In fact, now that you know why we see what we do, to not enter conflict with doubt is to enter with ignorance, since intelligence is to not keep repeating the same behaviour in the hope of a different outcome. At the heart of “seeing yourself see differently” is a rational reason for courage… the courage to occupy spaces of uncertainty.
—Beau Lotto, Deviate, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2018
By re-seeing the process through which we are shaped by our communities and re-meaning our historical experiences, we feel a stronger sense of belonging and connectedness… and this courage and respect for ourselves and all things and people around us. This conception of communities encourages us to be still more humble, as it illustrates that all of us are defined by a collective ecology. So choose that ecology well, because your brain will adapt to it.
—Beau Lotto, Deviate, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2018
(…) none of us exist in a vacuum. We not only create our ecology… the environment we inhabit that is constituted not just by the things in it but also by the interactions between them… we are created by it as well.
—Beau Lotto, Deviate, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2018
To love is to love another’s deviance. What makes you you and them them is how one deviates from the norm. (…) It’s about whether two people’s madnesses are compatible. To enter conflict consciously with doubt as a part of your ever-evolving history of perception is difficult, risky even, especially if the other person is not entering the conflit with an understanding of the principles of perception. Thus, in addition to humility, creativity requires courage because you are stepping into a space that your brain evolved to avoid.
—Beau Lotto, Deviate, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2018
(…) conflit is in fact as much a part of love as physical affection, thought for most people it’s not nearly as enjoyable. Unlike hugs, kissing, sex, and other kinds of touch (which also require active listening to be felt meaningfully), the emotional touch of conflict is often what divides instead of unites a couple, since it so often leads to the anger axis described above: bickering arguments and worse. It is an outlet for tensions that arise out of everything from banal matters like daily logistics and housework, to attitudes toward weightier matters like ways of being, fidelity, and fundamental world-views. Yet as most of us know, all matters can become weighty during conflit if we don’t stay aware of how perception works in oneself, NOT just in the other person.
—Beau Lotto, Deviate, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2018