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The answer is actually quite simple. Medicine works with definitions and not with distinctions.
So similar things seen as same… And some similar things seen as different.
Example: Fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, Epstein Barr syndrome.
They are all the same, I just googled it… Myalgic encephalomyelitis is also the same.
The method they use is trying to label the thing in question as fast as possible, so there is certainty.
Uncertainty is not comfortable… this may be the reason so few people are willing to remain uncertain.
When Werner Erhard, founder of est some 50 years ago, could have said it this way: The reason I am a forum leader and you are not, is because I can stand, stay standing in the face of something not working longer than anyone. You jump into conclusion to reduce the discomfort.
So distinguishing is not comfortable. But distinguishing leads to 70-100% truth value, while defining leads to 10% truth value.
Big difference. And when your life depends on it, when your money depends on it, when your relationships depend on it, you may want to consider a higher than 10% truth value method.
What is this ‘jumping into conclusions‘, thing?
I see it all the time. In fact I only see that… No one has any patience for the whole truth. They see a little sliver of the truth and they consider it the whole truth.
In every single discovery, in every single political commentary, sports commentary, religion sermon, relationship issue… etc. etc. etc. people come up for air pronouncing some sliver of the truth, and consider it the whole truth.
It’s mental slothfulness, as Wallace D. Wattles calls it. Or spiritual slothfulness, physical… no matter the area, it is slothfulness.
If they hung out with the issue longer, they would be able to see the whole picture, but they don’t.
This includes every single one of my clients, every single participant in Landmark Education’s programs, including the leaders.
It takes a certain kind of person who can say what they saw and not project it, not consider it the last sentence in the matter. A person who uses commas, or the three dots… to indicate that it is not over until it is over.
Which is, judging from the size of the universe, the size of the area of what you don’t know that you don’t know in that pie chart, is pretty impossible to exhaust.
Definitions, pronouncements are all partial truths, rendering everything else most likely not true… and you end up with a low truth value.
Tests that say someone’s condition is cancer, while it isn’t. Or making descriptive names to a condition that you don’t understand. And a humanity that is castrated, disabled, and is suffering.
I have found that unless something has at least a 70% truth value, then it can be more harmful than useful.
Why 70%? I guess that is how high on the Tree of Life a human can go.
Curiosity that can be satisfied in a lifetime is really idle curiosity…
Real curiosity doesn’t look for answers, it looks to see. Looks to explore, not answers.
Looking for answers is the slothful’s method. The ‘cheap closure now’ method of most humans alive today.
How many people are not like that? About a thousand… That pesky thousand again.
What is this hurry, this impatience to get THE ANSWER about?
I think, maybe, that human evolution has gotten stuck on the level of individual evolution: age 3.
Just watch a little kid, age 3, as they refuse to listen to anyone. Instead they press that they already know.
What is that about?
When you are little, there is a separation between you and the rest of humans: the kids who don’t know… you. And the adults who seem to know everything.
So you decide that the way to live is to know, or at least pretend that you know. Adults, seemingly, are allowed to do everything, while you are limited, restricted, disciplined, and that is not good. You want to be allowed to do everything you want to do. So you start to pretend that you know.
When in class I ask people a question, a question that would either require thinking, or a question that is completely new, there is deep silence. No one is willing to say: I don’t know.
And that is the end of curiosity.
The very few that don’t pretend, they remain curious. And then even their curiosity is killed somewhere along the way. So we are left with the one thousand.
Another reason this ‘cheap closure now’ is the norm, is because humanity doesn’t like discomfort.
Not knowing, not being sure, is mighty unpleasant. Really. So in the face of that unpleasantness, humans jump the gun.
This is probably also connected to the fallacy that quick is better than slow. That quick thinking means smart. And the quickest man wins… Or woman.
And here is another interesting tidbit.
Although you can raise your mental toughness. Although you can raise your tolerance to unpleasant, to discomfort, not many people volunteer… unless it is dressed up in some fancy promises… like the Wim Hof method.
The only benefit from the Win Hof method, if you know that that is the goal, is an elevation of your tolerance… but…
I am going to dedicate an entire article to the Win Hof method…
but… when you need a higher TLB, higher tolerance to unpleasant, controversial, or ugly, the Wim Hof method gives you nothing. OK, maybe if you do some Wim Hof breathing… then you get dulled to the ‘THREAT’ enough to not care… but your TLB didn’t rise.
Why? Because if you limit your TLB to extreme conditions, then that is where you’ll have it… not in everyday life.
Anyway, I am going to do a workshop with a small group to see and then practice what one can do to increase one’s mental toughness, one’s TLB.
Spoiler alert: allowing is the most potent tool in your tool box to increase mental toughness. Ultimately I managed to raise my mental toughness (TLB) to 70 with just that… and, of course, practice. Lots of practice… exposing myself and committing to do things I didn’t want to do…
Raise your TLB for mental toughnessIf you don’t expose yourself to additional unpleasantness, then your limit is raising it to 2…
So having a project, saying yes to challenges, trying new things is needed so you learn your limitation… Double of zero is still zero.
PS: The workshop is on Saturday August 12, 4 pm EDT… that is New York Daytime Savings time on the gotowebinar platform. So you won’t see me, and I won’t see you.
