In your life expect some trouble; when you worry it makes things double.

Bobby McFerrin singing “Don’t Worry; Be Happy”

The Focus Illusion can be summed up in a single sentence: Nothing in life is as important as you think it is when you are thinking about it.

Nobel Prize Winning Psychologist/Economist Daniel Kahneman

McFerrin is philosophizing; Kahneman is summarizing empirical data, but both are addressing a practical problem we all face about when to focus on problems, in effect making them double, and when to ignore them bringing them back to their real size.

Kahneman’s findings need a little explaining as their implications are many, for delight as well as worry.

The Shrink Wrap Effect:

Anticipating something wonderful is invariably more exciting than having it. We overestimate the joy of acquiring something because we overestimate how much attention we’ll give it once we have it. Focusing on its arrival, all shrink-wrapped, attention-grabbing, thrilling, and new makes it seem more important than it will be once we come to take it for granted.

The Shrunk Life Effect:

Conversely, anticipating a setback, our focused attention causes us to overestimate how long it will disappoint us. We forget that we’ll adjust to the setback. For example, people tend to overestimate how shrunk paraplegics’ lives will be a year after the accidents that put them in their wheelchairs. We overestimate how much paraplegics think about their condition and underestimate how much they will adjust to their lives and come to take their setback for granted. This is Bobby’s point: Because worry focuses your attention, when you worry, it makes setbacks double.

The Focus Illusion exaggerates all polling results, inflating our strong opinions in opposite directions. The light of our focused attention makes the highs look higher and the lows lower. When the pollster points your attention at something, you’ll make a bigger deal of it than you’ll make once your attention shifts to other matters.

Here’s a figurative graph, not based on real data but illustrating how the Focus Illusion works. In the “no focus” area, incremental changes in circumstances make for incremental changes in your feelings about your circumstances. But once your situation catches your attention, changes in your circumstances have an exaggerated effect on your mood.

In light of the Focus Illusion, how then should we live?

Obviously, focus on the positive; ignore the negative. In other words, don’t worry be happy. That way you go from thrilling to fine, not thrilling to awful.

But before we leave it at that, a little reality check. First, we don’t have full control over where we focus our attention. Second, it’s often good that we don’t, because attention to what’s bad is the spur that motivates us to make things better.

Indeed, focusing on the thrilling and the awful are two sides of the same self-mobilizing coin. We experience them not in isolation, but in comparative contrast to each other. Feeling awful about your situation, you’re in effect saying, “Wouldn’t it be thrilling to experience the opposite of this?” Feeling thrilled about your situation, you’re in effect saying “Wouldn’t it be awful to experience the opposite of this?” In this sense, the Focus Illusion doesn’t describe three states but two: Focusing on a contrast between what is and what could be, vs. not focusing on the contrast between what is and what could be.

Appreciating the good mobilizes you to protect and preserve it. When you appreciate the contrast between what you’ve got and the awful alternatives, you’ll work harder to defend the status quo. Yes, this can cause problems. Fanatical partnership makes can make you needy, clinging and desperate. Fanatical patriotism can make you belligerent, prickly and obnoxious. Still, to be thrilled about what’s worth preserving often puts the right fire in your belly.

And Bobby’s right that worry makes things double, but wrong that the prescription “don’t worry; be happy,” necessarily follows from it. Worry that makes things double can be very useful. To focus on what’s bad exaggerates its badness. The spur gets bigger, perhaps big enough to spur you to action sufficient to overcome inertia, to get over the hump and hump harder for true improvement. Fanatically disappointed partners can be nagging, unappreciative whiners. Fanatically unsatisfied protesters can be tedious pests. Still, to focus intensely on what’s worth changing often puts the right fire in your belly to make changes.

Focusing on the thrilling and the awful motives campaigns for change that if successful will tend toward the anti-climatic. The thrilled will discover that preserving the status quo wasn’t worth as much as they thought it would be when they were focused on preserving it. Life goes back to normal, and the shrink-wrap effect shrinks. And those who focused on their awful situation until they improved it will discover the shrink-wrap effect shrinking too. The improvement will only be thrilling at first, before they come to take the improvement for granted. Then the thrill is gone.

