The Neurodivergent Professor

I want to let y’all know what is going on in my life.

There will be a pause in my articles, podcast, and videos until at least August. For the next two weeks or so I will be delivering our boat from the BVI to the USA. 

Wait, WTaF?

For those who don’t know, my family has been planning to live on a boat since before the pandemic. We are finally to the point of making the shift. We are selling our home and getting rid of most of our stuff. We are buying a boat and will move a very small amount of our stuff onto the boat. We will be living on the boat in Chesapeake Bay, USA until December when we will head to the Bahamas. 

It reminds me of this George Carlin skit:

Leaving the Rat Race

I’ve talked and written a lot about this shift, but mostly we want to try something new. We hope to shed some of the pressures of American Life and redefine our values. 

I’m terrified by all of it and think this is a great opportunity for growth. I also realize we may be in over our heads. But that’s life, isn’t it?

We may come crying back with our tails between our legs. Who knows? We’ll see. Good thing, bad thing, who knows. Reminds me of this Buddhist koan:

Are These Bad Times or Good Times? The Story of the Zen Farmer
When we stop trying to coerce life to go exactly the way we want, we naturally experience a greater sense of fluidity…mindfulness.com

I look forward to sharing my experiences and discovering how this will change my writing, podcasting, and video. I’ll be back as soon as I can.

In the meantime, please enjoy some of my older content and let me know how it holds up!

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Have you ever sat down and thought about your values? 

Values are important, motivating, and provide guidance.

I’ve done a lot of values work in therapy and find it challenging. I value many things, but prioritizing the top five to ten is difficult and dynamic.

One thing I have learned during over a decade of values work is that many human values suck. 

I think a lot about universal or ‘optimum’ values

Are there ‘optimum’ human values? For my purposes, optimum is an adjective meaning most favorable or desirable. The best. In biological systems, we can think of optimum in terms of homeostasis or balance. Please see here for more on that. 

An example of optimum is transportation. Can we identify an optimum mode of human transportation? Many suggest it is the bicycle: 

Science of Cycling: Human Power | Exploratorium
© The bicycle is a tremendously efficient means of transportation. In fact cycling is more efficient than any other…annex.exploratorium.edu

In the case of transportation, we skipped past ‘optimum’ in pursuit of ‘better’. Now we burn jet fuel to fly around the planet. This uses more fossil fuels and creates more problems associated with that industry. 

We also change our values

Change is inevitable. Everything is impermanent and evolves. Sometimes, we change toward improvement. Sometimes our pursuit of ‘better’ leads us astray. Words like improve, better, and success, are extremely subjective. 

Modernity induced a key shift away from optimum values and toward money, status, and power. Currently, artificial intelligence is exacerbating this transformation.

With each technological advancement, we need to revisit our values. We are mistaken to believe that each step along the evolutionary ladder is an improvement. Rather, organisms experience increases in efficiency that facilitate new abilities. But these advancements are not always the optima.

Consider, briefly, biological respiration. An amphibian requires minimal energetic investments to oxygenate cells across moist skin. Humans, on the other hand, must breathe. While humans can be more active and grow larger and more complex, are we ‘better’?

So with evolution, knowing what is optimum is key

Humans evolved the ability to choose, which itself becomes a selection pressure. We can influence our evolution. If we want to remain extant we need to make better choices.

Valuing money, status, and power leads to our demise. To enhance evolutionary fitness we must revisit our past. In our past, we may find more optimum values to guide our future.

I will be assisting with delivering my future floating home for the next few weeks but will post when I can. Please check out my back catalog here and on The Neurodivergent Professor podcast and YouTube channel. 

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You don’t have to look far to find something to complain about. 

The world is full of problems.

Now, I’m no doomer. My intent is not to illuminate human suffering. Rather, I accept the Buddhist notion that there will be suffering. My issue is all the EXTRA suffering. I can’t shake the naive, hippie belief that solutions are within our reach. 

When it comes to the end of the world I’m an optimist.

