Shared myths - the foundation of society

One of Homo Sapiens' most powerful skills is our ability to work together and strategize on a larger scale than any other animal. It is believed that this is what helped us edge out our other hominid competitors.

Why are we able to collaborate better than other animals?

It seems we have a unique ability to communicate abstract concepts using specialized language centers in our cerebral cortex. We are able to communicate concepts like possibilities, flow of time. For example "yesterday there was a lion near the river, and I saw it go near the mountain. It is possible you might encounter it near the hill today" vs "lion near river, dont go". This way we can share more nuanced information and benefit from each other's knowledge and coordinate better at greater distances and at a larger scale. 

(Thanks to S. Ramachandran's The Tell Tale Brain for giving me a really interesting primer into the brain, introducing me to Broca's and Wernicke's areas their quirks and sharing theories on how they must have evolved)

This ability also extends to creating shared myths. When you reach a scale where you cant see or interact with someone else, where it is impossible for all individuals to have direct access to all other individuals, shared myths can hold them together. We all agree to believe in some stories, so we have a common framework to work together towards a larger goal.

Most of the shared myths I brought up earlier - capitalism, liberalism, democracy, independence, fairness, tolerance, justice, equality, religion - all serve the purpose of enabling unprecedented scale of cooperation. They form the basis for our modern day countries and economies.

So shared myths aren't just some inconvenient by-product of society we have to deal with, it seems perfectly plausible that they forms the basis of human superiority.

This is a rather sobering thought for me. I place a lot of importance on truth and reality. But if our entire society is based on and flourishes on imagination, what is reality?

I take solace in one of my favourite quotes -
"Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?"

Shared myths

Wow, it's been 3 years since I wrote. I want to practice putting my thoughts into words again, so here we go.

Let's talk about shared myths.

The reason we, homo sapiens have been able to scale our societies so well (> 7B globally and almost fully interconnected) is our ability to create and believe in shared myths. It is what differentiates us from our ape ancestors, and it is the reason we have become the dominant species on earth (by being able to coordinate at unprecedented scale). This is one of the core ideas of "Sapiens" by Yuval Noah Harari.

What is a shared myth? An idea that is not real and only exists in our minds (the myth) that a group of us agree to believe collectively (shared). Fashion is an easy example of a shared myth. Societal norms are another.

Now, I don't believe in shared myths. Everything I believe has gone through stringent quality control and I hold very few ideas to be absolute truths. I do not blindly follow cultural and societal norms. I am aware of my biases, actively seek to understand them. What is not verifiable is always up for debate.

At least, that's what I thought till Mr. Harari helped me see the all-pervasive nature of shared myths. Our entire society for tens of thousands of years has been built on these stories, and it is very hard for us to be part of one without having strong faith in multiple stories.

Capitalism, liberalism, democracy, independence, fairness, tolerance, justice, equality, religion are all shared myths. Languages are shared myths. So is money and the idea of a country. Even Mathematics is a shared myth. What mathematics seeks to explain may be real, but numbers, algebra, integrals - the language of mathematics, is a story.  1 + 2 = 3 is true only because we all agree on the meaning of 1, 2 and 3.

Hmm.. I believe strongly in most of the examples above. As if they were true.

Yet, for each of these myths, successful societies have existed where these myths are not true. The only reason they are true now is because a large group of us believe in them unquestioningly.

Suppose I go into a coma for 5 years. Meanwhile, one of the shared myths I hold to be true - say, equality ("all persons are created equal") - has changed. Every single co-conspirator has relinquished their belief in equality.

What happens to my story now? Would I still believe it? *Should*  I still believe it? Why? Fact is - we are all not created equal. Every person is different.

Slower

I usually take the train to office. Here is a breakdown of the state of my mind during the journey -

• 10 min walk to station, stand on the right platform - active
• Less than 5 min waiting - mostly on auto-pilot
• 5 min train ride, mostly standing - active, looking out for the right stop
• 5 min walk to switch tracks - active
• 5 min train ride, mostly standing - active, looking out for the right stop
• 10 min walk to office - active

Quick predictable rides, fast walk, listening to an audiobook @ 1.5-2x. I actively and consciously drive most of the journey.

Contrast that with a bus ride to work -

• 5 min walk - active, but much less than walk to train.
• 1-15 min wait for bus - active, need to look out for and board the right bus. Can be minimize by planning ahead / looking at bus schedule.
• 15-30 min bus ride, usually sitting - mostly auto-pilot, hard to miss the stop, many more visual cues to work off. Very passive.
• 5 min walk to office - active

High variance. Duration of bus ride varies based on traffic, time of day, bus schedule. When I am on the bus / waiting for it, there is nothing I can do to speed the journey up. It's a passive journey, with few decisions, mostly done on auto-pilot.

