Circling and Making Maps

I really identified with the desire the know what it feels like to be someone else that Malcolm Ocean describes in this post.

The inner lives of other people seem like the great mysteries that demand exploration, like the Poles used to be, or the Amazon, like outer space is now. Except more mysterious than that because the details of what the Poles are like or what another galaxy is like are available to us, more and more available as tehnology gets better. But I'm not looking for what another person is like, but what it is like to be them, to think with their neural pathways, to feel with their automatized emotions, to use their habitual ways of paying attention.

This attempt to know what another consciousness experiences is what circling is about. I wondered if Malcolm Ocean did any circling at Burning Man because I know circling happens there and his language seems to overlap heavily with the way circlers talk. And the point of circling is to listen and to watch and to encourage communication that lets people get inside someone else's world.

Circlers have this wonderful phrase "the water you swim in" that refers to all the things about your own conscious experience that just seem like the way everything always is, the way water must feel to a fish. And it is that habitualized, automatized world, the water we swim in, that it feels so impossble and so appealing to understand.

I think intimacy might be having a map that corresponds more closely than most people's map to the territory of someone's inner life. The map is necessarily worse than those old maps of some barely explored continent, but with intimacy, the continent is vaguely the right shape and some coast lines are distinct from constant exploration, though others are still barely seen and mapped with distortion.

And circling is when you show your map to the person whose territory you are mapping and say, "Tell me how to make this map better." And they are amazed that anyone could have seen this detail so clearly and equally amazed that this other detail could have been so wrong. And they try to describe to the mapmaker how they see and what they feel. And both mapmaker and territory benefit because the mapmaker gets a better map and a steadier hand for drawing borders and a set of tools to elicit the information he needs. And the territory sees that the terrain of his inner life is rich and interesting and valuable to someone else, that each rock or tree or spring always taken for granted as necessary and given and ordinary is actually unique, and his own view of the territory clears, no longer murky and misty--he opens his eyes, focuses hard, and sees the inner world around him distinctly.

Two Good Linky Things

1. I made Mark Sisson's brisket, and it was better than everything. Better than sex, better than peppermint bark, better than the two-hours-after-Crossfit high, better than Jane Austen. Just on the basis of this brisket, Mark is now my third favorite person after Aaron and Livy.

2. Here's a link to Ansley's YouTube, where she posted a video of me that you should all see. If you want to sum me right up, this video is it.

Late Week Love Fest

Here are some blog posts and articles that I have really enjoyed in the last week or two. Hope you find them valuable and that you enjoy my commentary on them.

Summer Visitor and People Issues at Sanguinity

A really honest and funny look into the heads of people who have trouble dealing with people. It helped me understand my less socially fluent friends and romantic partner a little better. And I was very impressed with Alyssa's introspection and the work that she puts into the Herculean effort (don't I know it!) of trying to fix your bad premises.


Recycling at Rational Jenn

In this post, Jenn recycles two awesome posts about the Amelia Peabody novels. I am working my way through the series again, and, to my delight, they are as wonderful as I remembered. Maybe better. Jenn gives you quotes, character details, and all the reason anyone might need to get out and read these books.



Humans Carved Meat Far Earlier Than Thought at CBS News

I have long been fascinated by Australopithecus afarensis, an early human ancestor. Remember Lucy? She was an A. afarensis. Anyway, some scientists made a cool new discovery, pushing back the dates on stone tool use by our ancestors a million years. Super neat-o.


August Poetry Recitation at 3 Ring Binder

I desperately want to be adopted into Lynne's family. This is not the first time I have wished it. I want to tour battlefields with action figures of the officers. I want to kayak under the Old North Bridge. And now I want to participate in their poetry recitation evenings. What a freaking cool family!!


Have a great weekend! I'm all alone and doing only my favorite things, so I definitely will.

Persistence

Amy, over at The Little Things, made a post I really like about helping Sammy to try new things and develop physical confidence. I love that Amy challenged her daughter with tumbling lessons, while still accomodating her temperament by sitting nearby in the gym. She really seems to have walked that difficult line between letting our children be who they are and helping them to develop useful life skills.

