Really, Tommy?

Tommy Angelo was at this thought-provoking best with his recent blog post “Old Man Goals“, about mellowing out with age:

I only have one objective now when I drive, and that’s to not run into anything. If I decide to slow down or stop when I don’t really need to, that’s always the reason why. (What makes this possible is that I no longer think of time spent waiting for a light to change as being less valuable or less important than time spent with a loved one or playing poker or whatever. Another oldness trait perhaps?)

It’s typical Tommy to express such a deep and complex concept in such clear and simple terms. In the interest of understanding it better, I want to push back on it a bit.

For one thing, I definitely don’t think this is a natural result of aging. I know plenty of cranky and impatient old people, many of whom seem to have gotten worse with age.

More to the point, I think I get what he’s saying in principle, but in practice it’s hard for me to accept such deep ambivalence. Is Tommy really indifferent between sitting in traffic or catching up with an old friend? If so why get in the car at all? Why not sit at home and watch TV all day? Or just stare at the wall? Taking it to the extreme, is time spent with a loved one any more valuable or desirable to the ideally tranquil mind than time spent having one’s fingernails pulled out with pliers?

I’m guessing there’s some sort of pain principle involved here. It’s pretty hard not to experience pain when being tortured, though perhaps the greatest Zen masters could achieve that. Plenty of people experience pain when stuck in traffic, too, but I think what Tommy’s saying is that that’s self-inflicted pain that you can choose or train yourself not to experience.

This seems like an extension of the principle of non-judgment that we discussed here recently in a slightly different context. I see the desirability of it, but sometimes it also seems to resemble nihilism. I’m sure there’s something I’m missing, as that’s usually the way it goes. Anyone care to enlighten me?

25 thoughts on “Really, Tommy?”

  1. I don’t get it either. If the time you’re waiting at the traffic light is as valuable as the time you spend with your girlfriend, there’s no point in spending time with your girlfriend anyway. As you pointed out, there would be no point in doing anything, because everything has the same value. And if that’s the case, how can you enjoy anything?

    I think it’s very important to not get annoyed because you have to wait for the light to change (and other similar stuff). But I don’t think you have to value the time you spend waiting at the traffic light the same as the time when you’re doing something you really like to achieve that. Just because there are other things I’d rather do, doesn’t automatically mean that I’m getting irritated whenever I can’t do these. I usually don’t get angry at a traffic light because I know that they are a service to the public and I’m happy to oblige with the traffic rules. That doesn’t mean that I value the time I spend waiting as much as the time that I spend with friends.

    I’d like to take it one step further. The fact that I’ll have to spend some time waiting at traffic lights, makes the time that I spend with friends much more valuable.

  2. Woah, let’s back it up. He said he no longer *thinks* of that time as less valuable, not that he actually believes it. More accurately he probably no longer torments himself in the car with those unproductive thoughts.

    I think you’re both seriously over analyzing his observation.

  3. Looks like nihilism to me, and I think Tommy would be the first to admit that. He’s publicly advocated for a kind of nihilism/subjectivism about moral properties. Quinn: I’ve read and listened to just about everything of Tommy’s I can find, and I’m pretty sure he believes the claim.

    I love Tommy’s writing but reject his metaphysics. I have to hand it to him, though: he avoids the sorts of basic inconsistencies that most ethical nihilists fall into…he’s quite careful to (at least usually) say, e.g., that X causes suffering and not that X is bad. Me, I’ll take the extra time with friends or my wife or a poker game any day.

  5. My take is that Tommy is saying that you do not in fact gain any time by getting from point A to point B faster. There is only so much time alloted to each of us, so the situation of maximal value is that you make the most of each moment. Now given that one is driving a car (and one assumes here that there is a motive for doing so, not that it is being done for its own sake), being mindful in the moment means driving safely. First, because prioritizing speed over safety runs the risk of drastically shortening the time alloted to us; and second, because the potential harm one might cause to other drivers and to oneself weighs more than the benefit of getting to your destination faster (and as we said, the supposed benefit of gaining time in this way is illusory). This cannot be nihilism because there is a clear value dictating this position: avoiding an accident. The point here is not to compare the value of different activities, but to suggest that whatever we happen to be doing, we ought to do it well and with mindfulness. For it may be the case that we do not gain any time by arriving at our destination faster, but we do “lose” time when it it is lived carelessly.

  6. After reading Tommy’s post, I focused on the later sections, where he equates oldness with less risk taking. I basically came to Michael’s observation above. Tommy now realized life is a journey. He’ll treat each moment as a valuable opportunity.

    But I am not familiar with Tommy’s work. As Andrew and others point out, Tommy is a deliberate writer. If true, then I second Quinn’s observation. The young Tommy would lament each minute stuck at a traffic light as a lost opportunity with a loved one or to at the tables. The current Tommy no longer tortures himself that way. He was likely not making a value comparison between those activities.

    Of course, I’m an engineer, I don’t even understand what nihilism means, and Wikipedia is down in protest today! Maybe I’m just old.

    Russ

  7. I find the idea of not getting upset at traffic to be consistent with the concept of tiltlessness. You’ll still tilt, but the less you do the better. Same with being angry at things over which we have no control and have only fleeting importance on our lives. We’ll still be angry with them from time to time, but the less we are the happier (and likely more productive) we will be.

    Taken in the context of the entire article (and Angelo’s work overall) I feel this is more apparent. Michael M above got it right imho.

  8. I’d really like to push back on Tommy’s comma in the first sentence. It is a closer spot than some grammaticians would admit but even in popular writing such as this I think the cons are always going to outweight the pros and for the discerning eye it is quite the eyesore. Maybe its just because having read him a lot lately it seems like a pretty consistent leak of his. If only there was a way to exploit it.

