FLOWERS & FRUIT

December 29th, 2018

Visitors never comment on the seeds in the ground.  A gardener knows what work goes into the flower and the fruit, but the early onlooker judges on appearance, not an understanding of the slow process at work.

Even when something finally pierces the surface, there is still no flower nor fruit.  The well versed gardener takes it as a a good sign, a chance to nurture, a chance to start the real work.

Shipping our project is just the start, like planting a seed.  Think for a moment of how much laborious design went into the instructions curled up in that seed.  Generations of flowers and fruits interacting with the world at larger were slowly edited to give that seed a tweak, a nudge in a direction that might better, more useful, more fruitful. 

Seeds are no flash in the pan, though some weeds may sprout early and fast to take advantage where they find, the oak, though tentative and weak at the start, endures long beyond those petty weeds.

Our projects need not wait for the seasons of the world, but may lie in wait for the season of drive and determination.  Some people go through all of life without a single season of courage, without a single season where their efforts flourish and blossom with flowering fruits of labor long in the making.  Just as the good gardener labors for goods that require patience, any goal or project we undertake must be afforded the generosity of that same patience.   Seeds just planted do not sprout overnight but require time and warmth and water.  So too with our projects for we know not when that first searching limb will take root in the larger imagination of our fellow friend and foe, and produce a chance to change things for the better.

Evolution has done the same to you, and invested millions of years in the design of you.  Just as millions of seasons have shaped the curled instructions of seeds, we too have been honed as best as the past could fashion for an unknown tomorrow.   Are you going to pierce the ground and suck in the sun’s energy?  Whether that be the power wrought from a successful business or a high platform affording you the ears of thousands, maybe millions.  What flower and fruit will you proffer for the world at large to take and find nourishment, in order to move forward into a new and unknown tomorrow?

This episode references Episode 65: The Brain Garden

CHECK YOUR MIRRORS

December 28th, 2018

As the year comes to a close, many eagerly or anxiously await the day when a potentially grueling list of new years resolutions comes into effect and we are obligated by plan to try a whole bunch of novel behaviors.

Perhaps such lists have not yet even been written.  Regardless of where in the perennial process we might find ourselves, and regardless if we even take practice in a ritual that often peters out in silently discarded failure, there’s an important preparatory ritual we can perform that has no risk of failure and can in fact bolster the thoughtfulness of preparing for a new year and the changes we’d like to enact.  We can spend a little time looking back on the year that’s coming to an end.

Just as we are instructed as drivers to check our mirrors before changing lanes, we can take a quick glance at what is behind us before heading in a new direction.

One tint of this metaphorical mirror is to view the year through a list of successes and difficulties.

A refreshing result of this sort of practice may for many be the strange realization that successes outnumber difficulties even though we probably anticipated by raw feeling that the opposite would be true.   For those who find this pattern, we might pause for a moment and ponder that perhaps we spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about those difficulties and so they feel bigger and more numerous than they actually are.

Such a rear-view perspective can also help us frame goals for the future: which difficulties are still giving us a hard time and need to be remedied?  Perhaps annoyances that have metastasized need to float higher on the priority list.  And perhaps the successes we’ve accrued imply that we need to aim higher and with more ambition.  Perhaps there is a pattern or trend that links our difficulties or successes, a pattern that can help solve our difficulties or capitalize on our successes.

At the very least, this exercise gives us an awareness, just as checking mirrors while driving gives us an idea of what is behind us, spending time thinking about the year past gives us a better idea of how we behave as a person and ultimately who we are. 

We might realize that some things that we hold as top priorities have not gotten any attention or effort whatsoever.  And this difficult possibility highlights something important: namely, the difference between what we think and say, and what we actually do.  Being honest about what we see looking back might be exactly what we need to look forward once more and change direction so that we live more in accordance with who we thought we were.

This episode references Episode 32: Rear-View.

MENTAL TEETH

December 27th, 2018

The animal kingdom is replete with an incredible diversity of tools for munching on dinner.

Lions have their fangs for taking down prey, cows have epic molars for grinding down grasses, and blue whales have a screen of baleen to sift food from the ocean.

Each is equipped for processing a different part of the environment, and we humans are equipped as omnivores to chow down on just about everything.

