An early draft of my vector field was super complicated and had all sorts of attractors in it. I think each of us individually has a slightly different vector field, and that it's affected by the external environment.
This essay looks incredible, definitely going to dive in. Thanks for sharing!
I think it is when Max Goodbird begins to believe in his own experience as the ‘one that information bends around’ that he becomes compelling. ‘We always tell the same story, over and over’ - Chris, Jessie’s friend. In a world where everything worth monetizing has been created - Ai can do that - he begins to influence Ai. You should read his previous work.
This is great. I love your writing. I want to disagree a bit but I also want to convey that I can tell you have thought about this a lot more than me. So please see this as more of a student raising their hand than a colleague critiqueing the post.
I think concencus right now is that for an anxious person, talk therapy, Cognitive behavioral therapy, some sort of IFT approach at tackling the anxiety is best approach. I agree, anxiety often thinking the world is better than you but I don't think most professionals would approach this as "try to make everyone else seem worse". I think most professionals try to inflate your self-worth by tackling the issue.
Same for anger. Anger management, talk therapy, and all the other therapies above seem to be the prescription, not "have you considered you aren't as great as you think you are"
That being said I think your outlined approach works. It might not be healthy though. If okayness is equanimity then anywhere on the path of equanimity will feel "okay". Therefore if you are in the bottom left quadrant but dislike others as much as yourself you might feel "okay" with your place in the world. This can lead to a downward spiral where you feel okay but hate everything. So I think everything you say here is 100% true, it will work. But it's not the BEST way to get okay?
Yeah this is a good point--current therapeutic practice does *not* recommend this.
Especially the anger one--above I linked to a study that showed intentionally tapping into anger tends to produce more anger. Which this model would suggest is true for about 50% of people.
This strategy is hard to put into clinical practice, because it needs to be calibrated to the individual. You have to (a) figure out which side of the Path they're on, and (b) how much of a push they need to get back to center. IME it takes a *very* light push to get back to centered, and there's a serious danger of overdoing it.
For me, it's the fastest path back to well-being, much better than pushing in the positive directions. Is it a clinically viable strategy? Is there a therapy here that could be repeated across millions of patients? Maybe! But definitely not today, and it'd be hard to create.
My flavour of therapy (Gestalt therapy) has historically been much in favour of aggression and it's expression, surely overdoing it in the process.
While dialing back on that - and interestingly becoming more interested in Shame - we still maintain some positive regard for expressions of aggression and anger, if it serves to protect one's own boundaries.
At least I work like that with the clients who need it (co-dependent and over-conforming types).
Fascinating read! When I'm low, I tend to go towards shame, and generally, I don't easily get angry. Your article has given me much to reflect on. Also, love the emoji graphs, they illustrate your explanations in a fun way!
This is something really sutric, and I don't know how workable it is in more extreme real life scenarios. I have no idea how I would sell this to the homeless drug addicts that I see and do volunteer work for, I have no idea how this could be sold to the denizens of 4chan, and hell, I have a hard time applying it to me. My particular predicament is being a 35 year old virgin (long story, largely due to a very sad and outcasted childhood/adolescence/young adulthood), and I guess I have a natural tendency to narcissism, suggesting shame as the counter, but that seems like a really bad idea if you're trying to attract women (worth noting there's a couple quotes from monks in this article). Hmm.
If there's a bigotry I have, it's against normal people (I define normal as not-weird), which is very unspiritual, as all bigotries are. And I feel all 3 problems I brought up should have spiritual solutions, even if I can't quite see them.
If you're cycling like that (sounds likely, given how you describe your childhood), the key is to dampen the cycle, making it go in smaller and smaller turns. If you e.g. constantly push in the shame direction because *most* of the time you're narcissistic, you're just going to load the spring that much more strongly and launch yourself back into narcissism.
All it takes is a tiny does of shame/anger to get back to the Path. You don't want to wallow in those feelings--you just want a few seconds of salve to get you back to a point of evenness.
(Side note, but the "women like overconfidence" cliche isn't true IME. They're attracted to the same balance of confidence and humility that we all are.)
