Dude, hate work; that is such a thing for me. My god. What a way to describe it too! Also love the "pass-the-bong" response, I'm gonna start using that in my own work from now on.
Great article. The lines between “love-work” and “hate-work” are not clearly defined for me; my day job is obviously hate-work, nevertheless the underlying fear of letting colleagues down / not being good enough drives me through with surprising speed and motivation.
I'll have to expand further on the love-work/hate-work distinction. My experience has been that hate-work is done best when afraid. It's basically the driving force behind a lot of forms of procrastination--people delay because it's aversive and they can't "get into it" the way they can with love-work, until they hit a critical threshold where fear of putting in a bad showing with a boss/colleague/client prompts them to explode into action.
Are you okay with it if I make reference to this comment in a follow-up? I'm going to try to start creating a "community response" thread because I'd really like to leverage this newsletter to start up something like a community dialogue on creative work. I'd love to include your observation here and credit you for it, if you're okay with it. Just let me know. You'd get an @mention out of it and a link to one (or more) of your newsletters.
Another brilliant piece, brilliantly written. Your papers are never dry, James. They sparkle with wit. I love "pass-the-bong" level - never heard that before. And so many other vervy bits.
Baird and you make a very interesting point about how the view of psychology changed once Buddhism became more known in the US.
I don't have any great insights to contribute here - just saying I enjoying your thinking and writing so much. (More than I enjoy your punctuation - there are a few cases where a question mark sits where a comma should be.)
I've never caught that pattern before! I'll add it to my editing checklist. I can see why I did it--in those sections I was trying to capture a question/answer sentiment (And then? This happened!") but i can also see that I'm abusing the form to the point where it's becoming intrusive.
I've told students before that small verbal flourishes like that are sort of like 'tics.' They indicate personality, and they add individuality to your writing if you use it in a constrained and structured way, knowing what you're doing. If you let them get out of control, though, people start to anticipate the tic and it detracts from their experience of the work.
I've seen several patterns like those. In my own writing, the one that used to be most intrusive was my use of the word "which." My advisor in graduate school hated it so much that he told me that before I send any paper to him I should first go on a "which" hunt. That was the start of my editing checklist.
“our understanding of the mind was changing, radically. We refer to this period as the Cognitive Revolution, and textbooks record it as the point where psychology pivoted from trying to define everything in terms of behavior to acknowledging that it was both possible and necessary to study cognition. This was supposedly a major victory in the field.”
American psychologists lack that historical perspective you write about because they think “psychology” began with William James. Buddhists and Stoics and others were doing fine-grained cognitive analysis centuries before Lazarus et al. The Russian school (Luria, Pavlov) fixated on a conditioning/reflex model of mind, and the American behaviorists like Skinner and Watson were so pissed at the intrapsychic fixation of the psychoanalysts that they ignored the black box of the mind as subjective epiphenomena. Cognitive “revolution”? Hardly. Only the computer metaphors were kinda new.
Spicy take. But yes, I'll concede that this is an America-centric explanation. And if you start from that perspective then it also explains why so many alternate explanations of mind also began to flourish in the American psychological milieu at that same time. Americans broke away from their fixation on the clockwork mind and found immediately that there were traditions that had an enormous amount of accumulated insight and wisdom which they had been ignoring.
I'm certain there are stories to be told here about just how much of the cognitive revolution in America ultimately grew out of the paradigm of mind imported into America by Buddhism in the 1940s-1960s. It doesn't seem surprising at all to me that the generation of young people first exposed to Buddhist thought were also the generation who shattered the behaviorist model.
Regarding Freud and alternate models of mind within the western tradition, I would argue that those fit nicely into the titan analogy. In spite of their popularity, at the level of academic psychology those paradigms could largely have been considered "conquered" by both behaviorism and the Cartesian approach to mind up until the 1960s when both a shift in generational attitudes and a slowly mounting body of neurological evidence started to suggest that they were not tenable. That would be the "fuzzy titan." Eventually the evidence became overwhelming.