“Don’t worry; be happy” applies fruitfully to awful, but hard to change situations. If you find yourself focused on a bad, but seemingly un-improvable situation, try to find some distraction strong enough to shift your focus elsewhere. Given the Focus Illusion, maybe the situation is not as importantly bad as you think it is when you focus on it.

At minimum, “Don’t worry; be happy” is a good strategy for testing your motivation to change things. If at first you don’t succeed, try to ignore. If you don’t succeed at ignoring, then focus, exaggerate, and spur yourself to action, try, try, trying again to make the changes you overestimate will make a big difference, but even overestimated, might well be worth making.

Most people who oppose moral relativism believe that they know the moral absolutes. Rarely does they say, “I believe there are moral absolutes, but I don’t know what they are.”

Generally, opposition to moral relativism is a way of saying, “There are moral absolutes. I know what they are and you don’t, so just shut up and conform to my moral standards.”

Moral absolutists are absolute about the existence of moral absolutes. To be absolute about an absolute imposes what’s called a “Double Bind”

A double bind is basically a, “I’ve decided you’ll have to either take it or leave it” wrapped in a protective coating of “…and don’t you dare question my decision.”

An example would be a church saying “We decide who’s a sinner, and if you question our decisions, you’re a sinner.”

McCarthyism is a classic historical example. Joe McCarthy said in effect,  ”I decide who’s a Communist and if you doubt my decisions, you’re a communist.”

Fox News commentators exercise double binds in bulk.

What is the double bind’s protective layer made of?  Usually not just an “or else.” Typically it contains some of the same material used to build halos. The church says, “In the name of holiness, we decide” and if you question their decisions, they accuse you of attacking holiness.”  McCarthy said “In the name of Freedom, I decide,” and if you challenged him he’d say you were attacking Freedom.  Fox says if you challenge them you hate America.

Most people who study double binds think of them as exclusively unhealthy.  I’m not so sure.  I sometimes wonder if they might be necessary to maintaining institutional loyalty.  Even great marriages often depend on the partner’s mutual imposition of double binds, each partner saying in effect, “In the name of love, we can talk about absolutely anything, but if you bring up certain topics (my weight, my breath, my baldness, my boringness), you’ll be attacking our love.”

Similarly a business might maintain loyalty by saying, “We here at ABCO are a team. We encourage you to challenge management about anything, but if you challenge management on certain issues you’re not a team player.”

Some institutions are worth stabilizing. Others are not.  Double binds may be useful or necessary to maintaining virtuous institutions, but far too often they’re employed to sustain bad institutions, and to make gross double standards un-challengeable.

Moral absolutists employ a double bind when they say in effect “On behalf of morality, we declare that moral relativism is immoral, and if you question either our declaration or our morality, you’re practicing moral relativism and are therefore immoral.”

In truth, people disagree about moral absolutes. We debate them. And no matter what absolutes we argue for, they all rest on assumptions, not bedrock. Some moral assumptions are almost universally embraced in theory, though, alas, not in application.  For example, most of us support the theory that killing people is bad except in self-defense against attackers.  In practice, we go to war, disagreeing violently over who is attacking whom.

Sit down with a moral absolutist some time.  Pack a lunch, stay a while. Ask question after question looking for the bedrock foundation of his absolutes. Eventually he reveals his assumptions. He just has to say something like, “It just is.  It is because it is. It’s absolute because it’s absolute.”

Championing their moral absolutes, moral absolutists reveal that they are at heart moral relativists, defending beliefs based on assumptions. And if resting their absolutes on assumptions weren’t enough to make them relativists, their effort to persuade is a dead give-away.  In a world of moral absolutes, they wouldn’t need to persuade more than a handful of moral miscreants.  A moral absolutist who needs to persuade large swaths of humanity of his moral absolutes is acting just like a moral relativist, regardless of what he claims.

I’m a moral relativist.  I believe morals change through negotiation.  Moral absolutists apparently believe that morals change through negotiation also. They’re just not honest about it. They pretend that they don’t have to persuade us moral relativists, even as they’re trying to persuade us.

