of life itself.
Now, let's think about life's purpose. Our purpose is to serve: to work and serve ourselves, our family, our community, our species, all species, Nature, God if you like. If we are children of a Creator, our purpose too is to create, to work, to build, to design, produce new interesting patterns, and to reduce the chaos, the disorder (entropy) in the world. Seeking pleasure, even happiness itself, is a lowly goal, unfit for us. Even less of a worthy goal is avoiding discomfort, pain, even agony if necessary in doing our work. Not that we want to seek out pain, damaging our bodies, beating our backs with chains like religious zealots. We want instead to enjoy as best as we can whatever comes from doing our duty; that's fine and good. On our deathbeds, we shall accept the utmost pain and carry on with our work if possible.
In our work we have primary goals: to achieve success in our chosen career, making enough money to feed, clothe, and house ourselves, to marry and raise a family, to win and influence people enough for social acceptance or even fame, to help cure the evils in the world and promote justice. We need to observe a number of supporting goals also: to promote our good health and fitness, to keep learning new skills and knowledge needed as the world changes, to save money and property for our security and retirement, to perform our civic duties, such as voting, tax payments, jury duties.
I want every year of my life, every day, every hour, every minute to be dedicated to my goals and actually be used to further these goals. How about rest and recreation? Some time should be given over to R & R, scheduled for that purpose as needed and no more. When tired, rest; when rested, work. Needed fun for relaxation is helpful to a career; excess fun is damaging. What should I do about the arts--literature, drama, cinema, music, dance, painting, sculpture, interior and exterior design? Art can enter every phase of life--work, family, society—because art is an emanation of the life force, invigorating everything we do. I would like to integrate art into my activities as much as possible, into my eating, exercising, traveling, sleeping, socializing, loving, and work. How about laughter, adventure, and spontaneity? I will allow for these also, otherwise, life becomes boring, but I don't want the pursuit of trifles, pleasure, comfort, happiness even taking over my life, distracting me from my purpose.
Felicity follows function follows fulfillment. Fulfillment, my life's purpose, determines how I function, how I behave, and such behavior makes me happy, joyful, and serene.
I expect fulfillment in experiencing sensations and feelings, as well as thoughts in exploring on the surface of planet Earth. I see myself as a robotic probe on Earth, my consciousness a transmission from another place, another dimension. My body is very valuable, a complex mechanism at my disposable to get around on the surface, much more sophisticated than the surveyor craft on Mars. But my body is not I. I belong elsewhere and will go there again to join my transmitter and be debriefed fully after my body has ceased to function. My body is like a candle holder with a burning light. When the candle is used up, the light goes out to infinity like all radiation. Seeing myself thus, I have set my goal while living here to learn as much as I can--skills, knowledge, wisdom, right behaviors—to explore the world, seeking adventure without terminating my body too soon, experiencing all the activities this body is capable of tackling: swimming, dancing, loving, singing, playing, laughing, knowing other human beings intimately, and accomplishing things of value to me and others.
Primarily, however, my goal in life is to think, with the sharpest reasoning my brain is capable of exercising, about the fundamental problems of existence and the universe. And to write down my answers to the big problems with the best art and artistry I can muster.
That is the purpose of my life. I hope my work is of value to other people. In any case, my efforts are valuable to me. What is the purpose of your life?
A definite major purpose in life, perhaps some secondary goals also, enable praxis, the control, the wheel and rudder in steering your body in turbulant seas. Your purpose must be concrete, definite, and well defined. You cannot tie effective action to a vague, tenuous purpose. Your purpose must be vivid, foremost in your mind when planning and executing your actions. Repeating frequently to yourself and others, in writing and speech, what you want to accomplish, reinforces your vision for the success you want. Detail your goal, embelish it, picture it in your mind's eye often; it will help couple your goal to your daily activities and you'll be less likely to be thwarted by adverse events and people.
The world around us is often turbulant, chancy, even mad. People fail us, contraptions fail us, nature fails us. We begin by exercising ataraxia, complete inner peace. We submit for a time to the will of all-powerful, compassionate, and wise Jupiter, Jehovah, or Allah. We accept momentarily whatever fate dumps on our heads, we resign, relax, and remain calm in the eye of the hurricane. We no longer feel pain, have no need of pleasure, and enter a state of perfect mental tranquility. That's ataraxia, taught by Epicurus, another concept, taken up elsewhere. For now, we go the way of praxis, powerful action in the face of adversity. We want firm actions, day in, day out, hour in, hour out, to take us out of the storm to our port of call. Actions that inevitably follow from our intention, premise, or axiom, like a logical or mathematical argument, like the laws of physics: gravity, electromagnetism, and the nuclear forces.
Praxis is a method for controlling your time and life, directing your energies to succeed in your goals. Your day has twenty four hours, eight hours or so of which are given to sleep and dreaming over which you have little control. You still have sixteen hours remaining for goal-driven actions. If you use your waking hours effectively, you'll find your sleep and dreams may also be productive in ideas. Working effectively each hour you push towards your goals. What you may control is the push, the action you're able to take, not the result you want, although your aim is to hit your target.
In your daily schedule, do set up your target, but mainly plan your actions and later record what you actually did each hour. Stick to your planned schedule, unless you find a good reason to change course; don't vacillate. At the end of the day, study how you have deviated from your planned actions and how to correct your behavior next day. Praxis doesn't come at once without practice, like an epiphany; you perfect praxis gradually with constant and devoted training, like any other discipline. You may only control in the world what you feel, what you think, and what you do; the rest is up to the dice and toss of nature.
You can improve control of your behavior by rehearsing your planned actions enough times until what you're going to do is very vivid, certain, and real in your mind. Think of yourself as an actor preparing to go on stage to say your piece, because “all the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players.”
Unavoidably, some of the time you'll be busy with necessary supportive actions: dressing, eating, exercising, resting, cleaning and nursing yourself. Enjoy what you can of these activities, but fit them in the interstices of your work schedule by making them brief. For example, eating is something we do too much; affluence leads us to overindulge. The adult human body requires few calories and nutrients in a few snacks: each day, sixty grams of protein, thirty grams of good fat, thirty grams of fiber, traces of vitamins, minerals, phytochemicals, and anti-oxidants, which you can best get from delicious vegetables and fruits with complex carbohydrates for clean energy. Any excess food goes to waste or to body fat. We tend to eat too much too fast. Less eating will give you, paradoxically, more energy--also better health, and a longer life. Eat little, slowly, and enjoyably, focusing on fine, fresh, food for ten minutes between work periods of fifty minutes, like a psychiatrist's hours. If the needed materials, like ready foods, are available at hand, you can fit most of your support activities between your fifty-minute productive sessions.
