A LUCILIUS PARABLE: BLINDED BY SIGHT

February 24th, 2019

Lucilius sat in a crowded student center studying a textbook.  He turned to a diagram he was drawing and labeled cranial nerves and nuclei.  The center was bustling with students rushing in and out to eat between classes, everyone chatting, creating a kind of static humdrum that helped Lucilius concentrate.  He was highlighting the path of the Vegus nerve, switching markers to make connections to the heart and lungs when a comment popped out of the fray.

“So gross - lucky he’s blind.”

Lucilius looked up from his work and found a group of young men huddled around dirty plates near him.  They all chuckled at the comment while staring.  Lucilius followed their stares to find they were gawking at a couple.  The man had a folded white cane beside him as he sat close to a woman who was clearly the aim of their comments.  Lucilius was entranced by their interaction, the woman’s smile so bright, as though a person were smiling for the first time, the blind man’s fingers dancing along the back of her hand as he spoke like a kind of gesturing for his comments.

“Can you imagine?” one of the guys said, interrupting Lucilius’ thoughts “being stuck with that and not knowing it?”

“Hey pretty boys,” Lucilius piped up, cuing them as they looked over with a quick lift of his chin.  “You give any thought to how ugly your comments make you look?”

They stared blankly at Lucilius for a moment and then sneered, turning back to each other and laughing.  Lucilius watched them for a moment or two longer wondering what effort would actually make the difference he had sought, but he left the effort went back to his work.

A few minutes later he felt a strange silence in the fray of noise and looked over.  The boys had fallen silent as the blind man had walked up to their table.

“It’s interesting,” the blind man said, “Everyone always thinks I’m at a deficit because I can’t see, but in the same breath no one seems to remember what benefit there are in limits.  The disciplined man shapes his body by shaping and pushing limits of exercise and diet.  The disciplined mind does not easily distract by some passing trifle, flash nor advertisement.

            You’re right, actually:  I am lucky.  I can see so much more than you can, and I simply can’t imagine how terrible it must be to be blinded by vision in the way you are.”

Then the blind man turned to walk away and just as he passed Lucilius,

he winked.

SHOULD WE DRIVE

February 23rd, 2019

I should do this,

You should do that,

Everyone should be doing these things.

Such statements instantly split the immediate future into two different universes.  In one of these universes, we ignore these statements and go about our business as we were.

In the other universe, we are introducing a possible edit to our behavior.  This edit arises from some kind of ideal, some kind of narrative story.

For example, a religious individual might think or say something along the lines of “I should do this because I’m a good Christian.”

The narrative in this case is the belief system of Christianity, one aspect of which outlines a type of ideal behavior for people.

A common agnostic example might be someone saying “I should have a salad instead of this donut.”

The narrative in this case is a fluctuating knowledge of health and nutrition, one aspect of which outlines a type of ideal behavior for people who strive to be healthy.

The word should is the past tense of ‘shall’, which has a base meaning of ‘owe’ as in debt or obligation, which in turn comes from ‘formal promise’ and ‘bound by oath’.

Indeed this is exactly what we are trying to do when we use the word should.  We are trying to bind reality to an idealized conception of reality, so that they become one in the same.  We are, through ourselves and our efforts to change others, trying to evoke a better version of reality that we can see in our mind’s eye.

As long as this idealized version is in accord with the laws of physical reality, there is no reason to doubt that a full realization of such a narrative is possible.

Such a stipulation gives rise to an important caveat when it comes to the narratives we choose to follow or future narratives that we might design:

If such a narrative is at odds with the laws of physics, we will be met with frustration and endless disappointment.  This is the importance of the well-oiled Zoom.  We can be so focused on a detailed path of effort that we forget to Zoom out to the big picture to make sure our efforts honor the larger axioms of reality.

Our ability to take in reality, model it in our minds and reorganize it in novel ways is one of our most powerful assets as a species.  But like any sufficiently powerful tool, it can cause great good as well as great harm if used incorrectly.  Simply put, we can imagine versions of reality that are intrinsically unrealistic and our efforts to realize such an unrealistic reality results in a whole slew of painful ramifications.  We need only imagine someone trying to hold back the tide with a net.  The flaw is obvious to the average person, but if the flaw is not obvious, that pain of frustration points not to a problem with reality but with a problem in our model of reality. 

We see this pain of frustration everyday, on the news, on social networks, flashing across the faces of our fellow and friends, we can even see it within the fluctuations of our own emotions over the course of the day.  The pain of frustration is a point of contact between our ideal narrative and reality.  Friction arises between the two and it’s at this point that we must ask:

Is there something wrong with the story by which I’m trying to live by?

