SUSPENDING THE PROGRAM

September 21st, 2020

A laundry list of good habits that are fully present in an individual’s life will do a ton of good when compounded through time.  But habits, once properly adopted and installed as routine become just that - routine.  Good habits become easier and easier with time, and the success they garner can seem strangely automatic.  What is more impressive, however, is when an individual can consciously alter their systemic behaviour.

Take for example fasting.  It’s impossible to make fasting a daily habit because after enough fasting, the lack of food is eventually going to cause some medical issues, and of course… death.  But fasting is a powerful practice to aid and bolster the health of the body.  So this becomes a conundrum.  How do we implement a regular practice that can never become a routine that feels effortless?

This question spells the important difference between success that is in some sense foretold by the promise of good habits continued and the willing ability to twist the model of our behaviour on command to fit the needs of a new or larger situation.

It’s one thing to institute this level of discipline once to instantiate a bunch of good habits, or perhaps a few times to get the ball of life rolling in the right direction, but it’s a far more powerful skill to express willpower on command.    It might feel as though we always have this available, and it is always possible, but like any habit or skill, it requires regular practice to keep in good form.

An accidental form of this is when a vacation or a move interrupts our routine.  Getting things back on track is an act of will more than it is picking up habits again.  It may be easier because these things have been a habit, but it still requires work to move against the antihabit that is forming in the absence of routine.  

Beyond this, it’s an argument for keeping a flexible and less regulated schedule.  The individual who can only be productive with a tight and decided schedule will flounder in a chaotic situation, but the individual who can flourish in a chaotic situation will be comfortable anywhere.  The difference is a practice of constantly suspending the program in exchange for a larger meta program that is flexible and far more powerful than the tracks created by mere good habits.

A LUCIILUS PARABLE: LATE TO THE PARTY

September 20th, 2020

Once the logs were alight, Lucilius picked up the cast iron teapot and held it to the bamboo spigot to fill it with water from the river.  The pot clanked down on the warm stove top and Lucilius opened his container of coffee, but just two stray dark beans remained in the bottom.  He closed it and tucked it under his arm and opened the cabin door.  The air of the woods was fresh and thick with a chilled mist.  Lucilius smiled as he trekked the short path to his underground storage, but as he pulled open the heavy wooden door, he noticed a new hole dug some short distance away.

Sacks of rice and wheat were torn open, but much of it he’d still be able to use.  The stores of canned goods were untouched of course, though Lucilius almost never ate from those choices, seeing them all as chemical souvenirs from a time before he left for the woods, when he was still immersed in that world of people and cheap gadgetry.  It was a continual pleasure to sustain himself so royally on the fruits of the natural world.  But still he returned to his cabin and took the kettle from the stove and nearly threw it to a side with a frustrated sigh.  His stores of coffee were destroyed.  Whatever animal had nested in the beans for some time, and Lucilius knew himself a fool when he pinched his nose to sift through the mess with a stick, as though me might some how convince himself that they might be washed and saved, but even for someone as resourceful as he, there was just no saving the mess.

He entertained the idea that he might somehow learn to live without coffee for a mere couple hours before he started planning his trek back to the wretched world of his fellow man.  It simply wasn’t worth it, he knew, to live so beautifully apart from such a corrupted civilization, but to do so without the exquisite pleasure of morning coffee.

It was a week’s trek back to the nearest metropolis - that city Lucilius had spent those final disgusted years, prepping and learning and itching to get away from the terrible mindless trajectory of his fellow man.  He tried not to speculate, to wonder how bad it had gotten, and instead focused on the contentment of trip, taking him far beyond any of his seasonal circuits while hunting and foraging.

And during those final days when he knew traces of would begin to appear he braced himself while growing ever more curious at the lack of sound.  He expected to hear the sirens, the searing hiss and rush of traffic and aircraft - that incessant and unsettling drone of a hellbent people.  But the subtle sounds of the natural world continued without being drowned out as he neared closer and closer to the place he once knew.  

As he noticed this strange and continued silence and wondered if perhaps that awful human experiment had found its end when he noticed a strange luminescence woven into the bark of a tree.  He stopped to inspect it, seeing that it seemed to be a natural part of the tree, as though it had evolved a natural bioluminescence.  The day was coming to the end, the sun deepening and with the encroaching darkness the same light was beginning to glow all around him.  This forest was alive with life now.  

