Breaking News #6: Maintaining Optimism in a Polarized Political World

The essence of meditation is to learn to let your thoughts fly by, to accept that your mind thinks in the same way that your heart beats…constantly. And those thoughts are not you because there is no you.

I used to be more interested in finding my sub-conscious self, my “true self” until I realized that was another story of the monkey mind - “I need to find my authentic self and then I will understand”.

It wasn’t until I let go of the idea of I and learnt to see myself as a part of the we that I was finally able to find my way to a non-self.

(I don’t call I t an empty self because it implies the ability for the self to be full, and I believe the self doesn’t exist. Its the ego that fills itself and continually has to be emptied in my mind)

One of the most beautiful ideas of Rastafari culture (second to the Ganja ) is the concept of I and I, the idea of unity and equality between people, the sense of oneness and connectedness through Jah.

It’s so much more than the conscious mind can keep track of! Why even bother trying?
Guilt is another “thing” which has a consistently powerful effect on some people with interactions, deserved or not. For some it may balance out any status posturing.
Sooooo, how to proceed in this potential quicksand? How about just let the thoughts fly, be willing to allow your subconscious to expose where you stand, and quickly apologize if it becomes necessary? Just accept what comes back in response and carry on with a full heart. Maybe not always a good idea in public, but in a great pack like this….

I love this…so much I wish there was a button for 1000 likes.

I read this after I had posted this in a different thread when answering questions about narratives and the market…I

I LOVE YOU PEOPLE!!!

yes indeed. knowing how to not play the game is a whole other level. GREAT links and connections!

Instantly curious about something that changed (anyone’s) understanding of the world, I peered into the Looking Glass.
“The actors seemed to know exactly what I meant and the work was transformed. The scenes became ‘authentic’, and actors seemed marvelously observant. Suddenly we understood that every inflection and movement implies a status, and that no action is due to chance, or really ‘motiveless’.”

Maybe too quickly I wrote that off as an artifact of performance / audience: actors needing to leverage status games in performance in order to maintain interest, something people do when they know Schrodinger is watching.
*“How do you like the Queen?” said the Cat in a low voice.
“Not at all,” said Alice: “she’s so extremely—” Just then she noticed that the Queen was close behind her, listening: so she went on “—likely to win, that it’s hardly worth while finishing the game.”"

But there’s got to be more to it. What is emptying-the-self (if that’s a goal) but not only suppressing status in interaction, but, in a way, negating the value of status altogether. I don’t think we can conceive of this in a non-Western way. I certainly struggle to describe it. Maybe this helps.
“Even when the Buddha talked about “emptiness” or sunyata, he talked about it as a mode of experience in which you refrain from adding anything to, or inferring anything about, what you are experiencing. In other words, you perceive things empty of your usual stories about them.”

But then watch out: Emptiness is Not Just Another Story (a bit down the page).

What a rabbit hole indeed, but one that maybe in some small way adds value and optimism, maps to a new territory of selflessness.

Nothing dated about page 26 that I could see. Timeless.

it’s an odd and somewhat dated theater handbook, but the explanation of status it contains changed the way I understood the world. Just did a quick google search, you can find it here (jump to page 26, iffen you’re interested)

http://coled.ucsd.edu/files/2016/03/Johnstone-Impro1-1.pdf

I have not heard of Keith Johnstone, but agree fully with the above

this thread just made my day (that’s directed at you, @Em_Lofgren @robmann @psherman and @Tanya

I have to ask (extra emphasis on the status bit, and with a bonus nod towards the EU friends here), have you read “Impro” by Keith Johnstone? The second chapter, which is solely focused on status (in a 70s, very English improvisational theater handbook) is maybe the greatest thing I’ve ever come across on the topic. Johnstone explains a status game/exercise that applies at the bar AND in job discussions AND - you name it. His point is it’s everywhere and his focus is teaching improvisational actors to “see the water.”

The metaphor he uses is to think of it as a status seesaw. When no action is motiveless, then status shows up even when there’s no conflict (which is a little surprising at first). What you do, where you work, all these things are invitations to understand where the asker exists in relation to the questioned.

How we answer and/or how we ask can - as your examples show - tip the seesaw to show deference, respect, or playfulness to the other to invite friendliness or whatever tone you want to set. Guinness all around, you all clearly have techniques on how you keep the seesaw from spiking the other into the ground - now this is HOPE!

That’s fantastic - agreed that you nailed it!

Perhaps that’s another way that Americans make themselves “ugly” on the Continent. The micro version for folks in the rural Western US is that it’s rude to ask a rancher how many cattle they own, about the equivalent of asking how much money you made last year.

That… is a whole 'nother level of complication. We colonists don’t have peerage, so we (perhaps) depend too quickly and heavily on other means to establish a social pecking order. So to the difference, I think it has less to do with leisure and more to do with either probing social standing, or finding common ground for conversation. I don’t know anything about astrophysics (and damn little about investing), but I can listen to people talk about bass playing for quite a while. Longer than my wife.
That said, I’ve left some interactions wondering how a Starbucks barista came to be, say, in a group of 10 men in a remote, somewhat pricey Canadian fishing lodge. Invisible means of support?

Among my friends are a few who are non-degreed yet extremely experienced manufacturing specialists working in positions almost exclusively occupied by degreed engineers. They have to do a different dance, sometimes mumbling, sometimes defending their occupation. A bit easier for the software people I know who’ve proven themselves competent and don’t need to lean back on their diploma - or lack of one.

To attempt to connect it to the title of the thread maybe there’s an opportunity to think and interact differently around “First, seek to understand” and the work/status/worth/polarization calculus we orient to in social introductions. Can I do better remaining optimistic and gracious when I find out my aisle seat neighbor for this 3 hour flight is a (Planned Parenthood clinic director / Jim Jordan campaign manager), or should I learn to be more creative and flexible and let the conversation reveal what it needs to reveal? Better to learn enough to guess that Rob is a pharm rep, and hold off on that vaccine tirade. (I jest! )

Thanks, Em, for the comprehensive answer! Your Guinness is inbound!