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Daily, snackable writings to spur changes in thinking.
Building a blueprint for a better brain by tinkering with the code.
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The SECOND illustrated book from Tinkered Thinking is now available!
SPIN CHESS
A Chess app from Tinkered Thinking featuring a variant of chess that bridges all skill levels!
REPAUSE
A meditation app is forthcoming. Stay Tuned.
ARTIFICIAL HARDSHIP
August 26th, 2019
Occasionally you will come across a discussion between wealthy people who came from humble beginnings concerning how to raise children. Such successful people almost always point out how the hardship of poverty or lack of opportunity was a valuable aspect of their growth. But what to do about the children? Create artificial hardship?
Most of these discussions default to the conclusion that creating an artificial hardship is unrealistic and would somehow not work.
Strangely, such discussions fail to see how much artificial hardship already exists on a broad scale.
With all due respect to those who are struggling in a legitimately impoverished situation, the modern world affords many of us a degree of abundance that is staggering when paired with the standards of our ancestors. The further back in time we go, the harder things get. Simple as that. The ‘good ol’ days’ are simply an illusion and a fantasy to escape the pressures and stresses that we might have now.
The double-sided case and point for this would be our immensely complicated medical procedures, -such as bypass surgery- that are implemented to deal with the impacts of abundant food. Here we have two radically new advances that would astonish our ancestors.
Abundant Food?
Like so much food that they eventually have to cut you open and unclog all the food because it’s stopping your heart?
The first artificial hardship in relation to this problem is obvious.
People want to look good naked.
So they go to the gym.
This is another condition that would boggle many of our ancestors.
Wait, you’re saying you go to a special place to do hard manual labour? And you pay for this? What in the hell is wrong with you, go home…relax…. enjoy life for once. Like, what in God’s name did all of us ancestors work so hard for?
We can highlight another artificial hardship that applies to the same issue of weight and health as impacted by abundant food.
The practice of fasting.
This is a growing trend and the research to support the health benefits has been well established for decades and only continues to grow in robustness.
Now think of all those ancestors we’ve had that suffered through long famines.
So you’re telling me you have all this food available… that you can eat virtually any cuisine you want by just going to ‘restaurants’, and you purposely starve yourself? Frankly, on behalf of every human that suffered and died just so you could exist right now: you’re an asshole.
The modern world is ultimately a collection of evolving solutions that were implemented to address these age-old concerns. We are making things easier for ourselves.
But for what purpose, and what’s the real effect?
Clearly we go a little overboard with our solutions, and we’ve failed to anticipate that too much of a solution actually becomes a new problem. Too much food, too much inactivity, and boom, you have an unhealthy and uncomfortable life.
As with many things, the middle path balanced between the extremes of solution and problem is optimal.
But back to those rich kids for a moment.
A lack of hardship certainly has the potential to create a fairly useless human that creates unproductive problems for themselves.
On the other end of the spectrum we have those who are stuck in a downward spiral of debt and stress who –for the most part- can’t think clear enough to find a way out. Chronic stress is potentially another new and unexpected problem created by the modern world. This seems clear from the fact that we are not built to handle chronic stress. Short and even intense intervals of stress are actually quite good for our brain, but keep that engine in a high gear and the effects quickly flip to the exact reverse.
(As a quick side note, the neuroendocrinologist Robert Sapolsky is an excellent resource for exploring the intricacies and implications of chronic stress.)
Clearly, a human is likely to do best somewhere in the middle of these extremes. Some resources, and the opportunity to take a few risks can go a long way in this modern world.
But unlike previous times, that opportunity to take a few risks ultimately involves manufacturing some artificial hardship for one’s self.
Just as going to the gym and fasting to feel good and look good is an artificial hardship..
A university course is artificial hardship.
A side hustle outside of a 9-5 job is artificial hardship.
Getting up on stage for amateur night at a comedy club is artificial hardship.
Writing a blog or a book or a podcast that no one may ever read or listen to is artificial hardship.
Natural hardship in the modern world is a matter of constructing and tailoring a set of artificial hardships.
But why?
Well, stay tuned for tomorrow’s episode.
A LUCILIUS PARABLE: PERFUME
August 25th, 2019
This parable is now published in the second volume of Lucilius Parables. Click on the book below to visit the store to consider purchasing.
