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Go, Said the Bird...
Go, Said the Bird...
by Ross Robertson
06-20-2011
Go, Said the Bird...

"You see the world as it is, and ask 'why?' I see the world as it could be, and ask 'why not?'"

You've heard it before. It's an old saw. But it does speak to an interesting conundrum -- is it better to see clearly, to know truth and reality as it is, regardless of the emotional cost, or is it better to see through rosy glasses if it promotes health and happiness?

A recent Time Magazine cover article investigated the mystery of optimism. Why are people, generally speaking, more unreasonably optimistic than not? What evolutionary benefit could there be in perceiving one's environment inaccurately?

In particular, the following quote jumped out at me:

"While healthy people expect the future to be slightly better than it ends up being, people with severe depression tend to be pessimistically biased: they expect things to be worse than they end up being. People with mild depression are relatively accurate when predicting future events. They see the world as it is. In other words, in the absence of a neural mechanism that generates unrealistic optimism, it is possible all humans would be mildly depressed."

As someone who self-identifies as mildly chronic depressive, I find this flattering. It appeals to my inner artiste. It appeals to my outer rational, empirical, scientific-oriented researcher and explorer. It vindicates that persistently nagging feeling that others just don't get it.

I tend to agree with the bumper stickers that say, "If you're not outraged (horrified, frightened), you're not paying attention." I feel sympathy and understanding when Shirley Manson sings "I'm only happy when it rains."

Yet however much we creatures of the night love our own dark souls, we also like laughter without cruelty. We want goodness for everyone. It does feel good to feel good, to be in love, and to be overwhelmed by beauty.

Indeed I often think that the measure of depression is the perceived distance between reality and happiness. Maybe it's not that depressives just see how rotten things are... maybe it's that they have a much clearer picture than most just how phenomenally good things could be, and should be.

So there you have it. If the current thinking among psychologists is right (always a dubious assumption), then we are faced with an eternal Faustian choice:

Would you rather be right, or would you rather be happy?

I'm going to propose a solution to this puzzle, but first I want to state a case for the suspicion of happiness. It's hardly novel, but it goes something like this:

There are some things that people should not tolerate. However noble our capacity for suffering and resilience, some things should simply not be acceptable. A habit of finding silver linings does nothing to alleviate a world full of dark clouds. Does singing the blues really relieve the blues, or does it simply celebrate sadness?

There is a point at which happiness leads to stupidity and indifference. Among the wealthy, there is a strong tendency to not want to look beyond what is comfortable. Among the downtrodden, there is a strong tendency to persevere fatalistically rather than risk jostling the homeostatic social order.

I also want to say this about evolution, just as a reminder: a successful species has absolutely no requirement to be either right or happy. If it serves the agenda of survival and reproduction, then anything will do. Doest the eye of the cockroach need to be high fidelity? Do sharks need a spiritual life? If evolution has produced a capacity for pleasure and clear-seeing, it is only because these incidentally further the propagation game. Evolution cares not for comfort or wisdom. There is only the persistent furthering of mindless matter animating matter.

Unless of course, we change the rules. When animated matter acquires a mind, then new rules become possible.

Humans tend to see the world rather anthropocentrically, so it's easy to think that we are the crown of creation. We think that our capacity for invention and humor and compassion and justice and beauty and imagination is exactly what evolution has been striving for all along. This is quite wrong-headed, but it may inadvertently wind up being rather right-minded.

We stand a chance of not only being more evolved, but of becoming evolvers ourselves. Already we are seeing how we see, and learning to improve our vision. Already we are learning why we feel the way we do, and increasing our capacity for a sense of well-being that is justified. Already we are deciphering nature's code, and becoming programmers ourselves.

In scientific circles, the idea of Intelligent Design is met with derision. Yet when we've become the designers, we have the obligation and responsibility to be both intelligent and wise.

So how can we use aikido wisely as an intelligent design tool?

When I teach aikido these days, I teach according to the notion of zones. I'm less interested in centering and perfect posture and grounded stances, and more interested in areas of attractors and boundaries. In my view, zones offer a greater range of liberty and rightness, a greater diversity of postures and potential for coherent action.

So, what is our optimal zone -- to be happy or to be right?

Rather than choosing one or the other as the best zone, it seems to me that these may be delimiters defining a zone of optimal well-being. If we take the middle path between these two dogs at the door, then we actually can have it both ways.