Begin your work on the hour and take a break for supporting activities ten minutes before the hour. Even exercise can be fitted in ten- minute sessions; the health benefits are the same as for longer exercise periods. Next to eating, we allow too much time for execise if we are healh conscious. Sweating in the gym for hours to lose weight is a waste of time. You can lose weight best by eating less. For body building, you need to work out more; but as for staying fit, three ten-minute sessions of exercise a day are sufficient, if they include aerobics, weight training, and calisthenics for flexibility. You can set an egg timer to remind you of work and break intervals.
With regular breaks, you will have more productive work periods and more work stamina to work hard till the end of the day.
You need to work hard each day to achieve important goals. Praxis is a discipline of feeling, thought and action, empowering you to work hard, enabling you to do what promotes your goals in life and to avoid what is harmful or wasteful of your time and other resources. Why do we often neglect work we must do and indulge in actions that we should avoid? First, we seek pleasure for the sake of pleasure, instead of utility. Second, we run away from necessary discomfort or pain. Third, we lapse into apathy, even depression, neglecting what we need. Fourth, we submit to damaging habits, wasteful customs, or addictions, debilitating modes of behavior, such as overeating, smoking, gambling, drinking alcohol, shopping excessively, or fornicating indiscrimately.
Praxis will set you free from such chains of behavior, leading you to greener pastures, because praxis is a belief system, a faith not necessarily tied to religion.
To achieve, you need to believe in yourself, in nature, and in your ability to succeed in getting results you deem worthwhile. Motivational teachers have called this attitude positive thinking. Positive or constructive thinking, enthusiasm, motivates us to move, to exert ourselves, and to achieve. Certainly, negative or downbeat thinking does the opposite, but it has its place in life too; it's conservative. When you practice negative thinking you fall into a passive state, lethargy, inaction, sleep, conserving resources, sometimes your very life. That is the evolutionary advantage of feeling low, dejected, defeated, or depressed. Positive thinking, on the other hand, pushes you to expend resources liberally to get to your goal, because you believe you can reach it, sometimes risking your money, or your eye and limb. You may end up with irrational exuberance, or mania. Your nervous system firing neurons, your glands secreting hormones, and your muscles contracting all act together with positive feedback into larger and larger swings to resonance, causing sometimes a complete breakdown.
Negative thinking and feedback are beneficial when breakdown threatens. Go then into ataraxia with laughter, or at least a smile. It's all a game anyway to be enjoyed this sporting life, acting on the stage of the world, having our exits and our entrances.
But while forging ahead with your daily goal-directed schedule, be prepared to counter distractions from your body, your negative mind, your bad old habits, your well-meaning friends and relatives, as well as those who mean to waste your time and damage your life. You'll be working intensely, doing much good work, when suddenly sleepiness will hit you, a friend will call to chat, or a salesperson will pounce on you. Be prepared to firmly resist these intrusions, pushing ahead with the things you have scheduled to do. This is the time to be stubborn, obstinate, pig-headed, projecting your powerful will.
If you want to accomplish anything extraordinary, you'll run into opposition; it's in the nature of the world. The world is jealous of achievers because most people are not. You'll need practice to defend your time and other resources from those friends or adversaries apt to waste them for their own aims or no aim at all. You have to possess the force of will to overcome the enemy, most of the enemy being within yourself, your lethargic slothful self, demanding to be pampered, comforted, pleased. The core of praxis, cold anger (thymos I call it) drives you on; it's what they call in marketing circles agressiveness. You're not hurting anybody, but you extend yourself, projecting your objective on your own actions and those of others. Thymos, (aggressiveness or assertiveness) is that cool, calculating, controlled, enterprising push towards the goal, plainly seen in sports and business, but energizing the arts, politics, professions, and sciences too.
I'm not implying you should be devoting every hour of your day to your job, except for necessary rest periods. You have other goals and interests besides your career: family, friend, community interests. Give these interests their due--but no more, if you want personal success.
The desire for personal success will lead you to exercise praxis, part of which is the right self talk. What we think affects how we feel and how we feel affects what we do. Psychologists say that cognition does not usually occur in an affective vacuum; thinking is tied up with feelings. On the athletic field or in business meetings you get pep talk from the coach or the boss. As an independent performer, you need to supply pep talk to yourself. “I can do this.” “I can handle it.” “It's a piece of cake.” “I'm going to win this.” “I'm going to make it through this.” Keep talking to yourself like this until you have built up enough drive inside to act, unless it's time for conservation, and negative talk: “I need a little rest now before I begin again.” “Look out, you're over extending yourself.”
If pep talk fails to motivate you rightly to solve your problem, if nothing works for a time, relax, fall back on humor and laughter with the aid of praxis. Humor is an active process, another side of thymos, spontaneous and frank, a play with friends or enemies you approach lightly, with laughter the relaxing reflex letting go of tension and stress for a while until you recover your balance to press on.
Praxis, however, is mainly intentional living, tied to goals not amusement, leading promptly to fitting and efficient action, as opposed to a casual and passive lifestyle directed by others, in which most people indulge, settling in mediocrity. Spiritually, praxis is the immediate and personal contact with the divine, a taste of the source guiding our destinies.
My lifestyle is a simple one as dictated by praxis, dedicated to purpose, integrity, conscience, ethical and frugal living in a village community, respect for the environment, mostly vegetarian eating, beneficence to all people and living things, resistance to ostentation, commercial appetites, and excessive money making. Like you or any human being, occasionally I'm assailed by doubts, anxiety, even despair about my life, family, the whole world. Then I quickly respond with praxis, blocking such feelings and thoughts and substituting the mind set which leads me to thrive and to help others. The human mind can entertain one powerful emotion at a time; therefore, I bring on thymos, banishing frustration, self-pity, fear, or despair.
When praxis with thymos is on, I know that every moment is a kernel of the future, my destiny, which must not be derailed by a foul mind set. As a rule, thymos transforms me to act with fortitude and enterprise. If in doubt of my next move, however, I stop and meditate, doing nothing--better than making the wrong move. I seek guidance in the silence of my spirit. I know that each moment my actions should bring me closer to my goal, or else I pause and reset my mind. I may approach then people I know who can influence me in the right direction, or read a passage or two of wisdom from my favorite thinkers, Plato, Marcus Aurilius, St. Augustine, Descartes, Russell.
