Podcast Summary
Practicing 'Holy Befuddlement' to Combat Information Silos and Improve Relationships: By embracing non-attachment to views and practicing intuition, we can tap into deeper wisdom and improve our relationships with others. Cultivating a relationship with ourselves, embracing moral ambiguity, and practicing forgiveness can lead to liberation.
In today's world, we have become too entrenched in our views, which leads to information silos and a lack of empathy for those on the other side of issues. To combat this, we can practice 'holy befuddlement' or 'don't know mind' by embracing non-attachment to views. George Saunders, a celebrated writer, talks about how this practice can help us be less dogmatic in our thinking and improve our relationships with others. His new book, Liberation Day, explores the theme of being stuck in life and longing for freedom. By trusting intuition and responding to our work from a gut level, we can tap into a deeper wisdom. Saunders encourages us to cultivate a relationship with ourselves, embrace moral ambiguity, and practice forgiveness.
Embrace Uncertainty to Achieve True Liberation: Overcome desires and embrace uncertainty to gain the ability to make better decisions and avoid getting stuck in oneself, leading to true liberation.
The key takeaway is that true liberation comes not from external change, but by overcoming the desire for things that we want. The book encourages readers to enter a state of holy befuddlement where they question their usual easy answers and become comfortable with being in a state of not knowing. By doing so, they gain the ability to make better decisions and avoid fast mistakes. The characters in the book are stuck and long for things like nostalgia and memory, but the idea is to guide the reader towards a state of liberation, where they can see that everything changes and that getting stuck in themselves is not the way to avoid further problems.
Art and Life's Difficulties: A Humbling and Reorienting Experience: Experiencing holy befuddlement through art or challenges can remind us of our better selves and counteract negativity. Art elevates us morally by providing role models and stories help us find courage to act.
Experiencing a state of holy befuddlement through art or when faced with life's difficulties can be a humbling and reorienting experience, reminding us of a better part of ourselves. This can be especially helpful in counteracting the negativity and uncertainty that pervades our culture. Art, in particular, has the power to morally elevate us by providing role models in small but meaningful actions. By reminding us of our past experiences of kindness and daring, stories help us find the courage to do these things again in our own lives, even on a small scale.
The Power of Small Acts of Kindness and Compassion: Small acts of kindness and compassion add up to create something bigger, so focus on making small tweaks and decisions in your actions and words. Avoid self-generated expectations and observe your inclination to be an asshole due to external attention or success to benefit your future work.
Small acts of kindness and compassion are not trivial or insignificant. There is no hierarchy to compassionate action and even the smallest of deeds add up to create something bigger. In life, we only have control over the next hour and the small decisions we make in our actions and words. It is counterproductive to approach a task with the goal of doing something great, rather we should focus on making small tweaks and decisions that add up to create something great. It's important to avoid self-generated expectations and observe our inclination to be an asshole due to external attention or success, as it would not be beneficial to our future work.
Acknowledging and Utilizing the Power of Attention and Praise: Embrace the desire for attention and praise, but do not let it consume you. Use it as a motivation to strive towards creating something valuable and beautiful. Don't deny your ego but recognize it and utilize it to become the best version of yourself.
When it comes to attention and praise, it's important to admit that it affects us all and not deny our own motivations for seeking it. Instead of wallowing in that attention, it's important to use it as a motivation to fuel our work and not lean on it too heavily. While it's natural to want praise, pleasure in it should be taken as a quick hit and used as fuel to strive towards creating something beautiful and worthwhile. Denying our ego completely is silly, but recognizing it and not misunderstanding it as something it isn't is key. The aim is not to let it consume us, but to utilize it to become the best version of ourselves.
Finding Proportion and Balance in Life's Desires: It's important to prioritize healthy desires and resist the temptation of craving recognition. Embrace the challenge of sitting with contradictions, and strive for harmony between seemingly opposing ideas.
It is okay to have desires and motivations as long as they are in their proper place. While on the absolute sense, there might not be much meaning to the universe, little things like saying the right thing to someone feeling bad can matter and be good on a relative scale. It is about proportion and striking a balance between healthy desires like wanting to help others and not letting craving and thirst for recognition take over. It is essential to learn to sit with contradictions and difficult questions instead of always seeking answers. Striving for that moment where two seemingly contradictory notions can coexist can be the highest place to be.
