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.

REDUCING DEPENDENCIES

December 1st, 2020

Freedom has many meanings.  For some it’s a freedom from some kind of constraint or pressure.  For others it’s a freedom to do something - kind of agency.  The two often go hand-in-hand.  One constraint often limits an ability.  Those with fewer constraints or dependencies often have the freedom to do more.  But what exactly is a dependency?

There is the literal use, as in, a dependent, like a child or a sick loved one who needs to be cared for.  Such adventures in love and compassion take time, energy and money.  If the child grows up or the ill loved one recovers, these dependents graduate to being otherwise.  But what about permanent dependencies, like oxygen.  It’s certainly non-negotiable whether someone can be dependent on oxygen or not.  We need that little molecule to help burn our own energy in order to do anything.  Oxygen is a basic input, and needing it isn’t so much a dependency as it is a necessity - perhaps a worthy distinction to lay out.  

Sleep is another dependency, though many people try to function as though negotiation on this one has hours and hours of wiggle room.

Strangely, a necessity like sleep often gets short-changed for other dependencies that are not necessities.  A penchant to scroll social media, for example.  This can easily become a dependency and it’s a well-entrenched one for many people.  It apparently degrades sleep quality, if only by being a reason to stay up a little later when the brain could be getting a few more minutes (or hours) in repair mode.  The juxtaposition is apt to suss out an important distinction:  many dependencies feel like necessities, and our behaviour honors the feeling, not the fact.  This is precisely how priorities get out of whack and incentives drive us to self-destructive places.  

The difference is a hard one to parse.  For example, much if not most of the food eaten is unnecessary, but it certainly feels necessary when the hunger hormone Ghrelin is running high and suddenly we hear ourselves say the words “I’m starving!”   Granted, it’s perhaps worth pointing out that quite literally no person in the modern world who says these words is actually starving.  Even someone who is relatively lean can go quite a long time without food before it actually becomes a problem.  But of course, it never feels like this.

The task of reducing unnecessary dependencies is counter-intuitive and it requires an intellectual faith in the facts of the situation.  In order to pull of this trick, it’s a matter of confronting the feelings of the situation, and regulating them.  For the unmindful person, this is extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible.  And the rampant infection of so many unnecessary dependencies should go to show just how few people have the mindful capacity to observe, parse, and regulate their emotions on such simple subjects like the kind and quantity of food, sleep, and technological engagement.  This lack of mindfulness is made even more distinct by the fact that most people know these simple facts about getting more sleep, eating a better selection of food, and cutting down on the zombie-scrolling.  We may have the capacity for rationality, but our behavior is often anything but.  Our behavior is tipifyied mostly by a reaction to the moment and the current stimuli and state of the body.  Any quick reaction simply doesn’t have the time for rationality.  There’s simply no time to actively think about whether it’s a good idea to pick up that phone and check social media when there’s a microsecond of distraction from the current task.  It just happens because that’s how we feel.  The rational decision to do otherwise quite literally requires a few more seconds than we are in the habit of giving such reactions.  The difference might seem trivial but it’s essential: it requires a couple of seconds to engage that dialogue with one’s self and ask: do I really want to do that right now?