On sacrifice

The other day I got into a discussion on the internet. This happens. I thought it was a kind of dialogue, and then later realized it was a pair of overlapping monologues. This also happens. It happens a lot when a conversation revolves around a single word or a group of words: try freedom, for example. People can talk for hours about freedom, each carefully listening to the other and responding sensibly. Then later they discover that not for one minute were they talking about the same thing. One was talking about postive freedom and the other about _negative freedom, See Isaac Berlin: Two Concepts of Liberty for the full, classic treatment

In this case, the word was sacrifice. I had outlined a course of action and described it as a sacrifice. I thought that using that word would point us toward a shared understanding of the meaning and potential value of the act. That’s why words exist. They are not just sounds or sequences of letters, but pointers to packages of ideas that provide the word’s meaning. But the word sacrifice has a second sense, one that I had not considered. He was considering the action I’d proposed according to one definition of sacrifice; I according to another. This happened.

So what is sacrifice, and why did I think it was such a good idea? A tour of online dictionaries and some deep reflection made it clear. I think it’s a good idea because I’m a recent convert, and like every convert, I’m overly enthusiastic about my new religion.

In my post, Whatever it takes I said:

I am willing to do whatever it takes to do as little as possible to seem to have worked hard to appear to have achieved whatever I can manage to get away with. And you can count on that!

In this one, written at DW**2’s in February, Doing the hard stuff, I was reflecting on my decision not to take a cold shower that morning:

As I got ready to leave and walked there, I realized that I was avoiding things that I deeply believe would be good for me, but don’t do because they’re uncomfortable.

February 2018.

Things have changed.

It’s taken a lot of work, but here I am, not quite a year later, deliberately doing things that are uncomfortable—but which I believe will be good for me. I get up early and do the things that I think will make me better. I take my cold shower. I clean up. I do my writing. I exercise. I meditate. I’ve gotten rid of things that waste my time. I’ve ditched Reddit, Twitter, and Facebook from all my devices. I’ve turned off Google’s news feed. I’m making my office a comfortable place. I’m volunteering to do things in the community that I’ve lived in for nearly 20 years.

There’s still a part of me that seeks comfort. There’s a part that hates getting up in the morning. There’s a part that hates taking cold showers. There’s a part that wants to read the news. But they don’t run my life the way that they used to. Indeed, according to Internal Family Systems theory, those parts are remnants of Past Me, still stuck in the past and suffering. Instead of fighting them, I’m learning to listen, to be grateful—they got me here after all—and for forgiveness.

In October I did The Stoic challenge and found a philosophic system that I’ve been looking for, all worked out, tested, and packaged up.

I’ve learned that it’s my job to always do my best and not complain about what I get in return. It’s nice to get something nice in return from other people, but that’s now why I do what I do. As much as possible I do what I do because I believe it’s the right thing to do.

I had been learning the lessons of the Stoics on my own. Now I was ready to embrace them. My job is to make myself the best person that I can. It’s my job. And it cannot be done without sacrifice.

Sometimes I’m still a selfish dick, way less than when I was young, but sometimes I am. I don’t think that’s ever the right thing to do and I keep working to be less selfish and less dickish. Why be selfish with the people I care about? I’m living in abundance! Why be a dick? It’s just a bad habit.

Sacrifice, the noun, has multiple meanings, but the relevant one is: “an act of giving up something valued for the sake of something else regarded as more important or worthy.” If it’s more important or worthy, then the decision should be easy. You do it.

For years I tried to improve myself without sacrifice. I was willing to do work to grow, but not too much work. Not to the point of discomfort. I kept looking for a way around it. Now I accept that there is no way around it. And more: even if there was a way around it, I’m not sure I’d want it Part of the value of something is the price you’re willing to pay. I’m glad that I’m doing what I’m doing—this blog post, for example. And I’m happy that I’m willing to pay the price—to earn it by hard work.

Sacrifice is another paradox, like the paradoxes of gratitude and forgiveness you give something up and you get more in return.

