Psychological Superconductivity
Psychological Superconductivity
Exploring life and friction
What is friction?
“Resistance that one surface or object encounters when moving over another”
The “action of one surface or object rubbing against another.”
“The conflict or animosity caused by a clash of wills, temperaments, or opinions.”
I wish to investigate this third meaning in a specific context, the aforementioned clash that arises within our own psyche.
Isn’t it curious that we often know what we ought to do to move toward a desired outcome yet even more often refuse to undertake the required actions, or do so in a sporadic and inconsistent manner requiring what seems to be great expenditures of effort?
A simple illustration is the undertaking of a physical regimen. Common knowledge suggests that two main pillars of health are diet and exercise (to be fair, recent research suggests that good sleep or its lack is even more impactful than exercise). A prototypical example is the familiar scenario of the New Year’s resolution to get in shape that fades within weeks for the vast majority who even bothered to set foot in a gym in the first place.
There is an illusion, particularly in the individually oriented West, that the personality is a singular entity. How else could we explain the above?
Perhaps to become an individual is the aim. G.I. Gurdjieff, an Armenian spiritual teacher of the early 20th century, expounds the concept of the many I’s, that we are all mostly asleep and comprised of subpersonalities, each with their own motivations. To become awake is to integrate these fragments of our being.
A recent development of this concept, from an evolutionary perspective, is found in The Rational Animal, by Kendrick and Griskevicius, two modern psychologists. They argue for and delineate at least seven subselves, each having evolved to solve different challenges. These include self protection, disease avoidance, making friends, increasing status, mate attraction, mate retention, and family care.
In my opinion, these don’t seem exhaustive, but are sufficiently comprehensive to expound the point I would like to make, that is, the discrepancy between having the seeming experience of a singular self or personality and the internal conflict among our thoughts, feelings and actions; that this observation is old and new, is grounded in personal experience, academic study, and spiritual teachings.
As a counterpoint, wouldn’t it be wonderful to move through life without this sense of inner strife, or at least a reduction in the friction among our subpersonalities? To harmonize and align the many motivations within our being that appear to operate at cross-purposes?
In my experience, that there are some aspects of ourselves we are regularly contending with appears to be a universal condition.
In one model, decisions require willpower. This has been a topic of modern psychological study, introducing the idea that decision fatigue accrues throughout the day and our decision making ability is in limited supply. This resource is replenished through sleep and other recovery activities.
However, as a counterpoint, there has been further research demonstrating that even believing whether willpower is or isn’t limited produces different results in decision making behavior.
Etymologically, decision means to cut off, sharing the same suffix as incision or precision. This is also reflected in the terminology executive function. A powerful reframe of willpower was to conceive of it as won’t-power, that is to say we use our will to suppress competing drives for conscious aims. Someone lacking executive (again notice the etymological similarity between execute and decide) function, whether through injury, as in the famous case of Phineas Gage, or neurodivergent conditions like ADHD, is said to be afflicted with impulsivity.
There are also fascinating connections made across mythology and religion as civilizations moved from polytheism to monotheism. This is reflected internally in our psyche moving from a pantheon of competing gods and goddesses vying and scheming with one and another to an omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient singularity.
Suffice to say, the mere concept of exerting will implies internal friction.
To what degree is reducing psychological friction a worthwhile aim? What if we start by removing friction altogether?
By outer analogy, navigating a frictionless environment is not without its dangers. Walking or driving on ice is certainly a precarious situation without appropriate equipment. This equipment actually increases friction, but in dry conditions is inefficient. Using skates or snowshoes is great for traversing ice or snow, but would appear rather silly and cumbersome traversing a sidewalk on a sunny day.
Speaking more psychologically, a life without sufficient challenge or meaning yields the throes of existential angst. Boredom, depression and antisocial behavior often result.
There are a host of authors, athletes and thinkers who discuss the nature of the creative process and argue for a fundamentally combative orientation within. Stephen Pressfield names this the Resistance, and has authored The War of Art; Ryan Holiday has written several books about Stoicism and overcoming inner strife including The Obstacle Is The Way and Ego Is The Enemy. A particularly insightful exponent in this camp is Nicholas Nassim Taleb’s Antifragile, whose position is that disruption, stress and shocks to an antifragile system make it stronger than it would be otherwise; without these challenges, such a system atrophies. He makes the case that life is such a system. There is no shortage of pithy quotes that speak to this. One from Jim Rohn is: “Don’t wish it was easier, wish you were better.” Podcast personalities like Joe Rogan and Jocko Willink often speak of the necessity of struggle and development of discipline in order to be effective in life. In fact, the title of one of Jocko’s books underscores this creed: Discipline Equals Freedom.
Who am I to argue against the collective, hard-earned wisdom of such men, most of them older, more experienced and orders of magnitude more accomplished? I would be a fool to do so, and fundamentally agree with their positions. If I were to summarize their collective perspective, it would look like this: life is full of challenges and is best lived by meeting these challenges and taking them on willingly rather than avoiding them.
