Tinkered Thinking

Certainly we can always imagine a bird, carrying this seed high up to the top of the mountain and dropping it. But in our quest to constantly level-up, what exactly does the analogy of a bird bird look like? Winning the lottery perhaps? Is such a smooth and easy climb more a factor of luck as opposed to anything else?

We can think for a moment about just how great a spot it is for a tree to be at the top of a mountain. The vantage point gets you all the sunshine possible, as opposed to deep in a valley below. Not to mention the great view considering as a tree you’re stuck there for quite a while.

Birds aside for a moment, how else do forests come to cover mountains?

It’s actually pretty easy to visualize and looks a lot like taking the stairs. A tree springs up, gains some height, and then shoots out a branch towards the mountain on the side where it is sloping up from the base of the tree. A seed drops from the branch and boom: another tree slightly higher up on the slope of the mountain. Repeat until the species can go no higher.

If we think about the species as a single entity that is moving up the mountain, it’s very much like the movement of our feet while taking the stairs. A foot drops on the first step, just as a seed hits the forest floor, then from that seed, growth lifts straight up and after a certain point it begins moving laterally out with the branches, just as we lift a foot and then move it laterally forward. Then the seed drops, just as we drop our foot from a height that is higher than the stair we are aiming for.

This is how trees gain higher ground, how we get to the upstairs bathroom, and how Pythagoras enabled geometry teachers to torture students.

The analogy lends itself further: the stepping process requires this up and down process. Dropping a seed can seem like a setback if the goal is to go up. But only if we look at an isolated iteration. If we look at the whole process, we see that the trend is ultimately unstoppable, even if it is punctuated at every point with a move downward.

So it goes in learning,

in business,

art,

and so on.

And that’s it, that’s life. Just a constant trudge uphill to try and level-up.

Or is it?

Is there a way to flip that infamous contradiction on it’s head and eat cake while having it?

While we trudge uphill, we must not forget the possibility of the birds.

On our quest to slowly step up the slope, can we perhaps also try to make the very thing we seek to produce even more attractive to lucky opportunities?

It’s certainly worthwhile to try. Who knows what virtuous current in society might lift your efforts to new heights. Even if it never happens, there’s certainly opportunity to play with as we put forth each and every effort.

This episode references Episode 42: Level-Up.

BLOAT & BUST

June 11th, 2019

We’re all too familiar with the phrase boom & and bust, especially as applied to financial markets. But, this process of expansion and contraction is present in numerous unrelated areas.

This bloat & bust process can even be seen in the world of words, and understanding the mechanics of this process and being able to recognize when we are being swept away in the unproductive bloat of a word that popular culture has singled out for fame is essential for detaching ourselves from the danger that arrives when such linguistic bloat renders a word too nebulous, thereby busting the utility of it’s meaning.

Episode 332 of Tinkered Thinking explored how this process is currently affecting the words ‘power’ and ‘entitlement’, and offers a potential lens through which we see how our ability to effectively navigate the world towards results is drastically hindered.

The word ‘perfect’ has also somewhat fallen victim to this process of bloat & bust. Where once the word merely meant ‘finished’ or ‘done’ with regards to some goal or task, it has metastasized into a concept akin to an unattainable ideal. An obsession with outcomes instead of process is perhaps hindering our ability to even take a first step.

Another word that has perhaps grown beyond it’s utility is the word ‘expert’. It seems as though there is no group of people more capable of making a bad call than the authoritatively phrased panel of experts.

An interesting way to look at the etymological history of the word expert, is to first cut it up into ‘ex’ and ‘per’.

ex means ‘out of’

and

‘per’ which ultimately forms the root meaning for the word fear means something like ‘risk’ or ‘to try’.

An expert, in this case is someone who has pulled something ‘out of’ + ‘risk’, or who has discovered something by trial. And yet, today, experts are constructed mainly through study, not through practice.

The word expert has drifted primarily because of the new educational systems that have arisen in the last hundred years.

To highlight the nuance here, we can ask a simple question: who is more of an expert in flying? A bird? or an ornithologist?

Surely the word expert is either experiencing a bust or is beginning to.

One last example, and perhaps the most important one in recent years, is the word facts. The importance of this word cannot be overstated. Without a word that solidly encapsulates the meaning that we have ascribed to the word ‘fact’, we begin to drift into very dangerous territory as we risk more and more the possibility of operating according to a fantasy world that dislodges us from physical reality.