There are limits, of course. You can’t sacrifice what you need to survive. And it’s easier to sacrifice from abundance then poverty. But when I can make a sacrifice, I find myself getting more than I’ve given. It’s not just the greater good for which I’ve sacrificed. It’s not a feeling of pride, but something else. Maybe sacrifice is tied to forgiveness. I don’t know. I just know that it feels that I’ve gained more than I’ve given.

Back to Peterson again:

Error necessitates sacrifice to correct it, and serious error necessitates serious sacrifice. To accept the truth means to sacrifice—and if you have rejected the truth for a long time, then you’ve run up a dangerously large sacrificial debt.

Maybe that’s what’s going on. Perhaps the mistakes of my life constitute a dangerously large sacrificial debt, and I’m just paying it down.

Stay tuned, I may understand it someday, and if I do, I’ll share it.

Written with the help of
StackEdit,
Grammerly,
Markdown Here,
Blogger, and Google voice typing on Android and Chromebook, plus other stuff.

​

The paradoxes of gratitude and forgiveness

Late in my life, I’ve discovered the paradoxical properties and the enormous power of gratitude and forgiveness.

Cost and benefit

When you tell someone that you are grateful for something they have done or have given you, you have gained nothing—nor have you lost anything—and they have gained some small benefit through your acknowledgment. When you perform some act out of gratitude, you have gained nothing and lost the time or resources that it took to do whatever you did. The recipient of your action has gained the benefit of whatever you did.

When you forgive someone for a harm that they’ve done you, you have gained nothing, and they have gained relief from whatever burden they were carrying for the wrong that they had done. It has cost you the time and trouble required to express your forgiveness and the risk of the dangerous consequences of reopening an old wound.

So gratitude and forgiveness seem to provide some benefit to the recipient and either a cost or for little benefit to the donor.

That’s the paradox.

Giving gratitude and forgiveness makes you richer, not poorer—providing you have plenty to give.

Utilitarian giving

“It is better to give than receive,” goes the saying. It comes from one attributed to Jesus in Acts 20:35. JC said: “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” Better? Blessed? Whoever said it and whatever was said, it’s true whenever you have an abundance of whatever you are giving.

Jesus didn’t make the utilitarian argument, as far as we know. But I’ll make it for him. If you have a million dollars, the value of a dollar received is about zero. But the benefit to you of the dollar you give to someone else can be substantial if you believe that your dollar has now made the world better in some way. That’s providing that you care about making the world better. (If you don’t care about making the world better, then you’re a terrible person. I forgive you for being a terrible person. But please reconsider what you value.)

To make it better for me to give than to receive I don’t need gratitude, though gratitude is nice. I just need to believe that my dollar has made the world better. I don’t need to know that it has made the world better. The fact that is likely to have made the world better is enough. Every dollar has that potential. (And consciousness turns the potential into the actual) See: Sacrifice to realize potential

For someone who is impoverished, the value of a dollar received may be far greater than the value of a dollar given. So the rule is not invariant. But for anything for which I have an abundance—much more than I need—I can gain more by giving that thing than by receiving it. You can, too.

Abundance

I have more than enough love, so it is better for me to give love than to receive it. I have an abundance of knowledge—better to give (by writing, for example) than to receive (by reading.) I have an abundance of money—so better money than receive. (Although receiving money is nice because then I have more to give.) Deciding who to give to takes time (and practice), and I don’t have enough of either. But I’m working to become better at giving.

I have enough forgiveness. That is: I have done some things that are regrettable, disreputable, and shameful, and have been forgiven of them all. Not by Jesus or God, or even necessarily the person I have harmed, but by me. My imaginary God has forgiven me, too. So I’ve got forgiveness to spare. It’s yours.

Resentment, forgiveness, gratitude

“Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die,” goes another saying attributed to Malachy McCourt. I’ve taken that poison with exactly that hope. The poison hasn’t killed them, and it’s made me sick. I’m not taking it anymore. And I’ve found that forgiveness is the antidote all that poison I’ve taken.

So I’ve made gratitude part of my daily practice. And whenever I have a chance to forgive someone—anyone—for anything, I take it.

Expressing gratitude does not reduce the gratitude I have available. Paradoxically, the more grateful I am, the more I can be grateful.

