SurrealPolitiks S01E049 - Drive

I devoted my weekend to completing something of a tedious task I had been putting off for far too long. It involved a lot of mindless data entry and this allowed my mind to wander some as I went about completing it. 

I was annoyed at having to do this work because it did not seem the best use of my time. It required none of my unique talents and was the sort of thing one could train a child to do. I cursed the energy this took away from my more creative pursuits. 

This, in combination with recent discussions across this and the uncensored production, led me to thinking much about motivation and inspiration. What I have termed here "drive". 

At the time I am sending out this email to you, I have more than 2500 words composed on the subject. I have more to commit to writing before showtime, but I will share this snippet with you now and we'll meet at 9:30pm US Eastern, as we do every Monday. 

----

The things that motivate various extremist political movements are diverse in the extreme, but what they have in common is ideological fervor. When somebody believes in a cause that they consider more important than their own life, the energy they can devote to this is incredible. A corporation selling widgets could hardly imagine hiring somebody so devoted to the company. Their most ambitious up and comers, as well as their top executives, will not for long eat sleep and breathe, their job. This is something only fanatics do, and they do it for very little money, in most cases.

This tends to give fanatical movements short bursts of momentum, followed by collapse and bitter infighting. When someone's entire life is completely wrapped up in something like that, discussion forums are rife with mentions of a phenomenon commonly called "burn out" - wherein ideological fervor shows a tendency to fade with time and experience. As the idealism is replaced by practical concerns, the ideologues in the rear, so cultivated by the prior rotation, condemn the more experienced actors as grifters and sellouts, and the movements go absolutely nowhere.

But that spark of ideological fervor has remained very interesting to me since I first found it a decade and a half ago. To look back it seems like my life was completely meaningless before I found that power. Even as my ideas have changed, and I've become more conscious of my own capacity for error, and attempted to be more level headed in my confrontations with society at large, I can feel that energy.

I try very hard to summon this on command, so I can bring it to others with inspiring words. It is not impossible to do, but is by no means reliable. When I sit down in front of this here keyboard and say to myself "It's time to write," there are times when I could easily be convinced I had been possessed by some other spirit. It just happens so effortlessly and when it's completed I want to read it over and over again myself, as if I had never seen it before and found it novel.

But when I sit down at this keyboard and I cannot find that spark, I feel almost like I want to die.

That's a pretty dramatic example of something we all deal with at some point or another. Most of us will confront it a seemingly infinite number of times. You have something you need to do in order to accomplish your goals, you feel like you lack what is needed to do it, and you want to give up.

Giving up seems like the easiest of your available options. At first glance, given a binary choice between effort and non effort, it seems axiomatic that non effort requires the least of you. It is only by anticipating future events that you might conclude effort today is easier than suffering tomorrow that could have been avoided thereby. If you don't do the difficult thing now, you will be less equipped to deal with greater challenges later, and it will require more energy from you to rise to those challenges. You will have less energy to do so at that time, because you did not make the investment earlier, and thus your likelihood of success is reduced. 

Failure, though a valuable learning experience, can become a downward spiral because of this. Trying entails investment. You have a limited amount of energy to invest. Invest it poorly, and you will need a bigger payoff from future investments. This can lead to risk taking and even more catastrophic failure. 

There's a Bible passage that touches on this. Matther 25:29 reads, per the King James version;

For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.

You see this all the time. The modern cliche is "the rich get richer, the poor get poorer" and this is often thrown about as a condemnation of corruption or capitalism or modernity, but it is a recognition of our natural state. Success begets success, and absent intelligent direction, failure begets failure. 

The element I wish to get at here, though there are many we could pursue, is the effect this has on one's drive. Your motivation to get things done.When I have that spark, whether it is from ideological fervor or some other element, I feel unstoppable, and my confidence is peaked. I am unfazed by obstacles when I am in that state, because they just make the game more interesting. 

When I do not have that spark, obstacles are discouraging. Setbacks are devastating, and they weigh on me emotionally. That voice telling me to give up goes from a squeak to a roar and becomes very difficult to tune out. 

That voice is not only an emotional burden but a cognitive one. I think about that instead of the thing I need to think about. The most important thing is to shut that guy up and concentrate on the task at hand. 

This is a large part of why you see me attacking people for complaining about things. Whether it is their love life, their financial success, or their political fortunes, complaining is literally a thing of negative value. That is you repeating the words of the guy you need to be silencing. It is the absolute worst thing that you can do, to make that voice, your own. 

SurrealPolitiks airs live every Monday at 9:30pm US Eastern, and takes your calls at 217-688-1433