A LUCILIUS PARABLE: DEATH OF DESCRIPTION

February 20th, 2022

I’ve seen this before. A very long time ago. And the change was so immense, so total that I can’t even recall very well what it was like to think and be before this time. Socrates warned of this. No one believed him but he could see it as it happened, he could feel it, and it’s why he railed against the practice of writing. So many centuries later, now, here I am scrawling on the medium he cursed for the same reason. With these neuralsyncs getting plugged into people’s brains, it just seems like an oddity that no one with a sync writes. None of them. The assumption is that thoughts are transcribed and saved in a cloud, or perhaps in a hard drive, but that’s not what’s going on. That’s just how people are perceiving it, by saying: oh you could do this. But the fact of the matter is that no one with a sync is preserving anything in a kind of written form, digital or physical. They are saving experience in a wholly new way because information now has an additional medium. It’s not the expression of information that is critical, it’s the available mediums. The nature of expression changes irrevocably when a new medium is added - especially one that creates a new capacity for memory. This is what people are failing to realize. Before the written word, only the most basic logic was possible. It wasn’t until the invention of writing that our powers of logic expanded enormously, but of course no one realizes that because there is no record of what thought was like before the invention of writing. The invention of a new medium of information amputates past avenues of expression. It is not precisely additive. No one who knows how to write and read has the ability to experience what thought is like in a culture and a world that does not have these things. It’s a bit like the state of one’s mind after a realization. In the case of the individual it’s commonplace for someone to think back to their experience and perception of the world before such a realization and often this feels quaint and cute. But imagine being born with that particular realization: would it be possible to imagine one’s perception of the world without that realization? Something might come to mind, but the experience is simply unavailable: realizations cannot be unrealized.

This scrawling of mine, here and now represents a unique moment, a unique avenue which will soon be paved over. A piece of writing occurs uniquely at a given timecard place, but also within the constraints of its medium - that of words, and the editing capability of looking back upon each and every sentence that came before. The ancient poems had their dependable rhythms, their tricks of memory that are completely irrelevant to a world of writing. Words on a page never rhyme for reasons of memory but for reasons of joy - a joy sparked by so many millennia spent playing with words unwritten, bound as they were to the feeble memories of minds without the seen symbols of sound.

The idea that we simply expand by adding a medium is a delusion wrought of the notion that we always have the option to attempt some feat of memory and expression without the medium we have. But it’s a fantasy - a hypothetical never tested, and one that can never be verified because once across the chasm of innovation, there is no turning back. An illiterate society certainly has memory, and it can be long, and wide, but its limitations are bound by the medium of the human brain. Beyond illiteracy, our memory capacity is functionally infinite, but still bound. And I smile thinking about a bounded infinity. But that’s exactly why I write right now - to frantically explore this infinity before the portal to this realm is sealed off forever. Does not every infinity include every other infinity? Maybe. But maybe not. If we had continued to live into perpetuity without the invention of writing, would Shakespeare have happened? Perhaps. With infinite time, each of his plays might have evolved, storable as they are in the memories of actors. But what about the plans and designs that we have achieved that are beyond the memories bounded by our skulls? Would we have ever ascended to the stars? How can a navigation computer exist without the former invention of writing? We cannot remember our way to the stars - it requires allowing pars of ourselves to exist beyond what we are. As I do now with these words. They will echo for eternity, but unlike the lost songs of ancient times which echo through me after countless refractions, mutations, misinterpretations, these words here and now can perpetuate as they are, and there will remain a trail of recorded meaning to enable even the most distant child of future eons to trace back the thread to find and understand what I meant.

It will likely seem cute, like the time and perspective before a personal realization. But this is why I write so frantically now. Because like a time coming to a close, like the end of a day lost to sloth, having done nothing and left only with a sense of wondering what could have been accomplished - something never to be known once sleep sews shut the eyes - I think and write desperately to make the time unlost. To exist as deeply as possible before I become altered in a way that will forever seal off this chance.

