School of Life Conference notes: July 7th to 9th Flashcards
Self-knowledge
“Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made” Immanuel Kant
We cannot fit humanity into a straightjacket of our own design.
We are evolved monkeys with nuclear weapons.
The modern world tries to repress pain and thinking about death. We’re left very alone with pain. Pain and suffering, however, is fundamental to what a human being is.
Sane insanity - to have a good grip on your insanity. How exactly am I crazy?
We experience our anxiety/loneliness as deeply personal but these are common truths to everyone.
Religion has lost its authority as the foremost purveyor of meaning.
In the 19th century, people believed that culture could replace scripture to provide a sense of consolation, community and understanding. There are lots of insights in scripture.
We are unashamedly dealing with First World Problems.
However, first world problems are not trivial because they can lead to mental health problems and suicide.
We feel anxious We feel alone Work lacks meaning We cannot get relationships right We feel disenchanted
Remember that we’re at the beginning of history. A visitor from the future will no doubt pity us as we pity our medieval ancestors.
Our lives are very hard considering what people will have in the future.
We don’t learn from hearing something once. Our minds are like sieves. We need CONSTANT REPETITION.
We need to ritualise ideas. Ideas need to be constantly repeated.
As soon as we have words to describe how we feel, we are liberated: think about babies.
We need a vocabulary to communicate our inner landscape.
The beginning of wisdom is to recognise the faults of the brain.
Socrates said “Know yourself”.
What is wrong with the brain?
- Difficult to interpret feelings (about job, work and relationships)
- Hates pain (the brain does not like disturbing thoughts)
Sentimentality and cynicism are the enemies of rational analysis.
“In the minds of geniuses we find our own neglected thoughts” Ralph Waldo Emerson
The brain is very bad at knowing what it’s anxious about.
Insomnia is the revenge of your pernicious thoughts i.e. all of the feelings/anxieties you suppressed all day.
The brain is prone to thinking that there are possible states of future happiness.
We project into the future, forgetting that WE are going to be there - of course, it’s going to be compromised.
We are constantly imagining there are material solutions to psychological problems.
The number one nutrient of the brain is connection. Connection is what we crave and what we so rarely get.
Habit can have deadening effects.
What could re-enchant the world? A meteorite that would strike in 3 weeks.
Transference: the redirection of feelings and desires and especially of those unconsciously retained from childhood toward a new object e.g. new partner in a relationship
Never assume the brain’s errors are complex; they can be fairly simple.
We are extremely unfair judges of ourselves due to a constellation of inner voices.
We are constantly interpreting what is happening to us through other people’s voices.
2 important points:
1/ There is no such thing as overthinking, only thinking badly
2/ Please don’t go with your feelings because they’re mostly wrong. We must submit them to reason.
We need emotional scepticism because unexamined feelings can be very distorted. We must be suspicious of our initial feelings.
We should regularly download the contents of our minds and sort through feelings and ideas.
Very often we apply an ‘interpretative lens’ to information that does not warrant it.
Why don’t people respond to messages? Potentially ambiguous meaning.
7 most common self-deceiving moves:
- Distraction / Addiction
- Manic cheeriness
- Irritability
- Denigration
- Censoriousness (the abstinence preacher)
- Defensiveness - cannot accept feedback
- Cynicism / Despair
Sociability
We have a shared universal humanity
“If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die?”
Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice
To get to the universal identity we must make the social leap of faith.
There is a difference between local and universal identities.
Universal identities
We all have problematic families We've all been disappointed We've all been idiotic We've all loved We've all hated We've all had problems around sex We all have anxieties We all have ambitions We all have bodies that give us difficulties
We can find ways to connect in even the most difficult conversations.
Surface self (less interesting) versus deep self (more interesting).
Facts and expressions of strength are bland and boring. Vulnerability and emotions and failure are much more interesting and conduits to real connection.
We like it when people show vulnerability - it builds friendships.
A question can take a conversation down different routes i.e. there is a conversational crossroads between the deep self and the surface self.
The fear of being intrusive is hugely exaggerated. Everyone is usually ready to disclose elements of their deep self.
How to be vulnerable
- Scarcely anything nice that anyone could learn than we are vulnerable
- We are not alone in our suffering
- It’s failure that charms
How to listen
Novels are stories we don’t mind paying attention to because they teach us about ourselves.
- No one is boring deep down. They just haven’t been edited properly.
- Good listening can turn a good story into a masterpiece
Your job as a listener is to edit the manuscript
We get bogged down in the local details.
