LONELY

March 26th, 2022

A French philosopher once wrote “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” There’s a lot of truth to it. How much of human behavior is an attempt to indulge in a distraction? It’s almost an eye roll at this point to mention how often we look at our phones. We get it, we know. There’s something that’s not quite right about what we’re doing, or how we’re doing it. Whether it’s a fear fueled need to avoid something within our own selves or just a tiny squirt of dopamine in a vain attempt to find some little pleasure, doesn’t really matter.

What would it mean if all of humanity could comfortably sit in a room alone, quietly? Perhaps it means that we’d all be immensely entertained by the moment and how wild it is that we even exist and we’d be fascinated by the walls and the air around us, and sensation of gravity, and the fact that we have hands, and we can feel the air as we breath, almost like a taste, like clean cold water on a hot day. This certainly sounds kind of nice - childlike, playful, full of wonder! But if anything it’s merely describing a different way of being entertained. (It’s absolutely vastly superior form of entertainment for those who can actually dune into this orientation of consciousness ) Regardless, what it also means is a much different level of self-awareness. Many of the behaviors we enact are inured habits. We know they don’t make us particularly happy or fulfilled, but few actions and behaviors are actually done with a high degree of conscientiousness. Most are the result of autopilot. 

The amount of self-awareness required to notice, let alone break these habits, or simply refrain, is a bit more rare than we’d like. Or rather, the instances of self-awareness can be rare in our experience.

Even something like loneliness can become a bad habit. We’ve all had quite an experiment the last couple years with vastly different patterns and routines of socialization. Personally, I was surprised how much people suffered from the isolation, and I learned that my own talent for solitude isn’t something I’m imagining. I’ve further realized that I’d likely be an excellent for deep-space missions as I can be quite happy and content with no human contact while living in a small space, on the condition that I have some project to work on. It’s difficult for me to imagine that this capability doesn’t exist within everyone, but as with all inclinations, such things come easier to some and not others.

But as much value as can be gleaned from solitude - it too can perhaps become a bad habit. The simple fact is that time is gliding by without any hesitancy, and given that we’re likely only here for a finite amount of time, it becomes an important question as to just how much that time should be spent alone - especially for someone who enjoys solitude, or someone who has made a bad habit of loneliness. I phrase it this way because it’s a bit of a weird idea that someone would be lonely in this day and age. There are so many ways to connect with people, and there are plenty of places to go and expand the surface area of chance when it comes to meeting someone. And yet people can remain horribly alone. Could it be due to something as mundane as habit? Certainly.

Breaking out of one’s own shell and reaching out to others is difficult - in fact, it’s difficult in very much the same way breaking a bad habit is difficult.  And this is where self-awareness rises as the key. Being self-conscious is perhaps the negative version of self-awareness, generating fear and helping to maintain a bad habit of loneliness. Think about the twin stresses of dating and finding a job. They are oddly similar problems that can evoke very similar emotional responses. Why? Because they both entail an excellent braid of both self-examination and new behavior. Loneliness is the default. This is despite the fact that we constantly crave novel experiences. The caveat that holds it together is that by default we don’t crave novel selves. And why would we? A change in the self is a threat to the current self. It makes sense that even something as ethereal as a perspective, a mentality and a belief would fight for survival, and therefore generate fear within a person to ensure the probability of change is lowered.

Get busy living, or get busy dying. Unfortunately there’s no middle ground. We sink or fly. Like the stock market. Perhaps a healthy solitude can create a safe plateau, but at the end of the day, time is still running out. Even someone who sincerely believes that their variety of solitude is healthy must question themselves and wonder if perhaps they’ve simply built a habit of loneliness.

WHERE IS MY MIND?

March 25th, 2022

This episode is dedicated to @meaning_monkey

Writing carries an inherent nostalgia. Like taking a Polaroid. It’s rather cute that the Polaroid camera fell out of use almost completely, replaced by more convenient technologies, and then made a small but respectable comeback. Snapping a picture with a Polaroid camera in the age of digital photography baked into everyone’s phone doesn’t seem rational at first glance. Why not just take a picture with your phone? The reason is because we have no nostalgia for our phones, nor the screens upon which we’ll review our photos in the future. But an actual photo fades - it shows it’s time in a way a juiced up, lit up screen never can. The Polaroid made a come back because the medium itself has nostalgia baked into it, and what is the point of taking a photo if not to lay a trap of nostalgia to be sprung at some time in the future? Writing carries a similar nostalgia, but not one that’s often recognized.

