Writer’s Block

Where Am I Going, Anyway?

William Sundwick

I can’t seem to focus these days. Is it Coronavirus quarantine fatigue? Or, is it a much deeper philosophical crisis? I must ask myself: what kept me going writing in Warp & Woof, for nearly three-and-a-half years, that is now missing?

The obvious answer: my Writers Group is missing. For all those years, I wrote under strict weekly deadlines (with breaks between sessions). Now there are no such deadlines. And, it doesn’t look like I can reconstitute the group in the near future. Not until in-person classes are again offered by Arlington Community Learning, anyway. Zoom classes do not allow the kind of feedback that was critical for my weekly production of posts and kept me going during breaks. I relied on the six to nine classmates and instructor reading my output – and I theirs. Each week they would give me spontaneous thoughts on my piece, as I did for their work, complete with notes written on print copies of the piece. It was a good system, at once conversational and well-prepared. It was Jerry Haines’ system.

But then Jerry left for health reasons. ACL tried to replace him but could not. I’ve been lost without him. Among other things, Jerry taught me to focus on my intended audience. Was that audience the Writers Group itself? Or, did I have a different, virtual, audience in mind? Friends and family? I promoted my blog via social media contacts and email, although I never paid for promotion.

Facebook discussion groups and chat rooms have fallen out of fashion these days, however. Do I need a different means of promotion? Do I need another ACL Writers Group?

And, I am beginning to question whether I have anything to say. Perhaps now is the time to re-evaluate the five basic themes on which Warp & Woof was built:

1.    .       The Past – “What Used to Matter,” I labeled it. This is my page for all pieces covering politics, history, and sociology. It has by far the most posts, after three-plus years of writing since launching the blog. The page reflects what I read.
2.       .    The Present – “What Matters for Sure.” It is the next biggest collection, where I have written about health and fitness, including mental health and my own life today, as well as several excursions into my grandchildren’s lives. Certainly, my family and friends appreciate this material, and the Writers Group often gave me positive feelings about these pieces, too.
3.           The Future – “What May Matter, Who Knows?” This page is decidedly thin on original content. Its only noteworthy topics have been related to economics, placed here as projections or explorations of consumer behavior. Originally, I thought I would cover more science and technology on this page, and maybe anthropology (enduring elements of the human experience). Alas, these never materialized after the inaugural year of Warp & Woof. Is it time to retire The Future?
4.            Beats – “Sounds that Matter,” as I tagged it in 2017. It is perhaps the most coherent of all my pages, except for The Past, but has recently suffered because I’m simply not listening to music during this pandemic lockdown. My gym has been closed! I would always crank up my iTunes playlist on my phone while working out – but I don’t workout anymore. Sad. Perhaps Beats will pick up again in the future. I still maintain an interest in classic rock, blues, and more avant-garde forms of rock (punk and metal). My music speaks to me. I should be able to put it into words.
5.            Totems – “Objects that Matter,” was really about car culture – something which apparently died (at least among potential audiences of Warp & Woof) more than twenty years ago. Beyond a planned piece on the decline and fall of General Motors, I’m not sure there is anything else in this realm that interests me enough to write about. If I were to write about EVs or autonomous vehicles, I could put it on The Future page, instead. Sigh.

If I seriously wanted to overcome my writer’s block, I think I would put more energy into writing on science and technology for The Future, and possibly launch a new page dedicated to political ideology (although I might keep covering elections and candidates in The Past). I used to be an information professional, so I ought to have a strong technology focus, right? But it may have been too long since I retired from that field. I could do some research, though! That might be fun.

If only I could recreate the feedback loop from that ACL Writers Group and Jerry. That would surely dissolve my writers block! But it would require collective reading and commenting, perhaps face-to-face in a classroom environment. This Spring, I had an unhappy experience with a Zoom writers’ class where nobody read anything, and all writing was limited to 250 words, only read aloud in a kind of “performance.” Not the experience I was seeking. Worse, I mistakenly chose Tara Reade and her accusation of sexual assault against Joe Biden as my topic – basing four short blurbs on that continuously breaking news cycle, with commentary about her reliability and “the truth.” It amounted to nothing, and my writing came across as shallow, given the constraining format of the class. Not my style.

Perhaps American politics, and media coverage of it, is too shallow? That alone could explain my writing doldrums lately. I need better subject matter!

Warp & Woof

v.1.3

Welcome to Warp & Woof, a blog from William Sundwick. Its purpose is to share with its readers some ways to navigate the philosophical, moral and aesthetic dimensions of life.

It is not a scholarly blog, but the author hopes that his own life experience and reading can inform his readers’ journeys through such realms.

He wants to share some things that he believes matter, not “fake news,” and he will offer frequent enough doses to motivate you to keep checking in. Comments are welcome. While Blogger requires you to identify yourself via your email address, the author will anonymize any comments before publishing them.

Warp & Woof has a structure. There are five departments of thinking (pages) -- but some entries may be cross-posted in more than one department. These five “realms of deliberation” are:

The Present

    … what matters, for sure!

 

                     The Past

                              … what used to matter       

                                                               

                                                                              

                                             The Future

                                                      … what may matter, who knows?