I for one think that claiming to be in possession of moral absolutes is immoral and I’m happy to debate that claim with anyone.  But if you try to persuade me I’m wrong, I’ll know you for what you are, a moral relativist in moral absolutist’s clothing.

I don’t agree with Conservatives about much but I do about this: Sometimes we think we’re entitled to things we can no longer afford. Our rights are, in truth, subject to our right nows. When times change; rights change. For example, to reduce the deficit, we’ll have to cut across the board, including entitlement programs.

Conservatives are, obviously, inconsistent about rights. Many cling with pitiable shortsightedness to their right to global supremacy, claiming that it’s America’s right to win, no matter what. Everyone has to adjust but us, by whom they mean them.

Still, among some deficit hawks, like Wyoming’s Alan Simpson, there’s a sober sense that rights can become beyond our means, and when they do, rights have to be renegotiated.

That’s the funny thing about rights. We think of them as permanent, as though they’re all inalienable. But no right is inalienable. Rights are man-made priorities. They’re ambitious pledges we make, declared commitments to high aspirations.

We talk about God-given rights. If there is a god, which I doubt, judging by this world, God doesn’t grant rights. If God granted rights He would enforce them with laws of nature. Calling rights God-given may facilitate our work to uphold them, but it’s still our work.

These days Conservatives are heading toward a head-on collision with themselves over rights. Libertarian conservatives are against entitlements because we treat them as inalienable rights. Social conservatives consider it their inalienable right to keep marriage exclusive to heterosexuals. I don’t envy them their collision, but to their advantage, they’re great at ignoring the sound of their one clan clashing.

I side with the practical conservatives. Work to uphold priority rights, but admit that rights are negotiated. Rights are not acts of nature, but human commitments to work against nature, not God-given, but meager human-made commitments to offset acts of God.

Rights are our lines in the sand, but it’s still sand.

Some people won’t give it a rest.  They’re never satisfied. Whatever question you answer, they’ll ask another question. They’re smart alecs like the kids who respond to parents’ demands by stalling for time with an endless string of Yeah, but why? questions.

Asking too many questions makes you a smart alec, but asking too few is a problem also.  Some people give it a rest too easily.  Like impulse shoppers, they’re satisfied with the first answer they find, regardless how flawed. They refuse to think beyond the bare minimum.

And actually it’s not different kinds of people so much as topics. We all have some topics on which we’re easily satisfied and others on which our curiosity runs persistent.  On some topics you’re a smart alec; on others you’re an impulse shopper. Sometimes you drive people crazy with too much curiosity and sometimes with not nearly enough, at least for their taste.

In debates and arguments, we attack each other over how much curiosity we demonstrate. We say “Aren’t you at all curious? You’re going to settle for that lame answer?”  or we say, “Oh, get over it. Stop asking so many questions!” Our shouting matches are often doubting matches, each of us demanding that our opponents doubt and question themselves more and us less. We shout as though we are authorities on some objective line, the right number of questions to ask, as though we know who falls over and under the line.

So where is that line? How many questions should you ever ask? I have an answer to this question though you are welcome, of course, to question it.

Let’s start by asking how many questions there are.  Is there an outer physical limit? On this question, philosophers, concur with the smart alecs having decided that there isn’t. No matter what answer is provided, you could always ask another question. At minimum, about any answer you could always ask Yeah, but why is that so?

Why? is sometimes actually a How? question. Why does a car move? for example. But most often Why? means For what benefit? or With what value? as in Why should we do that? Why? is a values question.

That you can always ask another Why? question is terrible news for anyone who wants to nail down absolute final answers to values questions.  History is a battlefield strewn with trampled absolutes on value answers, answers like Because God and the Universe say it is good, to which some heretic inevitably asks Yeah, but why?

Which is why history is also a battlefield strewn with trampled heretics.

The philosopher Richard Rorty notes that all values questions lead ultimately not to an imposed outer limit, but to someone saying, in effect Just shut up. Stop asking me why. Rorty calls this our final vocabulary. You encounter your own final vocabulary when you answer a values question Why is it good? with It just is. It’s good because it’s good.