Achieving Moral Elevation: Navigating Difficult Conversations and Decisions: Before initiating a difficult conversation or making a tough decision, engage in art or read stories to clear your mind. Strive to be kind but not passive, and take action when necessary. Avoid dogmatism and black-and-white thinking, and find moments of expansiveness to navigate conflicting thoughts.
When facing a difficult conversation or decision, it is important to clear your mind and have a moment of moral elevation beforehand. Reading stories and engaging in art can help achieve this. Avoid dogmatism and black-and-white thinking, as it can lead to discomfort and hysteria. However, being too passive can also be problematic. Strive to do no harm and be kind, but not at the expense of speaking up and taking action when necessary. The state of the world can make these conflicting thoughts more intense, but taking a step back and finding moments of expansiveness can help navigate these conundrums.
The Power of Provisional Language and Empathy in Communication: In interpersonal communication, using provisional language and building off-ramps can create space and facilitate better understanding. Empathy acknowledges roadblocks and resistance, while good hospitality shows awareness and love for the other person.
Provisional language, which involves using words like 'perhaps', 'maybe' or 'could' in arguments, can help build off-ramps and create space in conversations, even in conflict situations. This can facilitate better communication and make it more intimate. Empathy with the reader is important for effective storytelling and involves assuming the best of the reader and acknowledging potential roadblocks or resistance in the narrative. Good hospitality is also important in communication, where one is aware that the other person is present and beloved. Building off-ramps and using provisional language are important skills for interpersonal communication and can help create a truthful, yet fictional, narrative that resonates with readers.
Importance of Revision and Shifting Perspectives in Storytelling: Taking the time to revise and shift perspectives in a story can create empathy in the reader, add meaning and thematics to the story, and allow for a fair and valued journey for all characters involved.
Revision is essential in caring for the reader's journey through a story as well as caring for the characters. It is important to slow down and be tough on oneself to become a fair arbiter. The technique of shifting perspectives among characters in a story can add meaning and thematics while waking up the writer and keeping the reader engaged. It induces empathy in the reader and prompts them to see things differently. Additionally, adding a second narrator creates a shift in advocacy from one character to another, allowing the reader to witness and empathize with different perspectives. It is like occupying a god's eye view, where both characters and their journeys are cherished and valued.
The Importance of Reflecting Individual Reality in Writing: Writing should reflect the complex and diverse nature of human experience, avoiding overuse of any one technique. It's important to examine our relationship with the self and find happiness by turning down its volume.
Our perceptions of reality are individual and unique to each person, and it's important for writers to reflect that in their work. Overusing any one technique for the sake of it isn't helpful. Instead, writing should reflect the multiplicities of thoughts, feelings, and sensations happening at any given moment. The conventionally agreed reality doesn't always represent the entirety of what's going on. We're all given a self, just as we're given a body, but it's important not to become too attached to it or identify with the self as a permanent entity. Examining our relationship with our self and turning down the volume on it can be a source of happiness.
Letting Go of Ownership in Creativity: Don't hold onto every idea as your own. Embrace the temporary nature of thoughts and be willing to let go of what doesn't serve your story. Cultivate a mindful and productive approach to creativity by not taking ownership of every impulse that comes through your brain.
The Buddhist concept of illusion of self means that we don't own the impulses that come through our brains. We should have a proper relationship with ideas that come to us, considering them as temporary gifts that may need to be cut or changed. This makes it easier to 'kill your darlings' and not be attached to the clever ideas that don't serve the story. Creativity and ideation are unpredictable, and we should embrace the fact that ideas can come from anywhere - dreams, impulses, or even sentences blown in on the wind. By not taking ownership of our thoughts and ideas, we can have a more mindful and productive approach to creativity.
Exploring the Art of Creativity and Craft with George Saunders: Creativity can be sparked by a range of experiences and requires craft to bring ideas to life. Consistent meditation can help maintain a healthier relationship with oneself and ultimately lead to leaving readers speechless.
Creativity works in mysterious ways and can be influenced by a range of experiences including the Russian literature George Saunders read and his dreams. Craft plays a big role in bringing creative ideas to life and ensuring the reader feels something, even if it's not necessarily the same feeling as the writer. Although moral elevation and a greater sense of awareness would be nice, the ultimate goal is to leave the reader speechless. Consistent meditation can help maintain a healthier relationship with oneself and the mind, as avoiding it can result in old thought patterns and negative behaviors resurfacing.