 

                             Totems

                                    … objects that matter (or mattered)  

                        

Beats

    … sounds that matter, since we never get tired of hearing them! 

Author’s Introduction

Switching to the first person now and translating -- readers can expect entries dealing with health and wellness for seniors (that’s me) in The Present, along with musings on bigger psychological/philosophical issues. This includes a fair dose of writing on child development (I spend some time babysitting my grandchildren).  

The Past will be filled with lots of hopefully knowledgeable meanderings around politics, sociology and history. I’m a liberal arts type, undergraduate major in history, and professional librarian for something like 30 years before imperceptibly transitioning to IT professional. I retired from the Library of Congress in 2015, after 42 years at that institution. History and politics are very big topics for me, despite their vague and uncertain impact on the present or future.

Exciting (to me) developments in science and technology will be found in The Future, along with a healthy dose of fear about things like global warming and other planetary or civilizational catastrophe! Perhaps I have an apocalyptic frame of reference -- most of my thinking about economics and anthropology belongs in The Future. Economics covers consumer behavior and marketing, both interesting fields for me. Anthropology deals with primitive roots of tribal life, which I claim will become more apparent in the future, as more complex social arrangements break down, putting sociology in The Past. The Future is not the place for invective about the status of American politics -- that belongs on the page for The Past!

On the page for Totems, you will find lots of apparently senseless, but exciting for me, information about cars, past, present, and future. I’m a “car guy”, by virtue mostly of my upbringing as a General Motors brat in Flint, Michigan during the fifties and sixties. I’m not a car guy mechanic, however. I never open the hood or crawl under my own vehicle (much less anybody else’s!), but a car guy who was raised in, and by, mid-century American “car culture.”

Finally, on the Beats page, another personal obsession gets its due: rock music, from the origins in the Great Migration, through the British Invasion, hard blues, acid rock, punk, metal, techno. If anybody thinks these genres are still alive, please let me know! I’ve “got my ear down to the ground” to paraphrase Jim Morrison, When the Music’s Over. Yes, there is audio here, via YouTube videos.

That’s been the concept. Version 1.0 of Warp & Woof launched on Ground Hog Day, 2017.  I made some changes to the layout and design recently, for v.1.2 (sounds better than v.1.1).  And, true confessions, this v.1.3 is informed by two-and-a-half years in my Arlington, VA Writers Group. These folks may be my only audience – except when I beg my Facebook friends and relatives to read my posts. I hope my mission statement remains unchanged at least through version 2.0; i.e., helping my readers see the “big picture” more clearly, making the complex simple, and having fun while we expand both our peripheral vision and depth perception!                      

         

Me, at Filene Center, Wolf Trap, 2018

                                                        

Warp & Woof

v.1.2

Welcome to Warp & Woof, a blog from William Sundwick. Its purpose is to share with its readers some ways to navigate the philosophical, moral and aesthetic dimensions of life.

It is not a scholarly blog, but the author hopes that his own life experience and reading can inform his readers’ journeys through these realms.

He wants to share some of the things that he believes matter, not “fake news,” and he will offer a frequent enough dose to motivate you to keep checking in. Comments are welcome. While Blogger requires you to identify yourself via your email address, the author will anonymize any comments before publishing them.

It has a structure. There are five departments of thinking (pages) … but, some entries may be cross-posted in more than one department. These five “realms of deliberation” are:

The Present

    … what matters, for sure! 

 The Past

       … what used to matter     

  

                                                               

                                                                            

                                                   The Future

                                                       … what may matter, who knows?

                                                    Totems

     … objects that matter (or mattered)  

                         

Beats

    … sounds that matter, since we never get tired of hearing them! 

Author’s Introduction

Switching to the first person now and translating -- readers can expect entries dealing with health and wellness for seniors (that’s me) in The Present, along with musings on bigger psychological/philosophical issues. This includes a fair dose of writing on child development (I spend much time babysitting my grandchildren).  

The Past will be filled with lots of hopefully knowledgeable meanderings around politics, sociology and history. I’m a liberal arts type, undergraduate major in history, and professional librarian for something like 30 years before imperceptibly transitioning to IT professional. I retired from the Library of Congress in 2015, after 42 years at that institution.

Exciting (to me) developments in science and technology will be found in The Future, along with a healthy dose of fear about things like global warming and other planetary or civilizational catastrophe! Perhaps that is my apocalyptic frame of reference -- and includes most of my thinking about economics and anthropology. Economics, in turn, covers consumer behavior and marketing, both interesting fields for me. But, The Future is not the place for invective about the current state of American politics -- those things belong on the page for The Past!

On the page for Totems, you will find lots of apparently senseless information about cars, past, present, and future. I’m a “car guy”, by virtue mostly of my upbringing as a General Motors brat in Flint, Michigan during the fifties and sixties. I’m not a car guy mechanic, however. I never open the hood or crawl under my own vehicle (much less anybody else’s!), but a car guy who was raised in, and by, mid-century American “car culture.”

Finally, on the Beats page, another personal obsession gets its due: rock music, from the origins in the Great Migration, through the British Invasion, hard blues, acid rock, punk, metal, techno. If anybody thinks this genre is still alive, please let me know! I’ve “got my ear down to the ground” to paraphrase Jim Morrison, When the Music’s Over. Yes, there is audio here, via YouTube videos.

