A LUCILIUS PARABLE: DRIFTWOOD & TALLOW

February 9th, 2020

When Lucilius was young he took work aboard a ship.  It was a grunt position, being the ships’ boy, and being the youngest he was tasked with every manner of tedium and grime, leaving him little chance to learn the true ways of the ship, gazing up every day at the taut sails, seeing the men haul their lines and mend their ways.

One evening, exhausted, he sat with the cook in the galley, his only kind shipmate at the time, and watched the cook go about his business of food.  The ship had already had it’s fill and most were grogged down for the night, and Lucilius, eating last, savored the food only by being too tired to rush it into his ravenous body.

The cook removed the lid from a pot and with a ladle, skimmed off some tallow.  The cook blew on it and tasted it, smiling and then extended the spoon to Lucilius who sipped off the rest.  The hot fat was delicious to the two.

“Good stuff,” the cook grumbled through his crooked smile.  And then, “Well,” he said, looking at the boy Lucilius, feeling the nudge for a lick of conversation.

“When ya gonna be more than just boy?”

Lucilius looked at the ancient man.  He shrugged his shoulders.  “I just do what they tell me,” he said.

The old cook gave him a dissatisfied look.  He turned back to his pot and skimmed off a little more tallow, lifting it and then poured it back in slowly.

“Know why tallow floats to the top?”

The boy Lucilius shook his head. 

“Cause it’s so good. Yeh, ye need water like what’s b’low, but a man’ll go far longer on tallow then’e will on just water.”

The old cook looked seriously at Lucilius.  “I seen it ma’self.  Man’ll just shrivel up.  Don’ matter how much water he got.  But tallow does far more for ya.  S’why it rises for us.”

The boy Lucilius struggled, listening to the old cook, trying to understand what he was saying about the hot fat.

“Be like tallow boy, an y’ll rise.”

For the next week, Lucilius pondered the cook’s words as he went about his work, and one evening after stand-down, Lucilius was tasked by the bo’sun to recoil lines along the rails.  He was left alone as the crew went about their frivolity down below.  He’d yet to deal with lines and no one had taken the time to show him, nor had he paid much attention when the older sailors had been at the work.

He unhitched the coil and let it fall to the deck, and then he began to unhitch the line from it’s cleat, unaware of how much weight it was holding.  He came to the last turn and the line began to pull, and it sucked Lucilius straight into the rail, pinning him as he winced in pain at a trapped hand, keeping the line from feeding more, but totally unable to move.  He gasped heavily for breath, looking skyward, trying to figure what heavy piece in the rigging might fall because of him.

Then with a quickness that Lucilius could not fathom, a strong hand threaded round and clapped hold of the loose line behind his hand, and another holding high above teased the angle, till Lucilius’ hand was free.  He fell back to the deck gasping.  

The captain stood tall above him, and with dizzying speed, the man had the line held fast again.  Then he turned to Lucilius with a flat smile.  He grabbed Lucilius’ pained hand and examined it.  Then looked Lucilius in the eyes.

“Let me show you.”  And with that the captain lead him through the maneuvers of the line held fast, explaining how and why it was cleated.  What is was connected to, and then he coiled the tailing line, perfectly, and hitched it, then stayed with Lucilius as he went through the same maneuvers, and made him do it over and over until the boy Lucilius had it right.

“Good,” the captain said, and then he turned to leave.

“Thank you Captain.” Lucilius was barely able to say.

The captain stopped, turned and looked at him.  The captain motioned with a gesture to the whole ship.

“All this,” he said, shaking his head,  “without us, it’s just fancy driftwood.”

The next morning Lucilius arose before all others who were not on watch and he went to the galley to prep the cook’s work.  Then he went to the forepeak, and helped organize the bo’sun’s keep, and he started on the crew’s chores early, polishing the ships metals before getting to his own work, and he kept at the extra work, day after day, rising early and turning in late.