Lucilius continued to walk on and began to notice a certain symmetry among the trees, as if now the forest was falling into a pattern of organization.  Then, between the gaps in trees his eyes took in a strange sight:  sitting on a beautifully crafted bench was an android, it’s legs crossed, one food bouncing casually to a pleasant and invisible rhythm, reading a book next to several huge sacks of coffee beans.  

Lucilius stood struck with the strangeness of the sight, and as if finally sensing his presence the android looked up to see Lucilius.

“Oh, there you are.”

“What?”  Lucilius asked.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” the android said, and then motioning to the sacks of coffee beans.  “I have some coffee for you.”

Lucilius merely stared, and the expression on the android grew a bit awkward and self conscious.  “I can… help you carry it back… if you’d like.”

But Lucilius stared, and then it was as though the robot finally clued in.  “Oh, you haven’t been back in a while have you?”

Lucilius just shook his head.

The robot winced at a memory.  “Yea… I forgot to read the whole briefing this morning, and I like to disconnect for as much of the day as I can.  Should have checked up on that detail.”

“How do you know I was coming for coffee?”  Lucilius asked.

“Oh, well, the trees probably told us.”  The robot guessed.  “Honestly, I’m not too sure.  I could check for you if you’d like.  There are many pathways the information could have travelled on.”

Lucilius looked again closely at the trees and the glow softly radiating from between the cracks of bark.

“Anyway,” the robot said, squatting down to heave the sacks of coffee up on to its metal shoulder.  “I’m looking forward to the trek - haven’t really been up this way because of terra norms.”

“Terra Norms?”  Lucilius asked.

“Well,” the robot said, again a bit awkwardly.  “You are uh, wanting to be left alone, are you not?  That’s why you left?”

“Yes..” Lucilius slowly answered.

“Well, that’s something that anyone can pick up on from a great distance away when plugged into the bionet.”

“The bionet?” Lucilius asked again.

The robot quickly looked around and gestured at the trees.  “Yea, everything is plugged into everything else now, and when it comes to someone like you, out in the woods who wants to be left alone, anyone plugged into the bionet can sense your wish to be left alone, and everyone respects that wish.”

“Things have changed a lot..” Lucilius muttered more to himself.

“Oh yea,” the robot said. “Things are way different since you left.”  The robot smiled.  “I did read enough to know when you left.  -But, we respect anyone who wants to be left alone, so there’s no way to really let you know what’s changed.  I guess the assumption is that you just wouldn’t care to know.  Can’t figure otherwise, you know?  Unless of course,”  the robot chuckled, “…you run out of coffee.”

“What’s the rest of it like now?”

“Oh,” the robot exclaimed, eyebrows raising.  “Well, so, uh, I guess I could show you, if you’d, uh…like.”  The robot offered, realizing suddenly it would mean missing out on the trek back to Lucilius’ cabin.

“Yes, I think I might like that.”

VULNERABILITY FORK

September 19th, 2020

The word ‘vulnerability’ occupies a strange intersection in language: on the one hand it indicates weakness, but in many touted contexts vulnerability is presented as something that requires strength to exercise.  The juxtaposition certainly seems like a contradiction, for aren’t strength and weakness polar opposites?

Our tendency to think linearly extends to spectrums.  We rate and gauge within a framework of absolute minimum and absolute maximum.  But when it so happens that we come across a situation where the endpoints of a spectrum appear to intersect we can twist our linear framework into a new structure.  Imagine for a moment, taking that straight line from worst to best and wrapping that line around a circle.  In this form, the extreme endpoints are both as far apart as possible on the circle, and - paradoxically - side-by-side.  At first this seems either nonsensical or gearing up to some kind of sly hack, however, we need to introduce one more dimension of structure.

Imagine a slinky, or a spring in your hands.  Now imagine that you place this slinky or spring on a flat surface and position yourself so that you are looking straight down on the spiral.  Adjust yourself so that the perspective resolves so that all you can see of the spiral is the top loop.  What does it look like: a circle, naturally.