Both journeys, if planned right, take roughly the same time.

My parents visited me recently, and my dad was curious as to why I took the train when the bus ride was so much easier!

Well, the bus ride killed my momentum, I felt sleepy at the end of it. The train ride switched my brain on for the day ahead. Built momentum, woke me up, thanks to all those mini-decisions I had to make.

That's what I told him.

But really? The more I think of it, the train ride forces me to flex my decision muscle early on in the day. I reach the office running, continue running because I want to use my momentum, and then I take the train back (still running), reach home tired, and sleep. Repeat.

If I can't sit calmly for 20 mins without losing momentum, perhaps I need to slow down. The more I reflect, the more I feel I was taking solace in the busy-work that taking the train offered. If I spent my prime morning time looking out for MRT stops, isn't that time lost to thinking about bigger problems?

I take the bus now. I walk slowly and deliberately to the bus stop, listen my audio book at 1x speed (I used to do 1.5-2x) on my trip to work. Then I walk - slow and deliberate to office. I arrive fresh, thoughtful and composed. On my way back, I sit and reflect. Let my mind wander.

Sometimes, you need to slow down.

Faster

Sometimes, you do better when you increase difficulty.

I occasionally play Flight Commander when taking a quick break. It's a simple game - direct aircrafts to airstrips by drawing a path and make sure the planes don't crash into each other. Each plan landed gives you a point.

I was terrible at it, till I noticed the ">>" button at the bottom. It doubles the speed of the game, technically making it twice as hard to play. I started using it to get through the easy initial stages, and slowed the game down again once there were too many planes in the air. I was still terrible at it.

One day, I decided to play an entire game at double speed and see how far I could go. I tripled my high score. Every time I played at double speed, I scored 3-4 times my normal scores.

That got me thinking, and I think a couple of factors are at play here 

1. I lack patience and get distracted easily hence losing focus. 

2. I get into flow when I make the game faster. Hence gaining focus. 

Sometimes, to increase output, we need to tweak our tasks and impose constraints on them to convert them to optimal difficulty so we reach a state of flow. And time seems to be a very good tool to achieve this.

Allowing people to change

Here is another gem from Derek Sivers. To extend his point, all our opinions, beliefs (and the meaning we give to life) are subject to change. If our projected meaning or beliefs change, our outlook changes, and our actions change.

In that case, isn't it only fair that we allow others the freedom to change as well? To give people a second chance? To not pass lasting judgement based on one-off incidents?

Newton's first law only applies when there are no external forces. Our world is full of external forces. It does not make sense to assume constancy by default. Of ourselves, or of others.

What is the meaning of Life?

We know it's 42, but what is the right question?

Here is some food for thought from Derek Sivers. Nice analysis, and I agree. He says,

"Life has no inherent meaning. Nothing has inherent meaning. Life is a blank slate. You're free to project any meaning that serves you. You're free to do with it, anything you want."

The meaning of life, then is within you - not outside. There is no absolute / inherent meaning in life, only what you project onto it.

The natural question now is how do you know what "serves you" or what you "want"? We want so many things, often conflicting things. We want different things as time progresses. The meaning that serves me now will not serve me forever. What if your future meaning is incompatible with your present meaning?

The inherent assumption in all this discussion is that a life with meaning, is more fulfilling than a life without meaning. If that is so, what about a life with meaning that keeps changing? Is that so bad?

My approach is this:

Widen your options, talk to people, and pick a meaning that makes sense now based on your current perception of life. A meaning that you think will hold true for you in the foreseeable future. And then set a tripwire - 2/5/10 years from now depending on how long term you feel the meaning will be.

Write down the meaning, this is your answer to life. Don't doubt it, go live it! Until the tripwire is triggered. At which point, repeat the process. Decide on a meaning you want to live by, based on your current situation, and go live it. Until the next tripwire!

Life now becomes a collection of sub-lives each with their own meaning. The right question then is

"What is your meaning of life, at this point in time?"

My answer? "8128"

Open, Conscientious, and Disagreeable

I recently read that, of the Big5 personality traits, the ones that distinguish an entrepreneur are

- "Openness" (to new ideas)
- "Conscientiousness" (ie. willingness to work hard towards a goal) and
- "Disagreeableness" (willingness to not conform, and be ridiculed)

It struck a chord with me. I think these are nice "rules of thumb" to evaluate a startup culture!