Average - typical, conforming and invisible

It seems a lot of us suffer from FOBA: the fear of being average. This being Wordly Explorations, I wondered if the word average itself was part of the problem.

In part 1 of Average, I explored how people use and misuse the concept of average from statistics. I started with the statistics meanings of average - a single number (score) to represent a group, and normal - a particular pattern of the spread of different numbers/scores of a population. Two useful concepts for specific uses.

However, while the word average retains the 'authority of maths' in everyday use, it slides to mean normal (as in not abnormal), mediocre, and moral. It is mis-used to mean normal as in 'how we should all be'. This can cause considerable grief. 

That explains some of the sloppy word use that sits behind FOBA.  

In this post, I am exploring how the word average, used to mean normal, ends up meaning boring… and there's more grief as well.

Post-truth (part 6) - the building code for truth

Unlike the dictionary definition provided in part 1, this series has shown that the human relationship to truth involves much more than simply finding information that accords with fact or reality.  

Despite this, we are extremely reluctant to accept that truth is a social agreement using explanatory stories shaped by our cognitive biases and our deep need to believe that makes us feel safe. 

Everything in our being wishes that truth were absolute and objective. Otherwise, it raises a very uncomfortable question. 

If truth is not objective and absolute, is it completely arbitrary, disconnected from facts, even delusional?  

Does accepting that truth is socially constructed also mean accepting that 'facts' don't matter? How can we possibly agree that truth may not accurately reflect reality, when we have deep psychological needs for certainty and understanding how the world works? If we let go of our absolutes and our certainty, what will we hold onto for safety? 

Distress at the idea of truth as a social agreement is the result of a false dichotomy. We wrongly assume that the opposite of an absolute and objective 'real truth' is an arbitrary and delusional 'unreal truth'. But it's much more complicated than this misleading dichotomy. 

A more useful question to ask is what (usually) stops an individual from making up their own arbitrary explanatory story and calling that truth? 

The answer is that the social agreement on truth is tightly controlled and very real. 

Average - normal, mediocre and moral

Do you suffer from FOBA: a fear of being average?

FOBA, sometimes FOBO (fear of being ordinary), seems to be pretty common (here, here, here and here). If you suffer from a fear of being average at least some of the time, then you probably are … um… average.   

When I read the word average in articles about FOBA, I see several other meanings lurking behind it.

To me, fear of being average appears to be a modern condition caused not by illness or injustice, but by sloppy word use. Sloppy enough to cover a fear of something else entirely.

In this post, I focus on average when it is used and misused to mean normal, and in part 2 I'm going to explore average used to mean boring. 

Post-truth (part 5) - from hmmm? to ah-ha!

This post builds on the ideas explored in the previous Post truth posts: part 1 - a false metaphor, part 2 - a metaphor that fits, part 3 - reviewing the project brief and part 4 - tell me a story. 

In part 4, I described how the walls of the metaphoric house of truth are constructed. The metaphoric walls represent our interwoven explanatory stories, shared and reinforced by lots of people throughout life. Our explanatory stories run constantly under our thinking, most often without our awareness. It's hard for us to pull out any single 'story', think critically about our understanding of the world, or notice if some stories have only a tenuous link to 'facts' about reality (the metaphorical floor). 

But we don't really want to anyway; why take a wrecking ball to the walls of our own house? We like living there!

In the last post, I suggested that our shared explanatory stories meet fundamental human needs in a way that facts cannot. Those needs include our need to understand 'cause and effect' so we can do things, out need to belong and share a sense of reality with others, and our need to feel safe. 

Here's an idea: truth is the status that we give to the explanatory stories that meet these human needs. 

'Whoa!?!' you say. 'Don't facts count for anything? Doesn't being right or accurate matter? Can I just call any random idea truth if it 'feels' good then?'

Very important questions. To begin to answer them, in this post I'm looking into the nature of our relationship to truth, how truth meets fundamental human needs.

I want to explore how truth makes us feel.

Free - a prepositional problem

We love feeling free.

Western national anthems often proclaim their people’s status as free: the USA as the ‘land of the free’; in Australia, ‘we are one and free’; and the Brits see their isle as the ‘home of the brave and free’.¹  

Those anthems celebrate being a people and a society² free from domination, oppression and tyranny, thanks to historical fights against tyrants or governments.

But, what does the word free mean to us in a purportedly free society? 

When I think about how we use the word free these days, I see images like going on a long drive, ideally in a sports car, with the wind tousling your hair.

I wonder, what exactly do we celebrate being free from now?

And I wonder, what happened to the prepositions that should go with that word. Free from what? Free of what? Free to do³ what? And... free in order to achieve what? 

What can those strangely absent prepositions tell us about the contemporary meaning of free? 

Post-truth (part 4) - tell me a story

Welcome to part 4 of the Post-truth series. Well done for staying the course! 

The aim of this series is to explore humanity's relationship to truth from a new perspective. I want to explore what's behind the numerous contests of truth through concepts including objectivity, subjectivity, relativity, the boundaries to what we can know, the place of untruth in all its guises, and the concept of post-truth. 

No rest in the construction of truth!

"Part 4?!" you might be thinking. Is truth really such a massive topic? Is truth really that complicated to write about? These questions remind me of the deep appeal of the journey metaphor for truth. It suggests that when we find it, truth will be simple and pure and absolute. We will KNOW. Then we can rest. 

But that's one of the many problems with the journey metaphor: truth just isn't simple and pure and absolute. 

My new house metaphor symbolises that truth is a complex and ongoing social construction process. It's tiring; there is no rest. 

At first, this might seem a much less appealing metaphor for truth. 

It might also feel like the ideas behind the house construction metaphor are not hanging together yet. That could be because my exploration is only about one-quarter of the way through!¹ 

However, if I can nail it (bad metaphor-related pun intended), I will explain soon how the better fit of the house construction metaphor for truth provides some big payoffs…

This post builds on the content explored in the previous Post truth posts: part 1 - a false metaphor, part 2 - a metaphor that fits, and part 3 - reviewing the project brief. 

We turn now to the exciting process of constructing truth. 

Habits - freeing or limiting?

At the beginning of the year, the usual articles about New Year's resolutions rolled out in the media. Yawn.

These were followed by the usual blither on making your resolution into a habit. Same, same.

I didn't make any resolutions. But I did think about habits.

A quote from William James (Habit, 1887)¹ prompted this exploration (my emphasis added): 

"We must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can, and guard against the growing into ways that are likely to be disadvantageous to us, as we should guard against the plague. The more of the details of our daily life we can hand over to the effortless custody of automatism, the more our higher powers of mind will be set free for their own proper work.

There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision, and for whom the lighting of every cigar, the drinking of every cup, the time of rising and going to bed every day, and the beginning of every bit of work, are the subjects of express volitional deliberations." 

Really?! Habits are freeing 'our higher powers of the mind'? Can habits also be limiting? And William, how do we distinguish the 'useful actions' from those 'likely to be disadvantageous'? And are 'express volitional deliberations' so bad?