11 - Behind the Curtain
As a follow up to last week's post (wow - the first two-parter!), as well as recent global events, I wanted to delve into why I think this meta-cognition of thinking happens...or at least, why I think it happens to me. (There's a whole post's worth of content for why you shouldn't necessarily care about what I think - but as with anything, take what is useful, and discard the rest).
A key reason that I think people will react to events that happen around them is because they may have prior views on a subject based on their values. These values are informed by who they've been brought up as, what they've seen of their role models, the media, their peers, their own first principles thinking, or any of the myriad other influences in their life.
What this can prevent is an open, listening frame of mind. You've got a view, and you want to share it. It's human nature!
What it allows is a much quicker, more natural response to ideas and concepts - and judgement about a particular topic or person. Now, judgement is neither a good or bad thing, but it allows you to determine if something is good, or bad to you. It is informed by the influences above, which determines who you end up as, as a person. It gives you your personality, and helps people understand whether they can connect with you on that topic.
But...I'm not very good at that. I spent some of my life as a debater, as an overthinker, as a person living between two cultures, and as a fervent doubter of my own beliefs. These things influenced me to see problems from both sides of the coin - finding the middle grounds but never committing to any side.
No-one likes a fence-sitter.
To me, no-one's better than anyone else (well, as much as possible with the people I interact with...it's highly possible I'm very naive and haven't seen enough of the world yet!).
Nothing is just 'good' or just 'bad' - everyone's telling their own stories of why a certain thing is true, and all of those stories are valid in the context they are being told in. Sure, there are the exceptions to the rule (prisons are filled with these people! Can you tell I just finished watching Mindhunter??) but in a lot of cases, the understanding of another person should be the goal. Not the automatic denouncement of why someone else is bad.
Forgetting that means you stop trying to uncover the why of the other side of the coin, and instead look at them at face value, of what it seems like they're talking about, instead of understanding where they're coming from, which is the subtext present in many conversations. Being specific about what you're talking about, and going back to places where you agree, helps to unravel why you've diverged in your beliefs and/or values.
And what that means, is that my priority usually becomes 'why does this person think this', or 'what does this person want' instead of 'this is what I think should happen'. It can be detrimental because it takes me a lot of time to think through things, but, well...
I'm working on it.
P.S. IF THIS TYPE OF STUFF DOESN'T FLOAT YOUR BOAT, DON'T WORRY - LESS HEAVY STUFF COMING SOON :D
Chat soon :)
✔️ Real Life Recommendations
-
The Everything Store - just like Elon Musk's biography, this book tells the story of how Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, built up his company from the ground up, and became the tech giant that it is today. It's filled with anecdotes of a man who is intensely smart, intensely detailed, ruthless to a fault, and prone to emotional outbursts. The main thing I took away from this was how much foresight he had in terms of where he wanted the company go, and how willing he was to take big risks.
-
Dynasty Warriors - this was one of my favourite games on the PS2. I had a pirated copy of Dynasty Warriors 5 that I played for hours on end - at the time, the goal was to kill as many enemies as possible in a Three Kingdoms era hack-and-slash. But as I grew older and was still playing it, I realised that there was a lot of history that was happening in the game that I was ignoring. I remember asking dad about all the characters - he has a keen mind for Chinese history - and it was fascinating to hear the stories in Cantonese (rather than the English dub). I recently bought it on the Switch again - the nostalgia is real!!
🚌 Adventures on the Information Super-Highway
-
How to make meetings better - an interesting piece, especially in contrast to the Amazon two-pizza meeting idea. Essentially says that a meeting should be focussed, and the work needs to be done outside of the meeting, not in it. There should be clear purposes for meetings so that people's time isn't wasted. Pretty obvious but worth a quick read anyway.
-
Nushu - women-only chinese script - A writing system from the 19th century that was specifically made for women by women. It's a really pretty script - very flowing, narrow, and angular. Really interesting finding these corners of history that developed their own dialects, languages, and scripts!
-
Youtube Decade - what was popular on YouTube 10 years ago?!
oh.