That’s been the concept. Version 1.0 of Warp & Woof launched on Ground Hog Day, 2017.  I’ve made some changes to the layout and design recently, for a v.1.2 (sounds better than v.1.1).  I hope my mission statement remains unchanged at least through version 2.0; i.e., helping my readers see the “big picture” more clearly, making the complex simple, and having fun while we expand both our peripheral vision and depth perception!                     

                                                      Me, with grandson Owen (Oct. 2017) 

                       

Life on the Internet: No Fear, No Shame

Why All the Fuss?

William Sundwick

Why are so many people so afraid of sharing “personal information” with the world, anyway? Lately, especially with Facebook, it has verged on mass paranoia. Warp and Woof, the blog, was launched on Groundhog Day 2017. It is now 15 months old. And, I have been an active Facebook user for at least four years. Twitter about the same (but less active). Before I retired three years ago from the federal government, I was already well-acquainted with the public nature of the Internet, especially security risks – it was part of my job.

Let’s explore some of the risks of online presence in a cool, rational manner. As always, bad experiences can color a person’s feelings. But, I submit, so can positive experiences!

Fear and resentment of powers unseen manipulating you are a large part of the bad feelings people have. But, the only difference between what advertising and propaganda have always sought to do and what modern data analysis can do is something called “narrowcasting.” The more data that can be harvested about you, personally, the more precisely advertising can be directed at you. The hope of the advertisers is that this targeting will diminish your resistance to the message. The product being sold will appear to be custom-designed for you, even though it may just be the advertising message that is so customized.

The recent revelation about Cambridge Analytica stealing Facebook user data for political advertising reinforces the concept that there is a great conspiracy to manipulate your consumer behavior. There is, but it’s not new. True, social media together with “big data” can potentially be much more effective than the older “broadcast” methods of advertising. But, to think that you are less able to resist a narrowcast message is to admit weakness and defeat. Maybe it’s really all the “other people” and their ability to resist that concerns you? Hence, politics.

Then, there is identity theft – the idea that personal information can be used as a key to enable burglary. It has happened to some people.  But, again, the digital world has plenty of entry points for this kind of intrusion. Point-of-sale equipment has historically been the most common. And, Internet purchases via credit card certainly add to the risk. That’s hacking. Best defense: don’t ever buy anything with a credit card! (And, don’t use online banking or brokerage services.)

Perhaps even more compelling than either the manipulation risk or the identity theft risk, for many, is the fear of hurtful trolling – or, even physical harm. It’s likely because of bad experiences in the past, either online or in some other form of bullying, that many will foreswear social media altogether, and would never consider publishing an open blog. They also would not want to comment on anybody’s open blog, unless they could remain anonymous. Even then, they may let their fears of losing that anonymity consume them.

While most of us claim we want to be respectful of other’s feelings, it seems there are more than enough nasty trolls out there who are looking for an opportunity to demean and bully. What they engage in is a concerted attack on free speech. It can be either selfish (it makes them feel good, like the schoolyard bully), or strategic (they’re trying to suppress dissent). In either case, it seems that resistance is incumbent upon us. It may be that “resistance is futile” for privacy advocates, and we surely should support cybersecurity efforts to protect us from identity theft (businesses have good reasons to protect their customers), but to abandon participation in the digital world is tantamount to surrender to malevolent forces. Living “off the grid” means you have been defeated, no matter how refreshing it may feel as a vacation. Nobody wants to admit defeat!

Of course, it is possible to mitigate the potential harm of online conversations. Regarding social media, choose your Facebook friends wisely, and if discussion groups get abusive, go away for a while. I’ve reduced my Twitter activity for that reason. The other Digital Golden Rule is: don’t be stingy with the good stuff – there can never be too many compliments and validations. They likely will be returned in kind. My Writer’s Group knows this rule well. Congratulations to all, we self-enforce.

And, remember, if you publish online (including micro-blogging in social media) and your readers lose respect for you, it’s on you! The final judge of the value in your posts should be you. It’s helpful to keep your purpose and audience in mind – and write well. Sometimes, ruffling feathers is your objective. Don’t be shy if it fits your larger purpose. Just be deliberate.

To recapitulate, we need to be mindful of scams like phishing schemes, but psychological manipulation and identity theft pre-date the current state of the Internet – i.e., social media -- by many years. A more powerful fear for many seems to involve possible damage to their egos. Not to minimize real physical threats, but reasonable prudence about revealing our location, and being deliberate about what we say online, should alleviate most of those fears. Again, it’s not so different from the way life has always been. There have always been bullies. There have always been haters. And, it’s always better to confront a bully than to run away. You also confront by ignoring the bully.

Clearly, if I allowed myself to be consumed by these fears, I would not have started my blog. While my motivation for the blog is not to sell anything, I will admit to a desire to give something to my readers. Unfortunately, I can’t determine how successful I am unless I get feedback. Blogger stats are available which show me page views by article, by date, by operating system, and break it down geographically. But, page views do not necessarily equate to readers.

