A LUCILIUS PARABLE: TRUCKING ALONG

February 17th, 2019

The horizon was just beginning to split sky and land, glowing blue above and darkening the flat plains.  Lucilius was peddling a bicycle to his own gentle rhythm, having cycled all through the night simply to see the sunrise, after having started several weeks prior.

Lucilius was at a transition in his current life and decided to take a long trip by cycling in a single direction, day after day.

The glowing horizon brightened, growing gold and pushing the blue higher and higher into the starred night sky.  Soon enough the sun pierced the shadow and lit the land, giving form and color to the long road ahead, stripping everything of shadow save for the low and subtle hills that held their short trains of abyss.

Lucilius rode on into the day and the road began to busy.  Occasional cars passed, but mostly huge 18-wheeled long-haulers roared along the road, whipping up powerful backdrafts.  These trucks would often come terrifyingly close as Lucilius rode along the edge of the street, but sometimes, when they had the room, they would give him a wide berth by dipping into the oncoming lane.

During these weeks of riding he had spent a good deal of time thinking about these truckers, men far from home, sitting in a cab, at the wheel for so many hours at a time.  He imagined himself in their position and wondered if they were perhaps lonely.  The thought had lead him to begin waving at all the trucks that came down the road in the opposite direction.  He found out quickly what kind and lonely hearts were travelling these roads as almost every single truck he waved at, he got some kind of response, whether it was a wave back or a short signal with the horn.

Later in the day Lucilius came across another cyclist at a stop consulting a map.  Lucilius stopped as do all cyclists in such circumstances.  The two were going in the same direction and shortly decided to ride together.

That night they camped and cooked steaks over a fire talking about a whole wealth of topics.  And at one point the conversation veered towards the daily travails of riding.

“Those damn trucks,” Lucilius’ friend started.  “They come so close, like they’re trying to see how close they can get.  All I think about is climbing up on their cab with a .357 magnum.”  The man gestured the weight of a gun in his hand while he said it.  “Just give’em a piece of my mind and maybe a little more.”

Lucilius briefly marveled at how much trust he had unconsciously granted all these passing truckers, having not felt any of the fear he was hearing described.

“That’s interesting,” Lucilius said.  “I just wave at all of them that pass by, because I imagine they’re lonely and bored, and I figure that eventually they’ll be coming back the other way, and when they do, maybe they’ll feel just a little bit more, I don’t know, happy and compassionate when they see a cyclist and give that cyclist a bit more room when they pass.  Even if it’s not me, I figure it might help.”

Lucilius’ new friend stared long listening and then turned back to his meal.  “Interesting,” he said.

The next day the two rode together. Lucilius started out trailing.  And when the first truck came rattling down the road, Lucilius noticed his friend raise a hand and wave.

DERAILED

February 16th, 2019

Any day presents the unlimited opportunity for chance to intercede.  This can be good, but we are more likely to notice and remember the times when it’s been bad.  The day is going well and suddenly some occurrence or some news comes rattling down the pipeline.

The whole day and perhaps more can be lost.  We can feel derailed – like a train flung from it’s tracks.

But there is an important mistake in the way we use this word when it comes to our emotional experience and our productivity.

The mistake is the idea there was a track we were on in the first place.

Despite the order we try to haul out of a chaotic existence, we are still subject to that unpredictable future.  And perhaps instead of trying to bolt down more order with reinforced efforts, perhaps we are better off to recalibrate our perspective and think about a strategy with which we can interact with this chaos when it comes up.

Being derailed in the middle of the day is not a matter of trying to turn around and get back to the track we were on.  It’s a matter of seeing what we now have to work with and figuring out where we can go from this new place.

We might imagine being thrown into a new room and turning around to find the door through which we entered no longer exists.  Imagine the disorientation.  It’s not hard since we can all remember such instances in life where this allegory might resonate.

If, however, we keep in mind that we were never on some magical track in the first place, any situation is freed from the laurels of the past.  That good track may have simply been an extended time of stable and predictable emotions.  The days repeat and if it’s in a likeable fashion then we might be able to expect a fairly stable pattern of emotions.  Of course this is a fantasy and we’re more likely to feel derailed sooner or later.

But each time this occurs can be viewed as an opportunity.  Just think for a moment what kind of super power it is to be able to emotionally bootstrap one’s self to a more reliable form every and any time something bad happens.  In fact, we might wonder if there is any other skill with regards to emotions that is more important than this ability.

Cultivating such a skill might sound impossible, like painting the Sistine Chapel, but this is due to our complete lack of technique, skill and most importantly: practice.  Many skills look and sound impossible, but if they are skills, then this means that they’ve been developed and acquired by some other person, and the variance between all of us is refreshingly small, though many might argue.  It boils down to something simple:  what you put your mind to, materializes.  And like anything the results are slow and nearly non-existent in the beginning.

But with consistent effort, a mindfulness can develop, and given enough time, derailments begin to look like interesting detours to a mind curious about the present moment.

This episode references Episode 133: The Right Track and Episode 32: Rear-View

UNIQUE

February 15th, 2019

It should be left to the Pedant to gripe for grammatical reasons about the word ‘unique’ being mutilated by plopping an adverb like ‘very’ in front of it.  As in that’s very unique.

