Wednesday, November 2, 2016
Knowledge…and Understanding – not the same thing. Happiness…and Fulfilment – not the same thing. I'm semi-randomly placing specific nuance onto these terms because English usage has lost a lot of nuance with the invention of the computerized thesaurus. Computers struggle with nuance. Most of the synonyms in that drop down were once only kinda synonyms in a particular context.
Knowledge without Understanding is missing the why/how of things. Pressing this button makes that light go on is Knowledge. Pressing this button closes a circuit allowing electricity to flow through the lightbulb, making it fluoresce…etc…etc…is the beginnings of Understanding. Knowledge and Understanding are often interchangeable through day to day life, but particularly diverge when troubleshooting a problem. You really want your troubleshooter to have understanding of the process they are troubleshooting.
My Understanding of us people things is presently pondering Quality of Life and Purpose and Meaning and all that. Many of us have Trouble in our lives around the realization of those concepts and don't even have common language to facilitate the discussion with others. One person's Quality of Life is another person's Purpose etc.
Religion and Philosophy have been tossing these ideas around since forever and I'm going to completely step away from any Religious dimensions here except conceptually. Please feel free to substitute divine inspiration and faith and belief in here for rounding out any concepts, but I'm not going there…on-line policy and all.
The definitions I'm going to tie down here are Happiness and Fulfillment. I'm going to limit Happiness to the "in the moment" joyous, ebullient feeling around events. Fulfillment is the "not joyous or ebullient" belief that life is solid, that life is good and worthwhile and has meaning for you and is "Complete". More a deep seated contentment based on whatever makes you tick.
So to troubleshoot those issues we need to Understand more about how we work. We get the Happiness thing around going out with friends to a show, or getting a cool gift, or buying a new toy, or giving a cool gift - Laughing at a joke, pulling a prank. Dancing like no one is watching – Joy. There are darker shades to happiness around goals of greed and ego, or schadenfreude or…and those turn out to matter some.
In the evolutionary, natural condition, we are wired to get a positive kick when we see others we are in competition with, or outside our tribe(s), or whatever, have a fall – in several senses. Look at the world of GIFs and see, outside of cats being cute – it's people falling over, or crashing into stuff, or tripping over stuff that lead the parade. Humiliation of others makes us seem better and/or shows that other people do stuff like that too, and make us laugh – happiness, if a bit of a dark happiness. Dancing like no one is watching is healthier!
People are ultimately governed emotionally by Prestige and Fear - and a good chunk of the Fear is about loss of Prestige. Again evolutionary explanations are consistent with it. Prestige raises us in comparison to others and improves our opportunity to breed. We Fear what causes us harm and reduces our ability to survive long enough to breed...plus lots of stuff hurts, but it hurts because it causes us harm and reduces our ability to breed, and on and on in an ongoing spiral that is consistent within itself. What part religious concepts play in here varies with belief, but a lot of those beliefs are consistent with the evolutionary explanation. If not, then consider the above incorrect as you wish.
Our subconcious defines Prestige in our own heads based on our society and friends, and our interactions with it/them. We are members of a bunch of tribes in our lives. Our family, our city, our country, our religions, our politics, our sports teams, our hobbies, our kids hobbies, cosplay, golfing, cosplay while golfing, whatev… We have differing amounts of Prestige in each of those tribes. That Prestige is really, really important to us as per the evolutionary drivers stated above. Fear is generally stronger than Prestige, so if we fear a hurdle we need to pass to gain more Prestige, we will frequently not bother with that particular bit of Prestige – the Prestige to Fear ratio is part of the Encouragement/Threat persuasion thing from a few blogs ago.
Fulfilment is highly linked to Prestige, but only infrequently and imperfectly correlated to Happiness – in that correlation is not causation sort of way… Our internal sense of self is related to the Prestige we garner in those tribes we most value. Having a flash car may make us think highly of ourselves for having a the wherewithal to purchase it, the signal that in the "I got stuff" tribe, you rate more highly. The problem with the "I got stuff" tribe is that - except in exceptional cases that are unlikely to be reading this – lots of other people have more. There aren't a lot of billionaires on the planet, and most of them pale next to the Gate's or Slim's or Koch's of the world (if any of them are reading, nevermind this bit, and can I borrow a billion?).
People who get caught up in that tribe, usually end up not feeling near the top and don't get a Prestige surge from it so don't end up fulfilled. The same can be said about higher accreditations or job titles or whatev… Now, if you take the wealth and create something with it - a business, a family, assistance to another family, an intergalactic empire, whatev… - you get a Prestige surge…others didn't create that, and you probably got a bunch of help, but it's your vision/drive/work that drove it.
For me, I get most of my Fulfillment, my ability to reflect on my life and be content, my centre, my arrogance, whatev…from helping others. That help might just be cracking a joke and making them a bit Happier for a moment, or it might be lending them some money to get through a hard spot, or it might just be listening. Note on listening... I've learned, that after listening, a real good question to ask is "am I in the sympathetic listener role, or do you want me to try and try to fix this". Most of the time it's the sympathetic listener thing. I've got into all sorts of trouble trying to fix problems the person wanted to tackle on their own, so I try to make sure before doing it most of the time.
It turns out that just treating the people around you like people gets all sorts of unexpected positive feedbacks. Because I can't let myself be bored, I engage with the waiter at breakfast like their whole purpose in life isn't to give me eggs benedict, or the guy cleaning the office after hours has more going on than getting the gum out of the carpet. They are all people, and by just spending a minute interacting with the person under the role they are in, they become part of your tribe (or one of your tribes) even if just for a minute. Having big tribes turns out to make you feel fulfilled. It creates its own meaning. It's even, at least in practical terms, a big part of most of the world religions.
I know generally Happy people who have little Fulfillment. I know Fulfilled people that don't share their happiness easily. The Fulfilled lot enjoy their lives a whole lot more. Pursuing Happiness is totally cool, and it's something everybody needs to spend some time doing, but it isn't enough. Figure out what makes you Fulfilled and make sure you do that as well. Buying yourself a Ferrari to celebrate your kid becoming a Rhodes Scholar is totally cool, but the fulfillment is about bringing up the kid, not the car.