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#84: Personal sensemaking through etymology

Words are sensemaking tools, a common knowledge base that we count on everyday to communicate with each other and to think quietly inside our heads. However, interpretations evolve in the hands of the collective where every use and misuse carves and re-carves meaning. Etymology is the study of the origin of words and the way in which their meanings have changed over time. Every once in a while, I’ll look up the etymology of a word to better grasp its evolution and subtle references. These exercises help me make sense of the world by shining a light on the push and pull of culture and society. Sometimes I prefer the older meanings.

I’ll share three words here as a thought experiment: Competition, chaos and professional. See if these help with your personal sensemaking.

First, a quick note:

  • The portions with etymology may be hard to read. They aren’t complete sentences and are interspersed with italicized root words. 
  • This is a good resource to look up roots and meanings of words.

Competition:

  • Current meaning: The activity or condition of competing, an event or contest in which people compete. Interaction between organisms, populations, or species, in which birth, growth and death depend on gaining a share of a limited environmental resource.
  • Related word: Compete, which means to strive to gain or win something by defeating or establishing superiority over others who are trying to do the same.
  • Etymology: From com- ‘together’ + petere ‘to strive, seek, aim at, rush at’. From Late Latin competere “strive in common, strive after something in company with or together”. In classical Latin “to meet or come together; agree or coincide; to be qualified”. Revived from late 18c. in sense “to strive (alongside another) for the attainment of something”. Use in market sense is from 1840s, in athletics sense attested by 1857.
  • Read more: For competition, and compete
  • Notice: How the meaning evolves from “strive after something together” to >>> “to strive (alongside another) for the attainment of something” to >>>  “to gain or win something by defeating or establishing superiority” in the economic sense.
  • Reflections: The classical definition makes me think that one can stive towards a goal alongside dedicated others and could potentially move fluidly between competing and collaborating. That if one fails to achieve what they hoped to, they could potentially gain strength from others working towards the same goal. Competition as defined originally orients me towards the goal and task at hand while the current definition seems to focus more on goal attainment so the individual can thrive while limiting others. The goal feels like a means to a self-serving end and when one loses, as we often do, the loss feels existential. Doesn’t the classical definition feel more psychologically strength-inducing? 

Chaos:

  • Current meaning: Complete disorder and confusion.
  • Etymology: Late 14c. “gaping void; empty, immeasurable space,” from Old French or directly from Latin chaos. From Greek khaos “abyss, that which gapes wide open, that which is vast and empty,” from *khnwos, from PIE root *ghieh- “to yawn, gape, be wide open.” Meaning “orderless confusion” in human affairs is from c. 1600. Chaos theory in the modern mathematical sense is attested from c. 1977.
  • Read more: Chaos
  • Notice: How the meaning evolves from “that which is vast and empty” to >>> “orderless confusion”
  • Reflections: Personally, the classical definition of chaos feels like an invitation to step into the gaping void and create something fresh. The mention of the yawn invokes the subtle connection to boredom, which can be a stepping stone to creativity. Compare this to the modern definition that tunes me into my helplessness vs. the sense of agency and creativity.

Professional

  • Current meaning: Engaged in a specified activity as one’s main paid occupation rather than as a pastime.
  • Etymology: Mid-15c., profeshinalle, in reference to the profession of religious orders (see profession). By 1747 of careers, “pertaining to or appropriate to a profession or calling”, especially of the skilled or learned trades from c. 1793. In sports and amusements, “undertaken or engaged in for money” (opposed to amateur), by 1846.
  • Related words:
    • Profession: “Vows taken upon entering a religious order”, “public declaration”, noun of action…“declare openly”.
    • Profess: “To take a vow” (in a religious order), “avowed,” literally “having declared publicly”, “declare openly, testify voluntarily, acknowledge, make public statement of”. From pro- “forth” + fateri (past participle fassus) “acknowledge, confess”, akin to fari “to speak,”.
    • Amateur: “One who has a taste for some art, study, or pursuit, but does not practice it”, from French amateur “one who loves, lover”.
  • Read more: For professional, profession and profess, amateur
  • Notice: The evolution from “vows taken upon entering”, “declare publicly” and “appropriate for a profession or calling” to >>> one’s main paid occupation
  • Reflections: Three themes jump out at me from the original meaning –
    1. Declaration and taking vows: In the west, people publicly take marriage vows in front of loved ones. The idea is to make your commitments known to self and others so when you falter, you have something to anchor back to. Professionally, vows seem to have been reserved for those practicing religion, medicine or law, i.e. professions with a higher fiduciary duty. But all professions are undertaken in the service of others (vs. amateur, which is mostly for oneself). Vows seem helpful in creating both an internal grounding during times of struggle and a public commitment in how we want to show up in the service of others. We can fashion our vows for our vocation however we want, even if they are said mostly to oneself.
    2. Practice and action: The meaning implies that we will pursue something actively as opposed to passive interest. We move towards what moves us.
    3. Money:  Of course one has to sustain themselves through work but our modern lives push us to make professional decisions primarily on the last-mile transaction of getting paid instead of upstream engagement and commitment. Research shows that people are willing to earn less if they get to do more meaningful work, so it’s clearly not all about the money. The modern definition makes us think so. 