The word fact infamously took a dangerous hit when it was bastardized with an adjective in the phrase:

Alternative Facts

This phrase neatly encapsulates the exact problem that we must seek to avoid with our language. The thing about a fact is that there is no alternative to it. The phrase alternative facts is a contradiction when scrutinized.

The words ‘expert’ and ‘perfect’ have perhaps experienced a similar kind of contradictory bloat. To strive for perfection is really to never finish working on something, when the word perfect used to refer to something finished, and expert, if we hold on to the distant etymological meaning requires the very thing that most academics don’t really do: risk, which is now the domain of the entrepreneur.

So much of our world and what we have depends on language, and though the ordered, civil world around us might seem solid and permanent, it can crumble faster than we can imagine. Our first and best defense against having everything fall apart is a mindful use and scrutiny of language.

This episode references Episode 332: Power & Entitlement, Episode 154: Progress or Perfection?, and Episode 417: Perfection Paralysis

TINKER TALK

June 10th, 2019

To think or talk,

never mind the walk.

The myriad ways

we wile away the days,

With no real doing,

just a mind always chewing

on some plan

written in the mind’s sand,

before the memory’s tide

sweeps every design aside.

How does that blessed view,

from a neural web accrue,

and breathe life into our extraordinary sight,

of this universe filled with reality’s light.

And yet we run electric circles,

between our ears,

avoiding actual hurdles,

staying safe from fears,

only ever talking,

lest we tinker

and hear a new voice knocking

from a new thinker,

New words from our own lips

our consciousness sips.

The fruit of fresh thought,

an idea to act now caught.

To tinker with thought and talk

is to tinker with the path we walk.

A LUCILIUS PARABLE: EXTRAORDINARY CIRCUMSTANCE

June 9th, 2019

Lucilius was in a crowded market, sitting for a meal and reflecting on the warmth of the sun. He took a bite of food and thought of his good fortune in that moment. To be among the bustling people, on a beautiful day with food before him after a long fast. A small smile graced his face as he chewed his food and looked at the people moving along in the market. Until a face stopped moving, and Lucilius noticed someone was looking directly at him with a strange look of startle. A wide smile grew on the person’s face and then the person began to walk directly towards Lucilius. This person stopped just before Lucilius, eyes bright, and said:

“You’re Lucilius.”

Lucilius looked at this person, a little confused and curious, chewing his food slower and slower, until he swallowed. He quickly looked around.

“Well, yes, I am.”

“I’ve been wanting to meet you for so long,” the person said.

“You have?” Lucilius said.

“Yes, so much.”

Lucilius looked down for a moment, thinking. He looked back up at the person’s beaming face.

“How do you know who I am?”

“I read about you in a book.”

“You did?”

“Yes, and ever since, I’ve been dying to meet you.”

Lucilius thought for a moment, wondering how a book ever got written about him without his knowing. Surely this was some kind of madness, or a dream maybe.

“Does this book have pictures?”

“Sort of, but none of you.”

“Well then how did you recognize me?”

“I got in touch with the author.”

“Who might that be, by the way?” Lucilius took another bite of food, thoroughly amused with how the day was turning out.

“I never found out but, seemed pleasant enough.”

“So you found me through this author?

“Yea?”

“How exactly did you do that?”

“Well I asked the author how I could meet you, and at first the author laughed and thought it was a silly idea, but then it was decided that I could meet you if a story was written about us meeting.”

Lucilius stopped chewing his food altogether. He swallowed. He carefully looked around, suspicious of this world around him. His eyes narrowed, and he rested and opened his awareness, checking the details of everything around him. The text on the gummy plastic menu next to him. The clean silverware sitting in a coffee cup shinning dully from many washes. The few words he could pick out from the mellifluous clatter of many languages oozing from the crowd. He looked again at this person in front of him.

“So you’re telling me that your able to meet me today, here and now because a story was written about us meeting?”

The person paused and reflected for a brief moment as though to make sure all the details were right.

“Yes.. I think that’s right.”

“Well,” Lucilius said, “that would mean we’re not actually in this market but in a story that someone has written.”

The person’s brow furrowed a little and an unsteady look began to overcome their face.

“Actually,” Lucilius said upon second reflection. “We don’t really exist in the story. If what you tell me is true, then we really only exist in the minds of anyone who has read the story.”

The person looked even more troubled. Lucilius gestured at the market around them and the little open-air café where he was sitting.

“Does this look like a story, or what someone visualizes while they read a -” Lucilius froze, stopping mid-sentence. Then his arms collapsed to his side. He slumped a little and mumbled to himself,

“Well, of course it does.”