To relieve anxiety and extinguish anger, I really recommend this last book by the creator of CBT, it saved my life, it’s like a secular nirvana really. According to a recent meta analysis the most effective thing to relieve anxiety and anger is CBT (for anger, I recommend Beck’s Prisoners of Hate book after this. Social anxiety is actually the reason we get angry) https://www.amazon.com/David-Clark/dp/1462546161/
I wonder if "The path of Equanimity" is as powerful because it makes it easy to feel like one belongs. "You are ok" is not as existentally important to me as "I am OK", but what is existentially important is the question of belonging.
Both feeling inferior as well as superior can inhibit a feeling of belonging.
Thinking of that little ritual in my church every sunday where Pastor asks the congregation if everybody was aware of their own sins and shortcomings this week (=I am not better than everybody else / Others are just as bad as me) and if we are also aware that Jesus forgives us and loves us nevertheless (=I am OK).
Bravo! It's quite an accomplishment to present such a profound principle in such concise and actionable terms. This is fantastic and I thank you for it. 🙏
It seems to me like you can extend this usefully into three dimensions. Specifically by adding a “playfulness” axis. I find that being more playful makes it easier to hit that centerline, but being too playful puts me at risk of trivializing things to the point that I start to feel shame. I can also imagine for others being too playful can make them get self-centered and dismissive of others, basically on the “anger”/king side of that axis, which I guess could be fun for a while if you could sustain it but might really cause problems eventually…
Wonderful post. Such a clear exposition of something that, I think, many of us are dimly aware of. Thank you!
I absolutely love the gropings towards complexity theory here. You never actually say the word 'attractor,' but your vector fields are so suggestive.
One of my favorite online essays. Pretty old, but still useful.
http://www.davidbrin.com/nonfiction/addiction.html
An early draft of my vector field was super complicated and had all sorts of attractors in it. I think each of us individually has a slightly different vector field, and that it's affected by the external environment.
This essay looks incredible, definitely going to dive in. Thanks for sharing!
Oh, agreed.
I think it is when Max Goodbird begins to believe in his own experience as the ‘one that information bends around’ that he becomes compelling. ‘We always tell the same story, over and over’ - Chris, Jessie’s friend. In a world where everything worth monetizing has been created - Ai can do that - he begins to influence Ai. You should read his previous work.
This is great. I love your writing. I want to disagree a bit but I also want to convey that I can tell you have thought about this a lot more than me. So please see this as more of a student raising their hand than a colleague critiqueing the post.
I think concencus right now is that for an anxious person, talk therapy, Cognitive behavioral therapy, some sort of IFT approach at tackling the anxiety is best approach. I agree, anxiety often thinking the world is better than you but I don't think most professionals would approach this as "try to make everyone else seem worse". I think most professionals try to inflate your self-worth by tackling the issue.
Same for anger. Anger management, talk therapy, and all the other therapies above seem to be the prescription, not "have you considered you aren't as great as you think you are"
That being said I think your outlined approach works. It might not be healthy though. If okayness is equanimity then anywhere on the path of equanimity will feel "okay". Therefore if you are in the bottom left quadrant but dislike others as much as yourself you might feel "okay" with your place in the world. This can lead to a downward spiral where you feel okay but hate everything. So I think everything you say here is 100% true, it will work. But it's not the BEST way to get okay?
Yeah this is a good point--current therapeutic practice does *not* recommend this.
Especially the anger one--above I linked to a study that showed intentionally tapping into anger tends to produce more anger. Which this model would suggest is true for about 50% of people.
This strategy is hard to put into clinical practice, because it needs to be calibrated to the individual. You have to (a) figure out which side of the Path they're on, and (b) how much of a push they need to get back to center. IME it takes a *very* light push to get back to centered, and there's a serious danger of overdoing it.
For me, it's the fastest path back to well-being, much better than pushing in the positive directions. Is it a clinically viable strategy? Is there a therapy here that could be repeated across millions of patients? Maybe! But definitely not today, and it'd be hard to create.
