Punctuated Equilibrium

There are basically 2 theories about change. One of them is that it happens gradually, and the other is that it happens suddenly.

Take, for example, option pricing theory. The Black Scholes model assumes that share prices move continuously, ie they don’t jump. But a few catastrophic episodes which have wiped out the accounts of not a few hedge funds have proven the theory of gradual change to be wrong.

Take, for example, the theory of evolution. Even people who agree on evolution disagree vehemently about how evolution takes place. Richard Dawkins takes the adaptionist approach, and thinks that the species evolved continuously and steadily. Stephen Jay Gould believed in “punctured equilibrium” where species stayed the same most of the time, but underwent sudden changes in response to a sudden change in the environment, which killed off most of the population except for a small minority lucky enough to have the right mutation.

Take, for example, the great debate that arose among practitioners of Mahayana Buddhism: a group of them felt that enlightenment is gradual. And then there was the Linzhi school, who started the Zen tradition (yes, Zen is a Chinese invention, not Japanese) who contended that it was sudden.

I live life in punctuated equilibrium. A lot of things don’t change for a long time. I lead the same boring, normal life, and suddenly, when it changes, it changes completely.

Something turned my life upside down 20 years ago around now. (Actually you may recall that this was also around the time the Berlin wall fell, so just as well there were a lot of changes in the world as well.) 10 years ago, another big series of changes took place in a short time. It’s only looking back, now that I may be on the brink of another great set of changes, that I realized that these two epochs were placed almost 10 years apart.

10 years ago, things were in a great flux. It was that 2nd year in college.

I started thinking seriously about a career in science (because of my circumstances I had to seek a watered-down alternative – half a glass full or half empty depending on how you look at it).

I finally believed that I could be a composer. (I have written around 30? 40? Lost count – songs since then)

I fell in love. (this didn’t last)

I became a film buff (the object of my affections was a film buff. I haven’t talked to her for years but she now has a PhD in film studies.) This didn’t last, but for a while, as I started to absorb the possibilities of this art form, I spent a lot of mind-blowing evenings at the cinema. Most of my all time favourite films were those I watched around this period. I could never be a film buff for long because of the suspicion I was whiling my life away.

I decided to become a kinder, gentler person. (Quite unfortunately this didn’t last – any much longer than my love affair did.)

I became a bookworm / I took an arts minor. (Strictly speaking, this was not true. But I started a lot of reading courses because a lot of engineers sucked at them I wanted to know if I could survive them. I did. Later on, after graduation, I became a bookworm. It’s hard for people to realize this, but I was not a bookworm when I was a kid, and I might not be one a few years from now.)

When I started learning about psychology for the first time, I had a lot of my thinking cleared up (or at least, I had some notion about the motives and driving forces of people, where before I had mostly behaved like I was a robot.)

I started living life with a passion. (This is partly still true. My behaviour is still more purposeful and driven than when I was a teenager, and just another cattle in the herd. But the fire is definitely burning much less strongly today. Is it any wonder? I am growing old.)

I took up cooking. OK, in a way this was based on necessity, but it was great – for a while. But I have never cooked while back in Singapore.

I took up exercising regularly. (It was strange because after NS I swore: I’m free from all this shit. I never liked physical exercise while in there. But falling in love made me horny, and the horniness manifested itself in exercise. Sorda. I still make it a point to exercise once a week.)

I also broke with the past. There were a bunch of people I considered to be my friends, but we never reached any real rapport with each other. I allowed those friendships to fade away, even though I would say hi to them if I met them on the street (which for some reason is “almost never”). I used to engage in really useless activities like hanging out in CD shops and looking at new music. I stopped that. I used to spend long periods of time staring at the ceiling, doing nothing. I decided then that life was too precious to while away like that, although I still spend hours surfing and then wondering where my time has gone.

Yes, I imagined all that to be Year Zero. (In the French and Cambodian revolutions, they reset the calendar for a few years.) It was not hard to imagine, because it was 1999.

Things have faded somewhat, and there were a lot of disappointments along the way. But when your life has changed as thoroughly and completely as it has in that comparatively brief period of time, you usually measure yourself against that.