THE WORD ME

October 5th, 2019

How would you define ‘me’?

Perhaps you might thinking of qualities that you like to think might be attributed to you by friends and family who know you well.  Perhaps hobbies, and a profession would come to mind. 

But what about just the word ‘me’?

Linguistically it’s used to refer to one’s self.

But we need to take a step back from language for a moment.  Each word we are using is it’s own thing.  The sound we hear ourselves make, or the sound we hear when we say the word ‘boat’ is not an actual boat.  It’s a vibration in the air that is picked up by the mechanisms inside our cochlea.  The vibrating air is not the same thing as the boat that we see floating in the ocean.  Nor are the graphical marks that we combine as b-o-a-t.  These are meaningless letters that have a meaning when combined together.   They stand as a verbal and graphical placeholder for the thing we use to float on water with.  It would be cumbersome and very inefficient to use an actual boat every time we wanted to bring it to someone else’s attention.

However, if we return to the word ‘me’, what exactly is it a stand in for?

The person we see in the mirror?

Perhaps.  But if we nitpick at this experience, we realize that it’s just a familiar configuration of light and shadow, that looks like the same thing we see every time we look in a mirror.

What about the limbs that we see in the lower half of our visual field?

For those of us fortunate to have all of our physical faculties, we generally see arms emerging from the lower sides of our visual field and between and below that a body that extends to legs and feet.

Some movies go so far as to plant a camera in this spot so that we seem to get the same exact view that someone having such experiences would have.

Is that what the word ‘me’ is standing in for?

We can make a similar argument to the one with the mirror.  These limbs and this body that we see every time we look down is just a familiar configuration of light, color and shadow.

But there’s an added dimension of sensation.  We can make these limbs touch each other, and there’s an experience that’s added to the experience of sight.  With touch we seem to experience what we see from the inside.

However, we can all remember dreams in which much the same happens.  We have a body and we can touch things.  And yet, the reality of that sensation of ‘touch’ is questionable, because what happens in a dream is not real.

It invokes the line from the Matrix: what is real is just electrical signals interpreted by your brain.

We can circle back to the beginning and recall the qualities that we hope we’d be associated with, the hobbies we do and the profession that characterizes much of our action.  These are far more interesting because they speak of ephemeral things.  Can you touch a hobby?  Can you see trustworthiness?  How exactly do you experience the profession of the novelist?  Even the novelist must sleep and do other things that can’t be classified as the profession of novelist.  The actions that all of these things characterize are innately fleeting.  Like that breath you took in the second minute of the seventeenth hour of the fourth day of last week. 

These attributes of a person are dependent on time in that they take time in order to occur, and by the same virtue they end.  They are more like processes.

The word ‘me’ makes it seem as though there is some definite thing that persists through time.  The same way that a boat is pretty much the same boat when you go back to use it.  Certainly the boat has perhaps decayed a tiny tiny amount and perhaps it’s a little dirty from being in the elements.  But let’s ask, which has most likely changed more: the boat, or the thing we refer to when we say ‘me’?

What if the word ‘me’ didn’t exist?

Would you still exist?

Certainly.  Which begs to wonder. 

Is not the phenomenon of being conscious quite a bit more nuanced than the clunky box created by the word ‘me’?

YEA YEA YEA

October 4th, 2019

It can be so aggravating when someone says yea yea yea, in response to a good point.

But it’s a sign of victory.

The agreement is there, just not emotionally.  Yea yea yea, I know smoking is bad for me.

The common phenomenon is a one to look out for.  It’s not as useful to notice in others as it is to notice in ourselves.

Whenever we hear ourselves say yea yea yea in response to some good point, it’s a moment deserving of a Pause.

What the instance means in broad strokes is that we know we should act differently on some topic, and that we don’t, either because of some unjustifiable emotional reason or because of some kind of chemical influence.  I.E. the nicotine in cigarettes, the sugar in the cereal, the caffeine in the coffee, or the 6-monoacetylmorphine in heroin.

The utterance of yea yea yea is a perfect contradiction:

The actual words are indicative of rational agreement.

and

The tone is indicative of emotional disagreement.

It’s a flag that highlights impasses in who we are.  Issues where we are inconsistent and disjointed.

Ultimately they are opportunities, and of all the opportunities that we have at our disposal and in our awareness, these are often low-hanging fruit because we already have reasons and agreement built in. 

Often a new habit, or the dismantling of a current habit is what’s needed.  And this process of habit formation or habit dismantling also has an intrinsic ability to reshape the emotion that surrounds the issue.

Our emotions are a response to present stimuli.  When we think about the future and formulate feeling about tomorrow, those feelings are intrinsically inaccurate.  We cannot actually feel anything about the future because the topic is a complete unknown.  What we are in fact feeling when we try to assess the future is a reflection of current stimuli. 

We can highlight this with an easy and common example:

“Why don’t you go start a workout routine?”

“I don’t feel like it.”

And that response has no access to what it feels like after 6 months of a solid exercise routine.  Because exercise – for the most part – and once well established feels great.  The feelings here are completely opposite.

How we feel about prospective changes are never accurate simulations of how we will feel after the change. 

This disjunction of feeling between present and future is at the core of human stubbornness, laziness, and other things that can fall into a pattern of perseveration, whether that be smoking a cigarette or even something as controversially complicated as depression.