Expressing forgiveness does not reduce my ability to forgive. Paradoxically, the more I forgive others, the more I can forgive—including forgiving myself.

Judged by the average of humanity, I deem myself a pretty good person. Judged by the ideal of what a person could be, I’m deficient. Maybe horrible. I could be more courageous. I could work harder at what I care about. I could have more self-discipline. I could waste less time. If someone recorded every thought that went through my mind in a day, edited them down to the worst couple of minutes and posted them publicly you’d see: pride, envy, egotism, contempt, greed, pornography, irritation, flashes of anger, shame. They pop into my mind from time to time unbidden. They make me deficient.

I forgive myself.

Once upon a time, my mother did something that so offended me that I stopped talking to her. It went on for years. I was seething with justified anger. I cultivated the resentment that I had built growing up. I nurtured it. I could have done something about it, but I refused to. I hurt myself, my father, denied my kids the experience of their grandparents, trying to hurt my mother. I was taking poison and hoping she would die.

Finally, I came to my senses. I apologized. I did not ask for forgiveness. I just took responsibility for what I had done. Maybe she forgave me. Perhaps for her, there was nothing for her to forgive. But that wasn’t important. What was important was that I had faced a terrible version of myself, I had accepted responsibility, I had apologized, and I had forgiven myself. I decided this: If I can forgive myself for this, I can forgive anyone for anything. That was probably too grand. I am sure that there are people and acts that I would still find unforgivable. If someone did something horrible, I still might want to punish them or see them punished. But without resentment. There nothing that has happened that needs forgiveness and remains unforgiven. My aspiration remains: hold no resentment. Forgive what you can.

Gratitude and forgiveness: better to give than to receive.

Written with the help of
StackEdit,
Grammarly,
Markdown Here,
Blogger, and Google voice typing on Android and Chromebook, plus other stuff.

​

Practice what you post

This morning I woke up and practiced what I had posted yesterday. I woke to the potential of the day.

The numbers on the digital clock next to the bed read 6:24. I lay there and watched them change. 6:25. Perhaps 6:26. I don’t remember. I had seen the potential of the day and I was transformed. I rose to meet that potential. And I glimpsed my own potential as well.

Maybe it’s just brain hacking. Maybe it’s a kind of a psychological placebo effect. Maybe it will wear out in a few days. But this morning, when I took the time to realize—no, just to appreciate—the potential in the day and in myself, I felt—what? Peace? Power? Connectedness? Holiness? Purpose? Meaning? There is probably no word for the feeling (or any other feeling), but those are the words that had come to mind. Those are the words that had risen out of the depths of my unconscious in response to my intention to “find a word to describe this.”

Another morning miracle.

I changed my description as I wrote and thought about the previous paragraph—from “realizing” the potential to merely “appreciating” it. (Nothing “mere” about appreciation, I think as I edit this. But that’s another story.) But I was wrong. I was realizing the potential. Or, more accurately, the potential was being realized. My brain changed. Or my mind. Or me. Whatever it was, something had changed. The universe had changed. And those changed things—whatever they were—were, in fact, a partial realization of the day’s potential, and my potential.

And some of that potential is now made manifest in this growing and evolving blog post. (And more is manifest as I edit it, changing the present tense that I, the author, had used to the past tense that seems more appropriate to me, the editor.)

And to you who read this, I suggest, I request, I ask: stop for just a moment and look at the potential in your day, in your life. I started to write “look for the potential,” but it seemed silly. You won’t need to look for it. You’ll simply need to stop not-looking and not-seeing. The potential is there. It has always been there and mostly been unobserved, unacknowledged, unappreciated. It’s sometimes been realized, or you would not be here. (You are here!) But there’s so much more.

Look at that potential. Consider. There is potential you might make manifest in your next decision, your next action. There is potential that will grow or shrink because of the steps you take over time. Future You could wake up to even more potential than Present You is capable of perceiving.

Consider the potential of the people around you. Consider the potential you have the potential to catalyze—with your words, your actions, the way you bear yourself. Consider what you—Present You—could do to bring about change in the world.