Is there potentially something wrong with the underlying premise of my story that does not honor what is possible in reality?

These are hard and difficult questions if honestly asked.  Often they are not even entertained and the basic, wide-spread assumption is that such pain of frustration is an opportunity to have grit, charge on and hopefully prevail.  Indeed a capacity to enable such drive is invaluable, but only if the driver can properly navigate the way.  If we take this allegorical image literally, we might ask, does the driver understand the limits of the current vehicle?  Can the driver react to the environment as it changes by moving through it?  If the driver suddenly discovers that the destination is in a completely different direction, are they mentally and emotionally equipped to make a 180 and forget the feeling of lost progress?  While such questions perhaps seem silly and the answers intuitive when we think about literally driving around, these questions have great potential to evince edges of discomfort when we apply them to our larger goals in life.

We might think of the Oil Executive who suddenly has a change of heart with regards to the science surrounding Climate change.  Such an experience is bound to be emotionally conflicting.  And while the local goals of acquiring wealth and status for the benefit of family drove such a person to great effect, we might now wonder if such an executive is capable of driving such a company in a completely new direction?  Such a radical shift is bound to be met with great opposition, and so the simple questions that we’ve applied to driving a car suddenly seem fraught with great difficulty and trepidation.

We might identify grit in two directions.  Having the grit to ignore science and just charge along towards profit.  Or having the grit to hear the opposition and the cries against change and lead anyways, despite the human push-back. 

Inevitably, the most important question regarding our personal narrative is not whether or not we should act in accordance to such a story at any given time.

The most important question comes before this step, we must ask: 

Which narrative should I subscribe to in the first place?

This episode references Episode 54: The Well-Oiled Zoom, and Episode 72: Persevere Vs. Pivot

TREADING WATER

February 22nd, 2019

To be ‘treading water’ is to be going nowhere, holding steady, not moving forward, but not sinking.  This describes a mere holding pattern, like a plane doing loops waiting for an open runway.  But anyone who has actually treaded water in a pool or in the ocean for any length of time knows how quickly we grow tired in such a state.  Treading water has to be temporary otherwise we burn out and sink.  Even planes eventually run out of fuel and some have even crashed while waiting in such a state.

How many people feel as though their life is merely treading water.  The day job barely covers expenses.  What comes in goes right back out in order to simply keep existing in society in the context we have among the people we know.   However, this kind of state is not one that is holding steady.  Such a situation, without some strategic plan to move forward and end the tread, is exhausting, wears a human psychology down and ultimately makes a person less likely to see a competitive edge when it comes floating along.

Robert Sapolsky has laid out how such a chronic kind of stress creates a vicious cycle, where such scarcity and poverty influence neurochemistry in a way that makes it increasingly unlikely for a person to make a better long term decision.  Or to put it another way: the greater poverty a person experiences, the more likely they are to make decisions that increase this poverty because the chronic experience of stress releases a cocktail of brain chemicals that fundamentally gears the brain towards a perspective of short term survival over long term thriving.  This creates a trend in decisions and lifestyle that begins to look very much like treading water to exhaustion. 

We might imagine someone out at sea who has been treading water for days and days and days in total fear and nearing absolute exhaustion.  Would such a person be able to swim over to a piece of driftwood if they saw it?  Perhaps, but the better question is: would such a person be more likely to make it to the piece of driftwood if they had just fallen off a ship, or if they’d been treading water for days on end?  The comparison is far more important than any specific outcome because the exhausted person is far less likely to muster greater effort and put it in a good direction. 

Treading water might seem like a relatively stable, static circumstance, but when time is compounded onto this process, it begins to look like a downward spiral.  One that leads to no where good.

In order to break such a bi-directional feedback loop, a kind of situational jiu jitsu move is needed.  Some clever angle or plan that begins to unravel the coils of this trap. 

Unfortunately, the likelihood of such a clever idea popping into someone’s head goes down and down the longer a person treads water.

It’s at this point we remember the old saying, no person is an island, or should be.  Such a sentiment is reminiscent of our greatest attribute as a species: cooperation, and we might wonder what – given these deep neurological processes – can we do to help out our fellow and friend?  What piece of driftwood or lifejacket can we send drifting their way?

We can go further and ask: how can we help all these exhausted people treading water to build their own boats and set sail towards a better future?

EARLY DAYS

February 21st, 2019

 Whether beginning a new habit or dismantling a long established  bad habit, the earliest days are the worst.

