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.”

MENTAL DESTINATION

May 15th, 2021

It doesn’t matter where in the world the travel destination is, if a person doesn’t bring along an ability to be at peace, they won’t find it, not matter how sunny and wonderful the beach or how sacred and quiet the cathedral. Wherever we go, we bring along the capacity for experience.

The image of the pilgrim has the modern equivalent of the vacationer, as if it’s not possible to finally relax and have a good time until the destination is reached.  For the pilgrim, it was some religious experience that exists somewhere else, hence the need for the pilgrimage.

The disappointed pilgrim is just like the person who complains no matter how good the view nor how good the beach side mojitos.  There is nothing special about the destination that can change who we are capable of being.  The campy and cute twist here would be that it’s the journey not the destination, but that provides little help - no matter how glorious business class is, the journey on an airplane isn’t anymore suited for any kind of spiritual or mental growth than any other form of movement.

What’s missing is the framework of a mental journey, and mental destinations as being completely separate from the physical geography where we live or wish to visit.  The entire journey and destination is possible without ever moving, the whole thing exists within each person.  The physical world is a bit of a red herring in this respect.  We race around it chasing something that we carry along the entire time.  It’s a bit like ripping apart your house looking for some lost item when all along, it’s just in your pocket.

But imagine for a moment if you simply didn’t know exactly what it was you were looking for, but you knew there was something to find.  It could be easy and very understandable to look around the house, or the globe for the matter, for something that isn’t physical, but mental.  There’s little popular thought given to this notion of a mental destination, as represented by a mental state, and yet we are constantly chasing and cycling back to familiar stopping ground in terms of mental destination, be it having a glass of wine or being with someone in particular, or even taking a particular psychedelic.  We might instead think of the mind as a process, like a song that has lots of repetition but which can reach new crescendos never before experienced.

It usually requires some kind of life altering experience to achieve one of those new crescendos, unless, the volume on the whole song is regularly adjusted to be lower.  Without so much mental noise, even a normal day can sound like something new and fresh - because it is.  As much as the days repeat, they are unique - just in the same way life altering experiences are unique.  The difference is how much attention we pay, and what kind of attention.  With training, the mind can sink into the geography of time as we move through it, grasping the ordinary and the everyday in order to hoist itself to new heights.

BALANCE FALLACY

May 14th, 2021

Balance tends to mean homeostasis, but it’s used in places where we definitely don’t want homeostasis.  

Take for instance a fitness goal.  Often it’s lose weight, get leaner and perhaps gain muscle.  But how many people are likely to reward a workout with a meal that is less than ideal when taking into account those fitness goals.  We refer to this as being balanced.  I did something good, and for whatever puritanical reason, it now deserves a reward.  But it’s like taking a step forward in order to take a step back.  Balance I achieved alright, but what that means is a whole bunch of effort to ensure that nothing changes.  Goals aren’t reached and ultimately the workout seems like it’s not working out.

What we need to move forward in imbalance.  It’s a bit like when you find yourself falling forward, because perhaps you’ve just tripped, and in order to save yourself, you’ll run forward, usually awkwardly, but as quickly as you can.  The imbalance creates the need for speed.  Homeostasis quite literally gets us nowhere.

Achieving a calorie deficit, or rearranging nutritional ratios to create a deficit of carbohydrates or sugar are all a type of imbalance when juxtaposed to the diet which is or was the status quo.  The table will only tilt if we knock one of the legs out, and the same goes for most progress.  All effort is probably just a short break from being lazy.  The experience of being lazy is a kind of homeostasis: things are good enough, so why do anything?  It’s only when something about good enough is taken away, and things cease to be ok that we actually get going.  For a disciplined person, this can actually be a feeling around inactivity.  We can cultivate a kind of restless need to be doing something, similar to how some people can’t stand silence and must always have company, be it a real person, or some music, or the blathering TV in the background.

Balance as it’s commonly recommended is a fallacy, a regression to laziness and an underscored sense that things are just fine and need not change.  When in fact, in many areas, we need an imbalance to get the needle moving in a better direction.

