A LUCILIUS PARABLE: ARBITRARY DOMAIN PREFERENCE

March 24th, 2019

Lucilius was wrapping up a day of work with a friend.  The two had begun to develop a project several months prior and had formed a good habit of meeting up and working.  As his friend sat in final concentration, solving and executing one final task for the day, Lucilius was lost in thought, reminiscing about the process they’d gone through over those months.

The whole thing had developed from the casual chaos of conversation – the good grist of friendship - and eventually found its way onto a white board, where they tossed around ideas and directions, details and possibilities to which they might pivot.  What good living it was then and now, in that cacophony and mess of ideas, each brightening to the ideas of the other, pinning some, tossing many, and slowly pulling an order from the disarray.  And then as they narrowed in and began to actually build their project, their focus sought out and zeroed each little problem, as Lucilius’ friend now did one final time before they called it a day.

“Got it,” Lucilius’ friend declared with a bright smile.  Lucilius looked over the work, seeing the tiny issue of the project solved and smiled. 

“Nice, I think we can call it a day.”

Lucilius’ friend checked the time.  “Absolutely, and -”  He looked at Lucilius “You want to come over for dinner with the family?”

“That’d be great.”

When the door opened, the shrieks of children pierced the air and Lucilius could hear a mother fretting over some new debacle of childish chaos.  Lucilius watched the bright spirit of his friend drop a little as they entered.

“What now,” he mumbled.

The children filled the home with a cacophony of screams and yells, the mother trying to herd their disarrayed emotions into some kind of order while managing a kitchen in full operation.

The woman smiled at the sight of them, took a lingering moment to greet Lucilius and then looking at her husband, her expression flipped to exasperation.

“Can you look after the kids while I finish up dinner?”

Lucilius’ friend could barely hold his eyes from rolling.  “I brought company.”

The woman’s shoulders slumped a little further, but before she could muster a counter-argument, Lucilius interjected.

“I’ll hang out with the kids.  You two get settled.”

The woman looked instantly relieved, but her eyes grew wide as her husband protested.

“Oh no, you don’t have to do that.”

“Honestly, it’ll be fun, you two catch up.”

The mother introduced Lucilius to the kids, who grew shy in their introductions, their inner spirits bubbling at the social constraint.  And then Lucilius went down the rabbit hole of their game world, entertaining their ideas as they tossed them out, realizing he could give them more agency, lifting one on his shoulders so they could be Godzilla for a few minutes, then being their wings when they both wanted to fly, holding each round the middle and zooming them round the room.  From their huge amount of energy, he slowly unraveled the narrative of their imagination.  And when dinner came time, the tired hungry children ate and sleepy with full bellies went quickly and quietly through their nightly routine, leaving the adults plenty of time to enjoy one another’s company.

PHONING THE VOID

March 23rd, 2019

Boredom is an underrated activity in the restless, fast-paced world we find ourselves in.  Boredom must be separated out from leisure time or relief.  Doing nothing due to exhaustion from the day’s activities does not qualify for this subject.  Leisure time comes closer, but there is actually too much freedom in such a phrase.  Leisure time can be filled with anything: social media feeds, T.V. shows and mindless eating.

Boredom is actually a more concentrated effort: one that displaces all pleasure and distraction to other times and forces the mind into a kind of dark tunnel.

The myth of Writer’s block is a good image but a bad example.  For those who wish to do creative work, staring at a blank page often degenerates into a kind of passionate masochism – which is inevitably a totally useless rollercoaster of emotions that helps one embody the chic identity of a starving artist.  (This short hand is a rather brutal assessment, and one should refer to Episode 6 of Tinkered Thinking for a more thoughtful discussion of the topic).  For those who do not fall into this category, the activity of staring at a blank page might sound like a kind of weird torture, especially if it is compounded with memories of student life when one was under duress to produce some writing on some topic - school certainly does seem to have an uncanny ability to strip down such activities to their least enjoyable parts.

