‘Now
Israel loved Joseph more than any other of his sons, because he was the son of
his old age. And he made him a robe of many colours’
Genesis
37:3- ESV
Jonathan Pageau’s definition of love has stood out the most for me and it
makes a great deal of sense in and beyond feelings. ‘Love becomes the manner
in which both unity and multiplicity can coexist together. You know, because
love does not abolish difference. It celebrates difference, but it also
celebrates unity. It celebrates how difference can come together and be really
one at the same time.’ Joseph’s robe of many colours was not only an
illustration of Jacob’s love for Joseph, but it was also an expression of
symbolic love in sartorial form, beyond the personal. The robe is a display of
how ‘unity and multiplicity can coexist together’. The multiplicity lies
in the many colours and the splendid robe in its entirety is the unity. In
Jordan B. Peterson’s Biblical Series, Episode XV: Joseph and the Coat of Many
Colours, he limns an insightful picture on what Joseph’s robe means for us today.
‘For something to be many coloured’, says Peterson, ‘it means it
spans the entire gamut of possibilities.’ For Peterson, the many colours
allude to the variegated skills or qualities Joseph had which we should also
have, to be able to deal with the malevolence that is in the world and which we
will have to contend with over the course of our lives. Brad Lomenick, in his
blog post on the 8 key leadership qualities of Joseph, describes Joseph
as principled, humble, disciplined, faithful, graceful, competent, wise, and
strategic. These are skills and traits that led him to success despite the malevolence
that darkened his path. And there was plenty of malevolence going around:
sibling envy, attempted fratricide, domicide, slavery, wrongful imprisonment, perjury,
broken promises etc… and yet he was not destroyed. This is what Peterson was
pointing to; embodying a ‘differentiated mode of being that enables you to
be competent and at home in the widest possible places… you can be put in more
places and function properly, which is one of the indications there’s more to
you’. Peterson exhorts: ‘Make yourself so damn different and dynamic
that you are more than a match [for the malevolence]’.
‘People are
like houses divided amongst themselves. They are working at cross-paths.’
Peterson here is describing a multiplicity that lacks a unity which is a being
that is fractionated and not differentiated. This is a person for which
malevolence is not external but an ever present internecine internal force in
opposition to the person becoming ‘fully fledged’. Being fractionated
limits you while being differentiated expands you in the world. This ties with what
Byung-Chul Han writes in his book What is Power? ‘Power allows the
ego to be with him- or herself, in the other. It creates a continuity of the
self…Power is a phenomenon of continuum. It provides the holder with a vast space
of self’. It is the differentiation that realises power in different
circumstances and in turn becomes even more powerful… like Joseph. Rollo
Tomassi in The Rational Male writes, ‘the definition of power is not
financial success, status, or influence over others, but the degree to which we
have control over our own lives’. Having control over our lives lies in
our ability to deal with chaos and uncertainty and impose our own will on our
lives despite the malevolence. It is the ability to move from our own ‘mental
point of origin’ to use another Rollo Tomassi phrase. But before we can
even sharpen our mental point of origins so that the decisions we make with
regards to our lives are the right ones, we must be highly in tune to who we
are.
A short vignette.
About thirteen years ago, a friend of mine lent me his copy of Clem Sunter and
Chantell Illbury’s The mind of a fox. It’s still on my bookshelf but he hasn’t
returned my 30 Seconds to Mars This is War album, so we are even-steven.
The book became my armour against a very judgemental world that insisted on
specialization, on deciding your entire future when your brain hadn’t even
finished developing yet. I knew as I read the opening quote. ‘The fox knows
many things- the hedgehog one big one’ (Archilochus) that I was indubitably
a fox and that I was not alone. At the time I was dating a hardcore hedgehog
and we had endless yet fun debates on the matter. The book Mastery by
Robert Greene was on his bookshelf and that was his weapon of choice which he
wielded against my The mind of a fox. I think this played a role in why I
had avoided Mastery for the longest time but if you’ve read any of my
other blogs; you would know that it has become a firm favourite. Thanks Mr Hedgehog,
whichever burrow you are in, for introducing me to Robert Greene. Mr. Hedgehog
knew exactly what he wanted to do, sharp clarity, steely determination,
laser-like focus and an analytical brain that burrowed down all the way to
first principles. Being a fox looked like a snafu in comparison. I was all over
the place and I could hear the ‘Get it together Girl!’ reverberating across
the expanse. I have long embraced that I have varied interests; unsatiated
curiosity; and a general Eckhart Tolle ‘let life unfold’ disposition. I
have ‘followed my bliss’ (Joseph Campbell) and have tried to work in
alignment to the things I really like doing; naturally inclined to and move in directions
to which I was drawn. So here we are. It’s like how Santiago Ramón
y Cajal, ‘To him who observes them from afar, it appears as though they are
scattering and dissipating their energies while in reality they are channelling
and strengthening them.’ The reason why I have come to love books like Mastery
is because of what Angela Duckworth says we shouldn’t do. ‘Don’t confuse the healthy development of a
work ethic with the premature commitment to a singular passion.’
