Optimising dysfunction

“Chaos is inherent in all compounded things.”

– Buddha

The seeking of anything that is not – is a striving – or a view of the experience through the lens of lack.

Of what isn’t – the negative.

I don’t really know where I’m going with this, and it will probably all come across as hypercritical and contradictory, however, I’ll attempt to explain the nuance throughout the paragraphs.

And this is what I tell myself:

“The wisest man would be the one richest in contradictions, who has, as it were, antennae for all types of men—as well as his great moments of grand harmony—a rare accident even in us! A sort of planetary motion –”

― Friedrich Nietzsche

Having spent the last 20+ years trying to optimise my own health – and working with many individuals, over the years to do the same, I declare, I am in full support of, “health optimisation”.

However, this process can be philosophically and fundamentally flawed.

The seeking of optimal anything can seem to be somewhat of a compulsive disorder. It can be a hinderance or a counterintuitive protective mechanism. An attempt to discard the “incomplete” present or “painful” past, for a perfected future – a solidified or embodied, “happily ever after” event.

However, we all know perfectionism doesn’t tend to yield more “perfect” outcomes.

“The perfect is the enemy of the good.”

– Voltaire

An easy example is all these anatomical fundamentalists ranting about minute joint angle aberrations and slight out of alignment biomechanics – assumably contributing to total system dysfunction. Although many people are out there achieving their goals and successes with what would be deemed, by the analysis crowd as, “poor posture and equally poor biomechanical functioning.”

Just like that annoyingly, arrogant dude from “Functional Patterns” – really doesn’t appear to move well, be strong, be athletic, have greater structural integrity, or any perceivable, measurable quality to support his theory of movement optimisation.

That’s not to suggest that we can’t optimise movement, or that he hasn’t done such a thing – but what are the metrics?

Does the fixation provide superior outcomes? And how would that be recognised?

“Be careful, lest in casting out your demon you exorcise the best thing in you.”

― Friedrich Nietzsche

And it seems the same within the optimal health crowd — people are out there achieving the assumed unachievable with *gasp* objectifiable poor health.

If we’re to pay attention – ‘optimal’ as a standard should elicit real world benefits. If it doesn’t, how is it quantifiable?? How is it measured? Is it really optimal?

What’s the deciding factor?

Through objective data – bloods, diagnostic testing, appearance, competition?

Or subjective experience – symptoms, expression, removal of discomfort and limitations?

Unfortunately, the objective is prone to illusion and the subjective is prone to delusion.

As we can see that which is considered optimal is often filtered through societal constructs, personal conditioning, systematic expression of part deductions and reductionist theorising.

If our aim is optimisation – in one regard – our health – are we becoming subject to sub-optimal or dysfunctional elements in other regards? Maybe we become less social, more controlling, more obsessed with weight or every little perceivable experience and its possible detriments.

Maybe we start to pay attention to every experience that we do experience at total capacity – repeated and compounded – and this approach stifles our ability to live, create or explore.

“The Buddha said that suffering was caused by desire, we'd learned, and that the cessation of desire meant the cessation of suffering. When you stopped wishing things wouldn't fall apart, you'd stop suffering when they did.”

― John Green

‘Optimal’ is potentially a fixation flaw.

The Law of Diminishing Returns is commonly applied in economics but can also be observed in many complex systems. It suggests that as you keep improving or optimising one aspect of a system, the additional gains from further optimisation become smaller or even detrimental once a certain point is passed.

Or in complex systems theory, or cybernetics, it’s referred to as, “Optimisation Paradox”.

Which can be seen when trying to optimise a system globally leads to local disruptions, diminishing the overall performance and / or introducing new issues or dysfunctions within the total scope of the system.

In the context of system optimisation, it often presents that overly focusing on fine-tuning or making small, incremental improvements in one area might potentially and inadvertently lead to negative effects elsewhere in the system. This could be due to many factors, like, resource constraints, unintended side effects, or complexity increase that diminishes overall efficiency and function.

Or another applicable concept is, “overfitting” in machine learning and statistics – where excessive optimisation of a model to past data can reduce its ability to generalise well to new data.

“You just became something like some smoke that I tried too hard to hold.”

– Brian Fallon

But back to health – orthorexia is an easy example of this – as we seek out a more “perfect diet”, we create dysfunctional elements outside of this single, specific element of being well.

Humans are a complex system of complex systems – interacting within a complex system of complex systems.

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