The Importance of Finding the Right Practice for Improving Mental State: By being mindful of our mental state and trying different practices such as meditation, physical work, and writing, we can find what works best for us and improve our overall well-being.
Taking notice of the way our mind falls out of organization with negligence can help us resolve to do better in different aspects of life. Meditation is one of the activities that can be good for our psychological, spiritual, and physical well-being, but it is not the only thing that inclines our mind to be lighter and more positive. Doing physical work can also be an effective way to improve our mental state. While meditation can make us proud and create an egoistic desire, writing allows us to inhabit a state of mind that reduces rumination and reaction to what's already on the page. Therefore, we should try different practices and find what works best for us.
The Power of Meditation, Forgiveness, and Positive Thinking: By practicing meditation and forgiveness, we can overcome negative thoughts and achieve happiness. It's important to accept our limitations and focus on accomplishing small goals, while exploring our imagination through reading and trying new things.
Meditation can help in avoiding negative rumination and achieve more happiness. Forgiveness is limited by our spiritual imagination, and we tend to give infinite forgiveness and let go of some. In real life, forgiveness is not easy, and we are more complicated than stories. Techniques like sending a beam of light can help us realize the limits of our spiritual imagination and accept our shortcomings. Achieving small goals in our work can make us feel accomplished and happy. The absence of rumination is essential for a positive mindset. Reading and trying new things can help us explore our imagination and come up with creative ideas.
The Complexity of Forgiveness: Forgiveness is not always easy and cannot be simplified into a neat moral lesson. Understanding others can help, but in reality, it can be messy and we may struggle to forgive, even with spiritual experiences.
Forgiveness is difficult and complex, and sometimes there are offenses that we feel we cannot forgive even if we want to. Inhabiting other minds and understanding their intentions and perspectives can help us approach forgiveness, but it is not always possible. The character in the story refrains from confessing because she knows it will hurt her husband, but she cannot bring herself to forgive the person who hurt her child. It is important to acknowledge the complexity of forgiveness and resist the temptation to simplify it into a neat moral lesson. Spiritual experiences may offer temporary transcendence, but it is in the messy reality of everyday life that we must confront our limitations and struggles with forgiveness.
Embracing Failure and Imperfection in Characters and Real Life: Failure is a natural part of growth, and accepting our own mistakes can make us more relatable. By creating flawed characters, we connect with their humanity. We don't need to fully understand others' experiences, but presenting small glimpses can create empathy. Accepting eventual chaos empowers us to live fully.
It's important to acknowledge and accept our failures, as they are part of the journey towards being a better person. Realizing that even characters in stories can fall short and make mistakes helps the reader relate and empathize more with them. The goal is to have more frequent periods of moral elevation and fewer moments of failure, but it's okay to fail sometimes. In inhabiting the mind of characters or even dying people, it's not necessary to fully understand their psychology, but to give small proofs and create an illusion. Finally, everything falls apart eventually, and we should embrace this holy truth rather than being terrified of it.
Using Mechanical Means to Increase Empathy in Art: Attention to detail, specificity, and precision in language can help artists be more empathetic towards the subject matter. Understanding the continuum of emotions and using them in storytelling can encourage imagining experiences of others. Language use is critical to visualizing characters in a relatable way.
As an artist, one can learn the mechanical means to stimulate empathy in oneself using technical things like density of detail, specificity, and precision of language. Paying attention to these increases empathy towards the person being described. All feelings are on a continuum and can be used in storytelling to imagine the experience of someone radically other than oneself. This is a hopeful throwdown that encourages everyone to imagine others' experiences. The fictive corollary is essential in attention to language use when describing someone, which resulted in increased empathy. The specific sentences writers use to describe a character or situation can make the picture more clear and evident to feel compassion for them.
The Therapeutic Benefits of Art: Practicing art can lead to increased empathy, serve as a comfort, and inspire a refreshed belief in oneself. Find your form of art and reap its powerful, therapeutic benefits.
The practice of art, like spiritual practice, leads to empathy through specific technical practice that must be done. For George Saunders, writing during political turmoil and the pandemic reassured him of the power of art and how it can contain everything. Being intense about it, art can inspire a refreshed belief in oneself and set one on the path to a productive life. It serves as a comfort, a distraction from the confusion and a way to focus on intense thoughts and feelings. Saunders encourages everyone to find their form of art and reap the therapeutic benefits from it. As Saunders says, art is powerful and contains everything.