Isolation and ‘rugged individualism’ are a big part of the problem

I’m still wrapping my head around the concept of nonduality. I get that we are stardust. After all, I’m a huge fan of Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. I believe the Big Bang is a good explanation of what probably happened to get us here. I understand ecological cycles and geologic time. 

We are all connected, but I have seen little evidence of these connections in human behavior during my lifetime. 

We exist in this world simultaneously as individuals and as obligate members of the human species. Many of us experience cognitive dissonance around being two places at once and I get that. This is a feature of reality we have to embrace. It’s quite literally cosmic.

We are going to have to hit ‘refresh’ on our values

Human values have shifted from the group to the individual. This ‘we to me’ transition aligns with modernity, the industrial revolution, financial systems, and religions. I continually ask, ‘What happened?’, to speculate about this transformation but we will never know.

The great value shift from kindness, connection, and cooperation toward money, status, and power has created most of our problems. The solution is a shift away from individualism and toward collectivism. 

The problem is, that individualism promotes short-term fitness. Humans are hedonistic and we love a good dopamine hit. Our values shifted to maximize this. Moving back toward collectivism ain’t gonna be easy.

How do we convince ourselves that the ‘success’ of the human race over evolutionary time is more important than feeling high for a few seconds? 

To move forward we have to understand our past

Winners write history. 

The shift from collectivism to individualism is characterized by strong men defeating weak communities. This story gets recorded and repeated because the strong remain to tell it. Cherry picking at its’ finest.

Do we want the meaning of our existence to cater to a few men? Unfortunately, we continue to tell that story today. 

We value the strong. The competitive. The winners. 

We look down on the peaceful. The cooperative. The mutualisms.

Humans are so much better than this. 

It’s time to move past maximizing the ‘line of cocaine dopamine bumps’ and understand the importance of delaying gratification. 

Our nervous systems evolved for more complex and intimate social interaction but we are headed the other way toward simpler and less interactive social behaviors. Rugged individualism is a great leap backward and spits in the face of our evolutionary prowess.

Maybe we can stop treating life like a game of winners and losers

Winning is not better than losing. They are the same when we experience the game as a community and not as individuals. 

We need to stop playing Monopoly with our DNA.

Rather than socializing the gains and privatizing the losses, we can socialize gains by being a good steward of Earth and all its inhabitants. This is the pathway toward reduced suffering. We can change our values. There is still time.

Frankly, I’m embarrassed for us if we continue to choose otherwise.

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Have you seen (or read) “2001: A Space Odyssey”?

The story opens at the time of early humans. Folks are going about their business when a ginormous monolith appears. Everyone freaks out at first, but then some develop the ability to use bones as tools. 

At first, I didn’t understand that the monolith represented punctuated equilibrium. This is a phrase used by evolutionary biologists to describe a quick shift in the fossil record representing a significant change. Compare this to gradualism, characterized by the slow accumulation of small changes. 

As an impatient person, I prefer punctuated equilibrium. Rather than waiting around and remaining comfortable, I’ve always been (generally) ok with quick changes toward a new condition. I don’t mind changing jobs (I’ve one it 32 times in 39 years) or homes (ten houses in 17 years). Some things, of course, I want to remain consistent, but I don’t fear change like a lot of people.

I would go so far as to say I sometimes yearn for quick change, because most changes are painfully slow. And life is short.

Mostly, though, changes happen slowly and punctuated equilibria are few and far between. 

The world is in dire need of change. Do we have the time to wait around for it to happen gradually? 

Can it happen gradually? 

This is the question that drives me, and this article.

A built-in persistence mechanism

Not changing is good for a system to persist. We have become experts in the bait-and-switch technique where we create fraudulent mechanisms for change that don’t result in actual change but make us believe they do.

How long do we throw good money after bad, making minute alterations to existing systems in hopes that something changes? How many rounds of negative feedback evidence do we need to acquire before we stop? 

