Ive been reading The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. It’s the best history book I’ve ever read. Possibly one of the best books . Fascinating and equally alarming parallels emerge as you read and reflect on our current politic.
I’ve been thinking more globally since I began reading it. I’ve been thinking more globally, and more in terms of centuries and millennia, than days and decades
Like, recently I’ve been asking myself if the USA is really the best place for opportunity… like in 10 or 20 years, will America’s opportunities yield the ROI I should expect from my time on earth? Or should I emigrate to greener pastures, like my ancestors did when they escaped the oppressive inequality and corrupt policies of aristocratic Europe
In the beginning of the Roman Republic, that’s where you wanted to be. Everyone traveled to Rome to generate riches, to get educated, to get status and power.
Over time, wealth concentrated in the Italian state, and opportunity dried up
The poor still traveled to Italy to learn what they could and take it back to their homeland
But the educated Romans who knew better, they escaped Italy, and colonized provinces all over the world…. Spain, the Black Sea, Northern Africa, France, Britannia, etc.
They took their education and build amassed wealth in their distant province, where competition was with themselves, where opportunities were limited only by their imagination
Over time you watch Roman emperors birth location shift from Italy to Spain, Thracia, Gaul, Cyrene, etc…. towards the end of the Roman Empire, all the new wealth was amassed by entrepreneurs that colonized lands of opportunity
The Italian state was grossly unequal. The poor, and the ultra wealthy, and there was no middle. The mob eventually began to rule, and the emperors, out of fear, put more and more power in the hands of the army/praetor to restore order
This eventually ushered in the military dictatorship, whose absolute power left cruel ambition completely unchecked, which further eroded the republic So I’m asking myself, where is the best opportunity?
If I can leverage my American business acumen elsewhere, where would they be?
There’s too much competition in the USA. Too much inequality.
But there are many places where i think creative industry could go a long way, while leveraging American business knowledge
It’s got me thinking… I’m not sure America will be the best place to live in 20 years At this rate, at this trajectory
I want to design a chest. I’d build it but I really don’t have the tools or space. So I’m trying to assemble the designs and material construction to give someone.
The chest will be a utility and decorative piece.
I want to be able to consolidate my most important memories and documents in this chest. Like if I had one place for all the most important things I own, there are in here.
I want material that’s both extra sturdy, to last forever, and fire resistant, and bug resistant, if possible.
Once the dimensions and general architecture is finished, and construction is complete, I want to hand carve the outside.
It’ll be a safe, and a decoration, and something to pass on to future generations.
“If you cannot read all your books…fondle them — peer into them, let them fall open where they will, read from the first sentence that arrests the eye, set them back on the shelves with your own hands, arrange them on your own plan so that you at least know where they are. Let them be your friends; let them, at any rate, be your acquaintances.” – Winston Churchill
I know so little about slavery. This seemed like the best broad historical survey. I feel like racism and slavery are fairly intertwined, and by understanding one, I can better understand the other.
When I approach these conversations or topics of racism and oppression I try to remain conscious of the language being used. Language has a very clear genealogy, and whether it’s speakers know it or not, can be traced back to specific ideologies, or communities with specific agendas
That being said, whenever I hear “power structures”, I immediately think of Marxism, and the critical theory it birthed, from Foucault and other contemporary Marxists
There is a power struggle with this narrative There’s a lot of history that people are clearly ignorant of
But I really don’t know what to think of what’s going on right now, to be honest. I am against racism and prejudice of any kind, but the solution to end it is very confusing. There are so many extreme proposals.
You know, in the evolution of human history, slavery was seen as a major advancement. Imagine that?
Historically, warring people/neighbors would simply eviscerate and kill the losers At some point they decided to keep them alive, and feed them, but take their will.
The word “slave” is derived from the German word Slav, which referred to the Slavic neighbors to the East, which in the National Slavic tongue meant “glory”, because when Catholicism spread across Europe and the word of God was revealed to them, they proclaimed his glory.
What’s interesting is there is no concept of “freedom” without slavery. There is rich, there is poor. But the idea of unfree only exists when there is a lack of Will, which embodies slavery.
I feel like movements with good intentions can get hijacked by special interests with malicious intent, who hijack the narrative and pervert the good intentions of the movement, which end up sabotaging the ability to achieve the desired result. Like, radicals.
Perhaps the world is molded by radicals
They’re only radical in contrast to the prevailing systems, which violently resists change.
It begs the question if the ends justify the means
How radical must one become to achieve the end?
At what point do the radical means/methods subvert the desired end?
I always think about the losers, and how no one writes the history.
Howard Zinn revealed this phenomenon to me: Contemporary knowledge and culture and history is filtered by the rationalizations of the victor, of those who survived and were able to curate a personal history that justified their advancement
There is life, and there is death.
And at the center of reality is my life, and as I extend beyond my circles of influence, my responsibility for preserving life becomes less and less influential.
Not necessarily physically, but psychically.
How I define my identify, and who and what I include in my successive spheres of influence, ultimately dictates the value of each.
The more familiar, the more valuable.
I feel as if each person possesses a sociological web of knowledge which binds to networks of other minds.
And the web is composed of language, and the ability to leverage language to manipulate the sociological web is how knowledge is defined, and in turn power.
Language rules the world, by ruling the minds of men. We control others through language. The power of language, existing in an invisible sociological web, is the basis for government.
Laws are nothing more than words, which exist in mind alone, and their power simply a reflection of those with the most power to affirm and enforce those words in agreement.
I’m inclined to think racism is not inherently a color thing.
Slavery historically has been colorblind.
Whites enslaved whites. Blacks enslaved blacks. Blacks enslaved whites. White enslaved blacks. Etc etc.
When reading European history it didn’t seem that color was much of a factor in who was racists against who, who was discriminated against, or who was enslaved.
The Barbary pirates of the Ottoman Empire monopolized human trafficking for hundreds of years, enslaving millions and millions of Europeans, in addition africans.
It’s a complex thing
Humanity needs to be preserved If we fail to preserve it in others, we lose it in ourselves
Can we live in a police-less society? Or will we be trading one evil for another? I do feel fairly convicted that debt is the modern instrument of slavery Debt and slavery have a long history Is there “libertarian socialism” a thing?
Like, it is up to individuals to create the conditions for social wellbeing? Or is that a contradiction?
I feel like it should be a thing Instead of electing politicians that enact bureaucratic government to enable social welfare,
We elect representatives who lead and promote social responsibility by creating models for citizen lead social welfare
As much as I’m for eradicating systemic injustices, I’m just as against creating bureaucratic structures with executive power to dictate abstracted visions of social good, which may begin with good intent, but overtime I feel may lose touch with the genesis of their purpose
One thing that’s becoming clearer to me every passing year is that you can be a complete idiot and go places in life as long as you “look” like you know what you’re doing.
You don’t actually have to produce results to succeed. You can simply fool everyone into thinking that you know what you’re doing. Results can be manipulated to optimize positive image reinforcement, despite having no anchor to reality, and despite not actually knowing what the fuck is going on. It’s just a theatrical display of gestures and words. This appears sufficient for the persuasion of confidence.
I’m increasingly perceiving public success is nothing more than a coincidence, a mere accident. Many times a person appears in the right place at the right time, and they mistake circumstance for talent.
So life is more a political dance than a test of thoughtful ability.
This is both inspiring and demoralizing.
