We’re approaching Christmas, a period that has always been complex for me. In hindsight, perhaps the complexity is precisely linked to the bias. I’m understanding it, observing it. This Christmas will help me understand more.
For the rest, I admit that this time I’m more in investigation mode than talking mode. The direct confrontation with the bias, to give a simile we can all understand, like having struck the bias and made it fall from its horse, has opened a new reality.
I’ve wounded it, deeply. But it’s not defeated. I knew this, it wasn’t possible. What I didn’t know was its evolution.
The bias counterattacks
From last time until today, the bias has evolved. And it’s positioning itself before me in a subtle way.
I don’t want to be too cryptic, but I’ll try to explain with similitudes. Imagine a war with an enemy. This enemy has always felt strong, always advanced without fear because it knew that in frontal confrontation, even the most complex battles, it would win.
Then one day the adversary, me, applies a different strategy and halts the enemy’s advance. Wounds it. Starts regaining ground.
The twenty-six year war
The enemy has more than twenty years of experience. The bias was created around age 18. Now I’m almost 44. Twenty-six years of war.
It’s not inexperienced. It studies me again and starts making different strategies. It no longer attacks me frontally, but makes targeted attacks, aimed at cutting my supplies and putting me in crisis. Attacks to regain control.
I saw them, fortunately. But they hit. They slowed me down.
Now my challenge is there. The step is there. I don’t give up because the state of well-being obtained, the goals achieved, the new look at life and the rhizome effect I want to create, I feel them within my reach.
The rhizome effect
The rhizome effect takes inspiration from two philosophers: Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari.
What did they say? A model that rejects hierarchical and linear structure, like a tree, to embrace a reticular, multiple and non-ordered structure.
The rhizome has no center. No hierarchy. It expands in all directions, creates connections everywhere, multiplies contact points.
If you think about it, much of what I’ve written, much of what’s not yet written, works like this. It’s not a straight line. It’s not an ordered path. It’s a network that expands.
And I notice it works with humans. It works when I speak to others, when I write here and others read. I feel it as a power that can help the individual and can help the community.
How the rhizome works
A concrete example. A client with whom I have an excellent relationship. One day, by chance, we started talking about philosophy through voice messages. Since then, at least a month, we exchange long audio messages on various themes. A common thread but many branches.
Socratic method. Questions, answers, more questions. Common elements but also differences. And it’s precisely this that makes it beautiful.
I now consider her a Friend. And we have an idea: if we manage, transform it into a podcast. So others can listen. Because we want to help.
She could be one of the allies I’m looking for to expand the rhizome. Concentric circles: me, her, others. Not hierarchy, but expansion. Not imposition, but sharing.
The individual improves with tools. The improving individual shares. Sharing creates other individuals who improve. And so on. Rhizome.
It’s not a tree where I’m the trunk and others are branches. It’s a network where every node is equally important, and connections multiply.
This is what I want to do. This is what the bias tries to block.
From hero to anti-hero to strategist
I now feel I’m no longer that myth of the hero, not mine, that was pointed out to me to the point of reinforcing the bias.
I’m the anti-hero ready for that pragmatism, ethical, aimed at improving. I don’t fight against windmills like Don Quixote. I finally have an idea to help the world.
Yes, there’s ambition. But since my mind eliminated that part of memory always full because of the bias, I’ve had ideas at work, ideas for myself, ideas about everything.
I want to share, I want to speak and I want to help. But I want to help not with useless direct attack that wastes energy, but with that strategy a bit like Themistocles. When to defeat the Persians he abandoned Athens, went to sea with the fleet, headed to Salamis. And there he knew he would have the strategy to defeat the Persians.
Not brute force. Strategy.
The subtle counterattack
The bias, when I wounded it, saw this. And the new attacks were born precisely to fill my mind again.
Before it attacked frontally. Fear of Others’ Judgment, direct, strong, recognizable. I named it, it lost power.
Now it’s subtle. Not direct attack but lateral attacks. Small anxieties, thoughts that seem legitimate but are its. Doubts that seem reasonable but are its weapons.
It tries to cut supplies. It tries to fill cognitive bandwidth again. It tries to block the activities that free me.
But I noticed them. In time. And now the ball is mine. I must manage and avoid.
Patience and the swing
Patience can help us. Nothing resolves in an instant, but it can resolve.
And thinking about golf, when these moments happen, I remember the swing. I think about the swing to empty my mind and start that activity the bias tries to block.
Last night, when the bias was trying to block me, I thought about the swing. I emptied my mind and opened a strategic video game I care about. Victoria 3, with all its complexities, its variables, its chaos to orchestrate.
A little, but I played it. Enough to activate myself, to test my ability to manage complexity. My ability as chaos orchestrator.
When I manage to do this, the bias loses ground.
The battle continues
The bias isn’t defeated. It has evolved. It uses subtle strategies.
But I saw it. And this changes everything.
It’s no longer a war where it advances and I defend. It’s a war where I recognize attacks, name them, manage them.
The ball is mine. The game is open. And the rhizome expands.
Concentric circles. From the individual to the community. From personal battle to collective help.
Not brute force. Strategy. Like Themistocles at Salamis.
The bias counterattacks. But I’m ready.