Back to Rollo
Tomassi’s mental point of origin. The world is geared towards efficiency,
which is why most of the words used to describe the technology or processes we
use end in an -er or -st. This efficiency goes hand in hand with early
specialization. It starts in the first grade ‘when I grow up, I want to be…’
and then there’s school, university, career, marriage, children then retire.
Efficient. It’s not really a system that encourages meanderings. And even if
there is a little voice beckoning us elsewhere; we are so encumbered with
responsibility that we are absolutely terrified of any uncertainty. Having our
own mental point of origin allows us to explore and discover who we are because we will
be on the lookout for what David Epstein refers to in Range as ‘match quality’. ‘Match quality is a term economists use to describe the degree
of fit between the work someone does and who they are- their abilities and proclivities’
and Peter Drucker of Little Bets adds ‘success in the knowledge
economy comes to those who know themselves- their strengths, their values, and
how they best perform’, but ‘we learn who we are in practice, not in
theory’ (Epstein). Maximizing match quality seems to be more efficient in
the long run because then people will always have an array of skills to bring
to the table like Joseph. Epstein quotes Herminia Ibarra (an organizational
behaviour professor) on maximizing match quality. ‘Ibarra concluded that we
maximize match quality throughout life by sampling activities, social groups,
contexts, jobs, careers, and then reflecting and adjusting our personal
narratives. And repeat’. And that is now we learn who we are. Epstein touches
on the ‘end-of-history illusion’ which is a psychological illusion experienced
by individuals of all ages where people believe that they have already
experienced significant personal growth and changes in tastes up to the present
moment but will not substantially grow or mature in the future. So, we
mistakenly think that who we are today is who we’ll always be, so we make these
huge specialization decisions based on an incorrect assumption. Epstein writes,
‘The precise person you are now is fleeting, just like all the other people
you’ve been… that feels like the most unexpected result, but it is also the
most well documented… The only certainty is change, both on average as a
generation ages, and within each individual’. We rely on this change,
though, to become differentiated people. Therein lies the opportunity to tap
into parts of us which have been otherwise dormant. Carl Jung calls this
movement towards reaching full potential, the ‘circumambulation’. We
move around a centre (home in on ourselves in a sense) and this
circumambulation manifests itself by making us interested in things. When we
follow this interest and tap into it and harness whatever skills or
competencies or traits that come about because of that interest, we become
differentiated, the centre holds. This centre that holds makes way for
expansion which in turn increases our power. This unity can be expressed as a centre
with lines homing in from different angles or it can be reconfigured as straight
lines coming together to a single point like the tip of a spear. It’s important
to bear in mind though; only the presence of a multiplicity produces a unity.
Without multiplicity, we cease being spears; we are just sticks.
.
In The 33
Strategies of War, Robert Greene quotes Ian Knight (The Anatomy of the
Zulu Army) and it sent chills down my spine: ‘Legend has it that Shaka
altered the nature of fighting in the region for ever, by inventing a heavy,
broad- bladed spear designed to withstand the stresses of close- quarter
combat. Perhaps he did: certainly, both Zulu sources and the accounts of white
travellers and officials in the nineteenth century credit him with this
achievement… His military innovation s made an impact on Zulu folklore, if
nothing else, for Shaka certainly developed fighting techniques to an
unprecedented degree, and there is a wealth of stories concerning his prowess
as a warrior; he may, indeed, have been one of the great military geniuses of
his age’. Shaka’s iklwa is what came to mind when I thought about
the tip of the spear. It is the spear itself that increased Shaka’s prowess and
the piercing nature of the spear enabled him to defeat his malevolence.
Interestingly, Shaka’s warriors used to encircle the enemy and home in on them, circumambulation much? In What is Power?, Han writes that the tip of the spear is centred and
gathers everything unto itself. And that is how prowess is culminated; the
unity that gathers the multiplicity into itself. Dark Horses is a book
by Ogi Ogas and Todd Rose that explores those people who became successful in unconventional ways. They write, ‘people often believe that when it comes to
earning a living; you must choose between doing what you like and doing what
you must. Dark horses teach us that is a false choice. By harnessing their
individuality [who they are and their interests] dark horses attained both
prowess and joy. By choosing situations that seemed to offer the best fit for
the authentic self, dark horses secured the most effective circumstances for
developing excellence at their craft, since engaging in fulfilling work
maximises your ability to learn, grow and perform. Thus, dark horses provide a
new definition of success suited for the Age of Personalization, one that
recognizes that individuality truly matters. Personalized success is
living a life of fulfilment and excellence’. The synchronicity of the word
‘prowess’ has not been missed. When we are differentiated then we have prowess and its this prowess that will empower us to contend with the overwhelming
computing capacity of AI technology and parry with it.