What goes wrong when we narrate our lives:
- Over-accumulation of factual details
- Insistence, not explanation
- Emotional squeamishness (we get scared and change direction)
- Modesty
- Digression
6 moves of a good listener:
1/ Strong idea of the underlying story
2/ Stop them digressing - bring them back to the last coherent and emotionally ‘alive’ part of the story
3/ Be extremely interested. Exude warmth. Lean forward.
4/ Draw them away from numb details to deeper emotional realities
5/ Allow for the unusual and weird
6/ Give them time
How to flirt
Good flirting is good noticing i.e. something unusual to admire
We must have a good relationship to our failings - be confident and calm about them. Weakness handled strongly.
Appreciate the other person but don’t idealise them naively.
Relationships
Relationships didn’t used to be about mutual love and gratifying sex.
Modern assumptions of love:
- We expect to be happy in love
- We have to the find the ‘special person’ by ourselves
Refusing love: we cannot accept the love of others when we remain semi-unconsciously unconvinced our own lovability.
We need to make the implausible leap of faith that we might be acceptable to someone else who knew us more completely. We may not have to lie in order to deserve love.
Real love tolerates imperfection:
- We can have faults and love ourselves
- We can see the faults of another person and still love them
To love properly we need IMAGINATION, especially to look with greater energy and curiosity into the face and character of another person, to search for what is desirable and good.
Love is having the imagination to be curious and compassionate about another person. Imagination is the key to love.
Instinct is central to romantic ideology. A modern idea is that instinct is a reliable way of finding love.
Our instincts are very often deeply flawed, for reasons that take us back to childhood.
We should not try to change who we are attached to.
Instead we should try to change the way we characteristically deal with the difficulties that our eyes cause us.
We are all emotionally very young. We have child-like patterns of response to difficult lovers:
- We over-personalise issues that we are not responsible for
- We assume we deserve punishment
- We seek attention
- We get unproductively furious
- We sulk rather than explain
- We withdraw
- We panic
WE CAN CHANGE OUR BEHAVIOUR. When you encounter a partner’s tricky behaviour you have a choice.
Compatibility is not the precondition of love. It is the achievement of love. There is no soulmate.
Pessimism is a friend of love.
Nobody will ever fully understand anyone else.
We may be best equipped to find love when we realise that it might not be the answer to everything.
“Marry, and you will regret it; don’t marry, you will also regret it; marry or don’t marry, you will regret it either way. Laugh at the world’s foolishness, you will regret it; weep over it, you will regret that too; laugh at the world’s foolishness or weep over it, you will regret both. Believe a woman, you will regret it; believe her not, you will also regret it… Hang yourself, you will regret it; do not hang yourself, and you will regret that too; hang yourself or don’t hang yourself, you’ll regret it either way; whether you hang yourself or do not hang yourself, you will regret both. This, gentlemen, is the essence of all philosophy.”
Soren Kierkegaard
Sulking
We don’t sulk with everyone. We sulk with people who we feel should understand us.
Mind-reading should not be an expected part of a good relationship.
Love is a classroom.
How to become a better teacher in love
1/ Confidence in the legitimacy of teaching
2/ Admit you’re not perfect
3/ Don’t blame the other for not already knowing
4/ Pick the right moment
5/ Don’t be in a panic
6/ Never humiliate
How to become a better student in love
1/ Admit you’re not perfect
2/ Accept that you can develop and grow
Gently delivered criticism is compatible with love.
It’s safer to seem mean and hard than scared and vulnerable.
We’re terrified of being rejected or sounding stupid.
Closeness
Avoidant behaviour - we cannot say ‘I need you’
Anxious behaviour - we get procedurally controlling, unduly cross or chastise our partners heavily
There is deep anxiety around the admission of need
Comforting
There are different styles to feeling comforted:
1/ Being listened to 2/ Being offered solutions 3/ Hearing optimism 4/ Hearing pessimism 5/ Being offered cuddles
The style we want is not necessarily the one we should offer.
Sexual Liberation
We are not living in a liberated age.
Sex is complicated for everyone.
We don’t have the language or ideology to download the contents of our imaginations.
Sexual fantasies are logical quests for intimacy/closeness with another person.
Sexual excitement is psychological excitement.
Society puts an enormous price on monogamy
Good sex requires distance - we can sometimes be too close.
Humour
We must strive to level criticism through the prism of humour. This is not sarcasm or cynicism. This is just exaggerating exaggerated behaviour.
“If you want people to tell you the truth make them laugh, otherwise they’ll kill you.” George Bernard Shaw
Love as Generosity
When we deal with small children we look behind the bad behaviour.
Adults behave like small children.
Therefore, the height of generosity is to treat your partner like a small child.
The will to be generous is not weakness.
Love is the accurate, corrective reimagining of the inner lives of others - even (an especially) when they are at their least impressive.
