MASSAGE

May 20th, 2021

Action is king. If the entire self-help section at the bookstore could be shoved into a blender, mixed up into a fine past and then distilled for it’s core message it would sound like a Nike advertisement: most problems get solved if you just do that thing that you need to do.  Twitter gurus hold up the sacred notion of taking action and eschew anything that even nods in the direction of overthinking.  For good reason, action is the potent ingredient for change.  That being said, action isn’t exactly the end-all mic-drop that it’s touted to be.  Because, most action doesn’t yield the results we expect.

Reality is a partner in conversation who doesn’t always speak the same language.  Perhaps even none of the time.  Taking effective action can often feel like picking out a random string of words from a dictionary of an unknown language and hoping that it makes a coherent sentence: it can take a few tries to hit upon some useful and effective trends.  Indeed it can take quite a lot of tries before anything starts to have a semblance of sense.

But with each effort we do push reality around.  Even if it’s not evidenced by the result we want, something is changing, even if it’s just our own idea of what reality is, and how it works.  The whole process isn’t like some crescendo of conflict where one decisive action seizes the day once and for all.  No, taking action is a bit more like massaging reality.  There’s a certain point when the knot in the muscle finally loosens, but there’s never any one single effort that makes it happen, it’s soup of effort, swirling at the problem with hundreds or thousands of attempts to touch some of the result we seek.  Certainly there are moments when things are suddenly different, or we simply realize that things are different, and such instances can be good fodder for celebration, but few things actually happen all at once.  Usually such an instance comes at the end of a long slow burn of meandering effort, and it was that whole meandering effort that was needed for the change, so action, as we relate to it is best seen as slow process of erosion.  We wear down a problem until it no longer exists and in it’s stead stands that discovered solution.

SELLING THE DIP

May 19th, 2021

What exactly is the stock market?  The value of a company share can fluctuate by an enormous amount in a very little time.  What exactly does this price change reflect?

If a car company, for instance suddenly has a drastic drop in it’s stock, does that mean that the company is worth less?  Yes and no.  For instance, imagine what the value of the same car company would be without the stock market.  Say for instance the stock market simply didn’t exist, how exactly would you determine the value of the car company?  

You could count up all the nuts and bolts it has, get valuations on its factory space, the land it’s on all the hardware, and then perhaps average revenue and costs could be factored in, and perhaps maybe, just maybe we could arrive at a fairly accurate valuation for this imaginary car company.  So what happens when the stock drops by a drastic amount?  Does this mean they suddenly lost a factory?  Perhaps a container ship with a thousand cars being shipped over seas sank?  No, not at all.  In the short term, the stock market has no sense of these sorts of things regarding the actual value of a company - it’s wild fluctuation in the short term is proof of this: cold hard valuation in terms of physical value simply can’t fluctuate this much without catastrophic disaster.

So what does the stock market indicate?  Far removed from physical reality, the stock market reflects a feeling about the future.  The cost of a given share for a given company is an indication of confidence in the future ability of the company to perform and turn a profit.

When day traders try to make a quick buck in the markets, what they are actually doing is gambling on the shift in feeling and confidence about the future performance of companies.  That’s why it’s so hard to make a *quick* buck, and also why it’s so unwise to try and make that quick buck.  Feelings and confidence about a future that no one can predict is an immensely fickle thing - it is a bubbling chaos of human emotion. 

The only wise bet regarding the market is a long term one.  The reason is because confidence in the future performance of a company is -over time- based on past performance.  If past performance is good, then over a long enough timeline, the trend of confidence about the future will be positive.  As simple as this strategy is, it’s remarkably difficult for human’s to adhere to.  People consistently buy the high because everyone is excited about the stock, hence why it’s high, and then sell the low, because everyone is nervous about the stock, hence the low.  There are quicker ways to lose money, but this is one of the most confounding ways to do it.

Selling the dip means only one thing: either you didn’t understand the mission, or you didn’t believe in the mission represented by that stock.

COMPETITION CONCEPT

May 18th, 2021

Competition provides a proof of concept.  If the competition can make it work, then there’s a real  avenue to develop.  Nascent efforts can interpret competition as a non-starter, as though someone already got to the idea, the take away being: what’s the point?  But as with any industry, multiple versions of the same thing almost always spring up, unless of course, a monopoly as formed.  But even monopolies can be toppled by novel interpretations of the same idea.

