Pinhead: A redifinition with insights into attaining your heart's desire




MIND READERS DICTIONARY : Mind Readers Dictionary show

Summary: A pinhead is a person so small-minded his shoulders taper up to either a pin's head or even narrower, a pinpoint. We apply the epithet like an X marking the spot, pinpointing anyone we think is an idiot. I'm on a never-ending quest for objective definitions of wisdom and conversely, stupidity. By objective, I mean something beyond thinking a butthead is just anyone I butt heads with. This quest has practical implications in that much of the misery humans impose on each other stems from over-confident, under-analyzed name-calling, for example calling anyone I butt heads with a butthead. And then bombing them. Here I want to explore an alternative definition of pinhead, not as having a head like a pin but heading for a pin. When you head toward a goal, aim for a target, or pursue some end, are you pinpointing or narrowing in on it? “Same difference,” you might say, but no, there’s actually a pretty big difference rich in implications about everything from love, religion and politics to the natural history of goal-seeking behavior. Let’s say you’re goal is to find your iPhone, misplaced in the house somewhere. You had it yesterday. You can just picture it, your iPhone crying, “Find me please!” You’re looking for a single pinpointed thing. But what if you’re looking for a decent cup of coffee? You don’t want tea or milk and you reject that cup of coffee you forgot and left in the microwave yesterday. Other than that, within a narrowed range any cup of coffee will do. Pinpointing implies that you have a positive ideal in mind. Narrowing implies rejection of everything that falls outside of a narrow range. Some goals feel like pinpoints, those supposedly one-dimensional things we learned about in elementary school geometry class. Other goals contain whole ranges of acceptable options, known mostly by rejecting unacceptable options. Searching for your one true iPhone, your bull’s eye goal is that single pinpoint in the center of the target. Searching for a decent cup of coffee your bull’s eye is anything that doesn’t fall outside the biggish circle in the middle the target. Suppose your goal is to find a home in a new town. You stick a pushpin into your map to mark the spot. But what is the spot? Is it the big red top of the pushpin, or is it the impossibly infinitesimal point? Say your goal is to find Mr. or Ms. Right, the partner of your dreams. Is this partner a pinpoint or a narrowed range? Do you have a perfect vision of your partner in your mind’s eye, a soul mate who, like your iPhone cries, “Find me please”? Do you go around checking people against this perfect vision until you find the one exact match? Or is your Mr. or Ms. Right anyone from a narrowed range of possibilities, who, like a decent cup of coffee is found by rejecting all of the Mr. or Ms. Wrongs until you’re left with Mr. or Ms. Right-enough? The evolutionary psychologist Randy Nesse notes that it won’t do to declare to your partner, “Baby, you’re like a total seven out of ten and probably the best I can get. So I’m right here with you until, like maybe an eight comes along.” Because relationship is so high-stakes, intense, intimate, competitive, and risky, we need to be more reassuring than that, saying and even believing a very pinpointed interpretation, at the extreme something like “Baby, you are my one and only soul mate. Before we met I dreamed about you, the only person who could ever satisfy me. In my dreams I saw you crying “Find me please.” I knew someday I would find you and until I did, I keep looking, accepting no substitute.” You’ll find such pinpoint exclusivity in the pursuit not just of monogamy but monotheism. In both, high stakes and intense competition escalates us toward the pinpoint interpretation of goal seeking. A religious leader isn’t goin