The etymology for all three seems to have one thing in common ― the old definitions felt expansive and humane. They invoked us to step into broader and better parts of ourselves. The current ones feel constrained and transactional. They invoke us to step into fear. Meanings evolve in response to society but society also evolves based on the meanings we create. Reduction happens gradually, with enough repetition, and it impacts our day-to-day. 

We don’t have to go digging into the meaning of every word but if our life is being commandeered by a word, it’s helpful to zoom out and see if it might be more liberating to anchor our thinking to a more expansive definition. 

“In a sense, words are encyclopedias of ignorance because they freeze perceptions at one moment in history and then insist we continue to use these frozen perceptions when we should be doing better.” ― Edward de Bono: Maltese physician, psychologist, author, inventor and philosopher

#78: Think global and act local vs. the reverse

I’ve often heard people say “think global, act local” and while the phrase made sense, I never really paused to think about its downstream impact until recently. As a thought experiment, I wondered what would happen if we “think local, act global”. I didn’t have to think very hard to realize that colonialism, the global spread of silicon valley mindset (chasing unicorns, quick-builds and fast-exits), and performative social media interactions are all examples of thinking local and acting global.

Thinking local and acting global makes it easier to lean into our self-protective tendencies. Easier to accumulate more and more material safety for our immediate habitat at the expense of the others that we may not (or may not want to) see. The impact of our actions becomes distant and invisible. We especially don’t stick around to see the long-term effects. It becomes easier to do and harder to feel. Our actions, emotions and impact become siloed.

When we do the opposite to think global and act local,  we instinctively lean into the following behaviors: An awareness that humanity is interconnected in unbreakable ways, and a sense of agency over actions and outcomes in our local habitat. When combined, these ways of operating strengthen our empathy and sense of ownership.

Thinking global and acting local, we may initiate and experiment with small scale localized actions to see what works. We may feel inspired to share learnings with others who are better positioned to add value to their own habitats. Our local becomes an incubator for the global.  We gain the capacity to contribute not only to our own context, but also to our collective intelligence so others may be able to support their local contexts. An apt metaphor might be everyone adding logs to the collective fire for shared warmth. It becomes easier to not only do but also to feel. Community organizing and our approach for Polio and Covid vaccinations are examples of thinking global and acting local.

Which version of our world feels better to live in? How will we choose to think and act?

“To become a different kind of person is to experience the world in a different way. When your mind changes, the world changes. And when we respond differently to the world, the world responds differently to us.” ― David Loy: Professor, writer, and Zen teacher

#73: The chokehold of finite games

We all choke at some point in life. When we intend to do something, and the moment arrives and passes without us having done it. Maybe it happened because we didn’t really want to do it in the first place or the complete opposite. That we really wanted to do this thing but it felt difficult and overwhelming; we didn’t feel ready or enough and not trying eased the pressure momentarily.

The stakes either felt pointless or high. But regardless of the emotions underlying the chokehold, the mind likely saw this game as finite.

James Carse, a history professor, wrote the book Finite and Infinite Games in 1986 and it offers a practical way to think about our work and commitments. Per Carse, a finite game is played to win and an infinite game to continue the play. In finite games, we obey rules, play within boundaries and announce winners and losers. In these games, like politics and sports, we seek power and strategize to win in front of an audience. In the infinite game, since our purpose is to continue play, we play with the boundaries themselves knowing they exist to support the goal of unending play. In this game we seek internal strength to keep participating alongside other participants. A symphony or parenting might be good examples.

Two other notable points in this text – 1) Participation in every game is voluntary and, 2) there can be many finite games within a larger infinite game but not the other way around. Extrapolating from these I wonder…even if forces larger than us pressure us to play in a certain (often finite) way, we can exercise a choice in how we operate. We can do the same work and choose to view the larger game as infinite.

When we think of our larger context as a finite, zero-sum, winner-takes-all game, it’s harder to play like an infinite-minded player and summon the perspective, creativity, playfulness or ease that might come with thinking regeneratively. In the finite mindset we strive to dominate through winning but in the infinite mindset we strive to keep on playing.

