Essay 5: Problems

Essay 5: Problems

Problems, problems, problems. Some refuse to acknowledge them, others can’t stop talking about them. Life can go so amazingly and yet somehow we always find ways to focus on the few things that go wrong. Problems are such a powerful element of our lives that one could argue every action we ever take is motivated by the will to solve one, and honestly, I fully agree with that statement. As I continue to pursue the nature of human experience, the shift from “Why do we act?” to “What are some categories of motivators to act?” will take another step further to “Why specifically do we act in the way that we do?” and “How come our perception of the same situation can be so different from others who are equally involved?”. As problems are arguably the world’s only motivator for specific action, it is an effective starting point in unraveling the rest of what's to come. I will dissect the nature of problems by contextualizing the premise through universals I already discussed, introducing some new terms to further specify said universals, detailing conceptual permanence’s relevance in further expanding our perception of reality, defining what problems are, how they alter our perception/behavior, and finally discussing some tools to assist in healthy problem-solving. 

A pattern I promised in Essay 0 is that the general groundwork for every essay will largely be laid out in previous essays, this case is no different. The first premise that must be asserted is that needs exist in the form I detailed in Essay 1. They are both physiological and psychological, they increasingly hunger for their specific type of satiation the more they are deprived of it, and that hunger comes up in the form of urges. The second premise, as is also detailed in Essay 1, is that urges are the sole fuel for every action we ever take. We always act in some capacity or another to address an urge and they are broadly prioritized by strength. For example, even though we almost always feel some level of thirst, that is not the main priority when we are going through a panic attack, so until either the panic attack dies down or we choose to focus on the thirst we will not even notice the feeling of thirst in the background. Another example is how we can be having so much fun that we do not even notice that we got cut or didn’t eat. Finally, the third premise, which is new, is that “action” must be and is specified into a specific action to be acted upon. At its core, to solidify my overall claim that we act because of our needs, this final premise must be agreed upon, and through it, we can explore what makes problems such a powerful and dominant force in our lives.

I mentioned before that an interaction consists of needs, things, and actions to address the needs in question. The involvement of things serves as the element that helps us decide on a specific course of action. If the course of action we pursued in any given moment was solely determined by our needs then there would be far less consistency in the way people act than we see in reality since there are many courses of action that could hypothetically address the urge said need is creating. The existence of things grounds the courses of action a person would pursue in what is present in their field of awareness; each thing has a story and some of their stories have interactions that resolved or worsened the urge being experienced, thus we can limit our scope of analysis during an interaction to only those things that we are aware help get us to where we want to be and determine an action based on that. Thus, the things in our field of awareness are ultimately what determine how “action” in the broad sense gets focused into “an action” in the specific sense. That set of things in our apparent, phenomenological awareness is what I will call the state-of-things, inspired in part by the Wittgensteinian concept of the state of affairs. While we can, and do, focus on things individually, the act of charting specific action (a course of action) depends on the analysis of the set of things that are relevant, influencing factors to the outcome we want. For that matter, we never interact with a thing individually, we do so with the context of its environment and the things within its (the environment’s) stories. There are two additional points worth noting though. First, two people in the same room can have radically different states-of-things, as perception is not “objective”, each person’s state-of-things is evaluated relative to the outcome they are pursuing. A guy who is trying to flirt with a woman is not particularly aware of the painting on the wall he noticed earlier since his focus is on the woman and anything that can help him get her interest. Whereas the uninterested woman is highly aware of the painting as it's a pretty effective way to look preoccupied and she does not want to deal with him. Additionally, some other guy who is more intelligent and also wants to speak to the woman does notice the painting as he has enough knowledge of it to use it as an icebreaker. So not only do people who try to accomplish different outcomes see the world differently from one another, but two people who are attempting to achieve the same result can view the world differently since one of them has a story associated with a thing that gave said thing the attribute of being helpful for the goal that the other does not. To reiterate, it is that understood relevance that most influences an item’s presence in one’s state-of-things. The second point is that people can be aware of things that are not currently present; be it a thing they cannot see at the moment or something that does not even exist yet/anymore. This point refers to a concept I call conceptual permanence, which I will detail in the next paragraph. Where all of the above proves relevant to problems is that problems involve a state-of-things and they involve needs/urges, but they precede action so interaction is not a relevant term. I will use the term situation to describe the awareness of a state-of-things from the perspective of our needs. A situation precedes action, and we act in accordance with the situation. Situations are broadly what motivate specific action but we can get more specific, first though, a few words on conceptual permanence.

As mentioned above, conceptual permanence is the ability to place things that you are not tangibly interacting with within your state-of-things. For example, a situation where a friend of yours is eating some cake does not raise any alarm bells in a vacuum. But knowledge of the context that your sister ordered that cake for a wedding that is in two days suddenly makes this a massive problem. If one were to further compound that with the knowledge that there are peanuts in the frosting and your friend goes into anaphylactic shock when exposed to peanuts, then suddenly this situation became a hell of a lot more panic-inducing. Neither the wedding, your sister, the peanuts, the allergy, nor the anaphylactic shock were tangibly present or observable in that situation but they are still relevant parties to your friend eating cake, and thus within your state-of-things in that moment. Note that this requires a highly sophisticated understanding of cause and effect, something that experimentation motivated by uncertainty via interest helped establish. This is how the understanding of cause and effect is most relevant to our daily lives; imagine living never being able to understand the consequences our actions generate because they have not happened yet? We take for granted that we can do this but even the smartest animals have only a limited and focused capacity for it. This is also the principle behind deferred gratification. In a vacuum, we would rather be exploring cool ideas than work (I am at work as I write this), but someone who can defer gratification understands that doing well at their job ensures the security of their income and potentially higher earnings potential. Almost every one of their needs is screaming at them to just open YouTube and get on some video essays but the understanding of the inevitable consequence of doing so regularly prevents one from starting the habit. However, the fact that their work is boring or humiliating is still a situation, and as such elicits specific action (applying for new jobs, networking, getting better at the current job, escapism, etc.). However, if I were to make one correction, I’d use the more apt term that serves as a near-synonym for situation in this context; problem. 

