Ambition and Love
“We often go from love to ambition, but we never return from ambition to love.” de la Rochefoucauld
One of my problems is that I start to turn everything into a routine. I go from love to ambition and then I can’t come back. I take the passion that I had for something and I ossify it into a rigid, set activity that ultimately ends of defeating the logic that led me to undertake it in the first place. It’s been a while since I ran well–since I really, really liked it. It’s so much more about “did I hit my quota? did I get all the days in I said I would?” I sort of become enslaved to it instead of employing it to my benefit. To me, this is a perversion of sticking to your word and the demands you set for yourself. It really easy to get locked in–sort of the banal evil of mediocrity, of doing what you’re supposed to do instead of what you want to do. It’s looking at life as a series of check marks instead of continued expression of whatever principles you’ve decided on.
It might be confusing since I posted about writing down what you want and then sticking to it and ratcheting it up. And then making sure other people hold you accountable. But It can’t be about micromanaging yourself, it’s need is to think of results. Because without an understanding of the vision, you get too caught up in the present. The Exec turned me on to Mission Creep, which is very much the opposite of Commander’s Intent. It’s where you start with a clear goal and then as you approach it, slowly load details onto it until it collapses as an utter failure (like a bill through Congress). Because what if you wake up one day and you’re a little closer to becoming that thing you didn’t ever want to become? What if you can feel the system start to break and twist your logic, and the sand start to suck you in? The day someone calls you out on your own bullshit…
It kills me inside. In Hollywood you see a lot of dead people. They can’t feel anything; if they had any self-awareness they’d be doing this all day–screaming and grinding their teeth in loathing, rattling the “chains that bind us.” But they’re not stupid or bad people or really any different than you or I, they just made a choice. Cognitive Dissonance tells us that when we face two clashing facts–my job makes me miserable and it’s my hope and dreams that compounds it–it’s a lot easier to go numb than change jobs. It’s the temptation to add just a little more here and there until the creep ties your identity in so deep that you can never change. And all that makes you is a tool.
What is the difference between a tool and a douchebag? A douchebag is that person with a delusional sense of self-worth, a lack of self-awareness, tact–an idiot. They are clueless but assertive; an asshole without justification or value. A tool is all that, but at someone else’s bidding. Which makes it so, so much worse. The world is filled with douchebags, but Hollywood, I think, is mainly tools.
The unifying theme is this
Play the game but don’t believe in it–that part you owe yourself. Even if it lands you in a straight jacket or a padded cell. Play the game, but play it your own way-part of the time at least. Play the game, but raise the ante, my boy.” Invisible Man
It’s very hard to stop believing in the game. Especially after you lost a bunch of money playing in it. That is the horrible trap of Cognitive Dissonance: Why would I have wasted all this time for no reason? Might as well try to make the best of it. Me, I’m trying hard not to believe in it all, even though that’s what the whole system is designed to do. Because no one wants to wake up one day creeped into being a tool.
Where can I read more from “The Exec”?
I had a similar experience to this when I arrived to Washington D.C. I wanted to enter international politics and all the glory that comes with it; instead I found myself surrounded by the tools you describe above, all of whom came to D.C. with my dream in mind.
At first this disillusionment killed a lot of interest I had in the field, until I decided that I could still make it and survive if I maintained my clarity of mind. The question is… how do you realize when you’ve begun to change? How do you maintain that balance–moving towards the very heart of that system without letting it crush you? I havn’t been in D.C. long enough to find an answer.
As always, I love your blog Ryan, but this one hit me in a particular way, since I want to go into the film industry.
How do you suggest achieving in that world without getting burned out or going numb?
Obviously, simply playing the game won’t win. You’ve got to see through it and transcend it somehow. What is the best way to do that in Hollywood? What is the Hollywood game and how do you beat it or opt out while still being successful?
P.S.: I wrote a bunch here, mostly because this is something I have a lot of trouble figuring out myself and writing about it kind of helped me clarify my own thoughts. Also, I hope you don’t feel offended by my assumption of intimate knowledge of you; the “you”s could pretty much all be replaced by “I”s.
“I take the passion that I had for something and I ossify it into a rigid, set activity that ultimately ends of defeating the logic that led me to undertake it in the first place.”
