May 23, 2007
From the desk of Jane Galt:Things can only get better, con't
Tyler Cowen explains more fully:
Holding quality of type constant (an important qualification, as some people are simply prone to bad events, and receiving another bad event signals as such), I more readily expect reversion to the mean. Good economies grow rapidly after wartime, often because they find it easier to reassemble preexisting pieces than to press forward from full employment. Much of the human capital is still there and rebuilding can occur quickly once in motion. The personal analogy is that once you start recovering from (some) catastrophes, the process is speedy. You already know where you need to go, and you might sample more randomness to court additional good events.There is also a "naive" evolutionary argument for bad things getting better.
When things go badly, your body borrows resources from the future. It pumps adrenalin, eats stores of fat, in some views it mobilizes the (only temporarily available) placebo effect, etc., all of which restore better states of affairs and make up lost ground. More psychologically, a setback may cause a person to try harder. If a computer crashes and wipes out a page I wrote, I can write it again at an especially high speed and with the energy of anger and adrenalin.
But what if I'm (whimper) one of those people bad things happen to? Certainly, in the hotel room last night at 3:30 am (GMT), that seemed like a distinct possibility . . . .
Remember your Fitzgerald - "In the real dark night of the soul, it is always 3 AM." That's a tough moment to wake up and consider things.
I wish I had better advice; Kipling is good for this kind of thing. I find "If" useful in moments of extremity.
this comic strip seems appropriate.
http://www.comics.com/comics/pearls/archive/pearls-20070522.html
You were born, healthy and intelligent, into a prosperous, free society. You won the Powerball jackpot that day. Recently, you had some bad luck on the dollar slots.
I don't want to sound like Shouting Thomas. I complain when things go badly, too. In some ways, a good life makes bad things seem worse when they happen. In the long run though, you make things better by recognizing past benefits and taking advantage of them, not by harping on misfortune.
You're one of the people bad things happen to? No, I am. Although in my case, it's not so much that tragedies happen to me, but for things that ordinary people expect to go well, I'm always the odd man out.
-I recently tried to upgrade my cell phone for the first time in 7 years. Apparently, everyone else can, but no matter what I do (after hours of customer service calls and technicians "reprogramming" the phone, I still can't make calls with it.
-Windows is "bad" because it "sacrifices everything" so that you have backward compatibility for everything that ever ran on Windows. Except that two of my favorte programs specifically refuse to work on a later version than 98.
-At the height of the mortgage industry's "giveaway" days, I could get a mortgage ... because I hadn't taken on enough debt before ... and I could establish credit because no one would give me a credit card!
-Perfect GRE scores and graduating with honors didn't get me funding for any grad school. (Hey, their loss -- I can do better in the private sector.)
-Apartments rent to ****ing deadbeats, but won't rent to be except on extremely stringent terms, and casually expect me to sign contracts before the terms are determined.
-If I say I'm going "North on I-35" three times to a 911 operator, they, three times after that, assume I'm going South.
-In my research-oriented seminar course, the POC on doing research was MIA.
-On the Welch Summer scholar program, where you're supposed to do research with a professor, only mine never saw me once or in any way involved me.
-When I tried to branch out by joining clubs in college, each one had a member who developed a hatred of me that led me to get kicked out and defamed. (Yes, I could be a more likable Person, but was it absolutely necessary to make up obviously fake stories about me in the process?)
-Deparment stores suddenly switch to "having no chairs for you to sit down in to wait for your friends while they're trying on stuff" when I finally decide to buy new clothes.
-And lots more I can't remember right now.
"Good things happening to you" is strongly and positively correlated with IQ, productivity, and the ability to blog.
why is it that 3-4 am local always seems to be the darkest? and how many have written and sung of that?
er, yeah bad things are always easy to enumerate. My ex infamously told me I was the unluckiest person she had ever known. [yeeeah, I was married to her, after all] but as has been said other places... do you enumerate happy? It is just easy to accept it all when you are happy. When things are dark, it is easy to count it all, and to try and decide just how wretched you should be based on that. Seems to me like nature. On the other hand there is a certain dark energy to be had from bad things. It is an engine of change. I never write when I am happy, when sad, reams of dark poetry pour out of my skull. Bad things require a correction to become good, but why would you ever correct good? Unfortunately sometimes good is stagnant, eventually deadening. Have you ever known someone that never seemingly had a problem or care, and yet complained how bored they were? The catch was, when someting did evetually happen, it put them off the rails because they had no experience in dealing with anything. I guess in that way experience is the lighter gray part of a dark gray cloud.
time is an interesting thing. It's possible that when you read these replies that the dark clouds have passed, and you gone on to something else. You may even write that you didn't mean to make it sound so bad. S'ok. Whimper or scream, just get it out.