He put a hand to his chin and looked as though he was thinking harder. Then his face lit up.

“Wait, you said you got in touch with this author?”

“Yea, of course.”

“How did you get in contact with the author, do you know where this author is?”

The person’s eyes shifted to a side, then they jittered around as though looking for something.

“Actually,” The person’s brow furrowed, and worry began to flood their face. “I can’t. . . remember.”

“Oh crap,” Lucilius said. “the author just locked us in.”

Lucilius pondered a little more as the person before him began to grow more and more worried, looking around just as Lucilius had earlier, questions arising that could venture nowhere into the past.

After a moment Lucilius noticed how distressed the person was becoming.

“Oh hey, I’m being rude, why don’t you sit with me and eat with me.”

The person focused and their face brightened some before moving around the bar banister to take a stool next to Lucilius.

“It’s a beautiful day,” Lucilius said, “and there’s nothing stopping us from enjoying it a little.”

The person was nodding, happy to be taking a seat.

A kind waiter approached and as this new person was ordering some food, Lucilius pondered the whole situation a little more. His thoughts were orbiting something he himself had said. Locked in. He looked around again, taking in the sight of the market, feeling the warmth of the sun on his skin, the fresh air slowly filling his lungs, the taste of the food in his mouth, the sounds of it all. Locked in, he thought again.

Then he burst out laughing.

The waiter and Lucilius’ new friend both looked his way.

“So sorry. Please, don’t mind me.”

Lucilius’ friend finished ordering and turned back to him. “What was so funny?”

“Ok, without thinking about it too much, remember when I said that the author just locked us in?”

A flash of worry came upon the face of Lucilius’ new friend, as they nervously spoke. “Yea…”

“Well, let me ask you: can you get out of your own experience of what’s going on?”

“What do you mean?”

Lucilius thought for a moment.

“Well, you are limited to what you see, hear, touch, and all that good stuff, and you can’t somehow get away from any of those things. You can’t jump out of your body and experience, say, what a tree is experiencing. Surely there are some ways to have radically altered experiences” Lucilius said, interrupting himself impromptu, as he reflected and riffed on his thoughts at the same time. “but even with radically altered experiences there’s no externally verifiable evidence that something like an out of body experience is possible, except from a subjective point of view.” Lucilius looked at his new friend.

“I think I’m following you,” his new friend said, nodding.

“Thank the author…” Lucilius muttered with a smile.

“What?”

“Nothing,” Lucilius said, “just a joke to myself.”

He swallowed his smile and continued. “So if everyone is limited to their own point of view in these respects, then we don’t ever have to worry about being in a story.”

“Why’s that?” Lucilius’ friend asked.

Lucilius looked around. “Even if it is a story, we are still experiencing what we are experiencing, you can look at the story as a sort of trap or prison, but you can also look at the experience of your own consciousness in the same way, as a trap or prison that you can’t get out of.”

“That sounds kind of terrible,” Lucilius’ friend said and Lucilius pondered a moment.

“Oh, that’s actually just because we have negative associations with the words ‘trap’ and ‘prison’. I guess a better one would be submarine or space ship. Without those containers we’d be screwed if we found ourselves in the exact same place, that being deep under water or in space. No one in a space ship or in a submarine while in space or deep underwater wants to get out of those vehicles because they allow a person to live in such extraordinary circumstances.”

“And you’re saying our body is like a submarine or spaceship.”

“Yes, maybe even just our experience of consciousness is what I’m talking about. Story or not, it allows us to experience the extraordinary circumstance of this universe.”

DYNAMISM - PART II: VICIOUS SUBTRACTION

June 8th, 2019

Read Part I for a full context of this episode.

Part I began with a quote from Jung that refers to a demonic dynamism. It comes from a part of an essay called The Will to Power, and it’s important to see in what way this demonic dynamism crescendos with Jung’s intended meaning.

The quote continues:

“The individual seldom knows anything of this; to him, as an individual, it is incredible that he should ever in any circumstances go beyond himself. But let these harmless creatures form a mass, and there emerges a raging monster; and each individual is only one tiny cell in the monster’s body, so that for better or worse he must accompany it on its bloody rampages and even assist it to the utmost. Having a dark suspicion of these grim possibilities, man turns a blind eye to the shadow-side of human nature.”

What Jung is talking about here is group-think, and the best way to illustrate group-think in this context is to visualize a buffalo jump. When the buffalo were numerous and stampeding, they could be naively lead to run straight off of a cliff. The whole herd would go over, and it was primarily because members of the herd could not see ahead of those in front of them, and when the edge of the cliff came, it was already too late, along with the fact that there were usually buffalo running right behind and to the sides, forming a trap. Sadly, this sort of thing happens with groups of people.

