Tag: passion

Reflections on Aphorisms #83

Travel is brutal and I don’t like it. I’ve had something like five hours of sleep in the past 24 hours, and that’s being optimistic about the amount of time I actually spent sleeping on the plane, so if this is more rambling and incoherent than my average work I apologize in advance.

Sometimes being tired leads to free association, though. Even though this isn’t always desirable, it can lead to points of interest. Speaking of which:

Aphorism 121

Interest blinds some and makes some see. (Maxim 40)

François de La Rochefoucauld

Interpretation

I’ve written about the distinction between the known and the unknown before, especially as it pertains to heuristics (basically, they’re fast hacks to understand the world better than our brains could otherwise do), so I’m going to take a different approach today.

Having an interest in things leads to an opportunity cost of all other things in which one could be interested. My experiences recently with dipping my toes into the game industry have pushed me to realize this: I’m not sure that I want to make games as the be-all end-all of my life, but there are people who have totally committed themselves to that to the exclusion of all else.

And that’s not necessarily bad, but it means that they’re not even considering applying some of their talents elsewhere. This is not, of course, a universal rule; some people have fully assessed their life and still choose to be monolithic in their pursuits, sometimes in error and sometimes in pursuit of exceptionalism.

The dangerous thing is when people haven’t assessed their life. I remember an instance when I was in college where it looked like everything was going to go off the rails. I was in a teaching program and hadn’t yet gotten any classroom experience and was letting the angst of uncertainty build up. My father was between jobs after the company he had been working for canceled his project, my friends had all gone away for the summer, and I generally just felt like I was adrift and life was down to the lowest point it ever had been.

Because I was living with the conviction that I was going to be a teacher (one I still hold) but I had not considered my options, this became something of a crisis. In reality, had I been willing to see it, I would have realized that I had talents and skills that would help me reach my goal, downplay my fears with the reminder that other people go through the same things without issue, and work toward a goal.

Instead, my interest in the path I thought I was on, the life I thought had been granted to me, blinded me to the fact that it was really a path that I could choose to walk and take proactive steps toward.

You can’t do much without a purpose, and interest can be a pathway that leads in that direction. However, if all you have is one consuming passion, it can vanish or be thwarted and put you in a state of disorder.

Resolution

Be open to opportunity.

Reflect on goals.

Find the pathway that leads to the stars.

Reflections on Aphorisms #80

One of the best things in life is to sit still and enjoy it. There are always worries, and always problems, but a single good thing is worth living for even if all else falls away.

It’s not a matter of hedonism, it’s a matter of potential. If there’s something good in the universe, it stands to reason that there can be more good things in the universe.

Aphorism 118

Passions often produce their contraries: avarice sometimes leads to prodigality, and prodigality to avarice; we are often obstinate through weakness and daring though timidity. (Maxim 11)

François de La Rochefoucauld

Interpretation

I think a lot about passionate emotion. In the past I’ve expressed terror of it, but I don’t think that’s the best way to describe it.

My relationship with emotion is something akin to respect, sort of like how people translated the biblical injunction to be faithful to God as a command to “fear the Lord” though I don’t take it to the same extent.

One of the things that comes up with passions is that you act in ways that go against your set goals.

Just this morning I recall getting really upset about an injustice, and it got to a point where I was almost yelling while in a one-sided conversation with my mother (despite the fact that she had nothing to do with it and was actually in agreement with me about it).

Now, I don’t think this really did any harm to me, and I actually value my ability to feel for those who suffer at the hands of oppressors, but I also felt a twinge of bitterness and vitriol.

It occurred to me that in that moment I was walking down a path that would enable me to justify an unacceptable action against those who I was ranting against, that I would let myself oppress them if given the chance. My desire turned away from the protection of the innocent and toward the punishment of the guilty.

That’s not to say that there isn’t some merit in punishment; it plays a key role in keeping the world spinning, but it’s also not a goal unto itself. That’s just revenge, and righteous indignation is great for turning people into bloodthirsty mobs.

My passion for protecting the weak quickly transformed into a passion for vengeance.

I’m not sure that I want to attribute this to some inherent law; there are certainly passions that don’t have an opposite and no law that says that one passion transmutes into another one, but there is definitely something to be said for passion evoking a state that leads us to further passion.

I think that this can also be said of consuming goals. Often what we desire to bring us the good life gets in the way of living (e.g. being passionate about a project), and it’s possible to abandon what is really good for the sake of something that promises to improve what will be long gone by the time it is complete.

Resolution

Don’t let passion drive the show without slowing down to check what I’m doing.

Control the emotions which lead to passion.

Operate on principle, not reaction.

Reflections on Aphorisms #50

Got a lot of stuff done today at the cost of putting off writing this until almost my bedtime. So, with my apologies, there will be only one aphorism today. I’ll try to make it count.

Aphorism 81

The impassioned man hasn’t time to be witty.

Stendhal

This cuts two ways.

On one hand, it’s an injunction to pardon the passionate.

Belief is often derided as a product of biases and unconscious assumptions, but the reason why we believe so strongly is because the cost of not doing so is confusion and chaos.

Beliefs orient us and guide us.

When something violates your beliefs, it tends to trigger your passions, and this also makes people “stupid” in the modern mindset.

Of course, it needn’t matter that many people who have beliefs have actually considered and contemplated them, since the important thing about a belief is that it overrides the current stimuli.

If something is currently ongoing that suggests a certain course of action, but your belief structure suggests something else, it’s probably better to go with your beliefs.

If deeply held tenets can be faulty, it is all the more true that seat-of-the-pants judgments are even more likely to be flawed.

So when someone makes an emotional argument, it’s not necessarily a sign of weakness. It certainly can be wrong, the same as any other argument, and it’s able to be wrong even if the facts and realities support it. The quality of an argument is found in both the ends and the means.

The counterpart to the argument that Stendhal is supporting the passionate (which I pursued first because as a Romantic Stendhal almost certainly aims for that) is the stoic argument that one should always strive to be dispassionate.

While values guide us, it is reason that allows these values to be given their full meaning. Without at least a little independent reasoning, belief becomes legalism.

Legalism works only when it is not exploited by others, and in the vast histories of humanity it is almost always brought to bear as a yoke on those who practice it.

The term “wit” has an interesting connotation.

On one hand, it’s often used in a derisive manner. A “witty” remark may really just be a clever dodge and a deflection from the real point. Wit is also used more generally as cleverness of the tongue, which is probably what Stendhal gets at here.

However, wit is also the ability to associate things with each other, the ability to reason.

Wit’s an animal in its own right, as much its own being as a part of the human mind.

It’s that eureka moment of realization, the time when things just click.

Passion gets in the way of that. Maybe not the sublime rapturous passion, but certainly the angry defensive emotional passion that seems to be what most people get into more often than they should.

It’s not an antithesis thing. You can be emotional and reasonable. I’ve seen this a lot with my own parents, and I associate it with wisdom and experience. You don’t numb feeling for the sake of reason.

You just make sure that you let each voice have its say.

If you’ve got one side of you that’s looking for a quick fix to a problem because it’s emotionally troubling, but the other side is pointing out that you’ll put yourself in the same situation again by doing the expedient thing, you really want to hear out both voices.

You also don’t want to get too clever, but that’s a topic for another day. Remember that your wit works for itself, not for you. It merely chooses to help you because it’s trapped in your gray matter.

Resolution

Slow down and listen to emotion and reason.

Conviction builds empire.

Don’t take credit for your own wit. If anything, it should take credit for you.