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Sloww Sunday Newsletter 134 (Feb 26, 2023) — What’s Our Problem?, Psychological Development, Pissed-off-ness, & More
Sloww Sunday shares creations from Sloww along with curations of fascinating finds to 10,000+ students of life. If you enjoy this issue, please help grow Sloww by forwarding the email version of this newsletter to other lifelong learners.
📚 Lifelong Learning
What’s Our Problem? A Self-Help Book for Societies
I read Tim Urban’s new book What’s Our Problem? (Book Summary) the day it came out this week. To be honest, it was a weird experience for me. Tim’s blog Wait But Why was an important part of my own journey back in 2015-16 when I was trying to make sense of life after an existential crisis. His posts and illustrations were a much-needed perspective reset on life in general. In the years since, I’ve been sensemaking through my evolving journey of lifelong learning, intentional living, life purpose, mental mastery, and spiritual growth.
Tim has spent the last 6 years sensemaking in a very different way—by diving deep into American politics, social movements, and current events. His new book starts with a premise I’m on board with: humans need increasing wisdom to use exponential technology wisely or we’re in trouble. Many have been talking about this for years now (or in Ken Wilber’s case, decades). The bulk of the book seems to get lost in pointing at superficial symptoms instead of ever getting to the root problems. The good news is the book comes back around to end on some positive takeaways about awareness and courage.
From my perspective, our #1, ultimate challenge, most urgent and important, root problem is: our relationship with our minds. The solution: further psychological development (individually and collectively).
“We are unlikely to effectively solve these problems unless we truly understand their ultimate source: the human mind. In our view, to survive and flourish…we must look inward. In an era defined by human impact, the most pressing questions of this time are about ourselves. The duration and prosperity of our species’ journey together on this planet will, in part, be determined by the extent to which we can come to understand our minds and apply the lessons we learn to how we live our lives.” — Nathaniel Barr & Gordon Pennycook
If you’re interested in the key takeaways from the book—without any of the politics, social buzzwords, or current events—check out my book summary.
If you’re interested in seeing how Tim’s concepts in the book relate to other existing concepts, check out my Twitter thread.
If you have no idea who Tim even is in the first place, check out his new podcast with Lex Fridman.
🌎 Lighter Living
How to cut your expenses by 25%
Vicki Robin, co-author of Your Money or Your Life (on my reading list for this year), says when you start paying attention to the flow of money and stuff in your life, your consumption will naturally drop by 20-25% because that’s how much unconsciousness there is in your spending. If you need a case study, my wife and I actually cut our household expenses by 30% a few years ago. The sooner you start tracking your spending, the sooner you may experience something similar!
“The new roadmap for money says that there is something called ‘enough.’ Enough is this vibrant, vital place—an awareness about the flow of money and stuff in your life, in light of your true happiness and your sense of purpose and values. Your ‘enough point’ (having enough) is having everything you want and need to have a life you love full self-expression with nothing in excess. It’s not minimalism. It’s not less is more (because sometimes more is more), but it’s that sweet spot, the Goldilocks point. Enough for me is one of the absolute fulcrums between the old roadmap for money and the new roadmap for money … Once people start to pay attention to the flow of money and stuff in their lives in this way, their consumption drops by about 20-25% naturally because that’s the amount of unconsciousness that you have in your spending. So, when you become conscious, that falls away and many people say they don’t even know what they used to spend their money on.” — Vicki Robin
It’s no surprise that Vicki Robin also has one of the best perspectives out there on financial independence—it’s not the end of your journey, it’s the beginning.
“For me, financial independence has simply been the freedom to pursue a higher purpose – to grow spiritually, to learn, to create and to serve … I don’t see financial independence as the ultimate goal. I see it as just a ticket to the greatest show on earth – the earth itself with all her beauty, complexity, critters and currently crises. The opportunity to ask the Mary Oliver questions: What are you going to do with your one wild and precious life? I’m writing this to invite you to look past the numbers to the meaning of life.” — Vicki Robin
More Vicki: 🔒Sloww Sunday #03, 🔒#67, and 🔒#73
Explore more: How do I design a lighter life? (Sloww Stage 1)
🧭 Deeper Purpose
Step away from work, and walk into life
Get up:
- “A desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world.” — John le Carré
- “How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.” — Henry David Thoreau
- “We can all agree that the unexamined life is not worth living … But if all you’re doing is examining, you’re not living.” — Adam Leipzig
Go walk:
- “Only thoughts which come from walking have any value.” — Friedrich Nietzsche
- “I have walked myself into my best thoughts.” — Søren Kierkegaard
- “(Walking is) gymnastics for the mind.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
Explore more: How do I find higher purpose (Sloww Stage 2)?
Get the eBook: Ikigai 2.0: A Step-by-Step Guidebook to Finding Life Purpose & Making Money Meaningfully (+ Bonus Workbook)
🧠 Mental Wealth
For those into psychological development…
It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of Ego Development Theory. Here it is in a nutshell:
And, here it is with more detail about the stages. If you can develop beyond the middle line of this journey (the “watershed”), in a sense it’s like living in the future. You are among the minority getting a sneak peek of what the human mind is capable of:
Even better, 🔒here’s my own self-assessment and 🔒how my own journey (what I call “Sloww Stages”) map onto the EDT stages:
And finally, here’s more about the Sloww Stages. Many seem to stumble upon Sloww in the transition to (or once they’re already in) the post-conventional stages—just like everything Sloww for me personally has been post-existential crisis. In a sense, Sloww is your guide to the beginning of the rest of your life:
Explore more: How do I master the mind (Sloww Stage 3)?
Get Mini Mind: 365 Daily Emails of Bite-Size Brain Food
☯️ Timeless Wisdom
Certainty vs Pissed-off-ness
Why is it that those most pissed off about everything in the world seem to be those most certain about everything? On the flip side, decreasing certainty (in other words, increasing uncertainty) means less pissed-off-ness and comes as a byproduct of increasing psychological development.
Continuing with the theme of ego development from the section above, Susanne Cook-Greuter (creator of Ego Development Theory) says:
- EDT Stage 4: “Sense of self-certainty common at this level comes from the notion that one can improve oneself.”
- EDT Stage 4/5: “The attitude of certainty that permeates the conventional mindset changes dramatically with the move into the postconventional … When one fully realizes that most prior meaning making was socially and culturally conditioned, scientific certainty and the judgmental frame of mind break down.”
- EDT Stage 5: “Based on the capacity to integrate and take a metasystematic view of different parts of experience, they tend to be quite certain of themselves and their cognitive and emotional capacity for synthesis and integration.”
- EDT Stage 5/6: “As a stage of differentiation, this perspective again questions everything that seemed to hold true and be certain up to this point. Indeed, an all-pervasive uncertainty is one of the characteristics of this stage.”
Explore more: How do I embody wisdom (Sloww Stage 4)?
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Go with the Sloww,
Kyle Kowalski
Synthesizer & Solopreneur
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