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Being sensitive and kind has made me *significantly* smarter, because itās given me access to information and perspectives that people actively avoid sharing publicly. I know so much shit that I canāt quite talk about (because I donāt have permission to say it)
Generally though - people go through a lot more shit than you think. Families are a huge source of pain and suffering. Lots of workplaces are toxic. The bigotry and prejudice you read about in the news is just the tip of the iceberg - most people suppress and contain and hide
In a way then all public discourse is in a sense intellectually dishonest, because people often talk about X as a sort of avoidance or coping mechanism, and the emotional energy expended is often disproportionate. Selective truths can paint a dishonest picture
I have at least one high-resolution picture of an adult man in his 50s whoās spent a lifetime railing against his government when itās quite clear to his loved ones that his real unacknowledged beef is with himself (I hope this is vague enough to describe multiple people... š)
but I donāt mean that as a dig to that particular dude, you know? life is hard and messy, the truth is elusive. even our own truths, about ourselves, to ourselves. you can spend decades missing things in plain sight, and even die not ever really knowing the truth about yourself
Letās take something fairly trivial abt me ā am I introverted or extroverted? Does the distinction matter? What is the story I truly tell myself, at the heart of it? How have others shaped my perception of me? If I woke up tmr in a strange land with no memory, who would I be?
I once read a Quora answer (I always have trouble finding it, argh) about how railroads work ā and the mindblowing thing is that nothing is actually āsecureā by itself, I think because that rigidity would be prone to damage. So itās a secure system comprising of āinsecureā layers https://t.co/l4UnUal6Tt
(If I understand correctly, the Internet basically works the same way ā thereās all sorts of confusing, messy gunk beneath the surface of what seems to be a coherent, consistent experience). Iām handwaving, but the same is surely more true of the messier gunk of identity & story https://t.co/vGDdMjQcfH
And because story and identity interfaces with culture, via iffy things like language, itās even messier. A lot of what Iām trying to do with my life as a writer-thinker is to basically crack open the hood (which is welded shut for lots of people) and figure out WTF is going on
I donāt want to be āhappyā or āsuccessfulā nearly as much as I want to just figure out as much as I can abt wtf is going on, who tf am I, how have I been bamboozled ā systemically, innocuously, maliciously, inadvertently, accidentally, whatever. Reverse-bamboozlinā, Feynman style
While we have figured out a lot about Newtonian physics ā how to send supercomputers to the stars ā weāre basically still in the Stone Age when it comes to figuring out how to deal with ourselves and each other. The amount of variance in peopleās skill-level here is *staggering*
āWe have guided missiles and misguided menā ā the more I think and talk about this the more I find myself centering on sensitivity. I repeat myself: Humans who flourish are sensitive (to inputs from reality), smart (to make sense of those inputs) and strong (to take action).
We already live in a world that obsessively cargo-cults smarts and strength. We admire the smart, we admire the strong. But there is a huge sensitivity gap. Sensitivity is still derided as weakness. From my POV itās super-clear that this is a massive hole in our collective boat
Notice that this model adequately covers smarts and strength, but sensitivity not so much https://t.co/6uBic6C8XE
Circling back to my previous thread on sensitivity. I suspect I will be repeating this motif until I die, sorry in advance if it gets boring. Hopefully I will find ways to keep it interesting https://t.co/AfSIDDYY7E
Time for a thread on sensitivity. My personal model of excellence involves 3 variables: sensitivity, smarts and strength. Most people intuitively know why itās good to be smart and strong, but sensitivity is too-often framed as a weakness https://t.co/Z5gnnKhjLV
A thread about the Quora answer I mentioned - I think about it so much and so often, itās a metaphor I use a lot https://t.co/9o3HUYrlBR
I wanna talk about one of my favorite Quora answers, written in 2015 by David Rose to the question, "Why are there crushed stones alongside rail tracks?" It's an interesting answer about an engineering problem but I got a really deep, fundamental mental model upgrade out of it