I promote Warp & Woof on Facebook, via email, in person to friends, and to my Writers Group. But, the responses, while always favorable, come back to me in the medium I used for the promotion – Facebook comments, email replies, in-person confirmations of reading or “seeing” the blog. Nobody makes comments in Blogger, itself (unless I beg them). That’s no fun. It’s true that the platform doesn’t allow for anonymous comments – but, I can anonymize the comment before I publish it, by making the comment myself, and quoting an anonymous reader. Perhaps that’s something I should promote, separately. Consider it done here. You must trust me, though.

So, consider this an invitation to follow Warp & Woof. Comment freely, I will anonymize before I publish your comments. It’s a blog with only one contributor (so far) – me! It contains my thoughts and expresses my interests. But, I’m interested in your thoughts as well. Help make it a conversation.

Social Entropy: Tribalization and Decline of Elites

William Sundwick

Collective Consciousness

Shared cultural experience, often reaching back centuries, is what determines many social behaviors, from voting behavior to social attitudes like racism or sexism. It is passed from generation to generation -- the basis of class identity and national identity. These cultural identities determine what we read, how we are educated, and how we interpret what we read and learn. Indeed, often, we only accept input from certain qualified sources … the frequently cited “echo chamber” of social media news feeds. It all comprises our collective consciousness as a society. Some of the filters our experience passes through become very sophisticated over time, and may be difficult to perceive. We accept them as the rules we live by. They become “social norms.”

Ordinarily, social norms are enforced by law, custom, and group status markers. Together, the enforcement mechanisms constitute what we know as “authority.” But, what happens when the enforcement begins to break down? Do we lose collective consciousness, forgetting the norms of the past? Do we depend on individuals to successfully break the rules, before we, ourselves, can be free from social bondage to that collective consciousness?

Systems theory, though originally invented to describe natural phenomena, is today common in political science and sociology, especially via cybernetics: the study of feedback mechanisms and system change. Application of the Second Law of Thermodynamics (entropy) to social systems, however, has not necessarily been accepted into the standard lexicon of either political science or sociology. Yet, there is a link, as manifested by the transformation of complex social organizations into tribal entities.

Tribalization

Relationships between members of a social group may be based mostly on the larger collective consciousness, social norms; or, they may be based on things like kinship, language, religion, and neighborhood. The multiplicity of filters for shared experience encourages increased tribalization of society. There appears to be a breakdown of traditional social structure underway, with big groups, like nation states, losing influence compared to smaller autonomous groups. These small groups emerge as virtual tribes. This is a global phenomenon, not limited to the United States. It has been aided by the rapid expansion of telecommunications capacity. The more complex social groups, with many interlocking subgroups, which share the same basic cultural identity, are becoming relics of the past. The new tribal groups, being autonomous, never need to speak to one another. Social norms of the larger group are not enforced effectively on their native turf. The ability to “see the forest through the trees” is increasingly restricted to a certain social class … the one that has been acculturated to systems thinking. While perhaps this has always been true to some extent, something is changing now. This group is losing its social status! The authority of knowledge is diminishing, perhaps because of mass availability of information, and a long-established social norm no longer as powerful as it once was. It also may be because more people feel betrayed by the “professional class” that has arrogated to itself an ever-increasing portion of the social pie.

One of the main concerns of pundits is with the existence of social media “echo chambers,” where users tend to be exposed only to opinions, or even facts, which support their own bias. Certainly, it is possible for some exceptional individuals to break out of the prisons of their collective past bias, if they possess the proper spirit of adventure. Eventually, such gifted persons will decide that they may have been wrong!  The impact of this in the social sciences is that there is no control mechanism … the Internet is not the “property”, or under the authority, of any recognizable social entity. It is supranational, and its content isn’t even managed by any international organization. (See Warp & Woof post: “Mysteries of the Internet: IP Addresses – Where Do They Come From, and Why Should You Care?”)

The Power Elite and Social Entropy

Politics and sociology intersect when it comes to looking at power relations in society. An important component of these relationships is authority.  Modern social units -- the municipality, the state, the nation -- bestow legal authority via politics, but politics also influences other types of authority. The authority of knowledge, especially, comes from social constructs (advanced degrees, or a resume in government) which, in the past, have determined political outcomes. Not so much anymore. If any of these alternate sources of authority are challenged, and lose, a pillar of social cohesion may be lost. This is certainly true of the authority of knowledge, as seen in the last U.S. presidential campaign, and the British Brexit vote. All traditional “intellectual” elites in both countries opposed the two outcomes.

C. Wright Mills, in “The Power Elite,” identified three social groups which, in all advanced industrial societies, control the bulk of social and political norms practiced by the society’s members. They were the institutions of the military, business, and government. He didn’t include academia as a normative power elite. It seems, fifty years later, that omission has become an endorsement for his definition of the power elite, after all.

Power relationships in society do change. There are challenges to the legitimacy of social institutions, and of political outcomes. Elites are challenged. They’re often replaced by other elites, contrary to the argument that there is a pluralism at work in advanced societies. Democracy is fantasy, as elite theory postulates. Still, shuffling off one elite group for another can create social change, because of varying constituencies.