To illustrate why this is a problem from a grammatical standpoint we can swap out the word ‘unique’ for something that is unique and the problem becomes quite clear, for example, imagine someone pointing up at the sky during a clear day and saying that’s very Sun.

This feels awkward in the ear and awkward on the tongue for obvious reasons: any given THING cannot be more or less of the thing it is.  This is what the function of the word ‘unique’ is supposed to embody.

If something is unique, it is one of a kind.  To say that something is VERY one-of-a-kind is like adding 1 to infinity, it’s not only redundant but ineffective.

These are all points that the Pedant would bring up when trying to point out grammatical misuse in the way another person speaks.  Often this is done to simply show-off some minutia of knowledge rather than to assist in some kind of opportunity to learn.

Anyone with a genuine and deep appreciation of language will notice how much language shifts, mutates and morphs over time.  This ability which ultimately annoys the strict grammarian is one of the core mechanisms of language that has enabled it to evolve to the form purportedly held sacred by pedantic grammarians.

While the careless manipulation of language can certainly lead to dystopian paradoxes of Orwellian stature, the vast metastasis of language has for the most part been for the better when it comes to our ability to get a notion from one mind to another.

We might wonder what exactly we are doing when we say something is very unique.  Such a mistake doesn’t seem to occur when speaking of some things that are actually unique.  As mentioned we do not say that’s very Sun, or that’s very Moon.

We do on the other hand modify some unique things in the exact same way.  For example, let’s say we have a friend named Alex who is quite funny, and we find ourselves in the company of mutual friends without Alex and the whole group witnesses something funny that is in line with Alex’s humor.  It’s quite common for someone to make the observation of similarity and say “that’s very Alex.”

Here we have a unique person who is being modified in a way that seems to some how be beyond their own nature.  But of course this is not the case.  The modifying word ‘very’ is being used to approach the unique nature of Alex and his humor. 

To highlight this, we can follow the modifying adverb ‘very’ into some of it’s more traditional territory.

For example, we can say something is bad, but then if it gets worse we’ll change and say that it’s very bad.

For whatever reason there is nothing wrong with this statement, and it may be because we have the word ‘worst’.  So we can suss out a kind of hazy spectrum from this concept.  There’s bad to worse which is very bad and then if things get even worse, it might actually be the worst.

As much as we don’t like the in-between gray spaces between categories and even identities, we need a spectrum of such gray space in order to communicate nuance.

The rise of the tendency to qualify the word ‘unique’ may be due to a need for a spectrum that approaches uniqueness as opposed to the nonsensical hyperbolic implication of something being more unique than unique. 

And what would be the point of such a spectral tool?

Well, to be perfectly pedantic about the word unique would require admitting that absolutely everything is unique.  Even an identical set of mass-produced fidget spinners is a composite of unique items for the simple reason that no two things can occupy the exact same space.  Two fidget spinners sitting side by side have unique orientations relative to the rest of the universe, and merely one differentiating factor qualifies for uniqueness.  What we end up with by investigating the traditional definition of this word is a rather useless concept.  It’s akin to the failure of the self-esteem movement and saying everyone is special, which simply becomes another way of saying no one is special. 

While language certainly has forays into totally grotesque and un-useful areas, these branches collapse with enough time, just as we see in the evolution of species.  For example, we don’t see peacocks with tail feathers that are 35 feet long even though this would certainly be possible, and there have certainly been slight mutations that have resulted in peacocks with feathers that are unusually long – even by peacock’s standards – but at that point the usefulness of looking ostentatious is impinged by fatality since predators have an easier time snagging lunch. 

Language is a similar adaptation that follows similar patterns of expansion and collapse in order to evolve.

While the pedantic grammarian might bask in the self-serving conclusion that people are using the word ‘unique’ incorrectly,

it may simply be evidence that the human mind as a kind of hive is delving into the concept with more nuance and seeking out a gradient that exists between things that are similar and things that are one-of-a-kind.

It might seem dangerously post-modern to put a toe in each mutually-exclusive category, however, unlike most products of post-modernism, this faded border is actually a useful one, even if at first glance it does not seem to be the way people are intending it.

It goes to follow that when we say or hear someone say very unique.  What’s really being indicated is a degree of something being out-of-the-ordinary.

Which is quite necessary in world of patterns where every ordinary thing is inherently unique.

THE TRACTION OF WATER

February 14th, 2019

A perfect storm is defined by a rare combination of meteorological factors that result in an effect far greater than the sum of those factors.

Two storms colliding and joining force create more destruction than the destruction of those two separate storms added together.

We might think of storms as an Allegorical image.  Indeed we already do this in other corners of language.  Some very driven people, for example can be described as a force of nature.  What actual natural occurrence is more fitting than a storm?

We talk about people being late bloomers or being fresh as a daisy.  Many cultures even tended to the position of one person as a rainmaker.

Each and every one of us is causing some kind of ruckus in our own way.  Some more than others.  Though some might try to hide from the fact: if you are living and breathing, then you are having an impact on the space and people around you.  We have no choice about this fact, but what we do have a choice about is exactly how much of a ruckus we make, and what kind.