Contact with good minds leads to good actions. I always seek to guide my steps with logic, sound reasoning, taking into account what I feel, but never to follow my emotions blindly. I program my actions towards my goal, visualizing each step in detail, in full color, rehearsing my movements enough times to completion; then I stop again, listen, attend, and repeat the sequence of actions in my mind, never allowing distraction, until I'm satisfied my course is right, firm, and inevitable.
The core idea of praxis is self discipline, a very different concept than discipline imposed on us by others. Self discipline leads to true freedom of mind and such success in life as is possible for us mortals in an indifferent often hostile world, ruled as much by caprice as by law.
Andros, Greece
May, 2010
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Hassel and Joy
Hassle and Joy: 10 Ways for Getting Past Hassles to Joys
By Basil Gala, PhD
In Search of Meaning
Dedicated to the joy of my life, my daughter Alia Joy Gala
Once upon a time, long long ago, a boy was born who liked messes, threw mud at people, screeched loudly, and generally dealt unpleasant, annoying, frustrating things, so his father and mother called him Hassle. The parents were lucky, however, because they also had a girl, sugar and spice and everything nice, who smiled, cleaned, played quietly; they named her Joy. The boy and girl grew up, settled down among us, and made our lives what they are. You can go beyond Hassle. This is a guide on how to get past Hassle in your own life, finding Joy, as I have learned to do, following the advice of wise people; also, by trial and error, for many years, stumbling and falling and getting up to walk upright.
We come to the world naked, yanked out of a cushy, warm place, raised up up-side-down and smacked on the back to breathe, sponged clean, swaddled, and finally placed next to mother for that first sweet drink, or a disgusting bottle of formula, another gift from Hassle. And so it goes after that day to the terminal day. I cannot go into all the unpleasant, painful, annoying, frustrating, disgusting, even tragic events which pace our lives. I will offer examples of such as you have known, and offer tools to go from frustration to satisfaction and benefit. Joyful activities are generally beneficial; unpleasant events are usually harmful. Clearly, it will be profitable for us to learn how to turn hassles, stressful and damaging to our bodies and minds, yes, turn them into joys.
In the nineteen thirties, Bertrand Russell wrote a little volume, “The Conquest of Happiness.” I stress conquest. If we find happiness desirable (who doesn't?), then consider active ways of finding it; it's not manna from the sky. Some people are born and sail through life easily, successfully, not bothered by much until their end. They seem to know what is the right thing to do, solving problems without much fuss, coming to their end without a whimper. I am not one of those. I had to learn slowly and arduously how to react to hassles. Marcus Aurelius, stoic philosopher and Roman Emperor, in “Meditations,” Bertrand Russell, philosopher and mathematician, Dale Carnegie, in “ How to Stop Worrying and Start Living,” and Napoleon Hill, “Think and Grow Rich” gave me good clues. I am no longer clueless, and I will pass on to you what I have learned.
My purpose is to give you general rules for coping with hassle and stress, with examples to a few situations. Articles in magazines may be more specific to particular problems; but if you have general principles for joyful living, without stress, you can apply them to most situations. “Judge—your Honor—I didn't do no child abuse,” said the 300-pound woman, “my boy had a temper tantrum; I sat on him to stop his hassling me.” I don't propose to give you instructions how to sit on unruly children, or other problems, but how to quiet them peaceably, if possible, and joyfully.
I want to suggest to you a bag of tools for getting past hassle and going to joy. Every mechanic, engineer, doctor, farmer, sailor, has a bag of tools, a variety of techniques to solve problems in his field; so should you in your life. If one tool doesn't work, you try another. Some people always respond the same rigid way to challenges: running away, fighting, or giving up too soon; that's not the way of Homo sapiens, you and me. We evolved and survived as a species by adapting, trying this and that approach until we succeeded.
Here we go to the first method, resignation.
1.Practice Resignation.
Kyrie Eleison
Resign yourself to the hassle; give in; give up; reconcile your spirit to the inevitable; accept your fate; it's the will of the gods; Allahu akbar; Kyrie eleison, etc. Don't complain and bitch when fortune deals you a bad hand. Why is resignation method number one? Because a great many events that bother us are unavoidable, like death and taxes; fighting against these calamities is a waste of energy, disturbing to our peace of mind.
People often like to complain about the faults of their spouses or families. My wife spends too much; my husband smokes and gambles; my brother is lazy; my sister eats too much; my mother bosses me; my father is cold to me; my child makes messes; my mother-in-law is a meddling old fool, etc., on and on, bitch, bitch, bitch. I say to these people, distance yourself from your spouse or others if you want; otherwise, shut up and resign yourself to the relatives you have. You are not going to change anybody over the age of five, certainly not by complaining. Once you have resigned yourself to your spouse and family, when you have accepted them, loving them with their faults, you may begin to enjoy life with them.
Walt Whitman wrote: “I turn and look at animals, there are so peaceful and self contained; they don't weep and whine about their misfortunes...” Oh yes, you need to know when a misfortune is unavoidable. After Saint Francis of Assisi, pray: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
In many, many annoying situations, I have found that the best way to get through the moment is by tuning out what disturbs me. In my forties, I had an ear infection, resulting in tinnitus, ringing in the ears. I checked with a specialist who could do nothing for me, but over the years, my mind has learned to tune out the sound frequencies from the tinnitus. With children playing, making noises, when I try to rest, I don't fret; I say to myself, these are birds singing--and fall asleep.
Inevitably, we come to the moment when our body is becoming still. Like Zorba the Greek, we can jump out of our death bed, rush to the window and yell. I plan to lie still, enjoying the peaceful moment of liberation from my body, like a little child again, praying to God my soul to keep.
2.Count Your Blessings
Doughnut and Hole
Look at the doughnut, not the hole; every cloud has a silver lining; the glass is not half empty, it's half full; when April showers come your way, they bring the flowers that bloom in May; if you're handed a lemon, make a lemonade; in your mind's mill, turn every adversity into grist and the greater the adversity, the finer the grist (Napoleon Hill); blessed are the poor, the meek, and the persecuted (Jesus). Popular wisdom has a million such sayings buzzing around. Far be it for me to surpass such folk wisdom, or do better than these fine bromides, extolled in songs, stories, and movies. All such advice against hassles works fine, as long as you are powerless in the face of untoward events. The theory goes that in life for every unfortunate hit, there is a compensating benefit; look for the benefit; use it.