A METAPHOR OF PSYCHOLOGICAL EXPERIENCE

May 13th, 2021

We each have a repetitive narrative that plays in our mind, reinforcing our own personal idea of who we are, what the world is like and what to think about the people around us.  This is like an audiobook that is constantly playing in the background, and every morning after waking up, it starts up again on repeat.  From this constant remembrance of what we think the world and ourselves to be, our behavior flows.  We do things in accord with who we currently think ourselves to be.  Change that idea of who you are and it can change the behavior you find yourself doing.

Another way of thinking about this narrative is to think of a pond.  Every pond or lack is bordered by the land surrounding it, and the shape of this land can take infinite shapes, and as a result the sort of waves or ripples that we might see across the surface of this pond is highly impacted by the shape of the coast.  Waves and ripples bounce and refract in certain ways depending on the shape of the coast they hit.  The hard border of land dictates that in normal circumstances, the rhythms of water is going to continuously cascade in a particular and repeated way.

Now imagine a giant rock is dropped in the middle of this pond.  A wave of sufficient strength can result to push out against the land and change the shape of the pond, and ultimately, the sort of music that plays across it’s surface in the form of ripples and waves.  This rock is the equivalent of a significant psychological experience, like the death of a loved one, falling in love, or having a sufficiently powerful psychedelic experience.  All of these unsettle the mind in ways that create a doorway or a freedom that can afford a new way of living, behaving and perspective.

The most accessible and controllable of such experiences is the psychedelic experience, oddly enough.  We cannot predict nor know when we might fall in love or when someone might unexpectedly die.  But we can, however consciously explore and decide upon the possibility of taking a strong psychedelic.  For years such an experience has been cooped up in the realm of hippies having fun.  But during the last few years it’s been making it’s way into serious mainstream study.  

The rock in the pond is a valid analogy, a strong psychedelic shakes up the mind, affording the near guarantee of a radically new perspective.  But a better analogy is to think of a tool, like a hammer.  It’s possible to have fun with a hammer in a casual and innocuously destructive way, like taking a few swings at an old TV that’s getting thrown out.  It’s fun, and that hammer is definitely being used, but anyone can walk away from that bit of physical exertion and think little of it.  This is the ‘party’ form of psychedelic use, though nothing may actually be destroyed, it’s just incidental of the hammer that it can be used in that sort of fun way.  The hammer, however, can be used in highly constructive ways: you can take apart a part of your house and rebuild it anew, better and improved if that hammer is used with skill.  But this is the ‘skill’ that most people don’t associate with psychedelics.  This skill is in the sense set and setting, of intention and integration for the experience.  These are all terms that are currently being developed in the research surrounding psychedelics, and in premodern times, such things were incapsulated by the ritual that surrounded such experiences.  

In terms of the pond image, the water and it’s rippled movement reflects the pattern of our neuronal firing, while the shape of land around the pond reflects the actual hardware of our brain, the placement and connection of those neurons in relation to one another.  When a substantial psychological experience occurs, that pattern of neuronal firing changes substantially.  Our neurons essentially play a different song, to a different beat…. For a time.  Eventually and usually the hard reality of our physical brain exerts its influence and for the most part we return to our regularly scheduled audiobook of who we think we are and what we think of the world.  There is, however, a brief time when the radical departure in thinking and subjective experience, as created by a radically different pattern of neuronal firing creates the opportunity for new behavior.  This can be like ‘getting out of your own way’, escaping the cage of your own mind for a while and doing something.  The actual doing, the physical behavior rooted in the body is a potential key for hardwiring a temporary positive change to make it permanent.j. Actual behavior, as downstream from a brief change in neuronal patterns can then refract back at the actual physical brain and get that brain to change it’s configuration, if only slightly, but enough to save the change.

None of this is proven of course, it’s just an elaborate image and metaphor in order to think about the brain and the mind, their link and how we might be able to consciously change the two for a better life.