Lucilius breathed in the stinking air slowly, carefully. He’d made a dangerous wedge of himself between the wooden hull of the ship and the cold slick skin of the carcass. Luckily, the sea was an immaculate stillness; unlike the last time he’d drawn short straw for the monkey rope. It was devil dancing. And last time the boys above had a laugh at him while he lanced sharks and bobbled around on the dead whale, slipping, trying simply to keep from falling into that dark blinking gap between carcass and ship. The first mate, a brute they called Roman, took a perverse sort of pity on him and emptied half a bottle of rum on his head from above. Lucilius’ eyes had stung shut for long blundering minutes, but his beard was soaked, and Lucilius spent the rest of the night sucking oblivion from his own whiskers and laughing at the blank stare of of black eyes in the water.
On this night there was not a sound, as though it had all died with the big fish lashed to the ship’s side. Lucilius loosened the slip knot of the monkey rope pinched round his waist, careful not to lose his bearable posture.
In the moonlight he could make out the designs on his arms. He rolled a forearm to look at the faded image of a girl, the lines already decades old.
Lucilius wondered were she was now, Serafina. He closed his eyes on the cartoonish likeness of her, and in his mind’s eye the simple dotted ovals of color snapped to real green eyes narrowing on him from across the room.
A silly tune rose in the gullet, the same he’d sung softly then, to get her to look, making her nose wrinkle with a smile.
Seraphina. . .
She’s the queen me boys of all the gals that live in the ol’ casino…
She finished buckling her shoe and stood. She misted herself quickly with a small bottle, squeezing a braided bladder hanging from it’s golden top. Walked slowly to him, as the man’s mind raced for a fresh line to add to his new song.
Seraphina’s got no shoes, I been ashore, I seen’er
Seraphina… Seraphina
She hiked up the damp dress and sat on him, facing him, lacing wrists together behind his neck as he sang.
She’s got no time ta put’em on, that hardworked Serafina. . .
The woman’s look sullied. She looked down, and leaned in closer to him.
“You were gone a long time.”
Lucilius shrugged. “Long, hard work to get all that goop and goo to make those pretty powders you wear - that perfume you puff about you.”
She looked at him now, her eyes softer than he’d known and full of question.
“Think maybe you’ll stay? Get a farm or something?”
Even after his long years, Lucilius was still a fool. A fool thinking fool thoughts, merely recording the moment for wiser times.
“I don’t know. Hadn’t really thought about it. Someone’s got to do that dirty work tho. It’s a life for now,” he said as she held his eyes with her own for a last tentative moment. She got up, and left the room.
Lucilius touched the tattoo, but all he felt was his own skin. She was a ghost in the ink now, he realized as he remembered the curious coin on the nightstand. He looked for her after, but she was gone. Only a faint and sweet scent of her fading.
Lucilius looked back out over the sea of black glass. They’d fetched two whales during the day with only enough time to flense and roll one of them and take the head of the second, the blubber now boiling in the tryworks. More goop and goo to barrel and roll below, to take home.
He thought of Seraphina’s little bottle of perfume and the dead whale he was sitting on. He wondered, if any of this stinking carcass would end up in Seraphina’s little bottle.
The carcass bumped, and Lucilius looked around with dread. The carcass bumped again, and through the rubber skin, Lucilius could feel the vibrations of wrestle in the water. He reached up and tugged on the monkey rope to wake his shipmate. The man grumbled, the rope around Lucilius’ waist tightened, cinched him and he hobbled himself up, steadying himself with the side of the ship. His scarred feet took small tentative steps and he swung the lance around again to prod the dark waters for it’s thieves.
ORGANIZED SYSTEMS
August 24th, 2019
If we are always playing catch-up with something, then it’s time for some creative thinking and sustained effort for the creation of a new habit.
Our habits comprise our systems.
And every recurring problem requires a systematic solution.
The difference between solving a problem ourselves over and over and having the same thing solved by a habit is a subtle one.
Tinkered Thinking will take itself as a case study. As this platform closes in on 500 episodes, there is one large concern with how it is going.
Often Tinkered Thinking is behind. By a day, or two, or a whole handful. The catch up required when these days add up leads to subpar thinking, writing and analysis. While this is sometimes due to the logistics of recording, it harks of a deeper problem with the approach of execution.
Clearly, the appropriate habits are not in place to make certain that episodes are released on time. And the only way to ensure this happens, is to get ahead of the curve and stay there.
