(You Can Get Some) Satisfaction

 In 2005. Kurt Vonnegut published a poem in The New Yorker.  It's actually an obituary of sorts for his friend, Joseph Heller, who had died a few years earlier.  It popped up in my social media feed recently and it got me thinking about the subject of this week's episode, so I wanted to share it with you. 

It's called "Joe Heller"  

True story, Word of Honor:
Joseph Heller, an important and funny writer
now dead, and I were at a party given by a billionaire
on Shelter Island.

I said, "Joe, how does it make you feel
to know that our host only yesterday
may have made more money
than your novel ‘Catch-22’
has earned in its entire history?”
And Joe said, “I’ve got something he can never have.”
And I said, “What on earth could that be, Joe?”
And Joe said, “The knowledge that I’ve got enough.”
Not bad! Rest in peace!

Now Heller may have been rationalizing to be able to live with the injustice of some morbidly rich billionaire daily earning more than the market value of a work of creative genius like Catch-22.  It's possible that the billionaire was genuinely content. And it's Heller himself who lays awake at night, dreaming of a life that could have been.  It reminds me of a moment in The Simpsons from season two, which if you want to feel old, I'll remind you came out over 30 years ago.  In this episode, Homer misses out on a big payday after trying to sue Mr. Burns for running over Bart with his car.  And Moe tries to console him:

Rich people aren't happy. From the day they're born to the day they die, they think they're happy.  But trust me, they ain't.

 The point is it doesn't really matter if Joseph Heller was truly content or whether or not money can buy happiness. The point is at times we all struggle to be satisfied with where we are in life. And with what we have.  What really matters is what each of us does about it.  Now, I don't want to pretend to offer any advice for people who are genuinely struggling to meet the basic necessities of survival.  In my opinion, those are the results of systemic failures, and we all need to be willing to make changes to how we live in order to make a real difference. But that's an episode for another day.  For this week, I want to talk about those of us who are fortunate enough to have the basics, and yet continually struggle to feel like we have enough.   I want to talk about the forces of discontentment that are so pervasive and powerful, and suggest a few strategies that can help all of us push back against those forces, and find some lasting contentment.  Please, stick around.

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

 As I started thinking about this episode. I kept coming back to this question: Why is contentment so elusive?  Now, some people would say that our discontent is a great source of our success as a species, you know, constantly striving to improve things and invent and create new technologies. That's what it is to be truly human.  And while there is an element of truth to that, I think the most important point is that it is our social nature that really ultimately gets us into trouble with regard to contentment.  And I'll explain why in a minute, but one of the things I stumbled upon with something that I had learned about in college way back when, and it's something called Zeno's Paradox.

Zeno was a Greek philosopher who came up with these sort of mind puzzles to explain how our experience of reality is actually an illusion. And certain things that we take for granted are impossible. Probably his most famous one is called Achilles and the Tortoise, and in this paradox Zeno places Achilles at the start line of a race, and he's racing against a tortoise.

 To be fair, he's going to give the tortoise a headstart. So the tortoise is out a certain distance along the race course. And the race begins. The paradox says that in order for Achilles to catch up with where the tortoise was at the beginning of the race, by that time the tortoise will have moved ahead a certain point.  And then from there in order for Achilles to catch up to where the tortoise is, then, during that time, the tortoise will have, once again, moved forward by a bit and so on and so on and so on.

And Achilles will, according to the paradox, never catch up with the tortoise. And I think that really summarizes the way a lot of us think about contentment.  It is this thing that is out there, that we are striving for, that we will never catch. We seem to get closer and closer and each time we get to where we think contentment will be, it has moved a little bit further away.

Now in reality, Zeno's paradox is clearly wrong.  So if you have a race, and let's say it's between Achilles and the tortoise and the tortoise is out 50 yards and the race begins. Achilles is gonna blow past the tortoise, right. So my analogy to contentedness might not necessarily hold up so well and we should be able to achieve contentedness just as easily as Achilles could beat a tortoise in a footrace.