It’s often said that success is when hard work meets opportunity.  We only have control over one of these.  The hard work.  Now while any bootstrapper might scoff at the idea of waiting around for opportunity, claiming that there’s plenty of opportunity lying around, even if you’re not moving, the word opportunity in this case is really referencing chance.  Luck, is nearly invisible until it’s been expressed as some kind of lucky occurrence.  So we might return to the sentiment that success is when hard work meets opportunity and ask:  what exactly is a person working hard on before it’s met with opportunity?  Do people not seize an opportunity and then work hard with it?  Or does the problematic idiom imply a capacity for hard work?

It is neither of these.

We must simply work hard on anything, perhaps multiple projects, until one of them starts gaining traction.  This might be a steady flow of income or a sense of daily fulfillment.  The two need not be mutually exclusive either.  So often hobbies are left cooped up in that category, when in reality a hobby can become a side-hustle and eventually a side-hustle can turn into an exciting and rewarding way of making a living.

What’s required is a perfect storm.  Our efforts constitute one storm:  we toil away at a hobby or side hustle, and we simply keep that storm going, like a system that stays out over water hoovering up more and more water to gain strength and longevity.  And then another storm, unanticipated comes over the horizon: an opportunity spun from chance.  Our storm of activity meets a storm of opportunity and boom: such a perfect storm of factors might begin to look like a sign of success.

We might think of water with a bit more eerie respect.  We think very little of it when wine or a cocktail is on offer.  We think of it as mildly useful while washing hands – if we think about it at all.  After a snow storm we think of it as beautiful and fun and then a pain when we have to try and drive through it.  And anyone who’s spent time at sea knows to foster a healthy fear of it.

Storms are completely made up of water and can doll out seemingly unlimited amounts of damage.  Water has this strange capacity to not only physically inhabit any shape container we might put it into, but to become these massively powerful shapes.

We might say the same thing about people.  We can fit them into cubicles, but given the right conditions they too can become a storm, a force of nature.  With enough energy, verve, and productivity, one chance meeting with opportunity is all it takes for a perfect storm - a virtuous cycle - to come into being.

It’s perhaps fitting that our thoughts reside in an organ that is nearly 75% water.

We might go so far as to say that it take only a single thought to begin stirring that water.

This episode references Episode 164: Moving the Whirlpool

DANCE LESSONS

February 13th, 2019

Go to a dance studio for the first time, and the class consists of everyone doing the same basic move, in real time after a short demonstration.

Could anything be more straightforward? 

Moves are added and combined slowly as newbies get a handle on what’s been covered.  This knowledge, know-how and practice compounds until larger patterns start to emerge where combinations can be linked together, split and mixed and eventually perhaps improvisation occurs with a deeper intuition about the most basic rules of what a particular dance invokes.

Let us for a moment compare this to a bizarre reimagining of a dance class.  Wanna-be dancers file into a room and listen as the professor shows diagrams of the human body, describing the principle muscles that will be activated and relaxed in which order and in what kind of synchronized pattern to achieve the first most basic move.  The students take notes and go home to read an expanded version of what the dance teacher went over in class.  The next day the students take a test requiring written knowledge of muscle firing patterns in relation to anatomy.  The class is several months long and at the very end each student gets a certificate stating they have completed the dance class.

To celebrate, the whole class goes to a dance club and no one knows how to dance.

This bizarre and humorous twilight scenario characterizes much of what is wrong with the great majority of modern education.

In an effort to be thorough, education has perhaps sacrificed efficacy.

And there is one phrase above all that epitomizes this huge disconnect: on the job learning.

We would presume that an education would equip a person with the things necessary to perform well in a related position.  Of course, anyone who has had a job that is supposed to relate to some degree they’ve acquired can relate to the fact that education and job execution are often experiences located in different universes similar to the experience of our twilight zone dance class.

We might ponder for a moment about the expansion of the educational institutions.  It used to be that a high school degree could get you a decent job.  Then this evaporated and secondary education was needed.  And now masters programs have exploded.

While it’s a gross over-simplification this trend sounds somewhat like the old snake-oil salesman who peddles a poison as a cure to the ailments the poison creates.  Such a salesman is bound to generate an increasing need for his product… as long as he has his audience convinced that his snake-oil is a healthy cure.

This might be juxtaposed with an excellent physical therapist who looks at success as making themselves irrelevant to the patient.  If someone is physically rehabilitated from some injury then the physical therapist is no longer needed. 

How many teachers and professors look at the main function of their job in that way?

The dance teacher is likewise seeking to be irrelevant in the same way the physical therapist is.  One might imagine an argument centering on the fact that these professions both center around physical activity, but we might reference computer science.

Educational Companies like Codecademy and particularly Lambda school are achieving increasing success by generating educational situations that require immense expressions of personal student agency with regards to the material. 

Like the physical therapist or the dance teacher, such educational programs get to their end and can confidently ask their students:

show me what you got.

This episode piggybacks off of Episode 31: PILLS, Therapists, and the IKEA Effect.