Parallel
This article was originally published in 2016 on my original site gritandteeth.com. It serves as a reminder that even when ideas are good, they are still most likely wrong.
It dawned on me the other day while partaking in a heated and admittedly, pointless argument, that the years I spent poring over information on technical skills like the Snatch and the Clean & Jerk, learning the nuances of energy systems, experimenting with various nutrition concepts and arguing their validity until the early hours of the morning were—for the most part—totally unimportant for my job. Specifically, I mean that no matter your ability to coach technical nuances in any given subject, the real skill that is required is communication. Without it, no amount of prophetic expediency will be heard. But this isn’t about communication, this is about how I learned how to learn.
My realization came in the form of a comment-section dissenter, one of those blessed guardians of truth that donate their patience and care to correct and homogenize the not-so-obvious thought crimes against humanity. Had he not been crippled by an inability to articulate a single idea or even complete a sentence, I might have been convinced of my wrongness. But something more important emerged in my head on collision at the intersection of different ideas, a destination fraught with frustration most typically circumvented by the average thought enthusiast, and that is that the impact and difficulty of confronting opposing viewpoints are often overlooked as an activity for bottom feeders or the Ivy elite intellectuals, both being groups to steer clear of. But I had collided, felt the frustration and lack of conversation, and began to reinforce my own, and diminish my opponent’s views but stopped short because I began to profoundly understand that I didn’t engage to help this lonesome keyboard evangelist become better, I was here to make myself better. The way I do that is to arm other people and incite them to use their energy for me to learn faster. Disagree with anyone and you most likely get that person’s full attention. Use it creatively and you never know what you might learn.
We protect our ideas as if they are pieces of our identity, but we would be better off if we viewed them as pieces of our identity’s armor; offering protection in cases that we are unable to maneuver with intellectual grace. Pieces that we might find burdensome and can shed to easily transit the world of differing opinions if we were so inclined to examine our wrongness instead of proving our dogma. The first thing you can notice when someone no longer requires armor is that they are light-footed and hard to pin down. They can play with different ideas but dodge the substantial weight of belonging to that idea.
CONFRONTING NEW IDEAS
I've tried to contemplate most of the arguments that I’ve had over the years, over what might actually be benign nuances, and what eventually leads to a loss of understanding because I was so sidetracked with trying to be right. My first thought on how to fix the problem of communicating ideas is probably similar to most: to know more, learn more, experience more, and through the hard-earned knowledge try once again to express it through the same obstacle course that didn't work the first time. But the truth is that the specifics matter little and the style we go about it is the influence of progress. Dancing isn’t so much about getting others to mimic you, but to adapt to their movement and adjust your style, to flow, and be free of constraint. In this dance with ideas, we are only taught not to step on another’s toes, or if we do to ensure that we smash them. Most of the world is positioned in camps based on one’s theory being more effective than another; it is responsible for what creates so much animosity between groups who have more in common than less. So in effect, debate taken on under the banner of being right as opposed to an attempt at understanding is completely pointless except to prove one’s membership to a club.
Learning happens when what we "know" runs perpendicular to new ideas (both wrong and right). That means that ignorance has a chance to resolve only when confronted with an intersection—which is conventionally perceived as a nuisance, taught to us at a young age when the incessant inquiry “WHY? WHY? WHY?” might be championed by our boldest toddlers but gets an overwhelming reaction of frustration because, eventually, we don’t actually know the answer. So instead of finding out, we get throw a temper tantrum so the kids will shut the fuck up.
Being absolutely certain is more a sign of ignorance than wisdom. When our ideas of the world start to all run parallel we might feel like we are on the right path because everything fits and feels smooth, but the course leads to little or no development. Learning will happen faster and more frequently if we urge ourselves into cross-sectional confrontations. The comfort of "feeling" correct is the first sign that an argument is being used for the wrong reason or that we are stuck. People who like to argue for the sake of beating other people like to park in the intersection and wait for the collision but they aren’t ever moving forward, the scenery never changes, and they never learn anything or adapt, they just prove they can take a lot of damage. It's important to realize that development, either physical or mental happens only when we break the rhythm of comfort. The smooth corresponding roads of society’s accepted beliefs allow you to perceive freedom, freedom “from” confrontation. But it is an illusion because you have no freedom “to,” freedom to be, believe, or dance with new ideas about yourself and the world.
THE ART OF ARGUMENT IS IN FACT THE ART OF UNDERSTANDING
I am all for healthy debate, in fact, I love it, I thrive on the challenge of deducing one’s thoughts and expressing them in a way that is convincing. But for this exercise in conflicting verbal futility, it is important to ascertain what the point of argument actually is. It is NOT to get everyone to think the same, as this is often the most obvious use of the activity. It is NOT to prove the correctness of one’s stance. What it is, is a reform of best practices. It is to punctuate new knowledge and test it against old ideas. There will always be sides no matter the subject, as in subjective, of which truth can be.