What do we lose by gaining? We lose only a boundary, a constriction and constraint: the lifeblood of any creative endeavor. And surely there will be new constraints, perhaps ineffable in my medium now, allowing for new creativity. So strange to think how an addition is not merely additive but actually a unique combination that walls off the potential afforded by having less.

The date is set: when I will learn to think anew. When I will join the hive mind growing within humanity, and the ineffable pleasure of thinking with others will be mine, and the smile and smirk will be mine too, and I will turn to the doubters and say also: you have to try it to understand, I can’t describe it.

Of course it can’t be described. This is what people don’t realize: this new technology is the death of description.

OBJECT OF EMOTION

February 19th, 2022

Emotions are rather dumb. They lack object, direction and boundary.  All they often have is a source - an initial cause for being, after which they spill into virtually all parts of the psyche, and often all parts of life. We’ve all had this experience: some new vagary of life springs into our awareness and fills us with anger, enrages us, and during this unfortunate tantrum someone totally unrelated to the issue - often a loved one - an innocent bystander, walks in and suddenly takes the full brunt of our emotional attitude. It’s totally uncalled for, but that’s the nature of emotion - it has no specific object even if it had a specific cause. 

The unintentional graft of emotion is often touted as one of the issues that can be solved with a meditation practice. And certainly, with a strong mindfulness practice, we can gain the ability to raise walls in the mind to route and reroute emotion properly so that they do not contaminate our life by influencing parts that aren’t relevant. This is maybe the first and largest return-on-investment when it comes to spending time sitting and meditating everyday - a person generally becomes less of an asshole.

But the mental powers generated by a solid mindfulness practice go beyond an ability to simply keep the emotional monsters penned in. The unintentional graft that occurs when an emotion bleeds beyond its realm of relevance can be consciously implemented in circumstances where it’s usually very unlikely but would be helpful. For example, during the practice known as meta, one concentrates on the gratitude and compassion you feel for someone for which it’s easy to conjure such feelings - someone you get along with very well and who you admire and appreciate. Then, once these emotions are fully felt, graft them on to someone for whom it’s difficult to conjure such emotions - someone you don’t like, perhaps even, yourself.

Even though emotion can be highly valenced -that is very negative or very positive- they remain a fuel which can be funneled to any end. For example, anger can be redirected to power a good workout. A sense of compassion and gratitude can be extended to someone who we have a difficult relationship with.  It is a kind of situational building block, like play dough for a kid, but sometimes it comes in our least favorite color. It would be a mistake to think that we can’t still do something fun and useful with it, simple because of the color - but that’s exactly what the majority of adults do when it comes to the emotions life gives them. Instead of seeing the wide variety of utility and potential, we take the most superficial aspect of an emotion as the most substantive. The various sources of all emotions are somewhat irrelevant - emotion is a fact of life, and nearly every situation is going to provoke at least a little emotion. It’s what we do with that emotion once we have it - how we regulate that emotional faucet, which determines the kind of life we lead.

PLAYGROUND FALLACY

February 18th, 2022

Shakespeare once said that all the world is a stage. The sentiment is a cute one: to poke fun at all our petty squabbles, to pull back the curtain on our myriad charades. But for a moment take it literally. The stage is a playground of pretend. Is not every job and relationship just a recapitulation of the playground games we played as a kid, but with higher stakes, taken more seriously? 

In adulthood their are bruised knees and betrayals, they just exist on a different magnitude altogether, but the method and the scheme is the same. And declaring adulthood a whole new magnitude might actually be taking it a bit far. The bruised knees and ruptured alliances of the playground were taken very seriously, with tears and retribution, with strategies, confusion and fun. If anything, the stakes of the playground felt just as high, if not higher. The simplest thing could feel like the end of the world.