Something like UBI, for example, could be a monolithic mechanism to change the global economy. But, 

The risks of Punctuated Equilibrium are high

Mention to any neoclassical economist that capitalism is broken and prepare yourself for a tongue-lashing. Tell any politician that the government needs an overhaul and you may have your citizenship revoked. Tell a high-school principal that students should be learning about meditation and, well, you get the point.

People don’t like change. 

Most of us fear the enemy we don’t know much more than the one we do. This explains why we stay in bad relationships, cruddy jobs, and unsuitable cities. Change is scary. But as I have mentioned in many an article, change is the underlying machinery of life. It is our DNA. That we fear change is not an excuse to avoid it. 

Look, I get it, leaping into the unknown abyss is scary. But sometimes it is the only option. 

Gradualism is ineffective, especially during stress

If a lion were chasing you, would you run or take some time to think about which direction to run? If you had to think about it, you’re dead.

Sometimes gradual change takes too long. Though that sounds like something Yogi Berra might have said, it’s true. Sometimes we need a change. Mostly this is because we tolerated non-change for too long.

Gradualism is about not changing. Not changing is resistance. What we resist, persists. Instead of protecting ourselves, we are going against the basic principles of biology. The universe changes. We must change with it. 

If we want to change something, gradualism is not likely to work. Our problems require faster and more severe solutions. If we can’t get comfortable with discomfort we will continue to gaslight ourselves into thinking things will be ok.

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It seems natural, even innate, to want to make the most of one’s life. To have a good life seems to require examination. Examining one’s life, growing, and continuing to be aware is part of our purpose.

The purpose of life has two branches. The first is the ecological purpose and the second is more metaphysical.

The ecological purpose of life is to reproduce to alleviate mortality. In other words, because all life dies, life reproduces itself. In this way, collective life persists despite the individual being terminal.

Evolution and natural selection, especially of the central nervous system, have facilitated communication, social interaction, and parental care. Humans still struggle with how to manage this complexity.

What is less derived is our metaphysical or non-scientific understanding of being human or of making a good life. Sure, we figured out how to keep the water (fairly) clean, eat, and build shelter, but how do we deal with our free time? What do we do with all the gains from understanding our physical needs?

Once our basic needs are met, what do we do? First, we evolve a complex neurology that facilitates taking in more information from our environment. To process all this new information we also evolve a central processing unit. Combined, we developed unprecedented ways to interact with our environment, each other, and ourselves. 

At the intersection of the metaphysical and physical elements of human purpose is socialization. Sophisticated communication and interactions led to cooperation, community, and enhanced parental care. Ultimately, love evolved to enhance our connections to each other and our ecosystem. 

Neural complexity also led to art, medicine, science, and other technological derivations. Along the way, of course, less desirable states or conditions arose including violence, competition, and selfishness. These elements, ideally, will be selected out of our population (see here for more).

The future of humankind depends on these metaphysical elements. Prioritizing values like love, connection, and kindness over money, power, and status is critical to our healthy future.

The privileged and fortunate among us are self-aware. Self-awareness facilitates an examined life. An examined life will grow toward an enhanced and necessary value system understood through our neural gifts.

Self-awareness permits the unlearning process. Don Miguel Ruiz, of “The Four Agreements” fame, and other Toltecs refer to domestication as the mechanism for our initial learnings. As children, we learn to walk, talk, sit, and stay according to the rules of our families, villages, and cultures. Few of us even realize this has happened. None of us consented.

Once aware our life examination begins, and the first step is to realize we don’t know why we believe what we believe. We must audit our thoughts, ideas, and values to determine whether they belong to us. This is the first step.

Self-awareness begets the undoing of domestication. Defining personal values and understanding one’s ecological and metaphysical needs defines a life. The next step is realizing we are interconnected to balance our individuality with our community. Finally, we figure out how to nudge our fellow humans in a similar direction.

Understanding and meeting our own needs helps us as much as each other. This is the pathway toward a good life. We make it by doing the work, being ourselves, and nurturing awareness. 

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Do you suffer?

Humans have problems. It’s hard to deny. 

