Cause and Effect

It’s amazing how little attention people pay to the simple process of cause and effect. There’s a common saying that the best definition of insanity is, “Doing the same thing again and again, while expecting the outcome to change.” By that definition, maybe the majority of working people—and nearly all their managers —today are insane.

OK, so that's the piece I came across. Now I'd like to try & put down a few thoughts that arise out of that.

Choosing a game plan for life based on short-term gratification

What has all this to do with life, work, and slowing down? The answer can be expressed in a simple equation:

Old Habits + Old Thinking + Short-term Viewpoint = Predictable Consequences

This seems to be the game plan for life that many people follow.

But if you want to build a less stressful, better, more enjoyable and more satisfying and happier life, you won’t do it by sticking with the way the majority think and act today: following current fashion while looking only to the immediate future.

A short-term, conservative mindset is not your friend if you want your life to change for the better. Nor is clinging to security. If you stick with habits and thoughts that are comfortable and undemanding, and don’t look much further ahead than next week or next month, expecting any different outcome from what you’ve experienced up till now is so illogical it must be described as form of insanity(?)

A game plan for positive change

To produce slow, measured change you should try changing one, or perhaps two, of the terms in front of the equals sign in the equation above. For example:

Old Habits + Old Thinking + Longer-term Viewpoint = Potential for Different Consequences

I say “potential” because those old habits and thinking will still hold much of your life in place until the longer-term viewpoint starts (fairly slowly) to change them.

The same would be true if you changed your habits, but kept your current ways of thinking and short-term outlook. There would be some change, but your old-style, short-term thinking would keep pulling you back towards the way you’ve always reacted to events until now—and thus to very similar consequences.

To make major changes, you must change habits and thinking and viewpoint at the same time:

New Habits + New Thinking + Longer-term Viewpoint = All New Consequences

If you do that, the “law” of cause and effect will ensure different outcomes and paths through life. When people have some life-changing experience, they often describe it as having turned their lives upside down. They can’t think as they did before, nor can they bring themselves to fall back on their old habits or see the world in the old way. They have new thinking, new habits, a new outlook, and therefore their life is totally changed.

Life-changing experiences . . . on demand

Armed with this insight, you can create your own life-changing experiences. Open your mind to new thoughts, lengthen and broaden your outlook, and try new ways of behaving. You can definitely expect different results to come about if you do that. The major drawback to a short-term, conservative, risk-averse mindset is not that it’s always wrong (though often it is), but that it’s static.

When you choose to alter your life in a controlled manner, inner change precedes outer change. You change yourself and how you choose and new consequences arise as a result. When outer change forces inner change on you, it’s nearly always due to some traumatic life event. That’s what happens when you stay dumb and happy until the universe forces you to make a major course correction.

If you wait until that happens, it’s likely to be painful. Wouldn’t it be far better to choose change than be compelled to experience it through a life-altering trauma?

The practice of Tolerance

The more strongly you cling to what matters most to you, the more fiercely you will respond to any threat, real or imagined, against it. People find it hard to cope calmly with such a slight danger as disagreement with the values they hold. How can someone pose a threat to your beliefs simply by holding different ones? Yet friendships are ended, families disrupted, work teams destroyed, careers derailed, and marriages wrecked by nothing more tangible than a disagreement about what is valued or believed by one of the parties. It makes no sense.

Of course, it does once you understand the fear. By refusing to accept your beliefs and values as mine too, I undermine, just a little, your confidence in what you believe. If I go further and openly oppose or denigrate your point of view, the threat is greater and the emotional response will increase in proportion. This is the paradox. The more strongly people believe in something, the less easy it is for them to cope with others who don’t. That’s why clubs become exclusive. That’s why we’ve had centuries of religious and political persecution.

Every day, we must all must face people whose view of the world does not match ours. You may have to work with them, serve them as customers, or answer to them as your boss. If you cannot learn to tolerate different—even uncomfortable—beliefs and viewpoints cheerfully, you’ll cause yourself and others continual pain. The dark side of your passions is always there, waiting to disrupt your life.

Strong values are usually seen as something to be applauded. Maybe. They also increase the danger of bigotry, self-righteousness, discrimination, persecution, and obsession. I’ve met many cases of good, principled people unaware of how they allow the dark side of their passions and fears to turn them into narrow-minded, cruel tormentors of anyone who disagrees sufficiently with them.

St. Paul wrote (in one version of the Bible) that without charity we are nothing. He’s not an authority much given to quoting, but in this case I believe he was pointing to something essential. One of the meanings of charity in Webster’s dictionary is “leniency in judging others, forbearance.” In other words, tolerance. If your values are strong but you do not practice charity and tolerance, the steep slope into bigotry, discrimination, and persecution is already under your feet.

A "Janet" writes about "inspirational" versus "institutional" leadership

I’d be cautious about getting simplistic here with “inspirational leadership = good, institutional leadership = bad”. The other great leader of the 20th century would have to be Nelson Mandela. His moral influence reverberated around the world when “institutionally helpless” in prison. However… he also continued to exercise moral leadership AND institutional leadership as President of South Africa. In that capacity, the Truth and Reconcillation process he instituted is one of the utterly remarkable stories of civil (indeed Christ-like) use of institutional power.

We actually live in a world of institutions… schools, governments, businesses… this is our current reality. I would rather leadership of these organisations be exercised by people who also have moral authority, than by those who are narcisists or worse.

Organisational leadership puts good people occasionally into moral grey zones… but isn’t it better to have bosses who agonise over whether there is any alternative to making good people redundant, than bosses who are only interested in maximizing short term profits to maximise their short term bonuses? Isn’t it better to have presidents / prime ministers / governors etc. who prayerfully agonise over whether tax increases to fund initiatives to benefit the poor might in fact increase unemployment and increase the numbers of poor people (for example)… rather than leaders whose only consideration in decisions is shoring up votes for the next election?

I do not believe aspiring power for power’s sake is ever Jesus’ way. But I do believe some Christians are called to institutional leadership. At least… I hope some are. I don’t want all institutional leadership to be exercised by those whose moral character is weak.

Ghandi exercised inspirational leadership only… and changed a nation. Mandela exercised inspirational leadership and (for a time) institutional leadership… and changed a nation. I think both types of leadership MAY be an expression of God-given vocation.

But of course… temporal power corrupts so often we take it up with fear and trembling.

"That Sunday morning feeling!?"

Prefering sign to thing signified

But certainly for the present age, which prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, representation to reality, the appearance to the essence... illusion only is sacred, truth profane. Nay, sacredness is held to be enhanced in proportion as truth decreases and illusion increases, so that the highest degree of illusion comes to be the highest degree of sacredness.
Feuerbach, Preface to the second edition of The Essence of Christianity

Always Leunig challenges

"What shall it profit a man ..?"

“What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world yet lose his own soul?” (Mark 8:36)

That question is just as relevant today as then. Is it a fair calculation of your personal “bottom line” to look only at getting and spending? Is it enough to make as much personal profit as possible, if the cost includes wrecking relationships, threatening your own health, and reaching the end of your life rich, alone, and despised? What if your personal profit comes mostly by exploiting others or pillaging the environment? Is that acceptable, merely because it makes sense in financial terms? What value do you put on a clear conscience and a civilized world?