habits rule our lives

with consequences

I have had my share of successes and failures in life, infinitely more successes than I probably deserved. I love my work in international affairs whether it was U.S. foreign policy or learning about China. I am keenly ready to figure where reading history offers applications about commonalities and major differences in our world today. I can put myself in other people’s shoes pretty effectively but, sadly, that is not all that life’s about, is it?

I also am a failure at so many technical things because of my eternal habit of taking shortcuts rather than learning some fundamentals, sincerely and earnestly intending to learn the detail later. Put another way: if I can do it through intuition, I am all in but less good about things in the technical field that require the equivalents of math proofs.

I have the patience of a gnat when it comes to too many things, especially detailed instructions. I cook by feel better than by recipe (it’s easy to say I use my own flair but it’s really that I find the verbage tedious). I was an utter and compete failure at sewing, though two different times people sat with me to try explaining it over extended periods. I didn’t understand some of the terminology so my brain left the building (I always knew I must be an Elvis impersonator); the results were disastrous. My mother until her dying day could not get over that my cousin let me cut a skit the wrong way on the fabric (I think it’s called bias but I will have to consult with my superexpert professional dressmaking daughter-in-law who could do what I fail at in her sleep). How could she sit there watching you do that? I dunno but I may well have cut it before my cousin had a chance to tell me otherwise. It was just one more thing with actions and consequences that I didn’t do well.

Thirty years ago few questions annoyed me like ‘Have you read the manual?’ since I did not read manuals. I wanted to know the action to fix something rather than the philosophical reasons I might want to do something or not try something else. I have never enjoyed the what or how part of things as much as the why part (at least that is the story I’ll stick with but think it actually true). I am so envious of people who do know how whats and hows work because they probably did not skip the basics of something-or-other fifty years ago. I did absolutely fine in all the school subjects but somehow the real essence of how and what lost out to why in answering so many questions. Life isn’t just the abstract grades you got in high school or college, I now know.

None of that was cataclysmic for the my teaching until we truly inherited a generation of students (around 2000) who wanted to use technology. What? Seriously? Why? What if the technology isn’t reliable? The brain is as technical, sophisticated, complicated, and any other logical processor so why do we need entertainment in the classroom? Movies as examples? No, not needed. Clips of speeches to make a point? Distractions from the flow. ‘Smartboards’? Another possible failure point in the seminar which could seize the already invaluable and short time available. In other words, I thought the new tech was a waste of money.

I wasn’t entirely a troglodyte, however. I had bought a Mac in 1984 when they came out (true) but when it wasn’t intuitively obvious how the icon-based operating system worked, I sold it to my brother (before I had actually paid off the credit union loan for the Mac). I wasn’t opposed to technology, I reckoned, but expected the technology to conform to my thinking—or intuitive approaches. Surely my intuition about icons was as good as Apple’s, right?

Oh, and I even managed to run a Word Press site several years ago before other things stole my time. When I reopened that site a few months back, I was dumbfounded by how primitive my understanding was versus the current state-of-art choices needed to make the thing viable, much less snazzy.

I was privileged and honestly saved by a few people who patiently helped me with technology. My submariner buddy understood me so well that he always gave me warning well ahead of things so I could get exasperated, then process my anxiety—I mean anger—out of my system so we could run the College when I was Dean of Faculty. He was as good a friend as I ever had in the workplace with his ability to know when to tell me no, you have to do this—a warning I wish I had heard from someone forty years ago when I started down this shortcircuiting track. He was a submariner so he was also so bloody smart about so many things and how to explain them to me.

I had two associate deans of administration who were probably shaken after their initial conversations with me because I was accustomed to doing work arounds to get to the objectives, not struggling through things step by step in the DoD system. We were crashing on so many things so often thus I focused on the objective; these two guys knew the steps that were unavoidable in getting us to be technically compliant as well. They had the added gifts of calmly drawin me along: they were the Cynthia Whisperers.

So now we are a third of the way into 2024 and my preference to rely on intuition rather than learning some of the fundamentals comes back to haunt me since I work for no one but sometimes want to dabble in technical things like websites. In short, I am playing catch up on some embarrassingly basic items like terminology. I have never absorbed the concepts as I could get away without them. Now it turns out that has adverse consequences.

Don’t misunderstand—I never expect any single person to learn everything. I do know a number of things and am proud of them. True polymaths of the world are few, particularly as there is so much more to know every single day. There is not reason everyone needs to know everything as that wouldn’t allow us to leverage the exquisite knowledge and experience each and every one of us bring to any discussion, meeting, relationship, car accident, or voting booth.

But K-12 schooling was established in the United States to provide a baseline common language and understanding of some things: some history, some civics, some math, some biology and chemistry and perhaps even a touch of physics, of music, art, and even literature. I am sure schools today are integrating these basics in computers, logic, AI, and perhaps some other things I missed in their curriculum but that means something else has to come out in a zero-sum 12 year experience.

That common baseline allowed us to function as a relatively coherent society for two hundred years. It’s that breakdown of the common baseline that is feeding the fracturing of the United States. Somehow we elevated that to include a lot of material offensive to someone. In a zero sum time frame of a dozen years, the new material like computer literacy and other new topics cramped the time for old topics. What we need to know is moving so much more quickly than we are adding and subtracting from the curriculum, I suspect.

But the basics of the fundamental information technology are now as crucial as the basics that arithmetic was sixty years ago. Without grasping even the basic terminology of this technology, one is vastly behind in discourse, much less application of the new world. If one has a tendency to be intuitive and underappreciative of that basic corpus of workable skills, one will fall further behind.

And I am that one. I find myself shying away from some discussions because I am not interested in filling my knowledge gap before I can fully participate with others. For shame. I try reading broadly but it’s all so superficial as to be behind our 12 year old grandson. He’s got years to go in the world so it might not seem that bad for me but I don’t want him or his sister or cousins to dread conversations with me because they know how little I know. Sigh. If it’s something that I can work upon from my intuition….but things aren’t always that sort.

Unfortunately, habits rule our lives. If we habitually chose the path of least resistance to some topics, then we inevitably confront a chasm to catch up in some areas. It doesn’t mean we cannot learn but it takes a lot of back filling, patience and willingness to admit a deficit in understanding at the beginning. Sometimes we more seasoned folks are poor at those admissions.

Yet age is not the issue. Each of us reading this can name multiple people still vibrantly learning in their 90s or 100s. All of us probably still embark on new topics daily without even thinking about it but a conscious involvement with new field as a choice is essential to support that learning, increased comfort with not knowing everything, and determination to fill the deficits in our basics as soon as possible rather than allowing those deficits to haunt us long term as I did.

Actions or non-actions most certainly create consequences. We may not know it as well at 23 as we do at 63 but we certainly are aware from early on. The question is which path do we pursue for ourselves?

What are the backfilling issues you confront? Are you noticing them holding you back as we become a more technically-prone society? Am I totally off base? I welcome your thoughts.

I hope this column offers you some foot for thought. Please circulate it if you think others might benefit. I welcome the exchange of ideas. I thank deeply those who subscribe to the newsletter as you keep me going.

Be well and be safe. FIN