Despite many pleas for ‘looking on the bright side of life’, we live in a world full of suffering. For whatever reason, I think about these problems, the causes, and potential solutions. 

While it is difficult to maintain a positive mental attitude and growth mindset, I strive for a balance. I consider how we might improve humanity while not getting bogged down in depression.

I think existence consists of two main branches. These are the biological or physical, and the spiritual or metaphysical. You probably have different names for these things, but hopefully, you get what I’m saying. 

As an ecologist, I see the biological side being defined by growth, maturity, and reproduction. The biological purpose of life is to find group immortality, despite individual mortality. Species seek to persist. Life goes on. 

Biological organisms persist through time because DNA facilitates adjustments, acclimations, and adaptation. 

One purpose of life is to participate in the cosmic dance of natural selection, genetic expression of traits, and a changing universe. You might even say this is a universal biological value.

This article, however, is about the metaphysical aspects of evolution. For more about the purpose of evolution and human life, see The Evolution Paradox and The Uniqueness Imperative. 

Humans also have metaphysical human needs. 

While we have a sound understanding of the biological and physical elements of life, there is less consensus about our spiritual or metaphysical purpose. 

If the biological purpose of life is to reproduce and persist, what is our metaphysical purpose? Why are we here?

The ecological realm of existence is examined by science, but the less measurable elements are left to spiritual leaders, philosophers, and thinkers. 

How we define the purpose of life is highly varied.

There are many schools of thought about our metaphysical purpose, but they all begin by understanding our non-biological needs and values. What ARE our needs and values? Are their universal values?

Whereas the biological explanation of life is hedged somewhat in the realm of science, these metaphysical questions are more subjective. I suggest one way to approach this type of investigation is to ask which values are adaptive and which are maladaptive.

What values might be maladaptive?

 As in, what are humans doing now that may be causing our extinction? 

What are we doing wrong? 

What do we currently believe in? And how’s that working out?

I suggest that our current human values are focused on money, status, and power. Focusing on these values may be helpful in the short term, but it is not adaptive in an evolutionary sense.

Values like money, power, and status may be maladaptive. 

What values might be adaptive?

What other values might help us avoid extinction? This is the question that drives me to share my thoughts. What can we do to change direction? What are we doing wrong? 

These are questions for today’s thinkers. The most important questions we can ask.

What would life be like if we prioritized the values of kindness, cooperation, and love?

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Do you ever think about your comfort zone? I’m sure most people are at least aware of the concept.

To me, our comfort zone is like an invisible egg that surrounds our physical body. Near the center, we are, well, comfortable. As we near the edges we become less comfortable. 

Our comfort zone is like a sixth sense. It is more a bodily feeling or awareness than an identifiable sensation. Approaching our comfort zone is unlike hearing, smelling, touching, tasting, or seeing.

Why do we experience these comfort zone sensations?

The purpose of our comfort zone is to alert us when our environment changes. Likely, there are several evolutionary adaptations for being aware of these changes. When our comfort zone is triggered, we become alerted. Sometimes the changes are mild, irritating, or uncomfortable. Other signals may protect us from real danger.

Our mortality depends on a degree of comfort and a lack of danger. The fortunate and privileged among us spend more time in comfort, and less in danger. Our environmental, emotional, and physical needs are met and we have nothing to be concerned with. Our lives are not threatened and we are, well, comfortable. As situations change, our “spidey senses” begin to tingle. We may become aware that something has shifted, but we do not always know what the danger is. 

One of the key protections of our comfort zone is for us to avoid real danger. Some call this intuition, a sixth sense, or ‘spidey senses’. These are critical but not what I am writing about here. The function of our comfort zone I am writing about here is more ambiguous.

Most often, our comfort zones act as a simple signal that we are encountering non-routine experiences. 

To know about our comfort zone we have to be self-aware.

I know I sound like a broken record, but everything begins with self-awareness because without it we have no agency. Once we are self-aware, we can direct our attention with intent toward our comfort zone. In this way, we are paying attention. I believe that self-awareness is selected for in evolution and will talk about this in an upcoming episode. 