SUPER SOAKER

February 8th, 2020

The speed of progress while working on a project is surprisingly and perhaps even depressingly variable.  Hours can dawdle by with a mere pittance of work done, but see the clock, realize there’s only twenty minutes left and suddenly things get kicked into a gear nearing warp speed.

The day or two before a vacation are always incredibly productive compared to any old normal Thursday or Friday on the calendar.

There seems to be a sort of pressure that we can apply to our ability to get work done.  As time falls away and looming obligations suddenly stand poised to topple upon our present moment, we hustle.  But when time is but a rolling grassland of open opportunity, we dilly dally.

Walking away from a particularly hectic and productive bout of work, it’s frustrating to wonder why that kind of productivity can’t always be called up.

Perhaps it can?  But how?

How do we build some sort of time pressure for our work?  We try to covet those large swathes of time in order to really go deep on the project, but it backfires as we relax in stead of settling in.

Is it possible to chunk that large swath of time in order to apply pressure in small sprints?  Like pumping a super soaker, creating a pressure to move forward?

It certainly is.

When Tinkered Thinking started there was a twenty minute allowance of time for each episode.  This was simply to ensure that something would get on the page, but more than that it also ensured that something somewhat cohesive was left on the page when finished.

Repeating a timer of 20 or 30 minutes can be surprisingly effective.  The alarm goes off and we realize we’ve gone down a rabbit hole with little promise of accomplishing anything.  Instead of spending an hour or two down such a path, the alarm jolts us from the reverie of exploration.  We can pivot far more easily and charge the pressure again, and with a different target, fire.

RIVALNYM CASE STUDY: INFLUENTIAL MANIPULATION

February 7th, 2020

If you are unfamiliar with the concept of a Rivalnym, it is something developed by Tinkered Thinking to address a certain class of words and concepts that fall in a strange place between Synonyms and Antonyms.  A rivalnym is a word, or rather, a pair of words that are somewhat synonymous in literal meaning, but opposite in terms of the emotional valence we ascribe to the thing being described.

A pair of words that makes a good example is Nervous and Excited

One is generally positive, that is, excited, and nervous is generally more negatively valence, and yet, what registers our excitement?  Our nerves.  And when we are nervous, is it not because our nerves are in an excited state?

Another pair of words that form an exceptional Rivalnym pair are: Influence and Manipulation.

Both words can be defined as an instance of having an impact on the way another person thinks, feels and behaves.

Influence is generally regarded as positive or neutral, as in that friend is a good influence or a bad influence.

But the word manipulative is wholly negative.  The idea of positive manipulation simply doesn’t spin well in the mind of the English speaker.

And yet it describes much the same thing as influence.  To manipulate someone is to have an impact on that person in a specific and targeted way.  The difference is that such manipulation is taken up for selfish gain on the part of the manipulator, whereas someone looking to have an influence is more likely to be doing this for altruistic aims.  Or rather, the manipulator is playing a zero-sum game where they win, and the influencer is looking to play a non-zero-sum game where everyone wins simply by playing.

It’s of further fascination that the word influence has given rise to the somewhat new word influencer, as in someone with a lot of pull, usually through social media platforms. 

The territory with influencer gets sticky, because it becomes harder to figure out what sort of game these people are playing.  Is it just a means to gain?  Or is there a form of the non-zero-sum game that can be played?

The answer to this question has perhaps yet to be realized, but there are certainly those out in the social spheres that would be more aptly labeled as manipulators as opposed to the more magnanimously sounding influencers.

But time will tell.

MEASURING QUESTIONS

February 6th, 2020

We are taught to think that all questions are good, but questions are never equally effective.

We’re told there are no bad questions.  This fosters the curious spirit by encouraging the inquisitive mind.

And this is a strategy that is great for children and beginners.  We all respond well to encouragement.  But after beginning, there comes a point when improvement depends on a critical analysis of our own performance.  This is almost banal in most areas.  Athletes track metrics of performance in order to see where things can improve by also figuring out where things aren’t going well.

The business world is replete with this kind of talk about optimization and efficiency.