Generally, philosophers call such answers tautological meaning that the answer is simply a reiteration of, or variation on the question.  Why do we like sugar? Because it’s sweet (meaning it’s a substance we like).  What is this swollen rash I have? It’s dermatitis (meaning it’s a swollen rash).  Why is this valuable? Because it’s good (meaning it’s valued).

Philosophers guard against tautological arguments, and yet they also admit that given the infinitude of questions one could ask, tautology is the ultimate endpoint of even the most stubbornly persistent inquiry. We never get to an absolute answer. We exhaust ourselves well short of the infinite, and cry uncle. saying for example on values questions, Good is good, so just shut up!

Years ago, I wrote this limerick to capture this:

Always Next Dilemma (A.N.D.)

After finding solutions that fit

I like to kick back and just sit

on my laurels but then a

resulting dilemma

proves questions in life just don’t quit.

But, like I said, I have an answer. First, to constrain impulse shopping I’ve long advocated inventorying the questions that follow from our answers or solutions: Rather than kicking back after answering a question, think about what your answer entails–its consequences and the resulting dilemmas or questions that follow from your answers.

This weekend I noticed a formula for asking not only the always next question but also the last one you need to ask on values questions.  My formula is based on the 2,600 year old Liar’s Paradox, the statement I’m lying, in other words This statement is false, or It’s true that this statement is false.

For these 2,600 years we logicians and philosophers have found the liar’s paradox very troubling.  Since Aristotle we’ve been committed to the idea that a statement can’t be both true and false at the same time. And yet the liar’s paradox seems to be just that, in that if it’s true, it’s false and if it’s false it’s true. That is, if it’s true that I’m lying, then it’s not true that I’m lying, in which case it’s true that I’m lying, in which case it’s true that I’m not lying. The liar’s paradox is an eternally oscillating question. It’s like a reciprocating engine in that each of the two answers (A, not A) triggers its opposite answer.

The liar’s paradox has three essential features:

1. It’s self-negating:  It’s true that it’s not true.
2. It’s self-referential: It’s about itself.  It says “This statement is…”
3. It has two parts that take turns determining the truth of each other and thereby to the whole statement:  It’s true that… and …this statement is false both apply to each other and to the whole statement.

After 2600 years struggling to decide whether the Liar’s Paradox is true, false, or simply avoidable, philosophers have concluded that its an unavoidable undecideable.  The Liar’s Paradox can not be turned into a stable stationary answer that is either absolutely true or false. Rather it’s a question that keeps toggling its answer.

If we think of the liar’s paradox not as a stable stationary thing but as an answer over time, it’s an oscillator, each of two answers triggering its opposite.  Oscillators can be very useful.  For example, a thermostat oscillates, turnig on a heater which makes the heater prone to turn off, which makes it prone to turn on. Likewise, a reciprocal engine’s piston’s expand causing their contraction, causing their expansion.  We find such oscillators everywhere in organisms and the things organisms make.

I work as part of an origins of life research team whose molecular model for the missing link between non-life and life is reciprocating like this.  When  our autogen is closed and seed-like, it’s prone to open and grow; when open and growing, it’s prone to close.

I work on values questions too. I believe that we can make an ultimate answer out of the liar’s paradox.

Here’s the recipe for baking yourself a nice liar’s paradox:

Start with an answer to some question. We’ll call it A.

This statement is true.

Now, we negate it, in other words, Not A:

This statement is not true

And then tack onto the front of it the original statement, so we have A that not A.

It’s true that this statement is not true.

And there you have it: A liar’s paradox. Our answer A that Not A is an oscillator, in that its first clause keeps toggling between true and false:

If A that not A (It’s true that this statement is not true)

Then Not A that not A (It’s not true that this statement is not true)

Then A that not A (It’s true that this statement is not true)

Then Not A that not A (It’s not true that this statement is not true)

…

Now let’s apply this recipe to a value statement. For example, take the values answer:

Be tolerant

Step one:  Negate it.

Be intolerant

Step two:  Tack the original statement onto the front of it.

Be tolerant of being intolerant.

Being tolerant of intolerance has its problems. Should we tolerantly just accept bigotry, racism, cruelty and oppression? No we should:

Be intolerant of intolerance.