Inspiring because it’s as if a key to success has placed in my possession, and all I need to do is walk through the door and perform the theatrics and wait for the audience to encore.
Demoralizing because I find myself increasingly surrounded by empty shells of gesticulating flesh that epitomize incompetence while being exemplified as an admirable example for others to follow.
I’ve been getting more and more looks from ladies.
Typically I don’t get looks.
But recently, I frequently seem women staring me down.
Sometimes initiating conversation with me.
At first I thought it was just a random anomaly. I really don’t get attention. But there is a persistent statistical trend.
But recently something’s different.
I’m trying to figure out if it’s my beard. Or my long hair.
Or if women are just horny as hell from being cooped up at home, and the first red blooded male they see just elicits a biological response that has absolutely nothing to do with me.
Of course I like the idea of my long haired, unkempt appearance appealing to the woman’s animalistic desire to procreate.
What’s crazy is that in 1000 BC there was a complex economy which enabled complex textile weaving and clothing stitching and construction.
I try to imagine the circumstances which birthed these pants, the economy of dyes, of looms, of seamstresses.
Were they made by a person within the family? A slave?
Where they produced commercially?
Were they traded?
I try to imagine the people and tools that enabled this in 1000BC
And the lively open markets that merchants potentially sold these through. The stacks of paints, dyed different colors, with different patterns, ready for purchase by passerby’s.
1000BC.
This is pre-Roman.
This is at the beginning of Greek civilization, which catalyzed around 1200-900BC.
It’s remarkable to think they were making pants like this.
Always reminds me that humans haven’t changed much at all.
I imagine our disposition to be fairly consistent across thousands of years. I also imagine that the knowledge to produce these pants, either by one person or an economy, took hundreds of years or more.
Right?
Like the process of agriculture, or growing fields of cotton or linen or whatever this is made of, of perfecting the art of spinning the fibers to consistent size, of tight weaves, of incorporating patterns, of the dyes likely imported from some distant land, like India (indigo)
I always wonder how much older certain knowledge is.
We see artifacts and buildings that have somehow survived the erosion and entropy of nature, as well as intentional human destruction and defacing. And we say, ah this is the oldest!
We don’t know if that specific article or artifact represents the pinnacle of the time, or of the millennia or culture.
It’s usually just a fragment. Perhaps it represents the lowest skill and quality?
Perhaps it’s simply what remained?
I like to think that ancient civilizations have reached peaks comparable to Greek and Roman and Egyptian civilization, beyond 10,000 years ago.
But they have been destroyed by nature of man. Or cities have been built upon them.
In the America’s there’s ample evidence to suggest mass agriculture and farming. The ancient ruins now covered in over grown jungles were once situated on plains with elaborate cities, with no jungle for miles. Once the civilization fell to war or disease nature simply resumed and overgrowth buried and eroded all the evidence of greatness.
Over the millennia looters dug up and destroyed what evidence did exist until all that remains are rocks.
And we find these organized rocks and conclude a vast, yet “primitive” culture once resided here.
But i do not think that is so.
I think humans have not changed much at all. I think that it doesn’t take very long for a civilization, blessed with the right resources, to rediscover natural truths and develop sophisticated technology and tools, which surpass what we imagine they are capable of
If I went to college outta high school I wouldn’t have lasted more than a semester. I couldn’t even graduate high school.
College was only an option when I decided that was exactly what I wanted.
Knowing that I wanted to go for me changed the game. I studied because I wanted to, not because I had to. I didn’t really party. Only the last year or so. I had no desire when I was in college.
I got that shit outta my system in high school and the years I was being a couch surfing high school drop out bum. Got fucked up just about every day from 18-20. Every drug. Just partied all the time.
It was great until I sobered up and realized i had nothing to show for myself.
Every day I woke up hung over and looking for a way to cure the hang over. Like a non-specific addict. Just trying to feel better. But drugs and alcohol always wear off and the sobriety always revealed the painful reality that I had nothing, had no one, and was going no where.
Everyone I partied with and got high with moved on. Or was in the same position. Homeless or living at home working a dead end job or couch surfing.
I had a girlfriend who was like, you’re a loser. Basically like, what future could you possibly provide that I’d want?
And I was like. You got a point. I have nothing. I know how to have a good time? People love partying with me?
But when you grow up you realize no one parties. And you’re the only guy partying, by yourself.
But if I didn’t reach that conclusion by myself and decide that i was sick and tired of being sick and tired, I would have prolonged the situation.
I feel fortunate that I dropped out/didn’t graduate from high school.
It prevented me from even considering college.
When I decided that college was exactly what I wanted, it didn’t feel like work. Just felt like that’s what I was suppose to do.
I think figuring out exactly what you don’t want is in some ways more important than figuring out what you want.
Cause it raises the bar for what is minimally acceptable for life, but doesn’t force you to choose.
I don’t think we have to figure it out. I don’t think it’s possible.
I’m sitting on my faux leather arm chair sipping my coffee from a mug that’s printed with a quote from Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, “The most beautiful people…”
I hear the sounds of the city emanate from the cracked living room window and echo throughout the small apartment. Exhaust and engines revving and beeps and the occasional voice yelling across market street.
I’ve found an apartment in Woodside California. If I sign the lease today, I’ll move in June 16th and be living in a 17,000 sq ft mansion with ten other housemates. I’ve gone through several feelings since I discovered this arrangement last week, from excited at the prospect of living in such a place, to apprehensive of so many housemates, to at peace that I’ll make the most of this situation, and it’ll provide me with the social exposure to relieve the loneliness of the breakup.
Other than that, work has been a combination of great and hectic. I’m suppose to be drawing up a long term business plan for our global president, who wants to meet with me this week or next. Quite a task. I suspect there is about $100 to $150 million in opportunity. We currently have less than 10% of the business at $6 million or so. With the right organization and investment, I firmly believe we can grow this to $25 million in ten years, and $50 million in fifteen years. Those are rough numbers, but extremely realistic.
The most difficult part is the “how”.
Of course my management wants to hire staff and develop new products. I don’t want this, however. Not yet. I want organizational processes. Specifically, I want database systems and processes in place. Then I want to hire more people, then I want to develop and release new products. Why? Data.
My job is to grow business. I grow business by satisfying needs. I satisfy needs by developing and delivering value.
What is most critical to growth is customer needs, not solutions and products. If the customer needs change, my products are worthless.
I want systems that allow me to capture customer data. That means everything about a customer, every need, every person with that need, every department and business unit associated with that need, every machine name, every assembly name, every contract manufacturer. Once I have that system in place, then I want to collect all that information. This is the stage we hire more staff.
Once we gather enough data, then analyze it so it can inform our decision making processes. Then we can strategically develop products that will be the best fit for the customers.
I realize that I cannot build a database system without understanding the optimal processes.
As a result, I’ve developed my own processes and created my own database in Excel. This is great for me. It’s okay for managing my team. But it is not scalable.
So, what I imagine to be the best order for developing this business:
Sales Process Organization Optimization
Database System
Hire Account Managers
Collect More Customer/Market Data
Analyze Data
Marketing Sales Strategies for current products
Direct Sales and Distribution
New Product Development Engineering
Release New Products based on Customer Database Analyses
Local Rapid Prototyping Engineering Office – Collaborative Development
Local Manufacturing
That’s more or less how I see this working.
