“Ivan and Abdul” by Bernard Suits – Part I

What would you do if you were a retired general? At first, two generals in this situation are happy to reminisce. But soon they become bored, and start to wonder about what could be the ultimate game and competition between the two of them. The following is Bernard Suits’ writing from one of my ten favorite books of all time, and ellipses indicate where I have removed longer sections… enjoy!

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Ivan and Abdul … had been officers of general rank before each was retired and ‘elevated’ to the post of ambassador in the backwater capital of Rien-à-faire.

Medieval War Both had established brilliant military careers in the service of homelands which had frequently been at war with one another…. So the two warriors were overjoyed at the opportunity their appointments afforded them for going over all of their old campaigns together. But after a few month, when they had reviewed all the victories and defeats from every possible angle…, they grew weary of their reminiscences and sought other diversions.

Sport seemed an obvious pastime for a couple of shelved warriors to take up, since sport seemed to them to be a kind of substitute, or polite, kind of warfare. It soon became evident to them, however, that sports were like warfare only in the most superficial respects. Specifically, they found that sports were hedged round with the most outrageously arbitrary restrictions.

In golf, for example, you were expected to use a golf club to get your ball out of a sand trap even when your opponent could not see what you were doing. And in tennis, you were expected to call a ball foul or fair honestly even when your opponent was not in a position to check your call. Chess was no better, since surreptitiously to alter the location of pieces on the board — obviously an effective tactic — was ruled out. Golf-Tennis

But since they could find nothing better to do to occupy their time, they continued to play these games, although — as the diplomatic colony to its delight soon became aware — with a difference. Whenever the rules could be broken without detection or retribution, they were broken. …

Things reached their fated conclusion in a climactic chess match. … The first game proceeded normally for six moves. Then Ivan made the move which was the beginning of the end. Utterly ignoring the rules governing movement of the pieces, he illegally moved his queen to a square which put Abdul in check. The fascinated audience waited breathlessly for Abdul’s response to this outrage. It was not slow in coming. He simply removed Ivan’s queen from the board and put it in his pocket. Ivan in turn was quick to respond. In a trice he had nimbly rearranged the pieces on the board so that Abdul’s king was in checkmate, crying, ‘I’ve won!’

charlemagne chess

‘Wrong, my friend,’ screamed Abdul, and gathering up all of the pieces except his king, he flung them to the floor.
‘Abdul, you can’t do that,’ said Ivan in outraged tones. ‘I won the game the moment you were in checkmate.’
‘So you say,’ responded Abdul, ‘but you were obviously mistaken, for there stands my king, quite free to move.’

Ivan had not, of course, expected such a transparent tactic to succeed with the wily Abdul. It had merely been a diversionary move so that he could, while his opponent was momentarily distracted, secure Abdul’s king to the board with the quick-drying glue he had all along held ready in his hand beneath the table. Then, of course, before you could say ‘scimitar,’ Abdul snatched a bottle of solvent from his tunic and freed his king. Ivan’s hand immediately shot out towards the king, but Abdul grabbed his wrist in time to forestall the assault. For a full minute they were locked in a frozen tableau of force and counterforce (evoking spirited applause form the audience), before they broke apart, leapt from their chair and began to circle each other warily. …

They fought all that night
Neath the pale yellow light,
And the din it was heard from afar.
Huge multitudes came,
So great was the fame
Of Abdul and Ivan Skavar.

The legend then incorrectly goes on to recount the game as ending in a tie with mutual destruction of Abdul and Ivan, followed by some sentimental reference to a tomb rising up where the blue Danube flows….