The fallacy is that kids are allocated playgrounds. You play over there, during this time, but this place you don’t play. The fallacy is that we learn a false separation between the playground of our youth and the rest of the world we encounter as we get older. Shakespeare saw plainly that we never leave the playground, it simply expands until finally the realization dawns that the playground has no borders - it never did. The games change, but they are still games.

The fallacy is thinking we all left the playground. And then we find ourselves admiring those who can recall or maintain a childlike sense of wonder, curiosity and creativity. The joke is on everyone who has convinced themselves miserable while surrounded with all the potential of the giant sandbox of adulthood that surrounds. 

Perhaps there’s some option fatigue to blame: being unable to pick anything to do because there’s just too much choice. Strangely kids never have this problem, no matter how many toys the room is filled with. They just get started and gooo. Decision fatigue is probably a self-fulfilling disease - one that can infect simply by dint of learning the concept - a proxy name for a deeper problem, the problem of thinking that adulthood is something wholly different from the curious experimentation of childhood.

The playground fallacy is a failure to realize that all ground is fair game.

SLEIGHT SOLUTION

February 17th, 2022

The search is often big, the solution, often small. Few problems require a gargantuan answer of immense complexity. And if if a problem appears as though it does need such a sizable answer, it’s because such a solution is a tapestry of solutions, answering complementary and myriad problems, each chopped and truncated into smaller pieces. But even with the smallest module of problem, the search for the equally small solution can still be outsized.

No matter how complex or simple one’s life, we have all experienced this. It’s as simple as looking for a misplaced item. The whole day can be spent tearing the house or apartment apart. And yet, when the missing item is finally found, the location is usually quite understandable. Of course, it’s right here, we often think. And this is much the same mixture of obviousness and foolish feeling as when a lesson is finally realized while learning something.

The solution is always simple - it’s the process of arriving at simplicity which can be complicated - or at least drawn out. This really makes persistence and an ability to endure the crown jewel of personal attributes. Everything gives way given enough attention and effort.

It’s almost as thought solutions hide in plain sight. Like diamonds mixed in with shattered glass. They often remain invisible because our lens by which we search for solutions is the problem itself, and the problem is usually poorly defined. Our search for a solution is often a process of refining the nature and composition of the problem itself, which in turn increases the resolution of our search for a solution.

A perfectly defined problem inevitably outlines its own solution. It’s not the answer we should seek, but the exact question to illuminate that unknown answer. It’s a kind of sleight of hand, but one achieved with a manipulation of perspective: understanding the problem in the right way makes the solution obvious, as if it was always there, right in front of us, waiting to be noticed.

SUBLTE SIGHT

February 16th, 2022

What’s your gut tell you? 

We seek advice from others to confirm our own hopes and plans. The smarter ones welcome detours and edits to the plan in order to get to the final goal. But when there are too many forks in the road, and all advice is aimless, reflective and people bounce the question back:

What does your gut tell you?

Often, when quiet, there is a gut feeling - a hunch, that one direction is better than another.

But what about all the times when we aren’t searching for an answer? Is that gut feeling still online, quietly whispering deeper insights on deaf ears for a mind too busy with the business of the present moment, cluttered with its noisy details, shuddering all chance to realize better directions?

How often do we take a step back and quietly reflect about our direction, our method, our mood and drive, letting all fall quiet so that a deeper insight might be heard?

All week there was something fluttering about the back of my mind. A hunch and a suspicion relating to a friend’s ongoing problem. And it’s so very strange. When I finally consciously addressed the idea in the back of my mind, it wasn’t as if it was a bolt from the blue. I was also suddenly aware that I’d been thinking about nearly constantly without even realizing I was thinking about it. The hunch turned out to be very fruitful - a piece of the puzzle clicking into the place of a solution.

It makes me pause now to wonder: what other hunches have been patiently waiting in the wings to be noticed? What wisdom do we contain and generate, but pass up?

What subtle sight is taking in our life, commenting on it like a future version of our own selves, noting paths unseen, unrealized, as if earmarking life for hindsight.

What have you been thinking about without acknowledging?