During most of the 20^th century, there was an alternative social organization to the familiar corporate, capitalist-dominated, form familiar to us in the West (Mills’ model for the “Power Elite”). This alternate form was the socialist model practiced in the Eastern Bloc. The Yugoslav apparatchik Milovan Djilas described a “New Class” in these societies, in the Soviet Union it was known as the Nomenklatura.  Prophetic socialist writers from the Bolshevik era (Trotsky) as well as anti-Communist writers in the West (Friedrich Hayek, among others), saw this New Class as the ultimate downfall of the utopian socialist state. Conventional historic interpretation of the fall of the Soviet Union, and transformations of the People’s Republic of China and Vietnam, tends to support that view.

Underlying the theory of social entropy is the notion that internal decay of all social structures is inevitable, following loosely the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The argument goes that the more energy that is invested in maintaining social norms the more friction, and less useful “work” (social change?), is output from the system.

Emile Durkheim, at the end of the 19^th century, did a groundbreaking study of suicide, from a sociological perspective. He coined the term “anomie” to describe the case of social norms abandoning the individual, no longer serving their personal needs. By extension, one can see this concept describing radical social alienation in the form of protest, or even revolutionary organizations. Indeed, whenever society no longer serves the needs of its members, we can say there is a state of anomie in the group which perceives that it is not served. If this anomie is spread out among various subgroups in a complex society, one could observe general system entropy, in accordance with the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

EROEI Theories

My argument is that politics and sociology, as we study them, are based on constructs we have made about what has gone before us, often what our ancestors had created. It’s not so much that they don’t matter in the present, or won’t influence what happens in the future, but that they come from the past. True, knowledge is being accrued constantly, new research does shed light on social phenomena, perhaps even leads to a new social theory. Investment in social energy through research, just as much as maintenance of social norms, might suggest looking at return on that social investment.  Does it match the cost, in terms of social friction, or threats to existing elites? If not, society will ultimately lose energy (value).

Energy Return on Energy Investment (EROEI) theories have been proposed in environmental science to describe similar activity regarding fossil fuels and social structure. Like fossil fuels, it can be argued that social energy is a non-renewable resource. It is limited by the size of the population, and by the available social power of different groups, both elites and non-elites. It is limited by levels of authority given to different groups. The social return on that investment would be measured in increased power for any or all groups. Tribalism might be a response to low return on big social investments. Little is invested, by comparison, in the tribal group, so less needs to be returned.

Warp & Woof

When I launched this blog, last Groundhog Day, I introduced it with a sort of charter. It would be built, I wrote, on five pillars of content, which I called: The Past, The Present, The Future, Totems, and Beats. Then, I went on to describe what sort of material would be in the content for each of the five pages. The page called “The Past, What Used to Matter,” would consist of “philosophical meanderings about politics, sociology and history.”  While history is obvious, my thinking about politics and sociology, at the time, was that both disciplines were expressions of our collective consciousness. They were based on shared experiences, and on our reading; but, specifically, on interpretations of them coming via social filters. Those filters are all rooted in a collective social past.

Both economics and anthropology live on Warp & Woof’s “The Future” page … “What May Matter, Who Knows?” That’s because those disciplines have an end which is future-oriented, increasing resources, or surviving in situations of reduced resources. Political science and sociology, conversely, only seek to increase understanding of forces which have led us to our present condition. They have much more in common with the study of history. But, unlike history, which is mainly storytelling, these two disciplines throw in some data analysis, and rely on hypothesis testing, in the scientific tradition … but grounded in data from past behaviors (e.g., voting patterns, survey research).

Finally, I will support my thinking about the social sciences with my reading list from the last few years. Newer authors have been more responsible for my current taxonomy of these disciplines than the older group cited above. These are primarily writers in economics and anthropology. Thomas Piketty did a fantastic job of bringing a traditional Marxian model into the 21^st century. Joseph Stiglitz has further emphasized what the future “good society” should look like. Robert Frank, a behavioral economist, contributed an important concept for social models: relative status. And, significantly, from anthropology, Jared Diamond, in “Guns, Germs, and Steel,” gave me a long view of human civilization which my college background in modern U.S. and European history never did.

My attachment to older, more traditional, social models, like those of structuralism, or the Marxian creed of controlling the means of production, are clearly romanticized notions from the past. That said, I can’t be totally removed from social turmoil, since I do believe in a dialectic tension in history … thesis à antithesis à synthesis. And, looking at history is as much a part of my page for “The Past” as are the social sciences. I firmly believe that history will continue to be written, even as complex societies decompose into tribal entities, with few enforceable social norms across groups.

Reading List

Jared Diamond, “Guns, Germs, and Steel”, W. W. Norton, 1997

Robert Frank, “The Darwin Economy”, Princeton University Press, 2011

Thomas Frank, “Listen, Liberal”, Metropolitan Books, 2016

Steve Fraser, “Limousine Liberal”, Basic Books, 2016

Thomas Piketty, “Capital in the Twenty-First Century”, Belknap Press, 2014

Celebrating Banality: Why Those Daily Routines Have So Much Power

William Sundwick

Excitement vs. Routine

We all love exciting new experiences. The faster heart beat of the unexpected thrill, or the shot of feel-good dopamine or serotonin neurotransmitters into the brain, are what many of us associate with a life lived "on the edge." Much popular literature, art, and music consider the excitement of danger and unanticipated adventure to be a great virtue.The appeal of newness can reasonably be associated with feelings of optimism, hopefulness. Novelty is undeniably an attractive prospect for many.