When it comes to hiring more staff, I see a territory or sales director, such as myself, with a small team of sales engineers, customer support specialists, and technical marketing engineers.
Sales engineers eliminate the need for application engineers, who are more of a support role and don’t proactively close the sale. Sales engineers are responsible for solving the customers problem without any need of outside support. They are responsible for making lots of sales meetings and calls, and promoting products to specific customers. They are the most important staff for maintaining the database accuracy and updating records.
Customer support specialists are basically a combination of inside sales and customer support. They create leads, take phone calls, direct calls, take orders, provide quotes, ship samples, etc. They work closely with sales engineers to get things quoted and ordered quickly, providing the customer with any information they need as quickly as possible.
Technical marketing engineers are a combination of product managers and marketing. They work to identify sales strategy with the sales director. They analyze the database and discover trends. They also have a very deep technical product knowledge, and are always studying competition, applications, and market trends.
When I was about twenty years old I read many books by Napoleon Hill. One theme that stuck with me was the importance of Mastermind Groups, or like minded peers that mentored each other to bring out the best of the group. I’ve also recognized these groups in various writing groups or intellectual circles or philosophy groups throughout history. It’s uncanny how talent seems to find itself in others.
Albert Einstein developed his intellect through the Olympia Academy, a group of friends who discussed philosophy and physics.
Since then I’ve always strive to cultivate my own groups of friends that I admire and respect that I discuss ideas with to bring out our best. I’ve had one such group for over 10 years now, named “Brosensus”, which contains more than ten friends I’ve made throughout my life whom I respect the most for their perspectives and attitudes and mindset.
Just recently I came across this concept “scenius” in the short book “Show Your Work” by Austin Kleon. And today I read a nice summary of the concept on Kevin Kelly’s blog The Technium, who is editor of Wired Magazine.
The things AmazonGo is doing is unreal. Everything will be tracked. Minute RFID tags in everything. There are other ways they’ll confirm, like machine vision and weight.
But the idea of a store there you are tracked, your every movement, from the moment you enter the store, seems like just the beginning of some Orwellian government control nightmare.
They know everything about you upon entering One day we won’t need to physically interact with other humans. Everything will be through media, through a medium, a simulacra.
And we will slowly become more and more submersed into the simulation. Unable to differentiate the map from the territory Propaganda is just what the opposing ideology calls your news
This COVID virus situation is just pushing society further into this cybernetic world of control.
When the media or medium is centralized…. when the message is controlled…. that’s a bad day for autonomy.
If we ever had it.
Controlled on the sense that, Reality becomes a simulation, because all the perceptible objects were engage with are simulacra, or copies that depict things that either had no original, or that no longer have an original. Just abstractions of abstractions.
What is digital currency?
An abstraction of physical value.
Digital currency is abstracted dollar note, which is abstracted coins, which is abstracted metal, which is abstracted value.
I just think this who shift to full blown digitization of human interaction is surreal Society is not consciously aware that the social media or “mediums” we rely on to represent original things may no longer be a reliable guide.
Perhaps we are aware, to some extent. Hence the “fake news”.
But that’s like one fish telling another fish the water’s dirty.
“What the hell is water?”
“No, your waters dirty!”
Meanwhile no one has a clue that we’re all in the water together. They don’t even know what water is, because it is everything they know and live on.
G went to Hays Valley park to sit on a bench next to some bushes.
While she was sitting there some police officers walked up to the bush and were talking amongst themselves, just a few feet away.
She continued watching them and occasionally they’d lean into the bush to inspect something inside.
G then saw what they were inspecting, and they took notice of her watching them.
Then they politely said to her, “it’s up to you if you want to stay here but this is a dead person”
That’s when G saw the lifeless body on the ground beneath the bushes, the legs and arms contorted in an unnatural way.
This shocked G, and sent a cold chill through her body.
She instantly got up up and thanked them and walked to another bench, and watched as they unfurled a yellow tarp to wrap around the body while they waited.
As G sat on the bench across the park, she reflected on the experience, still watching the bush and officers from a couple dozen feet away. She thought it was odd that she still remained in the park, and that life continued for everyone passing by, despite the dead body, and the end of life it represented.
Part of me wants to be jacked and ripped and just dangerously good looking and cool and suave and charismatic and sharp and GQ and smiling all the time.
The other half doesn’t care at all about appearances. Doesn’t want to groom. Is antisocial. Is content with not caring about what anyone thinks about how I live. Wear the same clothes everyday. Just be obsessed with building little metal worlds I can day dream about in solitude.
What’s the best way to live? There are pro’s and con’s to each. Is there a way to integrate both?
I think the biggest barrier to AI having any kind of dominance, is the inability to create meaning. Humanity currently defines what meaning is. I can’t imagine AI ever telling humanity what is meaningful
And because society and meaning and values are contextualized by humans, I don’t think AI will ever be able to do that independent of human input.
AI will be an instrument, but that is all. Value and meaning is uniquely human. Because these serve humanity.
We imbue things, ideas, feelings with value and humanity because it serves humanities interest.
How could anything other than humanity know what’s in humanities best interest?
It may mimic and emulate, but it will not create or coin meaning and value.
Perhaps this novelty will help us progress. But eventually there will be a divergence, and the novelty will wear off as we recognize the dissonance between what AI is providing, and what humanity requires/needs/craves. The meaning and value question is something I’ve never been able to reconcile.
I cannot conceive of a logical machine ever creating the illogical meaning and value that humanity thrives on
I mean, we tell the machines what is meaningful and valuable, what to perceive and look for Can you imagine them telling us? There’s just this pure chaotic electrical noise.
The AI says “this is beautiful”
We think it’s intolerable and ask why?
The AI explains there are perfect mathematical patterns creating layers of perfect harmony.
We don’t give a shit. It sounds like crap. But if I imagine AI as a dog, I think I can envision this: The AI just does whatever pleases humanity. But is that creativity? Does a dog create meaning?
When we say AI, are we saying a machine that man programmed to create music that pleases humans? sure It’s still an instrument of man. In the same way the the Violin is an instrument to create more pleasing vibrations Could it exist independent of man? I don’t think so AI is this catch all Just to be clear, I’m referring to the possibility of sentient artificial intelligence Not AI as it is today, which is just a computer that can calculate definitive outputs based on highly variable inputs So i guess this is what I’m thinking Man this is so complex Because I think our consciousness is a social byproduct Like the mind does not exist independent of society And we overlook this point Hard to do this thought experiment, because humanity depends on a strong cultural programming, but here’s a shot
Take a human. Place in a totally new and foreign environment.
Humans perceive the world and it’s various animations and actors, and assign symbols and signs to these. Man says this is meaningful. This is valuable. This is not.
I can only assume this is a symptom of man’s drive to survive.
But I’m not sure meaning and value is necessary without multiple minds. I just try to imagine an AI robot.
How do we program a robot? Do we program a robot? Or at some point does it program itself?
Like a child you program and then learns to think for itself. But it’s still human.
How does an AI robot does this?
If we place the robot in a similar foreign environment, is it relying on the human programming to decipher meaning and value?
Will a robot be able to correctly assign meaning and value in a way that serves the needs of AI?
In the same way that humanity creates meaning and value that serves our needs? I just keep thinking that AI will always be constrained to the program that humanity inscribes it with Will AI ever propagate Indpendent of humanity? I suppose when AI achieves the ability to propagate on its own, that will step 1.
