Easily Learned, Easily Defeated
But you’re still here, undefeated
Bury them with jargon!
That was the mantra when I was pursuing my intercalated course, Human Anatomy.
We had a daunting task. One was supposed to come up with a literature review, a short-term paper, and a dissertation. Three projects in eight months.
By the time you get to the final stretch, the kind of advice you would get from the alumni of the program is:
Bury them in jargon!
It is helpful up to a point.
Jargon makes the panel and the audience confused. Because they don’t know what your project is all about and due to the constraints of time — we had 7 minutes to present — they won’t ask as many questions as they otherwise would.
In the same audience, if you’re unlucky, you might have someone who can cut through all the facade. They would then ask a penetrating question that could paralyze you because you thought you had bullet-proof armor — jargon.
Now you look stupid.
But you might piggyback on your initial strategy and answer it with the same jargon-led defense.
Complicated and tough jargon is not reflective of your deep understanding of a topic. That is the lesson we were never taught by our seniors. I cannot be sure if they still get this important feature of communication.
Clarity is a metric for understanding.
Our natural world, however, banks on the opposite. First…
You must first exist
I use the example of living organisms to make a point.
Organisms must first exist before they can stand before a panel of experts and defend their thesis. Humans, however, are the only known organisms that do this. The rest don’t pay tuition to get harassed by others.
Defending your project is a statement about your work. It is putting your money where your mouth is. Both you and your project have to work together.
Let’s say that you decided to make your work easily skimmable or readable. Everyone who is seated on the floor now has a chance to ask you questions.
This strategy could be one where you’re ideas are easily learned. So you should be easily defeated. But if you were just as clear in communicating your research work and findings, you are likely to be just as contemplative of the challenges you faced. These are the questions you would get from the sitting.
You will not be easily defeated. You would have thought of these limitations up front. Some might be unveiled from the discussion with the audience. You will be on the same side as the audience that asks these questions because you asked yourself the same questions before the defense process.
Defense is a different ballgame in life.
Nature tests through action. Not formally, as in the mathematical or abstract world. Nature tests by aiming at your life. But first, you have to exist.
If everything outside you is wired to put you down, then existence is the first evidence of success. You have found a way to live despite the external damning forces. If these forces have been present long before you were born or existed, it means they have a whole toolkit of ways of bringing you down. That they haven’t found a way to eliminate you is a testament to your uniqueness.
Unique because they have not amassed the right combination of tools to bring you down. So you continue to live. The cell, the basic structural and functional unit of life, exists because nature has yet to find a sweeping way to cut its lights out from the get-go.
The reason has to do with the initial advice we were given by our seniors:
Bury them in jargon.
Hierarchies — A misunderstanding
In high school, when asked to explain the political or social organization of a group, it would be easy to mention the hierarchy.
If it was social, it would be a safe bet to start with the family. If it was political, you could mention how the father was the head of the family. Step by step you would make your way up the ladder of political and social organization earning full marks by the time you move to the next question.
These hierarchical structures can be misleading.
When I shared a sample of my book summary with a scholar whom I was referred to by my supervisor, he mentioned how hierarchies would not be a fitting discussion in explaining the robustness of systems.
At the time, I was seeking advice. It was better to understand the feedback than to defend my case. However, what I surmised was that the kind of hierarchy often discussed is that of power.
The president rules. The kind reigns. The father heads. These are all power structures if viewed from the head. One simple way of bypassing this perspective is by viewing other forms of life to understand the hidden role of hierarchies. The best example I can think of is fungi.
Fungi, once they exist, continue to spread like wildfire. They grow, branch, and connect ever exploring their surroundings through mycelial scouts. It’s like a fur ball with efficient communication but lacks a head. Lacks a father. Lacks a king. Lacks a president.
Still, the system remains robust.
It is robust because of hierarchies but not in the way we have often been taught at school. Hierarchies exist because one side of the deal serves the other.
Let’s now go back to the example of the figureheads — the president, the king, and the father with a revised perspective. The role of the father serves the other family members. He works to provide for them.
Usually, since the father has a badge of pride that he wears in his local society, the success of the people he takes care of serves him. They would want to see if their son would be a strong boy among the other boys. Or if the daughter would be of incomparable beauty. Of if the mother bears him many robust children. The role of the other family members, thus, serves the father.
That is the hierarchical relationship.
Hierarchical relationships are the reason why you are not easily learned and thus, not easily defeated
Once we are clear on the hierarchical relationship, it becomes easier to understand why organisms are robust. I will use the same example of the family and then go to the music industry for relatablility.
The hidden power of hierarchical relationships is that the role of one serves the other and vice versa. It is a functional and sustainable relationship. If the role of one does not serve the other, it breaks apart.
A deadbeat father does not serve the members of his supposed family. So it grows apart. Cancer does not serve its host, so it destabilizes the host.
A sustainable one, however, continues to survive or exist.
The result is trust.
Hierarchical relationships free the different components to pursue individual interests. The father can head to work knowing the other members will continue doing their roles. The other members can also do their own thing knowing the father will continue to care and provide.
That’s trust.
Because of trust, one is freed from knowing much about other parts of the system. The father is freed from knowing the crazy excursions the children had during the day. The mother is freed from knowing the difficult day the father might have had. Provided at the end of the day, the role of one serves the other.
Reducing the amount of information that every other part of the system, in this case, the family, needs to keep track of makes the system very mysterious. Nobody knows much about the other. They are not easily learned.
For that reason, they are not easily defeated.
You want a system that is difficult to predict for it to not be easily defeated by the forces of nature. If the Zebras were easily predictable, lions would be having a feast anytime they spot one. If the Lions were easily predictable, Zebras would only die from savanna fires or old age.
But they are not. Thus, they are not easily defeated.
Let me take the example of music and in particular, hip-hop.
Battle rapping is a core feature of hip-hop. The battlers go at the other’s particular features or affiliations. It could be one’s dressing style, skin, or even the school they went to.
Recently, the industry has been alive with the constant battle between Kendrick Lamar and Drake. With every hit, we get to know more about these superstars that we never knew. In reality, we can never know if it is the truth or not, but they are revealing what could have escaped their fans.
Neither of the two giants would let up and neither of them are easy to take down because they are unpredictable. They are not easily learned and as a result, not easily defeated.
That is the power of hierarchical relationships, a concept I stress in my theory, Organismal Selection, which is an important feature of what I call mergers. The family is a system comprising mergers — the father and the members are merged through their hierarchical relationship.
Mergers make it difficult for nature to bring down an organism. The reason? Because they are made of hierarchical relationships, they are not easily learned and thus not easily defeated.
Now…
What I’m trying to say is…
Before you are even worth defeating, you have to exist.
Once you exist, in the physical form, you can then be attacked by nature’s forces. But if nature finds it difficult to bring you down, I can double down on the fact that it is linked to the hierarchical systems inside and outside us.
I used the example of hip-hop music because it is a core feature of the industry — battling. Every battle is revelatory. But every battle shows that one can never know everything about the other side.
So one can never be easily defeated. The offshoot? Hip-hop can never die for as long as humans continue to produce music.
The existence of organisms affirms this belief.