I propose there is a missing piece. Or rather, a hidden surprise that is contained within this adversarial model.
Enter, superconductivity.
Superconductivity is “the ability of certain materials to conduct electric current with practically zero resistance” and “expulsion of magnetic flux fields...when cooled below a characteristic critical temperature.”
What are its practical applications and relevance?
Modern technological marvels ranging from MRIs to particle accelerators such as the Large Hadron Collider depend on superconducting materials. However, it is the maglev train that I would like to use as an analogy. The term maglev is a portmanteau of magnetic levitation. As a feat of engineering, the Japanese L0 series of trains has set the land speed record for rail vehicles at 603 km/h (375 mph).
Some interesting properties of this type of vehicle, great speed aside, is the absence of moving parts; there is no friction between track and car, and it can accelerate and decelerate more effectively than conventional trains. There are downsides: the systems have been much more expensive to construct, and there are only incremental benefits compared to the cost and risk.
What is the inner equivalent of the outer state of superconductivity?
This list of properties has parallels with the concept of flow that has been at the forefront of neuroscience research, particularly over the last several years. Two names in particular stand out in connection with this topic: Steven Kotler, author of Stealing Fire (with Jamie Wheal) and The Rise Of Superman among others, and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a Hungarian psychologist who researched and coined the term flow as it applies in the present context of human mental states.
What is flow? For the uninitiated, flow is comprised of the following elements:
a complete engagement with the present moment that demands one’s full attention at an appropriate level of challenge beyond ordinary levels of performance; there is a blending of action and awareness, a loss of reflective self-consciousness, a sense of agency, a distortion of temporal experience, and the activity is intrinsically rewarding. Additionally, there is immediate feedback, a sense that there is the potential to succeed, and the falling away of other needs.
Like the maglev train, flow facilitates extraordinary performance by removing the inner friction of self-consciousness and obviating the sense of time. Also like the maglev, flow is biologically expensive, requiring and expending considerable amounts of neurotransmitters. It cannot be sustained indefinitely.
It is somewhat paradoxical to note that the prerequisite of a challenging and difficult situation, relative to skill, is necessary in order to evoke this frictionless state, akin to the critical temperature necessary to achieve superconductivity. Ironically, to approach the near stillness of low temperatures requires extensive energy.
There are parallels and antecedents of flow throughout history, particularly among spiritual traditions.
In Taoism, the concept of wu wei, transliterated as “effortless action” or “doing without doing”, is presented as an ideal virtue. Again, ironically, much effort is spent in the pursuit of this effortless state.
In the context of the Hierarchy of Competence (a psychological model describing four stages of learning: unconscious incompetence, conscious incompetence, conscious competence, unconscious competence), flow and wu wei provoke comparisons with the stage of unconscious competence. Or more precisely, unconscious competence is another prerequisite for flow to manifest.
A complement to the peak performance state of flow that also qualifies as a psychological superconductor would be the topic of spiritual awakening, or what is called a plateau experience. Also known as self-transcendence, this is a lesser-known stage in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs developmental model following self-actualization.
‘Spiritual awakening’ is vague in some respects and requires distinctions. There are some parallels to flow; full engagement with the present moment and an intrinsic sense of unbridled and unreasonable peace and joy. It has been described as “a peace beyond understanding.”
Unlike flow, it is abiding and not a transient state, although it seems likely there are attempts to elaborate upon a spectrum of spiritual awakening. Dr. Jeffrey A. Martin’s Matrix is such a codification of his research on enlightenment, transformation and well-being.
While a difficult challenge does not need to be at hand, according to spiritual legends and myths, awakening or enlightenment follows a great trial.
The example of Jesus fasting in the desert for forty days and nights while being tempted by Satan is archetypal.
Another equally archetypal example is the story of Gautama Buddha declaring his intent to remain under the banyan tree until achieving enlightenment and the ensuing trials overcoming his fears and desires. Mara, the Buddhist deity of deception, plays the adversary in this myth.
Alas, these are the legends and myths that have formed the foundation of religions. What are we mere mortals to take away from this?
While I find it exciting that there is more research, better imaging, and unprecedented accessibility to information on the state of flow, perhaps there are other stones left to turn and other avenues to explore.
Let us consider when, where and how we can reduce and use friction judiciously both in our outer and inner lives and imagine what could be.
May you find superconductivity in your own life, and fill it full of flow.
This took me like 2.5 reads but when I got it, it really hit me. Extrapolating and thinking that the idea that I have so much internal friction might be because I create an environment that is conducive to it was very thought provoking.
Excellent article as usual Tai. Love the "won't-power" framing. I would love hear any stories you have on personal experiences with using, or being used, by friction to produce a transformational result.