Excerpts: “Tree-like thinking is important because it reflects the complexity that surrounds us, but also because it helps us to be resilient” (p. 24).
“Tidying our homes isn’t just difficult because it’s a pain to fold and stack things, work out where everything should go and wrestle with your duvet cover. It’s because you are trying to lower the entropy of an environment whose spontaneous progression is in the opposite direction, towards disorder” (p. 56).
“Like a computer running too many programs, my mind was becoming clogged with all the choices and options, its mental cursor lagging around the screen. Time for a cup of tea and a lie-down” (p. 59).
“As humans, too often we lack the empathy to see the world from someone else’s perspective and impose our own beliefs on them. The gap grows between the person we want and expect to be with, and the one we actually are” (p. 144-145).
“Our relationships are subject to the same threat of decay, likely to die out if we lose the ability to undergo emotional mitosis, continuing to evolve and specialize in changing circumstances–as both our needs and those of our partner change” (p. 149).
“With fuzzy logic, an algorithm can determine whether something is mostly true or not, on a sliding scale between 0 and 1, rather than having to choose one definitive answer or the other” (p. 157).
“The most important thing is to lose neither your Bayesian nor your fuzzy-logic perspective. Something isn’t ‘obvious’ unless two people are looking at it from an identical starting point. Your belief that you are 100 per cent right about something may fall apart the moment you realize that this only holds when seen through the lens of your own unique perspective, based on assumptions and experiences your partner may not share” (p. 159).
“We have all made mistakes in relationships, had regrets, and sometimes wondered what is wrong with us. We shouldn’t beat ourselves up. Humans are complex enough beasts on their own, let alone trying to work together in a pair, or as part of a pack” (p. 162).
“These four forces–the one that keeps us grounded, the one that creates attraction and repulsion, the one that hold us together and the one that enables things to fall apart–are fundamental to every element of our existence. And they provide a guide to thinking about how relationships come together, make us feel, and sometimes collapse without warning. They show us that it is the balance of different forces being exerted that is most important” (p. 179).
“Humans may be wired to connect, but there is a limit to how much we can offer other people without eroding the strong force that protects our own personality, needs and identity” (p. 182).
“If we want to change how we feel about things, or approach particular situations in life, then the feedback loop is the place to start. We should recognize that our instinctive responses have been conditioned by a lifetime of memory and experience, creating the weighted connections that determine how our brain makes calculations. The things we value in life and feel strongly about haven’t emerged by accident. They are rooted in our living memories, and the only way to change is by gradual adjustment via the feedback loop” (p. 200).
“Memory can be a place of anxiety, shame and regret. Left to grow and evolve unconsciously, it encourages us to dwell often negatively on our experiences and past decisions, reliving them in the seconds, months and even years afterwards. Our challenge with memory is not getting stuck in its maze of history, regrets or people and places we can never return to” (p. 204).
“But what I’ve learned is that it’s possible to change yourself: not to deny or erase your true self, but to improve–getting better at the complex business of being human, in the way we plan our lives, manage our days, balance our emotions and nurture our relationships. I’ve also learned (I think) what it takes to do this. And, in a word, that’s patience” (p. 224).
Pang, Camilla (2020). An Outsider’s Guide to Humans: What Science Taught Me Abut What We Do And Who We Are. New York: Viking.