Glorious is the world I see before me. The more I look, consider, reflect, the more potential I see. And as I write I notice how many words and phrases have potential worlds within them — that last sentence that could have pages explaining it. There is so much potential packed in so many phrases. In so many words.

And now it’s time to take this draft—a potential blog post—and make it real.

It takes a bit of sacrifice—another world in a word. I have to stop writing, which this morning is a joy. I will have to face and overcome, a series of mechanical obstacles. [Ed: And I have] And then some of the day’s potential will have been actualized. And the Present Me who wrote this be gone. A better Future Me will hit “Publish” and then rise to meet the new potential that appears before him.

Note: no drugs were consumed in writing this post. It just seems that way.

Written with the help of
StackEdit,
Grammarly,
Markdown Here,
Blogger, and Google voice typing on Android and Chromebook, plus other stuff.

​

Sacrifice to realize potential

A couple of days ago Daniel sent me an excerpt from a Jordan Peterson talk. So here are my variations on a theme by Peterson.

Okay so you wake up in the morning, and your consciousness emerges from nothing in some sense.

In the morning my consciousness comes swimming up from the depths. But at other times it emerges—not from nothing, exactly—but from the waking dream that is my ordinary life. Suddenly the world appears in consciousness. What was there before the world appeared?

…consciousness is in fact that part of you that deals with what is not yet determined because all the things that you do that are fundamentally habitual and deterministic are unconscious.

In the first stages of consciousness, I am observing but not determining. The things that I am doing are still fundamentally habitual and unconscious. Possibilities might arise in consciousness, and I might then do something that is not entirely habitual. But I am more likely to observe that nothing requires management attention and I can safely go back to sleep.

Okay so you wake up in the morning and what you confront, as far as I’m concerned, is potential. There’s a there’s a field of potential in front of you, and that’s the future…that potential it’s what could be and what is not yet.

That suggests a practice when I become conscious: what’s the potential in this moment? If I don’t ask that question, I might see some potential. But there’s a better chance if I look for it.

And then as a consequence of the choices that you make guided by your ethical aims then you transform that potential into actual. And you literally do that with your consciousness.

I look up from my Chromebook, and I ask that question. And the world, or my unconscious, or God answers back. The world is full of potential. And so am I. I just need to decide what to do about it.

From another Peterson talk, this one

Because it’s like, what you could be in, the future beckons to you in the present and helps you determine the difference between good and evil.

And that brings me to thinking differently about Future Me. When I wrote that post, I’d been inspired to change from resentment to gratitude. Now I’m inspired to take the next step.

Sacrifice.

…one of the things that characterizes your ideal future self is the ability to make sacrifices, and the deeper the sacrifice, the better. And then also to recover from the sacrifice, right? So that’s the death and rebirth.

Past Me didn’t just give Present Me the gift of life. Past Me died that I could live. Don’t tell me that Past Me had no choice, that Past Me had to die. That’s also true, but imagining Past Me’s sacrifice gives Present Me a better tool.

If you’re going to die, why not die for something that matters? Why not die in the service of the greatest good that you can achieve through your living and dying?

People say: “Today is the first day of the rest of your life.” And that’s true. But it’s also true that “Today is the last day of my life so far.” At the end of this day, I’m gone.

What would you do if you learned that you had six months to live? Or a month? Some people would go on a trip—to see what they’d never had time to see. Some people would get drunk. Some people would cry. I don’t know what I would do, but I know what I would want to do. I would want to spend my time making the world a little bit better. I would want to call people who I loved and tell them that I loved them. I want to write down things that I hadn’t written down yet. I’d want to clean up my room so that someone else didn’t have to deal with my mess.

Well, today is my last day. Tomorrow, Present Me will be no more.

So to die in some sense, and to be reborn in the service of a higher good…the direction of the world depends on you doing that.

I will die as Present Me, in some sense. And I will be reborn as Future Me. Someone who is better than the Me that will have died.

Of course, that depends on what I do today. It depends on the choices I make today. I can make sacrifices today for the person I might become. Or I can sacrifice my future for the pleasures of this day.