If we insist on seeing things only as they are, then perforce we can never see things as they might be. Any improvement on the human condition could not come except through accident. But if we constantly conjure our dreams, if we populate our fantasies and live in some sort of hallucinogenic hologram, then we are equally crippled. We cannot engage the forces of reality.

To go forward, we must have regular access to accurate data, and we must be willing to analyze it without bias or prejudice. We have to be ruthlessly unsentimental as investigators. But once armed with a better grasp of reality, we should avail ourselves of our marvelous imaginations and change reality.

When we say someone is a "realist," we usually mean that they see things the way they are. And this realism has an unfortunate association with cynicism. But actually, a realist should be someone who realizes things. Someone who has insights and who has the capacity to make an idea real.

Within the right zone, there is the possibility of the visionary and the realist being one and the same.

Unsurprisingly, I want it all. I want to perceive reality accurately AND I want to be happy. I want "joy beyond all reason for it," and at the same time I want a world full of reasons for gladness.

In his book "The Age of Unreason" Charles Handy makes the case that rational people are not the ones who make great changes in our society. It takes a certain kind of perverse unwillingness to accept things as they are. I can agree with the general thrust of this argument, but I might take exception to the hyperbolic premise.

Rather, I think the idea that "reasonable" and "rational" and "realistic" equate with "stodgy" is wrong. A reasonable person is someone who sees problems and fixes them. A rational person is someone who imagines a variety of possibilities and chooses among the most favorable, the most realistic.

What this whole question of seeing comes down to is one of actuality versus potential. It's great to be able to see things as they are, but this is not the whole of reality. The world is full of probabilities, and if we cannot see these, then we are functionally blind. Moreover, if we cannot act in such a way as to influence probabilities favorably, then we are impotent as well.

This dynamic is played out on the mat regularly. If we focus more on the technique than on our partners, ourselves, our environment, then we will experience a fundamental disconnect. If we only see our partners, ourselves, our environment, without seeing multiple arrangements, manifold conduits of flow, then we are stuck within walls of our own perceptions.

Aikido happens when these come together in a zone of functional balance. We see what is real. We see what is possible. We let go, and then we go where the going is best.

So if you see the world as it is and ask "why," I'd say that's a good start. If I see the world as it could be and ask "why not," then we have the basis for a productive collaboration. We need each other, whether it's really you and me or just different parts of our brains talking to each other. We need to know the truth in order to create the truth. We need to blend with our partner in order to move our partner. We also need the confidence to know when to be moved by our partner.

It seems to me that a philosophy of realism should include some latitude for both pessimism and optimism. We should see how it is, soberly contemplate worst-case scenarios, and best outcomes.

This, to me, would be true-seeing.

June 1, 2011
Ross Robertson
Still Point Aikido Systems
Honmatsu Aikido
Austin TX, USA

www.stillpointaikido.com
www.rariora.org/writing/articles

For the online version of the Time article, go here:

http://www.time.com/time/health/arti...074067,00.html
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Old 06-21-2011, 09:40 AM   #2
SeiserL
 
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Re: Go, Said the Bird...

IMHO, optimism and pessimism is how we think about realism. The view does change, only our judgment of it.

Some think the glass is half empty and others think its half full. The wise ones think the glass is too big.

Well said. Compliments and appreciation.

Lynn Seiser PhD
Yondan Aikido & FMA/JKD
We do not rise to the level of our expectations, but fall to the level of our training. Train well. KWATZ!
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Old 06-21-2011, 11:49 AM   #3
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Re: Go, Said the Bird...

Thanks for another great column Ross, I agree our optimal zone is to be happy and right, but how do I know if I'm right? In aikido I do as my teacher tells me, he replies to our why? and to our why not?
Yes we should see how it is and what is possible and be ready to react to unexpected and know how to improvise.
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Old 06-22-2011, 04:05 AM   #4
niall
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Re: Go, Said the Bird...

I don't think we should blur optimism - a vague hope for the future - with being positive, Ross. By the way if some of your readers haven't read Candide by Voltaire this is the link to the free e-book at project gutenberg.

I like your zones idea a lot and if you haven't written about it already perhaps you could consider writing more about it in a future column?

Thanks for the interesting article as always.

