CHEAT CODE

February 2nd, 2022

Anyone who claims that they are completely self made and that all their success is attributable only to their own effort is in denial.  Not only is a tremendous amount of luck involved in any person’s success, but we are a cooperative species and virtually no success is possible without the fact that there are other people playing this game with us.  These two external aspects of success: luck and other people can combine in some truly fortunate ways.  Some people can be so fundamental to our development and achievement that they are like cheat codes.

Nearly everyone is connected to a plethora of talent and goodwill.  But most of the time, a lot of that talent isn’t flowing through our network.  Often all it takes is to ask for help, which is a very humbling task and quite contrary to the ethos of the self-made individual.  Somehow, asking for help only feels like a power move if it can be paid for - and that is pretty much what commerce is: people paying for help, to obtain a particular object or have a particular service rendered.

For the most part, though, we pay strangers.  Certainly friends can do business, but real friendships often transcend the fenced logic of finances.  Asking a friend for help might be humbling, but it’s also an opportunity for the friendship to flourish.

First you have to get lucky enough to have a few great friendships.  And then if you’re lucky enough for those people to be talented in all sorts of ways, you have to get lucky a third time: to have the humility to ask for some help.

FALSE WISH

February 1st, 2022

If you want it bad enough, it’ll come true. This is a fairly ubiquitous and insidious tenet of current culture. Insidious because it implies that wanting is all that’s required. The more wishy washy aspects of culture have come up with other ways of invoking the same kind of spell, like manifest. But both wanting something enough, and manifesting are just forms of wishful thinking. They are hope incarnate.

And many who don’t prescribe to these kind of wishy washy ideas will not think the same thing about good old fashioned hope. But this concept is no different. It’s just a more wholesome flavor, underpinned by a longer history of use.

It’s not too difficult to see how wishful thinking can get in the way of execution. If we spend all our time and energy simply wishing for something to happen, then we have less time and energy to actually look at reality and try to figure out what puzzle-pieced set of actions might reconfigure reality into the one we’d like to see. Not only this, wishing, wanting, manifesting, and hope can leave someone feeling confident that the fantasy future is a sealed deal and that there’s no real reason to take any action.

Without these concepts and urges, it’s still possible to recognize that a different reality would be better. This is just a more sober phrasing of: wanting things to be different. But the sobriety of rephrasing helps to highlight the doorway to progress. Reality becomes a puzzle as opposed to the mysterious froth in a witch’s cauldron.

Instead of I really hope this happens! It becomes: what can I do to help reality change and move in a better direction - toward the one I can imagine?

In such a light, optimism and pessimism lose a bit of their sting and use.

Is it possible to be neither an optimist or a pessimist?

Certainly. But what exactly does that person look like? 

We love to think in binary ways. You’re either an optimist or a pessimist. You’re either with me or against me. You either agree or disagree.

We even think about the option of binary in a binary way. You either think everything is binary, or binary doesn’t exist and it’s all a gradient spectrum! The irony is lovely.

So to remove the binary of optimism and pessimism might at first inspire the idea of a spectrum between effulgent positivity about the future and pure cynicism.

But what if we do away with that spectrum altogether.  What if we boil things down to simply the actions that people take. This isn’t to evoke another binary, one of action vs inaction. But simply actions in general. Even people who ‘don’t take action’ are still living and breathing. Their actions are just far less grand than the ambitious person we often vaunt. 

We boil it down to just people doing things. Wishful thinking and ‘manifesting’ and hope are a kind of fantasy, a dreaming, a mental intoxication - a sort of navel gazing. And all of it can be classified as a kind of action: it’s taking up time and imaginably some small iota of energy.

We need ask: is there a more effective set of actions that such a person could take to make reality reconfigure so that the present evolves into a better future?

Certainly. Wishful thinking will work every once in a while, just by dint of coincidence, but this is pure correlation, and not reliable causation. 

All optimism and pessimism aside, all hope and wishing aside, we need only ask at any given time: is this the most effective action I can be engaging in to bring about a better version of reality tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year?

THE THOUGHTS OF OTHERS

January 31st, 2022

When we speak with someone about a contentious topic, there’s a single metric to gauge our own disadvantage: If you cannot anticipate the next thought and point of logic that your partner in dialogue will provide, then you fail to understand their point of view.

This might seem pedantic in the sense that one could - if given the time - come up with all reasonable manner of logic and argument for the other side. But this is also unrealistic. 

Instead, think of how incredible but ordinary it is for two close people to finish each other’s sentences. Here it makes sense. When two people spend enough time together it’s not unlikely for their minds to undergo a strange meld, where even from across a room, thoughts seem to be startlingly in sync.

Imagine having this kind of connection with the person whom you disagree with the most. This isn’t to say your agree with that person, but simply that you are so in tune with the method flow and content of their thought that you can intuit and anticipate their logic and argument with a startlingly high degree of accuracy.