Competing versions of similar products keep the idea healthy.  Each learns from the other in a kind of arm’s race that is constantly scaling up.  Sometimes this sort of competition results in a race to the bottom, as has happened with major news organizations that have fallen victim to the internet world of ad-click revenue.  Each new organization has grown more and more skewed in an effort to draw eyeballs, and by extension clicks, and further extension: money.  Why buy a newspaper if it can be read for free online?

This presents the ultimate form of competition: how do you compete with something that’s free?  When a thoughtfully curated Twitter feed is more informative and nuanced than any of the major new paper organizations, how can those news organizations possibly compete?  They simply can’t, at least not in the antiquated form they’ve maintained while slipping into the ugly era of internet revenue.

New technologies require radical rethinking of revenue streams when they make old revenue streams irrelevant.  This is blindingly obvious, and yet there’s been very little rethinking, and certainly almost no radical rethinking on the part of news organizations.  They represent a failure to pivot, a failure to welcome what is new, and perhaps most of all, they represent a toppled monopoly.  Most people get their news from Facebook posts as opposed to the Washington Post, or the New York Times.  The mistake on the part of the incumbents was to try and play the same game, the new game, which is all about engagement.  Depth was sacrificed for superficial glances.

Distributors of information have always employed sensationalist tactics to try and sell their product.  Even a hundred years ago there were those who bemoaned the salacious quality of newspaper writing.  The internet simply provided a conduit that cuts out the physical middle man.  There’s no need to buy the paper, and print the words, and hire the writers and the journalists and the fact checkers and the researchers.  All that can happen organically via the audience, given just the right platform.

While the news giants of yesterday may be taking their last wheezing breaths, that does not mean that competition has ceased.  New social platforms will arise to nock the current digital incumbents for the very reason that they were best formed to topple the previous giants of news, and the new ones will be designed to compete with the current ones.  Competition in this sense is a kind of immune response.  Concepts hunger to improve and welcome their own reincarnation through a better imagining, a better implementation.  

Far from being a threat, competition is a primary signal about how to improve.

FACTORY SETTINGS

May 17th, 2021

Mass production is all about identically perfect units.  When something is reset to factory settings, it means the same for every single unit.  Imagine if, however, each identical looking gadget that came out of the factory had unique settings to start off with.  This is pretty much what we get with the human body.  Not only are we not identical, but our settings are all unique also.

The concept of one-sizes-fits-all is the absolute antithesis of this fact.  While there are generalities that exist across the entire human population - the need to actually eat something, or breathe - the good life, the level-up, the ideal fitness, stable brain chemistry and a sense of fulfillment, all of these things often reside in the nuances of the story.  And when it comes to the unique body and brain that each of us has, that nuance is something that can only be discovered on a personal, individual level.  As far as our science has been able to reach, it still has a long way to go.

Perhaps at some point in the future there will be diagnostic tests paired with artificial intelligences that can sour the medical literature and data to help us discover these nuances of body and mind, but for the time being, we are for the most part left to our own detective work.

To compound the search for meaningful nuances, we can’t even reset ourselves to those so-called ‘factory settings’.  We have to figure these things out on the fly while compounding our health with age and wear and tear.

All of this is reason to be willing to take large leaps with one’s self, to make drastic experiments.  The idea is to find the boundary conditions, and then parse the environment between those boundaries.  Balance is the culprit that often keeps a person in the center of a safe little bubble of comfort: taking one step forward with a workout and another step back with an unwise treat as a reward.  That being said, many are exploring certain extremes of unhealth.  Obesity seems to have taken care of that boundary of human health.  We don’t have to wonder what’s in the other direction because the examples are plastered all over advertisements, magazines, movies: it’s that body we all want, and half-heartedly try for.

The other component of this is the mind.  Just as there is an epidemic of obesity (at least in North America), there also seems to be an epidemic of poor mental maintenance.  It’s one thing to say mental health, but the vague term does not point to the fact that our mind, like our body is something that requires maintenance.   And if we do not put it through it’s due training, it will grow ungainly in ways that will undermine our future attempts at happiness, success, fulfillment, and all the things that we dream of achieving.  