The attempt with this spiral design is to transform the one dimensional idea of a spectrum into a process - a cycle that functions through time:  Each complete ‘circle’ within the spiral represents one ‘cycle’. 

A good analogy here to evoke how this new structure works is to think of time, more specifically days, seasons and years.  We experience time in a nested set of cycles.  Each day has a zenith when the sun is at its highest and a nadir when the night is darkest.  So too with seasons and years:  the weather is warmest in summer and coldest in winter and this whole process cycles repeatedly through time, like breathing.

We might think of one loop around the spiral as a single day, but since this is a spiral, the process doesn’t simply repeat on the same circle, it ‘jumps’ to the next circular loop in the spiral, and so we can see a process that has identical iterations which are separate and compounding.

Now, how could such a convoluted spiralling structure make any sense of the relationship between strength, weakness, and vulnerability?

To see how strength and weakness can sit so paradoxically close on a circular spectrum, a practical example is needed: let’s say we have a weightlifter who can benchpress a whopping 300lbs.  Now, in the context of bench pressing, when is this weight lifter at his weakest?  Watch this weightlifter attempt to bench press 305lbs, and suddenly we can see the paradox: we see the weightlifter both at their strongest and their weakest, for what would happen if you suddenly added a measly little 20lb to the bar they are struggling to lift?  Suddenly it would be too much, and this impressively strong weightlifter would have to abandon the exercise, because despite how much strength such a person has, they are weak in a context that is just beyond the limit of their strength.  When the limits of strength are pushed, we feel weak, we become weak, but it’s only by engaging with that weakness, does our strength increase.

Weightlifting or not, we all know this experience, because it’s the same when we try to learn anything that’s completely new.  At first we don’t understand, we feel overwhelmed with confusion and frustration.  We feel crippled, and paralyzed because engaging with a subject in which we have no proficiency is to experience our weakness in that area.  But it’s only be engaging again and again with this experience of weakness do we learn and slowly gain proficiency, and ultimately strength.  

Suddenly, the dichotomy of strength and weakness, which seemed so simple and straightforward in the beginning now seems to require a kind of sliding mechanism where strength is constantly interacting with weakness in order to advance itself.  These new requirements map on to the spiral previously described quite nicely.  

Each iterative loop around the spiral, or circle, as viewed from above functions as a single instance of strength and weakness engaging with one another.  We can, for example imagine the very beginning of this circular iteration representing the situation when we are at our weakest, say when we have added new weight to the bar that we seek to lift.  As we put in the time and the reps with this new weight, a weight which represents the limit of our strength, we become less weak.  We grow stronger, until we are ready to level up, and add more weight and then the whole process starts again, like going round and round up the spiral.

So how does something like vulnerability fit into this. Vulnerability has a meaning which points in opposite directions - seemingly contradictory directions:  One indicates a weakness and a fragility which can break and result in real damage. The other indicates a weakness and a fragility which seeks to be broken in order to grow stronger.

The two directions are either advancing up the spiral, or sliding back down.  We either move forward, or we decay.

Vulnerability isn’t some sort of alternative to strength, it is not a synonym for weakness.  Vulnerability is the instance when we have to choose: to consciously engage with the feeling of weakness in order to grow stronger, or to coddle a sense of security through the illusion of strength in a context we can only hope won’t suddenly demand more.

DECEPTIVE OPTIONALITY

September 18th, 2020

Much of what we seek boils down to optionality.  We stock the fridge with more food than we’ll eat so we can have options.  We stay single longer in order to peruse options through time.  We buy larger houses so we have the option of being in the den or the downstairs living room, or the patio, or the other house on the island.  We are drawn more and more to shop with Amazon because the options continue to grow and grow and grow.

Leveraging a situation for an outcome that is focused on optionality is almost always the best course of action.  But as with anything, when taken to an extreme, the benefits can grow toxic.  Take for instance the young and wayward spirit who can’t commit to developing a single skill because the entire set of possible career options is both incredible and overwhelming.  The perennial dater may also run into a similar issue as life moves on and the enormous amount of time and effort required for a family gets kicked down the road.  Optionality can, in some cases become no option, and this is a subtle point wholly based on exactly which circumstance we are focusing on.  