Once self-aware, we can learn to discriminate among the various signals provided by our comfort zone. These signals can be benign and boring, moderate, or warnings about danger. For growth, we are interested in moderate information. The goldiloxian feelings are not too intense nor too uninteresting. 

Signals from our comfort zones are growth opportunities. By paying attention to our sixth sense, we can identify our fears. With practice and courage, we can push beyond our comfort to better understand the source of these fears. 

The era of maximizing comfort is over.

 Human persistence (non-extinction) requires discomfort. 

The industrial revolution and capitalism introduced an unprecedented degree of human comfort. While many of these comforts have been incredible, there are downsides. Privileged humans have become complacent, lulled to a waking sleep by immense comfort. 

In a world that constantly changes, however, complacency is maladaptive. To continue our evolutionary path our comfort zones need to be confronted. We need to get comfortable with discomfort again. To move forward we have to take a few steps back. It’s time to trade in our privilege for the next frontier. 

Links:

YouTube video: 
https://youtu.be/JvGkio3Zt8z

Ryan Holiday’s “The Obstacle is the Way”

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Does science play a role in your life? 

Do you value hard data and evidence? Do you think humans are good at proving things? Or maybe you defer to religion or culture to decide what is real?

I talk a lot about how science is over or undervalued. Some folks think science proves reality. Others think scientists are full of crap.

Regardless of how you feel about science, the scientific method is regarded as one of the best tools we have to help us answer questions. One of my favorite questions is,

My work focuses on understanding how humans can suffer less. 

Most of my interest lies somewhere in this personal and communal growth space, and much of my research falls outside the realm of hard science as we know it. But what if we took a more organized approach? What are we really trying to understand?

Briefly, science is a way to formalize how we ask questions and how we interpret the answers. We conduct experiments that convert the real world into numerical data, analyze the data using low-bias mathematical techniques, then convert the numerical results back into real-world terms. We ask a question, form a hypothesis, conduct experiments, and interpret results. 

So, is there a better way to live?

Let’s convert that to a hypothesis:

Basically, do the ‘data’ we observe in the real world support or refute the idea that there might be a better way to live?

My work suggests that self-awareness as an upstream cause of human suffering. 

Mostly, when we experience suffering we look nearby for causes and solutions. If we bleed we get a band-aid. But often the ultimate causes of our discomfort are farther away and more upstream.

For example, if we are always anxious in social situations, maybe we need to understand the trauma we experienced in childhood.

Personally, as I have pieced together my anxiety, I see that the causes are much more upstream than I ever imagined. Real solutions are often much farther away from the problem than we think. Scientific investigation is a tool designed to help clarify these relationships.

Moving forward, I can look for evidence that supports or refutes my hypothesis. 

Eventually, I will have ‘enough’ evidence to either abandon the idea (fail to reject my null hypothesis) or continue to pursue this line of reasoning.

The beauty of science is not that it proves anything. Rather, science helps us understand our realities by guiding us toward more likely causes. These relationships, in turn, help us understand ourselves and each other. 

The more we understand the links between self-awareness, attention, mindfulness, and connectedness the more likely we are to reduce personal and collective suffering. 

Our ancestors paved the way for our amazing individual lives. The least we can do is make the most of it. Do wars, anxiety, and suicide sound like making the most of it to you? 

There is a better way. Together, we are learning what it is. 

For more about what science really is see here, and here, and here. 

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Do other people ever make you angry?

I’d be worried about you if you said no. Or assume you are the Dalai Lama. 

Many of us struggle to find connections to people we disagree with. Or people who act out, are annoying, or mean.

I preach a lot about how we are all connected, and how we need to love one another and participate in our communities. But it is so very hard, sometimes, to love everyone or to want to connect.

If you struggle with truly feeling connected to people, this article is for you.

Have you ever considered reincarnation? 