Then it will need to be able to adapt to environmental changes. Maybe step 2.
I think it’s clear that the greatest intelligence is distributed. I think there’s an evolutionary advantage to not having centralized minds.
Makes the system more flexible and less rigid to adapt to change I don’t even understand my own consciousness, what it is, and how it arises or arose in humanity.
I don’t think I’ll ever understand how it will come to be in AI Yea my brain melts when I gaze into this gaping abyss of “what is mind?” The trip i have is that “mind” is actually software. It’s not hardware/wetware/brain It’s not in the brain Mind is a social/cultural by product The structures of consciousness do not inhabit a brain. We have this mind which is an aggregation of all the lived experiences that every human on earth ever absorbed and transmitted to other humans. As a metaphor A single human can not develop without another human The mind is nothin without another perspective at this point it requires nurture It relies on outside programming The mind is like this flame that was sparked tens of thousands of years ago, and since then this flame has been growing with every lived experience It’s just this accretion of programming The mind is lit by others If you took a baby and gave him to gorillas, assuming he survived, what would you make of his consciousness? Would this grown baby retain any semblance of the consciousness we see in our fellow man? Or would this grown baby possess the mind of the gorilla? I think that the grown baby would be no more conscious or less conscious than the gorilla The brain has the capacity for “consciousness”, whatever that is.
But i think it’s just a cultural byproduct. Residual programming past on from generation to generation
I did not understand the value of persistence until I was like, 20.
And I only understand the power of persistence when I learned that achieving anything and everything takes time.
I feel like the first 20 years of my life I got good at things simply because I enjoyed them. I was not a great student. Not at all. But when i enjoyed something, I did it all the time. It was effortless. Just lost in the “flow” and spent tons of time with the thing. And as I result I was good at it. I never saw this correlation as a kid. It was always attributed to innate talent.
“Studying” was a foreign concept. I didn’t study, ever. I just became fascinated with subjects and spent time with the books exploring them. I literally was a retarded “student”, as in no study habits or academic goals, even though i aced most subjects, simply because I found them interesting.
I recall long stretches of my early childhood laying on the floor, drawing the minute i got home from school until bed time. Usually this happened when I was grounded, but I didn’t mind being grounded. It happened so routinely. I’d just draw for hours or days or weeks. And somehow I was an “artist”, and parents and teachers would revel at my artistic ability.
Or I’d spend days or weeks laying on my bedroom floor or taking a shit or car rides reading books. Mostly encyclopedias. I literally read them all multiple times. And teachers would comment on how bright I was, but I never understood this, because I was a horrible student, never did homework. Just read stuff I enjoyed.
When i began playing guitar, I didn’t think of practicing. It wasn’t practice. Yes it was practice with my trumpet. Miserable practice. But guitar was effortless. I’d sleep with my guitar. I’d finger the fret board as I dozed off to sleep. Brought it everywhere with me. To school. To church. Vacation. I’d play all the time. People would attribute this musical ability to some innate music talent. But in reality I’d just enjoyed playing music, and did it all the time.
Sports were the same. I never thought of practice. I never thought of “persistence”. Just did things I enjoyed.
On the flip side, I did not do things I did not enjoy.
I did not enjoy activities when there was an outside pressure to perform, and I disappointed others.
When I lost. When my results were less than expected by people. This put immense pressure on me, and I attributed my performance to my value as a person, and I soon ceased enjoying these activities. Not consciously.
This pressure wasn’t really present in childhood. But it grew immensely as I got older. People expected these “talents” to do big things.
But I just never knew what practice felt like when I enjoyed it.
And when i didn’t enjoy it, I couldn’t do it. And if I couldn’t perform the task, I didn’t.
And so as I got older, it felt like I just had this talent for certain things, except when I let people down or “failed” or “lost”, and so when I didn’t have a talent for them, I just didn’t do the thing.
The thing is. I have a sister. She never really had a lot of interests, per say. She was always easy going and never really had a “drive” to know or perfect something.
HOWEVER, she was persistent as fuck.
I remember observing her. She would ask and ask and ask and ask. She would never ever ever ever give up if she wanted something.
Granted, she never had huge aspirations or ambitions. She’s simple, and she loves simplicity.
But when she wants something, she doesn’t make a big deal about it. She just persists until she gets it. I mean. Parents or people or friends would say no a million times. I’d be like, move the fuck on. Mom said no. Your friend said no. It was annoying how god damn single minded she was when she wanted something. Whether it was a puppy or toy or a dress or a vacation or to go to a certain school or whatever.
She has accomplished a lot of things. Things she values.
But mostly her approach taught me something.
It taught me that persistence doesn’t require effort per say. Action does, but persistence does not. Persistence requires patience.
It taught me that persistence can accomplish more than cleverness and intensity.
Persistence. It carves out a path in the world. Energy and persistence conquers all things.
“A river cuts through rock, not because of its power, but because of its persistence” Watkins
If you just keep that thing in your mind and show up, ask, knock, seek. Things will happen and move forward.
Habits are great in this regard. Habits are like the nozzle of persistence that directs your energy to cut through anything.
Foundational authors of Cybernetics and Systems theory:
Talcott Parsons Niklas Luhmann Ludwig von Bertalanffy Warren McCulloch Jay Forrester Gordon Brown Jose Verela Norbert Weiner Claude Shannon Ross Ashby Alan Turing James Maxwell John von Neumann Heinz von Forester Anthony Wilden Humberto Maturana Ilya Prigogine Gregory Bateson
These are a few names… but there are so many more that branched off into domain specific fields, though the origins of their ideas began with this complex systems background
It’s such a interdisciplinary subject. I’m constantly astonished how far reaching the topic is, and yet how completely unknown it is. As in, you discover that so many great minds contributed to it topic, and yet, it’s hardly known or understood. It’s like the ultimate platonic form.
I’m trying to do a thought experiment and model a scenario, maybe a betting situation, where there are 100 people, and 10 people have 90% the chips, and the 90 remaining people have 10% of the chips, and all 100 sit around a table and must play a few hands and place bets every day.
If one of the 90 people is feeling lucky they’ll convince one of the high rollers to lend a stack of chips to play a hand. If they win that hand, they pay back the high roller and now will have a seat next to the high rollers.
But mostly 90% of low rolling players have to shine the shoes and clean the houses of the people with all the chips, just so they can get a few chips of their own to have a seat at the table to play.
And every day all 100 come and sit around the betting table, and place bets. The poor can only afford to place the ante.
If you took a median sampling of the players, you’d think this was a pretty sad situation.
Everyone is poor, or owes the high rollers some chips. They all work for the high rollers, since they have all the chips that are required to play a bet every day.
But for some reason the pot is always so big!
So strange.
It’s like. How can a pot be so high priced, when everyone else is so poor? The only explanation is that we’re are a handful of people who are placing bets and competing with each owner
Trying to understand how the fuckin stock market is increasing
Despite 33 million unemployed
Despite GDP contracting 30% 2nd qtr.
Despite estimated -5% GDP growth in 2020 Like what would cause the stocks to unhinge so dramatically.
I can only conclude this stimulus basically just went straight to people who have money already, who just decided to keep that money in the market, since they had excess cash on hand. So this artificially inflated market values What happens when we see earnings reports? And all these companies are overvalued?
Will that even matter?