Moravec’s
paradox is an occurrence in AI technology where the tasks that are simple for
human beings are complex for AI, and the tasks that are complex for human
beings are simple for AI. Ogas & Rose ‘describe our epoch as the Age of
Standardization as opposed to the industrial age because the age is
characterized by the standardization of most fixtures of everyday life,
including consumer products, jobs and diplomas’. Premature specialization
falls right in line with this group. This standardization that opened the gap
for AI; anything that can be turned into an algorithm. But, optimistically; it
is this standardization that will inspire human beings to move away from a
standardized contribution to a more nuanced, dare I say, differentiated one.
Epstein, ‘Modern work demands knowledge transfer: the ability to apply
knowledge to new situations and different domains. Our most fundamental thought
processes have changed to accommodate increasing complexity and the need to
derive new patterns rather than rely only on familiar ones’. Information is
widely available but requires synthesis and the ability to transfer it
across disciplines; that is part of the aforementioned prowess. ‘You have
people walking around with all the knowledge of humanity on their phone, but
they have no idea how to integrate it. We don’t train people in thinking or
reasoning’ (Arturo Casadevall quoted in Range), or as James Flynn
puts it, ‘everyone needs habits of mind that allow them to dance across disciplines’.
It’s this cognitive flexibility that can put human beings in the driving seat
of strategists and multi- domain problem solvers and AI in the passenger seat
of focusing on tactics. ‘In narrow enough worlds, humans may not have much
to contribute much longer, in more open-ended games I think they certainly
will. Not just games, in open-ended real-world problems we’re still crushing
the machines’ (Gary Marcus). In my line of work, I recently met two amazing
girls who are currently in Grade twelve; one goes to St Anne’s Diocesan School
for Girls and the other, Roedean School. They are both remarkable and are involved in a
panoply of extra-curricular activities. From drama to hockey to leadership to
musical instruments or taking Spanish as an elective and involvement in The
President’s Award. Even when interacting with them, one gets the impression
that these are pupils who will fare well in life. Both have entrepreneurial
parents so there is also exposure on that front. I think their range has long
been inspired by how Ivy Leagues wanted learners with range. As I was
researching on why that is the case, turns out that it’s no longer the case. In
a blogpost titled, ‘How to get into Ivy League Schools: The Definitive Guide’
Shemmassian Academic Consulting writes, ‘In the past, being a ‘well-rounded’college
applicant was considered the best admissions strategy. However, in today’s
competitive admissions climate, well rounded applicants don’t stand out- there’s
nothing about them that’s unique, special or different. The far more effective
approach we recommend to our students is to become a specialist in their chosen
extracurricular field- to go all in on a specific interest and be extraordinary
in that small areas’. These are the reasons listed supporting this strategy:
·
‘Specialists possess an ‘it factor’ in admissions
conversations they get referred to as the ‘tech entrepreneur or the published
self-help author’ or the ‘non-profit founder’
·
Specialists elevate their college community
through their developed passions, achievements, and unique experiences. A group
of students who are each exceptional in different areas make the student body
well- rounded as a whole, and to a higher degree than a group of moderately we-
rounded students would
·
Specialists have higher levels of
self-awareness than students who merely dipped their toes into several
different activities. They know who they are, have clear career direction and
will take greater advantage of the available Ivy League resources.’
Fresh from reading Range and Dark
Horse, I, naturally, had questions.
·
Wouldn’t an ‘it-factor’ come from being as
differentiated as possible, that your ‘power’ spreads across domains, you are a
lateral thinker, you are a better problem-solver overall?
