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I'm normally biased against self-help blog posts, and even more when they quote other self-help blog posts, but this is brilliant: “Most people spend nearly al
by gruseom 13y ago
I'm normally biased against self-help blog posts, and even more when they quote other self-help blog posts, but this is brilliant:
“Most people spend nearly all their energy trying not to change. This is what the philosopher [sic] William James meant when he wrote the mind’s main function was to be a fortress for protecting your ego from reality. When the mind has to accommodate a new fact, James argued, it doesn’t settle on the change to its model of reality that is most likely to reflect reality. It protects the fortress, calculating the smallest possible modification to its bulwarks that can account for the new fact.
It's not just brilliant, it's astonishingly modern. It's not out of the question for the late 19th century, because Freud and Nietzsche were both working this territory. Still, the formulation sounds contemporary (to us, not William James). Can anybody point me to where James wrote about this?
(It's glib, though, to say "The real key is Self-Awareness with Discipline". This is extraordinarily hard to do and to take it as anything less than a life-long task, let alone treat it as an item on a to-do list, is naive. Even one tiny example where you catch yourself doing what the quote describes is worth more than a grand general statement.)
Edit: after thinking about this for a bit, the quote seems understated. Even as much as "the smallest possible modification to its bulwarks that can account for the new fact" is atypical. Far more often than that, the new fact is either elided from consciousness or ejected by the mental equivalent of antibodies, and the "bulwarks" remain as they were.
- jevanish 13y agoI agree with you. Self awareness is really hard and it is a day-in-day-out struggle. I honestly had been sitting on this post in a draft and felt something was off but a friend encouraged me to get it out there. The hardest part about the post was the balance between being instructional (you and we pronouns) and when/how much to talk about my own stuff (I). I don't think I nailed it by any stretch, but done beats perfect.
- redler 13y agoHere's a quote from James' Pragmatism and Common Sense lectures that expresses the idea: Our minds thus grow in spots; and like grease-spots, the spots spread. But we let them spread as little as possible: we keep unaltered as much of our old knowledge, as many of our old prejudices and beliefs, as we can. We patch and tinker more than we renew. The novelty soaks in; it stains the ancient mass; but it is also tinged by what absorbs it. [http://www.authorama.com/pragmatism-6.html http://www.authorama.com/pragmatism-6.html]
- gruseom 13y agoThanks. That does seem related. I wonder if it was an isolated insight or if he went into this theme in depth.
- jessedhillon 13y agoOne of my favorite quotes is from William James, addressing this point: A great many people believe they are thinking, when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. (Paraphrasing, I'm on mobile and in a hurry.)
- gruseom 13y agoIf you find the original, I'd like to see the citation. One has, I think, to be careful about applying this insight to other people. It's best in the first person.
- valisystem 13y ago"A great many people" : it seems that the author is excluding himself from the group, where his statement is just prejudice, making him inside the group. This is some kind of freak irony, and it does not feel intended.