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?

Purchase books that influenced this episode right below.

DYNAMISM - PART I: ADDING AND SUBTRACTING

June 7th, 2019

This two part episode is dedicated to @SE_Cauldron who prompted this topic with a quote from Carl Jung. Find him on twitter

 

 

 

 

 

Carl Jung once wrote: “It is a frightening thought that man also has a shadow side to him, consisting not just of little weaknesses and foibles, but of a positively demonic dynamism.”

 

When it comes to that shadowy side of humanity, there’s a lot of sexiness that we can often attribute to it or often see attributed to it, and it often seems to have a kind of seductive pull.

 

The overt reference to intimate relations is an easy place to start in order to begin unpacking some questions and thoughts that orbit this idea that Jung is putting forth about demonic dynamism.

 

It’s perhaps useful to note further that dynamism: is the quality of vigorous action and progress.

 

We can begin by asking: when does something like sexual attraction actually cause destructive negative outcomes?  In a trusting relationship it is widely deemed as a very good thing, but then in other contexts it flips into this shadowy function that perhaps has a touch of evil.  Speaking both bluntly and very generally, why would a married person cheat, and why does the prospect of that experience offer so much pull for so many people?

 

For those who find themselves in an unhealthy relationship, or simply an unhappy one, the attraction of such an experience is generally greater, and perhaps due to a straight forward reason:  the act itself becomes a viable reason to dissolve the unhappy marriage. 

 

The ‘evil’ act in this case actually serves a practical utilitarian purpose.  It’s much easier to end such unhappy relationships with such a blatant violation of the verbal agreements that often serve as the foundation for behavior in such relationships.  While the reasons for dissolution of relationships are varied, this particular avenue is by no means rare, and it is perhaps because this specific violation is built into the original framework that is supposed to hold such people together. Put simply, the way most traditional marriages are verbally constructed specifically states this avenue for making it fall apart.  It’s as though we were following instructions for putting together a piece of IKEA furniture, and discover the manual simultaneously describes the method for taking it apart.

 

To highlight the same point with another example, we can think of a kid playing with LEGOs. 

 

Anyone who played with LEGOs as a kid knows the inevitable limitation of pieces that you run up against while building something.  You build something with a finite number of pieces, and it’s often part of the building strategy to take into account what you have for pieces in terms of quantities and variety.  Even more important is when something is already built and the next time rolls around that you want to play with LEGOs.  In order to do so, you have to destroy what you already have, in order to free up the resources to start over. 

 

In a case of finite resources, destruction is an absolute necessity in order to further create based on the lessons of the past.

 

If we take this as a tenant of progress and reapply it to the romantic situation of relationships, it again still fits:  in order to make the situation better, something about the current situation needs to be changed, and often: destroyed.

 

[As an aside about monogamy, we can wonder if monogamy as an idea fits humans effectively or if it’s like a glass bottle full of water being placed in the freezer.  Is it our natural behavior that fails to fit the monogamous framework?  Or does the monogamous framework fail to fit our natural, and potentially healthy inclinations?  How many instances of infidelity have ultimately resulted in better situations for all people involved?]

 

We must carefully and cautiously wonder: do our natural inclinations towards destruction actually help us improve things in certain circumstances?

 

If we think about a kid who wants to play with LEGOs but is faced with the product of yesterday’s creativity, then the answer is: absolutely.  Destroying yesterday’s creation frees up the resources to make something that is potentially better.

 

 

 

All feelings have a kind of hope designed into them so that they function with the aim of one thing: make things better.  Often this just means feeling different.  We act on the current feeling and our feeling changes to one that is closer to a state that was imagined by the hope of the initial feeling.

 

Often this can backfire, as when we feel it would be an improvement of our situation to feel the pleasure of eating a donut.  Short term improvement in terms of raw sensations, at the cost of long term detriment.  We feel good for those moments of sugary-goodness and feel miserable looking at vacation photos, not to mention the specific consequences to our health.

 

We can mirror this short-term /long-term trade off back on to the example of relationships.  The excitement and pleasure of infidelity can have a negative long term effect of destroying a really good primary relationship.  The long term health of the relationship is compromised for short term pleasure just as our personal long term health is compromised for the short term pleasure of tasting a donut.

 

Through this lens the tension of shadowy destructiveness can boil down to a simple question:

 

Do you want to add?

 

Or do you want to subtract?

 

To reiterate: in a circumstance with finite resources, subtraction, or destruction is necessary in order to continue creating with recycled resources.