We might for a moment think of the Koala Bear that only eats eucalyptus leaves and wonder what happens to the Koala if some disease comes along and wipes out all the eucalyptus trees?  The koala would be in a tough spot.

Whereas we human can lose a huge portion of our diet’s diversity and still find something to make do with.

In all arenas of life, the mental model we use to interpret what is going on is hugely important.  Like having the right teeth or the right food, we likewise need the right mental model to best integrate the knowledge of our environment in order to use that information effectively.

Unlike our biological teeth, the mental teeth we can design and redesign and switch out in order to effectively chew on a situation are endless.  We can study mental models developed by others, whether this be Bayesian Updating, Pareto’s Principle, or a religious text and use these models as a way to filter and interpret the world.

One important thing about these mental teeth to remember is that there is no end to the design and kind we can create.  While many mental models have been developed, this does not mean that all possible useful models have been imagined or discovered. 

Often, naive ignorance is the most important factor for discovering something new.  If our mind is constantly trying to fit everything we encounter into models we have already learned, then we are less likely to notice natural patterns that may exist in the complexity we seek to understand.

One thing to further keep in mind is the innate violence that teeth perform.  Whether a carnivore or herbivore or omnivore, the teeth of all animals (and their subsequent digestive systems) tear apart their food into smaller and smaller pieces in order to extract what is useful.  The same is true of our mental models.  As mental teeth they simplify the complexity of information we look at, tearing off irrelevant parts and straining for the relevant information.

Imagine for a moment a new problem, and instead of having access to all sorts of mental models that have been used in the past.. imagine having no mental teeth.  What sort of mental teeth would we construct in order to rip into the problem most productively?  Like the thin edge of a wedge we might perhaps develop one kind of tooth to see how it works with the problem, perhaps to tear the big pieces apart like canines, and then use another tooth to really grind smaller pieces up, like molars.  Or for a moment we might imagine a totally different kind of food that needs to be ‘eaten’ from the inside out.  In fact we deal with and solve this kind of problem every single day.

We need only think of the teeth of a key used to open a lock.  Such teeth interact and process the environment inside of a lock and in doing so highlight the relevant information by moving that internal environment around and open the door or lock.

The teeth of keys is a perfect analogy here for the infinite varieties of mental models that we might imagine could exist for all sorts of different problems, since all keys are effectively different.  It’s as though a new mental model is developed uniquely for each problem or in this case, each lock.

Our mind can become like a keymaker that designs new mental models, or new mental teeth for each and every new problem we face.  Like some kind of epic swiss army knife, we can compound our collection of keys in order to become more efficient at making these mental teeth and perhaps even come up with a mental model for building mental models.  This is, in essence what raw learning achieves.

This is the ultimate skill, to learn how to learn.  So that when all the traditional problems dry up, we won’t be like the Koala in a world without Eucalyptus.  We can refashion our own mind’s maw and start gnawing on whatever reality throws our way.

ARRIVAL SYNDROME

December 26th, 2018

Going for a walk carries along with it a peaceful ideal of a leisurely pace.  And yet, how many are impelled by the busyness of the work week to rush through this event as though it were simply another task to mark as completed and from which to move on from in order to get started on the next task?

A mentor once reported a tenant from a class on developmental psychology that has always served as a tempering agent for such behaviors.  It was this:

The stages of learning never end, death simply cuts off the process.

While it’s clear that people’s mental capabilities can actually degrade over time through lack of challenge and use, the point still stands valid as a dictate about our potential to change for the better, which is always garnered through a difficult and challenging process of learning.

To return again to the leisurely walk rushed, we might for a moment pause and ask: “why the rush?”

If there is some kind of important destination in which we hope to arrive at, then rushing through a walk, or any other kind of transitory state makes tentative sense.  But not entirely.

The one who rushes through a leisurely walk can be easily compared to someone stuck in traffic who dreams of nothing other than splitting the locked-up bumper-to-bumper traffic like Moses splitting the Red Sea.

And yet, in both situations, a valuable opportunity is squandered.  The rushed leisurely walk misses out on all the details of scenery and company, and the person stuck in traffic misses out on the opportunity to reflect on their moment-to-moment experience, or otherwise utilize that time with audiobooks, podcasts, or general reflection. 