Niall

we can make our minds so like still water, and so live for a moment with a clearer, perhaps even with a fiercer life
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Old 06-22-2011, 10:51 AM   #5
graham christian
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Re: Go, Said the Bird...

Hi Ross.
Another good contemplative article.

Once again I find these questions similar to how I study life.

I couldn't help seeing a simplicity, which once said may cause some to say it's simplistic, but nonetheless it's something I adhere to.

Happiness I say is the result of progress. When a person feels they are progressing then they are happy. Like a cycle of progression and thus it includes the end result or target reached as well.

Depression therefore, and degrees of, would be proportional to the degree of not progressing and indeed finally finding things hopeless or impossible.

Now here's another factor. When looking at something not directly to do with you ie: a political situation, a country's situation even if it's not your country, a world situation. The plight of others or animals or whatever.

When we see things improving we feel happy for, when we see things heading for disaster we feel down about. Once again to do with perceived progress.

In the middle in my opinion is once again the acceptance of reality, again I equate this as centre as in Aikido.

Which brings me to a third point. If you can accept the reality then you will be more stable, more centred and thus more happy whether looking at progress or failure.

A few thoughts to add to the pot?

Regards.G.
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Old 06-22-2011, 12:14 PM   #6
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Re: Go, Said the Bird...

I agree with Graham that we are happy in aikido when we note a progress, and of course we get less unhappy when we accept the reality,we accept things as they come, even if they are bad or negative and we could compare this acceptance with the centre in aikido.
But in another environment there are more things that make me happy beyond my progress: seeing a nice landscape while doing a walk for example and feeling the fresh air, seeing a dear friend or relative, receiving a nice message and lots of little details that give me happyness during the day.
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Old 06-24-2011, 11:17 AM   #7
R.A. Robertson
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Re: Go, Said the Bird...

So many good points to respond to... Not possible to do you all justice, so I'll touch upon things as best I can.

@Lynn: The glass is always full -- sometimes liquid, sometimes air, but always full of potential.

@Carina on knowing rightness: I tend to think that we should follow the scientific method as best as we can, even in informal settings. This means we should test and verify repeatedly. In so doing, we never actually arrive at "right," but we can gain increasing confidence in workable models, and equally important, we can discard models that fail in the face of better evidence.

@Niall on zones: see
http://www.aikiweb.com/columns/rrobertson/2004_03.html and
http://www.aikiweb.com/forums/showthread.php?t=12010

And I'm always happy to discuss it further.

@Graham: I very much like your calculus of depression/happiness. The idea that it's a matter of vectors rather than points makes sense to me. It's complex, though, and Carina correctly points out that sometimes just being where you are is true satisfaction.

Yet acceptance also has its zone. Acceptance is a boon where we can arrive at serenity in the face of truly unalterable circumstances. At the same time, there is a risk of fatalism in acceptance which can be contrary to well-being.

Very nice discussion. Thank you all.

RA
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Old 06-24-2011, 02:53 PM   #8
graham christian
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Re: Go, Said the Bird...

Hi Ross. I agree Carina has added a valid point.

The point you make about acceptance and the possibility of fatalism so to speak I look at it this way: For fatalism to disappear you have to be able to fully accept it.

In other words when I am sure I am fully accepting something and yet not feeling good etc. then I have to acknowledge I have more to accept and a new lesson to learn for that truth tells me 'I may think I'm fully accepting but in truth I am not.

Thus on a nice walk when you are fully accepting the beautiful scenery you are happy and contented and centred.

A subtle change in perspective on the truth and power of true acceptance.

Cordially.G.
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Old 06-24-2011, 03:47 PM   #9
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Re: Go, Said the Bird...

My teacher told me that in the more than twenty years of practice with his teacher, one year the teacher showed him a technique in a way and next year he said, forget that, now we do it another way, so sometimes we should be open minded and accept for example that what last year was white maybe this year is black .
Another circumstance: I had a few deaths of an aunt(last year) and a coworker(for 25 years) of my age(the year before) and the only way of getting back happyness is the full acceptance of that facts to overcome them.
Once a yoga teacher told me that we should accept every day as it comes: if it is cold, raining or 40º C hot, and the same with all things that happen to us daily.
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Old 06-26-2011, 07:40 PM   #10
Philip Hornback
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Re: Go, Said the Bird...

Instead of only seeing the glass as half full or half empty shouldn't we see the glass as a work in progress?
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