My flavour of therapy (Gestalt therapy) has historically been much in favour of aggression and it's expression, surely overdoing it in the process.
While dialing back on that - and interestingly becoming more interested in Shame - we still maintain some positive regard for expressions of aggression and anger, if it serves to protect one's own boundaries.
At least I work like that with the clients who need it (co-dependent and over-conforming types).
Fascinating read! When I'm low, I tend to go towards shame, and generally, I don't easily get angry. Your article has given me much to reflect on. Also, love the emoji graphs, they illustrate your explanations in a fun way!
Brilliant article once again!
This is something really sutric, and I don't know how workable it is in more extreme real life scenarios. I have no idea how I would sell this to the homeless drug addicts that I see and do volunteer work for, I have no idea how this could be sold to the denizens of 4chan, and hell, I have a hard time applying it to me. My particular predicament is being a 35 year old virgin (long story, largely due to a very sad and outcasted childhood/adolescence/young adulthood), and I guess I have a natural tendency to narcissism, suggesting shame as the counter, but that seems like a really bad idea if you're trying to attract women (worth noting there's a couple quotes from monks in this article). Hmm.
If there's a bigotry I have, it's against normal people (I define normal as not-weird), which is very unspiritual, as all bigotries are. And I feel all 3 problems I brought up should have spiritual solutions, even if I can't quite see them.
When I was stuck in a narcissistic mindset, it was really a cycle between narcissism and shame (described here: https://superbowl.substack.com/p/navigating-manic-psychosis).
If you're cycling like that (sounds likely, given how you describe your childhood), the key is to dampen the cycle, making it go in smaller and smaller turns. If you e.g. constantly push in the shame direction because *most* of the time you're narcissistic, you're just going to load the spring that much more strongly and launch yourself back into narcissism.
All it takes is a tiny does of shame/anger to get back to the Path. You don't want to wallow in those feelings--you just want a few seconds of salve to get you back to a point of evenness.
(Side note, but the "women like overconfidence" cliche isn't true IME. They're attracted to the same balance of confidence and humility that we all are.)
To relieve anxiety and extinguish anger, I really recommend this last book by the creator of CBT, it saved my life, it’s like a secular nirvana really. According to a recent meta analysis the most effective thing to relieve anxiety and anger is CBT (for anger, I recommend Beck’s Prisoners of Hate book after this. Social anxiety is actually the reason we get angry) https://www.amazon.com/David-Clark/dp/1462546161/
I wonder if "The path of Equanimity" is as powerful because it makes it easy to feel like one belongs. "You are ok" is not as existentally important to me as "I am OK", but what is existentially important is the question of belonging.
Both feeling inferior as well as superior can inhibit a feeling of belonging.
Thinking of that little ritual in my church every sunday where Pastor asks the congregation if everybody was aware of their own sins and shortcomings this week (=I am not better than everybody else / Others are just as bad as me) and if we are also aware that Jesus forgives us and loves us nevertheless (=I am OK).
And we all quietly say Yes.
I like this framing in terms of "belonging". Definitely agree that a feeling of superiority comes with a sense of loneliness and "not belonging".
The Path of Belonging has a good ring to it!
Bravo! It's quite an accomplishment to present such a profound principle in such concise and actionable terms. This is fantastic and I thank you for it. 🙏
Wow! You’re elucidating something I’ve only dimly seen before. Tremendous.
It seems to me like you can extend this usefully into three dimensions. Specifically by adding a “playfulness” axis. I find that being more playful makes it easier to hit that centerline, but being too playful puts me at risk of trivializing things to the point that I start to feel shame. I can also imagine for others being too playful can make them get self-centered and dismissive of others, basically on the “anger”/king side of that axis, which I guess could be fun for a while if you could sustain it but might really cause problems eventually…
Very curious - if there is another axis ‘playfulness’ then there has to be ‘negative playfulness’ - is there a word for it?
I'd probably call it "seriousness"--I've definitely worked with some people who live on that side of the spectrum!
Bingo