The Futility Threshold

I have some additional thoughts as to what's really happening in the scenario described in my previous posting, "The Fog of Self Awareness". I described how people fall unwittingly into loops, trying the same thing over and over while expecting different results, as a foggy amnesia blocks self-awareness of their predicament.

I attributed it to the need for continuity. You fancy yourself a chef - a conceit which persists despite the enormous mountain of evidence that you're patently no chef. Forced to choose between contradictory views, you can guess which choice most people make.

This provides the basis for most comedy: the buffoon desperately and tenaciously clinging to presumption despite snowballing contrary evidence.

If you try to make the person cognizant of their plight (and manage to survive their reaction), they'll, at very best, nod impatiently and set themselves to do better next time. As if steely determination is what's needed. This also presupposes that previous attempts were performed by a pathetic slouch...even if they tried super-hard then, too!

At a certain point we need to try something else, and not just keep taking the same run at the impasse. At a certain point, we must recognize the futility of our efforts. Let's call that point The Futility Threshold.

However patently true this may be, it coexists with the antithetical truth that determination and grit can be highly effective. Very often we truly must transcend our slouchy selves via redoubled effort. Iteration - enduring poor results until they eventually improve, seemingly by magic - is a fundamental process.

So the threshold of futility is a crucial consideration. At a certain point we need to stop and reconfigure. In our effortful determination, we can fail to notice that we've passed this point, but outside observers do notice. For them, we're hilarious, trapped in an obvious loop without a shred of self-awareness. A fog having settled, we've lost our clarity.

It's the familiar error of using the wrong tool for the job. Maslow’s hammer! Determined pushing is how we get cars out of mud. But past the futility threshold, we must cease pushing, sip some coffee, and chart a new course involving shovels or chains or tow trucks. When perspective freezes, we lose the flexibility to view from multiple vantage points. Our efforts grow more and more futile (and funnier and funnier) while we remain grotesquely un-self-aware.

This has reverse engineered the observation that insanity is "doing the same thing over and over expecting different results." This saying always irritated me, and now I understand why: Anyone who's ever gotten good at anything has, indeed, done the same thing over and over with gratifyingly different results! Iterating in order to improve is the foundational human magic trick!

But only up to a point. The futility point!

The Fog
What about the "fog" - my foggy characterization of the tendency to become too distracted to notice the futility of one's circumstance? The fog which leaves us blind to overwhelming evidence that it's not going to happen even with an extra generous running start? The fog which creates the amnesia about how hard we've been trying all along?

"Fog" describes zones outside the spotlight of our momentary attention. Mental fog seems to rush in to fill an attention gap the way oxygen rushes in to fill a physical vacuum. The absence of Anything feels like an eerie, foggy Something.

A wine expert friend once told me that a tannic wine is either 1. too tannic, or, more likely, 2. lacking in all other tastes. Similarly, "foggy" is a concrete way to describe the "flavor" of a gap; of negative space; of the Ignored.

I noted that "a fog having settled, we've lost our clarity." This describes the experience of frozen perspective. Lithe reframing dispels fog by viewing from multiple vantage points, casting light from all directions...while a frozen perspective feels foggy everywhere beyond the tight tunnel vision. And so we may err endlessly, oblivious to the obvious truth. 

The act of balancing attention and shifting viewpoint - i.e. active reframing - not only dispels fog, but also recharges our self-awareness and sparks the creativity to devise fresh methods which can connect effectively with desired outcomes.