Ep25 -- It's All In Your Mindset

 The world seems to be overwhelmed with competitions these days.  While the U S presidential election is of course sucking up most of the oxygen in our entire domestic atmosphere,  there were also just important elections in France, the UK, and Iran.  In the sports world, we have the European football championships going on alongside Copa America,  we're into the second week of Wimbledon and we've got the Olympics starting in just a couple of weeks.  On the culture front, The New York Times recently ran an in-depth investigation complete with those cool interactive charts and graphics that the Times does so well,  to determine if in fact Taylor Swift is bigger than the Beatles or Michael Jackson.  And on top of that, God help us, there's a brand new season of The Bachelorette. 

So it's understandable if the 99.99% of us who in reality have no direct involvement in these competitions, would feel like they are the most important things in our lives right now, and that those competitors are striving to attain the pinnacle of human existence, that is: the newsworthy victory.  I don't want to suggest that these competitions aren't at all important and consequential, especially the political ones,  but I think it's important for us non-potential-superstar folks to keep them in perspective vis-a-vis our own everyday lives.  I was reminded of this fact while reading a recent post from none other than Kareem Abdul Jabbar on his deeply thoughtful and insightful Substack.  The post apropos of what I've been talking about was mostly about the presidential election, but he opened with some thoughts on this famous Michael Jordan quote. And full disclosure in the never-ending, often heated arguments to decide the greatest NBA player of all time, I'm totally in the Michael Jordan camp. 

So Jordan once said,  "I've missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed.  I failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed." 
Now there's an obvious way to understand that quote about fighting through and learning from failure as a necessary precursor to success.  But Kareem adds an additional way to think about it.  For him, it's also about rethinking how we define success.  If it's just about winning the championship or the election, given the very slim odds of that ever happening, why would anyone ever try anything?  As Kareem puts it: "Those who never hoist a shiny trophy overhead or drive around in a Tesla haven't lost a thing.  They are always in the process of winning because every day, they step onto the court of their lives and just enjoy the game, the interaction with other players, the feel of the ball in their hands, the joy of movement.  Success isn't winning, but choosing to play and choosing to enjoy playing." 

It's straight out of Viktor Frankl's book Man's Search for Meaning, which drew directly on his first-hand experiences in a Nazi concentration camp.  The most famous quote from that book is this one:  "Everything can be taken from a man, but one thing,  the last of the human freedoms, to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances. To choose one's own way." 

So this week, I want to talk a little bit about that power we all have that we're so often unaware of, that great ungaslighting power of choosing our attitude, our own interpretation of events, our own path toward meaning and happiness. 

Stay tuned. 

I'm Craig Boreth, and this is The Great Ungaslighting, a podcast about how we all get conned into accepting a human culture that's out of sync with human nature and how we can fight back and put the kind back into humankind. 

But first a word about a sponsor. 

This week's episode of The Great Ungaslighting is most definitely not sponsored by Boeing.  And not just because of their unmitigated and ongoing 7 37 max fiasco, for which they just today pled guilty to criminal fraud. Although, apparently that guilty plea earned them a pretty sweet deal from the Department of Justice.  And it's not because of the crashes, the door plug blow out, the flame shooting engines, the scrapyard parts found a new plane assembly lines, or the deaths, plural, of two whistleblowers recently.  No, it's because even with all of Boeing's airplane problems, They thought it'd be a good idea to press ahead with their star liner spaceship program.  And to the surprise of precisely no one, it has not gone well.  But to give credit where credit is due, Boeing and NASA have recently offered up some truly out-of-this-world doublespeak when addressing the situation. 

In case you haven't been following this ongoing saga, here's a quick recap.  After a month of delays due to a potentially catastrophic buzzing valve, helium leaks, and one aborted launch just four minutes before liftoff. The Starliner finally took off on June 5th for a scheduled 10-day trip to the International Space Station.  Well today  32 days later, would it surprise you to know that the two astronauts are still at the international space station while NASA and Boeing try to guarantee that the star liner will be safe for its return to Earth?  During that time a NASA spokesperson told the AP that the astronauts are not stranded, which led to this definitely not the onion headline from futurism.com.  NASA says the Boeing astronauts are not stranded. While the astronauts remain stranded. 

And after NASA announced that the Starliner was performing well enough to safely remain attached to the space station for as long as it takes for NASA and Boeing to fix all the problems, Futurism ran an article with the headline NASA praises Boeing's stranded Starliner for managing not to explode while docked to Space Station.  And just a couple of days ago, the manager of Boeing's commercial crew program said, "We're not stuck on ISS. The crew is not in any danger and there's no increased risk when we decide to bring them back to earth," which of course begs the question, increased risk from what baseline?  And finally, this little gem as testing was done to replicate what the thrusters will experience from undocking to landing from none other than the lead Boeing engineer for thruster testing,  who said, quote, "We really want to understand the thruster and how we use it in flight."  Well, it seems like a good time for Boeing to figure that out. 