 

The digital age is a welcomed hack when it comes to things like writing.  Early in the history of writing, paper was a difficult and rare resource so what was written had to be important, or palimpsests were created in order to recycle the paper.  But notice once more, in order to create a palimpsest, one must first erase what was originally written on the page, thereby destroying the writing and the message.  In that circumstance of limited resources, destruction was necessary.  But in the digital age, hundreds of pages takes up the tiniest bit of space in a hard drive.  There’s simply no need to destroy, unless of course we are talking about the process of editing. 

 

With editing we enter a new realm of the usefulness regarding destruction, but it again follows the same pattern as the little kid with LEGOs but the reason for destructive change is different.  With editing the destructive change is not for resources, but for quality.  We realize that something would actually be better if it were leaner, and so we destroy what we have in order to create a better, different version.

 

Our questions now change. It isn’t: should we add or subtract?  

 

But rather:

 

 Exactly what and where should we add and subtract?

 

For example, editing involves both the process of adding material in order to fully flesh out an idea and taking away material that does not add to the overall effectiveness of the piece, whether that be writing, music, film, drawing, painting, or product design.  Part of the genius behind Apple products is how much they take away from the design of a product in order to simplify it.  The original Ipod had a click wheel, a button in the center and an on/off button at the top.  Now think for a moment about how many buttons your average CD player had back in the day.  The minimalism was a welcomed change that clearly resonated, but this required taking things away.

 

Dynamism, or rather action and progress, is a process of growth and decay.  The demonic aspect the Jung tints this dynamism with, most likely refers to the subtraction, or destructive aspect of this process.  But he perhaps seeks to highlight it in a more extreme way.  As should be obvious, thoughtful destruction can yield great good, but destruction that is hooked up to a kind of chain reaction, or a vicious cycle lacks all sort of thoughtfulness and devolves into a force that erases the process of progress and leads to potentially terrible and irreversible circumstances.

 

Check out Part II

PERFECTION PARALYSIS

June 6th, 2019

If for a moment we think about the word ‘perfect’ or ‘perfection’, what exactly comes to mind?

 

The current cultural concept evokes something that is flawless, precisely accurate and fitting an ideal without even the tiniest exception.

 

This concept guides much of our thinking about the future regarding the plans we try to imagine and the results that we wish to see, but this concept, and our willingness to entertain it ultimately pollutes our ability to act.

 

The imaginative world that we can conjure is itself an immensely imperfect beast.  At a base level there is the sheer magnitude of information that we do not have available in our imagination, due both to the limitations of our senses, their ability to take in such information, and also our inability to remember every single detail that might come our way.  Beyond these first limitations, the double edged blessing of our imagination allows us to be host to this virus-concept of perfection.  The current cultural concept is in fact not a fair representation of where the word comes from.

 

Arriving via French from 11^th century Latin, the word ‘perfect’ arises from a meaning that is more akin to ‘completed’ or ‘accomplished’.  Dissecting it’s original roots we can arrive at an equation of ‘completely’ and ‘to make, or do’.  With this etymology in hand, we can see how far the meaning of the word ‘perfect’ has drifted.  It’s long history indicates something more like ‘finished’ as opposed to some kind of product or result that meets an ideal in absolutely every way imaginable. 

 

The differential here created by the drift in meaning is perhaps a bit more intuitive when we reframe it with a question:

 

 

When we try to imagine something we think we’d like to accomplish, do we focus on how we would actually do it, or do we instead imagine something fully formed?  Like an animal emerging from an egg?

 

The original meaning is about the cessation of doing.  To make or do completely.  The backbone of meaning in the word perfect is actually an active verb: that of doing.

 

And yet our modern idea of perfect so often keeps us from even starting.  This is the insidious effect that our new concept of the word inflicts upon us.

 

 

 

Something perfect is not necessarily flawless, it’s just done. 

 

If we accomplish something and it’s good enough but it doesn’t actually meet a lofty ideal, then it actually still fits the original meaning of perfect. 

 

This feels like a contradiction, but the feeling evoked by such a strange sounding sentence is perhaps an indication of territory where our imagination can go that reality cannot.

 

The nuance that connects our current concept to the original meaning in a practical way, is that some accomplishment is probably not done if there are flaws with the result, which merely implies that we are not actually done yet and that we simply need to keep tinkering.

 

Efforts here become asymptotic.  There is ultimately a bridge to the ideal that cannot be crossed and it’s wise to remember something an English professor once said:

 

You never actually finish an essay.  You just stop working on it.

 

An episode related to this one is Episode 154: Progress or Perfection?