In other words, not A of not A.

But that’s hypocritical isn’t it?  How can you be intolerant of intolerance without tolerating your own intolerance? So:

Be tolerant of intolerance.

In other words back to A of not A, and the oscillation begins again.

Tolerance, often touted as an absolute ultimate and supreme value is what philosopher’s would call an undecideable: When to be tolerant? When to be intolerant? We oscillate back and forth on this one, relaxing and tightening our standards on tolerance.

I’m often accused of not giving it a rest, of being a smart alec. I give it a rest but in a restless place, my liar’s paradoxes of values.  I consider them more fundamental than any absolute values, both the beginning questions and the ultimate undecideable answers, the outer limits on the questions we need ask.  Here are a few more of my favorite Values Paradoxes:

Commit yourself to flexibility

Convince yourself that you are not a self

Be persuaded that people can’t be persuaded

Be convinced that you should think for yourself

Do not be negative

You shouldn’t be judgmental

Why does bluish mean a little blue but selfish doesn’t mean a little self-focused? In common usage, selfish is something you either are or aren’t. If you want to say a little self-focused you say a little selfish which if -ish meant a little as it does in bluish, would be redundant.

I bring this up because we could use a word that meant a little selfish. There are degrees of selfishness not just based on intensity of self-regard but on kinds or size of selves. In terms of time, there’s your self today, your self this year, your self this lifetime, even perhaps your self in terms even of the very long picture-your ancestors and your children. And there are degrees of social self too, our you-and-who-else-selves. In terms of family, there’s you, your romantic partnership, your family, your extended family. Socially there’s you, your local friends, face book network. Vocationally, there’s you, your department, division, corporation and industry. Politically, there’s you, your party, your country, the world.

It’s not as though there are just two levels, forest vs. trees; thinking of yourself vs. thinking of others. There are many levels based on lots of dimensions, and plenty of them affording us opportunities to be self-ish. One can be selfish on behalf of a larger community. Ignoring this, we often mistake selfishness for selflessness.

For example, we assume that team players aren’t selfish, since as the saying goes, there’s no “I” in team. But actually, there’s plenty of “I” in team. We can be intensely selfish on behalf of our team.

There are plenty of names for the dark selfish side of being a team player. We can be cliquish, jingoistic, exclusionary, elitist, or partisan. But we rarely notice that the dark and light sides of teamishness are two sides of the same coin. Team player: Good; cliquish: Bad.

How, then, can you tell when someone has entered the dark, selfish side of team playing? Not by the sanctimonious sound of selflessness, since we often feel proud of our selfless generosity to the team, when we’re being selfish to outsiders. It’s as if we say to outsiders, “I deserve more than you but if you think that means I’m selfish, you’re wrong. See, I think my fellow team members deserve more than you too.”

Paradoxically, one of the best indicators that one has entered the dark side of team playing, is proud self-proclaimed selflessness in sustaining just such a double standard. Let’s take a current example.

A minority of fringe plutocrats and religious fundamentalists who have taken over the lead in the Republican Party today are skating closer to totalitarian talk than any mainstream US candidates in decades. True to the totalitarian tradition, they’re insisting that they’re acting selflessly to protect us all against the immoral behavior of their opponents both within and outside the US. All totalitarians talk like that.

And all totalitarians either can’t or won’t assess their own behavior by the same standards as they weigh their opponent’s behavior. The same exact behavior when they do it is fine, justified and appropriate. When their opponents do it, it’s an unambiguous sign of their depravity.

And if you asked why their riskily totalitarianish behavior is safe whereas in anyone else’s is a mortal threat, they’ll say “we pose no risk because we’re Americans, or True Americans, Republicans or True Republicans. In other words, they hold two standards—one for their team; another for non-team members—and are proud of it. Indeed, they justify their pride as selflessness in the service of the home team and the greater good even though they are in the minority and opposed by the majority. It’s as though they say my double standard is a sign of my selflessness. I’m generous because I think both me and my fellow teammate deserve more than outsiders.

Whether you agree with that example or not, it’s worth paying a little more attention to the dark side of being a team player. We can be collectively selfish leaving the world at large bluish.