I do this with so many things. At the moment the best that I’ve come up with is to every now and then actively not do the things that I think I ought to do. I figure the reason I want to stick to these things so rigidly is much the same reason some one with OCD feels they _have_ to count the ceiling tiles a dozen times before they can be effective in class; the desire for control and security. I figure part of being really alive inside is accepting all the things you feel and desire – not necessarily acting on them, but undermining the assumption that you have the ability to really control yourself absolutely. There is no guarantee if absolute security, and in order to be a real ‘alive’ person you have to find a way to accept this part of being human – you have to break your walls of control.
For instance, maybe part of not being dead inside is accepting your desire to not do the things that you think you ought not do in order to not be lazy or unmotivated, and doing them anyway. Like when you say you haven’t really run well in a while, it’s enslaved you – maybe don’t run for a few days, or even a few weeks. That doesn’t mean let the habit slip away into the void or become a sloth, it means observe yourself as you experience the walls crumble; watch what changes. Do you feel like your security has been undermined, that you are out of control? Do you miss the feeling you had while you ran? Do you want to start again, and if so, what would it be about? Hopefully you can begin to run again, but instead of it being motivated by fear of not doing what you said you would and filling your quota, but about living.
Another example. You don’t want to have a lack of self-awareness (be a douche) so you become constantly vigilant, always self-analyzing to ensure that you aren’t being what you don’t want to be. To do so you create rigid guidelines of what is “acceptable behavior,” (ossified passions) and you become enslaved by your own conception of the “conditions of self-awareness”; conditions, or guidelines to ensure non-doucheness. You may be secure in your non-doucheness, but all that has really been accomplished is that you’ve deluded yourself into believing in control and security as being the goal. With running you stopped and saw what the value of running was for you. Do the same with non-doucheness; do something that you might not do otherwise – something only a ‘douche’ would do, something that might reflect a lack of “self-awareness”.
If you don’t want to see your frameworks ossify, you’ve got to gain perspective by allowing them to bend early and often, maybe even break if they’re not in the service of you being ‘alive’.
I really liked this whole post, especially these two parts:
“Because what if you wake up one day and you’re a little closer to becoming that thing you didn’t ever want to become? What if you can feel the system start to break and twist your logic, and the sand start to suck you in?”
“Me, I’m trying hard not to believe in it all, even though that’s what the whole system is designed to do. Because no one wants to wake up one day creeped into being a tool.”
Which in context and combination, reminded me of this:
Do not perish unnoticed. – Our greatness and efficiency crumbles away not _all at once_ but continually; the little plants which grow up in and around everything and know how to cling everywhere, it is these which ruin that which is great in us – the everyday, hourly pitiableness of our environment which we constantly overlook, the thousand tendrils of this or that little, fainthearted sensation which grows out of our neighborhood, out of our job, our social life, out of the way we divide up the day. If we neglect to notice this little weed, we shall ourselves perish of it unnoticed! – And if you absolutely must perish, do so _all at once_ and suddenly: then perhaps there may remain of you some _sublime ruin_! And not, as there is now some reason to fear, a molehill! And grass and weeds upon it, little victors, modest as ever and too pitiable even to celebrate their triumph!
It’s really hard to play the game and not believe in it. Your participation is a tacit acceptance of its rules. And whether you admit it or not, whether it happens sooner or later, it will become a part of you.
“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.” -Kurt Vonnegut
Good piece.
On a side note, the first word that popped up into my mind during your part about love and ambition was “dedication”. No matter what, you can pull through.
That, however, would support your stance on cognitive dissonance, and I like to believe that mankind is stronger than that.
I like to believe that everyone has it in him/herself to get out of that confort-zone. But what would be strong enough an impuls to force such a change….?
Your inner intent may be valid here but your language and labeling is a little misguided. It’s dangerous precedent to label an entire system and claim that they are broken or dead.
Nick,
Think about it: Every time I have written about Hollywood, you jumped up to comment that “No! What you’re saying doesn’t represent everyone. That’s not fair.” No one else does this, only you. You worked in Hollywood for Christ’s sake. That is the definition of cognitive dissonance. Step back for a second and understand that I’m not talking about everyone, and your rapid defensive an entity you no longer work for is laughable.
Search my post again, I didn’t label a system anything, anywhere. You did. Now why is that?
I don’t think cognitive dissonance is the accurate label for what you are talking about in your last paragraph. It seems like what you are really referring to is a sunk cost effect, where people look back at how much money/time/energy/thought they have put into something and would rather continue doing that so as not to waste what has already been expended than to make a change. I think this compunds with the concept of cognitive dissonance you discuss a few paragraphs up where people know they hate their jobs but look at all they have already expended on it plus their past thoughts that this was their dream job and this keeps them from trying something new.