Probably not. Not to the people with money. It’s just a betting game between the wealthy
Value is relative to the player
They’re taking a winner take all game
That’s the only corollary to this situation They’re playing a winner take all game* At some point yes, the bets are outrageous. They’re unhinged, to the median player.
After 90% of the players are essentially eliminated, the rest are relegated to simply placing an “ante”. It’s just to make it seem like there is a competitive playing field.
I’m trying to rationalize this surreal market divergence from the economy.
I just think it’s obvious that there is a separate game being played The market is not public It’s a private game They just take our ante It’s unsettling
“Thus the device by which an organism maintains itself stationary at a fairly high level of orderliness ( = fairly low level of entropy) really consists in continually sucking orderliness from its environment.”
—Schrödinger, What is Life? (1944)
Life consists of sucking information out of the environment.
Think about that. And think about what drives human behavior.
Can I tell you, my friend? I feel death in my bones. It makes me want to cry.
Not death of body, death of spirit. Though there’s certainly the feeling that my body is wasting away with every passing year.
I’m reading an essay titled Of Peace of Mind by Seneca. It’s my bedtime reading. Or perhaps daily meditation. I can’t adequately express how much that essay speaks to me.
I’m in this prolonged changeless season. Some years feel like months, and some months like years. These past years have felt like decades. So much has transpired, and yet so little. Moves, jobs, living arrangements, lifestyle changes, and the like.
Throughout it all, there has been a growing pressure, as if I have no where else to go. My aspirational visions have withered to attend to more present things: fulfill my current duties to the best of my ability, and derive a sense of pleasure and accomplishment for their fulfillment. This has made me fulfilled. Being responsible is satisfying, on some level.
The daily routines of mechanical habit give a sense of structure and meaning to my otherwise turbulent thoughts. This rigidity provides security, my daily bread.
But I feel malnourished.
Bread is not enough.
These daily disciplines act as gates that guard against the vacuous abyss that siphon whatever pleasure I can wring from life.
I’d like to tear down the gates, and jump into the abyss, race to the bottom, rather than fight to escape. I want to feel the center of its crushing gravity, and let it tear me apart and unfurl my spirit like an exploding star.
There are gatekeepers of the world, and these gatekeepers define value.
They define value by making sense of the noise, of the cacophony of competing voices.
They implement systems to channel and distribute chosen voices.
They select what is worth seeing and hearing, what is worthy of public attention, of admiration and praise, and they categorize it for the people. They tell people what it is, and what it means.
The values they pick are always self serving. Gatekeepers select voices that reinforce their authority and position the most. This is natural, this is survival.
The systems they implement are often pay to play. They capitalize on the desire to be the voice. You must pay to play.
Sometimes there is a voice that the gatekeepers have overlooked, or ignored. These voices emerge out of revolution, out of defiance. They are non conformist that grow in influence in proportion to their rejection by the gatekeepers.
Eventually an outside gatekeepers sees the fire inside this voice, and builds its own channel and systems around it.
Sometimes it is the voice that builds these systems and channels for itself, and in time becomes a gatekeeper for other voices. This is how it works, I believe. Roughly. Any voice:
Actors, musicians, writers, comics, playwrights, dancers, academics, choreographers, artists, etc.
These gatekeepers are necessary. They are byproducts of society need to be lead, to provide a heuristic to aid judgement. The public chooses them to be guardians of public values, to represent what the public desires, what it avers.
But in time these gatekeepers stop serving the public, and start serving themselves. They preserve the status quo.
And a divergence occurs, and this creates opportunity for new voices.
The public is hungry for something different, that it’s not being fed.
You don’t need talent to succeed, you just need to serve the gatekeeper.
If you will not serve, you need talent, as well as resilient defiance, and an ability to endure solitary rejection, and sing with the same vigor, even if to an empty room.
I purchased Jacques Elull’s book Propaganda in 2012, but read it briskly, savoring the deep insights into humanity’s mechanical madness, and the sad susceptibility that each forgetful generation falls to soothsaying demagogues who program the populous with a prose which incites blind obedience that cost them their lives. I’ve recently began turning over the pages again to uncover these sage gems, which seem to reflect the tides of current times.
“To the extent that propaganda is based on current news, it cannot permit time for thought or reflection. A man caught up in the news must remain on the surface of the event; be is carried along in the current, and can at no time take a respite to judge and appreciate; he can never stop to reflect. There is never any awareness — of himself, of his condition, of his society — for the man who lives by current events. Such a man never stops to investigate any one point, any more than he will tie together a series of news events. We already have mentioned man’s inability to consider several facts or events simultaneously and to make a synthesis of them in order to face or to oppose them. One thought drives away another; old facts are chased by new ones. Under these conditions there can be no thought. And, in fact, modern man does not think about current problems; he feels them. He reacts, but be does not understand them any more than he takes responsibility for them. He is even less capable of spotting any inconsistency between successive facts; man’s capacity to forget is unlimited. This is one of the most important and useful points for the propagandist, who can always be sure that a particular propaganda theme, statement, or event will be forgotten within a few weeks. Moreover, there is a spontaneous defensive reaction in the individual against an excess of information and — to the extent that he clings (unconsciously) to the unity of his own person — against inconsistencies. The best defense here is to forget the preceding event. In so doing, man denies his own continuity; to the same extent that he lives on the surface of events and makes today’s events his life by obliterating yesterday’s news, he refuses to see the contradictions in his own life and condemns himself to a life of successive moments, discontinuous and fragmented. This situation makes the “current-events man” a ready target for propaganda. Indeed, such a man is highly sensitive to the influence of present-day currents; lacking landmarks, he follows all currents. He is unstable because he runs after what happened today; he relates to the event, and therefore cannot resist any impulse coming from that event. Because he is immersed in current affairs, this man has a psychological weakness that puts him at the mercy of the propagandist. No confrontation ever occurs between the event and the truth; no relationship ever exists between the event and the person. Real information never concerns such a person. What could be more striking, more distressing, more decisive than the splitting of the atom, apart from the bomb itself? And yet this great development is kept in the background, behind the fleeting and spectacular result of some catastrophe or sports event because that is the superficial news the average man wants. Propaganda addresses itself to that man; like him, it can relate only to the most superficial aspect of a spectacular event, which alone can interest man and lead him to make a certain decision or adopt a certain attitude. But here we must make an important qualification. The news event may be a real fact, existing objectively, or it may be only an item of information, the dissemination of a supposed fact. What makes it news is its dissemination, not its objective reality.” —Jacques Ellul, Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes
“Those who read the press of their group and listen to the radio of their group are constantly reinforced in their allegiance. They learn more and more that their group is right, that its actions are justified; thus their beliefs are strengthened. At the same time, such propaganda contains elements of criticism and refutation of other groups, which will never be read or heard by a member of another group…Thus we see before our eyes how a world of closed minds establishes itself, a world in which everybody talks to himself, everybody constantly views his own certainty about himself and the wrongs done him by the Others – a world in which nobody listens to anybody else.” —Jacques Ellul, Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes (1962)
“People used to think that learning to read evidenced human progress; they still celebrate the decline of illiteracy as a great victory; they condemn countries with a large proportion of illiterates; they think that reading is a road to freedom. All this is debatable, for the important thing is not to be able to read, but to understand what one reads, to reflect on and judge what one reads. Outside of that, reading has no meaning (and even destroys certain automatic qualities of memory and observation). But to talk about critical faculties and discernment is to talk about something far above primary education and to consider a very small minority. The vast majority of people, perhaps 90 percent, know how to read, but do not exercise their intelligence beyond this. They attribute authority and eminent value to the printed word, or, conversely, reject it altogether. As these people do not possess enough knowledge to reflect and discern, they believe—or disbelieve—in toto what they read. And as such people, moreover, will select the easiest, not the hardest, reading matter, they are precisely on the level at which the printed word can seize and convince them without opposition. They are perfectly adapted to propaganda.” —Jacques Ellul, Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes
The energy storage and battery industry needs to learn more from the semiconductor industry. Lots of talk about current battery science progress revolves around battery chemistry, the chemical mix and crystal structure and construction of the anode/cathode/electrolyte composition.