Now, this is virtually unheard of in the real world. It’s only with intimate partners - or close partners of any kind that we grow to develop this kind of intuition. But, this is sort of where it’s needed the least.

It’s with the enemies across the isle, across the battlefield that we need it the most. Imagine being a general of an army and understanding your opposing general so intimately that you could anticipate their next move. It would enable you to win the war.

Intimacy is not a capacity that is or should be relegated to positive relationships. Like the nemesis characters of comic books or the villains of deep tragedies, these are characters deserving of intimacy - if not for the humble value of exploring the humanity incased in such being, but for the benefits accrued to our ability to navigate reality with them.

Understanding an enemy is a risky game. It requires a venture away from our regularly scheduled programing to try and attempt to understand programming far different from ourselves and maybe our culture. There is the risk of becoming convinced of such programming, and the true hero is one who can straddle both of these worlds without being intoxicated by either - the one who can venture into the darkness to become a part of it and return with whatever jewels the darkness hides.

The thoughts of others are what we fear the most, but also what we understand the least. To understand the thoughts of others is to dissipate that fear by embracing it, and by so doing understand whomever we deem an other.

A LUCILIUS PARABLE: EDIT THE GAME

January 30th, 2022

From the dusty mist a figure emerged. The blocky pieces of plated armor clashed with the soft patina of filmy air as he moved. Out into the clear air he moved, until there was a clear view of the desert basin. 

The evening sun was crimping the far horizon and the figure sat. Lucilius threaded a thumb beneath the edge of the cylindrical helmet and lifted till the shell was aloft and he breathed the fresh air. Straggled hair matted his forehead, and he twisted his head, stretching his neck, the bones clicking from their cramp.

From a compartment of armor on his leg he dislodged a flask. The tiny cap split and unravelled by it’s mechanical apparatus to unveil an opening. Lucilius drank long and deep the searing liquid, and then he breathed deep and sighed from a long day of work. He glanced to his side, where lay the clothed bounty of his day’s work, soaking through the fibre.  

He smiled softly at the sunset before the pleasant sense of a day’s work soured as he registered the particular sound of space splitting, spreading and forming a portal.

Lucilius closed his eyes, disagreeing to the flood of memory filling his mind. His long meditation practice, kept up even in this universe held them at bay before embracing them, allowing old times to flood over him like a neutral stream, neither hot nor cold.

He looked toward the sound of the split space, the portal. Swirling in suspended air was a whirlpool of shimmer, now bigger than the width of his two hands, and before it, a tiny critter, gazing up at him with large eyes.

“What.” Lucilius demanded.

“Your majesty, your opinion is greatly desired.”

“How long’s it been?”

The little critter - somewhere between a rabbit and a tiny dog, it’s garish talking jaws awkward below it’s pendulous blinking orb eyes - seemed to huddle into itself as though it had made an offense.

“Your majesty, our readings indicate you have been a resident of this world for nearly two centuries!”

“No.” Lucilius stated. “How long has it been? Not in this reality, but ours?”

The little creature’s eyes fell lower and seemed to search the stone ground for some kind of answer besides the one it held. It mumbled something.

“What.” Lucilius stated.

The tiny creature looked up again. “Forty-five.”

“Forty-five what? Hours?”

The tiny creature cast it’s eyes down again.  “….seconds.” it stated quietly.

“Forty-five seconds? You can’t handle things for forty-five seconds while I have a little fun playing a video game?”

“You excellencey. The galaxy is most anxious at your decision to abandon reality.”

“Abandon? Are you kidding? I’m away for 8 hours while I sleep, and people are complaining about forty-five seconds. It takes longer to go to the bathroom for Zeus’s sake. Give it up Hermel. What’s the real issue here?”

The little critter looked even more uneasy.  “Sire, it’s more the principle behind the matter that people have been bothered with.”

“Hermel,” Lucilius said. “If a group of people can’t order and regulate themselves then democracy is null and void. A supreme chancellor is of little point if the point is to be a despot. It might seem like a silly issue of semantics but the practical ramifications of one role and definition as opposed to the other will rattle to the cold edge of the universe. I will be no parent to the whining throngs of people, and they must learn to govern without me - by trial of fire if it need be.”

The tiny creature looked askance with a sad and nervous seriousness that almost made Lucilius feel guilty.

“Hermel,” Lucilius said, “Old friend.”

The little critter looked at him. “They will be just fine, I promise. I prepared them.”

The little critter looked unsure.

“Hermel.”

“Yes sire?” The critter said looking up at Lucilius.

“Stay with me a while. There’s fun to be had in this wonderful universe.” He motioned with his hand at the wide horizon, the shades of azure, maroon, and violet cascading up to endless stars.

“Sire, I could never, I have responsibilities!”

“And so do I Hermel, and how long have I been gone again?”