In fact, the two friends met the following afternoon at their favourite cafe. Said Ivan, ‘My friend, that was the best chess game I’ve ever played.’
‘Oh, unquestionably,’ replied Abdul.
They drank their aperitifs in companionable silence. Then Ivan spoke again.
‘Still, there is something that bothers me.’
‘Indeed,’ said Abdul, ‘Perhaps, you know, the same thing is bothering me.’
‘I shouldn’t be surprised. If you are thinking what I am thinking you will have realized that it will be impossible for us to ever play chess again.’
‘Just so. The instant of setting out the pieces for a game would be the signal for us to start a battle whose weapons had nothing whatever to do with chess, since the only moves either of us will accept are moves that really coerce, either by force or by deceit. For, since we will not abide by the rules of the game, the winner can be only he who has gained final mastery of the situation. And, of course, it’s not only that we can no longer play chess. For the same reason, we can no longer play any game, for games require that we impose artificial restraints upon ourselves in seeking victory, and we refuse to do that.’
‘Exactly,’ said Ivan. …

‘…But an awful lot of people do seem to play chess and golf, you know, without getting into a brawl.’
‘Civilians, old boy, civilians.’
‘Still, Ivan, look at all we’re missing. I sometimes wish I could play by the rules.’
‘Wishes don’t cost anything, Abdul. The question is, can you play by the rules?’
‘I suppose not.’
‘Of course not. We are what we are.’
‘Then it looks as though we’ll have to go back to reliving our past glories for the rest of our days. Maybe it’s just time to pack it in, Ivan, as a noble Roman would have done.’
‘I don’t think it has quite to come to that, my friend.’
‘You have an idea, Ivan, I can tell.’
‘A germ, Abdul, a germ. I’m going to sleep on it, however. Tomorrow at the same time?’
‘Very well. Till tomorrow.’

Next day Abdul found his friend already seated at their table at the cafe smiling broadly at the tumbler of vodka before him.
‘Tell me your idea at once, Ivan,” said Abdul, seating himself at the table.
‘At once, my friend, at once. I have thought about it all night and most of the day, and I am satisfied that the logic is absolutely compelling. There is one, and only one, game left for us to play.’
‘What game, Ivan? What logic?’
‘A fight to the finish, my friend.’
‘What! Ivan, you must be mad!’
Continue reading ““Ivan and Abdul” by Bernard Suits – Part I”

Wednesday

Hi guys, haven’t yet put up posts yet this week. Will post some things later this week! Thanks for checking in! Best, and good coolish weather of the fall to you – if you’re in the US.
Senia

ps And I’m looking forward to commenting on the cool comments that you guys have posted recently! Also, later this week. :)

UPDATE 9-7-06: Ok, ok, ok, ok, ok! I agree! It was wrong to not write this week. As Evelyn said about Fred writing every day!

Ok, I agree! I planned to do this when I first started out two months ago. And I want to keep doing this: daily posts Mon-Fri! Ok, I’m back on the wagon… just needed a little push after missing Mon-Wed this week (mon was a holiday though… :) ).

It’s more fun that way – new thoughts, new ideas, new voices in your head. Live. Real. As they are. Thanks, Evelyn and Fred.

Psychology of Success (in progress)

This is a post in progress, just to let you know that there are some findings about psychology and success.

Here, Phil Zimbardo writes this great paper when he is APA President in 2004: “Does Psychology Make a Significant Difference in Our Lives?” (this is also a very interesting history of psychology). Also, here is the site that was born from this paper: www.psychologymatters.org, which illustrates in which fields psychology has made some significant inroads and found results that people can and do implement (I like the post here on multitasking).

And here is a nice 2002 Forbes article on the “Psychology of Success”.

Comfortable, a definition

I was talking with a friend about how with some people you just seem to feel comfortable. Around your good friends, around people with whom you can throw about ideas. What is it, this feeling of comfortable? If you ask, “what does it mean when you’re comfortable around someone?”, you’ll hear things like “It’s like being yourself,” “It’s like not thinking,” “It’s relaxing,” “It’s not stressful.”

Have you ever been in a work situation in which you felt that you were both the person who was in the meeting, answering the questions, giving the presentation – and at the same time that you were also the person observing all this from the side, seeing people’s reactions, sensing the vibe in the room? Do you know that feeling in which you’re both doing something and observing yourself doing it? It’s almost as if there were two of you. It seems to take two different brain processes to be doing something and to be on the lookout for how it’s going. And research shows that having both processes run at once uses a lot of your psychological resources.

