IMAGINATIVE MAINTENANCE

May 5th, 2020

Boredom is the imagination’s punishment for being ignored.  Of course, this humanizes the imagination, anthropomorphizes it, making it out to be like another person, one that has feelings and opinions about what we’ve done, or haven’t done.  And for the most part, this is a mistake.  As powerfully diverse and creative as the imagination is, it should be regarded less like some sort of entity or muse and more like a muscle.

A muscle has no opinion on what workouts you have or haven’t done.  It simply exists and responds according to what has happened previously and what is currently happening.  Just as boredom is the imagination’s punishment for being ignored, physical pain is the muscle’s response for being unused for so long.

Everything dies off if it is not fed in some way.  Muscles atrophy when not used, the imagination goes blank, hunger fades after enough fasting, good relationships crumble if not nurtured, fire snuffs out if given no fuel.

It’s a universal principle: Use it or lose it.

But perhaps even more important is the inverse implication of this principle:

Use it to boost it.

There is no middle ground where we assume things stay at rest.  Things either decay or improve.  Rocks slowly chip and weather.  Even the glass in windows slowly slumps downward over decades.  Change is the only constant.  And nothing highlights the state of an individual’s imagination more than a fat dollop of free time. 

With this quarantine, for example, many people are having such a hard time with all this free time because life has normally been packed with the busyness of a bullshit job that only ever requires a sliver of creativity and imagination.  And now, with the feeble constraints of a busy job gone, the true weakness of people’s imaginations becomes obvious, like an astronaut who cannot stand against the force of gravity after a long enough time in space.

On the other hand, for those who have by fortune or habit maintained a healthy exercise of their own imagination – these people are feasting on this opportunity of free time like never before.

Reminders that great things have been achieved during times of quarantine have circulated social media in recent months.   Newton created Calculus during the plague.  John Milton finished writing Paradise Lost during quarantine.  Shakespeare’s most productive years were likewise during an epidemic.  But the missing key for all of these anecdotes is the fact that these people were exercising their imaginations rather obsessively before the opportunity of such free time became available during times of the plague.  It’s easy to imagine the mental health of your run-of-the-mill laborer during such times declining while these people created some humanity’s greatest works.  In short, these creative people were prepared when the opportunity came along.

What harms one person is an opportunity to another.  But where is the real difference if it’s the same event that both people are experiencing?

The good thing is that we can only stand so much pain before we get fed up and do something about it.  What we do, of course, determines everything.  If we don’t placate boredom with mindless entertainment – if we sit with that boredom, it burns itself out.  The rusted gears of the imagination grow warm, and crackle back to life.  The mind, if left to it’s own devices for long enough begins to create.  Even those who have been mentally blindsided by this event have an opportunity, to once again, get their most powerful asset rolling again.

CHANGE MY MIND

May 4th, 2020

For a moment, think about what this sort of request entails: change my mind.  Imagine if we changed the request with a simple substitution that is often mentioned in conjunction with the mind.  Imagine if we were as casual with saying change my body.  The invasive and deeply profound implication of a phrase like change my mind suddenly starts to resonate in a way that doesn’t normally come across when we use this common phrase.

Change my mind asks someone else to do something at once magical and devastating.  To have a changed mind is to become a changed person.  This sort of transformation doesn’t even extend to alterations of the body, whether we speak of whimsical tattoos or a missing toe or some hair that has fallen out, these changes don’t really change who we are.  But a changed mind?  The way we think is everything, and if the way we think becomes altered, does it not mean that our whole life is now different?  That it’s not impossible to look at the world and reality in the way we did before?

To change a mind, whether it be one’s own or someone else’s is not just profound in its reverberations, it’s quite difficult. 

Changing the body isn’t terribly difficult.  We have much of the medical industry devoted to this practice, whether for health or aesthetics, and then of course there are tattoo artists, and pretty much everyone right down to the physical trainer and the absent minded woodworker - has quite a bit of ability when it comes to altering the body.  But the mind?

Nothing is more intimate than to have one’s mind changed.  Which perhaps lends some understanding to our rampant stubbornness, our squabbling, yelling, squawking, bickering, name-calling and biting speech.  On the one hand we resist having our own mind changed, and on the other we attack the obstinate walls in other people’s minds with as much vitriol as might exist in the crown of a nuclear missile.  The revelation on the one hand reveals the flaw on the other.  No amount of caustic treatment is going to dissolve the walls of the stubborn.  The tactic needs to be inverted. 

The way to change someone’s mind is to first be welcomed into that mind.  The process of being welcomed into another’s mind is the same as discovering it. 