Agreed. Compensating benefits often occur, and I have seen them in my life and the lives of those I have known, but not always. Don't take the theory too far, beyond its reach. Especially, don't focus on the bright side of things too much, neglecting to remove the dark side, if you can. Once in a while we need to chuck optimism, and look at what is unpleasant, irritating, damaging with sufficient but not excessive pessimism so that we motivate ourselves to eliminate what's bad if we can.
3.Relax and Meditate
Yoga Posture
Ignore the pain, problem, frustration—it will soon go away, or you go away. Most things that trouble us have a way of taking care of themselves. If possible, let others solve their own problems. Is the planet heating up, close to destroying the world with smoke and fire? What can you or I do about it? Are you Al Gore to make a difference? Yes, you can do your little part to burn less gasoline, but will everybody else follow your example? Don't agonize about the world suffocating in CO2, being hit by an asteroid, freezing up in a new ice age, decimated by a super virus, demolished in a nuclear war, or invaded by tentacled aliens. What will be, will be. In the end, death comes to us all, even to the whole planet, in this century or in five billion years.
Relaxing and meditating is different from just resigning yourself; it is more active. You consciously, through an effort of the will, direct your mind away from the hassle to a peaceful state. Religious traditions, philosophies (such as the stoic school), and psychological methods teach us how to meditate, relaxing mind and body, relieving stress and distress. Try yoga, prayer, exercise, analysis, spas.
Waking up and going to sleep appear to be big hassles for many people, considering the gallons of coffee they imbibe in the morning, and the mess of sleeping aids (or liquor) they gulp at night. Coffee and other stimulants during the day, keep us awake at night; then waking up the next morning becomes a hassle and a chore. Observe how cats wake up, slowly first one eye open, then the other, stretching leisurely, yawning mouth wide open (how rude), arching the back, scratching the carpet, sofa (or their post if they deign). Set your alarm a few minutes earlier and make like a cat upon waking. Enjoy; it's the best time of the day, welcoming life anew from a slumber like death.
Going to sleep after a busy, productive day, that's the second best time of the day finally to rest from your labors (oh, sweet death of the night), relaxing for a few minutes with a good book, or some soothing music, thinking pleasant thoughts, visualizing tranquil scenes. If worries intrude, if sleep does not come, relax further with meditation or prayer, with counting to 100 and then counting down, over and over. Say to yourself, “I'm going to sleep soon; if not, I'll rest just fine with my eyes closed. Relax now, relax; I've nothing to worry about. I'm a baby in my mother's arms; all my needs are met. I have no enemies; I have nothing to fear.”
The ultimate relaxation is the way of the Buddha, the Wakened One, perfected in the Chinese Chán, or Japanese Zen tradition. Following the Buddha, we seek Nirvana, liberation from life's ultimate hassles: the frustrations and pains of illness, accident, disaster, famine, war, aging, and death. Rich or poor, prince or pauper, learned or illiterate, we are all subject to these ills, yet the way of the Moses, Buddha, Jesus, or Mohammed can lead to joy everlasting in the mansions of the spirit. Religious teaching is not my forte, but I commend to you good spiritual guidance from persons well qualified to offer it to you. Steer away from the cranks, as you do from quacks and shysters.
4.Laugh
We laugh, smile, express wit or humor in words or actions, in response to a hassle we cannot eliminate or want to attack, but we are being now more active in our response than when we only resign or relax. An infant smiles or laughs when facing people, especially older children; the infant being helpless, a smile or a laugh is the infant's best defense, besides being cute, a way of avoiding hostility and winning a friend.
Laughter is a reflex, an instinctive response to a mock threat, a response we all have when we are infants or young, which we may lose growing up uptight at home, school, or work; we lose our humor, if we don't use it, the same as our other faculties. Humor is part of our genetic heritage as mammals and humans, helping us smooth relations with others, interact, entertain, relax, resign. Wit is cultivated humor, for those among us who are more literate. What we have inherited from our ancestors we can improve and extend for our enjoyment and survival. Laughter, humor, playfulness can be augmented with practice or buried under a mountain of concerns. Throw off your concerns with resignation, relaxation, and laughter. Say to yourself, I don't give a dime. Be an infant, a child, for the moment. Enjoy.
5.Enjoy Patience
What did I say? Who enjoys being patient? I do; I'll explain how. First, hassling situations requiring patience are innumerable: waiting to be served at the bank, at the airport, at the telephone with a computer switchboard (horrors, far worse than the old operators), at the checkout counter, at the doctor's office, driving in traffic, down loading at the computer, flying across oceans, listening to a boring lecture, visiting with in-laws; the list goes on forever.
How to enjoy these waits? Keep busy with something you do enjoy doing physically or in your mind. Always be prepared for the wait with a favorite book or magazine, notebook computer, a puzzle, a game, an exercise, a topic for thought, music, movies, documentaries, favorite poems to recite mentally; the list goes on forever. I'm never without a pocket notebook and pen any place I go; I scribble down ideas and solutions to problems in mathematics, philosophy, and other interesting matters. Waiting at the bank, or post office, I may do stretch exercises as unobtrusively as I can, and if I appear odd, who cares? In heavy traffic, I listen to my favorite music or books on CD. In boring company I cannot split, I put a smile on my face, look attentive, let them talk to their heart's content, and I wander off in my mental meadows.
Let's remember the methods people used in old days to while away the hours of waiting for something. We can use some of these today, such as knitting, weaving, sewing, embroidering, while waiting for baby to arrive, while waiting for recovery from accident or illness. Women in the dark ages did these activities with husbands at the Crusades, the women in iron maidens, unless they had secretly made a copy of the key. The key to fighting boredom is to get into something active, not passive television, reading, or listening. Going into idle pastimes increases the ennui. I do read and listen to music or talk, but actively, challenging everything I hear, following the melody closely, coming up with questions and ideas in response to what I see or hear. If not that, I can often sketch, even doodle.