But the most basic, core task in order to carry out these kinds of processes towards improvement has been left undisturbed and unimproved in it’s beginner’s state.  That task is the Art of Questions.

We can still maintain that no question is a bad question while making progress with this subtle art.

A question’s first and most important metric is easy to measure, and it’s best evoked by another question.  One that sharpens our view of the first.

Does our question inspire the action to explore?

If our question merely keeps us ‘deep in thought’, then the answer is ‘no’.  And this is an important sign that it’s time to explore better questions.

If a question doesn’t propel you into the role of an explorer, either in the form of a researcher or someone who experiments with reality in order to get an answer from the source, then the question either fails on an emotional level or a practical one.

There might be enough emotion evoked by the question to keep our mind’s spinning for days and weeks, but this implies that it’s not practical enough because it’s somehow too vague which leaves us without a legitimate path in reality to explore a potential answer.

In the case of a question that is too large, it can benefit from chunking.  Meaning, ask another question that addresses a small aspect of the first in a way that can actually be answered, and by this process slowly build an answer. 

Otherwise, we can always begin again and ask an entirely new question.

THE NEW WILDERNESS

February 5th, 2020

We come equipped with bodies that are better adapted to prehistoric times.  We are generally good runners.  Though we aren’t fast, we can outlast almost any creature on the planet that is bound by legs and gravity to the ground.  We have hands with a dexterousness that puts all other all other combination of limbs that Mother Nature has assembled to complete shame.  Iphones and Swiss watches aside, we were able to fashion spears and hunt creatures that outweighed us by the tons.

While our minds are totally lacking in the knowledge of that old wilderness, we are still physically primed to travel the distance of the nomad and risk our life in the pursuit of the hunt.

It’s fun to imagine:  leaving the tribe with a small group of hunters who are your brothers, cousins and second cousins.  Together the band of you try to learn, outsmart and take down an enormous beast that you know will feed the tribe for months to come.  It’s incredibly dangerous and maybe you lose a family member in the process, but the reward is immeasurable, not just in terms of the feasting and what that means for survival, but imagine the gratitude and adoration of the rest of the tribe.  In this wilderness, the ability to feel life down to the marrow by risking it with literal skin in the game and as a result feel incredibly valuable – all of this was a complete straightforward package.  And of course for those who did not go on the hunt there were other things of vital importance that functioned in much the same way.

But what about today?  Where the modern world has fenced us into a cement and asphalt jungle of incredible predictability.  Where does the modern person extract their sense of worth?  Where does this person play with skin in the game?  How does this person come across that vital experience of putting it all on the line in order to flourish tomorrow?

The New Wilderness is an invisible one.  It is not straightforward, and it’s for this reason that so many spiral into poverty and from there further down as we see with the opiate crisis. Depression, anxiety, and an entire lexicon of neurological disorders have sprung into existence in an attempt to explain the total dearth of life well lived.

So where is this New Wilderness that can be mined for risk, a sense of adventure, and glory?

Whereas in days long bygone, our body was a reaction to that wilderness, today’s world is a result of our own minds. 

The New Wilderness is the same place where all these modern comforts came from.  It is the chaotic and uncertain world of the imagination.

Think about it.

The heroes of today are those who dared to think different and try out ideas that other people thought were crazy.  The heroes of today face the fear of uncertainty and abandon the predictable humdrum of our everyday 9-5 life and venture off with chance in search of fortune.

These people start companies with innovative visions for the future, and just about always, these people are underdogs trying to rise up against the tide of entrenched habit among their common people.  And when they succeed and return from the world of imagination and strenuously haul their beast of an idea into reality where we can benefit from it, these people are rewarded handsomely.

In today’s age it’s almost impossible to create something useful and not get rewarded for it, just as the hunter who brought back the kill to sustain the tribe would be rewarded.

The New Wilderness is the place of the mind, one of uncertainty and creativity - those twin forces that pull taught the tightrope of chance, with treasure, glory and satisfaction waiting for us on the other side.