See, we make the mistake of thinking someone’s mind is located in their head, behind their eyes.  The mistake is that we can somehow talk at it, in the direction to which it seems.  But this is a mistake, the head of a person is just the portal to their mind.  The location of the mind cannot be pinned down, it’s quality can only be revealed.  The only way for this to happen is to listen.  It’s the first step to changing someone’s mind, because it’s the only way to touch that elusive quality in each person.  It remains nowhere until it begins to make itself known to us in our own mind by what we hear, and what we see.

The second step is to want more, to ask questions, and by doing so we coax more of that person’s mind into our own as we build a working model of the structure we uncover.  We begin to build a map of a place we cannot visit, but to which only our words might echo and reverberate through.  And if such words and ideas are welcomed then they gain that precious opportunity to fuse and further mold that elusive place that somehow exists within each and every one of us.

To seek it out from another, perhaps when we want to learn, is to see some possible improvement that can be made to our mind and by extension to the physical shape of our brain.  The change might be tiny, some little stimulating weight change on a few neurons, perhaps some dendritic strengthening, but nonetheless a meaningful change.

How welcoming would you be to a stranger who wants to rearrange the furniture in your house?  Is it any surprise that the wild protestations of our culture mostly land on deaf ears?

A LUCILIUS PARABLE: WELL READ

May 3rd, 2020

Lucilius closed the back cover of the book he had been reading and smiled.  It was a good read. He stretched and yawned and looked around at the countless books, covering the walls, stacked up on tables, forming their own walls as stacks that wound around the tables.  He got up and went to the counter and ordered another coffee and little pastry.  He closed his eyes as he waited, listening to the grinder at it’s beans, the click clack of the espresso machine and the clink of the plate with his pastry on the marble counter. 

He took his treats back to his seat and looked at the books that were stacked on the table.  He realized he’d read the last of the bunch.  It was time to find some more.  He sipped the hot coffee and took a little bite of the pastry and then hauled himself up.  He tossed the stack of books on a sorting cart and then gleefully went about his perusal.  He held up a hand as he sauntered, a finger tracing against the spines, tapping their tops and tantalizing them with a chance of being read.

Countless stories riddled these pages.  Perhaps all the adventures of humanity, and then even more.  Perhaps all the stories of the universe could be found in these pages, he wondered.  His eyes scanned the titles, seeing all the ones he had already read, images and visions, lyrics and passages from each lighting up in his mind.  Such good living it was to live in these words.

He arrived at the last section he’d been mining and realized that he’d read the last book there.  The rest he’d come across at some time or another.  So he went in search of another shelf that he’d yet to explore.  But as he walked around, he recognized each and every title.

So he got the ladder and started looking up at the higher stacks.  But they too offered nothing new.  Lucilius looked around the vast space of books, like a cathedral.  It had been a while since he’d looked around at the gorgeous space, and he smiled again before turning back to his task.  He searched for hours, but all he could find were books that he’d already read.  He scratched his head and looked around again.  The place was endless, surely he couldn’t have read them all.

Then Lucilius wondered how long he’d been there.  He pondered a moment, and then realized he also couldn’t think of how he’d gotten there, nor where he might have been before.  So many images from novels and stories seemed to crowd his mind.  He had trouble trying to sift out what might be his life from all the lives he’d been immersed in. 

He grew nervous.  What he needed was a good book.  Another to get lost in.  He was just having an off day.  Perhaps he’d think a bit better after the coffee and pastry, he reasoned.  But before he went back to his snack, he needed a book to enjoy it proper.  So he kept searching, until finally down low in a corner, Lucilius spotted a spine he’d never seen before.  It was a small book and the spine was blank, which is how he knew he’d never read it.  He’d never seen a book with a blank spine.  He threaded it out from it’s neighbors and practically skipped back to his cozy seat.  His coffee was luckily still warm and it was delicious to wash the pastry down with the bitter heat.  He licked the flaking crumbs from his fingers as he chewed the last bit of pastry, and then after he’d hastily swept his hands clean with one another, he picked up the book to get started.

He opened it to find the title page blank.  He flipped another page, and it too was blank.  Perhaps it was an experimental novel?  He flipped through the rest of the book, but the whole thing was blank.  He turned it over, flipped through it again.  He’d never seen a blank book before.  He placed it down, wondering what to do.  Then he picked up the book and went back to the spot where he’d found it.  He recognized all the books it was surrounded by.  There was nothing else here to read.

