It may be useful to the cause of avoiding one’s own potential happy death spirals (HDSs) to actively attempt to subvert the “my ideas are my children” trope. Perceived ownership of an idea or mental tool may be a prime contributor to HDS thinkery, giving rise to the kind of protectiveness we humans tend to provide our offspring whether or not they deserve it. The fact that our child started the fight with another child doesn’t prevent us from stepping in on OUR child’s side; the fact that our child is demonstrably average doesn’t prevent us from telling complete strangers how intelligent, sweet, talented, beautiful, etc. OUR child is, was, and shall always be, forever and ever, amen.
So too it seems to be with the ideas we feel we own, particularly the ones we ourselves have generated. This impulse is entirely understandable within the context of a species whose primary survival trait is intelligence, with opposable thumbs taking a distant second. Yet to feel ownership of an idea to the point that we feel protective of it seems rationally contraindicated: an idea—anyone’s—should only be valued insofar as it can stand on its own in the uncaring realm of reality… in a making beliefs pay rent kind of way.
So perhaps a good solution to the “How?” of resisting HDSs would be to try to view ideas and mental tools as being both fundamentally borrowed and potentially disposable upon breaking. It’s a nice way of avoiding even the temptation to indulge in ad hominem, as well.
It may be useful to the cause of avoiding one’s own potential happy death spirals (HDSs) to actively attempt to subvert the “my ideas are my children” trope. Perceived ownership of an idea or mental tool may be a prime contributor to HDS thinkery, giving rise to the kind of protectiveness we humans tend to provide our offspring whether or not they deserve it. The fact that our child started the fight with another child doesn’t prevent us from stepping in on OUR child’s side; the fact that our child is demonstrably average doesn’t prevent us from telling complete strangers how intelligent, sweet, talented, beautiful, etc. OUR child is, was, and shall always be, forever and ever, amen.
So too it seems to be with the ideas we feel we own, particularly the ones we ourselves have generated. This impulse is entirely understandable within the context of a species whose primary survival trait is intelligence, with opposable thumbs taking a distant second. Yet to feel ownership of an idea to the point that we feel protective of it seems rationally contraindicated: an idea—anyone’s—should only be valued insofar as it can stand on its own in the uncaring realm of reality… in a making beliefs pay rent kind of way.
So perhaps a good solution to the “How?” of resisting HDSs would be to try to view ideas and mental tools as being both fundamentally borrowed and potentially disposable upon breaking. It’s a nice way of avoiding even the temptation to indulge in ad hominem, as well.