Regardless of the attitudes towards such strange behavior, there is ultimately a great utility in the constraints such a situation creates. 

The blank page creates a far more pure form of boredom than leisure time which is more like a buffet of entertainment and distraction.

The fact is, pure boredom is not sustainable.  This framing might hint at some kind of meditation practice where one might imagine the goal to be no thinking – a kind of pure boredom, but such a discussion of focus and attention – while related – will be more fully explored later.  Any person who has attempted meditation for any length of time knows just how difficult it is to keep thoughts and memories from arising.  It’s from this very wellspring that the artist sifts for honey and gold.  But not everything that sparkles in the flow of our consciousness is a rabbit hole worth exploring.  Like a prospector who sifts mud only to find a broken piece of glass instead of a diamond, this game is initially about traversing a large quantity of thought and memory and then zeroing in for quality.

Reliably making this connection, however, is a practice and a kind of art with regards to shifting one’s perspective.

It’s somewhat similar to the phenomenon of an optical illusion.  Particularly the images that look like static, but if viewed at with the right angle, at the right distance and with slightly crossed eyes, suddenly an image of Bugs Bunny or Mickey Mouse pops out as though it exists in front of the surface upon which it emanates.

This allegorical image is nearly perfect when mapped onto our own internal train of thought.  We can see it as an uncontrollable cacophony.  A static noise of consciousness which requires distraction to drown out.  Or, with a shift in perspective on such a phenomenon, we can see it as that prospector’s stream in which lies gold.

It’s the shift in perspective which is the trick, and which often requires practice.  What many people think of as a terrifying void while staring at a blank page is actually a roiling vat of memory and thought that we can pull from if only we know how to connect to it.  Whether we think of it as sifting a stream of consciousness or throwing a baited line into that roiling vat, it’s of no matter.  These are merely analogies that cannot supplant the necessary practice required to fulfill such analogies.

This is where boredom comes in as an infinitely useful tool.  Only by sitting without distraction, constrained by our own intention to somehow connect with this mess of memory and thought do we actually develop the muscle which enables one to make that connection on command.

This episode references Episode 6: What’s Your Passion?

THOUGHTFUL CHANCES

March 22nd, 2019

When a shot in the dark doesn’t pan out with a bulls‘eye, it’s easy to say “I have no luck.”  Or even worse statements that degrade our sense of ability or possibility to improve in some way. 

Every action that we take is at most an estimated guess of execution.  There are factors of randomness that we cannot even label that intercede in all sorts of ways.  A problem that can help be a solution if highlighted is that we do not recognize the smaller slips of ability to be in the same category as big misses.  For example: typos.  We all make typos, whether texting or typing with all ten fingers, our ability to get the right letter down every time is remarkably low.  But it’s of little matter.  We think almost nothing of it and hit the delete key and rectify the situation with the correct key.  It’s only when we make a similar mistake several times in quick succession when we actually notice what’s going on and perhaps sigh with aggravation and double down our concentration in order to keep from wasting so much time doing the wrong thing.

Few of us really remember learning to type, or better yet, learning to read.  The first few stabs at this process were bound to be pathetic at best – more of an endurance test with regards to frustration rather than a test of actual or desired ability.  But we are so quick to forget such perpetual challenge and quicker still to forget the fact that we are near-constantly making mistakes with the abilities that we have the most practice in. 

Mere walking is another example:  how few days pass us by with out a trip, a stumble, a quickly-saved fall?

We all have these missteps – both literal and figurative – to inform us with a gentler, less ruthless view of our chances of success, and yet when we try something new and fail at first, how quickly we throw the whole endeavor out the window, claiming no luck and no ability.

Rectifying this cognitive dissonance can go a long way to aiding our chances and our efforts when it comes to new frontiers.  

Imagine, for a moment, starting some new venture and getting slapped with some brand of failure.  Imagine reacting to such development in the same way we react to making a typo.  Without second thought, taking a few steps back and then retaking those new steps forward with clearer intention.  With no big emotional upheaval, no depression-delay, only a sort of mechanical retry.