    What was the question?

    Oh yeah well I think the age-related comment you make is right. One of your sentences could be taken as a statement that nihilism is to be avoided in all cases. I would suggest its the best and most productive stance in certain spots, maybe more than one would like but definitely not many, and that letting those seep in doesn’t require you to turn cheek to a horse being whipped or to later have sexual relations with that horse. Anyways I think Quinn got it right and with brevity. I would also say that if you are in Tommy’s line of work, where thinking can be done literally anywhere, then you can always turn a traffic jam into productive time. At least, this is what I do at life’s red lights. The trick is making sure you see when they turn green.

    • Interesting point but I don’t think Tommy would endorse it. What you describe is pretty much the opposite of mindfulness. I think he wants to say that he doesn’t have a preference for thinking over waiting for a light to change, so he doesn’t feel the need to turn the latter into an opportunity to do the former.

      • Well I guess I am with your OP in general then, or at least in premise. Some things are better than others, actually, and I for one, am not afraid to make value judgments about the world, however fallible they might be. And I am not going to invest too much effort in feeling the same about everything as opposed to not making the best use of my time.

        Feeling different about spending time with people you love and spending time waiting at a traffic light is not a problem to be solved. I don’t know what would lead anyone to think it is, unless they have a shitty family and commute way more than they should.

  9. This isn’t what Tommy’s trying to say, but dealing with sitting at a red light did remind me a bit of David Foster Wallace’s wonderful commencement adress “This is Water.” In it Wallace talks about how we have a choice about how we view things and situations and what we place value on. It’s easy to simply operate on the default setting that we are the center of the universe and that our thoughts and feelings and concerns are so much more essential or important than anyone else’s. Wallace describes how this perspective applies to dealing with monotonous activities like waiting in line at the grocery store or sitting in traffic. I may be frustrated that I am stuck at a red light, but there are probably other drivers who are in a bigger hurry and so it’s for the best that some of them get the green light instead of me. Many of the situations in life that are the most tedious and frustrating and seemingly unfair are only so because we choose to view them this way. As Wallace says, “the trick is keeping the whole truth up front in daily consciousness.”

    • Nice connection. For all my love of DFW, I’ve never actually read “This is Water”. It’s on the list, but Nate (commenter above) just gave me Oblivion so I guess that’s next.

  10. I will en-light you Andrew.
    Tommy Angelo personal development seems to be more refined in terms of depersonification,ego,the concept of I.
    His post indicates he still struggle with the perception of time.
    In his books he see the importance of this concept a lot.His most popular conclusion about time: Time == Tilt.
    The perception of time is very strongly interrelates with concept of I.
    You Andrew Brokos derive your identity from your poker knowledge.
    Universities are typical place where you find people like you -The people who derived their identity from their knowledge.
    Some people derived their identity from their appearance.
    Both cute chicks and poker intellectuals will have problem to grasp the idea.
    Last week I derived the definition of Ego from your post.
    I defined ego as very busy entity.The entity which is preoccupied(obsessed) with questions and finding the confirmation to his(ego) answers.
    This “intellectual” activity takes priority focus and energy from your limited resources.
    The number one question is: Am I better than he is?
    The number two question is time related: What’s NEXT Ego Fish?

    • There is no pain,no effort.
      What happens when you stop involuntary asking yourself question what’s next ?
      Literally you will expierience that waiting at traffic light is the same quality time you spend with your friends.

        • I do not try to by cryptic. There is some huge difference between you and me.
          You identify with your mind.I observe my mind and I see fu.. transient sinusoide of moods.
          I am happy now.But I am broken moment later. But I do not take my mind seriously.I am able to choose when to fuse with my emotions.
          You Andrew do not have much choice.Because you identify with your mind.Andrew Who are you?
          The same story with Tommy I see high level of depersonification in his logic and some problems too.

          “There is nothing of yours in this, except the little point of ‘I am’, which is the bridge between the watcher and his dream.”

  11. I just chose right now to read more about your vision of poker and reading some articles that seem interesting.

    I think in Tommy Angelo’s post there is also some vision about choice.
    Once one chooses to drive, the time spent doesn’t matter. The choice has been made and so, every part of us must profit from the situation. Even if you are stuck in the traffic and that doesn’t fit your plans, what can you do ? You have no other mean than accept the situation or turning crazy.

    Yesterday, I was having a supper with a girl I knew a bit and after getting really closer to each other on that evening I kissed her. She seemed fine with it but finally wasn’t too sure and got herself out of it.

    I had one of the most awkward time going on because that choice of kissing her spontaneously turned out to an awkward moment of rejection and while living it, instead of rushing into excuses or justification I chose to open myself widely to the whole awkwardness.

    I lived the awkwardness from head to toe and tried my best at feeling every part of my face getting red and hot. I made jokes about it and it turned out to be a really fun experience and the person I lived this situation with gladly laughed with me until we could not stop laughing.

    As a matter of fact, I made a choice then it was no longer one and I had to accept the new situation and then for that, I made the choice of living it to the fullest.

    Your examples of torture are a bit extreme but I do think that every situation is a teaching and if a Zen master chose to be tortured he would try to live it to the fullest.

    What if you didn’t choose ? Then you just accept it because it’s right here and right there, you can’t make it unhappen. So turn it into a choice !

    I hope it makes sense, but that’s my vision.

    • That’s really well-said, Luis, thanks! Great example and great attitude to have, or to strive for anyway.

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