·
Epstein writes, ‘both training and
professional incentives are aligning to accelerate specialization, creating
intellectual archipelagos’. Are higher education institutions immune from becoming
intellectual archipelagos? A group of moderately well-rounded students
could better create an actual college community because there would be more
potential nodes of creating connections based on similar interests. A group of
students who are each exceptional in different areas make the student body look
great on paper, like archipelagos on a map but in terms of benefitting the actual
student body? Not too sure
· I made a case earlier in this essay that the people who know who they are, in fact, are the ones who explore and discover who they are. For the majority of people, we had a vague understanding of who we are in high school and so the discovery was still in nascent form. Universities are known to be specialization tanks, and for them to extend their reach of specialization even earlier into the lives of prospective students seems unwise. Epstein writes, ‘Mostly, though, students get what economist Bryan Caplan called narrow vocational training for jobs few of them will ever have. Three-quarters of American college graduates go on to a career unrelated to their major- a trend that includes math and science majors- after having become competent only with the tools of a single discipline’. Now even the years prior to university, that could have been used for exploration and ‘sampling’ as Epstein puts it are now dedicated to specialization. Our education systems are designed around specialization, with a few exceptions such as Roedean and St Annes’s whose cultures engender sampling. It sure does come at a steep price. The fee tags attached to those schools are… WOW! What makes it worthwhile is not the fact you’ll achieve A’s at the school (‘Valedictorians or in our context dux scholars don’t become millionaires’- Eric Barker) but the richness of contexts available to learners. What usually happens in standard classrooms is standardization, the truly exciting stuff is happening outside the classrooms. Extra- curricular environments offered by these schools is invaluable. Ultimately, we thrive in environments that are in alignment with who we are. As Eric Barker puts it, ‘Following the rules doesn’t create success, it just eliminates extremes- both good and bad. While this is usually good and all but eliminates downside risk, it also frequently eliminates earth shaking accomplishments. It’s like putting a governor on your engine that stops the car from going over fifty-five; you’re far less likely to get into a lethal crash, but you won’t be setting and land speed records either’. Conventional classrooms are about following rules and conforming; everything outside the classroom is where we get to tap into creativity; to explore; to discover who we are. As Sir Ken Robinson says ‘we are educating people out of their creativity’.
I remember how at the end of high school; the big buzz word
was ‘innovation’. We were expected to magically start innovating, and my
response was a bewildered ‘How sway?’ At which point of my educational
journey was innovation cultivated; it felt like a blindside. It was a skill the
world was expecting me to have without having taught me methods or approaches that
build the innovation muscle. Peter Sims says experimental
innovation is the approach that will lead to breakthroughs and success; and
where else to experimentally innovate than outside the classroom in those twelve
precious years of formal education. ‘For most of us, adopting
this experimental approach requires a significant change in mindset. One reason
for this is the way most of us have been taught. Great emphasis gets placed in
our education system on teaching facts, such as historical information or
scientific tables, then testing us in order to measure how much we’ve retained
about that body of knowledge. Memorization and learning to follow established
procedures are the key methods for success. Even when we are taught problem
solving such as solving math problems, the focus is generally either on using
established methods or logical inference or deduction, both highly procedural
in the way they require us to think. There is much less emphasis on developing
our creative thinking abilities, our abilities to let our minds run
imaginatively and to discover things on our own. We are given very little
opportunity, for example, to perform our own, original experiments, and there
is also little or no margin for failure or mistakes. We are graded primarily on
getting answers right.’ So, the early specialization required for
university admissions, extra-curricular time should not be usurped to serve ‘premature
optimization’ as Paul Graham describes it. Range has also inspired
me to view educational reform in a very different light. In South Africa, where
inequality is rife and rampant, the area code we are born into usually dictates
the type of education we get. And I have been myopically focused on reforming,
the disadvantaged classroom that learners have a fighting chance in the work
market. But that is just ensuring that learners have only one skill (good
enough grades to pursue their desired career at the time). As I’ve mentioned earlier
in the blog, having one skill makes a person a stick, not a spear. We will not
have any prowess. Alternatively, we would have to blow up our perspective and
focus on all the time outside the classroom to engross learners in different environments, cultivate
skills; and assist learners in discovering who they are or at the very least
what they like or are interested in.
Some people would describe David ‘stay
hard’ Goggins as someone on the extreme side of the continuum of human
achievement, and Jessie Itzler lived with him for a month. Respect! If you don’t
know who Goggins is, google him and just prepare to be yelled at by a shirtless
man for not living out your full potential. Goggins has accused everyone who
has called him crazy as lazy and weak because they want to use him as an
excuse. According to him, anyone and everyone can do what he does and
accomplish what he has accomplished. I’m not as convinced. When Eric Barker
introduced the Gautam Mukunda idea of ‘intensifiers’ in his book, Goggins
immediately came to mind. Barker, ‘Intensifiers are qualities that on
average, are negative but in certain contexts produce sweeping benefits that devastate
the competition’. David Goggins is not the ‘sunny disposition’ and ‘rainbows
and butterflies’ type. I can imagine him saying, rather yelling, to a five
year old on his birthday ‘WHAT YOU EATING CAKE FOR? DID YOU COMPLETE YOUR
MORNING RUN?’ Goggins is pretty intense and that is his intensifier. Tapping
into that has really differentiated him from the bulk of society, and it has
given him power and he is now able to access more people and places(expansion) as
a result. I know I said Goggins is shirtless, but he is actually wearing an
invisible coat of many colours. Just as how grit is context specific, success
is context specific as well, and it is the range of our exposure that increases
the likelihood we land up in the right context. Barker writes, ‘[success] is
less about being perfect than knowing what you’re best at and being properly
aligned with your context… sometimes an ugly duckling can be a swan if it finds
the right pond. The thing that sets you apart, the habits you may have tried to
banish, the things you were taunted for in school, may ultimately, grant you an
unbeatable advantage.’
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