There are a couple of ways to understand a pie.
Is pie = filling + crust?
Or is pie = slice 1 + slice 2 + ... + slice 8?
Say, how do you honestly answer somebody who asks the following:
- "I want to bake a pie, but should I bake slice 1 first or slice 8 first?"
- "Should I eat the filling first or the crust first?"
I think the immediate, natural response is not, "Well, technically, you bake all slices at once, you see" or even "You eat the crust and filling together, but I suppose your teeth usually hits the crust first, hmm". It's more like, "That's... not how it works", or "What are you talking about?".
It's clear they don't really know what a pie really is, much less ever had one. (Unless, of course, you're talking about some weird deconstructed pies à la molecular gastronomy... in which case, what are you talking about?) Don't you just get this real aggravating feeling that you don't even want to grace that question with an answer, because it might confirm their ass-backwards way of thinking? And yeah, they're not technically doing anything wrong, and you can technically answer their questions like I showed. But something's off. Why would you think about baking pies in terms of slices? It's the kind of situation that makes you want to go, "Okay hold up there, what are you exactly imagining that baking is, and what a pie looks like?" I'm talking about those situations where a question just baffles you because it's so... wrong somehow.
It brings to mind the image of some deeply enlightened Zen teacher frustrating his arrogant young student with his answers (perhaps with a koan?). Why won't you just answer the question, teacher? Tell me... is it, or is it not! Yet the youth isn't necessarily in the wrong here. Technically and literally, things are or things aren't. But perhaps, by giving the student a "straight answer" -- i.e. an answer that fits with the student's understanding -- the Zen teacher would be confirming the student's mindset, terminating potential development there. This would be a disservice to the student, choosing to specify their understanding in favoring of expanding it.
More and more I notice I'm that youth, but surrounded by Zen teachers everywhere. I'm that strange dude who hasn't had pie before, doesn't know what it is, can't even ask the right questions about it. I've been noticing that fewer of my questions, even smaller ones, can be answered directly but instead require these difficult little enlightenments... the ones that make me go "Oh, I was totally thinking about it the wrong way" afterwards.
But as they say, questions are more important than answers. A question zooms in, cuts and joins reality into different possibilities, and presents it. An answer simply chooses one out of these. In fact, my philosophy professor once said that philosophy is not really about answering tough questions (along the lines of "What's the meaning of life? What is love?"), but rather about restructuring your mind... something about replacing and shuffling the "cabinets" of our minds which hold our thoughts, experiences. So, basically questions, and asking the right ones (it's my belief that "what is the meaning of life" is the wrong question, but that's for another time).
You know, a real nice side effect to actually changing up your whole brain is that it sort of makes things that were hard before, easier. Sure, I've made do with some more elementary mindsets, but it's always a struggle, building rulesets and attempting to imitate what seems to come so naturally to others. Like the guy that knows the moves of the dance, but something about how he shifts his weight and balance seems... not as natural, flowing. At best, I'm only 80% there. But then when it "clicks", it clicks.
It makes me think of this quote by Carl Jung:
We don't solve our problems, we outgrow them.
Lately I've become more and more convinced of its truth. Or am I just more and more understanding it?
It reminds me of those childhood and adolescent problems we outgrew: playground vendettas, puppy love, drama. And more generally: things never tried, curiosities never satisfied, naïve dreams never accomplished... all these "problems" becoming, for lack of better words, irrelevant upon simply growing up. (I'm thinking of "problem" to include "things we want", not just "things we want to stop happening".) Forgotten, maybe? Discarded, in favor of something better?
Growing up is a little bit complicated, isn't it? That old cliché "you'll understand when you're older" made it sound real easy, automatic. In reality, the process involves what can only be described as "paradigm shifts". It's less like the stream of incrementally building knowledge I once thought it was, and more like, I don't know, getting hit by a truck? Multiple trucks? But, good trucks, helpful trucks!
The things we saw and wanted as children are as ripples on the surface, caused by some deeper system of undercurrents below. Once we grow up and see the undercurrents, we laugh at the past. Somehow, that past seems so trivial! We were so dumb, we say. And in our arrogance we are caught off guard when it happens again and again, when we are swept deeper and deeper still.
It feels so great, doesn't it, expanding your mind, changing out the cabinets. Understand the true nature of pie! Answer that Zen koan! Even Plato was all about it, except he thought there was an end to it. Just look into the Sun, he said. But that's the thing, there doesn't quite seem to be an end, does it? No Sun, no Forms. And plus, isn't it somehow dissatisfying, that so many of those things we've been dying to try, accomplish, get... are only easy, trivial, and gettable when we're past the point of caring about them at all? Isn't it maddening, that most things you really want, you only get when you stop wanting them as much? And even when you do get them, you and that "more mature brain" of yours will just find something else to want!