The only people we can think of as charming are those we do not know very well.
Romantic Daydream = someone’s enticing exterior + time to study it + no knowledge of their interior
CONFIDENCE
Confidence is the recognition that hellish difficulties are an inevitable part of any worthwhile achievement.
To cultivate confidence, it’s not just about our good bits. We must also embrace our inner idiot.
Try this exercise: I am an idiot because…
“The starting point of being wise is a thorough knowledge of our folly” Erasmus
The only thing to be afraid of is our death.
We lose confidence and give up when things are hard in a way which we did not expect. (It’s more about the expectation).
It takes 15,000 hours to become a violinist. We may need to commit to a life of suffering for the sake of art.
We have not seen enough of the early drafts of those we admire, and therefore cannot forgive ourselves the hell of our own first attempts.
It is easier to say: “I do not have enough talent”
Being confident is totally compatible with :
Being polite
Being modest
Being down
Being gentle
We don’t have to shout a lot or be arrogant.
FAILURE
Modern snobbery cares about your job
The opposite of a snob is your mother
It is said sometimes that we live in materialistic times. However, beneath the pursuit of money is the pursuit of respect.
The Ferrari owner is someone with an especially intense need for love.
For most of human history everyone was born poor and stayed poor.
Self-esteem = Success / Expectations
We have a crisis of self-esteem because expectations have been raised so high.
Our self-esteem in this world depends entirely on what we hope to be.
We have a modern feeling of equality which can be toxic. For example, Mark Zuckerberg says ‘I’m a regular guy’. This is a recipe for fierce inadequacy.
Meritocratic systems mean that ‘failure is deserved’.
We have done away with LUCK.
We hold people accountable for what happens to them. We are an individualistic society.
It’s a totally unfair narrative in a perceived game of life where we have winners and losers.
You must understand the psychology of the narrative you are living under - it’s deeply unfair.
Think of Hamlet, Anna Karenina or Madame Bovary: you wouldn’t call them losers. They deserve our sympathy and our dignity.
We are much more deserving of sympathy than the media and society accords us.
It’s very hard to avoid the conclusion that “who you are is your money”.
We can try to change what money means.
Money is not allocated morally.
Wages are not decided by the extent of someone’s human worth or social contribution.
The determinant of wages is simply the strength of demand in relation to supply.
When we’re afraid of failing we fear poverty but also, we fear humiliation / judgement / neglect.
2 ways to feel less of a failure:
1/ Try to be more successful
2/ Lower our expectations (a graceful skill)
There is a strange lightness in the air when one’s nothingness in a particular area is accepted in good faith. How pleasant is the day when we give up striving. Every expectation added to the self is a burden.
On an individual level, too, no matter how much success you may experience in life, your eventual story – no offence intended – will be one of failure. Your bodily organs will fail, and you will die.
We are all trying to win the lottery of life, but we are torturing ourselves with an idea of reality that does not exist.
CALM
There appears to be an association between getting things done and not being calm. We live in an age of efficiency.
The school of life rejects the association between effectiveness and calm.
Angry people are optimists. Behind every outburst is an expectation that things should not be this way - there is optimism lurking in the background.
We can move from local pessimism to global pessimism..
“Children are a life-long punishment for a few moments of sentimentality.”
“All of man’s unhappiness comes from his inability to stay alone in his room”.
“Life must be some kind of error” - Schopenhauer
“What need is there to weep over parts of life? The whole of it calls for tears.”
Enjoying life
Appreciation - an artist is an appreciator of certain things.
Real purpose of art isn’t so much to appreciate the art. It’s to appreciate what artists have loved.
There is real snobbery around what it’s legitimate to appreciate.
We do not have the right models.
We must become better at taking drugs.
A drug = anything that changes your mood.
Pomegranate juice is a drug in that it has good narcotic qualities psychologically.
2 ways to become richer:
1/ Make more money
2/ Discover that more of the things we could love are already to hand
We are already a good deal richer than we are encouraged to think we are.
Meaning of Iife
We have to start to plot for meaning.
We have moved from a time where meaning is imposed to creating it for ourselves.
There are 6 sources of meaning:
1/ Service - we crave a feeling that we’ve made an impact on people’s lives
2/ Connection
3/ Transcendence - liberation from the petty aspects of life. Become freed from the burden of the ego.
4/ Belonging - able to identify with something larger than ourselves
5/ Self-knowledge / understanding - the task of civilisation is to help us achieve self-knowledge.
6/ Order (flow of activity) - as a species, homo sapiens has an impulse to arrange / divide / systematise
When thinking about meaning, ask yourself, what problems do you want to solve for other people?