For example, money creates optionality.  In fact, the fungible nature of money creates optionality in its most form, both practical and conceptual.  A surfeit of money unlocks optionality in most other fields within a human network, aside from, perhaps, love - but even that is certainly up for debate and scrutiny as few, if any people would object to a spouse that was instantly wealthier.  Optionality for one usually means optionality for the other, particularly if love is genuine.

When optionality is a function of time, however, it runs like a fuse.  It’s a grave mistake to spend too much of one’s life trying to figure out a path to try because time and life runs out and we can find ourselves with the best years behind us without ever taking a solid swing with any one path.  While money is fungible, time is not.  The illusion of course is that time seems fungible.  You can wake up tomorrow and do something totally different than anything you’ve ever done.  It’s possible to radically change direction and the potential and possibility teased by the concept of tomorrow feels consistently reassuring.  But how often do we actually take up the tease on its dare?  How few people, it seems, have the guts to take hold of their life and wrench it in a totally new direction.  Such drastic action is certainly the exception, not the rule, though the promise of tomorrow makes it feel like a steady rule.  

Optionality tied to time dwindles like sand in an hourglass, each grain a different day, a different chance when our possible path might have struck out in a new direction, falling through the pinch of the present, forever lost to the impenetrable vault of yesterday.

The lesson of course which we must anticipate before learning too late is to get busy living, or waste it all waiting for something that may never show.

THE SOCIAL IMPULSE - PART II

September 17th, 2020

Part I of this two part series can be found here.

In the Bible, Adam is given one simple task: to give everything a name.  Now, what exactly is a name?  What is it for, and most importantly, what does a name mean in relation to other things with names?  The act of giving something a name is the instance of creating a category, which is -in relation to other things- a division.

Adam’s task wasn’t just an odd naming exercise, it was in fact the invention of language altogether, which perhaps lends a new lens to the idea of the word being so important in such religious traditions.  It’s of further interest to note that such religious and spiritual traditions exist primarily through the medium of language.  If for example language didn’t exist at all, how else would you be aware of such religious traditions?  From a secular point of view, it’s not much of a stretch to see religion as a reverent nod first and foremost to the invention of language, and the way it has pervaded and guided us.  Because language does guide us, far more than we have the ability to guide it.  This can be a deeply unsettling revelation.  

We need only ask: can you have a thought that exists outside of your language’s ability to describe it?

Part I of this two part series on The Social Impulse ended with an examination of the divisions that exist between people and how we seem to be hardwired to resist groups that are not our own.  To phrase the issue more simply, we might notice that:

100% of human problems boil down to the fact that we have natural systems of thinking that are in accord with just two words:  us & them

The word ‘them’ represents perhaps the most insidious and potentially destructive concept we’ve ever invented.  This vague category shifts and slips between different levels constantly.  A country can become united against a common enemy, against them, but in the absence of a common enemy, we are primed to try and find a new group to call them, as can be seen with a civil war within a single country.  This tendency to subdivide further in the absence of a clear and obvious other can go all the way down.  It can even go straight down to the individual level where a person feels divided and starts hating themselves due to the illusion of this new division, at which point suicidal ideation can arise, and of course: suicide, when the illusion of division finally collapses in on itself.

This fragmentation is always occurring.  It is the growth and operation of language itself, which is why it’s so important to monitor the way we use language.  To do so is in fact to monitor the way language is using us…

Language is a double-edged sword.  It allows us to cleave the universe into modules that we can conceptually manipulate and in so doing discover more about how the universe works, but it can also be a tool turned against ourselves - one that can quite literally lead to the cleaving of heads from bodies.

Our hardwired social impulse is to belong to a group, and woven in with that urge is a natural tendency to identify who is part of the others, part of them.

While this default programming most definitely served a survival function in the past, it has quickly outgrown its utility, especially in modern times.  If we don’t start thinking about the entire planet as THE in-group, and the only group, we risk a communal suicide as the capability of such wide-spread destruction becomes more and more available.  Simply put, we need to get rid of them - not the people we might temporarily plaster the word with, but the actual word itself.

What’s perhaps even more curious is that if the word them suddenly vanished as a concept from the minds of all people, the word us becomes pleasantly meaningless.