THE END OF MONEY

October 30th, 2019

In the 1990’s, an anthropologist named Robin Dunbar proposed that humans can only maintain social groups of about 150 individuals.  This refers to stable relationships, it does not mean to include any and every acquaintance or simply people we might know about, such as celebrities, which is purely a one-way street.

The number has come under some scrutiny but no one disagrees that the concept is valid and we are certainly limited when it comes to how many people we can know, and that number is somewhere around what Dunbar has proposed.

Dunbar’s number is the result of an innate physical limit on memory.  Our brains are only so big.  And this limit is the reason why we have developed systems like money. 

Since we live in societies that far exceed Dunbar’s number, we need a way to trust strangers.  Money fills in this role, and it’s even baked into the words that we use around number.

For example, to have good credit means that you’re likely to be loaned money.  The word ‘credit’ means simply ‘belief’.  Think of the word incredible.  Which means literally, unbelievable.

A credit card is therefore a ‘belief’ card, and if it isn’t declined, the transaction basically implies that a stranger is trusted because they make good on their debts. 

Compare this system of money to the way very close friends handle similar ‘transactions’.  If for instance, a good friend asks for help, and then offers some sort of payback, it’s far more likely we wave them off and say something like “you would do the same for me.”  And indeed, we say it because we know it’s true.  This is the nature of friendship, and money is the system that substitutes for friendship when we deal with strangers.

Recent advances in brain interface technology calls all of this into question.  One such company, Neuralink has created a system that allows for direct communication between the brain and a computer outside of the skull.  There’s an interesting Black Mirror episode that has the same premise.

Now, while the technology is still in early development, it’s conceivable that such a communication can be hooked up to a hard drive of some sort and radically expand the capabilities of our memory.

This might sound like science fiction, but the basic components of this fiction already exist in separate parts.  We do have storage devices that can hold enormous quantities of audio, text, and video, and now we have a way for the brain to communicate with computers.  The parts of the equation are there and it’s unlikely that industry won’t supply the addition operation to these parts.

Strangely enough, this technological possibility calls into question the use of money.

Imagine this:  You have an infinite memory of people.  Not only that but you have access to other people’s opinions about people.  This might sound like a data breech but we do it all the time.  It’s what a resume is, and what’s going on when we call a reference, or when we ask close friends at a party about someone attractive on the other side of the room.

Imagine even further:  many researchers, companies and doctors are trying to unlock the mysteries of aging.  Radical life extension may or may not be around the corner.  Let’s say it is.  With enough time, and enough memory, you could get to know. . . everyone.

This might seem like impossible fantasy, but it’s without a doubt that our ancestors from tens of thousands of years ago would think any description of modern day society would likewise be an impossible fantasy.

When we are young and just learning to ride a bike, we have training wheels.  And those who can remember the experience, might agree, they don’t do a great job teaching you how to ride with two wheels.

We might say something similar about money.  The system of money has all of these unfair loopholes, and the amount of money someone has certainly doesn’t predict how trustworthy they are.  In terms of being a substitute for authentic friendship, money works about as well as training wheels do on a bike.

The difference is that a child’s growing brain ultimately gains the capacity to handle balance on a bike, whereas human memory is capped in its capacities and it never expands to accommodate the enormous size of society.

But with technology, it might one day be able to handle this enormous amount of data.

Imagine a day when the use of money becomes irrelevant because the cooperative capacity of each and every person is completely transparent, and the complex network through which we all help each other with our projects is illuminated.

The end of money isn’t even the most radical implication of these possibilities.

Instead of 6-derees of separation between you and everyone else, imagine no degrees of separation.  The potential for enhanced efficient cooperation doesn’t just exist on a financial level, but an emotional level.

The greatest possibility of increased time and memory is the chance to get to know our enemies and eventually

to cooperate with them.

This episode relies heavily on Episode 325: Failures of Cooperation.  If the idea of money as a substitute for trust sparked your interest then check out Episode 325 which thoroughly explores this idea.

AMENDS

October 29th, 2019

Actions always speak louder than words. 

Our language, our speech, the promises we make - all of these are a mere conceptual realm.  And as much talking as we do, it’s always action that speaks louder. 

One oft-used phrase that we retreat to can be quick to lose it’s meaning:

I’m sorry. 

In relationships of all sorts, it’s possible to get stuck in a sort of habit of saying I’m sorry, over and over.

And like anything else repeated, it often loses it’s meaning.

Unless, we act upon it.

The action that corresponds to ‘sorry’ is a little counter-intuitive.