I suspect my big failing in this article is that I didn't give eastern philosophy it's due credit. I'll post an extra footnote clearing it up. And also, I'll be comping you a paid subscription because I want you, especially, to be able to read the footnotes. ;-)
Question for you; do you mind if I bring up your Buddhism comment? I'm trying to do a "community dialogue" type piece for my newsletter in the next couple days -- something I hope to do regularly, where I talk about the comments people have made, in addition to crediting people for their cool ideas and providing links to their newsletters.
If you're okay with it, let me know; I'd like to mention your comment (not negatively in any way) and then highlight the role of Buddhism in the mid-century pivot towards new understandings of mind. It would come with an @mention and a link to your Substack for interested readers.
A couple alternatives if you'd prefer those:
1) I can mention the idea but keep you anonymous (e.g. "one reader mentioned...") or
2) I can drop the Buddhism thing entirely from the community newsletter--although it's a great point, I'm happy you mentioned it, and I'd be sad to have to leave it out. ;-)
Since this newsletter goes out to a lot of creatives, though, I'm trying to find ways to platform writers beyond just the few recommendations I make as part of Moonshots. I'd love to use this as a chance to boost you further on Substack. No idea what the repsonse would be, exactly, and my mailing list is meager compared to the real titans on this site. But hopefully it would send some people your way.
Oh my James, I hope my comments didn’t sound in any way critical of your wonderful writing. I’m only critical of the myopia of American psychology/ists.
My intention is always to just walk and talk along with your ideas. A conversation, not a debate or competition. Feel free to delete my comment if it seems at all disagreeable.
Thanks for offering me a gratis subscription. Very generous! 🙏🏻
No worries at all, Baird. I've re-read your post and it doesn't seem critical at all - mostly I was just embarrassed a bit because I realized I was falling prey to the same lack of scope that the rest of psychology had. ;-)
Dude, hate work; that is such a thing for me. My god. What a way to describe it too! Also love the "pass-the-bong" response, I'm gonna start using that in my own work from now on.
Great article. The lines between “love-work” and “hate-work” are not clearly defined for me; my day job is obviously hate-work, nevertheless the underlying fear of letting colleagues down / not being good enough drives me through with surprising speed and motivation.
Elkay,
I'll have to expand further on the love-work/hate-work distinction. My experience has been that hate-work is done best when afraid. It's basically the driving force behind a lot of forms of procrastination--people delay because it's aversive and they can't "get into it" the way they can with love-work, until they hit a critical threshold where fear of putting in a bad showing with a boss/colleague/client prompts them to explode into action.
Are you okay with it if I make reference to this comment in a follow-up? I'm going to try to start creating a "community response" thread because I'd really like to leverage this newsletter to start up something like a community dialogue on creative work. I'd love to include your observation here and credit you for it, if you're okay with it. Just let me know. You'd get an @mention out of it and a link to one (or more) of your newsletters.
James
Another brilliant piece, brilliantly written. Your papers are never dry, James. They sparkle with wit. I love "pass-the-bong" level - never heard that before. And so many other vervy bits.
Baird and you make a very interesting point about how the view of psychology changed once Buddhism became more known in the US.
I don't have any great insights to contribute here - just saying I enjoying your thinking and writing so much. (More than I enjoy your punctuation - there are a few cases where a question mark sits where a comma should be.)
Allegra,
I've never caught that pattern before! I'll add it to my editing checklist. I can see why I did it--in those sections I was trying to capture a question/answer sentiment (And then? This happened!") but i can also see that I'm abusing the form to the point where it's becoming intrusive.
I've told students before that small verbal flourishes like that are sort of like 'tics.' They indicate personality, and they add individuality to your writing if you use it in a constrained and structured way, knowing what you're doing. If you let them get out of control, though, people start to anticipate the tic and it detracts from their experience of the work.
I've seen several patterns like those. In my own writing, the one that used to be most intrusive was my use of the word "which." My advisor in graduate school hated it so much that he told me that before I send any paper to him I should first go on a "which" hunt. That was the start of my editing checklist.