Research shows that emotional-cognitive processing expends a lot of resources in a person. What do I mean by that? If the emotional signals that a person is getting are not in line with the cognitive signals, then it takes a lot of the person’s resources to balance the two inputs. It’s uncanny that it takes that many resources to figuratively both tap your logical head and rub your emotional stomach. But at the same time, we shouldn’t be surprised: it’s that emotional-cognitive unbalancing that is often the cause of miniature stressors that can turn into major stressors.

(In fact, if you think about babies and toddlers, in toddlers, you visibly see new tricks all the time – a new word, or a new physical ability whereas with babies of less than a year old, you’ll see fewer physical new tricks. But just think of all the different types of balancing that are going on inside their heads. Think of how a baby (and even a toddler for that matter) needs to balance the emotional and physical and thinking and seeing and other processes especially when it’s not yet clear to babies what is in balance and what is out of balance.)

So, in short, being comfortable is not needing to watch what you do while you’re doing it. Being comfortable is not playing both roles at once – the actor and the observer. (Likely similarly to not writing and editing at the same time – first writing to get the content out, and then perhaps later editing to make it pleasant to read). For example, think of how you feel if you’re practicing delivering a presentation in front of a mirror: you are at that point focusing on the delivery and not the content. Now think of yourself talking within a group of people or talking to one other person. Comfortable is when you can focus more on what you’re saying than on the possible reactions of that group or of that person.

comfortable

Comfortable is always knowing that you’ll have a mulligan with this friend or with this group.

COMFORTABLE, a definition
Take-away: Comfortable is when you can focus more on what you’re saying than on how you’re saying it.

“Human Beings, not Human Doings”

This is an expression that my friend Margaret really likes to use, “We are human beings, not human doings.”

RECONCILING BEING AND DOING
But maybe sometimes we are human doings. There’s a wonderful brief blog entry by Jeanie Marshall about how people can act both in ways of achieving and reaching for their goals and in ways of allowing and taking in what’s around them without strain. Jeanie says, “At a very early age, most of us are taught to go after the things that we really want. We are often told that the willingness to fight is the indication that something is worthwhile. To fight, compete, and achieve are lifted up as important values. … If you have had such a cultural conditioning, it can come as a real shock to hear that what you need to do is “allow” or “be in the flow” or “relax.” These can seem like really soft or surreal ideas if you have proven yourself by doing things, by taking charge. … In my view, it is not such a paradox. Perhaps that is because I do not advocate replacing outward action with inward reflection; I am advocating a balance.”

To me, there’s something very soothing in the cadence of her words. Plus, what she says is a nice way to resolve the duality of the human beingness and the human doingness: you can have both. She continues, “Being, allowing, being in the flow, and opening are qualities that help you to remember and provide balance for doing whatever you do. Doers already know how to do; doers need to learn how to be, in order to recognize their wholeness. If every breath is only an out-breath, there is no in-breath to provide more air to sustain the next breaths.”

Martin Seligman, known as the father of Positive Psychology, says in his Authentic Happiness that one of the most powerful ways to increase happiness in the present is to savor more, to more fully enjoy the moments of life. Since so many lives are about action and activity, what are the ways that we can slow down and savor?

FOUR WAYS TO SAVOR
Fred Bryant has done research on savoring and writes that there are four different ways that people savor, that people enjoy the moment. And several of these may appeal to you greatly. (I learned about this theory of savoring from Karen Reivich, who heard Bryant present this four-types model in a talk). Everything in life is personal, including how you like to enjoy your downtime.

You can keep a brief log for the next two days to see when you are enjoying the moment, in which of these four ways are you really enjoying it? Are you …
* Basking: Receiving praise and congratulations
* Thanksgiving: Experiencing and expressing gratitude
* Marveling: Losing self in the wonder of the experience
* Luxuriating: Engaging one’s senses fully

Here’s a visual interpretation:

Bryant's four types of savoring

For example, enjoying the fresh salad during dinner is … luxuriating,
looking at the sunset can be … marveling or luxuriating, or even thanksgiving,
hearing someone compliment your cooking and saying “thank you” is … basking,
seeing a little child smile at you can be … thanksgiving.