It’s a worthy assumption that if Tinkered Thinking can stay ahead of this curve for a solid month that the trend will hold.
But, in order to accomplish this and make it hold, some creative incentives and structures are required. Not just the brute-force-iron-will that most people assume it takes.
The work of James Clear and Charles Duhigg come in especially handy here.
One of the attributes of habit formation that they comment on regards thresholds.
Apparently, repeated behaviors become notably more entrenched and therefore more likely to continue when certain run-streaks are achieved. These are 3 days, 7 days, 21, 28, 30, 90, and 180… if memory is correct.
These thresholds will be used in two ways. When a threshold is reached with number of days equaling on-time posting, some reward will be applied, and each threshold will have a different reward with increasing value.
On top of this, there will be a second set of rewards for the number of back-logged episodes that equal the same threshold values.
Posting on-time three days in a row gets a reward, but amounting a back-log of 3 additional days also initiates a reward. The purpose of this isn’t just to post on time, but to stay ahead in the event of something unexpected that makes the work of Tinkered Thinking impossible for that day.
To be sure this is an experiment, and will probably require tinkering, the details of which, will probably comprise a future episode as the effective is gleaned from the ineffective.
LET GO
August 23rd, 2019
One of the earliest episodes of Tinkered Thinking, Episode 15, titled Firebomb Your Life, is all about starting over, cutting ties, moving, and seizing the opportunity of a totally fresh situation.
Doing this physically, by actually moving to a new place is the most drastic, and probably the easiest way to do this.
but it is possible every day, at every moment.
It’s a matter of letting go of the past more than anything else.
The reason why it is so difficult is – in large part – because of the concept of Rose-Coloured Cuffs, as discussed in Episode 33. People: friends and family, trigger the person we have been to remerge in the moment, by reflex.
Letting go of all that is very difficult, whereas moving to another place affords a situation with none of the influences to trigger the person we have been.
But it’s still possible. To let go of the person we have been.
It’s clearly very unlikely as we don’t see it happening all the time. But rarity does not mean impossible.
It also doesn’t seem likely that someone would be able to let go in this way without a strong practice of mindfulness.
In this context, the gift of a mindfulness practice simply allows a person to thoughtfully pause before reacting in a reflexive, canned sort of way that is the hallmark of who they’ve been. Without this pause, it’s difficult to see an avenue by which a person could possibly let go of who they have been in favor of better actions they might take.
GRIP
August 22nd, 2019
When someone tells you to get a grip, what’s going on?
Are you about to fall? Or perhaps we are about to float off and lose touch with reality.
Indeed, how can you grip something that you can’t even touch?
The word ‘humility’ has etymological roots that reference the ground, as in ‘being grounded’. (Those etymological roots are about as literal as it can get, figuratively speaking of course)
The opposite of humility is marked by a kind of conceit, the core of which pays heed to its own idea of reality as opposed to what’s really going on out there in the world. It’s the opposite of being grounded – sometimes quite literally.
So what do we need to touch, grasp and grip when we’ve lost it?
The short answer is reality.
The long answer entails a troubling question: what exactly is reality if not the thing we currently think is going on?
In this light, it makes it sound as though reality is something that other people see. We are left in the dark of our own ideas.
How can you have access to any other conscious experience than the one you currently have?
The answer is you can’t, of course.
The subtle shift required here, is how we pay attention to what is going on.
Often, our experience of the present is tiled over with thoughts. These mostly fall into a category of a habit of interpretation. We assume we’ve seen or experienced what is going on before and our prior convictions, impressions and conclusions are referenced and repeated,
instead of,
letting all that go and opening up our attention to the present moment.
It’s all those prior convictions, opinions and thoughts that deactivate gravity, allowing our being to float off into a land of pretend.
We are so susceptible to this because of the tendency to save cognitive effort and simply reference some foregone conclusion, combined with the fact that those foregone conclusions probably weren’t all that accurate in the first place. Not to mention that such conclusions may not apply to the current moment at all, despite some superficial similarities.
In order to get a grip, it’s almost always necessary to let go of prior ideas, notions, feelings and beliefs.
To get a grip of reality as it exists in the current moment, it requires our full attention, and how can anyone do that while some part of the screen is obscured by all these thoughts from the past?
In it’s simplest form, in order to get a grip on the present, we must let go of the past.
This episode references Episode 492: Letting (yourself) Go