Nothingness

Bertrums reference to ˜˜nothingness during our dinnertime telephone dialogue was no accident . I think he was pointing to a universal fear of what I have heard referred to as insubstantiality or emptiness. The idea is that there is nothing underneath the sense of self. Or, more precisely, the meta-level of consciousness has placed a singular image of the self, based on an array of inputs, on top of nothing.

The phenomenon can be likened to how a video projector projects a film at a movie theater. The object-level represents inputs to the projector: the film entering the machine. It contains all of the information available to render the picture. The meta-level is the series of lenses, mirrors, and lights that send the image into the theater. It takes the object-level data and creates a ˜˜thing out of it. Its not a real thing, its just an image being projected on a screen. That image is the self. It is being projected onto the screen. It looks real. It tempts us, as any good movie does, to get lost in its projected reality.

But if the lightbulb inside the projector blows, then the whole thing stops. There is nothing on the screen. Its blank. The audiences illusion of participating in the life being told on the screen is completely shattered. The machine is still running, but there is no ˜˜self.

I would suggest that people have an active projector running in their heads. They are in the audience, getting lost in the show. They are only vaguely aware that they are participating in an illusion. In fact, some people actually judge the show by how much of a distraction it created in their lives. They like to get lost in the program. A blank screen is not what they came for. They want the full image. The bigger the screen, the better. The big, bright picture is what its all about. Darkness is bad.

We are very much afraid of a dark, blank screen. But without the projector doing its job, thats whats there. We fill that screen, with the best action, comedy , and drama programs that we can find. We fill the screen with meaning.

Sometimes when I go to an early matinee at a cinema complex with many screens I find an unoccupied, dark theater and go sit inside so that I can see the blank screen and embrace the nothingness for a few moments. I find it invigorating to give physicality to the metaphor. Shutting off the meta-level meaning maker for a little while can indeed be refreshing. The object-level can be very satisfying in itself. Meta-level meaning can be such a heavy thing.

The meta-level compensates to some extent for the insubstantiality of consciousness by producing meaning. We can get hope from meaning. It picks us up when we are down. At any given moment, we have the security of whatever is on our mind (unless its a negative thing on our mind). When we extend our thoughts into the future, insecurity can hit. Thats when we need something to prop us up.

Some people use religion for that purpose. They have faith in God, and they use the various tenets of their religion to deal with things that would otherwise scare the pants off them. For example, people respond to expressions of fear that start with the words, ˜˜But what about . . . with the words, ˜˜Well have to trust God to handle that. I sometimes think that what that really communicates is the response, ˜˜I dont have the faintest idea, but if we allow ourselves to run with the possibility you are asking about, we havent got a hope.

Self-esteem is a kind of meaning we experience. It means that we fully believe ourselves able and worthy. With high self-esteem, we have hope. With low self-esteem, we lack hope. We seek it from other sources.

Other meta-level creations get us through periods of hopelessness. The love we have for a partner, or for humanity, can be a source of inspiration to get us through tough times. In this case, we are leaning on those feelings to fuel our motivation.

In business, we have mission and vision statements to keep our spirit from falling through the cracks. In our personal lives, we have our dreams and our routines.

Goals give us a sense of hope. They give us a feeling that there is somewhere to aim for. And they work! They inspire . They provide a sense that things are under control. With goals and just a little progress toward them, there is no need to despair.

Some people seem like hope-producing machines. I know a man who is involved in multiple business ventures. All of them get him pumped up because they have not yet matured, so there is still hope that they will. Multiple, unfinished ventures are like lottery tickets whose winning numbers have not yet been chosen . One still feels the excitement of the possibility of winning.

But sometimes, we lose hope. Unless there is something to prop us up, there may well be a natural tendency for the meta-level dream machine to break down. In the view of Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, professor and former chairman of the psychology department at the University of Chicago, consciousness, over time, tends to break down toward a state of disorder . The suggestion is that without certain conditions being met, hope, mood, and orderliness of thought will disintegrate.

It could be argued that one of the purposes of leadership is to compensate for the natural human tendency of people to get negative. Leaders offer us optimism , direction, mission, vision, and inspiration. Without their propping us up, our attitudes could spiral down to negativity and disorder.

Of course, there is nothing inherently wrong with keeping on track by relying on our leaders, our spirituality, our goals, and our self-produced belief that we are able and worthy. Its the way we operate . But now, when the reliance on these sources is not enough, or when there is a desire to get to the bottom of problems with the behaviors that define the six types explained in this book, we can add to the list the powerful idea discussed in this chapter: embracing our insubstantiality.