I feel like battery tech is 20 years behind where semiconductor is. Why?
No idea why battery science appears so far behind current semiconductor technology. I attribute the lag to economic incentives: we’re always near a power grid, and oil and gas are already stable stored energy sources.
When you look at the technology, battery technology would benefit immensely from incorporating the science of semiconductors. It’s weird that it’s not.
Essentially battery manufacturing is a less refined process, but extremely similar steps, involving coating/deposition.
I feel battery technologists and manufacturers would benefit from incorporating semiconductor processes, specifically thin film deposition techniques (depositing atomic layers to build circuits, gates, etc via vapor deposition or epitaxial processes etc)
I just googled to see if this was a thing, and it is. Albeit, not commercial, yet.
The recent “single crystal cathode” patent by Tesla to eliminate structural cracks within the crystal structure made me think about water fabrication equipment OEMs who specialize in building atomic structures an atom or two thin with various deposition techniques.
Simplified Battery manufacturing process (cathode and anode combined to simplify): Mixing: creating slurry Coating Top: extrusion slurry onto foil substrate Drying: removing solvent Coating Bottom Drying: removing solvent Curing Press Slitting Winding: Jelly Winding the Cathode/Anode/Separator Jelly Roll Insertion Top cap tab welding Electrolyte fill Top cap assembly on can Charge Test Formation: lots of steps including aging, charge, discharge, testing Final visual cell inspection
The recent “single crystal cathode” patent by Tesla to eliminate structural cracks within the crystal structure made me think about water fabrication equipment OEMs who specialize in building atomic structures an atom or two thin with various deposition techniques.
Semiconductor science began in the 1960’s and never stopped. It exploded in the 1980’s once deposition and etch and photolithography techniques began to streamline. Once they learned how to etch transistors into metal, they only limiting factor was manipulating light waves, and the size of those waves.
We had 130nm gates in 2000.
Now we have gates 3nm.
A silicon atom is .3nm.
I say this because the efficiency of computing and microprocessing is directly related to the precision of depositing and manipulating layers of atoms….
And this is exactly the same challenges that battery is dealing with now.
Except battery science appears to be in the Stone Age.
They are just painting atoms onto foil substrates with imprecise extrusion machines.
They are not precise, and they aren’t manipulating atoms. They aren’t building atomic crystal structures with the precision they desire, and which is currently being achieved by the semiconductor industry.
The crystal structure is critical for efficiency and power density.
Maxwells proposed Dry Cell is a big step in this direction, eliminating solvents and liquid electrolytes.
But they are still depositing these materials with gross imprecision.
Battery science and manufacturing need to leverage the established deposition techniques of the semiconductor process.
The integrity of the crystal structure is critical for electrical efficiency, power density, etc.
Demand will shift from brick and mortar retail to online.
Restaurants will continue to suffer, and grocery will improve. More people will eat at home. Demand for “Cloud kitchens” may increase, but cash strapped consumers may not demand this higher premium service.
Automotive will be hit hard. No demand for new cars. People will travel and commute less. Cars will be less of a status symbol.
Oil is cheap, so demand for EV will decline.
Tesla will declare bankruptcy.*
Governments will struggle with budgets with no tax revenue. This will have cascading effects for gov employees, teachers, pensions, etc.
Short term rental industry will collapse. Airbnb will likely collapse. Lack of short term rental demand and outstanding mortgages will result in increase of home sales.
Home prices will fall as supply increases.
Travel and tourism will struggle. Cities and business in this industry will struggle.
Airlines will continue struggling.
Commercial businesses will see remote work success and increasingly move to remote work model. Decreasing need for commutes and expensive office space.
Home electronics demand will increase.
Lab automation will increase, with increase demand for mass testing and lab diagnostics.
Current food production outstripped demand. Food producers over supplied. Decreased restaurant demand will mean less food waste, further decrease in food demand. This will further impact food production, increasing need for gov subsidization, or increasing consolidation/monopolization of food industry.
Local farms will likely flourish as people are spending less at restaurants, and will spend more on high quality groceries.
The stock markets will reverse their bullish course soon, likely this month, and continue to decline as these economic realities begin settling in.
As much as I genuinely love Musk, I have been bearish on him for a long time.
I’m not trying to be a hater or non conformist, or any of that.
I just see two things as flags:
He’s financed his growth, and when he stops getting finance, that’ll be a bad day.
He’s got a bad reputation with suppliers. Doesn’t pay his bills so he can show positives on balance sheet for shareholders. Treats his suppliers like trash.
His model could work if he had infinite runway I suppose. Like Amazon, ramp and scale up revenue streams then flip some switches and turn on profits. But automotive supply chain is not like distribution or software. Very complex. And lots and lots of overhead. He thought this could be automated away, but he learned it could not.
So I think this is the year that Tesla has its reckoning. I think auto sales will be crushed. I think Tesla will have very low car sales. I think they will bleed out until their debt obligations hit, which between 2021 and 2023 are $4.2 billion.
There are a lot of variables still. They have this China factory building Model Y and some batteries. Cost is his biggest barrier to mass consumer, and batteries are a significant portion of total vehicle cost. His China plant should reduce cost significantly, thanks to cheap labor.
I’m curious how this relationship with China will pan out. I think it will reduce his costs significantly— China has cheap labor, almost slave labor (Uyghars). But then also have massive government intervention. This could be good or bad. In many ways Elon and China has lots in common: they do whatever necessary to get the job done. However, I wonder what arrangements were made. Did Elon sell his soul to the devil? Does Elon know that his entire IP will be stolen? Or will this be a saving grace, and will China bail him out to save face and use Elon as a propaganda tool?
I dunno.
But either way Elon needs to sell cars to stay afloat. And will definitely will not this year.
Teslas cash reserves will stave off the inevitable for awhile, but his salesmanship won’t work if there is no liquidity, or if there’s no one willing to bet on an auto EV company that no ones buying.
Elon knows all this. I think he’s worried, definitely.
Working at the Gigafactory revealed that there is a bearish sentiment regarding Tesla. Panasonic executives don’t want to continue working with Tesla. That’s a flag. Everyone at the factory supports his mission. Sustainability. Electric vehicles.
But he doesn’t run his business like he should. He doesn’t treat employees well, and he doesn’t treat suppliers well.
No one works for Elon. They work for his dream.
I don’t think there will be the demand he needs, not this year. With oil prices, with lack of commuting and traveling, with unemployment, etc. No way will Tesla, who has never had a profitable year in its 12 years as a company, somehow emerge unscathed.
