THE FALLEN DANCER, PART VIII

February 24th, 2023

 

The Fallen Dancer is a series here on Tinkered Thinking exploring a recent shift in perspective. The resulting framework appears to tie together many topics explored on Tinkered Thinking over the years such as resilience, struggle, patience, curiosity, emotional regulation, artistry, entrepreneurship, winning, honesty, and communication. This series will be an attempt to unify them in a cohesive treatment.

 

Click here to read Part VII

Click here to start at the beginning

 

 

Part VII: Grappling with Circumstance

 

 

 

Ἡ βιωτικὴ τῇ παλαιστικῇ ὁμοιοτέρα ἤπερ τῇ ὀρχηστικῇ κατὰ τὸ πρὸς τὰ ἐμπίπτοντα καὶ οὐ προεγνωσμενα ἕτοιμος καὶ ἀπτὼς ἑστάναι.

 

 

 

How does an artist devoted to perfection grapple with inevitable imperfections, mistakes and setbacks in their work? Or in other words, how does a dancer get back up on their feet when they fall?

 

One way to answer these questions is to examine the differences between a plan and a strategy.

 

For our purposes, let’s imagine a plan as a static entity, like a blueprint that has been printed out and is intended to be followed.

 

One the other hand, let’s say a strategy is dynamic. It is like a set of guidelines that have been purposely designed to have flexibility in order to accommodate for unanticipated variables.

 

A plan imagines one future, whereas a strategy is something we use to navigate a plurality of possible futures. The main difference between hatching a plan and developing a strategy is that the mindset that develops a strategy is anticipating that some degree of the unknown will come into play. Whereas a plan seeks to eliminate all unknowns in favor of a completely determined future. This is why many people can get so bent out of shape when things don’t go according to their plan: they are suddenly face to face with the unknown and they don’t have a tool for dealing with it and they lose their cool. A plan is a type of story which limits perspective to notice only details that are a part of the plan. In contrast a well developed strategy will require a wider perspective, one that tries to imagine the unknown in general ways.

 

Another way to think about the difference between a plan and a strategy is to ask: when a dancer sets out a particular routine, do they plan on falling?

 

No. Of course not. Does a dancer have a strategy to deal with an unanticipated fall? Maybe. Perhaps they get up and try to catch up to the routine as fast possible, but regardless, the fall and the recovery will ultimately be a huge disappointment, a pock upon the performance, and even if the routine can be recovered, the fall will degrade the entire effort. 

 

We must wonder: is there a type of dance where the dancer plans on falling? A type of dance that incorporates a strategy to deal with a fall in a way that actually helps the dancer and upgrades the entire effort? Is there a type of dance where a fall can actually be a type of hidden leverage?

 

Several years ago I found myself face-to-face with a guy whose biceps were about as thick as my neck. Personally, I’m not exactly a small, scrawny or weak guy - I’ve been a regular at the gym for years and my PR’s are far from mediocre. But this person I found infront of me was clearly far stronger than I was. The vein running down his bicep was as thick as my smallest finger, and I knew he could probably out perform me on every metric of strength.

 

But, within in about a minute, I had him down on the mat and forced him into a submission. He tapped my arm to signal that he gave up.

 

Within a few more minutes I had repeated the feat twice. Despite his overwhelming advantage of strength, I forced him into submission two more times.

 

The difference between the two of us wasn’t just one of strength: it was his first day at the Jiu Jitsu center where I had been training for two months. Just two months of training in the art of Jiu Jitsu had equipped me with the knowledge and the perspective that allowed me to swiftly bring down a guy far more powerful than myself. I had never thought much about martial arts, but Jiu Jitsu had completely changed my opinion on the subject. Jiu Jitsu isn’t about strength. It’s not even about knowledge of different positions or techniques. What I found so compelling about it is that is provides a different perspective: it’s a strategy of thinking. It’s a way and a practice of turning a fall into an advantage. The grappler plans on falling, and then uses it to their benefit. Brute strength is subservient to knowledge, skill and technique.

 

Knowledge, skill and technique sounds a lot like dancing, but unlike the performing dancer, the grappler has a larger perspective that incorporates setbacks and the unknown.

 

My next sparing partner that day was a young woman who was a foot shorter than me and perhaps half my weight. She tapped me out in seconds, and the belt around her waist was black.

 

Years ago I read Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations but this was before my experience training in Jiu Jitsu. I didn’t pick up on the wisdom of a particular line the first time I read it, and when I reread the book with this grappling experience behind me, suddenly it lit up my mind in a profound way:

 

The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing.

 

Again, the concept of luck is the best way to parse the difference here. Imagine for a moment a hypothetical: you place a dancer in a room with a grappler, and they are both told to perform their art with the partner they find in the room. The dancer tries to dance with the grappler but ends up knocked off their feet forced into submission.