“Forty-five seconds.”

“Well that’s been about two centuries of adventure for me, Hermel. So stay with me, Twenty seconds at least. We’ll have a grand old time ricocheting across these endless systems. You won’t be gone more than an eye blink, and in that time I’ll tell you how to run that old universe. Your wife won’t miss you a second.”

The tiny critter’s face was cramped with uncertainty. “Sire, it’s very forward.”

“Oh shush Hermel,” Lucilius said, standing. The critter gazed up at the gleaming maze of armor his master wore. Lucilius pointed at his helmet, and the tiny critter scurried toward it, as though it might somehow raise it to the tall being. But as Hermel came close to the helmet, Lucilius bent and scooped up his advisor with the helmet and launched him up to his shoulder. The nervous little critter shrieked as it landed and scrambled for a hold a top the shoulder plate cascading from Lucilius’ neck.

Lucilius laughed. “You’re going to love it Hermel.” The little critter looked back at the portal. Lucilius raised his spread palm and clenched the wide set fingers into a fist, and the portal blinked out of existence.

“How!…. how did you do that?” Hermel shrieked.

“You don’t spend centuries here without learning how to edit the game.”

Hermel’s nervousness rose till his tiny body quaked. 

“This was always my plan Hermel.”

“What do you mean Sire?”

Lucilius turned to look at the small critter on his shoulder. “To bring you here. This is your training Hermel. You will be the new chancellor. This is how it’s been done for thousands of years, and now it’s your turn.”

The critter’s eyes grew wider and wider. “But sire! Sire! I can’t possibly, I am but a mere aide!”

Lucilius laughed, and laughed as he walked forward, descending the rocky terrain toward a starship in the valley below.

“Oh Hermel, you think of yourself like everyone else does: a mere aide, a servant to me to do my bidding.”

“Yes! Yes!” Hermel exclaimed. “That’s what I’ve always meant to be.”

Lucilius continued to laugh. As he hopped down from rocky ledge to ledge. He slid the helmet back over his head and the laugh grew muffled and deep. The critter clung more frantically to the shoulder plate.

“Hermel,” The echoed voice of the helmet grated. “My servant, shall be a servant no longer. You shall have to become more than you want.”

Lucilius stopped and turned to look at the big disbelieving eyes crouched on his shoulder. “The moment you walked through that portal to visit me, to plead for my return on some tiny, insignificant matter of state, you bound yourself to a century of training. Fifteen or twenty seconds will pass, but here, we will grow closer than ever before, and if we survive, and if I can fulfill my most important function, you will return the chancellor of the galaxy.”

The tiny critter’s eyes grew widest, as its tiny jaw chattered.

A metallic laugh echoed out from the helmet.

“Oh Hermel. Relax. We’re going to have quite a bit of fun…”

BLIND FUTURE

January 29th, 2022

The experience is deceptively brief, subtle and profound. This is something we’ve all experienced, either by duress or curiosity: toiling away at some inscrutable problem, trying this and that, furious with confusion, calmed with determination. And then all of a sudden, the issue vanishes. Something clicks, something connects, something slides into place and instantly the world is different. The anxious guess of trying is now a certainty.

All too often we just move on, simply and quickly. Well, that’s done, what’s next? The magnitude of such moments is very important for two reasons: one is simply the fact that it’s so brief that we don’t internalize how profound the shift is - no matter how mundane the task. The second is that some people - many people are working on problems and technologies that when solved will change everyone’s life in drastic ways.

It requires a lot of free time and a lot of curiosity to have even a small mental cache as to what these problems and technologies are. So the vast majority of too-busy, exhausted, in-need-of-entertainment people are simply oblivious to the determined minds dragging innovation forward. Most assume the future will be pretty much like yesterday or last week, with perhaps a few new emoji’s. It’s the 2020’s now, and where are our flying cars? That’s the eye-rolled criticism so often lobbed at futurists and technologists. But the haste of such a criticism is further evidence of our total obliviousness to the profound change that occurs when we finally figure something out. It’s just too brief, and the wayward journey to get to the point of revelation collapses afterwards into a kind of blurry snapshot that we toss to the side. After something is solved, it’s easy - natural even - to completely forget just how much effort it took to achieve. Inverting this fact upon problems yet to be solved, it then seems natural that not-soon-enough arguments would proliferate.

Opinion is not just fickle, but momentary, and constantly transiting based on the morph of circumstance. Insight can also be momentary. The same realization can come about more than once, and the restitution is often needed to truly integrate it. Our own experience with figuring out things is a perfect case. No matter how many thousands of things we’ve figured out since we first rolled over and set a mind to figuring out how to crawl, we still grope and groan when faced with a puzzle to solve. 

Our eyes are some how wide and clamped shut as we swim through the present, oblivious to the lessons of the past that hint at a profoundly different future.