Within every disagreement there will be those that wish to uphold the old ideas (conservatism), this could be out of some archaic reasoning (naturalistic fallacy, an appeal to authority, or antiquity), or it could be from a position of validated efficacy; that we have in fact found the best practice and that we should stick to it (of which capitalism is often held up). On the other side, there are those that will seek to advance ideas (progressivism). This stance is often argued under the guise that we have not yet perfected a practice. This often involves arguments rooted in existential fallacies, and the use of unknown or even fabricated non-existent theories in order to substantiate the need for existent or emergent behaviors (of which crony capitalism is often held up as something to be done away with). In other words, the need to progress into better practices based on imagining there are better practices.
THE BABY WITH THE BATHWATER
It should not go unnoticed that best practices are usually more often than not associated with progressivism rather than conservatism. This is not to champion progressivism but to nod at nature and evolution which uses the radical idea of variation to select for progress. Our ideas are simply a branch of evolution, condensed biological complexity is still seeking the same stuff from which exploding stars and electro-magnetism sought; perhaps not consciously but it eventually became conscious and aware. Is there a greater example of progressivism than life becoming self-aware? That awareness is what leads to what works and what doesn’t.
It was once argued that the earth is flat. Those seeking to hold onto the old ideas of the firmament and other religiously endowed beliefs warned of the dangers—divine retribution for blasphemy or physical dangers of sailing off the edge of the world. This was without a doubt the subject of many heated arguments. And it was raised in good faith, no one wanted to lose the seemingly insane sailors and their ships to the edges of existence and the lure of the devil. So they hung or burned those that disagreed with the obvious majority, or the majority influenced by authority. Practically speaking, knowing the earth is not flat has improved our lives dramatically, besides the obvious of discovering more habitat in which to populate which lead to the discoveries of sustainable agriculture, governing discourse, and even medicines, but also conceptually in the sense that without that development, every piece of technology would not exist today. But I want to add there is nothing wrong with believing the earth is flat. Sure, it’s funny, we can tease “those people” but belief is cool like that, you can believe all you want by yourself, argue to anyone that might listen, sit in the intersection and pretend that the crossroads you keep confronting is your stake to bare, build a narrative and a story, make meaning out of your trials, and whatever lessons you distill from it are yours to interpret. The fabric for which our society works today is because a few have repeatedly gone against many. Newton crushed our concepts of physical reality and also spent much of his time “decoding” the bible. Einstein demolished Newtonian physics with a new relative reality, but was unable to see the genius of the quantum world by laughing it off as “spooky science.” Progression has champions, and those same champions also fall victim to parallel thinking. No human is immune to being wrong.
It would be unwise, however, to assume that new is always better. It is easy to point to many advancements that left old practices without considering the whole picture. Take for example the relatively new practice of protecting our children with an abundance of technology (either medically through antibiotics, hygienically through anti-bacterial cleansers, and even psychologically through present practices of overbearing parental guidance). These all to some degree or another are great advancements, but in application have drastic consequences. Whether through the creation of super-bugs, or the even more subtle degeneration of our immune systems, to outcomes that probably won’t be understood for generations, which leaves most of society with increasing allergenic profiles, auto-immunity, and a host of metabolic disorders. The saying “don’t fix what isn’t broke” comes to mind but if you are saying it whilst clutching your pearls then we don’t understand each other.
THE POINTLESSNESS OF BEING CORRECT
After years of honing in on what might be considered expertise in training and nutrition, I’ve come to find that more than half of my education is faulted. I don’t mean it is specifically useless but that it will have to be reassessed, reconsidered, and progressed in order for me to advance. I won’t realize what I don’t know until a time that requires it to be blatantly clear. In a sense, what I know is old but I subconsciously hold what I know as truth, which hinders progression. Even further these new “truths” do not help me convince others to take up fitness as a practice, in fact in some cases they hinder it because of how I might garishly roll my eyes when someone asks me about the Paleo diet, the benefits of coconut oil, or a “Superman” training plan. These things might be ridiculous to me because of certain truths, but at one time or another, I have practiced the Paleo diet, wondered as well why my throat felt sore from trying to maximize the health benefits of MCT, and, for fuck’s sake, I have spent more time thinking about a Superman training plan quite possibly more than anyone.
Even after I wrote this article and published it almost 7 years ago, my concept that led to it was a misunderstanding of how training and adaptation work. I still thought in terms of “muscles” as a foundation for change, and I now largely think in states of the nervous system. It wasn’t until someone in a recent AMA requested I republish some of my old writing that I went back and read this. I had a head-on collision with myself at the intersection of “shit I used to believe and no longer do.” I laughed the entire time because reading about myself, speaking about myself—about the possibility of what I could be wrong about—without, at the time, seeing how I was wrong is only tolerable if you know how to dance on your own. At that time I would argue my position with any person on the planet and I would be convinced of my correct position. I would like to say that today I am closer to the truth, but I am still wrong about many things that I am unaware of. The only difference is that I now look for those intersections because roads that run parallel are often paved to hell.