6.Stay Calm; Don't Panic
When disaster, big or small, strikes, it's best to stay calm, not to panic. That's what officers tell us on board during an emergency drill; it's good advice, though we may have some difficulty following it in an actual disaster. We find it easier to stay calm, not to panic, when we are having a drill for a possible hassle or catastrophe. Therefore, practice your reasoning response to big or small hassles with repeated drills. That's a method used by the military, police, and firemen. As you repeat your proper logical actions in drills, the right response becomes habitual, even if fear arises in an actual emergency. Habituating ourselves to disaster by rehearsing events is instilled in us; kids play fighting games, listen to stories about wolves and witches, and young people enjoy horror movies.
Fear, panic, and anger are primitive emotions; in today's world they serve us poorly. We can perform better without such emotions in dealing with hassles, because today's problems are complex, requiring reasonable procedures for their solution, not wild responses.
How do we calm our inner turmoil in a difficult situation, when someone attacks us, steals, lies, or deceives us? How do quiet our emotional turbulence from the impact of an accident, natural catastrophe, injury, severe illness, death, divorce, marriage? I have offered you a clue. You stop in your tracks, stay still, and think of a rational approach to face the hassle. Count to ten or one hundred or one thousand, if time permits. It is usually better to use method 1 (practice resignation) than act irrationally in the face of danger. Ask yourself, what would my father, mother, or Abraham Lincoln do in a situation like this? Then act accordingly.
7.Find Adventure
No matter how awful a hassle has hit you, you can enjoy the event, if you turn it into an adventure. What is an adventure if not hassle taken as sport? Think of hockey or American football. Sweat, tears, and even blood may fit an exciting adventure experience, at least in retrospect. Alexander Von Humboldt in 1799-1804 explores Latin America, climbing to the peaks of the Andes without an oxygen tank, bleeding from the nose and mouth, almost freezing to death; floating on the Amazon, bitten by mosquitoes until his face is a swollen, bleeding mess. It was all one grand adventure to be told and retold with relish in books, lectures, and gatherings, recounting his achievements in bio-geography.
Taken that way, life for all of us is one grand adventure, no matter the anguish it brings sometimes. A life of ease, of passive pleasures, does not afford much thrill, excitement, or achievement. That's why today astronauts volunteer to explore space, sometimes getting burned or blown up.
8.Play a Game
Playing at Work
Even more active than seeking adventure in hassles, you can turn a hassle into a game to play well and enjoy. For eighty percent of the workers, a job is a huge hassle: boring, burdensome, tiring,oppressive, unrewarding, and depressing. Workers do their job because they have to earn money to feed their mouths, though they feel a job is slavery (until they lose it). They forget the little ditty from Walt Disney's Mary Poppins: “In every job that must be done, there is a element of fun. You find the fun, and 'snap,' the job's a game!”
Actually, the reverse happens: the fun, the joy of working at a job, is in making the job into an adult game, my team against some other team, which team gets the most points (results). We all like to play games, especially children, of course, because children learn more from games than from formal schooling. All young mammals play hide and seek (to learn escape from predators), wrestling among themselves (to establish a hierarchy in the group), stalking and jumping at the each other (to hone hunting skills).
You can make a job, which feels boring, into an interesting activity, by making it into a game, an artistic expression, the expression of skill raised as high as possible for you towards the ideal; that's a game too. Is your job so repetitive it kills you? You reach for perfection through repetition, proper training. A repetitive task is an opportunity to hone your skills to the highest level, like a gymnast pole vaulting. You can aim for speed in your work (and higher production) or you can reach for exactness, precision, and smooth, controlled movement, like a dancer leaping in the air with perfect form. You will soon be training others in your trade, getting promoted, and getting better pay, while having a joyful time at work.
9.Hussle Against the Hassle
Move and Bustle
So far we have been adapting to hassles which we can't avoid, like tax audits, or don't want to eliminate, like a bratty child or a controlling parent when we are adults. We now take a different stance facing a hassle, getting to work to eliminate the problem, hustling to that end. To hustle is to cheat, to con, to fool, to steal from somebody what you want. The street hustler is a prime example of a confidence person. The baseball player who steals bases is another example. When things get rough, you can fight a hassle by cheating fate, your allotment by nature, or your social stigma.
10. Whack-a-hassle
We are dealing now with attack as a method, not acceptance of a hassle, adaptation to it, or conversion (transmutation Napoleon Hill called it) of an adversity to a joyful experience. If you can fix the trouble, exert your best efforts to fix it; most problems have a solution. The solution often hides from you, so keep trying long enough; most likely, you'll find a technique to crack the problem, a key that turns the lock. God or Nature is that way, testing your spirit, your will, your mettle, deciding whether you deserve to survive, to succeed, to stay above the soil or go under the soil now. If a hassle keeps at you despite all your efforts to quiet it, remember the attitude of Alexander the Great, Napoleon the Great, and Erwin Rommel: the best defense is attack-- with good tactics and strategy.
Like Alexander, unless you can unravel it, cut the Gordian knot with your sword; charge at the enemy's king. Like Napoleon, move to battle speedily; attack with cannon and cavalry. Like Rommel, the Desert Fox, adapt your tactics to the land, hitting hard with superior force. Rommel, Nazi Germany's best general, was equaled only by George Patton in WWII, another fierce warrior. He did not hesitate to use overwhelming force to smash enemy ranks. We should have done that to the Taliban and al-Qaeda from the air, safe from roadside bombs and suicidal maniacs, as we did in Serbia, not landing troops in harm's way.
The Muslim fanatics want us to adapt to their way of thinking, throwing extreme violence against us. What a hassle they are for us for the wars we are in, and for the airport inspections we have to endure. How do we face off to the Taliban, AL-Qaeda, and the theocracy of Iran? Elsewhere, what do we do about a militaristic, communistic, dynastic regime acquiring nuclear bombs and long-range rockets, such as North Korea? Such hassles are problems for world leaders, not for you and me. We deal here with our personal problems, small or large, but what we say among ourselves about our hassles also applies to the international arena.
To attack effectively, you need to feel aggressive. How to you make yourself feel aggressive? Punch a pillow; swish a sword through the air; give the rebel yell; have a cup of Starbucks coffee. Sales groups advertise to recruit aggressive agents; business doesn't want agents who are likely to punch people on the face. What business wants are agents who go forward with enterprise to engage the customer in a dialogue to purchase the product or service they sell. An aggressive, dynamic, pushy worker in any field is likely to get better results. This is true for business, scientific research, plumbing, or construction work. The worker pushes for results, undeterred by obstacles and difficulties, which always pop up in a competitive enterprise. Only government services are exempt from competitive pressures, government being a monopoly.