I never used to think about it. I don’t know why. It just wasn’t a concept I considered. Recently, however, I had an epiphany. I struggle to tolerate people and am often annoyed by human behavior. While considering a particularly annoying person in a loud truck I thought about reincarnation.

What if we were all at very different stages of some much longer lifespan? What if our Consciousness, Self, or Spirit gets multiple ‘laps’, or chances to live a good life? 

What if reincarnation is a thing?

This explanation made me feel much closer to my fellow humans — even the ones that annoy the crap out of me. 

Somehow, believing we are all at different stages — perhaps vastly disparate stages — made it easier for me to find tolerance for others. 

This sudden thought of having multiple lives led me where other ideas could not. If reincarnation is ‘real’ I can understand how people can be so incredibly different. It explains a level of diversity that goes beyond a human lifetime. 

What if our Consciousness, Self, or Spirit lives longer than a human lifespan? 

What if we ‘come back’ to Earth and continue to live somehow? What if part of life is about the growth we can accomplish over multiple lifespans?

This idea shifts my focus from personal growth from a single life to a much longer period. Rather than spending thirty or forty years trying to be a ‘better person’, ‘reaching enlightenment’, or ‘growing up’ what if we have hundreds or thousands of years to accomplish these goals?

I know, I know. This is crazy talk. And maybe it is. But I can’t deny how much this has opened me up.

Considering that reincarnation is real made me more tolerant. 

When I consider that another person might only be on lap two or three it makes it easier for me to find compassion for their journey. At the same time, I do not consider myself ‘advanced’ or ‘better’ than them for potentially being on a higher lap. Rather, I see that I was them and they will be me. The idea that we all might be blessed with multiple lives fills me with joy.

Reincarnation checks all the boxes.

If you have seen my work you will know that I preach diversity in all things. Reincarnation extends our capacity for diversity by extending the growth period. I have spent almost fifteen years learning to live better and frustrated by the slow pace. Sometimes it feels like I haven’t made much progress. But if we get more chances to grow I am somehow less frustrated. 

Similarly, the idea of reincarnation makes it easier for me to tolerate others’ behavior. When I am frustrated by another person’s behavior I can remember that I was once where they are. I am them and they are me. That we are on different levels of the same playing field connects us. 

Any idea that makes it easier to feel connected is ok in my book. 

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Have you ever wondered how any two people can have a conversation and walk away feeling both like they were heard and believing they heard the other person?

It blows my mind how limiting conversation can be. As magical as language is, it leaves so much room for error. Words mean different things to different people. We hear one thing when they mean another. Context matters. We have different life experiences. There are so many layers that make it easy to misunderstand.

Language, like any technology, is wrought with at least as many restrictions as benefits. Yes, we can be more complex in our descriptions and needs. But that same level of complexity increases the potential for error!

Being a good communicator is incredibly difficult. 

But it is also a luxury because it takes time, skill, and most of all, awareness. Self-awareness is a huge luxury. Not everyone can afford to pay attention. We are all at a different place evolutionarily and these different perspectives further complicate communication.

Despite the incredible variation that occurs between any two communicators, I think all conversations can be described as having fairly discrete outcomes. Either two people (or more, this is a simplification) agree, or they disagree. We can behave as isolated individuals or as part of a connected partnership. When two people disagree, the results are therefore limited:

How many conversations have you been in that have the above result?

The first two outcomes require concession by one party. This concession is often characterized as ‘giving in’, ‘people pleasing’, or having ‘weak boundaries’. Not advocating for your needs is considered unhealthy.

Of course, the ‘winning’ party in the first two scenarios is often described as being ‘assertive’, ‘confident’, or ‘narcissistic’. 

The most interesting outcome is the last one which represents a compromise or partnership. When both parties alter their needs to allow for the other we approach an equitable condition. This, I argue, is more evolutionarily ‘fit’ in the long run.

Compromise, of course, requires good communication. Which we suck at. The pathway to compromise and partnership — to truly realize that we are all connected — is the practice. The practice helps us take an observer’s perspective, witness nonduality, and make peace with the dissonance.

This is how we change the world.

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