Large topics aside,

we can start small, and look for clues in our own person.

Like when someone recommends starting a practice of meditation in response to our description of anxiety, and we hear ourselves say…

yea, yea, yea…

This episode references Episode 23: Pause and Episode 531: The Reason Behind a Lie.

THE INFINITE MONEY QUESTION

October 3rd, 2019

Here’s an exercise that’s worth trying with anyone you know.  It’s particularly good with new acquaintances.

Give the person the premise:

You suddenly have infinite money.  Not just billions or trillions, but Infinite money.  You quite literally can’t spend all of it, nor can it ever run out, nor will this source of money ever be taken away from you.

Now, after your period of hedonism.  Because everyone is going to go travelling, or drink the most expensive wine, or buy ungodly amounts of shoes and nice coats, and all that stuff and that needs to get out of the way. 

And that’s the thing… this period of hedonism and gluttony would get old.

The only real reason that such things are so appealing to us now is because we can’t do this.  It’s like a dog chasing it’s tail.  The moment it catches it’s tail, it no longer knows what to do.

But back to the question:

After all that hedonism had run it’s course….

what would you do?

Ask yourself the question.  And then ask others.  It’s been well tested and it works wonders to peel back the layers and reveal interesting things about people.

CONDUCIVE

October 2nd, 2019

Late nights can be strangely conducive to getting work done.  There is something quiet and contemplative about the time when most people have succumbed to slumber.

At least some of the reasons are easy to point out: there’s fewer people who are likely to bother you, what with people being asleep or making the polite assumption that you might be asleep.  There’s also fewer places open that might tempt one to venture out, and of course darkness takes the flashy color out of everything.

It’s worthy to note here that the iphone’s screen can be converted to greyscale in the settings and this has been shown to make addictive apps… less addictive.  To think about why this might be the case, just think about how flashy and colorful everything is at a casino.  Especially those slot machines.

And yet, when we try to sit down for a stint of concentrated work in the middle of the day, what do we do to make things more conducive?  We check email to make sure there’s nothing lingering we should take care of.  We go to YouTube to find the perfect music to listen to and expose ourselves to all of the algorithmically addictive selections of recommended videos.  We get a snack to make sure we won’t get hungry.

And of course we keep our phone close by… just in case.

Ironically, we do the exact opposite of what happens with nightfall.  We add potential distractions to our plate instead of understanding the allure of the meditative night.

Night time eliminates distractions. 

There are still plenty to waste time with.  Youtube for one never sleeps.  But with less overall chances to be distracted, we are more likely to have the time needed to engage in deeper work.

It’s not unusual for those with some kind of 9-5 job to say that their best and often only work really gets done in the morning.  Some people get to work early for this period.  And it makes sense as an extension of night time.  Less people around, less chance of being distracted.

But of course, the reasons why night time can be so conducive to productivity can be manufactured at any time of day.  The phone can be turned off for an hour or two.  YouTube can be consciously avoided in favor of some old faithful choice.  The door can be shut, or the location can be changed. 

Strangely enough, even fasting is a valuable tool for productivity because a firm resolution to not eat ultimately precludes the break of getting food from being a potential option that can crop up in order to break our attention.

As with most things, we are quick to state what works or doesn’t work for us.  But we’re slower or even totally inactive when it comes to knowing exactly why something works or doesn’t work. 

It’s this second perspective on our own preferences that unlocks a flexibility and agility that we can use to cater situations more to our use. 

By rearranging the situation we have, we can make things more conducive to our own ends.  Whether that be focused attention or some other aim in life.

RESOLUTION PREREQUISITE

October 1st, 2019

Resolution usually increases before we go.

The moon, for example, was first just a disk in the sky with some textured coloration.  Then Galileo invented the telescope and we started to get a better look at the thing.  Telescopes became better and better, and by the time the first Apollo mission landed on the moon, we had the whole thing mapped in pretty good resolution.

The same thing is true about things in the other direction.  The first microscope was invented in the early 1600’s but it would be quite some time before that resolution increased to the degree that we’d be able to tinker with all of the tiny structures we could see.

Perhaps this is one of the reasons why visualizing a goal is very effective:

Vague is very difficult to execute because action requires specificity. 

Any goal or achievement that we might strive for boils down to a string of basic actions.  The higher resolution we have with regards to what each little detail requiring an action might be, the less time we spend simply being stuck.

Resolution increases agency by providing navigational details. 

Think of it the other way around.  If you instantaneously found yourself in a totally different environment and it was completely pitch dark, what would be the first, default reaction?

Well, you certainly wouldn’t go waltzing around.

You’d freeze.  You’d stay very still for at least a moment, and then you’d start putting out feelers, putting a toe out to see if there are safe places to step and what not.

Even taking a few casual steps could actually be dangerous in such a situation. 

And with everything, it remains dangerous until we gain some resolution on the environment.

It’s a good rubric for analyzing failure:

Did I understand what I was actually trying to do?  Or was a I missing a lot of the picture?  What parts?  Or was it simply details I missed due to a lack of resolution?

How do I zoom in for the next attempt?

Or perhaps I need to zoom out?

This episode references Episode 54: The Well-Oiled Zoom