But there are other forces at work and that's where our social natures really start to work against us. 

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Now I live in Santa Monica, California, which by any measure is a wealthy community. And I have two children who have gone through the Santa Monica public schools. One thing that I've noticed over the years is that if you go to the elementary school or the middle school during drop-off or pickup, you'll notice that there's one particular type of vehicle that dominates, not just a type, like an SUV or a minivan, but a brand.  And it changes over the years. But currently, the vehicle of choice makes the drop-off lane at the elementary school look like a Land Rover showroom.  Every other car is a Land Rover and you would think, well, there must be a good reason for that.  And while I would suggest there is a reason,  I would argue that it's not necessarily good. 

If you look at Land Rovers reliability ratings. They historically have been awful.  JD Power and Associates just came out with their most recent reliability ratings for just about every passenger vehicle on the market. And in the past, Land Rover has been at or very near the bottom by far. Now this past year they have had a dramatic improvement.  So maybe that's the reason why they've suddenly become more popular than any other vehicle. But to be specific, this year Land Rover attained their highest rating in many years, reaching a resounding third from the bottom. So Land Rover is a terrible car with regard to reliability, and yet it is everywhere around the elementary schools and the middle schools.

 And the reason for that is that we look around and we see what other people have and what other people want and that very significantly informs what we want.

French philosopher and social scientist René Girard came up with something to describe this, that he called Mimetic Theory, Llike to mimic, and he believed that all of our desires were based on what we saw other people wanting and desiring and it's hard to argue with his case on that.  And he sort of plays it out based on that initial instinct such that once we see what other people want, we want the same thing.

 Then there becomes a competition for that thing, and violence can ensue. Lots of conflict can ensue. And he actually suggests that one of the reasons there is such conflict among humans is not because we are so different but because we are the same. And because we want the same things.

So, how does this play out in real life? You graduate from college, you get a job. If you're fortunate and you work hard over the years, you may move up the socioeconomic ladder a little bit and you will socialize with people at your level and according to Gerard, monkey see monkey want, and you sort of have this constantly increasing level of desire based on your direct compatriots.

And while that sort of matches up with the analogy of Zeno's paradox and Achilles and the tortoise, there's an even better analogy that got me thinking about this as I was watching a free-diving documentary the other day.

The movie's called "The Deepest Breath," and it is about this Italian free diver who tries to set the female record for the deepest dive in a single breath. The movie's available on Netflix and I definitely recommend watching it. It's fascinating. It's harrowing. It's terrifying. It's pretty amazing.  But there's an interesting phenomenon that happens to free divers at about 30 meters below the surface. And that's the point when the body is no longer buoyant and the pressure of the water from above begins to push the diver downward.   So they're no longer propelling themselves downward. They are forced and pushed downward. It's something they call "free fall." And it's amazing to see as the atmosphere gets darker and darker, these divers are falling down through the water.

And I think that's kind of what it's like when you are moving up the socioeconomic ladder. There's a pressure that's forcing you to continue along in that same direction and becomes very difficult to resist just by virtue of the people you hang out with, the resources you have.

 And there's a lot of gaslighting at that level. I think it comes from people who've sacrificed a lot of valuable relationships and experiences in their lives to achieve material success.  And they realize it's not as satisfying as they'd hoped. So there's this cognitive dissonance that they need to relieve. And the easiest way to do that is to convince yourself and the outside world that it was all worth it, that there's no other life you'd rather be living than everything's just great.  And of course, lots of people see that life and they want it, too.  It appears that this is the way everyone wants to be. And the pressure increases. It's all-consuming and it's totally understandable that the vast majority of people are unable to resist the pull toward more and more.

So the big question is what can we do, regardless of where we are socioeconomically, to cultivate a level of contentment that can resist those constant pressures. 

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to begin to understand how to break the mimetic cycle and figure out how to actually catch up to contentment,  we're going to figure out how to solve Zeno's paradox.  I looked around a bunch and found a lot of rather complicated mathematical solutions. But the most elegant one solves it, not so much by showing how the paradox and reality actually do match up, but by showing the sleight of hand that Zeno used to make it feel paradoxical in the first place.  And this solution suggests an excellent way to bring contentment within reach. 

