Note: This is part of the “Forces of the Soul” series. The introduction to the series will link to other essays in this series as they become available.
One of my favorite scenes from The Office is the DVD logo cold open. Michael Scott is talking about quarterly reports to a captive office audience. Little did he know, they were captured not by his riveting presentation, but by the DVD screen saver on the TV behind him, waiting for the bouncing DVD logo to precisely hit the corner. The pure anticipation as the people of the office wait attentively for the logo is palpable. Internet streamers have even held events for people to collectively watch DVD logos, and this video1 probably captures the emotion best:
I can think of many more instances of the pure emotion of anticipation. You may be familiar with counting down the clock for the new year, but did you also count down 2:22 on February 22, 2022 this year? Growing up, my sister and I would literally sit in front of the microwave to watch the clock turn 12:34. For a less trivial example, I find that watching football (of the soccer sort) is not unlike watching that DVD logo. I don't really understand the game at all but somehow I still find myself, along with thousands of people around me, drawn into watching that little dot bounce around on the green pitch, and cheering when it finally enters one of the rectangles on the field. Recently I've been watching the Japanese show Ainori, and when I take a step back I am floored by how the show's delightfully kitschy graphics keep me up to date on the relationship dynamics of the show and keep me waiting for more.
The above examples are silly and drawn from entertainment, but they point to how utterly we are driven by the forces of anticipation. For example, you see an object flying towards you, your brain predicts its trajectory, assesses it will reach you, and you flinch. Or your heart races in anticipation of an imminent meeting with an idol or a crush. Or you hear a few sentences coming out of your parent's mouth and you dread the conversation going down the same dead ends it has gone down many times before. Or perhaps you envision a future of connections if you are able to finish writing that manifesto.
Simple examples like the DVD logo, however, give us a chance to take an objective look into the dynamics of anticipation. Importantly, upon close reflection I see two critical pieces behind anticipation.
The first is a near term prediction of where things are going. When I say near term, I mean quite near term, as in "where is the soccer ball going to be in the next second?" near term.2 In some other settings, the prediction might work on slightly longer time scales, but is nevertheless quite local. For example, a common reason why you might quit or be bored with a movie is because "you can't see where it is going." But oftentimes this doesn't really mean that you want to know the outcome of the movie to enjoy it — indeed, the suspense of not knowing for sure how the movie will turn out is often an integral part of the pleasure of watching a movie.3 Instead, the refrain "can't see where it's going" usually points to not seeing how things are connecting, how they imply what's going to come next. This sense of prediction underlies a sense of continuity and coherent motion. This near-term prediction and continuity can be absorbing in its own right.
The second critical piece of anticipation does refer to the longer term, bigger picture view, and involves a sense of pattern that constrains the world of possible outcomes to a few special cases. By this, I mean patterns, outcomes, and configurations that stand out and feel particularly important. In The Office DVD logo scene, the corners of the TV screen feel particularly special as an articulable pattern. On the soccer field, the pattern at stake is seeing the ball enter the goals. When watching a movie, the pattern might be seeing the protagonists find their way out of a haunted house. In contrast to the dynamics of near term prediction described above, where the brain and soul demand great certainty or else it loses interest, note the great uncertainty that is often tolerated while waiting for this latter kind of patterned outcomes, and how this uncertainty can even be the whole thing that absorbs us. The role of the pattern is to provide an anchor by which to contextualize the near term predictions we're constantly making and feeling — are things moving towards realizing the pattern or away from it? We wait with bated breath to see if the DVD logo will hit that corner. We feel this impulse that wants to see patterns realized.
In many life contexts, this latter piece of anticipation, a sense of patterns and constraints, might even be the dominant force governing our souls. In a sense, patterns and constraints are almost necessary to make tractable sense of the world. The world is too big, the possibilities too large, and we are all too finite. How do we know what to pay attention to, articulate where things are ultimately going, and decide on actions to take? We rely on the intuition of pattern, which takes shape in many guises. Beauty. Truth. Coherence. Purpose. Vividness. Simplicity. Elegance. Certainty. Universality.4
The combination of prediction and pattern recognition results in being absorbed in anticipation,5 and consequent feelings of validation and dissonance depending on whether anticipations are fulfilled. At its best, seeing patterns come to fruition, i.e. catching a glimpse of elegance, beauty, and coherence, can be exhilarating. It is how we judge and feel things to be true. It may even serve as an orienting goal. But these feelings can also go awry when we fixate on particular patterns to the exclusion of others, and oftentimes the patterns are in conflict (e.g. what imprints vividly upon our mind may not be true, or what is true may not be beautiful, or what is beautiful may not be universal, or what is universal may not be coherent).
While we wait in anticipation of patterns, the uncertainty sometimes breeds anxiety, and other times it is thrilling. Given anticipation of a vividly disastrous outcome — some might respond with anger and fear, while the cynic might feel vindicated. While living in uncertainty, there can be a strong impulse to jump to seeing patterns and feeling certain about our conclusions. These anticipations underlie our deepest impulses.
In closing, this first force of the soul (anticipation, prediction, seeing patterns and constraints) refers to a whole host of things that our brains and souls are constantly anticipating, monitoring, and responding to, too many things to actively and consciously track. These processes are always operative, and we depend on them to make sense of a complex world. Sometimes these anticipations are in confluence, other times they are in conflict with one another.
These forces of the soul are not inherently good or bad, but it is worth being more conscious of where the forces are pushing us to. Again, one can fight, lean into, or go with the flow of forces, but one has to recognize them first. Your job is to try to monitor what your brain and soul are anticipating and monitoring, and see if there are new things you want to guide your brain and soul to pay attention to.
Bonus: Another way anticipation reveals itself: magic!
The comments in this video say that this is edited footage of a crowd watching a soccer match.
I also suspect this prediction is visceral — it is the feeling of motion. As a specific example of this, people with extreme akinetopsia ("motion blindness") struggle with these feelings of motion in their visual experience. In extreme akinetopsia, one can see that the world has changed, even intellectually know that things should be changing, but still not have the feeling of motion! Patients report difficulties with tasks like pouring water — they are doing the pouring, they know how the world should be changing (cup getting full), they can see the cup's water level is different from a moment before, but they still don't have a sense of motion. I interpret this as they do not have a feeling for how fast that cup is filling up and have no feeling of anticipation for when the cup will fill up. Again, the patients are the one doing the pouring, they know what should happen, but they don’t feel their prediction.
Although for sure some people find that spoilers actually do help them enjoy a movie more.
Self-described "rationalists" with a partiality towards probability might call these our priors. The typical person might instead think of aesthetics. One difference in view is that while rationalists obsess over the importance of changing priors to match reality, seeing these heuristic senses as aesthetics shines light on how it's not that clear how to (or how quickly one can) change one's intuitive feelings of things. In another way to frame things, the "rationalists" sometimes focus on overriding many intuitive feelings... in favor of a particular intuitive feeling that math should be right even when it feels wrong.
Maybe this starts looking like "attention"? I haven't thought about that enough, but it's worth contemplating. I think they're related, but point at different dynamics.