My final point is, when you can't dodge a hassle, ignore it, transmute it, or hustle it, then you must stand up to it and compete, even fight. I am a peaceable man by inclination and philosophy; that is why fighting is listed last as a way to get past a hassle. When a bully is on your back, you need to spit back, kick back, punch back, or shoot back. In the end, courage has no substitute.
Andros, Greece, July 2009
By Basil Gala, PhD
In Search of Meaning
Dedicated to the joy of my life, my daughter Alia Joy Gala
Once upon a time, long long ago, a boy was born who liked messes, threw mud at people, screeched loudly, and generally dealt unpleasant, annoying, frustrating things, so his father and mother called him Hassle. The parents were lucky, however, because they also had a girl, sugar and spice and everything nice, who smiled, cleaned, played quietly; they named her Joy. The boy and girl grew up, settled down among us, and made our lives what they are. You can go beyond Hassle. This is a guide on how to get past Hassle in your own life, finding Joy, as I have learned to do, following the advice of wise people; also, by trial and error, for many years, stumbling and falling and getting up to walk upright.
We come to the world naked, yanked out of a cushy, warm place, raised up up-side-down and smacked on the back to breathe, sponged clean, swaddled, and finally placed next to mother for that first sweet drink, or a disgusting bottle of formula, another gift from Hassle. And so it goes after that day to the terminal day. I cannot go into all the unpleasant, painful, annoying, frustrating, disgusting, even tragic events which pace our lives. I will offer examples of such as you have known, and offer tools to go from frustration to satisfaction and benefit. Joyful activities are generally beneficial; unpleasant events are usually harmful. Clearly, it will be profitable for us to learn how to turn hassles, stressful and damaging to our bodies and minds, yes, turn them into joys.
In the nineteen thirties, Bertrand Russell wrote a little volume, “The Conquest of Happiness.” I stress conquest. If we find happiness desirable (who doesn't?), then consider active ways of finding it; it's not manna from the sky. Some people are born and sail through life easily, successfully, not bothered by much until their end. They seem to know what is the right thing to do, solving problems without much fuss, coming to their end without a whimper. I am not one of those. I had to learn slowly and arduously how to react to hassles. Marcus Aurelius, stoic philosopher and Roman Emperor, in “Meditations,” Bertrand Russell, philosopher and mathematician, Dale Carnegie, in “ How to Stop Worrying and Start Living,” and Napoleon Hill, “Think and Grow Rich” gave me good clues. I am no longer clueless, and I will pass on to you what I have learned.
My purpose is to give you general rules for coping with hassle and stress, with examples to a few situations. Articles in magazines may be more specific to particular problems; but if you have general principles for joyful living, without stress, you can apply them to most situations. “Judge—your Honor—I didn't do no child abuse,” said the 300-pound woman, “my boy had a temper tantrum; I sat on him to stop his hassling me.” I don't propose to give you instructions how to sit on unruly children, or other problems, but how to quiet them peaceably, if possible, and joyfully.
I want to suggest to you a bag of tools for getting past hassle and going to joy. Every mechanic, engineer, doctor, farmer, sailor, has a bag of tools, a variety of techniques to solve problems in his field; so should you in your life. If one tool doesn't work, you try another. Some people always respond the same rigid way to challenges: running away, fighting, or giving up too soon; that's not the way of Homo sapiens, you and me. We evolved and survived as a species by adapting, trying this and that approach until we succeeded.
Here we go to the first method, resignation.
1.Practice Resignation.
Kyrie Eleison
Resign yourself to the hassle; give in; give up; reconcile your spirit to the inevitable; accept your fate; it's the will of the gods; Allahu akbar; Kyrie eleison, etc. Don't complain and bitch when fortune deals you a bad hand. Why is resignation method number one? Because a great many events that bother us are unavoidable, like death and taxes; fighting against these calamities is a waste of energy, disturbing to our peace of mind.
People often like to complain about the faults of their spouses or families. My wife spends too much; my husband smokes and gambles; my brother is lazy; my sister eats too much; my mother bosses me; my father is cold to me; my child makes messes; my mother-in-law is a meddling old fool, etc., on and on, bitch, bitch, bitch. I say to these people, distance yourself from your spouse or others if you want; otherwise, shut up and resign yourself to the relatives you have. You are not going to change anybody over the age of five, certainly not by complaining. Once you have resigned yourself to your spouse and family, when you have accepted them, loving them with their faults, you may begin to enjoy life with them.
Walt Whitman wrote: “I turn and look at animals, there are so peaceful and self contained; they don't weep and whine about their misfortunes...” Oh yes, you need to know when a misfortune is unavoidable. After Saint Francis of Assisi, pray: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
In many, many annoying situations, I have found that the best way to get through the moment is by tuning out what disturbs me. In my forties, I had an ear infection, resulting in tinnitus, ringing in the ears. I checked with a specialist who could do nothing for me, but over the years, my mind has learned to tune out the sound frequencies from the tinnitus. With children playing, making noises, when I try to rest, I don't fret; I say to myself, these are birds singing--and fall asleep.
Inevitably, we come to the moment when our body is becoming still. Like Zorba the Greek, we can jump out of our death bed, rush to the window and yell. I plan to lie still, enjoying the peaceful moment of liberation from my body, like a little child again, praying to God my soul to keep.
2.Count Your Blessings
Doughnut and Hole
Look at the doughnut, not the hole; every cloud has a silver lining; the glass is not half empty, it's half full; when April showers come your way, they bring the flowers that bloom in May; if you're handed a lemon, make a lemonade; in your mind's mill, turn every adversity into grist and the greater the adversity, the finer the grist (Napoleon Hill); blessed are the poor, the meek, and the persecuted (Jesus). Popular wisdom has a million such sayings buzzing around. Far be it for me to surpass such folk wisdom, or do better than these fine bromides, extolled in songs, stories, and movies. All such advice against hassles works fine, as long as you are powerless in the face of untoward events. The theory goes that in life for every unfortunate hit, there is a compensating benefit; look for the benefit; use it.
Agreed. Compensating benefits often occur, and I have seen them in my life and the lives of those I have known, but not always. Don't take the theory too far, beyond its reach. Especially, don't focus on the bright side of things too much, neglecting to remove the dark side, if you can. Once in a while we need to chuck optimism, and look at what is unpleasant, irritating, damaging with sufficient but not excessive pessimism so that we motivate ourselves to eliminate what's bad if we can.