We can close our eyes for a moment and fast-forward to the end of our life and sum up its different parts, like some kind of tally at the end of a game and ask: how much time was spent being aggravated, frustrated and dejected over some first or second effort?  Hours and days and weeks and perhaps months and even years sum up before our eyes. 

Was the time well spent?

We can imagine another tally just below, recording how much time and effort it took for our very next attempt to result in some breakthrough. 

How embarrassing would it be to see that number amount to far less and realize just how much time was wasted agonizing over nearly nothing.  It was agonizing for frustration’s sake. 

We can Pause to think about emotions – especially the negative ones – as Divas: always wanting to get back in the lime light, always hogging the time once they have the light.

Instead we can refocus on the present and take thoughtful heed of the ubiquitous and relatively harmless nature of failure and gladly welcome  such phenomenon when it appears again during our next endeavor.

At the very least, failure signals that we have started.

The trick is only to continue.  Lessons abound in failure if we do not let ourselves get wrapped up in the emotional minutiae of our own heads.  By listening closely to those details of reality that signal some failure, we can be a little more thoughtful with the next chance we take. 

In fact, if we act with more information, than our effort becomes less of a chance and more of a thoughtful action.  Naturally there is always some large slice of chance when we try anything, as we can see when we simply try to type a word and fail to do so,  but the mere fact that we can slowly shift the balance and have more thoughtful actions land effectively over time rather than not is a powerful fact that can be tread, axel and engine for our motivation.  If this weren’t true than none of us would be anywhere.  This post would have amounted to little less than a pile of incoherence and no one would be equipped with the ability to understand what actually did come about here.

Each letter of each word, like each thing we say and each action we take in life, was an instant of taking a thoughtful stab at chance and seeing it work out.  As a matter of fact there turned out to be dozens of typos during the writing of this post, but such failure never warrants giving up.  We need only take a few steps back, pivot a little and continue on.

This episode references Episode 333: Frustration Focus, Episode 23: Pause, and Episode 72: Persevere Vs. Pivot

DISCOVERING DETAILS

March 21st, 2019

A failure to understand often occurs due to some missing detail.  When, for example, we engage with a brand new subject, there can often seem to be so many details that a larger context seems impossible to construct.  However, with enough details discovered, their web of relationships unearthed, we begin to approach that large context, like building a mosaic, or wondering about the trunk and main branches of a tree that are hidden by thick leaves.

Peeling back a leaf gives small amount of insight into what lies beneath, but this is nothing compared to a tree in winter, stripped of all it’s leaves, leaving only its wooden structure to be seen.

Our insta-culture provides too much pressure for things to happen quickly, near instantly, but learning works more like a caterpillar on the leaves of a subject.  Luckily we need not devour the whole tree of a subject and return it to a winter-like state in order to understand something.  Usually we need only remove the leaves on a few main branches in order to peer deeply into the structure of a subject, and with that understanding we can extrapolate far more efficiently and quickly to other details that grow out from the core axioms of any given subject.

While these leaps of understanding require a consistent, munching effort. We can easily still be befuddled by one leaf, one detail we have ignored, have not investigated, or which simply stands in the way of the internal view we’ve already created. 

If we’ve spent significant time with a subject and still fail to grasp the context that allows us to exercise abilities within that domain, than we’re most likely missing a few key details, or string of details.  The learning has been a kind of patchwork, all the individual details separated by voids of unknown, like leaves blocking a larger view. 

It’s these details we should endeavor to undertake a hunt for, having faith that if other people can understand such a subject, than we too can, if only we discover the pieces missing in our mind.

The devil against our understanding is in these details..

OMNISPECTIVE

March 20th, 2019

In general, each person has a vague and hazy idea of who they are.  A more circumspect person might include who they would like to become and spend some time thinking about the aspects of their current self that need some work.  A retrospective person might be able to look back on the process they’ve gone through to become who they currently find themselves to be.