Peterson says that the direction of the world depends on me dying and being reborn in the service of a higher good.

So not only your own life but your family’s life. And, and because we’re networked, so intently together, you know, the whole panoply of humankind and maybe the structure of the of the cosmos.

Everything matters, he preaches.

Before I wrote this post, I looked back over some other posts I had written. I know I’ve written some stupid posts, but the ones I found we’re good advice from one Past Me or another, and I was grateful that those Past Me’s had written those posts.

I’m thinking about the difficulties I’ve sometimes had trying to write. I’m thinking about the sacrifices that Past Me made to write them. He loved (as I do) learning new things. Perhaps he got some satisfaction when he finished writing something, but his pleasure was always mixed with frustration. Nothing was ever as good as he hoped it would be. Nothing was ever as easy as he wanted it to be.

And yet, he kept on. He could have kept reading, But instead—under a kind of compulsion—he made his sacrifice.

Carl Jung, according to Peterson, “thought of people as four-dimensional entities, especially, essentially, that were stretched across time, and that you as a totality across time, including your potential, manifested yourself, also in the here and now… what you could be in, the future beckons to you in the present and helps you determine the difference between good and evil.”

Right now I feel Future Me beckoning to me. I can faintly hear Future Me calling to me, encouraging me to make the sacrifices that deep within me I know that I want to make.

Perhaps Past Me did not sacrifice knowingly. Maybe not willingly. But he is gone, and I am here, and my life is terrific.

I am grateful. And I want to make my own conscious, willing, joyful sacrifice. This post could be better. Something in me would like to work on it some more. But I will sacrifice perfection so that I can produce something else for my future self, and for whoever might read this.

Written with the help of
StackEdit,
Grammerly,
Markdown Here,
Blogger, and Google voice typing on Android and Chromebook, plus other stuff.

​

The price of progress is death

Nature is cruel. For something to grow, something else must wither. For something to come to life, something else must die. In nature, growth requires destruction. Life requires death. 

As in nature, so in psyche. Part of us can’t grow unless another part dies. To become what we want to become, part of what we are must cease to exist.

I want to hold on to what I have—to what I am. I worked hard to make myself what I am. But to become what I want to be what I am must die. I must step away from the comfort of being what I know and into the discomfort of being what I don’t know.

I want to change, but I want to change without letting go of what I have—and that’s not going to work. I’m fighting to hold on—to keep from changing—while struggling to change. It doesn’t seem to work.

I don’t want to let go of what I am. But equally valid: what I am does not want to let go of me. It worked hard to come into existence and to gain control. It does not want to die any more than I want to kill it.

But die it must, and kill it I must.

Growth requires sacrifice. I must embrace the loss that is the necessary price for the gain.

I want to write, but I keep trying to do it without sacrifice. It’s clear that I have to sacrifice the time that I spend in other, more diverting pastimes. I accept that sacrifice. But it’s not enough. Not nearly enough.

Whatever I produce will be less than what I dreamed of producing. And so the dream must die.

The person I am can’t do the job I want it to do. So it must die as well.

The person I create in its place is likely to be unable as well. I don’t know how to create that person. It will be better than I was, but inadequate to the task. And so I must kill it and create something better.

I must start with a self that is competent in some ways, incompetent in ways in which I need it to become competent. I must kill it and replace that self with another that is differently incompetent. Then I must kill it as well. Holding on to any self—or letting it hold on to me—will lead to failure.

There is no easy road to success. There are roads that are not easy--but not too difficult. But those get you to success slowly. If ever.

Every path requires some sacrifice. The direct path requires more.

That kind of sacrifice is painful—more painful if you resist it.

To sacrifice willingly, knowingly, even happily is the path to change.
[Edited]

Written with the help of
StackEdit, Grammerly, Markdown Here, Blogger, and Google voice typing on Android and Chromebook, plus other stuff.

​

Waking up Day 30

Holy crap

When I wrote Waking up, Day 20, I thought that things had gotten pretty good. Here I am at Day 30, and things have only gotten better. I’ve gotten into the habit of doing more than one meditation session a day. And sometimes continuing after the guided meditation has ended.