But, what about routine? We all engage in daily rituals, or some banal activities, to which we pay little heed, in our imaginations. Why do we continue to practice such ordinary, repetitive, processes in our lives? Indeed, we often conclude that life may amount to nothing more than replacing one pattern of banal activity with another, on and on, throughout our short time on this planet.

The facts are that daily routines contribute much to our psychological, and physical, well-being. They generate comfort and security, predictability -- necessary prerequisites to develop skills, mastery, in life. Just as a corporation seeks predictability in the economy, to enable growth, so, too, do we individuals need that security for us to grow. Routines reinforce our "being present" in reality, as opposed to anxiously contemplating the future, or drowning in regrets about the past. Meditation is often reduced to the most fundamental routine: breathing in, breathing out. Continued practice of routines is what enables mastery of any skill, hence from childhood on, we need routines in order to keep our world functioning. Schools and workplaces emphasize routine for exactly that reason -- mastery.

There exists an interesting circular interaction between "exciting" experiences and banal routines, throughout our lives. On the one hand, moments of excitement can create energy needed later for stamina in maintaining daily routines: those neurotransmitters, and the psychological lift they produce. But, simultaneously, the very repetitiveness of the daily routines frees up creative energy, which can be used to induce further excitement. Not much energy is expended by the banal, unless you let your mind wander to an uncertain future, or become paralyzed by regrets for past mistakes. Hence, a reservoir can be built up, ready for release when the opportunity arises.

Patterns

In addition to the binary system of "excitement" vs. "routine," we also possess a mechanism for controlling the pace and scheduling of routines. Complex lives, those which need variegated scheduling, depending on lots of contingencies, will require another behavioral tool ... "patterns."

Patterns of behavior are really layers of routines. Depending on their sophistication, they may mitigate uncontrolled variability ("uncertainty") with varying effectiveness. While daily routines are governed by clocks ... actual clocks ticking off hours, minutes, seconds; or, lifetime clocks related to aging and stages of life; or, quotidian biological clocks with alarms signaling hunger, tension, lethargy, sleep deprivation, etc. Behavior patterns will trigger the routine when certain combinations of circumstances occur, perhaps not following a predictable clock; but, instead, following the completion of a previous routine, as a precondition. Some of these patterns have no apparent cause, but are totally arbitrary: e.g., I raise the venetian blinds on the clear story windows in my family room on alternating days of the week, depending on when my cleaning ladies are scheduled to come, so that on the day they clean, the blinds are lowered with only slats open. This routine has no purpose other than an alternating diurnal pattern, I could just as easily make sure that the blinds were lowered just before the cleaning crew arrives, and not worry about the other times! Perhaps the behavior pattern helps me remember which week they are due to clean (alternating weeks), but surely I could come up with a less bizarre reminder!

When multiple routines compete for the same space, other contingencies must determine which routine will be followed. I take late evening showers, if I intend to go outside afterwards (usually to unplug my Chevy Volt from the outlet in the driveway, so that my wife doesn't have to do it before she goes to work next morning), I will get dressed, else I will get in my pajamas after my shower! The operative contingency here is whether I plugged the car into the electrical outlet early enough in the evening so that it will be fully charged by the time I finish my shower; which, in turn, may depend on how much battery range was left on the car when my wife or I last returned it to our driveway that day. One can imagine far more complex combinations for many of the decisions they make regarding which routine to activate, and when. Since the logical flow chart for all these behavior patterns could become very elaborate, most of us rely on our own internal circuitry, and memory, to pull up the correct behavior for the contingency at hand. As long as the patterns and routines further our progress toward a goal, we should be okay. But, what about that goal? Where does it come from? ... Whose goal is it, anyway?

Goals

Some goals are low risk projects. We have ready access to the routines, and patterns, that we know can let us reach those goals easily. Little energy is invested in achieving those simple goals. If we have food in the house, and minimal food preparation skills, we will eat. If we find we are dozing off on the sofa, and the clock shows an appropriate hour, we go to bed. If we have an established home exercise routine, and the time and tools to execute it, we will do so. Other goals, however, are more difficult to achieve. Sometimes, it's because the goal is unclear ... why do I have a pattern for opening those venetian blinds, anyway? Sometimes, the skill set needed to achieve the goal is not yet mastered, we may have to learn new routines, or maybe we have lost the skills needed, during the course of our life. We may have simply forgotten the routine  ...  where are light bulbs in this store, again?

Even a routine as silly as opening and lowering those blinds on alternating days, when you break it down to its origins, has the goal of reminding me when the cleaning ladies are coming ... and, keeping track of which day of the week I'm in, as bonus! Some goals are related to maintaining good health, like meals, sleep and exercise. Some goals are selected to foster creativity, like frequency of posts to Warp & Woof blog. And, some patterns of daily routines are invented for the purpose of building structure in life. In these cases, the routines came first, the goals that the routines facilitate only take shape after the routine is established -- does this explain the venetian blinds?