James
“our understanding of the mind was changing, radically. We refer to this period as the Cognitive Revolution, and textbooks record it as the point where psychology pivoted from trying to define everything in terms of behavior to acknowledging that it was both possible and necessary to study cognition. This was supposedly a major victory in the field.”
American psychologists lack that historical perspective you write about because they think “psychology” began with William James. Buddhists and Stoics and others were doing fine-grained cognitive analysis centuries before Lazarus et al. The Russian school (Luria, Pavlov) fixated on a conditioning/reflex model of mind, and the American behaviorists like Skinner and Watson were so pissed at the intrapsychic fixation of the psychoanalysts that they ignored the black box of the mind as subjective epiphenomena. Cognitive “revolution”? Hardly. Only the computer metaphors were kinda new.
Spicy take. But yes, I'll concede that this is an America-centric explanation. And if you start from that perspective then it also explains why so many alternate explanations of mind also began to flourish in the American psychological milieu at that same time. Americans broke away from their fixation on the clockwork mind and found immediately that there were traditions that had an enormous amount of accumulated insight and wisdom which they had been ignoring.
I'm certain there are stories to be told here about just how much of the cognitive revolution in America ultimately grew out of the paradigm of mind imported into America by Buddhism in the 1940s-1960s. It doesn't seem surprising at all to me that the generation of young people first exposed to Buddhist thought were also the generation who shattered the behaviorist model.
Regarding Freud and alternate models of mind within the western tradition, I would argue that those fit nicely into the titan analogy. In spite of their popularity, at the level of academic psychology those paradigms could largely have been considered "conquered" by both behaviorism and the Cartesian approach to mind up until the 1960s when both a shift in generational attitudes and a slowly mounting body of neurological evidence started to suggest that they were not tenable. That would be the "fuzzy titan." Eventually the evidence became overwhelming.
I suspect my big failing in this article is that I didn't give eastern philosophy it's due credit. I'll post an extra footnote clearing it up. And also, I'll be comping you a paid subscription because I want you, especially, to be able to read the footnotes. ;-)
James
Hey, Baird,
Question for you; do you mind if I bring up your Buddhism comment? I'm trying to do a "community dialogue" type piece for my newsletter in the next couple days -- something I hope to do regularly, where I talk about the comments people have made, in addition to crediting people for their cool ideas and providing links to their newsletters.
If you're okay with it, let me know; I'd like to mention your comment (not negatively in any way) and then highlight the role of Buddhism in the mid-century pivot towards new understandings of mind. It would come with an @mention and a link to your Substack for interested readers.
A couple alternatives if you'd prefer those:
1) I can mention the idea but keep you anonymous (e.g. "one reader mentioned...") or
2) I can drop the Buddhism thing entirely from the community newsletter--although it's a great point, I'm happy you mentioned it, and I'd be sad to have to leave it out. ;-)
Since this newsletter goes out to a lot of creatives, though, I'm trying to find ways to platform writers beyond just the few recommendations I make as part of Moonshots. I'd love to use this as a chance to boost you further on Substack. No idea what the repsonse would be, exactly, and my mailing list is meager compared to the real titans on this site. But hopefully it would send some people your way.
James
Thanks for such a generous offering, James. I’d be honored to play a part in whatever writing you have in mind!
Oh my James, I hope my comments didn’t sound in any way critical of your wonderful writing. I’m only critical of the myopia of American psychology/ists.
My intention is always to just walk and talk along with your ideas. A conversation, not a debate or competition. Feel free to delete my comment if it seems at all disagreeable.
Thanks for offering me a gratis subscription. Very generous! 🙏🏻
No worries at all, Baird. I've re-read your post and it doesn't seem critical at all - mostly I was just embarrassed a bit because I realized I was falling prey to the same lack of scope that the rest of psychology had. ;-)
Hmmm. I see you more as reporting on these scope issues than falling prey to them! Very 20K foot level, you!
Excellent Read!
Ruth,
You're wonderful. Thank you so much for your kind words.
James ;-)