3.Relax and Meditate
Yoga Posture
Ignore the pain, problem, frustration—it will soon go away, or you go away. Most things that trouble us have a way of taking care of themselves. If possible, let others solve their own problems. Is the planet heating up, close to destroying the world with smoke and fire? What can you or I do about it? Are you Al Gore to make a difference? Yes, you can do your little part to burn less gasoline, but will everybody else follow your example? Don't agonize about the world suffocating in CO2, being hit by an asteroid, freezing up in a new ice age, decimated by a super virus, demolished in a nuclear war, or invaded by tentacled aliens. What will be, will be. In the end, death comes to us all, even to the whole planet, in this century or in five billion years.
Relaxing and meditating is different from just resigning yourself; it is more active. You consciously, through an effort of the will, direct your mind away from the hassle to a peaceful state. Religious traditions, philosophies (such as the stoic school), and psychological methods teach us how to meditate, relaxing mind and body, relieving stress and distress. Try yoga, prayer, exercise, analysis, spas.
Waking up and going to sleep appear to be big hassles for many people, considering the gallons of coffee they imbibe in the morning, and the mess of sleeping aids (or liquor) they gulp at night. Coffee and other stimulants during the day, keep us awake at night; then waking up the next morning becomes a hassle and a chore. Observe how cats wake up, slowly first one eye open, then the other, stretching leisurely, yawning mouth wide open (how rude), arching the back, scratching the carpet, sofa (or their post if they deign). Set your alarm a few minutes earlier and make like a cat upon waking. Enjoy; it's the best time of the day, welcoming life anew from a slumber like death.
Going to sleep after a busy, productive day, that's the second best time of the day finally to rest from your labors (oh, sweet death of the night), relaxing for a few minutes with a good book, or some soothing music, thinking pleasant thoughts, visualizing tranquil scenes. If worries intrude, if sleep does not come, relax further with meditation or prayer, with counting to 100 and then counting down, over and over. Say to yourself, “I'm going to sleep soon; if not, I'll rest just fine with my eyes closed. Relax now, relax; I've nothing to worry about. I'm a baby in my mother's arms; all my needs are met. I have no enemies; I have nothing to fear.”
The ultimate relaxation is the way of the Buddha, the Wakened One, perfected in the Chinese Chán, or Japanese Zen tradition. Following the Buddha, we seek Nirvana, liberation from life's ultimate hassles: the frustrations and pains of illness, accident, disaster, famine, war, aging, and death. Rich or poor, prince or pauper, learned or illiterate, we are all subject to these ills, yet the way of the Moses, Buddha, Jesus, or Mohammed can lead to joy everlasting in the mansions of the spirit. Religious teaching is not my forte, but I commend to you good spiritual guidance from persons well qualified to offer it to you. Steer away from the cranks, as you do from quacks and shysters.
4.Laugh
We laugh, smile, express wit or humor in words or actions, in response to a hassle we cannot eliminate or want to attack, but we are being now more active in our response than when we only resign or relax. An infant smiles or laughs when facing people, especially older children; the infant being helpless, a smile or a laugh is the infant's best defense, besides being cute, a way of avoiding hostility and winning a friend.
Laughter is a reflex, an instinctive response to a mock threat, a response we all have when we are infants or young, which we may lose growing up uptight at home, school, or work; we lose our humor, if we don't use it, the same as our other faculties. Humor is part of our genetic heritage as mammals and humans, helping us smooth relations with others, interact, entertain, relax, resign. Wit is cultivated humor, for those among us who are more literate. What we have inherited from our ancestors we can improve and extend for our enjoyment and survival. Laughter, humor, playfulness can be augmented with practice or buried under a mountain of concerns. Throw off your concerns with resignation, relaxation, and laughter. Say to yourself, I don't give a dime. Be an infant, a child, for the moment. Enjoy.
5.Enjoy Patience
What did I say? Who enjoys being patient? I do; I'll explain how. First, hassling situations requiring patience are innumerable: waiting to be served at the bank, at the airport, at the telephone with a computer switchboard (horrors, far worse than the old operators), at the checkout counter, at the doctor's office, driving in traffic, down loading at the computer, flying across oceans, listening to a boring lecture, visiting with in-laws; the list goes on forever.
How to enjoy these waits? Keep busy with something you do enjoy doing physically or in your mind. Always be prepared for the wait with a favorite book or magazine, notebook computer, a puzzle, a game, an exercise, a topic for thought, music, movies, documentaries, favorite poems to recite mentally; the list goes on forever. I'm never without a pocket notebook and pen any place I go; I scribble down ideas and solutions to problems in mathematics, philosophy, and other interesting matters. Waiting at the bank, or post office, I may do stretch exercises as unobtrusively as I can, and if I appear odd, who cares? In heavy traffic, I listen to my favorite music or books on CD. In boring company I cannot split, I put a smile on my face, look attentive, let them talk to their heart's content, and I wander off in my mental meadows.
Let's remember the methods people used in old days to while away the hours of waiting for something. We can use some of these today, such as knitting, weaving, sewing, embroidering, while waiting for baby to arrive, while waiting for recovery from accident or illness. Women in the dark ages did these activities with husbands at the Crusades, the women in iron maidens, unless they had secretly made a copy of the key. The key to fighting boredom is to get into something active, not passive television, reading, or listening. Going into idle pastimes increases the ennui. I do read and listen to music or talk, but actively, challenging everything I hear, following the melody closely, coming up with questions and ideas in response to what I see or hear. If not that, I can often sketch, even doodle.
6.Stay Calm; Don't Panic
When disaster, big or small, strikes, it's best to stay calm, not to panic. That's what officers tell us on board during an emergency drill; it's good advice, though we may have some difficulty following it in an actual disaster. We find it easier to stay calm, not to panic, when we are having a drill for a possible hassle or catastrophe. Therefore, practice your reasoning response to big or small hassles with repeated drills. That's a method used by the military, police, and firemen. As you repeat your proper logical actions in drills, the right response becomes habitual, even if fear arises in an actual emergency. Habituating ourselves to disaster by rehearsing events is instilled in us; kids play fighting games, listen to stories about wolves and witches, and young people enjoy horror movies.