In an aside, she writes:

"Jenn Casey and Kelly Elmore have a good podcast on temperament which you can listen to here. While I agree somewhat with their, and Positive Discipline’s, position on temperament, I do have differences. Jenn and Kelly mention persistence as a temperamental trait, meaning that some children are just born more persistent than others. I believe that some tendency towards persistence may be temperamental, but I don’t believe that it is a neutral character trait. It is a virtue, and like other virtues, it may come more easily to some than others, but either way, it must be something parents actively work to foster in their children.)"

First, thanks for the mention of our podcast! The one on temperament is one of our favorites. What she said got me thinking about persistence. If fact, instead of a nap with Livy, I ended up pondering. (Thanks a lot, Amy!) Here's what I came up with.

I disagree that persistence is a virtue. A virtue is an action that is always positive; virtues are universally applicable. For instance, there is never a time when being unjust will lead to good results. There is never a time to be irrational. Dishonesty can never produce a long term good.

Persistence, however, only leads to a good outcome when we apply it to certain tasks. While we should be rational in every situation, we should not always persist. If, for instance, I was in a job I disliked very much and I could afford to leave, it would be irrational to persist in that work. If I realize that I am too tired to complete a quality essay, it is not in my best interest to persist in writing it.

However, in a situation where the circumstance call for it, persistence is necessary to achieve long term values. If I encounter a tough spot in an essay, I should persist. If my job is difficult for a week or two but very meaningful to me, I should use my persistence to make it through the tough time.

I do think that some people have a natural tendency to persistence; I observe this is the kids I teach at the gym (some will do 500 cartwheels if that's what it takes to perfect it), Livy and Jenn's kids (Morgan seems to have a harder time letting go of a frustrating project than the others), and in myself and the other adults around me (I have to watch myself to make sure I am not quitting when the going gets tough, whereas Aaron has to make sure he does quit when something becomes futile.)

Like other temperamental traits, I think that each child has something to learn to manage their level of persistence. If a child is particularly persistent, she might have to learn how to take a break, how to tell the right kin of circumstances to apply persistence rationally, or how to switch gears when it's necessary because of outside influences. This child will probably overcome adversity and work hard to achieve values but might face problems with being a workaholic or not know how to budget their time to maintain more than one value at once.

If a child is not particularly persistent, she may need to learn how to push through discomfort to get to the accomplishment on the other side. But there is a bright side to this lower level of persistence too. She might be the kind of person who explores many different values and tastes a lot of the things life has to offer, and she will probably find it easy to leave bad situations. But she might need work on exploring one or two values very deeply, and she may need to learn not to jump ship too early.

Anyway, I think Amy is right that it is a parent's job to help children learn to navigate their temperaments. I hope that I give my persistent child the help she needs to let go and to apply her persistence rationally. And learning this stuff is a lifetime project. I am still learning the opposite: how to keep plugging away at something even when it's hard.

How to Throw Your Very Own Mini-Con

Hey there! Jenn and I wrote up a big post about how we managed to throw our Mini-Con. We are seriously hoping everybody and his brother jumps on the Mini-Con bandwagon, so go and look and then throw your own!!

Here's a picture from Mini-Con, just to give this post some spice:

Amazing Anit-Circ Post

I liked this post so much that I wanted to link it here. The author is a Jewish man, and he completely takes apart the religious arguments for circumcision, as well as the cultural and medical ones. I feel so strongly about this issue, and I hope all my readers will read his article. Also, watch a circumcison on the internet.


http://blog.cogito-enterprises.com/2010/05/why-i-will-never-attend-brit-milah.html

Amazing Life-Learning Blog Post

The entire post can be found at Renegade Parent.

Here's a quote from this wonderful post:

"When I listen to my child's speech developing daily, or when I watch my partner programming in a new language he has learnt, or when I read about new ideas and work them through to a satisfactory conclusion in debate, then I understand the nature of real learning - tested time and again not by a teacher but against the rigorous standards of reality. Can my child make herself understood? Will customers buy the software? Does my logic stand up to public scrutiny?"