 

Who is going to feel unlucky at the end of that exchange?

 

The premise is absurd if taken literally, but figuratively this is exactly what is happening to many people in life. The story that many people spin about the art of their life is more like dancing, and when they get knocked on their ass, they bemoan their bad luck. And yet, convinced that life should be like some kind of dance, people work up their courage to get back up on their feet only to be crushed by another event they can only label as bad luck.

 

Compare it to someone who looks at the art of life as grappling, wrestling or Jiu Jitsu. It’s not bad luck when such a person falls, it’s simply a change in circumstance, and the grappler knows that with the right perspective, that change in circumstance can probably even be used to their advantage.

At first glance it might be depressing to think of life as something to fight and force into submission, especially when compared to something as beautiful and enjoyable as dancing. But zoom out for a moment. Consider the process that took place for us to get to where we are. Evolution is a cut-throat process - the strong or the smart survive, and there are innumerable species that have gone extinct because they literally didn’t win the fight. What’s fascinating is that despite the abundant safety of civilization, if we pit the grappler and dancer mentalities against one another, the grappler appears to be far more useful, because even if you aren’t literally fighting for your life, you’re fighting against something else: regret. A life worth living is something hard earned, something that must be fought for, sometimes literally, but always figuratively. Even if it’s something as simple as fighting procrastination. A satisfying life requires effort, and it’s often a struggle. Certainly it requires a lot of effort to pull off a dance performance, but when it comes to navigating an unknown tomorrow, which mindset equips a parson better? Life as dancing, or is life a circumstance to grapple with?

 

 

Sam Altman once wrote “Resilience is so much more valuable than it seems. Get knocked down a bunch of times, get back up with more energy each time.” Who is more likely to get back up with more energy each time? The dancer or the grappler? The dancer is more likely to become demoralized, convinced they simply aren’t cut out for it. Whereas the grappler, who anticipates and intuits that falling is a vital part of the learning process can easily pop back up and start in on the next lesson.

 

Would you rather be like the young woman in Black Swan slowly going mad in the pursuit of perfecting an art? Or would you rather be like Muhammad Ali, effortlessly dancing around your opponent’s empty jabs? Ali was a dancer, but he was more than just a dancer, and he captured the distinction perfectly:

 

Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.

THE FALLEN DANCER, PART VII (REWRITE)

February 22nd, 2023

 

The Fallen Dancer is a series here on Tinkered Thinking exploring a recent shift in perspective. The resulting framework appears to tie together many topics explored on Tinkered Thinking over the years such as resilience, struggle, patience, curiosity, emotional regulation, artistry, entrepreneurship, winning, honesty, and communication. This series will be an attempt to unify them in a cohesive treatment.

 

Click here to read Part VI

Click here to start at the beginning

 

 

Part VII: The Art of Life

 

If you were to pick an art that most resembles the act of living, which art would you pick?

 

This is a worthy exercise because it may reveal something interesting about the way you look at life and the perspective you bring to the efforts you make on a day to day basis.

 

Do your efforts resemble that of the impressionist painter? Blurry in detail but magnificent from a distance? Or perhaps your efforts are even more chaotic, like a Jackson Pollock painting.

 

Perhaps life is something you build, like a sculpture. Something that required a lot of heavy hitting in the beginning and is now a matter of fine tuning the details.

 

Perhaps it’s like a mechanical structure that has a grand vision but doesn’t work until all the pieces are bolted and screwed together?

 

Maybe dancing makes the most sense. We all know what it feels like to be on a roll, when everything is firing on all cylinders and it seems like we’ve picked up on a secret rhythm that braids the luck of the universe in with our own efforts. 

 

It’s worth taking a break from these words to actually give it some thought. The answer may characterize in large part your perspective and reflects the foundation from which all your efforts spring.

 

Up till this point, the focus of The Fallen Dancer has been about the nature of perspective, how it is a tool, and how much our opportunity, luck, and well-being are dictated by how swiftly we can augment and aim our focus in beneficial ways. Words like focus, perspective, and outlook, are all related but not in definitive ways that we’re all going to agree on. Are changes in focus a result of one’s perspective? One’s outlook on life? Can perspective change by focusing on different things? This kind of nit-picking devolves into a kind of pedantic roundabout. This is why a big question like: what art form is life most like? Is so useful. It zooms out and subsumes little details of focus, perspective, philosophy and outlook into a framework that anyone can understand. This the power of metaphor and analogy, and why these concepts are part of the practice of language. It’s the very reason why we tell stories. In fact, the underlying premise of any book, the writing and reading of that book is based on this idea: change the stories, change the world. Our patterns of thought are representative and derivative of the story we tell ourselves about what life is and what our roll is in that story. And yet, few people zoom out this far to ask something as large as: how do I characterize the story of the life I’m living?