Fear, panic, and anger are primitive emotions; in today's world they serve us poorly. We can perform better without such emotions in dealing with hassles, because today's problems are complex, requiring reasonable procedures for their solution, not wild responses.
How do we calm our inner turmoil in a difficult situation, when someone attacks us, steals, lies, or deceives us? How do quiet our emotional turbulence from the impact of an accident, natural catastrophe, injury, severe illness, death, divorce, marriage? I have offered you a clue. You stop in your tracks, stay still, and think of a rational approach to face the hassle. Count to ten or one hundred or one thousand, if time permits. It is usually better to use method 1 (practice resignation) than act irrationally in the face of danger. Ask yourself, what would my father, mother, or Abraham Lincoln do in a situation like this? Then act accordingly.
7.Find Adventure
No matter how awful a hassle has hit you, you can enjoy the event, if you turn it into an adventure. What is an adventure if not hassle taken as sport? Think of hockey or American football. Sweat, tears, and even blood may fit an exciting adventure experience, at least in retrospect. Alexander Von Humboldt in 1799-1804 explores Latin America, climbing to the peaks of the Andes without an oxygen tank, bleeding from the nose and mouth, almost freezing to death; floating on the Amazon, bitten by mosquitoes until his face is a swollen, bleeding mess. It was all one grand adventure to be told and retold with relish in books, lectures, and gatherings, recounting his achievements in bio-geography.
Taken that way, life for all of us is one grand adventure, no matter the anguish it brings sometimes. A life of ease, of passive pleasures, does not afford much thrill, excitement, or achievement. That's why today astronauts volunteer to explore space, sometimes getting burned or blown up.
8.Play a Game
Playing at Work
Even more active than seeking adventure in hassles, you can turn a hassle into a game to play well and enjoy. For eighty percent of the workers, a job is a huge hassle: boring, burdensome, tiring,oppressive, unrewarding, and depressing. Workers do their job because they have to earn money to feed their mouths, though they feel a job is slavery (until they lose it). They forget the little ditty from Walt Disney's Mary Poppins: “In every job that must be done, there is a element of fun. You find the fun, and 'snap,' the job's a game!”
Actually, the reverse happens: the fun, the joy of working at a job, is in making the job into an adult game, my team against some other team, which team gets the most points (results). We all like to play games, especially children, of course, because children learn more from games than from formal schooling. All young mammals play hide and seek (to learn escape from predators), wrestling among themselves (to establish a hierarchy in the group), stalking and jumping at the each other (to hone hunting skills).
You can make a job, which feels boring, into an interesting activity, by making it into a game, an artistic expression, the expression of skill raised as high as possible for you towards the ideal; that's a game too. Is your job so repetitive it kills you? You reach for perfection through repetition, proper training. A repetitive task is an opportunity to hone your skills to the highest level, like a gymnast pole vaulting. You can aim for speed in your work (and higher production) or you can reach for exactness, precision, and smooth, controlled movement, like a dancer leaping in the air with perfect form. You will soon be training others in your trade, getting promoted, and getting better pay, while having a joyful time at work.
9.Hussle Against the Hassle
Move and Bustle
So far we have been adapting to hassles which we can't avoid, like tax audits, or don't want to eliminate, like a bratty child or a controlling parent when we are adults. We now take a different stance facing a hassle, getting to work to eliminate the problem, hustling to that end. To hustle is to cheat, to con, to fool, to steal from somebody what you want. The street hustler is a prime example of a confidence person. The baseball player who steals bases is another example. When things get rough, you can fight a hassle by cheating fate, your allotment by nature, or your social stigma.
10. Whack-a-hassle
We are dealing now with attack as a method, not acceptance of a hassle, adaptation to it, or conversion (transmutation Napoleon Hill called it) of an adversity to a joyful experience. If you can fix the trouble, exert your best efforts to fix it; most problems have a solution. The solution often hides from you, so keep trying long enough; most likely, you'll find a technique to crack the problem, a key that turns the lock. God or Nature is that way, testing your spirit, your will, your mettle, deciding whether you deserve to survive, to succeed, to stay above the soil or go under the soil now. If a hassle keeps at you despite all your efforts to quiet it, remember the attitude of Alexander the Great, Napoleon the Great, and Erwin Rommel: the best defense is attack-- with good tactics and strategy.
Like Alexander, unless you can unravel it, cut the Gordian knot with your sword; charge at the enemy's king. Like Napoleon, move to battle speedily; attack with cannon and cavalry. Like Rommel, the Desert Fox, adapt your tactics to the land, hitting hard with superior force. Rommel, Nazi Germany's best general, was equaled only by George Patton in WWII, another fierce warrior. He did not hesitate to use overwhelming force to smash enemy ranks. We should have done that to the Taliban and al-Qaeda from the air, safe from roadside bombs and suicidal maniacs, as we did in Serbia, not landing troops in harm's way.
The Muslim fanatics want us to adapt to their way of thinking, throwing extreme violence against us. What a hassle they are for us for the wars we are in, and for the airport inspections we have to endure. How do we face off to the Taliban, AL-Qaeda, and the theocracy of Iran? Elsewhere, what do we do about a militaristic, communistic, dynastic regime acquiring nuclear bombs and long-range rockets, such as North Korea? Such hassles are problems for world leaders, not for you and me. We deal here with our personal problems, small or large, but what we say among ourselves about our hassles also applies to the international arena.
To attack effectively, you need to feel aggressive. How to you make yourself feel aggressive? Punch a pillow; swish a sword through the air; give the rebel yell; have a cup of Starbucks coffee. Sales groups advertise to recruit aggressive agents; business doesn't want agents who are likely to punch people on the face. What business wants are agents who go forward with enterprise to engage the customer in a dialogue to purchase the product or service they sell. An aggressive, dynamic, pushy worker in any field is likely to get better results. This is true for business, scientific research, plumbing, or construction work. The worker pushes for results, undeterred by obstacles and difficulties, which always pop up in a competitive enterprise. Only government services are exempt from competitive pressures, government being a monopoly.
My final point is, when you can't dodge a hassle, ignore it, transmute it, or hustle it, then you must stand up to it and compete, even fight. I am a peaceable man by inclination and philosophy; that is why fighting is listed last as a way to get past a hassle. When a bully is on your back, you need to spit back, kick back, punch back, or shoot back. In the end, courage has no substitute.
Andros, Greece, July 2009
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