This solution says that it's the changing point of reference that's the problem.  At the beginning, the starting line is the point of reference. Then over a certain time Achilles has caught up to where the tortoise started the race, and then that becomes the point of reference. And so on the point of reference keeps changing.  And sure if you keep moving the point of reference further and further back, Achilles we'll never catch the tortoise and you'll never attain contentment.  So, what does it look like if you don't change the point of reference? Well, after the start of the race, Achilles runs to catch up to where the tortoise started and the tortoise is slightly ahead of that point. But then if we keep the point of reference at the starting line,  In the next few seconds Achilles blows by the tortoise. Simple, right?  So, how does that apply to contentment? Well, it reminds me of a quote that lots of people attribute to Ernest Hemingway, but is most likely from psychologist W.L. Sheldon.  He said,  "There is nothing noble in being superior to some other man. True nobility is being superior to your previous self."  So set your point of reference at your previous self.  How are you doing compared to that person? Are you learning, growing, becoming a more thoughtful person? Even in material terms, how has your level of satisfaction relative to what would have satisfied your previous self? 

I remember for my 30th birthday. I went out to a jazz club with some friends.  We went to see this amazing pianist named Michel Camilo, who was playing with still one of my all-time favorite drummers,  Horacio "El Negro" Hernandez.  Tickets were kind of pricey and I had three or four martinis, but it was a great night as much as I remember it.  And while it was still quite a bit of money in total, in the end, I could afford it.  And I remember thinking, if throughout the rest of my life. I can afford to do stuff like this every once in a while, then that's all I really want.  So think back to things you did in your younger days, things you love doing and could afford to do, and keep those things in mind as your reference point as you think about the things you really want to do, or buy now. 

More generally, this kind of deeper consideration of what you think you want can be really powerful. There was a fascinating study, a bunch of years ago, showing that while we think our minds consider something and then our bodies react with fear or excitement or whatever.,the direction is actually the other way. Our bodies feel it before our minds think it.  So your desires, your wants, what you think you need. Is probably felt first based on what you see other people wanting or needing or desiring around you. So take a moment to ask yourself when you think you want something why you want that thing, challenge your assumption what you really wanted.  Maybe it really is just because you saw somebody else have it or want it. 

Author Luke Burgis recently wrote a book called Wanting that explores René Girard's ideas of Mimetic Theory and offers some great strategies for overcoming our mimetic desires.  One of my favorites of his suggestions is to clean up your consumption.  He says,  "There's nothing wrong with consuming; it's consumerism that is dangerous. Consumerism is a spirit that enslaves us to our own desires and leaves no room for others. It undermines human freedom by short-circuiting our ability to respond to non-economic values (and there are many, like taking time off work to spend 'non-productive' time with an aging parent)."

He also talks about avoiding frictionless consumption, under the assumption that it's frictionless for a reason. And it's intended to make you mindlessly consume.  There was an article a couple of weeks ago about credit card reward programs and the problem with them. And I'll admit, I take advantage of a lot of those. And it was a simple reminder that these rewards you get are not free.  They might feel free to you, but someone is paying for them. And the person who's usually paying for them in the form of higher prices for everybody, in order for you to get that free thing, is usually someone much further down on the socioeconomic spectrum who can't afford the fancy credit card with the rewards and the high annual fee.

So that's just one example of investigating your consumption and taking into account all of the potential ramifications of it.

So let's try to embody an anti-mimetic mindset this week. Notice the people you pay attention to and might be modeling your desires on and ask yourself, do I really want that?  Or do I want it because everybody else does?  Would my younger self give a crap about that thing?  And what could I substitute for that desire that would bring me closer to my family, my friends, the rest of humanity, and the natural world?  

Well, that's it for this week. Until next time, be kind to yourself, cut each other, some slack, and use your damn turn signal.