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And we're back. 

It's funny how we all tend to believe we're consistent, rational actors, when there's tons of evidence to prove just how variable we actually are.  So, for example, have you ever had this experience?  You're driving on busy crowded city streets.  I remember one time I was driving on South Street in Philadelphia, which is a perfect example since there's a never-ending war on Philly streets and sidewalks between drivers and pedestrians. 

Now when you're driving, you're like Jeremy Clarkson on Top Gear:

CLIP 1 

But then you pull over and park, you get out of your car and instantly you've transformed into a pedestrian and you're Ratso Rizzo in Midnight Cowboy:

CLIP 2

Now there's nothing good or bad about that perspective-shifting it's just the way we are.  What's important, I think is just to recognize that we have this kind of flexibility within us, and to put it to good use a lot more often than we consciously do.  I think gaslighters get a lot of their power from the fact that we don't realize how easily it actually is to look at things differently.  Looking at success as only in the winning, and looking at competition as a zero-sum game is essential to keeping lower power groups atomized and fighting amongst themselves. Because otherwise they might band together and use their collective power to upset the current power hierarchy. 

And speaking of hierarchies. I recently read a counter-intuitive take on the value of different levels within a hierarchy. It's from a great novel called The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Naylor.  He's looking at a fishing vessel.  Now this happens to be a slave ship, but it's emblematic of any capitalist enterprise.  He observes that the most valuable level in the enterprise is the raw material. In this case, the fish that they're catching.  

The next most valuable is the crew that do the fishing.  The crew has to be slightly less valuable than the fish because there needs to be some profit to pass up to the next level, which consists of the ship's officers.  Now they're less valuable than the crew because once again, there needs to be profit to pass upward to the ship's owners.  The owners are less valuable than the officers. 

And then above them, the least valuable are the investors.  Now, I'm not sharing this example because I want to topple capitalism, although I think there's very strong, empirical evidence that a healthy capitalist society is one that is strictly regulated and redistributive.   I'm sharing it as simply a different way of thinking about the power dynamics within a capitalist hierarchy.  

Another example that offers different perspectives is the progressive income tax structure.  Now, lots of people will argue that it's unfair. Why should wealthier people in theory, at least the actual practices, a different story, but why should wealthier people? Pay a higher percentage of their income. And a much higher amount in absolute dollars in taxes than everyone else. Now there are plenty of arguments in favor of progressive taxation. From societal benefits accrued to the wealthy and societal power claimed by them, or the much higher percent that poor people have to spend on necessities, or the subjective nature of money, such that a hundred dollars means something very different to someone making a million dollars a year compared with someone making $50,000 a year.  As a little side note, this provides a legitimate, no-con man-included way to double your money. If you want to double your money, just give it to someone who value it twice as much as you do.  Granted in that case, it's no longer your money, but it is valued twice as much as when it was yours.  You could also accomplish this without giving your money away. You just need to appreciate the money, you've got twice as much as you do now.  And by the way, Speaking of taxes, I'm not completely opposed to a flat tax. But in order to make that system fair, everyone should be able to deduct all of their necessities, including food, shelter, healthcare, and education. Then if we all pay the same percent of what's left over, That could work.  

But for me, An interesting way to look at progressive taxation is that we all pay the exact same amount to the extent that we earn the same amount.  Now, this may be confusing to people who don't really understand how a progressive tax works, which by the way, tend to be the people most opposed to progressive taxation.  How it works is the first about $50,000 that everyone makes is taxed at the lowest percentage. 

That's the same for everyone.  Then about the next $50,000 is taxed at the second lowest percentage. And so on until you get to the top, where everything earned over about $600,000 is taxed at the highest rate. So as you can see, we all pay the same amount to the degree that we earn the same amount. Now that doesn't seem so terribly unfair.  

So what's the big takeaway for this week? It's getting back to Victor Frankl. You have the absolute freedom to choose your attitude in any given set of circumstances. So, if anyone is trying to influence your attitude toward yourself, toward another group of people, or regarding some event or issue,  understand that there's always a different attitude you could choose to take.  That doesn't mean every attitude is equally valid and deserving of respect, but that it's your responsibility to find the best attitude for your own wellbeing.  Now you might say you shouldn't focus exclusively on your own well-being, since doesn't individual selfishness lead to major societal problems. Well, here's another opportunity to look at things differently. For me,  my own well-being is dependent on the well-being of others. I know we all live in the same ecosystem.  I want to live in a diverse neighborhood and city and state and country where people of different means can afford their rent and afford to own their homes, where they have access to good healthcare, transportation, and jobs. That would be a better, safer, happier world, which would benefit me directly. That's how I think about my own individual well-being, and I think most people would feel the same way if they really thought about it.  

Well, that's it for this week. If you like this episode, please share it with anyone you think might also enjoy it.  And until next time, be kind to yourself, cut each other, some slack, and use your fucking turn signal.