Even more complicated is how the treatment of the body becomes a treatment of the mind.  Drinking alcohol everyday, sleeping poorly as a result, slamming coffee to try and remedy the problem, which simply compounds the issue - these are not just effects that we bestow on the body, they are equally detrimental to the mind and it’s ability to focus with clarity, vision and determination.  The body can take quite a beating and shoulder the burden for quite a while, but the mind is something that’s affected almost immediately, as we all know with the fast effects of caffeine or alcohol, or waking up after an excellent night of sleep.  The effects are profound and fairly immediate.  But all of these factors effect everyone in nuanced ways, and the combination of factors makes the detective work all the more personal and difficult.  But the riddle and mystery is always with you, the difference is really whether or not we pay attention to the clues along the way, and take chances on a hunch that might arise.

A LUCILIUS PARABLE: RECONSIDER

May 16th, 2021

The steady beep was a rhythm for Lucilius’ thoughts as he looked at all the tubes and wires laced into the unconscious body of someone he loved very much.  The heart monitor was backed by a softer beat of another machine, slowly inflating and deflating, to breathe for the person before him who could not.  The hand Lucilius held was still warm, and he looked off out the window while his thoughts bubbled up in the same way.

“I’m torn,” Lucilius said. “I know what I promised I’d do, but now that the time has come, I’m torn.”

He looked back at the closed eyes, the tubed and taped mouth, and wondered.  “When we had this conversation, things were different.  The future wasn’t so bright with possibility, with innovation, and back then it made perfect sense to make the promise I did.”

Lucilius rubbed a thumb softly over the back of the hand, staying clear of the taped lead.  “I wish I could just know if you are hearing me or not.  I suppose that would make it easer.  Though, I’m not sure.  If you can’t hear anything, and it’s just like you’re asleep, than what’s the harm in waiting?  The money certainly isn’t an issue, and I’m willing to wait as long as it takes.  But if you can hear me, than I guess that makes this all the worse.  I can explain myself but I have no way of knowing if you’re experiencing a kind of torture, chained to this bed by tubes and wires, growing antsy and restless, your thoughts screaming back at every word I’m saying.”

He paused to let the pain he felt from the thought pass.  “The thing is, when I made that promise, when we discussed the possibility of this situation, it seemed like medical advancement was at a standstill.  But now the portion folding problem is solved, and the theory of information aging seems to be proving itself out, a whole set of different industries are set to collide over the next few years and the fruit that will probably come from those combinations just makes it seem so likely that what’s going on right here will be an easy fix.  So what am I to do?”

Lucilius sighed, and then chuckled a little.  “I know, I know, I can hear you yelling at me in that head of yours.  You’ve always had your own ideas about how things are going to turn out.”  

Lucilius laughed a little more and then shook a finger at the unconscious person.  “But who has been proven right time and again with these sorts of predictions?”

His smile quickly weakened with no reaction to bolster it, and he sighed deeply.  “Here’s the thing, here’s the way I need you to look at it.  Imagine for a moment that I keep my promise to you, but I also turn out to be right about all this stuff.  Imagine it’s three or five years in the future and I’m reading an article about the exact sort of breakthrough that we could use right now, but you’re gone at that point.”  Lucilius winces at the thought. “That’s the hard one to think about, and thing is I’m almost certain it’s what’s going to happen if I follow through and keep my promise to you.  But then you also have to imagine, what is that breakthrough comes and it fixes everything that’s keeping you from answering me right now.  Imagine if we could have more time together, years, and decades of full and healthy life…. It’s either that or I have to live those decades thinking about how you could’ve been there with me, but you aren’t, because I kept my promise.”

Lucilius rubbed his eyes and his head at the temples.  “Caught between a promise and a possibility.  But I guess what I’m saying is that you already know what I’m going to do, you know the way I think, and as stubborn as your condition is, it’s nothing compared to what you know I can muster.”

Carefully, he laid down on the edge of the bed, and studied the arc of the breathing tube, looked at the familiar skin, now pale.

“Can an honest promise turn into a bad promise?  Of course you’d agree with that possibility, but maybe not about this situation.  I just don’t know.  I just. Don’t know.  You could be hearing every word I’m saying and your thoughts could be screaming for me to pick one way or another now based on what I’ve said, but I just don’t know.  But I’ve still got to decide.”