What Are You Seeing?
“Expanding your Horizons”
Astronomers tell us that the universe is expanding. So are the options for all of us. And I’m not talking about the types of chips available in the grocery store.
Only a few generations ago, if your father was a farmer, a blacksmith, or a tailor, that’s likely what you were going to be when you grew up. You had no choice in what your last name was going to be, nor much choice in your vocation. Now, even if your family name is Smith, or Taylor, there are very few limitations to our choices. We can get trained in what the family down the street does, and not even have to become their indentured servant for 7 years. (Unless having a student loan counts.)
That old maxim that ‘the only constant thing is change’ is holding true. In fact, changes in our available choices just seems to be continuing to speed up over the past century. All kinds of things are expanding faster right now, the good, the bad, and the ugly. Which begs the question, “Which do you want more of in your life?”
Expansion:
Known in economics as the Matthew Principle is the concept that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. (Side Note: Up until the pandemic and The Great Reset, this century has seen the greatest decrease in the proportion of poor people than ever before in history.)
I have also heard this concept described as. “it takes money to make money,” as an excuse for why they have little of it. It is true in a sense, but is not a reason to stay poor. We’ve all heard stories of some immigrant who arrived in North America with $20 in their pocket and built up a successful business. It took that $20, and a lot of faith! We may not be millionaires, but we’ve all got $20 to take a chance with.
A modern version of that would be the person who starts with a paperclip and keeps trading for something better until she owns a house. She has the intention and focus to build from that humble beginning. Other people have saved up for a house and then keep expanding until they have apartment buildings and hotels, just like in Monopoly (or Cashflow game by Rich Dad Poor Dad, which is next level)!
It is called the Matthew Principle because Jesus is quoted as telling this parable of the talents in the Gospel of Matthew (Matt 25:14ff). The story ends with the little that the poor servant had being taken from him and given to the one who made lots of money.
This is not Jesus being a Big Meanie. He is revealing a principle of how the world was designed.
Attitude is Everything:
Regardless of what else you may find acceptable in it, the first chapter of the Bible says that the world was designed so that we can multiply and have abundance. But the world is also designed to give us freedom of choice. Our attitude going into a situation will largely determine the choice we’ll make.
His story reveals that it was the man’s heart attitude toward the ‘Big Boss’ that determined his behaviour and hence the reward, or lack thereof for the behaviour.
The story is saying that we have all been given resources that we can make grow, and it is our choice what we do with that. We can cower in fear and do nothing and end up with nothing, or we can have the faith to take chances and have abundance.
The universe rewards certain behaviours and not others. We can either complain and protest about that, or we can use that principle for our benefit. The moral of the story is, if I’m faithful with a little, I’ll be given more. In practical terms, this means that I start with my own personal life, then my family, my community, my city. In terms of voting, I should ask myself if I should vote for someone to be mayor of my city before he has obtained abundance in his personal and family life.
Pareto Distribution:
You may recall some Math from your high school education about averages. You understand when the Weather Reporter says it is 5 degrees above the normal temperature for today, and at the end of the week, it will be cooling down, to 5 degrees below the average for this time of year. This assumes a normal distribution, where mostly the temp for that date is around the average and fewer and fewer temperatures are recorded above and below that temperature, as you get further from that number.
This Math works quite well for many repetitive systems, like a coin toss or daily temperatures. For creative events, however, the data do not generally have a Normal Distribution centred around an average. These follow the Pareto Distribution.
Maybe you didn’t follow Math that far in school, but that’s OK. It simply means that most of the measurements pile up around zero and a few get almost everything.
A forest can start out with all different kinds of trees, but over time, it becomes populated almost exclusively by only one or two species. This is not because the maple trees are greedy (as in the Rush song ‘Trees’) or Douglas Firs have unconscious biases. It is not the fault of capitalism either. It is the way the world is designed. Not everything is normal!
For example, almost all the stars have no planets around them, and a few have a whole bunch. Most hockey players never score an NHL goal and a few players score a whole bunch. Most people who sing a song, never make $1 from it, but a few make a whole pile of money, Most people on the planet have almost no money and a few have almost all of it.
The question of course is how to be in the second group, rather than the first. The answer, from the previous blog, is to be laser focussed on what we’re best at, for the benefit of others, but that doesn’t seem to be human’s natural tendency. So, what happens when we focus on something?
Increasing the Good or the Bad:
In his book ‘The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined’, Steven Pinker describes how the Matthew Principle can be understood as part of a virtuous cycle of progress or a vicious cycle of violence. Pinker refers to research measuring quality of life in various American cities by calculating the expected lifespan from all causes other than violence. In those cities that rated worst, the residents there made it even worse, by having an increased rate of violent crime, compared to other cities.
So, things get worse and worse. Conversely, things can get better and better, once a few people start some movement happening in that direction.
A general principle is that what we focus on expands. If you don’t believe me, you can do this little experiment. One time when you stub your toe, stop everything else and focus on that toe. Dwell on how much it hurts. And another time, just get on with your day immediately and focus intently on something else. Note the difference in your experience of pain, how long it hurt for and how much.
So, if you give in to the temptation in the legacy media to focus on the bad stuff going on in the world, you will feel more intensely all the bad and tend to over-react from those negative emotions. If we want good things to increase, let’s start by focussing on the good!
Three in One:
We are a mind, we live in a body and we possess a spirit. We can not pretend that one aspect of our being does not affect the others. Although often we live our day to day life as if this were true. “It’s just a donut, just a TV show; it won’t affect me.” What if we could discover to what extent it actually does affect our mind, body and spirit?
My focus will determine my language and produce changes in my physiology. Likewise, the language I use and changes in my physiology will affect my focus. So, if we change our focus, we change our life. Visualization techniques can be used to make adjustments to our focus.
We tend to ignore the cost of doing nothing, because our mind is used to where we are now, and so doesn’t consider stagnating to be a bad thing. Things keep changing, though, with or without us. Two hundred years ago, having a thousand dollars in your bank account at age 65 would have been considered really good; now, it’s nothing.
The good, the bad and the ugly are expanding right now. Which do you want more of in your life? How much do you want it?
We are all responsible for how we use that $20 in our pocket, or $1 mil, or $1 bil, in our investment account. What are you doing with your paperclip, or $20?
