The desire for control
This is an entry from my journal in which I comment at length on how the desire for control can be useful and harmful.
Another rainy day. The clouds have been low in the valley. I can barely see the opposite side, even though it is about a hundred metres away. Every time of the year has its beauty. This is no different. I appreciate it while it lasts.
The nearby stream gets flooded whenever there is heavy rainfall: it is why I spent months setting up flood-control infrastructure and redirecting the flow of water. On such days gravel comes downstream. I have put some sturdy obstacles to hold the larger pieces in place, while still allowing water to flow through. Stones and sand accumulate there. I collect them daily with a shovel and distribute them around my land on a wheelbarrow.
There are several spots in my land that get muddy and slippery. By putting coarse earth over them, I make them safer to traverse. Plus the result looks pretty. This project is time-consuming. Working in the ice cold water is uncomfortable, though it is worth the trouble. Once I am done, I will remove the obstacles from the stream so that they do not hold back anything I would not want to have there long-term.
I check all the spots in my vicinity to make sure everything is as it ought to be. I am proactive, though knowing what is happening allows me to act in a timely fashion if I need to intervene. Being in control is a matter of safety as well as a precondition for iterating on my goals without experiencing major setbacks. For example, I never actually had to deal with a flood since I first came here. But if I had never done any of that work, the kind of weather we have now after an intense drought would have surely put me at greater risk of harm. This is due to how dry soil with insufficient vegetation is more prone to erosion: there is nothing to hold it together.
Generally, I maintain situational awareness. It allows me to act swiftly, calmly, and decisively. This is what I did when the wildfires were raging this past summer. I kept my cool in large part because I had a clear mental map of where to be and the possible paths to safety: I had been checking them out on a daily basis.
Alertness stands beside paranoia. One must be safe, but being “too safe” detracts from the quality of life. What helps is to have a sense of the longer term: the world is not collapsing. If we focus too much on the short-term and the details, we lose sight of the bigger picture, which engenders in us the functional equivalent of claustrophobia. In other words: it disempowers us.
The narrow perspective may distort our perception, in how we estimate the extent of a threat or the interplay of factors. Indeed, too narrow a view will make us miss relevant factors altogether, both those that contribute to potential trouble and the ones that provide an antipode to it.
Our outlook aside, we have to tend to our physical condition. One must be able to breath easily, if they are to think clearly. More so in times of duress. The baseline heart rate has to be fairly low, so that there is enough of a buffer when push comes to shove.
In short, the mental and the physical go together. Those who think that meditation alone, without respect for the body, will give them peace of mind, are in for a rude awakening.
One earns the power of control through consistency and patience. It is a state of being characterised by balance and elegance. Those who are typically described as “control freaks” are not actually in control of anything, which is why they are freaking out all the time. All they are good at is to anger and/or infantilise those around them. Maybe their desire is to reach a point where they can affect their environment. But want alone amounts to nothing if it is not underpinning a stepwise plan of action to build up the requisite capacity.
The hut project has given me a house. This is its purpose. I like it for that very reason. Though it has also affected certain intangibles. It is my own initiative and its product is a function of my labour. As such, it reinforces the impression that part of my fate is in my own hands. I know that if something does not work well, it is because I did not do it properly or completely failed to account for some factor. And, conversely, if everything is in order or moving in the right direction it is due to my ongoing efforts.
Being told what to do without a cogent argument as to why has always rubbed me the wrong way for as long as I can remember. Give me a valid point and I will follow. Demonstrate with reason or facts and I obey. Else do not bother. Physically, I need an outlet for my energy. Let me run, let me dig, let me explore. Just let me be: I do not interfere with anyone’s activities and will not boss anybody around. Same on the intellectual front, where I want to express my thoughts without holding anything back. I do not appeal to any authority nor do I claim to be an expert. I just have to be left to my own devices.
Where I am, I love that nobody will do the work in my stead. Mine is a double-edged life: reward for my achievements and punishment for my shortcomings. Having embraced this reality, I do not brag about the good things nor do I complain about the bad ones. “Good” and “bad” are mere figures of speech. To me here, what is, simply is. There is no attendant judgement call that matters. I accept the consequences of my choices without arguing with the heavens and am prepared to deal with the circumstances as they unfold.
People operate on a spectrum of safety and risk, which correlates with blending in versus standing out. At the one extreme are those who follow the beaten path, act on the basis of directives, respect existing structures, and take no responsibility for their actions. At the other extreme is someone like me, who will speak their mind and be ready to take the hit on the chin.
When I launched my website, for example, I was still a university student yet was already vociferous as if I was a preeminent scholar in my field. Not being an expert did not deter me. Nor was I afraid of being wrong—of which I have been countless times, both stylistically and substantively. I admit to my faults. If I improved at all in the process it is through trial and error: a baptism of fire. The mistakes are integral to my growth as a person. I do not hide them, as they are constitutive of who I currently am.
On the aforementioned spectrum, none of the extremes is better than the other. I am not proud of my disposition. Again, no value judgements. Mine is a descriptive statement of how things stand. I do not prescribe it as the conduit to the blissful life.
The extremes on the spectrum represent complementary modes of behaving. The same person can be situated on different parts of the spectrum, depending on the specifics of the case, though they generally are more on one side or the other. What matters is that we appreciate the diversity among people, so as to not try to force everyone to act the same way: all have their role in the social whole.
A competent leader figure, which may be a parent, teacher, football coach, et cetera, knows whom to leave to their own devices and whose hand to hold. A one-size-fits-all treatment is not only lazy and misinformed but detrimental to those involved.
The desire for control is understandable and, depending on the specifics, indispensable. The parent must be there to define the boundaries within which the child can explore its world. What the parent offers is effectively a robust framework of control, inside of which there can be freedom. The child is thus empowered to employ its faculties while being shielded from the most pernicious consequences.
Control loses its benign function as soon as it denies any space for experimentation and failure. In the above example, the child can never learn to trust its own devices if it is babied in the strictest of ways. If it is not allowed to fall while trying to walk, then how will it ever be prepared to deal with the far more painful hits that life has in store for it?
What applies to individuals holds true for societies at-large. Those that seek to maximise safety, else to monitor and regulate everything down to the last detail, necessarily give rise to the tyranny of the perceived known, which manifests as totalitarianism. At the other extreme, those who deify the individual and see no need for constraints whatsoever, such as through tradition that has stood the test of time for millennia, usher in the tyranny of the perceived unknown, which is experienced as ochlocracy and which shifts rapidly from one fad to another.
The desire for control is what protects the baby, but also what kills the latent hero in it. It is why we have to make efforts to understand each other, not merely to tout how open-minded we are. Ignorance cannot beget tolerance.
It will be another rainy day tomorrow. I am looking forward to it.