Balance
In my last post I highlighted the unintended effects of elevating “wellness” above mission. The implication is that placing the mission first is critical to optimize the performance of an organization and its constituent individuals. One thing I didn’t cover is the other side of this coin. What happens if myopic focus on mission accomplishment begins to degrade performance? While I argue that it is necessary to beware Sims’ Paradox, it is equally important to consider the truth that leads many with good intentions to prioritize an abstruse wellness over mission. This truth is that sacrificing certain domains of health and fitness to accomplish the mission in the short run has the potential to end in disaster. It might sound trite, but it is important to maintain balance. Good stewards of organizations keep in mind the long term impact that their actions will have. Trying to get results on certain metrics today might destroy the ability to get those same results tomorrow. Both leaders in the military and private sector have a perverse incentive to produce results while in command or in a leadership position, especially when their time in those positions in limited. Also, the larger the organization, the more tempting it is to direct efforts to one particular goal which will always come at the expense of other things. Power is seductive like that. For a great book illustrating the contrast between the seen and unseen results of dirigism check out Henry Hazlitt’s classic Economics in One Lesson. There are trade offs involved in all decisions, and putting the mission first is no exception. I do think large organizations should put the mission first, but it is always important to consider the manner in which this is done, as determining the optimal balance here is the perpetual challenge often separating success from failure.
Choosing a Variable
I’ve been taking a break from reading, writing, and working (but not incline treadmill walking) this past week by playing an old turn based strategy game lately called XCOM 2.1 Like many strategy games, you’re consistently required to optimize for different variables to accomplish the mission, in this case, overthrowing an alien regime that instituted itself on Earth after a successful invasion by preventing them from completing a secret project that will doom all mankind. Such variables include contacts with resistance networks, supplies, intelligence, facilities, weapons, armor, personnel, and power to name a few. To add further complexity many of these variables have bidirectional relationships with others which tends to make certain overall strategies more successful than others. At any moment based on the random generation of events, priorities may need to shift and trade offs are built into every decision. Speculations and risks taken to optimize one variable to mitigate a bottleneck on the other have the potential to backfire. There is no one variable that you can optimize for and be successful. As complex as this may seem, none of these variables have the input of real human beings, and as such, are not nearly as complex as the situations we encounter in real life. That said, for human beings there is a single variable that you can probably get away with optimizing for: Spiritual Profit. This isn’t to imply that doing so is simple, it is quite the opposite.
Optimizing for Spiritual Profit
First off, what the heck is spiritual profit? Honestly I hadn’t ever considered it as a variable to target until Mathew Crawford said it in response to Harrison Koehli’s excellent article on Chris Langan’s “Two Singularities” concept.
Once you’re “aligned” in the Pauline sense, every action you take that can be said to be in alignment necessarily results in spiritual profit. The more challenging the circumstances, the more the spiritual profit. There are countless frameworks that can be used to describe this phenomenon, but one example of something I haven’t talked that fits very well is the Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) model from psychology. It describes how making such decisions allows you to be “unhooked” vs. “hooked” on a path that diverges from your deeply held values. To be unhooked is very similar if not the same as to be spiritually aligned. I take convergence upon concepts like this to be evidence that there is some important truth. What else could drive such convergence? Langan goes deep with his Cognitive Theoretic Model of the Universe (CTMU) outlining how we need a metareligion to achieve the human singularity and thereby avoid the tech singularity that seems to be the preferred target of the current ruling class. Going that deep, it is easy to get lost. I propose the simple idea of targeting spiritual profit. Unfortunately there is a lot that goes into determining what your values are and how they relate to your beliefs about the world. I should also note that values and beliefs can change, sometimes rapidly, and that this adds further complexity. Optimizing for spiritual profit is speculative, just like optimizing for monetary profit.2 Success in achieving a high degree of spiritual profitability over time will vary as innate ability and knowledge varies. That is fine, the point is that optimizing for spiritual profit might be something that we can all agree is worth pursuing.
Strategy
If all that isn’t abstract enough for you, I’ll continue on to talk a little bit about long term strategy for spiritual profit. The first thing to consider is that you are trying to optimize for this variable for your entire lifespan (and perhaps beyond). This means that long term investments into your own physical and mental health in terms of time, attention, and effort might not pay off for awhile. Also, looking far into the future and doing your best to understand complex sociopolitical issues might be necessary. Dedicating yourself to developing a set of skills that is predominantly valuable to evil people trying to do evil things sets you up to have to make very difficult decisions down the road. To put that less dramatically, there are credentialing pathways that are substantially burdensome in terms of time and money (massive opportunity cost). At the end of many of these paths are credentialing bodies that have developed the power and authority to force people to do things to maintain those credentials that go against their better judgement. If you look ahead you can avoid ending up in positions that require great sacrifice in other domains to maintain spiritual profitability. If you do find yourself in such a position making decisions that don’t align with your spiritual beliefs, you can also take actions to set yourself up down the road and restore your spiritual profitability. You can focus on all the health behaviors that you know are important, but haven’t gotten sorted for whatever reason. Get your sleep schedule established. Exercise and eat in a way that enhances your health. Keep your eyes on the horizon for opportunities that might allow greater spiritual profit down the road. Try to take time to enjoy life, friends, family, hobbies, nature etc. Everyone has things that are intrinsically enjoyable. Is there a way that you can integrate these things with positive health behaviors? If you can, you’ll probably be much better situated to take advantage of opportunities for spiritual profit.
In the game aliens have taken over Earth and propagandize the populace to believe that they’re only here to help and any resistance is therefore evil and unwarranted. One of the things that they offer is gene therapy to credulous humans looking for cures to disease. Feels kind of appropriate for the times…
I think this is what all businesses are supposed to do, and in a free market this works great. Unfortunately as central governments become powerful enough to make and break businesses, the balance can shift such that profitability is easier to achieve by using the power of government than by providing customers with goods or services at prices that induce their patronage.
Excellent piece Grant. Spiritual food for thought.
I have never heard it put that way - spiritual profit. But I suppose that would help modern people to think about it.