Frustrated, Lucilius shoved the book back into it’s spot, and as he stood he realized that it was still sticking out a few inches.  He frowned, and kicked into place, as he turned to leave.  But he heard a crack.  He looked back, hunkered down and gently pushed the book.  He heard the grating sound of fractured glass upon itself.  He removed the book and a thin beam of light spilled out on his hand.  He turned it over, watching the foot of the beam trace over the contours of his hand.  He slipped the blank book into his back pocket and got down even lower to look.  He squinted at the bright light.  He couldn’t make out anything.

He began taking out books and as he did he began to see himself doing so.  Behind the books was a mirror, and light was shinning through a small crack he’d made.  It ran upwards so he began pulling out books on the next shelf and the next, until he was removing the shelves themselves, and soon stood in a mangled pile of books, looking at himself.  He didn’t recognize the person in the mirror.  It seemed like someone new, but then, he also realized he had no idea what he looked like. 

The crack from the blank book ran up all the way through his image.  He reached out to touch the crack that split the sight of his face.  He could feel the crisp edge.  He began to push and another crack sprung out in a wild direction.  And then another, and another, until they began to glow, the whole of it like lightening, slowly growing to find it’s strike.

Then the whole thing shattered and Lucilius turned to shield himself from the blinding light.  Slowly he looked back, waiting for his eyes to adjust.  He stepped forward, still unsure of what lay ahead, unable to see for all the light that now filled the way.  Lucilius tried to shield his eyes, waiting for them to adjust, but it was no use.  He took another step into the light, and then another and another, with the blank book still in his back pocket.

HATEFUL VICTIM

May 2nd, 2020

What is the connection between harm and hate?  If we are harmed, are we obligated to hate the source of that harm?  More importantly, if we fail to hate the source of harm, is it still harm?

Consider it in even simpler terms.  If hate were  impossible, if it simply was not an option, how would harm be interpreted?

How much of a connection is there between the concept of a ‘victim’ and the way we interpret harm and feel towards the source of that harm? 

Is victimhood the only interpretation of harm?  Perhaps not all harm.  But then is it possible to for all harms to be understood without the concept of being a victim?

The stoics and the Buddhists would certainly say so.  The literature of such traditions is replete with instructions and examples for interpreting what happens in the best possible way, or at least in such a way that one is never without a say in the final effect of any harm or circumstance.

It’s interesting to note the etymology of the word victim.  It comes from the Latin victima, and it denotes a creature killed as a religious sacrifice.

Oh how the word has drifted in meaning.  Or perhaps it hasn’t.  Perhaps people who identify as victims do so in relation to some larger meaning or structure, a bit like a martyr would.  Other traditions are certainly filled with vainglorious stories of people who self-sacrificed, and in many cases this was a literal sacrifice.

We must ask: do such stories, either inherited or the one’s we tell ourselves, really serve us well by casting us in such a role?

TASTE

May 1st, 2020

What does it mean to have good taste?  Is this just a matter of style and preference or is there something deeper going on?  And why does this quality of taste expand beyond the realms of what we eat and drink?

Thinking about taste in it’s most basic primordial sense, taste was what allowed us to know if something was good and healthy to eat.  If something doesn’t taste good, if it’s rotten, chances are high that we’ll get sick, and in pre modern times, that could be disastrous.

Having good taste in clothes doesn’t seem to have such a visceral and obvious connection to health.  Or does it?

When the concept of taste is applied to realms outside of the kitchen, good and bad taste don’t necessarily mean you’ll get sick if you’ve got the wrong idea, but it does have an impact on your life.

This is easy to break down in our current climate of productivity, self-improvement and success.  Good taste in many areas lends to credibility in the eyes of others which in turn helps create a healthy image of who we are.  Beyond this, there’s an even deeper implication about the actual items that compose good taste.  Not only do they signal to other people that you have a mind that is healthy, aware, and can quickly solve for the problem of style, but many things that are purported to be in good taste often advance us on a personal level.  An exceptional drama that delves expertly into the human psyche becomes like a healthy exercise for someone to experience when compared to watching a soap opera which is perhaps not in strong accord with the way people actually function and the way we really experience one another.

This sense of good taste and style extends to all areas, giving social clues as to how our mind works.  In realms where our physical health isn’t directly affected, taste becomes a way of identifying people of a like group, and naturally those who have bad taste think those with good taste actually have bad taste.  We all have good taste, but in the long run these preferences don’t just decorate our lives, they shape our lives, for better or for worse. 

It’s easy to dismiss taste and style as something superfluous, but it’s worth remembering that the concept derives from a very basic filter that we have used to help get us to where we are as a species.  Every little choice that we make that is in good taste or bad ultimately comes back to us in some form or another, however minute or unnoticed.