This doesn’t mean that we’ll never choke when we play the infinite game. It means that the sting will feel more manageable and we’ll have the stamina to keep going.

“Strength is paradoxical. I am not strong because I can force others to do what I wish as a result of my play with them, but because I can allow them to do what they wish in the course of my play with them…
Infinite players are not serious actors in any story, but the joyful poets of a story that continues to originate what they cannot finish.” — James Carse, Professor of History and Literature of Religion

#65: Coloring the work in our own colors

Two people doing the same work will do it differently. They will color the work with their context, perceptions, judgments and resulting actions. There are examples abound in our everyday lives but here are a few public ones from politics and business to clarify the point—Barak Obama and George W. Bush held the same office with the same supporting structures but their governments ran differently. Imagine if Steve Jobs built Amazon instead of Apple or Jeff Bezos built Facebook instead of Amazon. Those that follow these leaders and their unique styles might be able to extrapolate the kind of companies Amazon or Facebook might have been in this alternate universe. Each of these humans has unique strengths and blind spots given their life journey and wiring. It’s easy to see this blend—of strengths and failings, informed perspectives and gaps in understanding—in public figures because of their magnified influence on society and culture but these forces exist within each of us.

I’ve noticed however that when I care enough for something, I want to support it with all of my strengths and none of my failings. It’s how parents might feel when they hope to pass along all their good traits to their children but none of the suboptimal ones. But of course, this is impossible. The next generation pulls from the entirety of our genetics, DNA, capabilities and gaps. The same applies to work. Good work asks that we step forward as our whole selves which includes our ideas, perspectives, and strengths but also our blind spots and failings. Trying to surgically suppress our shadows only turns us into distorted and inauthentic caricatures of ourselevs. Also note that suppressing our limitations is different from understanding them, which is critical if we care about the impact of our presence and work.

The contradiction buried in a good life and good work is that we have to step forward completely with our blind spots and imperfections, and bring along a commitment to keep broadening our perspectives. We need the audacity to show up with all our warts and the humility to keep learning. The alternative is to just freeze and be paralyzed with fear of being proved imperfect, and this approach serves no one.

“Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”― Maya Angelou: poet, memoirist, and civil rights activist.

#59: External stimulus and the need for better filters

In the last note I considered the need to dig a few high quality “wells” that are aligned with who we are and what we choose to become. Today I’d like to discuss external stimulus, my key stumbling block when I try to dig my wells with the focus I’d like.

Stimulus is the “detectable change, physical or chemical, in the environment of an organism that results in some functional activity”. We are designed to detect and respond to changes and stimulus in our environment because our survival depends on it. Our receptors detect stimuli (light, heat, sound etc.) and send timely messages to the nervous system, which then guides the appropriate effector (muscles, glands etc.) to take specific action. We are designed to take action when we meet stimuli; this occurs within us at a cellular level and is often outside our control.

No surprises that we live in a world of escalating stimulus; words, products, ideas, notifications all coming at us with the quantity and intensity we weren’t designed to handle. Our nervous system allows for fast-acting but short-lived responses but if it’s constantly in a state of response, when does it get to rest, reconstitute and regenerate? You can buy the best engineered car but if you habitually over-rev the engine, it will end in junkyard faster. That is what’s happening to our nervous systems. That is what’s happening to each of us individually. To our ability to grapple with complex ideas, create something of long-term value with patience, navigate life’s turbulence with resilience, and show up in the world as whole as possible.

Here is what I’ve found helpful:
While external stimulus gets in the way of digging my wells, paradoxically, defining the wells I want to dig with more precision has helped me create effective personal filters.

We all react to different stimulus, and have different points of reactivity and overconsumption— some over shop, some binge-watch TV, some overeat. I’ve done all of the above at different points in my life but my biggest point of overconsumption as I dig my current wells is information. My work leads me to an abundance of useful tools, information and knowledge. Any google search surfaces a multitude of options, making me wade through the noise to get the right signal. But since I have more clearly defined how I want to create what I want to create, I’ve been able to ignore 80% of that noise. I have a mental-model of the knowledge landscape I want to traverse, the ideas I want to explore now and those I might pick up later knowing full well that I may not be able to get to them. And that’s ok.

It has been clarifying and freeing because I’ve stopped poking myself with needless stimulus.

Above all else though, here is my most useful personal filter: I keep reminding myself that my days are limited and they become wastefully shorter when I chase every shiny object.

“Don’t go to great trouble to optimize something that never should be done at all.”― Kenneth Boulding, Economist and Educator