Choosing your battles
A book review, words of wisdom, and more.
“The warrior and the artist live by the same code of necessity, which dictates that the battle must be fought anew every day.” — Steven Pressfield, The War of Art
When he refers to the “artist,” author Steven Pressfield means to include anyone who is seriously pursuing a creative or pro-social endeavor. This could be an actual artist who has resolved to do her work every day. This could be an entrepreneur deciding to push ahead despite an early setback. It could be someone who takes up volunteer work in the community. Or it could be a politician deciding to stand on principle rather than be cowed by threats from small-minded authoritarians.
The artist is anyone who is responding to an authentic calling. In his book The War of Art, Pressfield assumes everyone has an authentic calling. It is our task to find it, and do it, because nobody else has our individual combination of gifts and insights.
We are blessed to live in a society where self-actualization is a real thing we think about. The curse is that social freedom brings all kinds of psychological traps.
Resistance is the force that tries to stop us from pursuing our authentic calling. Resistance can appear in many different forms: rationalization, victimhood, conformity, fundamentalism, procrastination, and all sorts of enticing human vices. Resistance is whatever keeps us from sitting down and actually doing the work of our calling.
A way to beat Resistance, according to Pressfield, is to adopt the attitude of a professional. The hobbyist tinkers around when he feels like it, or when he finds the time. The professional shows up and works every day, even when he doesn’t feel like it. The professional detaches the self from the work, and therefore approaches the work with diligence, without the outcome being determinative of one’s self-worth.
Why does Resistance yield to our turning pro? Because Resistance is a bully. Resistance has no strength of its own; its power derives entirely from our fear of it.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, there are “muses and angels,” which Pressfield defines as the “invisible psychic forces that support and sustain us in our journey toward ourselves.” By taking concrete and persistent steps toward our own self-actualization, the muses and angels smile upon us, guiding us in unexpected ways.
Pressfield’s formulation reminds me of the duality of the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola. In the Spiritual Exercises, the “good spirit” offers consolation and guides us toward the ends for which we have been created. The “enemy of human nature” brings desolation and obstacles. In the Exercises, there are various rules for how these spirits operate, and there is advice for how to discern God’s will.
The War of Art is far less coherent than the Spiritual Exercises, but they both assume this duality in the cosmos, and the characteristics of the competing spirits are similar enough to notice.
A reader might get caught up in a metaphysical question: Are there actually sentient spirits out there in the Universe doing battle for the hearts and minds of human beings?
Regardless of the metaphysical answer, we often experience difficulty sustaining resolutions, despite our best intentions. It might be helpful, depending on your personality, to view these dynamics through the lens of competition.
The War of Art is a combination self-help book, motivational speech, and spiritual manifesto. It’s an easy read, full of short chapters, some of them less than a page long. I didn’t resonate with some of Pressfield’s metaphors, and his analysis of human nature can be fairly criticized for being half-baked. But this isn’t the type of book to read for analytical purposes. It is the type of book to read for inspiration. I recommend The War of Art to anyone looking to get their juices flowing in pursuit of a personal project.
"A Tough Mind and a Tender Heart"
In this sermon, published in his book Strength to Love in 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. says, “life at its best is a creative synthesis of opposites in fruitful harmony.”
Here he addresses the seeming conflict between science and religion:
There may be a conflict between soft-minded religionists and tough-minded scientists, but not between science and religion. Their respective worlds are different and their methods are dissimilar. Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge that is power; religion gives man wisdom that is control. Science deals mainly with facts; religion deals mainly with values. The two are not rivals. They are complementary. Science keeps religion from sinking into the valley of crippling irrationalism and paralyzing obscurantism. Religion prevents science from falling into the marsh of obsolete materialism and moral nihilism.
King describes “tough mindedness” as being characterized by “incisive thinking, realistic appraisal, and decisive judgment.” Tough-minded individuals break through “the crust of legends and myths” by sifting out truth from falsehoods.
Who doubts that this toughness of mind is one of man’s greatest needs? … There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think.
By contrast, “soft mindedness” is characterized by people’s “unbelievable gullibility” which is evidenced in how easily people fall for advertising, or religious fundamentalism, or political demagoguery.
Our minds are constantly being invaded by legions of half-truths, prejudices, and false facts. One of the great needs of mankind is to be lifted above the morass of false propaganda. Soft-minded individuals are prone to embrace all kinds of superstitions. Their minds are constantly invaded by irrational fears…
The soft-minded person “fears change” and allows prejudice to guide their thinking. Dictators always prey on soft mindedness to consolidate power. In the South, it was soft-minded segregationists who wanted to deny equal rights to black people.
Religionists aren’t necessarily soft minded, and scientists aren’t necessarily tough minded. King points to Jesus as an example of creative synthesis — someone who combined the tough wisdom of the serpent and the tenderness of the dove.
Non-violence is an extension of this logic. Non-violent resistance “combines tough mindedness and tenderheartedness and avoids the complacency and do-nothingness of the soft minded and the violence and bitterness of the hardhearted.”
Before I get carried away and quote the entire sermon, here is a link to read it.
Links and News
Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs’s “Educator Retention Task Force” released a list of recommendations a few weeks ago. The recommendations were mostly predictable: things like higher salary and better working conditions. There was one omission: State standardized testing. The current structure of state testing is a burden on teachers that is wildly disproportionate to the actual usefulness of the data. Not only does the overemphasis on testing (in its current structure) drain the joy out of teaching and learning, but drilling students with test materials might actually be detrimental to the goal of teaching kids to read.
Testing was also missing from the governor’s plan to add “accountability” to ESAs. To justify the current burdens of state testing, the tests should be delivering crucial information about school performance. Neither political party believes the tests are important enough to be applied to ESA recipients. Ok then. Let’s ease the burden on public school teachers and allow states to adopt more flexible, less detrimental testing structures. We don’t need to ditch aptitude tests for higher education. But we should rethink our approach to state testing and update federal education law to reflect current realities.
Mesa debuts Arizona's first fully electric fire truck via Axios Phoenix
Netflix recommendation: Nothing to See Here: A funny and moving TV series set in Mexico. Two friends, one who is blind and the other who has cerebral palsy, move away from home to pursue their dreams in the big city.