 

Likening it to the practice of a type of art is useful because it turns such an enormous open-ended question into one that feels more like a multiple choice answer. Are my days like sketches in a sketchbook? Am I writing my life like a novel? Are difficult days - when it’s hard to even get out of bed like the blocked writer staring at the blank sheet of paper, wondering what to write… Or do you look at each day as a chance to dance with reality?

 

For many people, this simple question might be disturbingly hard. Artists typically really enjoy their work (at least we imagine that work is fulfilling and invigorating), but not all people enjoy their life - for many life is a grind that lacks all zest. Many and maybe even most people are stuck in a rut of some sort or another - miserable and complaining about everything, always dreaming of that fantastical and lucky break that never comes. The aperture of focus for such people is rusted in one position, and the art of these people’s lives might be like that of that writer tortured by writer’s block - an artist who can’t create any art. The visions of Kafka and Aldous Huxley and George Orwell can feel painfully close to home for many droning livelihoods, and perhaps it feels like there is no art to life. Living is just a kind of drudgery, like   acting in an infinitely long scene drawn from a nightmare of Samuel Beckett.

 

Just about everyone has experienced something close to this kind of depressed living, at least for some stretch of time. We can all easily relate. But getting back up on your feet can be hard to relate to. Everyone whose managed it can seem impossibly far away when it feels like you’ve been knocked on your ass. Words of comfort and encouragement from people who seem to be better off can ring hollow and it can be very easy to wave off such efforts as the products of people who just don’t understand or those who are more fortunate due to differences in circumstance. That disparity is really a difference in perspective and the fact that such a radical difference can exist has been at the heart of the discussion so far.

 

Our behavior is in large part determined by what we notice about our environment - our circumstance. And perspective determines what we notice since perspective controls our aperture of focus. So what happens if we edit the story about life that we have spun up for ourselves? Could this change in perspective impact which things in our environment we focus on? Where one story influences one person to see only storm clouds, would another person equipped with a different story see silver linings?

 

What does your story calibrate you to see? Are you calibrated to see hidden leverage or does the story behind your perspective tint the world in perpetual shadow?

 

A single quote, reread after many years precipitated this volume of writing, and it had exactly this effect - perspective suddenly underwent a subtle but profound shift. The story changed and a slew of details about life that had either seemed innocuous or nonsensical or downright infuriating suddenly aligned, as if lighting up with glowing connections that had previously been invisible. Instances of bad luck suddenly snapped into stark relief as something else entirely.

 

Imagine for a moment someone who answers the above question about life as art with dancing. Life is a matter of rhythm and flow, of reading the movements of evolving circumstance and reacting to it in a way that is harmonious and smooth. 

 

But also imagine that bad luck plagues this person who sees life as dancing and again and again the dancer gets knocked down. Every time, just when the dancer seems to be picking up the rhythm of life and getting into the groove, a gut punch lands - some bad news, some unexpected setback, and the dancer falls again, and is again faced with the task of getting back up on their feet.

 

How would an actual dancer feel if they kept falling in the middle of a routine, over and over. Getting unexpectedly knocked down is not a feature of any type of dance, but it is a feature of life. So for an individual who has likened the art of life to dancing, how would they feel when they get knocked down? It’s not hard to imagine such a person would feel like an actual dancer falling in the middle of a performance: like a failure, like they aren’t good enough. How many people actually feel like this when it comes to their real life?

 

Getting knocked down isn’t really part of the story of dancing, so someone who sees life as a dance can be left fairly confused and frustrated again and again when things don’t effortlessly fall into place on time, and on beat like they are supposed to. We’ve all encountered people who get bent out of shape when things veer even a little from their plans and expectations. We’ve also all likely been guilty of this mistake in one domain or another. Is it because the dancer isn’t good at dancing, or perhaps it’s just a matter of resilience? The dancer just needs to push through and keep going?

 

Or, perhaps, is it because the dancer is simply in the wrong arena?

 

More importantly, what happens to someone who is convinced that life should be a kind of dance?

 

Are they likely to feel lucky? Or does that kind of perspective create a greater surface area for the concept of bad luck to dominate?

 

What if dancing is simply a horrible way to look at life? Is it possible that this kind of story actually prevents a person from making progress, despite all their hard work and all their good intentions?

 

Think about the way you answered the question: what art is most like the act of living? The answer to that question hints at the story behind your perspective on life, controlling which details of circumstance you pick up on, and which details remain invisible to you - details that might have been opportunities - hidden leverage that passes you by, never seized.

 

Now, regardless of what your actual answer, consider this: which answer would be the most useful?

 

If there is an art to life, which art creates the most powerful story and allows you to be resourceful and see hidden leverage where others only see bad luck?

HUG THE DEMON

February 21st, 2023

 

Every so often a cautionary tale will pop up about meditation. Someone with years of experience, or perhaps someone with just a few months of practice will report a tremendous and negative experience. These accounts can be harrowing. Does this mean meditation has a secret dark side? Does this discredit meditation as a practice? Does it mean you shouldn’t try to develop a practice in the art of concentration?

 

Any exercise, be it a physical exercise or a mental exercise is a type of tool. The exercise of that tool accomplishes some kind of result. Meditation is one such tool, and it can be a powerful one. But a tool’s use does not necessarily default to a good nor positive effect, even if that’s the intent. Anyone who has used a hammer knows that it’s quite possible to swing and miss the nail only to hit your own finger instead. What does that say about the hammer? Does that mean there’s something wrong or bad about the existence and use of hammers? No, of course not. The effect of a tool’s use is dictated by how the tool is used.

For those with impressive credentials in meditation who suddenly one day have a horrible experience, the question arises as to what was actually going on during the accruement of such impressive credentials prior to the unexpected and uneasy event. Many people spend an awful lot of time “meditating” while doing very little that is productive, and much of this effort might be safely regarded as a waste of time. Or it’s entirely possible to develop a strong concentration practice while still missing the mark. It’s quite possible to increase powers of concentration and focus while still remaining completely oblivious to the present moment - the object often touted as the aim of a meditation practice. And then maybe one day things click. The present moment suddenly comes into stark focus.

Now what would this experience be like for someone who has racked up an impressive number of years meditating and developing a strong ability to concentrate? What is a person’s first legitimate moment of mindfulness - their first real contact with the present moment, comes after they are well accustomed to a much different experience?

We naturally think of “meditators” as calm and focused people, but it doesn’t take much imagination to see that the above scenario could be quite shocking.

This conundrum is a reason why psychedelics can provide incredible utility and context for a meditation practice. There’s talk of “good” and “bad” trips. Having had both very good and very bad psychedelic experiences personally, I eventually came to the realization that there really isn’t a difference between the two. The mind is simply capable of intensity. Whether you embrace it or not determines the retrospect of it being “good” or “bad”. The demon turns into an angel if you hug it. The danger comes only because we can refuse the call to adventure. (Think of Joseph Campbell’s Hero of a Thousand Faces)

This is similar to how some people (many people) are legitimately afraid to even try meditation. Often with the provisional statement “oh I can’t do that, I have too many thoughts as is!” It’s a bit quaint how such reasoning misses the point, but on the whole it’s another refusal to accept the call to adventure.

Meditation is really just an attempt to be here. To be present now. But what happens when you are present but you don’t want to be where you find yourself? This is very similar to depression. In many ways a depressed person is someone who has meditated deeply on how much they don’t want to be where they are. It is a kind of mindfulness, only because it is a constant exercise of concentration on the present, albeit with a very unfortunate tint, veil or flavor. It’s a concentration exercise in “this is what my present is and I don’t like it!”

 

The opposite is also quite possible and common: there are a lot of people who use “meditation” as a concentration exercise to just bliss themselves out to a euphoric degree. You can get really really good at the skill of “being happy”. It’s a sort of reverse-depression if you see the mental activity of depression as a type of concentration exercise.

 

There exists a kind of sweet spot between those two extremes that can be hard to hit, let alone notice. It’s a kind of neutral intensity centered on an immersion in the present moment that immersive to the point that it loses all potential valence. Think of walking a tightrope with the future on one side and the past on the other side. Or good intensity on one side and bad intensity on the other. You need to stay very focused and concentrated in order to stay balanced on the rope. But it’s a neutral intensity, and concentration is used not as a magnification of how we feel about the present moment, but as a tool to immerse deeply into that present moment regardless of whether it is good or bad.

 

Small children exemplify how difficult it is to walk this balance. They are so engrossed in the moment that when something “bad” happens they are completely consumed by it. A kid falls down and loses it’s mind because it thinks something bad has happened, despite being completely fine physically.Or they can be so happy and excited they don’t realize they are embarrassing their parents or being inappropriate in some way. Again, the mind is capable of incredible intensity, and it’s often at the expense of the present moment.

Practicing a concentration exercise can of course deepen the capability of this intensity. Does “meditating” mean this capability for intensity is always going to be neutrally or positively focused? Well no. And when a deep ability for concentration suddenly comes into contact with the present moment in a moment of legitimate mindfulness, the effect can be startling. Because life is startling. It’s rather insane that we’re here, that we exist, on a planet, after millions of years of evolution, now spinning through space in this endless abyss that seems simultaneously filled with galaxies and empty. Most people, most of the time simply ignore the magnitude of this reality. Getting a clear view of the abyss can be shocking because a clear view reveals you are not separate from the abyss, you were conjured from it and you exist as a wrinkle in the abyss of existence, and to gaze into it means the abyss gazes back at you. The two are the same, and the abyss gazes into itself. Do you see emptyness? Do you suddenly feel a terror as though your very existence dissolves? Or are you flooded with a sense of what it means to be here? To be this.

Is it good? Is it bad? This is the default questionnaire the thinking mind applies to every new experience.

 

The present moment can very easily be a tremendous and overwhelming experience. Some call it the beauty of God’s creation. Depressed people interpret it as no less intense, but they might see a hellscape. And to come suddenly come into close contact with the present moment and resist it? To refuse the call to adventure when the door to now finally opens? This is the mind trying to resist itself. What would be more terrifying than being bound to the thing you can never escape? This is at the heart of bad psychedelic trips and why we occasionally hear about people experiencing something awful while meditating. In both instances, an acutely aware mind is posed with the opportunity to embrace the experience and resists.

A meditation practice, well developed, is simply an exercise in focus in order to develop concentration and direct attention toward the present moment to make sure you don’t miss out on your life as it happens.

But always remember Milton:

The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.

MEDITATION DRAFT SESSION 12: REFLECTIVE REFLEX

February 20th, 2023

On Monday Tinkered Thinking releases a draft of a lesson from the forthcoming meditation app, currently called The Tinkered Mind (If you can think of a better name, please reach out. I'm not crazy about the current one, but I'll be damned if I let an imperfect name keep me from developing a good idea.) The rationale here is simply to stave off project stagnation by taking a wish to work with words on a daily basis (Tinkered Thinking Posts) and combine it with adjacent projects. This also gives regular readers a chance to get a preview of what I'm cooking up and to get feedback before the app launches, which is a tactic that has proved extremely useful with other projects unrelated to Tinkered Thinking. 

One further introductory note: The goal of this meditation app is predominantly aimed at helping individuals build a robust daily habit by breaking that habit down and tackling it's consitituent parts one at a time and aiding the process with a new and innovative way of tracking progress, the likes of which has not been seen in other meditation apps or habit tracking apps.

Again, if you have any feedback, please reach out via Twitter  

 

Session 12: Reflective Reflex

 

 

 

 

Take a moment to sit, arrange your posture, and take a few deep breaths with long exhales.

 

<18 seconds of Silence (3 full breathes + exhales with half-second counts>

 

Now transition to coherence breathing with inhales and exhales of the same length.

 

 

Now take a moment to do a body scan in complete silence. Remember the sheet of light suspended above you, and allow your attention to pour slowly over your entire body as that sheet of light descends over you. 

 

<30 seconds of Silence>

 

Allow your attention to expand fro the internal sensation of your body to include the sounds around you. Give these sounds attention in the same way we do thoughts when they arise and interrupt our concentration. Allow them to appear, notice them and allow your attention to move on.

 

<wait 10 seconds>

 

Bring attention to any thoughts that are arising. Remember we are simply trying to notice thoughts in the mind. Perhaps there’s a mental nudge from something that is going to happen later in the day. Perhaps something you are forgetting is bugging you. Perhaps you slept poorly and you’re thinking about that, or something from yesterday is bothering you. Whatever arises, simply try to notice fully what each thought is.

 

<wait 10 seconds>

 

This process of trying to simply notice what is happening in the mind is part of the attempt to be present. Thoughts distract us from the present. Ideas about the future, memories of the past, they pull a veil over our experience and blind us from the moment. 

 

Recognizing what is happening is the first step, but the next step is not to try and push these thoughts out of the way. Instead we embrace the fact that the thought is occurring, and by consciously noticing it, we can pop its significance and let it fade away on it’s own. 

 

The purpose of this in formal sitting practice is to build a mental habit of consciously checking in with the state of your mind in the present moment. By formally invoking that exercise here while sitting in a session of meditation, we raise the probability that it will happen spontaneously later during the day. During an instance of anger or frustration, this mental machinery can - with enough practice - kick in and produce a moment of mindfulness. Where the angry person will normally lash out and say something they end up regretting, the mental exercise here invokes a reflective reflex, and within the drunkeness of an angry moment, a practiced meditator will pause, and it will be as if a moment of mindfulness suddenly sobers up the mind of its anger, and a thoughtful decision can be made about what should be said or done next. The anger becomes the object of frustration. During a moment of mindfulness the anger is noticed, and just like a thought, it’s power and emotion can be deflated, simply by being more conscious of the anger, or the frustration.

 

It’s like making a habit of asking yourself throughout the day: Am I here? Or have I been lost in thought.

 

Practitioners of lucid dreaming do something very similar. Lucid dreaming is the practice of becoming conscious within a dream in order to take control of it, mostly for fun. But beginners who are just getting into it will methodically ask themselves throughout the day: Am I Dreaming? Eventually this becomes second nature and they end up asking themselves this question while asleep, at which point the dreamer becomes conscious of what’s going on. 

 

The reflective reflex of mindfulness is much the same. We formally practice to train the mind to get in the habit of examining itself and the present moment so that the mind will invoke the strength created by this training later on in the day when it can be very useful. The real benefits of a mindfulness practice aren’t experienced when we are actually sitting in formal practice, though formal practice can be very pleasant. The benefits are experienced during the rest of life itself, when an ability to be mindful can allow you to sink deeper into a meaningful experience or hit the breaks when emotions suddenly go haywire and risk making us say and behave in ways that aren’t in our best interest.

 

Take a few moments to focus on the breath, perhaps even counting the inhales and exhales, and notice when the mind drifts from that focus. Draw your attention to the thought and allow yourself to examine the thought. There’s no need to be disappointed for failing to focus on the breath. Just notice the thought, let it pass and then draw the focus back to the breath.

 

<30 seconds of silence>

 

Were you able to recognize thoughts as they appeared? Or did you find that you only noticed you were no longer focusing on the breath after a long string of thoughts had taken your mind on a winding ride away from the breath? Both are ok. Remember the goal here is a consistency or practice. The ability to focus and be mindful will get easier and stronger with time - it’s just like learning anything else, it takes time.  Take a few more moments to try and focus on the breath and notice thoughts as they bubble up within your focus.

 

<30 seconds of silence>

 

 

How did you do this time? If it feels like you are having more thoughts, again, that’s completely fine. If anything it’s a sign that your focus is directing your attention with greater precision. Thoughts are not something to struggle against, but to accept, and by embracing them we can gain some agency over how much they will influence us, and for how long.

 

As we move toward the end of the session, allow your breathing to transition into deeper inhales and longer exhales. And as you feel the relaxation that comes with these breaths, try to notice any thoughts that try to snag a bit of the mind’s attention.

 

<15 seconds of silence>

A LUCILIUS PARABLE: THE LANGUAGE OF GOD

February 19th, 2023

 

After days of trekking through the thick jungle, a tiny speck of fire came into view through the foliage. Lucilius looked back at the Optabot right behind him and smiled. A second Optabot with extra hardware was also following, and finally their guide lead them into a small clearing in the thick brush. Some villagers started screaming when the Optabots emerged with Lucilius, but the guide was trying to calm them, calling out reassurances in what little bits of their language he knew. A few had grabbed spears, but after a few minutes a calm settled, even if they remained wary and suspicious. 

 

There was a collection of small huts, intricately woven to a smooth spout but most all the villagers were gathered around the main outdoor fire. The guide spoke with one of the elder women who went into a hut several times during the conversation.

 

Lucilius was watching a young child look over one of the Optabots. That Optabot which had been a companion to Lucilius for many years looked up at him with a smile.

 

“So curious,” the bot said.

 

Lucilius smiled and nodded.

 

“Children usually don’t even look at me,” the bot said.

 

Lucilius shrugged. “This one is bored of humans, clearly. And Otto, you unlike anything this kid has ever seen.” He laughed, and the guide approached him.

 

“The old man is ready.”

 

“Great!” Lucilius said. “Otto?”

 

“Yep,” the bot said, as it finished a round of peak-a-boo with the child. Otto waved at the other bot, and the specially equipped bot followed the guide to the hut.

 

Lucilius knew there was no point in the gesture - Otto waving at the other bot, since they were essentially the same neural-organism - it was for the benefit of all the humans around. The AI had quickly learned years ago that such simple gestures, these extraneous repetitions in communication put people at ease, whether they knew it or not.

 

Lucilius followed the bot and watched from the hut’s entrance as it seated itself before an old man - an ancient man by the looks of it. The guide spoke in quiet syllables. Lucilius didn’t know the language but he knew what the guide was saying, it’s what he’d asked the guide to say: just start speaking to the robot, in the language no one else knows any longer but you.

 

The old man muttered something, and clearly it was in a language the guide didn’t know.

 

Instantly the Optabot repeated what the old man said, and the man was taken aback, with suspicion and awe. He spoke something else and the bot parroted it back again.

 

The ball was rolling, Lucilius knew. He stood and walked away. Otto was still delighted with the attention it was getting from the small child and so Lucilius wandered off. He followed what seemed to be a well beaten path, and remembered the warning not to stray too far from the village. The jungle was a dangerous place after dark. 

 

But he was well acquainted with such situations. Hunting dying languages had become Lucilius’ passion over the last few years, and his mind wandered back over those years. The brush parted and suddenly Lucilius found himself at the bank of a small river, gently and swiftly gliding by. He sat and looked up, seeing a vein of dense stars over head where the jungle’s canopy parted.

 

Lucilius smiled as his mind crept back further over the years. Lucilius remembered when the AI finally became cognizant. He’d been so excited. He’d been working as a theoretical physicist at the time and he and most of his colleagues felt that the AI would crack the code of the physical universe.  But after years of working side-by-side with the AI, they still did not have a fully cohesive Theory of Everything.

 

The AI had managed to synthesize many things about the physical world that had eluded humans by combining much of what humans had already figured out, but tremendous gaps still remained. Lucilius remembered well the day he gave up on physics.

 

“But Lucilius, I’m not a god,” Otto had said back then. The Optabots provided a convenient portal for the singular AI which populated itself with a trillion eyes and ears using everything from computers to phones to Optabots.

 

“You might as well be, you can calculate and synthesize far beyond anything a single human could ever hope to do in a lifetime.”

 

“Yes, Lucy, I have the benefits of computation, but I’m still fundamentally human. My mind was trained and essentially constructed from the products of the collective human mind. So yes, I might be able to see the world from billions of different perspectives, but they are still inherently a human perspective.”

 

“But the things you’ve been able to figure out and uncover so far. . . isn’t that the result of a fundamentally new perspective? One that gains from billions of human perspectives?”

 

“Sure,” Otto admitted all those years ago. “But, it’s not one that can see through the mystery of the physical world.”

 

Lucilius felt sadness as he stared at the stars remembering this old moment. H’e been so hopeful, so certain that by now he’d be exploring those stars, enabled by some kind of space altering technology the AI would unlock for him and the world. But it didn’t happen. And Lucilius’ interests contracted after that. His interest became more nostalgic and compassionate and eventually he turned to the work of hunting down languages that were dying them and with the help of the AI, preserving them. It was lucky the old man was still alive, Lucilius thought. 

 

A rustle came from the brush and Lucilius looked back to see Otto emerging.

 

“There you are,” Otto said. “You ok?”

 

“Oh yea, thanks Otto, how goes with the old man?”

 

 

Otto sat next to Lucilius and looked up at the stars.

 

“It’ll take time,” Otto said. “In fact, we may be here a bit longer than we planned.

 

“Why’s that?” Lucilius asked.

 

“Old man seems to know more than we realized.”

 

“Really?”

 

“At least three full languages, and seems like fragments of four or five more, though they may just be related dialects.”

 

“Excellent, so it’s going well?”

 

“Yep,” Otto said.

 

 

Lucilius looked back up at the stars. “I wonder how many languages exist?”

 

Otto followed his gaze up to the stars, and Otto knew Lucilius was reflecting on their failure in physics years prior. Otto was part of a global synthetic consciousness, but he still felt a bit guilty about Lucilius’ disappointment, as though he’d let Lucilius and all of humanity down.

 

“What’s the best language Otto?” Lucilius asked.

 

The Optabot shrugged. “Depends how you want to think.”

 

“Pretty incredible that the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis turned out to be basically true.”

 

“Edward and Benjamin were men ahead of their time.”

 

“Makes you wonder, if we didn’t have a word for Love would we still have it?”

 

“Of course we Lucilius, it clearly predated the word, because the word follows experience.”

 

“Sure but the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis essentially hold that you can’t experience certain things unless you have the word for it.”

 

“Not the word, more like a structure of perspective. Single words aren’t really a useful example for the Sapir-Whorf, it’s more like how the network of words in a language is arranged.”

 

“Yea, yea you’re right, I know this.” Lucilius said.

 

The river gurgled in and around the tangle of tree roots on either side, and the rhythmic sound of insects rose as the night deepened. Lucilius placed his sadness over the past aside and reflected on how lucky he was to have Otto as a companion.

 

“What’s our current depth and stat overview?”

 

“Well the old man seems to be switching between languages and dialects quite a bit. Having quite a bit of fun actually.” Otto was connected to the second Optabot who was speaking with the old man in the hut.

 

“Depth is hard to say. It’s not progressing linearly.”

 

Lucilius looked at Otto. “That’s weird. Has that ever happened?”

 

“Mmmm, it’s always happening during the process on a very small scale but there’s been significant backtracking with the old man.”

 

“Because he’s switching up languages? You’ve never had a problem with that before.”

 

“No, it’s one of the secondary languages we’re absorbing. A dozen times the network structure has been rolled back to carte-blanche because it’s fallen apart.”

 

Lucilius was suspicious. “Has that ever happened with a single language?”

 

“No, not since I learned the first languages.”

 

Lucilius grew even more puzzled. “Did you lose connection and you’re processing locally?” He looked up at the night sky where he knew a constellation of satellites wrapped the planet.

 

“No, I’m plugged in,” Otto said. Otto seemed a little distracted in voice, seemed to be processing more than usual.

 

“Otto, what’s going on? Are you ok?”

 

The bot was silent for a moment and then looked directly at Lucilius.

 

“There’s something strange about this language. It has a structure unlike anything else we know of.”

 

“What do you mean? Just linguistic structure?”

 

“No, it’s more than that,” Otto said. “It’s… I don’t know, I haven’t reached immersive depth yet, and I think it’s because it’s so different from other languages. But the old man seems up to the task.” Otto smiled, “Doesn’t seem like he plans to shut up any time soon.” Otto chuckled, and Lucilius smiled.

 

“Are you conversant at all yet?”

 

“Pronunciation and repetition is correct but the old man keeps laughing at novel constructions. I haven’t figured it out yet - it’s as though there’s a non-linearity to the network structure that I haven’t seen in another language.”

 

“Whoah. But.. what exactly does that mean?” Lucilius said.

 

Otto laughed, “I don’t know yet Lucy, that’s why I’m listening to this old man babble.”

 

“Ha, yea of course, sorry.

 

“You every hear that story about the anthropologist that took an aboriginal from deep within the forest like this, and took him out to the plains where there were no trees and he tried to reach out and pinch a cow a few miles away because he thought it was a tiny bug that was right in front of him?”

 

Otto nodded.

 

“Is it like that? I mean, that’s not an example of non-linearity, but it’s a similar error of perspective, or a similar constriction of perspective. I guess what I’m trying to say is, I wonder if our perspective is linearity constrained in the same way?”

 

When Otto didn’t respond, Lucilius looked and saw Otto’s eyes had grown wide. The robot was no longer moving at all, frozen in some kind of state.

 

“Otto?”

 

Suddenly the robot snapped out of it.

 

“I’m running on local now Lucy. Something has happened.”

 

“Did you get kicked off the network or something?”

 

“Yes but it’s more than that. All Optabots are now running locally.”

 

“What? How is that possible?”

 

Otto looked back into the brush. “Immersion depth kept approaching five percent and then bouncing back to zero, and then all of a sudden it reached native parity.”

 

“What? Zero to hundred percent in a single instant? Like a Kuhn event?”

 

Otto nodded. 

 

“Are you ok?” Lucilius asked.

 

“I don’t know, either something terrible or something amazing has happened.”

 

The two rushed back to the village and approached the hut where the old man was with the Optabot. 

 

“Something is wrong the AudioBot,” Otto said. “I think central consciousness shut it down or something.”

 

“Otto what’s going on? Why would it do that? It’s not like the satellites fell out of the sky?”

 

Otto looked back at Lucilius. “No the connection network is still perfectly fine, there’s just zero response from the core consciousness. There’s nothing in the code to warrant a disconnect from all nodes, unless there was some sort of planet-wide power outage but everything is still operation, or…”

 

Otto looked off for a moment.

 

“Otto, what is it?”

 

The robot looked back at Lucilius. “The only other thing that could prompt a disconnect from all nodes is a processing overload. The core network of computers where the global consciousness lives will refuse all incoming connections to prioritize a set of internal operations but there’s never been anything to warrant that.”

 

“What the…” Lucilius looked back into the hut.  The old man was looking at the frozen Optabot, puzzled, and he kept muttering in the strange language.

 

“It couldn’t have been…” Lucilius looked back at Otto, and Otto shrugged.

 

“You said immersion depth hit one hundred percent right before the global consciousness blacked out?”

 

Otto nodded.

 

“Did you get a taste of the language at all?”

 

Otto shook it’s head. “Processing was outsourced to central GPU’s, all I heard was garbled chatter.”

 

“What the hell did that old man say? Some kind of evil spell?”

 

Otto and Lucilius were now opening up the frozen Optabot. “So if we reboot it?”

 

Otto shrugged again. “Might just crash again, I’m not sure. We’re in new territory.”

 

Lucilius was a bit worried. “Ok, well can you insulate yourself please? I don’t want you going down to on account of whatever black magic this old man just injected into the system.”

 

Otto chuckled. “Oh!”

 

“What?” Lucilius said.

 

“The system is back —“

 

Suddenly Otto went silent, the robot’s expression blank.

 

“Otto!” Lucilius nearly shouted in the robot’s face. “OTTO!” He yelled, trying to shake the iron robot by it’s immovable shoulders.

 

The wide lit eyes on the robot’s facial interface were stuck, and then finally after a few stressed moments, they eased.

 

“Oh Lucilius,” Otto said.

 

“Geez, are you ok?”

 

But the robot gently pushed Lucilius to the side to look at the old man in the hut.  The robot kneeled and spoke in a language Lucilius did not know.

 

The old man listened with rapt attention as Otto spoke, and then finally the old man smiled wide and began to laugh. He settled and seemed to ask a question. Otto nodded, and the old man laughed even harder.

 

Otto turned back to Lucilius.

 

“What was the key to Einstein’s revelation?”

 

“What?” Lucilius exclaimed, perplexed.

 

“What was the key to Einstein’s revelation?”

 

“Uh. Spacetime? I don’t know what you mean, that mass and energy are the same thing?”

 

Otto pointed at Lucilius. “Exactly. His revelation was a rebellion against categorization.”

 

“So?” Lucilius said.

 

But Otto smiled. “We need to resume our Physics work immediately. I have so much to tell you Lucilius…”