Karen Reivich states that when you separate savoring out this way, you have a range of possibilities to choose from. It’s like deciding on a mild sage green for a paint color for the bedroom, as opposed to forest green or swamp green. You’re more in control of how you perceive savoring when you start to break savoring out into its components. And according to Diener and Myers, personal control is one of the four main components to happiness.

It’s like having a peacock’s tail of possibilities to choose from.

Sources:
Bryant, F. (1989). A Four-Factor Model of Perceived Control: Avoiding, Coping, Obtaining, and Savoring, Journal of Personality 57:4, 774-797.
Bryant, F. (2003). Savoring Beliefs Inventory (SBI): A scale for measuring beliefs about savoring, Journal of Mental Health, 12, 2, 175-196.
Myers, D. G., & Diener, E. (1995). Who is happy? Psychological Science, 6, 10-19. “In study after study, four inner traits mark happy people: self-esteem, a sense of personal control, optimism, and extraversion.”

My Biggest Change in View!

John: “Hi, how goes?” rhododendrons
Mary: “Good. The weather seems to be nice today.”
John: “Yes, it sure is a good day. Did you see the rhododendrons blooming along Salem Road?”
Mary: “Yes, they looked really nice, really fresh. … I think it might rain tomorrow.”
John: “Really, you think so?”
Mary: “I think I heard that on the radio.”

When I was a teenager, I distinctly remember thinking, “How boring. How boring! How BORING! How could people talk so much about the obvious!? Hello! I mean, yes, ok, the weather is nice, the flowers are blooming, yes, it may rain. Let’s get on with it. Let’s debate something. Let’s agree, let’s disagree, let’s find out why things are happening!” (Yes, I actually probably did think in terms of “Let’s debate something.”)

And now, I have COMPLETELY CHANGED MY MIND. Not even a little bit, not even a tiny bit, but a huge large, definitely, very large, very very large bit.

It has to do with living in the moment. What I once had thought was boring, I now think is so nice. So nice. Some of my favorite times are with friends – after we’ve caught up on this and that and this and that, and we’re just lying on the beach, in all our clothes, on the little washed-up shells, with the sun against our faces (probably commenting about how clear the sky is and how warm the sun feels). Or sitting on the couch in the evening with the music on and just saying how mellow the flutes sound. So simple. So good.

shells

Mixed Messages? Kill the Messenger!!

Here it is, simple and real:

When you say something good to someone, DO NOT put in anything bad.

That’s it. That simple. When you’re saying good things, keep them good! That’s all. How simple is that?

It frustrates me to no end to hear…
… in the office, “What you did was superb, wonderful, but I just wish you did it all the time.”
…as a couple, “You really matter so much to me, and what you did by coming to my graduation instead of to that conference really matters. I don’t even mind it so much that you’ve missed my last two chamber performances. Thank you.”
…to a friend, “That outfit looks really good on you. And much better than that thing you wore to the charity gala, remember that?”
…with children, “You make me really proud of you. Two A+’s in one week, and a great note from your math teacher! You really should just straighten up in your room a little more.”

There is no high! There is no benefit when you mix the message. What am I saying? That the messenger should be killed? Well, no, ok, I’m not going that far. I’m just pointing out that good combined with bad is semi-good/semi-bad. Here’s the math:
1) good + good + good = good (three pieces of great news or three compliments… together the result is good)
2) bad + bad + bad = bad (three insults…together make a large insult)
3) good + bad = bad (good and bad… together that’s bad)
4) good + good + good + good + good + good + good + bad = bad (n number of good things and one bad thing … together the result is somewhat bad)

Why do I feel so strongly about this? Because the brain remembers bad things more easily than it remembers good things. In the fourth example, the brain overweights the bad. That’s just how brains work. It has to do with being on the lookout for danger in the caveman era. If you don’t see the dangerous animal once, you’re gone. If you don’t always observe the butterflies in the sunshine, you’re still ok, you live. Continue reading “Mixed Messages? Kill the Messenger!!”