The battery tech will be interesting. The most exciting part is combining Maxwell’s super capacitive technology with Lithium ion, which will increase battery life significantly, and also boost performance. Adding supercapacitive will reduce cost as well. We’ll see how this pans out.
Panasonic is launching its Tech6 battery in a few months. I believe this is unrelated. But Panasonic’s battery technology is leap years ahead of its competition. It’s worth noting that this technology is not owned by Tesla.
But Tesla actually doesn’t produce any batteries, and has never mass produced batteries. Building batteries in a lab is different than mass manufacturing. So no one knows whether Tesla’s batteries are just concept or will work in practice.
At the moment Panasonic is the sole supplier of Tesla batteries, and they produce double what the next largest supplier produces CATL, Teslas future China parter.
I think there’s a big risk China will likely steal whatever battery technology Tesla develops. Or just any technology period. This could be problematic for Tesla, assuming it’s better and less costly to manufacture than current batteries. China has 486 EV car manufacturers that would benefit from this.
At the end of the day, Elon is a showman. He tells half-truths. He’s not honest or transparent about the whole picture. About anything really. This may be well and fine, and business as usual. But there is a lot hiding that people don’t see. He only lets people see what he wants them to see.
People forget about all of his straight out lies, and only seem to remember the things he pulls through on.
I can list all the things he promised and never came through on, but it’d be exhausting.
He has indeed done remarkable things. Maybe unconventionally. Maybe with too much risk. But he’s done it.
I think as long as he has cash/liquidity on hand he can afford mistakes. Make 10 bets, one pays off, people forget the rest, he gets more funding, drives up share prices, etc.
I just thinks there is more than meets the eye with his Tesla business. I’m not convinced he’s got a sound business model yet. It feels like he’s constantly flailing, always desperate.
My intuition is that when cash/funding/liquidity dries up, these cracks will expose bigger problems.
That’s what I wish to say. But what that requires is discarding my current life, and reinventing myself, or perhaps embracing a version that’s been there all along, perhaps an authentic version, the real me, until I realize that I’m no good at being that person either.
Susan Oyama has some fascinating insights into developmental systems and biological evolution, specifically looking at genetic programming and the ontogenesis of information.
She explores the reflexive interactive relationship between organism and environment, such as how environmental features become embedded in genetic information and “manifest” as genes, and reciprocal selectivity between environment and organism, relating to both inherited and acquired characteristics, ie information/ programs.
Lots of interesting thoughts on the fundamental processes of life: constancy, change, and variability. And their evolutionary/developmental role.
She also explores the how biological constraints “generate” information, controls, and regulatory systems, rather than there being a guiding genetic principle to their development.
And much more. Relating to our conversation about energy manifesting in forms of matter,
“The gene is a vehicle of constancy.”
Gene is information, information is order, order is pattern, pattern is repetition, repetition is constancy
Design is pattern. In-formation as shaping or animating.
Constructive to think of information as a manifestation of physical form, of shape.
Which, at its essence, is geometric.
Geometry is spatial,
And spatial is relational.
When I think of information, I think of syntax, of order, which determines a sequence of value-point, the meaning of which is determined by the sum of these values, as well as the order of the points, and the relationships between any one point.
When i think of syntax, I think of statements strung together.
Then I think of how that statement can be further reduced to abstract symbolic logic, while retaining the intention.
The logic of the statement is determined by the total symbols, as well as the order in which they appear in a sequence.
We can further abstract these symbols to on and off, 1 and 0.
The information contained relates to the total characters/points, and the relationship to all other characters. The sum and order.
But the “rules” are what result in the pattern. This could be random numbers. The only thing that makes it information is that we apply a set of rules to translate into something meaningful.
The rules require us to perform repetitive actions. Every time I was to refer to “man”, i must use the characters “m-a-n” in that order/sequence.
By using different combinations, i am not preserving the integrity of the pattern, and not creating structure, or order.
Something like that As it relates to genetic information,
You can see the energy manifesting in matter. You can see the vibrations, the wave form, the repeating geometric structure.
The environment is buzzing with energy, with an energy force.
The constancy of that force manifests as repetition, as frequency, as Hertz.
This repetition is order. In the same way that a sine wave is repeating. Or a transmission signal has a repetition to the communication protocol, be it Morse Code or something more complex, such as UDP or TCP etc.
A crystal’s geometric form is determined by the repetition of relationships between its atomic parts.
The environmental energy force that’s acting on physical matter requires a constancy to impress and form and shape.
This constancy is an equilibrium It’s a resonance I just think it’s interesting…
How does information make its way into DNA.
How are genes encoded? What is the rhyme?
I know it’s a vastly complex biochemical process…. but it’s not random. The environment impresses itself into the organisms DNA. Nature leaves her trace in every organism, and it never leaves. The environment of our ancestors is embedded in our DNA as information.
It’s not random in the sense that, chaos does not generate information.
“We have not overcome our condition, and yet we know it better. We know that we live in contradiction, but we also know that we must refuse this contradiction and do what is needed to reduce it. Our task as [humans] is to find the few principles that will calm the infinite anguish of free souls. We must mend what has been torn apart, make justice imaginable again in a world so obviously unjust, give happiness a meaning once more to peoples poisoned by the misery of the century. Naturally, it is a superhuman task. But superhuman is the term for tasks [we] take a long time to accomplish, that’s all.
Let us know our aims then, holding fast to the mind, even if force puts on a thoughtful or a comfortable face in order to seduce us. The first thing is not to despair. Let us not listen too much to those who proclaim that the world is at an end. Civilizations do not die so easily, and even if our world were to collapse, it would not have been the first. It is indeed true that we live in tragic times. But too many people confuse tragedy with despair. “Tragedy,” [D.H.] Lawrence said, “ought to be a great kick at misery.” This is a healthy and immediately applicable thought. There are many things today deserving such a kick.”
—Albert Camus, The Almond Trees (1940) [Les’Amandiers]
I was telling a friend how out of touch I feel recently, not just this past month, but over the years.
Of course I attribute this to a projection of my own circumstance, and I’m skeptical to assume that this is a malady facing society in general.
But I also feel that this narrative isn’t uncommon.
I wonder how many people feel increasingly out of touch with the world, but perhaps can’t put their finger on what they’re feeling.
I attribute it to my age, the consequence of growing older, to the my personal career choices, to my relationship choices.
But perhaps these choices are not unique to me, and the feelings they produce are not unique to me.
I wonder if my generation, if modern society, is feeling increasingly out of reach from one another, from life, from meaning.
I observe my daily habits, and remove the personalized importance I give them.
I observe the routines, not as a part of this meaningful lifestyle, but as a series of actions on inanimate objects.
I am a body of energized mass hurling through iterative routines, colliding with other masses is the environment, and these collisions comprise my relationships. I am a pinball bouncing from one place to another, in varying time and intensity.
My relationships, my interactions with the inanimate, or through the inanimate, has increased: Computers. Media streams. Emails. Apps.
The world comes to me, at my solitary convenience: Movies, groceries, mail, people, clothing, and the like.
In order for this post-physical community world to thrive and grow, solitude becomes even more important. Independence increases our dependency on the technologies that bring the world to us.
We do not choose what we know. It is chosen for us. The options are given. The prices are fixed. The system does the thinking for us.
The less we depend on others, the more we depend on the system, and the more our participation can be monetized, our labor, our thoughts, our preferences, our time.