Not often recognized because the vast majority of people don’t write for pleasure, but everyone takes photos for fun. For most writing carries a strain of necessity and duress, and a reminder of school, bad grades and a confused sense of ineptitude. There’s little nostalgia in things that would be better off forgotten. 

But all writing is a kind of snapshot - like the Polaroid. The words that fall onto the page aren’t the person’s actual mind being recorded, but simply expressed during that particular time. If this paragraph had been attempted a day later, the same mind would have worded it a bit differently. The reasons why are both numerous and fairly straightforward: I’ll be a slightly different person tomorrow, in a slightly different mood, and the thoughts that will have led up to the writing will have been a quite different narrative. But there’s no way to test this. I can’t try to write this paragraph again tomorrow because in that case I’ll also have the memory of this paragraph in my mind to some degree. It would likely come out different had I not taken the time today.  All of this is to say that the words we print upon the universe are unique to our mind in a specific time in a specific situation. It’s as close to a snapshot of the mind as we can get.

So is a piece of writing representative of the writer’s mind? Hard to say. Maybe we can say its representative of the writer’s mind during that particular moment. But then, what if the writer goes back later and edits the piece of writing? Would that mean we now have two different representations of a writer’s mind now interacting?

What’s unique to writing is that we associate it so closely with how we think, or what it’s like to be a mind in the moment, so a book looks quite literally like a record of a thinking mind. Much more so than say a painting, which really is an expression of much the same process. But not everyone thinks in brush strokes, but everyone utilizes some degree of language relative to thought.

Where is my mind while this is being written? Well, if my focus and attention is solely on what word might appear on the page next, then I suppose it might be pretty accurate to say that my mind is right here. But the moment this piece of writing is finished being written, my mind will be past it, gone, never to return  - even if I come back to edit, it’ll be a different mind, a different circumstance taking the knife to an artifact of the past.

Where is my mind? Well, it was right here, but it’s gone now, and you dear reader are left to experience these words like a fresh tombstone of a past moment, like animal tracks freshly pressed - something that happened. It’s but a testament to the fact that something was here, something living, someone that didn’t want time to pass without marking the moment.

A LUCILIUS PARABLE: SLOW SIPPER

March 13th, 2022

Lucilius counted the fine rings that circled the inside of his glass above the beer. The distance between the rings at the top were large, and he noticed how they got smaller and smaller the further down the glass he looked - like tree rings, they measured time, he realized. There was only about a quarter glass of beer left and Lucilius looked at his friend’s glass. Rings bunched up above the cold circle of beer. Always it was like this. It wasn’t as if they hadn’t seen each other in a long time. This had become a treasured habit - to meet up, chat, and enjoy the one real gift on offer.

But always, Lucilius noticed, the sips of beer grew smaller and smaller as the evening’s time waned. It was a bittersweet attempt to make the time last longer, pausing longer, sipping less. Together they were locked in a game, to keep a kind of loneliness at bay. Not that either of them were particularly lonely - they both lead full lives, but even the fullest life cannot escape the heartbreaking truth that it too is slowly sloughing off it’s happening to a void called yesterday. Seconds raining into a moment already slipped by. This torrent of time is unstoppable, unyielding, and sometimes - often - the only way to truly pay tribute to the awful loss is to wile it away on purpose, with no other aim than to share the bitter gift with someone else.

Lucilius took another slow sip, as these thoughts washed over him. He hadn’t thought about it explicitly, but somehow it had always been clear what they were doing. It was as though he were finally listening to the lyrics of a song he’d heard so many times before. And as he smiled at the sad thoughts, his friend lifted up his glass and downed the rest of his beer in one swig.

Lucilius’ heart sank a bit, and he sighed, knowing there was no beer left. He looked down into his own glass, reluctant to get the good time over with, but he followed suit.

He stretched his shoulders back, starting the uncomfortable routine of goodbye, when his friend reached for a bag he’d brought. He pulled out a bottle of whisky, and the cork cap squeaked at it was pulled free.

A tepid smirk grew across his friend’s face as he reached over and poured a few fingers worth of bourbon into Lucilius’ empty beer glass.

Lucilius laughed a little as his friend poured himself some whiskey.

His friend shrugged and looked at Lucilius.

“Screw it,” his friend said and smiled, “let’s turn the volume up.”

HYPOCRISY OF PROGRESS

March 12th, 2022

Progress consists of two fundamental components: there’s the idea, and then there’s the implementation of that idea. Now one of these steps is a bit faster than the other. Ideas can be instantaneous - suddenly springing into the mind, altering perspective and radically altering an opinion about the world. But acting on that idea to actually change one’s self, or something in the world? This can take a long, long time. And in the meantime, hypocrisy is unavoidable.