In Waking up with my personal coach I quote Harris’ analogy between astronomy and meditation. If you have never seen the skies at night or photographs !taken using the Hubble or large terrestrial telescopes, you’d never imagine that the sky could be so profoundly interesting. Likewise: I’ve discovered that my mind is a fascinating place.

Harris is trying to encourage me to realize that there’s no difference between the state that I’m in during meditation and the state that is available to me in every waking moment. And also to realize that it’s possible to move instantly into the most focused stage. And it seems to be working.

Written with the help of
StackEdit, Grammerly, Markdown Here, Blogger, and Google voice typing on Android and Chromebook, plus other stuff.

​

Under Milk Wood

“To begin at the beginning…”

Dylan Thomas “play for voices,” Under Milk Wood starts with these words. I fell in love with it when I heard it performed on PBS about 50 years ago. 50 years ago? WTF?

Perhaps twenty years later I decided to memorize the poem. Or I chose to play at learning it. I didn’t get very far. Every once in a while I resurrect that intention and do a refresher course. Sometimes I make a little progress, but mostly I keep from losing what I’ve gained.

Poetry changes you. Committing it to memory changes you permanently. There’s no alternative. It has to change you. You can’t remember it unless the physical structure of your brain changes. But I’m talking about non-trivial change. The poem becomes a part of you. If the poem is powerful and beautiful, then you become a little more powerful and beautiful for making it a part of you.

Under Milk Wood was separate from the core of my being—whatever that is—when I started. The words were in my nervous system, distant from the part of my brain that enacts “me.” To recite it I had to go on a hunt, rummaging around, find where bits of it had been saved—it’s not in a single place. Then I had to gather it up and reconstruct it. And only then I can recite it.

But as I absorbed he poem, the poem and I became more closely connected. It became a part of me. Or maybe I created a part whose job is reciting it. Or perhaps it’s alive within me, and it speaks itself through me.

I start to recite, and the words flow. Each word pulls the next behind it. It is effortless, and I can witness the performance. I am not the performer but part of the audience. The poetry appears as though by magic.

I don’t believe that “I” have much agency, but I do have some. I can turn my attention in a direction and create an intention, and things happen. If I turn my attention to Under Milk Wood and my intention to reciting it, then the words come out of my mouth. If I turn my attention to this experience and my intention to blogging, then the words come out of my fingers. I watch them as they come out, word by word, phrase by phrase, sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph. As they are now.

When I’m voice typing, I can get more done, in less time. My writing is serviceable. But Dylan Thomas makes music with his words. He paints pictures with his words. He creates feelings with his words.

To begin, at the beginning.

It is still, moonless night in the small town, starless and Bible-black, the cobblestreets silent and the hunched courters and rabbits wood limping invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black fishing boat bobbing sea.

The houses are blind as moles, though moles see fine tonight, in the snouting velvet dingles. Or blind as Captain Cat there in the muffled middle by the pump and the town clock, the shops in mourning, the Welfare Hall in widow’s weeds. And all the people of the lulled and dumbfound town are sleeping now.

Google’s voice typing typically does a pretty good job of transcribing what I say, but it has a hell of a time with poetry. It wants to make everything mundane. It translated the phrase “there in the muffled middle” as “they are in the muscles little.”

One of the things I like about Thomas’s poetry, and which makes this piece particularly hard to memorize, is the way he uses lists of things to paint a richly detailed picture.

After telling us that “all the people of the lulled and dumbfound town are sleeping now,” he tells us:

Hush! The babies are sleeping. The farmers, the fishers, the tradesmen, and pensioners; cobbler, school teacher, postman and publican; the undertaker and the fancy woman; drunkard, dressmaker, preacher, policeman; the webfoot cocklewomen and the tidy wives.

And no, voice typing. It is cocklewomen and not kaka women!

What we grow into depends on the seeds we sow, the soil we plant, and nutrients we provide them. Poetry, like Under Milk Wood is full of seeds, it prepares a ground where other ideas—poetic and not—can thrive. It nourishes the soul.

​