There’s much in western culture and history to push us in a direction of punishment, but punishing one’s self as the action stemming from I’m sorry does not make amends.

The answer is more counter-intuitive.

I’m sorry certainly seeks to clarify something about the past but it has nothing to do with moving forward.

I’m sorry is about the past.

Making amends is about the future.

Making amends requires moving forward with actions that are in line with the ideas we share with the people we care about.

It feels intuitive to say sorry because there’s no action we can take to affect the past.  Often it ends here because everything is in the past.  But just as we try something different after failing to achieve something, the next step is a creative one.

Making amends is about building a future.  Not just merely talking about it or bemoaning the fact that it was thwarted by past mistakes.

It’s a practical exercise as much as it is a healing one. 

And this separates it from the usual stereotypical option of flowers, or a gift, which are rarely practical and almost always indulgent in some way.

Looking at the action of making amends as a practical contribution to the future forces it to be considered under a far more thoughtful light. 

It’s not just a guideline for making amends, it’s the basis for contributing to the health of any relationship.

PROMISE?

October 28th, 2019

What is a promise?

An agreement between people that seeks to make the future a little more certain.  It’s a common idea about how the future is going to look.  Or at the very least, it’s a common idea about a future people are going to work to bring about. 

Promises are sacred things, they pop up in life in the heart of very important events: marriage, baptisms, court proceedings.

Promises address our deepest concern and our greatest fear, namely chaos.  Promises represent a one-way direction away from chaos and towards order.

They can be problematic, in the same way a poor question can lead us in fruitless circles. 

An example of such poor questions would be: what’s the meaning of life?  This is a terrible question because it’s unanswerable, and at the very least it simply produces anxiety, and at the very most it produces bad philosophy. 

Promises that lack a thoughtful and dynamic consideration of the future can be likewise problematic, as so many divorces might attest to. 

The problem is that the future is unpredictable, and we often bite off more than we can chew when we make a promise about it.   Situations change and people change as a result, and naturally situations change when people do.  This is a risky dance, and we often sabotage ourselves by thinking we have more control than we actually do.

This isn’t to say that promises can’t be wonderfully useful, it’s only to say that we need to be careful about the promises we make.

A bad promise kept is worse than a good promise broken.

A bad promise kept perpetuates something rotten through time creating an unwanted future, whereas a good promise broken does not necessarily cancel out the possibility of building that originally envisioned future.

Promises may be more like questions than we might at first realize. 

A good question often leads to an even better question.

Does a good promise lead to an even better promise?

Perhaps it helps to remember just what promises are addressing: the future.

Let’s rephrase the question:

Can a good vision for the future lead to an even better vision for the future?

This certainly seems to make sense.

As we move forward productively towards one vision, we inevitably discover things we didn’t expect; this is to be expected considering the unpredictable nature of the future.

Any resourceful person is going to put those unanticipated discoveries to good use, and the leverage of such discoveries can easily make that original idea of the future seem less ambitious as a vision of an even better future emerges.

We might even look at this process as a toggle between promises and questions.  As we move forward towards a shared vision, our discoveries might inspire the question: is there something even greater that we can shoot for?  Inevitably this spawns more and more questions, and as we slowly answer each one, we update our shared idea of what the future can look like.

The mistake that plagues our promises is that we think of them as static entities.  They are solid, which inevitably makes them brittle, and easier to break.

Think about it: what’s easier to break?

A stone,

Or a pool of water.

It’s a trick question of course.  How do you break water?  We can imagine it frozen, and cracking, just like a rock, but unlike a rock, we can warm those shards, make it all liquid again, put it into the original shape and freeze it.  Water is dynamic in a way the stone isn’t.

All this is to say that we make many of our promises as though we are talking about the past.  As though we are talking about something that can’t change.  But the fact is, when we make a promise we are talking about something that has change at its core.

As we move forward.  As we experience more and learn more and understand more.  We need to be able to ask: was that the best promise we could make?

Chances are everyone can see something better now.

A LUCILIUS PARABLE: LETTERS' END

October 27th, 2019

Lucilius walked into an old used bookstore.  Books were stacked from the floor to the ceiling, everywhere, as walls and columns forming a delicate maze.  Books made up the bookcases that were mere slats of wood pinned in stacks forming bridges upon which more books were shelved.  The smell of the place had a comfort like that of a cool and ancient forest, muffling sound as though everything was resolved into a palpable firmament of thought and dream that floated between towers of words and wood and paper.  Lucilius felt himself smile as a calm slowly over took him.