When goals are selected by others for you, your behavior patterns may be ad hoc. Deadlines and priorities may be imposed which determine how the patterns are structured. Which should I do first today, if I know I have to be at a meeting in Alexandria by 7:00? Should I go to the gym, shower, then take a walk? Or, should I start writing my blog post first, then go to gym, and leave the walk optional, as time permits?  Any combination of routines may be possible, inclusion or not, based on priorities or deadlines. Constraints imposed by others tend to govern some people's behavior more than others ... and, at some stages of life more than others (not so much in retirement!).

Banality

There is an annoying lack of authority on the subject of the banality of daily routines. Most everybody agrees that daily routines are good for you. They seem to be responsible for all the positive direction in our lives. The disagreement arises in assigning relative value to different routines. It seems everybody has an agenda, something to sell. Which routines are labeled "good" versus "bad" depends on that agenda. I am left with the conclusion that it is the very banality of the routine which generates its value. Banality has multiple definitions, too. One definition focuses on the "ordinariness" of the banal, Another definition, based on its Old French origins, is "common to all."

If we focus on the banal as being the "ordinary" or "unexceptional", we are confronted by the fact that what's ordinary to one person may be very extraordinary to another. Think about routines for somebody with a disability, versus the able. Perhaps the routines that seem most ordinary are precisely those which we should be most thankful we can call banal! On the other hand, if we accept the definition "common to all," we are now entering the realm of lowest common denominators. Is it fair to say that these routines are at the heart of what makes us human? None of us can survive without them, much like the case of meditation exercises.

Banality, as ordinary, obvious, or uneventful, is often associated with "boring."  Yet, our shared experience in life supports the concept that very interesting, and creative, people can lead lives filled with banal routines. It may even be the banality that spurs their creativity. Conversely, how many boring people seemingly have "exciting" lives, free from such banality? Of course, the dark side of banality is seen in the excessively compulsive person, who can't seem to control the banality of their daily life (like people who have patterns of raising and lowering venetian blinds, which seemingly cannot be altered!).

Yet, there is a school of art, music, and literature which celebrates the banality of daily life. Andy Warhol comes to mind, and more recently, Jeff Koons. Pop culture, in general, is often thought to be a celebration of the banal, and Bob Dylan receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature last year seems to confirm this view.  Last year's indie film "Paterson" has been billed as a celebration of the banal, whose main character is a New Jersey bus driver with no formal education, who becomes a poet. Some even place pornography in the category of banal art. Clearly, then, the banal has its place in the arts. Consequently, it should not be denigrated in our personal lives, and it certainly does not have to be seen as "boring!"

On a personal level, it is impossible to ignore the banal nature of my daily life. It has become even more apparent over the last two years, since I retired from a 42-year career in an office environment at the Library of Congress. Although, clearly, that long career was, itself, a monument to banality. I contend that this mass accumulation of banal activity consuming my entire adult life has been the raw material for sparks of creative energy. And, these sparks have been igniting on a regular basis, all through my life, without my noticing! I haven't noticed mostly because I've been so conditioned to demean the role of the banal.

My Banal Life

These days, routine definitely trumps adventure. Virtually every weekday, I get out of bed, get dressed, unplug my Volt from the outdoor electrical source, retrieve the newspaper from the front yard, kiss my wife goodbye as she leaves for work on Capitol Hill, eat a breakfast consisting of some bakery bread, banana, coffee, and orange juice with my prescription drugs, vitamins, baby aspirin.

This routine only varies by the occasional substitution of Post Great Grains cereal for the bread, and possible elimination of the outdoor unplugging of the car (if I had already done it the night before). The entire routine lasts from about 7:30 - 8:00 until around 9:00. I eat slowly while checking email, recording estimated calories in my Fitbit app (both for breakfast and previous evening's snack), and maybe begin the secondary routine of following my Facebook news feeds and friends' posts.

After making the bed -- and, on Monday or Tuesday, starting my laundry -- the Facebook routine typically fills my morning until it's time for a "second breakfast" sometime after 10:00. This morning snack will consist of Yoplait yogurt (various flavors) and either cereal or bread, with more coffee.

There could be interruptions caused by a need to respond to an email, but this is often the time when I plan the rest of my day ... which routines, and in what order? Wild variations sometimes follow these activities: today I drove to Alexandria, to reconfigure the prison videoconferencing equipment at my church, some days I go to Planet Fitness next, for my standard 40-minute cardio-heavy workout routine, other days, if the weather is nice, I use this block of time for a walk around the neighborhood, and listen to one of several podcasts to which I subscribe.

Whenever I choose to walk around the neighborhood, I will follow one of eight possible routes, some of them can be varied by incorporating portions of another route. On bad weather days, I have been known to get my required steps (Fitbit tells me I should get 10,000 per day) by going to the gym and simply walking on a treadmill while reading a book. Some days, like today, interruptions to my usual routines cause me to jettison the steps ... an example of ad hoc variance of routines.