This hypocrisy exists at all levels. Learning about some aspect of health, or having some idea to get more fit does not suddenly mean that a successful strategy to achieve such things is suddenly implemented. Not at all, and so many people concerned with their health still have some pretty unhealthy habits, while fully realizing how bad such habits are.

It works on the personal level, it works on the level of societies. Take for instance the abolition of slavery. As an institution, slavery is as old as history itself, used by virtually all people’s when slavery was still widespread. (Note, it seems slavery is still shockingly widespread, though not in the way it was institutionalized before abolition.) Now when someone first had the notion that perhaps slavery as an institution and a practice should be abolished, what might we say about that person being a part of a society that practices slavery? Bit of a contradiction. The best contradiction is perhaps Thomas Jefferson who wrote the famous words that all men are created equal - and yet he owned plenty of slaves. Hypocrisy to its core. 

But, that’s the thing, progress requires an innate amount of hypocrisy because good ideas cannot be acted upon instantly. The only thing that’s truly consistent is something that’s not open to change, and simply cannot change. 

This subtlety of growth and evolution - of progress - should come in handy when we next spy hypocrisy in another person. Many of the things people say represent a reality they would like to see come about. And it’s very easy to confuse this contradiction with blameworthy hypocrisy. 

Now there’s another level of hypocrisy that someone could sneak into if they were aware of this perspective, and that it might be possible to get away with contradicting words and actions because it can simply be plastered with a band-aide of intentions that can’t be carried out because “these things take time.”  No - the idea here is not to be vocal about the necessary role of hypocrisy in progress, but simply to be aware of it so that one’s own perspective can have wiggle room to grow, expand and perhaps occupy the of another’s view of the world. Compassion is aided by understanding, and if the contradiction and hypocrisy of other people can have a sensible cause, then perhaps it’s ll be a little easier to sympathize.

SLOW GOING

March 11th, 2022

It’s a respectable lamentation that Hofstadter’s Law appears to be infallibly on point. The law states: Everything takes longer than you think it will, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s Law. It’s cute because it’s recursive, but in a kittenish - feline way, in that it’s cute, but deadly in its accuracy. 

The saddest part about this Law is that it also means you’ll have less time. If things always take more time than you think they will, then that means less time for other things. This is on top of the fact that success is not guaranteed. It’s possible to spend all your time working on something, without it paying off and being left with far less time than originally anticipated. It can seem like a lose-loose.

Perhaps this is a reason for our innate desire for novelty, and our quick-to-trigger boredom. It ensures that we don’t fall victim to the sunk cost fallacy - spending too much time pursuing something that won’t pan out. It means we’re skittish and quick to jump ship. Usually this facet of people is frowned down upon, but framed with Hofstadter’s Law, it seems to make a lot of sense.

Unfortunately there are a host of things that we can’t jump ship on. It’s not practical to simply stop eating, paying rent, and other bills, and because of this, there’s forced sunk-cost and forced consistency. It’s necessary to continuously work to feed these needs. Youth is the time for jumping around and trying different things, and living completely without commitment. The responsibilities of adulthood slowly encircle and strangle this so-called freedom. 

What’s funny is that when the topic of automation pops up, suddenly people wonder what we’ll all do if all the boring menial jobs have been eaten by some robotic or digital form. Strange considering this comes from a species that valorizes youth - and for what reason? Surely the freedom of youth has to be part of it, but when proffered the possibility of that freedom again, somehow it’s perceived as a nervous threat.

It’s a personal suspicion that after a period of adjustment to an automated world, we’d all become stranger far more productive. But of course, such a change won’t happen over night. Some already have called upon the powers of automation to maximize leisure, and it would be worthwhile to see what sort of output such people have if their curiosity remains in tact. 

There are those who “never find their way”, who seem perpetually aimless and never seem to stick with anything and never seem to get any meaningful breaks. It’s a worthy thought experiment to wonder what would happen to these people if they simply had a lot more time. What if instead of living barely a century, we had half a dozen or so centuries. Do you think the people who don’t seem to ever get a break or get their act together would ever find their way?

It’s worth wondering about it, if only to realize that the answer would likely be positive. So much of life is spent doing things we don’t want to do so that we can simply stay plugged into the systems of civilization. So few get to have their cake and eat it too, but it is possible - to have desirable, creative work. It seems it’s relegated only to the lucky, but that’s probably because the going is so slow, and rare lucky breaks simply fast track parts of the process for a hallowed few.