One strange opportunity that some technologies offer is the ability to get a new mirror to look in.  

To understand this we can think of the first moment in history when someone was able to place two mirrors at angles so that they can see the back of their own head.  It’s difficult to think of this sort of opportunity occurring in the natural world, but easy to imagine the inventor of the portable mirror to have that first bizarre day of fun discovering all those new perspectives.  It’s entertaining to imagine the copper smiths of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia putting two mirrors in parallel and witnessing that strange phenomenon of having one’s head repeat to infinity.  Doubtless they wondered if they’d discovered another dimension.

These mirrors, whether we talk about the polished copper of Mesopotamia or the modern mirror invented by Justus von Liebig are a kind of technology, and it’s the most literal example of getting a new perspective on one’s self.

We can see an evolving growth of this perspective via innovations in technology when we think of the film camera.  Never before had humans been able to literally see exactly how they looked and sounded in the immediate past.

These examples are quite literal with regards to perspective, they involve actually seeing our body, whereas other areas of technology are providing less intuitive perspectives. 

There are, for example, continuous glucose monitors which can give a moment-by-moment measure of blood sugar.  This presents another perspective on what is going on when we contemplate the phenomenon of the self. 

(Some may like to differentiate the self as some sort of soul that is separate from the body in some way, but this idea need not take away from the current line of thinking in any way.)

There also exists monitors for tracking sleep patterns, brain activity and all sorts of things that occur within the body.

One important caveat to these technologies is that if they are not used, then the information they might provide need not even be considered possible.  Meaning: just because it exists doesn’t mean its actually useful unless its actually being used.  This is hopefully eye-rollingly obvious.  However, we need only consider one of our oldest technologies and it’s lack of use to see how much opportunity sifts through the fingers of our life.

Descartes famously said: I think therefore I am.

Overlooking the many problems people have found in this statement over the years, we can make the simple observation that, often people don’t even know what they think about a given topic.

We need only think of the mere existence of phrases like “I don’t know” or “I’ll have to think about that.” to find the simplest and most troubling problem in Descartes declaration.

If we don’t know what we think about a given topic, do we cease to exist in relation to it?  This is a silly train of thought to ride and puts us at risk of losing sight of the more important point which lies in the opposite direction, which is namely the answer to this question:

If I don’t know what I think about something, how do I find out?

While many of us are quite likely to sit quietly and stew unproductively like some ruminating herbivore – and this is a conscious stab at the general uselessness of such behavior – others are likely to employ the strategy of talking it out, finding a friend and having a discussion, bouncing the topic off someone else’s mind – so to speak.

We might wonder if this is simply an excuse to socialize and create a feeling of progress on the topic.  The ubiquitous hate for the business meeting is perhaps the clearest signal to evidence this possibility.  Whereas those who seek out a friend to discuss personal life are being a bit more true to the urge of simply wanting company and interaction. 

This isn’t to say that such situations can’t be useful, but merely to point out that the likelihood is low. 

These strategies depend on our most powerful technology, that of language, but there is perhaps an iteration of this technology that is far more efficient and powerful when it comes to figuring out exactly what we think about a given topic:

writing.

If Descartes’ declaration could be worded with a little more specificity, we might imagine an addendum:

I think therefore I am, and I write to know my thoughts.

Ponder for a moment all that has been written by the human race.  Certainly much of it is useful and reports important facts about our shared physical world.  But we might wonder: how much of our written content is more an exploration of the author’s own mind?

While school has become incredibly adept and efficient with the task of sterilizing the act and practice of writing to the extent that people lump it into a similar category with ‘chores’, writing as a technology remains to be a tool that can sharpen endlessly in our quest to know ourselves.

It can be better than any movie or novel or entertainment that we might fill our free time with, for the simple and symmetrical reason that one doesn’t know exactly what they’ll think and write next, just as novels and T.V. shows keep us in suspense for what will happen next.  Except when we are creating the story or the concept through writing, it simultaneously creates a record of who we are and how we know ourselves.