The first hard science most people learn is Newton’s First
Law, “An object persists in its state of moving or rest unless acted upon by a
force.” This is the concept of
inertia. A rock sitting on the ground
won’t start moving unless something comes along and pushes it. The same rock once it starts moving will keep
moving until it is acted upon by a force, such as friction with the ground or
hitting another object.
The second law states, “The acceleration of an object is
proportional to the acting force divided by the objects mass.” It is usually expressed in a slightly
different format, Force equals Mass times Acceleration. Mass is the quantification of inertia; it
represents how difficult it is to change an object’s motion, or lack thereof. Mass can be thought of as how much substance
an object has, and in the presence of gravity an objects weight is equal to its
mass times gravity.
Newton’s third law gets more specific, “Every action has an
equal and opposite reaction: or the forces two bodies exert on each other are
always equal in magnitude and opposite in direction.” The idea behind the third law is that forces
are always balanced, for instance if you were to impart a force onto a ball, or
throw it, the ball is pushing back on your hand just as hard as you are pushing
on it. The ball accelerates much faster
than you do because it has much lower mass.
In the realm of physics, people are objects just like everything
else, and we all have mass and hence inertia.
If we are sitting on the couch, we aren’t going to suddenly get up and
move across the room. Something has to
apply a force to our body to make it move, or as is usually the case you apply
a force to another object, such as the couch or the floor and you move in the
opposite direction.
When you walk across the room, you are pushing the room in
the opposite direction just as hard as the room is pushing you. However, the room weights considerably more than
you and it is usually pushing on the ground and the earth definitely weights
considerably more than you or the room, so the result is that when you push on
the floor you are the one doing the moving.
If you were standing on a surf board in the middle of the ocean and you
started walking, the surfboard would shoot out from under you while you stay
pretty much in the same place, since it has much less mass and inertia than
you.
People are different sizes, so they have different masses. If a large person and a small person were
pushed by the same force, the smaller one would accelerate much faster than the
larger person. So if the two people,
large and small, pushed against each other, the smaller person would be
propelled much faster than the larger person.
Most people understand these principles on an almost
subconscious level. They might not know
the math, but they know that if they see their car rolling down a hill it would
be a bad idea to get in the way. Even
children grasp the concept as they speed across the room to try to knock their
father over, knowing they have to go very fast to make their father move just a
little.
The same physical principles can be applied to the mind,
psychophysics if you will. A person’s
thoughts and behaviors have mental inertia or psychoinertia, just as their
bodies have physical inertia. Some
people, and some thoughts, have more psychoinertia than others.
Like physical inertia, if you have a lot of pyschoinertia
you are much harder to move, or motivate.
But they are also much harder to demotivate or distract from what they
are doing. Imagine a giant boulder rolling
along, if you throw a small branch in its way, it will crunch through it and
continue on its way. If you wanted to
turn the boulder, you would have to exert tremendous force, but once it started
in the new direction, it would continue.
As a result, people with high psychoinertia also find it difficult to “wind
down,” because even if their body has stopped moving their mind is still
trudging along.
On the other end of the spectrum are people with low mental
inertia. People with low psychoinertia
are easily motivated but tend to be distractible, because it requires
relatively little to get them to change mental directions. Instead of a giant boulder, imagine a beach
ball rolling along. This time the stick
will stop the ball entirely, or send it flying in a new direction. People with low mental inertia also tend to
be spontaneous.
The obvious question is whether it is better to have a lot
of psychoinertia or very little, or perhaps somewhere in between. There is no answer to that question, because
life presents all kinds of challenges, some which require nimbleness of mind,
and others that require perseverance. However, if you understand which part of the
spectrum you fall in, you can take advantage of the good traits and counteract
the bad.
For someone on the heavy end of the spectrum, let’s say a
major life event is going to be occurring in the near future, such as a new job
in a new city. Simply packing up and
moving will cause a tremendous mental hardship, since while your physical body
has moved to your new location, your mind is still at your old job in the old
city. Instead, picture the new job and
new city, imagine living there. If you
push continuously over a longer period of time, it requires less mental strain
at any one point. When your body finally
gets to the new place, you will find your mind is already at home. This process of building up mental momentum
can also be used in reverse, so rather than just stop doing something, start
the mental process of stopping early.
People on the light and nimble end of the spectrum have less
problems changing, but more problems staying on course. I was careful not to use the term “stubborn”
to describe those with high psychoinertia, because there is more than one way
to be stubborn. Barnacles are stubborn,
not because they are heavy, but because they cling tightly to something that
is. If you push on a barnacle, the
barnacle transfers that force to what it’s growing up. So, if you cling tightly to what you are
doing, then the task itself will help pull you along when a distraction arises:
be stubborn. Or, if you do get
distracted just remember that it is just as easy to motivate yourself back on
course as it was to get knocked off course in the first place. The key being not to lose too much ground in
the process.
Psychoinertia can also give you insight into other
people. Is your friend being stubborn
because he is clinging tightly his thoughts, or is it because it simply takes a
lot of effort to change his mind? Teams
work best with a combination of high and low psychoinertias. The nimbler lighter minds are easily
motivated to get things started in the right direction. Eventually the high inertia minds will start
moving along and then they’ll help keep the lighter minds motivated when
distractions crop up.
The other side of the equation is force. Force is required to generate motion in the mass,
whether it is physical or mental. There
are people who are said to have forceful personalities, as in full of
force. These are the people who are
capable of exerting the mental forces to motivate others. But, they are also the ones who can motivate
themselves, or keep themselves motivated in the midst of distractions.
Mental forces require balance in the same way that physical
forces do. If you were to pull someone
towards you mentally or emotionally, you are pulling yourself towards them as
well. In the physical world, it is much
easier to see the paired forces as they oppose each other, while in the mental
world it is much more difficult.
In the physical world, a person generally moves about by
pushing off the ground, the floor, or their surfboard. The stronger the foundation the person is
standing on, the harder they can push.
The mental world is the same, except the foundation is a person’s
beliefs, which form from life history and the influence of others. A person thus has a second store of inertia
to push against that has been built over their life.
If you have a shaky mental foundation, no matter how much
psychoinertia you have, you won’t be able to accomplish anything. Imagine a large man trying to run while
standing on a bed of marbles. The
marbles will go flying and the man will go nowhere. A few feet away, a girl stands with her toes
digging into the ground. It might not be
easy, but the girl could push the man backwards because she has the stronger
foundation.
People with weak foundations have difficulty motivating
themselves. They try to push themselves,
but they have nothing to push against.
If they are given outside motivation, a mental push from someone else,
they can be motivated. This is why
counselors, teachers, and friends can be so influential on people who have a poor
foundation, but so can a gang.
People with weak foundations can get out of the morass by
latching onto a different foundation, such as a religion or a cause. People who have struggled with a weak
foundation are particularly prone to clinging to a new foundation when they
find one. The difficulty for them is
that religions and causes have direction.
If they want to use the foundation to motivate their life, they have to
stay with the foundation where it moves them.
If the foundation is worthwhile cause, then it will motivate in good
directions, if the foundation is a gang, it will not.
Peer pressure is a battle of psychoinertia and foundation. Children are still building their
foundations, and are much more easily pulled off. A child with a strong foundation is able to
resist the pressures of their peers, even if they lack the psychoinertia
themselves. A strong role model, an
external foundation, will also give the child something to cling to when
pressured.
While a person might have high or low mental inertia, their
trajectory through life is determined by their interactions with others and
with their mental foundation.