He wandered through the disordered store looking at the spines of color, picking out a title here and there, some upright, some easily read on their side.  He’d walked in just out of curiosity and stayed not because he wanted some book to buy and take but merely to appreciate that a place like this existed.

Lucilius was serene, and then a combination of shapes caught his eye.  His head slowly turned to a perpendicular and the shapes snapped into recognition as he read the letters of his own name.  He stood still, a moment, reading the title of the book over and over:

The Lucilius Parables Vol. II

He so rarely saw his own name that it was a bit of a strange and curious puzzle that he’d never come across this book, and that it was a second volume nonetheless, implying that there was a first made it even stranger.  Surely he wasn’t so oblivious that he would have missed two books that happened to have the same name as his own.

He hooked a finger at the top of the spine and unsheathed the small volume from its neighbors.  He opened the book to a random page and read:

Lucilius looked up from the book.  He flipped back to the cover to look at the title again: Volume Two.  He did not need to read any further, having a good notion now of what the book might hold in promise. 

He stopped a moment, just holding the book, while standing in the bookshop, thinking about that idea.  ‘A promise is something that’s decided, agreed upon beforehand’, he heard his mind say in that silent space of the head.  ‘A promise is really a hope to make the future certain in the minds of two different people, is it not?’  The question washed over him, warmly.  He looked back down at the book and closed it.

He walked to the front of the bookstore where an old mechanical cash register stood on a cluttered desk full of books.  Behind a dingy curtain he heard a woman’s voice, hushed, as though in reverence, as one would have at a library.  Lucilius delicately pressed the small metal button of a bell and the tone rolled out through the soft air of the bookshop.  There was delight in the woman’s voice, a giggle.  An old man emerged from the parting curtains, smiling.  He raised his head too high too see Lucilius, looking down at him through low-slung glasses.

“Well hello there,” the old man said.

“Hello to you too,” Lucilius said.

“Feel like reading today?” the old man asked.

“Sure seems like it,” Lucilius said.  The old man looked at the book that Lucilius slid forward on the desk.  The old man picked it up. 

“Oh yea,” the old man said with a wider smile.  “this stuff.  Not bad.”

Lucilius chuckled to himself.

“Seems promising.”

SETBACK TRAINING

October 26th, 2019

Major setbacks in life are going to show up.  More than anything they present the opportunity to be crushed, reduced to an emotional mess and potentially totally incapable of taking the next reasonable step.

So how do you prepare for something like that?

Like anything else, you start small, with micro-setbacks. 

Let’s take the smallest, and most literal set-back possible:

Stubbing your toe.

It sucks, it happens frequent enough and until now it might seem like one of the most senseless and unnecessary pains life has to offer on the regular.

It’s the mosquito of moving through physical space.

But unlike the frail, flying vampire, stubbing your toe is an opportunity to prepare for things that are much much worse.

Imagine it for a moment.  You are stopped in your tracks.  A pain shoots up your leg, and crashes back down into a super-concentrated point.  You curse, or yell, and perhaps you have the thought that you now have no choice but to endure this dumb pain for a while.  We usually move on from this moment in an attempt to drown the pain by ignoring it and concentrating on other things.

But, you can do something else.  Instead of just registering the annoyance of pain, you can look down at your foot and

imagine something worse.

You could say, imagine that your foot is now missing because some powerful piece of machinery hooked you at just the right angle and amputated it.  How much worse would that be?

If you are lucky enough to have two working feet, just imagine for a moment going through the rest of your life with just one. 

Take it a step further.

. . . . figuratively – of course –

Imagine having no foot and remembering that you used to stub your toe on that missing foot.  What would you give to have to put up with the inconvenience of pain when you stub your foot.  Would it be worth having the foot.  Of course.

This exercise is a mental reframing trick.  It’s a way of putting things into perspective by willfully shifting perspectives. 

Our imaginations can conjure all sorts of terrible things with which we can torture ourselves, but that same mechanism can paradoxically be used to create a sense of gratitude for what we still actually have.

There are innumerable tiny setbacks like this that punctuate our days and weeks like bullet holes.  Each is a pain, an inconvenience, but each is also an opportunity to practice how to deal with setbacks.

This sort of reframing, once well practiced can be used to respond to a setback of any size.  When a major setback finally comes along, It can be dealt with as efficiently and effectively as a mere stubbed toe. 

This sort of practice offers one other benefit.  We aren’t simply equipped for the big stuff.

We’re equipped for everything, and the daily annoyances melt from their prior status.

Our experience of day to day life improves,

and in an age of so much aggravation and frustration. . .

 what could be better?