So... is ignorance truly bliss? Should we just stay children, so our wants stay simple and attainable? Maybe we are doomed to either never be satisfied, or to never grow at all. Is this some cruel trick of the mind? Of the universe? If so, I need to understand!Perhaps that's because of the complexity of the things we want today. The things that seem valuable to us are exactly that -- they seem valuable because they are fragments of things we can't quite understand and attain, and therefore appear valuable. So they are only valuable in our shallower frame of mind.
It's not that we want only things which are inherently elusive. It's just that once we understand something, we no longer want that thing anymore, because typically once we have reached some higher understanding, the world complexifies, and there are other things that will provide us greater fulfillment. The previous things just appear to be "simple pleasures", literally.
Once we calm down a little, we might get a little meta and understand that we're posing the wrong questions and that we need to deepen our understanding. So the following is a discussion of two parts: decoupling want from knowing, and decoupling want from happiness.
Wanting is independent of knowing (in some sense). Want, if the neuroscientific framework is to be believed, is driven by dopamine. Hits of dopamine encourage us to eat food, drink water, have sex. But the modern world is complex, and so are our wants. This happens because our immediate, biological needs are mentally tied (rationally or not) to the more abstract needs, like love, approval, wealth. Understanding this, it's easy to see that "want" is highly dependent on the experiences of the individual and not simply a function of how deep their understanding of life is.
Put another way, "want" is just an "orientation" of sorts on top of one's understanding of the world. Understanding by itself doesn't really cause you to want or not want anything. If the way you understand the world is like some complex map of rooms, your wants are just arrows drawn on top of that map, leading to... "somewhere". However, when our maps complexify to include more pathways and rooms, our brains can re-evaluate, re-draw those arrows to perhaps find better ways to get to this... "somewhere".
For instance, imagine that Bob wants love, and through some life experiences has come to think of approval as the way to get love. Suppose then through some other big life experience, he comes to realize that approval does not imply love, and that there are healthier ways to get love, like, I don't know, loving himself. Without even resorting to neuroscience (though it's been a great help) we can see that it's no longer rational for Bob's brain to keep wanting approval from others, there's really no point anymore. But take Alice, for instance. She comes from a background where acceptance from the tribe meant the difference between life and death. Do her wants change because she realizes that she can just love herself? I doubt it.
Want-fulfillment is independent of happiness. Well actually it might not be, at least in some neuroscientific sense. Apparently while dopamine encourages you to chase wants, opiates induce that pleasant state of... well, bliss, when you finally attain that want. BUT! The point is, happiness is something deeper than just going around knocking things off your want-list. It's something much more internal, more enduring and long-term. Something something peace, something something mindfulness. I don't think I need to belabor this point, plenty of philosophers and gurus and pretty much everyone beat this topic to death.
So, conclusion. Taking all of the above in total, the quote deconstructs as follows (but not like a weird pie):
- 1. Solving our problems = actually fulfilling wants
- 2. Outgrowing problems = accruing deeper understanding, which cause us to re-align our wants. no longer wanting the previous stuff
- Important to note, wanting and knowing are independent, we do not simply chase that which is elusive
- Quote says: we do 2 more than 1.
- Author understands this, and is concerned: But wait, does that mean happiness eludes us forever? Is this some sick joke?
- Author is no longer concerned (?): No, the assumption is that happiness comes from getting what we want. But... happiness is independent of reaching goals, remember? (Or, it should be. It can be? I hope it is.)
Appendix
For example, in the behavioral sciences we have models which delineate between visual/auditory/kinesthetic learners, or categorize of mental illness, or even label personalities. I wonder what kind of impact advances in brain sciences will have on such models -- perhaps it will explain away and dissolve the categories as different activation patterns or different functions in the brain. As our understanding grows, perhaps categories will not be as useful. Kind of like how modern chemistry and atom theory makes splitting things up into Aristotelian elements a bit silly. Sure, you could index everything in the world by its makeup of "fire", "earth", "air", and "water", but... why? We already know it's just atoms.
Further examples (will add as they come to mind)
References
The Neuroscience of Wanting and Pleasure | Psychology Today
We Don't Solve Our Problems, We Outgrow Them | HuffPost Life
Notes
Mathematics and projection-- 3d rotating cube casting shadow onto Flatlanders who see some weird shit, but like us 3d-landers know it's just a cube, really
Nobody looked any finer
Or was more of a hit at the Parkway Diner
We never knew we could want more than that out of life
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