Mental Traps_ The Overthinker's Guide to a Happier Life - Andre Kukla [42]
At this stage in our struggle against regulation, we’re apt to say things like “The only rule is that there are no rules.” Like the skeptic who is certain that nothing can be known for sure, we’re oblivious to the untenability of our position.
What causes us to resort to cumbersome prescriptions when effortless impulsivity would suffice? There can be only one motive. We have lost all confidence in impulsivity as a guide for action. Some of us are no longer aware that impulses are even capable of guiding action, whether for good or ill. We think that as soon as we cease to tell ourselves what to do, we will stop dead in our tracks, having no basis upon which to choose one action over another. We make our way through the world by perpetually kicking our own behinds, first to the left and then to the right.
And after we recognize both the existence and the legitimacy of certain classes of impulse, we still insist on passing each individual case to our prescriptive apparatus for final approval. We’re afraid that raw impulse, unchecked by prescription, will make our actions chaotic, absurd, or downright dangerous. If we don’t tell ourselves what to do at every moment, we may wander away from home, forget to urinate, or stick a thumb in our eye. This view is utterly refuted by the ordered existence of the non-prescribing “lower” animals, not to mention trees and plants. To be sure, rabbits and daffodils can’t build rockets to the moon or hold committee meetings. But we’re not always busy with rockets and committees ourselves.
ormulation is the trap of indiscriminately saying or thinking something just because it seems to be true. We’re not content to marvel at a spectacular sunset. We also have to note that it’s a Marvelous Sunset, if only to ourselves. We say “Oooh” and “Aaah” and “Isn’t it a Marvelous Sunset”? and “Aren’t we Having a Good Time?” If a news reporter or a myopic friend had asked us to comment on the quality of the sunset, a brief description would be nothing more than benevolence. But what, exactly, is the point of describing these things to ourselves?
Concept-making and describing are powerful tools. Without them, we would derive very little benefit from the experience of others. One after another, we would nibble at the same deadly fungus and fall into the same ravine. We would have no help in discovering the orderliness of the seasons, the movements of the sun and the moon, and the stages of human life. In sum, we would be indistinguishable from any other large land mammal. Nevertheless, there are also disadvantages to saying what a thing is. We fall into the trap of formulation when we bring these disadvantages upon ourselves without compensation.
The most obvious disadvantage of formulation is that it leads to division. Every time we describe or evaluate an experience before it’s over, we are doing two things at once. On the one hand, we’re watching a sunset; on the other hand, we’re talking or thinking about it. We’ve already seen how division destroys pleasure. We can’t really watch a sunset and evaluate it at the same time, for the activity of evaluating takes our attention away from the sensual experience. The moment we say “Isn’t it Marvelous?” we’re no longer marveling.
Our experience is even more drastically curtailed if we fall prey to public formulation, wherein we strive to write it all down or tell it to a friend before we forget. In this trap, we act as though experiences counted for nothing until they entered the public domain. A beautiful sunset or an entertaining thought becomes a burden to be unloaded as quickly as possible. We rush away from pleasure immediately upon perceiving it, so that we may communicate it to the world. Good news oppresses us until we lay hold of pen and paper or a receptive ear. We “can’t wait” to tell.
Photography introduces a new dimension to the art of public formulation. There are people who curse their fate for coming upon an interesting