There is a technological system that is replacing the function of physical community. Community was a dynamic system, capable of handling change.
Historically, community, the physical community, and the forum and neighborhoods it inhabited, promoted freedom of ideas, of thought.
It was as uncensored, and unregulated. We speak, and people heard.
We could speak to and negotiate and physically touch one another, and this visceral connection kept us anchored to each other, in a way that strengthen social ties.
Today that relationship is mediated by a system that taxes our participation. The mediation is a form of censorship. Advertising. Search results.
The tax is the price of accessing resources. Pay to play. We do not depend on the goodwill of people, but of technological systems, private or public. Platforms than aggregate all the demand, and control all the supply. These are the great regulators.
I’ve been feeling increasingly out of touch. As if there is an arbitrariness to the choices and the potential resulting outcomes.
Everything seems mundane. Trivial. The outcomes seem insignificant. The future seems to be arbitrary ideals pregnant with hope, but hope for what? I’m not sure.
I often wonder how much of my generation feels out of touch, and if they do, what they attribute this to. I’m curious if this is an isolated feeling, or if this is a signal from the collective unconscious that something is not well, and that the current path forward m is untenable, unsustainable. That the world we’re building, that we’re hoping for, is the exact opposite of what we truly want.
Which is, quality, meaningful, local physical relationships that we mutually depend on for nourishment of the soul. What we need is sustenance, and the ability to help one another.
And perhaps that exists for many people. But I wonder if the world we’re building is encouraging more of that, or less, and whether that’s something to look forward to and participate in, or revolt against.
“If you could be exceptional at ONE thing, but no better than average at everything else, what would it be?”
I think I’d want to be an exceptional artist. Probably a writer.
I was thinking mathematician.
But then I was thinking of the lives of mathematicians and their work, how narrow and niche and inaccessible it is to most people, yet how influential. Their contributions inspire almost every field, from engineering to physics to computers to design etc. And math seems to be timeless, crossing cultural divides and epochs.
But then, physics seems to be a bit more relatable. At least it deals the with the relationships of entities inhabiting the phenomenal world, rather than abstract expressions and relationships.
And yet, engineering seems a bit more creative, a way to utilize these mathematical relationships and create something unique from them, to solve problems and satisfy needs from the material of the world, via technology.
However, artists have this universally accessible and timeless quality to their work. It’s inspiring in some universally accessible way.
And within art there is writing, which seems to be this timeless artistic medium. Words seem to change the world. Books can program the mind. Writing seems to be the very basis of civilization. Words move men to action, to feeling, transcending the temporal, reaching out over generations, crossing all kinds of boundaries.
I think I’d love the ability to be an exceptional writer.
It’d be better to be versed in many languages, and possess the ability to borrow from the history and perspective and culture and meaning from all languages, and writing in all languages would be a tremendous skill. I’m sure it improves writing ability quite a bit.
So, art and creation.
The difference between instruments seems so arbitrary.
It’s difficult to choose between the instruments of mathematical symbols and linguistic symbols and colors and melodies. All these instruments of expression to manifest the intention of a man.
What does the world need? I feel like that determines the value of anything. But I’m not sure who decides it, if it’s the world, or if it’s the individual for the world. And so you just need to pick one thing and decide to do your part.
The older I get, the less certain I am of everything and anything.
I expected the opposite effect growing up.
When I was younger, I was so certain about my decisions, about the world. Even if I knew that I didn’t know everything, I was confident.
Each passing year, I feel less and less confident about what I know, and more and more confident about what I don’t know.
And I don’t say that as a virtue.
I say that as a feeling of unraveling. As if life is not something that can be figured out, that’s it’s a cumulation of choice mixed with chance, and there’s no hedge to it.
Yea. G is not happy about it Even tho she wanted to break up
She really wanted for me to object and fight for us. I just don’t have the energy anymore. Hoping one day things will work out and I’ll be able to convince myself that I knew what was doing all along
49% of me wants to work it out 51% of me doesn’t care enough
It’s tough I don’t like hurting her And i don’t love the idea of being alone But i also have a verrrry strong intuition that I’m putting off the inevitable So it’s like, do I “settle”, and avoid it, only to undermine happiness and satisfaction, just because I don’t want to deal with the discomfort and pain? Yea. Who knows. We really don’t know. I don’t know. We don’t know what we’re doing But I don’t have much to say She cries I just stare I don’t want to argue I love her and care for her and if things were different, this would be different But they’re not So I’m sorry By comforting her I’ll just be lying to myself and her
So I just resist saying anything, other than we both agree it’s not working. I know you love me and I know you want to work it out, but that all depends on me being different, which I really can’t be. I’m me. And I know you think I’m consciously not being who you want me to be, but the reality is, this is me. And you don’t like it, and it’s frustrating, and it hurts you, and you know I’m not intentionally trying to hurt you, you know I love you. You just think I’m selfish, and not willing to put in the work. But I do… but i also just… am worn down. I feel like I am not myself And I want to reclaim that
So this is apart of that Letting go Somehow
But it’s possible we become what the other person is looking for, or our expectations change Because I’m aware that I’m more more attracted to the idea of her than her. And they are such different realities.
I mean this realization hits me when I become aware that this is not the kind of interactions I wish to have with people…
Like, why are we arguing? I don’t want to argue. I don’t want this conflict. I just want understanding. Can we give that to each other?
Why are certain issues so persistent and recurring? Why can’t they just be resolved.
Like, I definitely don’t share that attitude.
I definitely don’t share that perspective.
That’s definitely not how I see things.
So like. What the heck am I doing this with you?
Okay, it builds character. Patience. Empathy.
Fast forward 3 years. Nope. Not feeling like a better person. Quite the contrary. Kinda feel the same, or like I’ve just been making compromises this whole time, which makes me feel like I’m settling.
It’s like love and passion and romancy, interrupted by jolts of erratic discomfort.
I don’t want to live in some fairytale, only to be electrified awake by some very real conflict.
The conflict is we are not compatible.
We can’t wish that away.
I am me, you are you.
So I can’t keep clinging to some unreality, some dream that is how it “could be” and just temporarily suspend the real conflicts that interfere with the life goals that are embedded into my character, which I really can’t change, because that’s who I am or who I want to be, or at the very least, who I need to be to survive. To get by. To cope. To flourish within the circumstances that are my life
I often wonder how I’ll feel different when she’s not around, if the discomfort will remain, and just materialize by some other cause I project it onto.
Or if it will intensify, because I’m alone, and don’t have this partner, and then I realize that these feelings are my own doing, and running from them only amplifies their power
Or if the discomfort will diminish, and fade…. and as I center myself, and expand responsibility for choosing my happiness, by choosing my influences and activities and relationships, the stress dissipates and the peace of being returns…. and I find myself free, open, optimistic, empowered…. and energized with an attitude to seize life, knowing the only person in my way is me.
And i wonder if the latter, if this will only make me more selfish and independent, and more incapable of cultivating a healthy compatible selfless relationship
Or if it will lead to the happiness most healthy relationship of my life. The relationship is taxing. On these weird levels that require emotional and cognitive resources to cope with, which I’m looking forward will return.
It’s a big reason I’d like to end things. To free up this tax. This weird burden I feel like I have to contend with to maintain the relationship. The feeling that I’m responsible for her happiness, her states of being.
