Monday, March 31, 2014

Inactivity

There's this bit early on (relatively speaking) in Tron Legacy where Jeff Bridges (Flynn) devises the perfect plan. Realising that CLU has lured his son into the grid in order to create an escape for himself. Flynn suggests they simply refuse to play, they don't make their escape thus allowing the portal to close and CLU to be thwarted.

Now imagine if you will that some problem of yours were personified. And let's assume you aren't a psychopath. You take that personified person and drop them into a pit they can't climb out of. Then you shut a grate they can't open over their heads, and flood the pit with water.

Soon your problem will be solved, you don't have to do anything, just wait. Wait for the water to rise until their head hits the grate and then shortly afterwards they drown. Except remember we've assumed you're not a psychopath. So what you do have to do, is ignore their pleas for help and mercy and the begging to stop the water and set them free.

It would, I'm assuming, be very difficult.

But many of life's problems have this nature. They simply need to be deprived of oxygen, suffocated and they simply go away. A problem that is solved simply by not engaging it, not thinking about it, not caring. It can be neglected away. But it's just so fucking hard to restrain ourselves and let the problem die.

It seems our very nature is to do something, to act, to try and control, to engage. With a concerted effort, a problem can simply go away, we can become deaf to its pleas for our attention until it suffocates.

Inaction, I have thus come to appreciate, is a very sophisticated technique. It requires I feel, a lot of maturity and self control as well. (Not an actual bounded psychopathy). In some part it relates to depravation, when we are in a position to do something, and if power = the ability to act or do. It means foregoing our power over that situation in order to let the situation resolve itself.

Just as I am now learning to reconcile with my white knight tendencies, that if people can save themselves, that is best of all. I don't need the credit, or often to even assist. I'm getting the outcome I desire, at no personal cost.

It is strange though, to think you can approach your best self, by doing less. 

No comments: