A LUCILIUS PARABLE: FOILED TRY

December 6th, 2020

Lucilius entered the enormous hardware store and vaguely looked around at the towering isles of lumber, tools, hardware and other supplies.  Banner signs hung with an assorted lists of items, but Lucilius couldn’t see any that sparked a connection to his issue.  He looked down at the gadget he’d removed from a machine he was trying to fix and wondered exactly how to phrase the issue he was having.  

Frankly, the issue was that Lucilius didn’t know the word for the piece he seemed to need, but the parts involved seem to indicate it’s phantom shape.

He wandered past the isles until one seemed to offer hardware similar to the size and shape of the thing he needed.  He scanned the shelves as he slowly made his way down the aisle until nearly bumping into someone who clearly worked at the store.

“Excuse me,” Lucilius primed.  “I was wondering if you could help me figure out the piece that’s missing here?”

The worker looked down at the gadgetry that Lucilius was holding.

“Oh, easy,” the worker said.  “Check aisle 33, there should be someone there to show you where it is.”

“Fantastic,” Lucilius said.  “Thank you.

After walking nearly the length of the warehouse-sized store, he found aisle 33 and luckily there was another worker cataloguing items.

“Excuse me, I was told by one of your colleagues that the piece I’m looking for is in this aisle and that I should talk to you.”

The worker took the piece of hardware from Lucilius and turned it over, looking at it’s design, it’s connections and fixtures.

“Yea, I don’t know who you were talking too, but you need aisle 11.”

Lucilius was momentarily dismayed, but it wasn’t a dead end.  So he took back the piece, thanked the worker and backtracked until he found aisle 11.  He was in luck, there was a third worker in this aisle, and again he went through the charade.

“Excuse me, I’m looking for a piece to make this work.  Someone ins aside 33 sent me here.”

The worker took the piece from Lucilius and turned it over.  “Hmm, strange they sent you here, you need aisle 9.”

By this point Lucilius was beginning to feel a bit exasperated.  But he took back the piece and walked off, failing to thank the worker, and feeling only the slimmest bit of comfort that aisle 9 was a lot closer.  But when he arrived at aisle 9 his heart sank: it was the very first place he’d started and asked for help.  But this time there was a different worker scanning the shelves - an older gentleman with a tailored moustache.  

“Excuse me,” Lucilius asked a bit more brusquely than he’d intended.  “But I’ve been running around this store on a bit of a goose chase looking for a piece to fix this thing, and everyone here keeps telling me it’s somewhere else.”

The older gentleman took a moment to look a Lucilius over the rims of his spectacles.  There was a slight and bemused smile bending up against the moustache.

“That so?”  The old man said, momentarily looking back at the task he was at, organizing some dissolved merchandise on a shelf.

“Yea, and I actually started here, but I was talking to someone different, obviously.”

The older man glanced quickly at the gadgetry that Lucilius held.  “Do you know what you’ve got there?”

Lucilius hesitated.  “Well, no.  I pulled it from a machine I’m trying to fix.”

“I can see that,” the older man said, now turning to Lucilius.  He held out his hand for the piece and Lucilius gave it to him.

“Let’s see,” the old man continued.  “I’ve got about a 50-50 shot at guessing correctly.”  The old man twisted an end of his moustache.  “I be the person in this aisle sent you to aisle 33?”

“How’d you know that?”

The old man was further bemused.  “And did you come here from aisle 11?”

“Yea, how’d you know?”

The old man raised the piece and pointed to a specific spot.  “And let me guess, you’re looking for the piece that goes right here?”

“Yes!” Lucilius exclaimed, “Finally, someone who knows what they are talking about.”

The old man was smiling.  He turned the piece and pointed to another fixture.  “This connection is used in boilers, which is why you were sent to aisle 33, but the guy there probably didn’t think you were looking for a brand new boiler to hook up to a boiler part.  He sent you off to aisle 9 because this part which it looks like you removed is over there.”  The old man turned the piece again and pointed at a new spot.  “But that just needs to be removed to get this thing off of the machine, I’m pretty sure.”

Lucilius nodded.  “Yea, that’s right.”

“Commonly used, but it’s a feature of the male end, not the female end here, so the guy in aisle 9 sent you here assuming you needed this.”  The old man pulled something off the shelf and clicked it on to the gadget.  “But, I’m guessing you have that piece too?”

“Yea, I didn’t bring it.”

“And it’s the missing piece that goes right there that you’re looking for?” The man pointed to a specific spot.

“Yes, exactly.”

“So it seems everyone was doing their job just fine, given what they were handed.”

“I guess,” Lucilius fretted, “but I don’t know what any of these pieces are called.”

“Simple enough mistake.”

“So now that I’ve finally found someone who understands what I’m after, where can I find it?”

The old man sighed with a larger smile.

“Well, that’s the biggest reason why no one here assumed you were talking about it: specialty part, we don’t carry it.”

SUBTLE NECESSITIES

December 5th, 2020

The importance of some crucial aspects of living aren’t obvious.  Much of this phenomenon has to do with our absurd ability to adjust to new situations, to get accustomed to new normals and to a large degree forget the way an older and better situation felt.

Sleep is a great example.  Go a few weeks without a solid night of sleep and days of constant drudge become the normal and the sense and feeling of what a well rested mind feels like can quickly be forgotten.

Diet often slides in the same way.  A few unwise meal choices sink into a habit of vapid pleasure, which compounds and soon enough the body’s definition dissolves as the pounds mount.

The insidious factor at the core of this sort of slide into mediocrity is that the feelings surrounding the experience normalize with exposure, and what is actually quite bad eventually feels…fine.  It’s possible and quite common to go years upon years with little sleep and very poor diet.  Such people don’t notice just how bad the situation is because they can’t feel just how much better the situation could be.

Again, this points at the need to develop and foster a healthy suspicion of one’s own feelings.  They do not guide us toward better ways of living.  If that were the case we’d all be billionaires with six-packs, but that’s most definitely not happening.  All things considered, it seems that more than anything, feelings shift to justify the present.  Thoughtful consideration is the only real tool we have to combat the seductive mediocrity of our own feelings.  It’s a thought that wonders about how much better things could be that holds a threatening edge to the feelings that try to cement the current situation.

That ability to apply thoughtful consideration to the situation runs amok if it results in simple day-dreaming of an extravagant and luxurious life.  The gulf is too great, blind of any stepping stones that might lead in that direction.  The first consideration should be of necessities ignored, one’s that have grown subtle due to long absence, like the feeling of a well slept mind, a body fed with proper nutrition, and many other subtle necessities that fill our common sense but fail to be captured by the feelings of the present.

INITIAL CONDITIONS

December 4th, 2020

It’s virtually a miracle if a person can do anything before a cup of coffee.  Some have a whole routine before the conditions are right to tackle the day.  And others never even get started because the conditions required never arrive, and worse, such people simply aren’t clear on what those conditions are, what they should be or could be.

The initial conditions for a person to do something hinges on a feeling.  And for those who never even make an attempt, it just never feels right.  The big secret known by all go-getters is that the feeling is a phantom - it just doesn’t exist.  The movers and shakers are equipped with a counter-intuitive function: they do things despite not feeling like it.  When the intuitive idea of what to do is to take it easy, relax and plan a little more before making a move, the doer has realized the necessity for having a healthy suspicion of such feelings.  

Pause for a moment to notice just how insidious this self-subterfuge of thought:  we feel lazy, but a thought gives birth to another feeling: a sense of suspicion.  The thinking mind can pit a new emotion against another.  This is how a person gets going with no motivation, with a feeling that perhaps the perfect conditions and a sense of drive actually aren’t necessary.

The raw ingredients are often just time, and the space to do what needs to be done.  Waiting for feelings to align with that wondrous gift is to waste that gift.  Feelings are fickle, especially when we hope for those feelings to be aligned with our laborious aims.

In terms of feelings, they’re always a bit of a mess and far from ideal in the beginning, but after - after the work has been done, and something has been accomplished - that’s when the feelings finally fall in line and suddenly things are good, things finally feel, just right.

DESIGN INTUITION

December 3rd, 2020

It’s a source of endless conjecture, conspiracy and wonder that different unconnected ancient civilizations all around the world all built pyramids.  The most prominent conspiracy theory is that aliens had something to do with it.  A more sensible explanation lies in the simple and blatant fact that these structures were all built.. by humans and that as a species we carry a deeply embedded form of language that gravitates towards building such things.

We see, for example the exact same phenomenon in other species.  Like bees, or beavers, or ants.  Different pockets of such species have imaginably gone unconnected with one another for similar timeframes in the past as humans underwent before the construction of the great pyramids that we see that contain such similarity.  And yet beehives around the world are all fairly similar, and ant hills aren’t all that different, whether it be in North America or Africa.  Local differences surely exist, but then again, the Aztec pyramids are certainly a bit different than the pyramids built by the ancient Egyptians.

The fulcrum of realization here lies in the human tendency to gravitate toward the same basic shapes: a square bottom with right angles, fitted with triangular sides.  There is clearly something elemental about these forms that is an innate part of human understanding that probably exists on a far deeper level than language.

We can approach the same point with a modern example: we need only juxtapose and compare a fantastic and intuitive app, with another app that is confusing, convoluted and difficult to use.  What exactly is the second missing that divorces it from the realm of the first?  In short, it fails to honor the deep sense of pattern and understanding that humans have on that fundamental level.  This is exactly the sort of system that an intuitive app is in harmony with.  This system or language maps a set of subtle tendencies that we use to understand things.  It relates to where the eye moves while looking at something - which direction it moves, and why.  What draws in the eye, and how do we make sense of the shapes we encounter and the flow of their appearance and disappearance.  In some sense the layout of an app tells a story, but it is a story without a protagonist and divorced from the usual arc and theme of the forms we generally associate with stories.  This story of pattern is one of conceptual process, and it is the story of how understanding arises within the mind.  

Intuitive design is in harmony with this story, this bloom of understanding.  The more effort required to use and understand an app, the further it’s design is from that language and story of understanding.

Design, in these ways is not a cerebral, intellectual activity, it is primal, atavistic.  Good design functions on a level that is deeper than a need to use spoken language.

NEW NORMALS

December 2nd, 2020

For someone who has never gotten a good night of sleep, who is chronically sleep deprived, the experience of a completely well reseted body and mind is not even a fantasy, it’s not even imaginable.  What’s even more frightening about these sorts of issues is how quickly and completely we can become immersed in new normals.

When a subpar situation persists for long enough, we adapt, often accept and so subpar normalizes into par.  A key aspect of this is forgetting just how it felt when things were different - or being completely obvious to just how much better things could feel with an improved situation.  Our ability to adapt comes with this unfortunate second edge that cuts back in all sorts of counter-productive ways.  It’s imaginable that if people could have a visceral sense of just how much better life could be, behaviors across the board would shift to bring about those better lives.  But instead, we adjust, without even meaning to.

In such instances, a good imagination coupled with a concept of dissatisfaction can be a powerful combination.  Much of the time dissatisfaction is concept and an experience to be eschewed, but a sense of dissatisfaction can be a powerful fuel for progress and improvement.  A good imagination helps an invented sense of dissatisfaction because it can help create a faith that a better life actually can exist.  

A subtle distinction worthy of parsing within this frame is the difference between self and situation.  Many if not most are all too quick to blame themselves for their situation.  And while this may be valid in a straightforward way, the connection is often strong enough to paralyze any effort to change.  A helpful trick to help loosen this knot lies in the ability to accept one’s self but not one’s situation.  Our situation is not completely a result of our own actions.  There are other influences, a degree of randomness that must be admitted.  But no matter what sort of situation we might wake up to find ourselves in, even it feels like it is a self-inflicted creation, our departure from acceptance becomes a dual rebellion: one that strives to change that situation and one that refuses to see the situation as the final stamp of judgement on our character and our abilities.