Problems are situations where the state-of-things is seen as incompatible with our needs. I mentioned that theoretically, it is situations that motivate specific action, which is no doubt true, as it has the fuel (urges) and the direction (state-of-things), but the gap between the theoretical and reality lies in discussing what causes urges. It is the discrepancy between where our needs want us to be and where our state-of-things suggests we are/will be. So situations, while real, is used as a more theoretical term in the context of “motivating specific action”; if the situation does not involve a discrepancy between our state-of-things and needs then most likely we would not act upon it. This is what makes problems such a powerful force, we are always performing some kind of specific action, which implies the urges that fuel it, which implies a discrepancy between our state-of-things and where our needs want us to be. Every action we take is done for the purpose of reshaping the world or ourselves (cumulatively making up our state-of-things) to be more conducive to our thriving. Do not interpret problems in their bolded context to mean something bad or stressful though, even relaxation is acting upon the problem that you were not previously enjoying yourself as much as you could now. This is to say it is a matter of prioritization; relaxation was not the priority when you had no accumulated PTO, children to feed, and were past due on rent but for some reason or another either some PTO opened up, all the immediate problems were addressed, or you realized it was necessary to stay healthy in the long run and now it can finally be stationed as a priority. This is a consequence of the nature of urges which is likely the most important piece of practical understanding needed to properly understand how to deal with problems.

Since problems elicit urges, and urges are broadly prioritized by strength, this also means reality itself shifts in accordance to our problem. Take the unintelligent man that was about to flirt with the woman as an example. Any combination of any portion of the seven needs can explain why one would want to talk to a woman but the point is that (ideally) his state-of-things did not include a relationship and he wanted one. This incompatibility (problem) created the urge, and now his state-of-things consists of primarily whatever helps him address that urge or whatever stands in his way. This narrowing of the world to tools and obstacles relative to an objective becomes more extreme the stronger the urge and leads to no less than three implications. First, this narrowing may account for why we prioritize urges at all. The potential reason why we are not aware of our thirst during a panic attack is that the panic attack is backed by such a strong urge that everything in the world is narrowed to it and what it demands of us, not leaving any room for thirst until it subsides or we actively focus on it. This is why we are so bad at solving our own problems a lot of the time. The fact that we are emotionally involved with the situation narrows our perspective, rushes our analysis, and causes us to focus on what could lead to the appropriate change in our state-of-things even if that thing is outside of our control. Second, even though it seems identical to what we just talked about, reality itself changes to suit our problems on a regular basis. Yes, our state-of-things does narrow when we have a strong urge, but this point illustrates that what this narrows to changes depending on the prioritized urge and what things our stories assign the attributes of being helpful/harmful to it. And third, shocker, our behavior changes depending on how we feel. Everything else equal, having a different primary urge causes us to take a different specific action as not only does the motivation change, the state-of-things that specific action derives from changes. This all stands in the way of self-control and effective problem solving so how do we overcome these difficulties?

The effective handling of problems requires a reexpanding of our narrowed state-of-things. When we are trying to solve a problem and we are stuck, the solution is often (not always) not to “dial in” and keep hammering away at it, a tactical and intentional retreat can be helpful. This may not require physical separation from the problem (although it may be helpful), even taking a few deep breaths and mentally detaching ourselves from the goal can lower the adrenaline enough for us to take other things into account. Even when we are not stuck this can stop us from making impulsive actions. Since our awareness narrows, we are not considering matters we consider external to the urge that fuels solving this specific problem, but we may forget that our actions negatively impact another priority that is not in focus at that moment. Highly effective people tend to take this up to another level by detaching emotion from logic to the best of their abilities and considering their full set of priorities before ever acting at all. Act first, cry later is another way to put it. All of us are worse at it than we think we are and assuming that we are good at it is also immensely unhelpful so having a reference point outside of ourselves that cannot be negotiated with (calendar, list of weekly priorities, someone who will hold you to account) helps in ensuring we weigh all the positives of addressing the problem with the negative externalities it can lead to. Referencing this kind of material also allows us to reorganize our day in such a way as to minimize the negative externalities. What's more, taking the time to review these resources may serve as an effective brainstorming tool, as maybe there are synergies with tasks you are already about to do or maybe a key word jogs your memory of another tool that can be used that you never thought of in your narrowed perspective. 

I want to finish by reemphasizing that to the best of my knowledge, everything we do is done to solve a problem. Even actions that seem directly contradictory to solving what you believe are your most urgent problems are solving your most urgent problems, the disconnect lies in a lack of awareness of what your most urgent problems really are emotionally. By taking a first principles approach of staying in regular communication with our needs we can sympathize with ourselves more effectively and understand what we actually want out of life. Also, be forgiving with yourself. Self-criticism is not a long-term solution, it degrades your health, limits your creativity, and is wildly ineffective from a problem-solving front. To solve a problem we must detach ourselves from it to broaden our perspective, self-criticism increases our emotional attachment to the goal which ironically makes solving the problem harder. Remember, we value an outcome because we give it the power to meet our needs, the greatest reminder we can ever give ourselves is that there is a core to our being that is endlessly certain. If we lean on it as our primary source of significance and certainty, then we take away our problems' power to limit our perspective. Yes, we are evolved to be problem-solving machines, but purpose and self transcends our problems. We’ll get to that in book 3.

That is all, see you all sometime by February 3 for Essay 6: Logic as Subjectivity!