We need only think of the ordered precision of Nazi Germany during the 1940’s to realize that:

Regular people are totally capable of being similarly trapped inside of a system that does not easily allow thinking and behavior that is different from the group at large.

Climate Change poses another sort of buffalo jump, but this time, it is all of humanity running towards the edge of the cliff. Absolutely everyone is stuck in this system which is pushing the planet into a fever state that will kill off many of us if we don’t drastically change the direction of our herd.

It’s important to remember that Buffalo Jumps were formed by corralling stampeding herds into a specific direction. Native Americans riding horses, would steer the herd from outside of the herd, having a much more expansive awareness and knowledge regarding the situation and the geography. This example makes something very important extremely obvious: it would be useless not to mention suicidal to try and steer the herd from inside the herd.

In order to have a hope of altering the herd’s direction, we need to think outside of the group’s behavior and ideas. We do not need to physically leave humanity, as the Native American’s were physically outside of the herd, but rather, expand our knowledge and awareness of the situation so that we have a larger, fuller picture of the situation, and then make productive moves with that perspective to see what dangers are ahead and what it would take to change direction.

The stampeding herd is just going about it’s natural business, just as we do: driving cars, buying imported foods, leaving the heat on and all other manner of behavior that ultimately stresses the climate. From an individual stand point, it would be useless on a global level to attempt living a carbon neutral life. This kind of thinking is akin to a single buffalo trying to run in a different direction while deep in the herd. That buffalo is going to have a hard time and ultimately make little change in the larger picture. Someone with a larger perspective and understanding who can identify the key forces that are bringing us in such direction, can then make strategic dents in the movement of the herd. We might think of someone like Elon Musk who sees an end to the use of fossil fuels by rapidly pushing the electrification of transport with the aim of capitalizing on the effectively infinite resource of the sun.

If we recall the discussion of writing on paper in Part I, we can see that renewables offer the same hack that digitization offered to writing. By using fossil fuels, we are rearranging the planet’s composition, moving compounds that were formerly under ground to the atmosphere, and like a monk writing in the first century with very limited paper, we are running out of space in the atmosphere where carbon can comfortably fit, consequence free.

If however, we switch our energy source to exclusively renewable technology, we can keep moving our cars, trucks and ships for a very long time, in just the same way the monk would not have to worry about running out of paper if we gave him a laptop and a fat hard drive.

Carl Jung’s quote that describes people as part of a monster’s body, doing terrible things need not have all the scary language attached to it. Driving a car around while doing errands has no obvious scariness attached to it, and yet it is contributing to humanity’s drive towards a monstrous direction.

What we are talking about here is a system built of routine behaviors and habits. Our brains are geared for this kind of thing. In fact some people surmise that all of our actions boil down to some nuance of habit.

Whatever new behavior or action that we undertake that ultimately has a repetitive nature will eventually yield compound effects once given enough time. For a long time these compounding effects are nearly invisible making the exponential nature of such compounding very unintuitive. The systemic habit that we have is adding to an atmosphere that has a finite resource of capacity before climate starts to change.

Creative hacks that come about, like the effect digitization had on the limits of writing, are crucial points when a system changes by changing the traditional limits of a finite resource. Renewables have the potential to offer an identical freedom from traditional finite limits by invoking the sun.

Our attention should draw to the systems of repeated action that we create, and what sort of editing process we can unleash on these systems. Left to their own devices, these systems, whether on the global scale of a planet, or on the scale of the individual with personal habits, can lead us to monstrous places. Habits, once in place most often become self-reinforcing. The more it is done, the more likely it will be done again. Inevitably, an addictive quality rises in anything that we repeat often enough, making such behaviors innately attractive.

If this habit happens to have negative consequences, then our only defense is to Pause, and reflect deeply on the nature of the system we have built that is our life repeated day in and day out. Without such mindful reflection, we slip in deeper by virtue of the compounding effects of our repeated behaviors that continually gain more and more sway over our conscious ability to change.

There is nothing inherently evil about this process, it can be applied to produce incredibly good results or incredibly bad results. Episode 386 of Tinkered Thinking, entitled White Diamond explores more fully the structure of this process and the different directions to which it is applied.

More importantly, this editing process that we must apply to our own personal systems and to the global systems is something that can never rest. Because circumstances are always changing, we must always ask:

Exactly what and where should we add and subtract?

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