Lunch consists of a sandwich with cold cuts and one slice of cheese, pickles or cantaloupe, and iced tea or non-alcoholic beer. Every weekday, afternoons will consist of either the gym workout plus shower, the walk, or both. Lunchtime is always between 1:00 and 2:00. Recently, a new routine has been added two days a week, before dinner. At 5:00, on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, I am now expected to pick up my toddler grandson at his family day care provider and play with him at his house until one of his parents returns from work. This is fun, and reminds me of how important routines are -- little Owen gets a written report from his day care center each day which looks EXACTLY LIKE MY DAY! Except, he fills time in the afternoon with a nap ... I don't.

When wife returns from work, around 6:00 or 6:30, sudden retooling for excitement and unpredictability takes over! No telling what may happen next! Dinner typically is not planned until this point, beyond some speculation which may have occurred the previous evening. Now is her time to do all those wonderful routines that I had the whole day to do. I will either spend time with dinner prep during the next two hours, or not, in which case, my creative impulses can either start, or continue where I left off earlier in the day. This very moment is such a time during just such an evening.

Weekends have different routines, since they generally involve my wife as well. Breakfasts for me are the same as during the week, and I have to try harder to squeeze in those health/fitness routines, since it is over the weekend that we go places and do things! Errands must be run, occasionally we must go out to eat, or a movie, or even something more exciting, like theater. Sundays typically include some portion of the day at church, and these days, some Saturdays also include church activities (like this week). Generally, weekends are a struggle to preserve my precious routines of the weekdays, they contain more unpredictable activity, more people interrupting the automatic repetition of my solitary behavior patterns of the week. For this reason, I find creative production more difficult on weekends.

Evenings, both weekday and weekend, have one very dear routine ... interrupted only when there are extreme late nights out, such that we just collapse when getting home. My wife and I always indulge ourselves in watching recorded, or streaming, television in the late evening hours. This ritual never begins prior to 11:30, often not until after midnight. It consists of me closing my browser on my office computer, thus shutting down Facebook for the night, making a snack ... which includes an alcoholic nightcap (beer, wine, or a mixed drink from my Calabrese bartenders' guide), getting into my pajamas, and selecting which of our favorite series to watch tonight! There is a long list of possiblities ... the two of us watch lots of TV, just not when it's broadcast.

It's clear that I am pursuing goals with my banal routines, but many of those goals are never quite realized. It seems that the behavior continues until I feel the goal has been reached, then I may change the routine. Some goals, of course, by their nature, are lifelong motivations: good health, wisdom, and the like. But, others could be achievable, if only we had enough time! Alas, things always seem to interfere with our spending sufficient time "practicing" our routines. And, we are told we are all mortal, anyway.

Hence, we may have to abandon some goals as impractical. This is the sort of thing that causes deep sadness at times, indulging that phenomenon of spending much time reminiscing (regretting) the past, with no payoff except depression. In my life, four lost goals stand out, two due to impracticality, and two because they were successfully achieved, but the associated routines are equally missed for all four: 1) piano, not practical at my age and state of mind, or small muscle coordination; 2) child rearing -- grandchild rearing is not the same, since I won't see the actual results; 3) meetings, that's right, I miss the balm of listening and reporting group endeavors, but I'll call this one successful achievement of the goal, as I may rediscover the goal, social in nature, who knows?; 4) projects, those big, long-term, endeavors which I was responsible for executing, whether alone, or with help from others -- the skills exercised, when successfully applied, always made me feel good. Note that all four of these missed routines, and associated behavior patterns, characterized earlier stages of my life (except piano, which I now concede, I began too late in life).

For the future, it appears that it's necessary to plan our banality.  My future plans include a basement remodeling project, transitioning off the Board of Deacons at my church, perhaps some level of political activism, and grandchild rearing (whatever that entails). All will likely involve new routines, which will need to be practiced, and the complexity of my life won't diminish so much as to obviate patterns of behavior, which will still be needed to facilitate the practicing. Inasmuch as some existing routines will have to be replaced, I will have to prioritize the new over the old, if my new goals are to be achieved ... in my lifetime. I can't contemplate just yet the costs of leaving unfinished goals behind, perhaps it's inevitable that there will be some. I was compelled to leave a record of ongoing activities and projects when I retired from the Library of Congress (it was 2015, after passage of the Federal Records Act). This blog post doesn't count as such a record of my life goals!

Your Banal Life

If my reader is burdened by too many goals being imposed on you by others, try some engineering design of your daily routines. Invent new patterns of behavior, tweak the existing patterns. Don't be afraid to let the banality of tasks release some pent-up creative energy which can be directed elsewhere. If you feel imprisoned by your compulsiveness, try a rational evaluation of how effective your familiar routines really are. Are they the best possible vehicles for achieving your stated goals? Sometimes, you may have to forcibly break a routine (a "bad habit"), even if you remain fuzzy about what its replacement routine looks like. If you are "self-actualized" already in your banality, then congratulations! That means your routines and patterns of behavior are well-suited to meeting your life needs. Keep it up!

But, whatever adjustments you make to your daily routines, remember not to pass up opportunities for excitement, even if the end result might only contribute to your life's banality. That banality enables future excitement!