D
At least you've got a song written about you:
I make a date for golf and you can bet your life it rains
I try to give a party and the guy upstairs complains
I guess I'll go thru life just catchin colds and missin' trains
Everything happens to me
The best sentence I read today:
"'Good things happening to you' is strongly and positively correlated with IQ, productivity, and the ability to blog."
I added in the comments (though Tyler's text pretty much covers it):
"It think it also has to do with changes in expectations and resource management.
After falling on hard times, a person may have more free time for creativity, intensified social connections, an increased entrepreneurial spirit. They also realize that they can get by on less, are more focused, and don't splurge as much or drink as much. They become less wastefull with their time."
Once you're past the exhaustion and despair, your demeanor changes. You are more open to people and more considerate in your words, tone of voice, manurisms... People are likely to be more open to you (and you to them). Leading to more opportunities.
Your utility curve shifts also, you're more willing to get by on less, save more to invest when opportunity presents itself. Knowing that you can get by fine on less also may make you more willing to take risks and move on opportunities.
Ah! And, of course, the experience factor. You simply get better and dealing with problems. When they come up again they aren't as much of a problem.
Tyler Cowen is an idiot. The growth of a good economy after a war is due to 'reduced clutter'. The privations and turning from previous habits, combined with the end of wartime responsibilities, turns both economy and individuals to the future. With less baggage. Less baggage means more energy, more freedom to follow interests, and a recently improved skill at accomplishing tasks with minimum resources.
Jane, the Tarot uses the 'Lightning Struck Tower' to signify the calamity we experience at the end of a way of living, but also signifies the clearing away of what went before, in preparation for a changed future. Unfortunately, that changed future isn't promised to be any better than the old one, just different!
Take time to heal, maybe keep a private journal to explore your inner thoughts, meditate, keep in touch with friends and family. Maybe consider the feelings behind Karen Carpenter's 'Goodbye to Love'. Take frequent 'nature' walks, maybe do some gardening, or a flower box, or even just root and then plant the heart of a stalk of celery or an avacado (You might be the first one in two generations to sprout an avacado!).
Take care!
I live always with two thoughts in my head: Things can always get better (so there is hope and something to strive for) and things can always be worse (so I can be thankful for my current state of affairs, despite myself and the appearance of the half empty glass).
Tyler Cowen is an idiot.
So...how long have you been holding that one in?
anony-mouse, Thanks for pointing this out.
I meant, applying this particular reference to the cloud over 'Asymmetrical Information' seemed out of context. Making that particular statement was meant to support Jane. A lame sort of way to say 'I don't think this applies here, or to you'. Not 'T.C. is an idiot', but 'This T.C. reference is't useful *here*'.
But I don't agree with Tyler's conclusions.
Tyler-
First they insult you, then they refer to Tarot cards;
then you know you've won.
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Megan, I'm very sorry about your dog, and I'm grateful for your earlier post's discussion of how we respond to others' grief. I'm not a neuroscientist, but I'll venture a guess that when we suffer emotional setbacks, the brain is enduring something like an injury, and it takes time to heal.
People think some kinds of loss, like the death of a family member, are more real than others. But the pain of loss is not about what's real or rational. (If it were, why should we grieve over anyone?) Whether we've lost a parent, a pet, a relationship, or even an illusion, by the time we fall into grief, I think there's something biological going on that can't be cured by self-awareness and rationality alone. And our suffering is real, no matter what the cause.
People who don't understand this often try to give advice, when what the grieving person could really use is sympathy, support, or encouragement.
The beautiful Auden poem you posted doesn't belong only to those who've lost a human loved one. About suffering he was never wrong, the young master.
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