Strangely enough, the one on the leisurely walk is getting caught up in ideas and habits of behavior that are not particularly relevant in the moment, whereas the one frustrated by the trapped situation of bumper-to-bumper traffic is overly concentrated on what is going on in the moment. 

The common link between these paradoxically similar situations is the concept of moving forward as fast as possible.

This is invariably a reactionary-product to the rate of change we see with regards to society and technology. 

This rate of change will continue to accelerate far beyond our ability to keep up biologically, but this does not mean that we cannot deal with such changing  speeds in a healthier manner.

It’s akin to a 4 year old placing the unfair expectation on one’s self that running as fast as the varsity track team is necessary.  Such an expectation is bound to disappoint because the matter is a question of the order of magnitude in terms of ability.  Simply put, no 4-year old can out run a varsity track team, not because of will or desire, but because of sheer difference in physical make-up.  The same will come to be true for many people in different capacities.

And as a species, this is an organization of operation that we are striving to arrive at.  But while many fear this is to spell the end, or the arrival of some end for their own profession, such a fear is again a matter of the unhealthy ‘arrival syndrome’.

We have only a certain and undetermined amount of time alive, and our usefulness during that time is less determined by external forces that might subsume our abilities and more by our willingness to engage with new things during the time we are conscious.

The Arrival Syndrome is really a curse that leads one to believe that eventually some kind of safe, stable place will be achieved in perpetuity.  Unfortunately, if the past, or principles derived there from are to be of any use, it’s clear that security is never a permanent state of affairs.  We are better off anticipating random sorts of change that disrupt our regular patterns and challenge our ability to figure things out.

The unlearned wisdom of Arrival Syndrome is to realize that living means never arriving, and that death –with religious precepts placed to the side- is an arrival to nowhere.  Our only option in this paradoxical situation is to be forced to move onwards towards some better, more knowledgeable and improved state.  We can do this only by learning and stretching our stubborn minds to understand what formerly made us disgruntled with confusion.

Having ‘Arrival Syndrome’ is simple to think that there is some place to arrive at or some goal to achieve.  There is always somewhere beyond to which we can strive.  Having some destination in mind simply spells the beginning of our own atrophy, from which we slowly degrade towards confusion, sedentary laxity, and to which we ultimately mount the slippery slope to death.

As Dylan Thomas once wrote,

our humanity as a living, breathing, fighting species is best expressed as an effort to: “rage, rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

For there is nowhere good to which we can arrive, but only onwards in an effort to improve the life we live and the lives lived by all those we might possibly touch.

EVERYDAY IS A HOLIDAY

December 25th, 2018

Imagine for a moment if you had a perfect record of everything that has happened on every January 3^rd during your life.  The older you are, the more likely there was one particular January 3^rd that was particularly good, or that had something special happen, but for whatever reason, isn’t remembered happening on precisely that day.

Who, for example, remembers the day they had their first kiss?  Or knows the day we took our first steps?  Or learned to tie our shoelaces?

Birthdays and anniversaries get marked out on the calendar for special recognition along with all the other standard holidays, but we rarely add more to the calendar in order to honor in future years.

And yet, if we were to have a perfect catalogue of what has happened on each day or our years, we might realize that most days have some link to an interesting or wonderful moment in the past.

How much better would a random day in March be if we began the day with the realization that we are celebrating our own private holiday to commemorate the first time we cracked a joke that made others laugh, or a day that started a meditation habit that has followed us through the years, or any number of accomplishments or delightful events that have occurred in life.  Surely in years of living we’ve amounted a few hundred reasons to look back and smile.  And yet we rarely put conscious effort into this kind of gratitude.

One day, perhaps, we will have augmented memories that enable us to catalogue the events of our lives perfectly, and we would be able to form a precise calendar that honors our time alive.

In the meantime, the point should still stand as a salient reminder that there are countless reasons to celebrate the difficult gift of being alive.  Not being perfectly cognizant of the events of every single January 3^rd might be a blessing since our distribution of events worth honoring might not be even across the year.  Ignorance in this case can perhaps allow us to wonder every morning what development in our life occurred 7 or 17 years ago on that date.  Even without knowing specifically, we can hold to the fact that regular days are packed with such developments.  And in such case, every day becomes a holiday.  One worth celebrating, no matter what circumstance we find ourselves in.