An unlikely concept is exceptionally useful in this case: compound interest.

Generally compound interest is relegated to the financial world and how money if well placed can grow like a wild weed.  Most middle school math programs will send home their pupils with the challenge to barter a new system of allowance with their parents.

One cent this month, and simply double each month.  Next month 2 cents, and after a whole year a parent has only dished out $40.95

Seems like a deal, but just after three years, the allowance has risen to over a billion dollars.

This kind of trend is not intuitive for the human mind.  There are few obvious examples of exponential trends in nature, at least not ones that we can notice on a timeline that makes the trend intuitive.

One day the milk looks fine, the next day it’s covered in a film of mold.  Bacteria culture grows at a similar rate.  But to us, the transition looks instantaneous.

This counter-intuitive trend can be both a benefit and a comfort when it comes to the formation of good habits and the shedding of bad habits.

The beginning of a compounding trend seems mind-numbingly slow.

As we saw with the smart child who breaks a compounding deal for allowance, only $40 is accrued in the first year of such a deal.  Doesn’t seem like such a deal, but if we extend the timescale to cover a whole decade, the shift from $40 a year to Billions of dollars a year seems like it appears overnight, like that mold we find on the milk.

Kicking a bad habit is painful for weeks, but once we’ve compounded enough time, the succeeding days ease up faster and faster.

So too with good habits.  That first month requires incredibly diligent attention, but after a few months, the habit of sitting down to meditate nearly makes itself happen.  Or the habit of hitting the gym, or sitting down to write.  Any of these good habits compound in terms of connections within the brain, and soon we have a habit that is robust beyond belief.  Indeed it has not simply compounded through time but in the physical structure of our brain.

The early days always hurt, but everything after gets easier and easier regardless of the whether we institute that good habit or eschew the bad.

Simply knowing the fact can be all the difference.  Early days do not last, but only if we keep at it and make those days the early ones in a long line of a new behavior.

FAKE FORTUNE

February 20th, 2019

The board game ‘Monopoly’ doesn’t work unless the players all begin with the implicit belief that the fake money has value within the context of the game.  This implicit belief remains through out the whole game for every player, no matter how poorly things go.

Monopoly money does not actually have any real recognizable value outside of the game.  And yet it’s remarkably similar to actual money.  “Real” Paper money may be adorned with a much greater array of markings that help validate and secure the authenticity of such money, but at base it is still a fairly worthless inanimate piece of paper, plastic, or rubber composite that we ascribe an imagined value to.

This imagined value ultimately allows us to take part in a wide game of cooperation.  It’s this context of cooperation that we’d do best to define wealth.

Those who are wealthy are those who others are more likely to cooperate with.  Exchange is nothing other than an instance of cooperation.  Any person who pays another for some service is invoking their cooperation in their plans.  The money by which they pay such a person is generally proof that other people have found such a person worthwhile in cooperation.

Due to the lack of optimization in our system of money, there of course many ways that the system can be gamed for advantage, and such methods are not always in line with the essence of cooperation, making the above definition of wealth seem a bit idealized.  Such machinations and loopholes are, however, always undertaken for the above reasons.  Regardless of how it is begotten, wealth simply ensures that others will cooperate with our designs, whether that is a plan to take people to the moon that all parties involved generally agree with, or the movement of orange juice from a refrigerator into a glass with vodka down the steps of the hotel to the beach where someone thirsty waits.  Both acts require some level of cooperation.

But instances of cooperation are essentially fleeting actions and therefore not easy to see or record in a way that is overt.  Hence luxury brands.  Such luxury goods are created for the sole purpose of communicating wealth.  These signals of luxury themselves are often the product of unnecessarily complicated or wasteful expressions of cooperation.  For example we can think of the difference between a mass produced sneaker that works just fine versus a handmade leather shoe which takes a single person many hours to produce.

Knock-off brands are created for the hoi poli to broadcast a signal that no one of greater wealth is actually better.  Which begins to smell a bit like the original point that money is an imagined value.  Knock-off brands are an indication of a greater imagined wealth. 

Indeed creating the image of greater wealth through fake means has long been a tactic for generating actual wealth. 

In Gone With the Wind Scarlet O’Hara makes a rich looking dress out of curtains in order to look wealthy for a beau who might actually give her money.  The charm of the story comes from the fact that Rhett constantly sees through her machinations and appreciates her anyway.

A similar phenomenon can be seen occurring on Instagram where people use their inherent beauty or other rented mechanisms in order to broadcast a lifestyle of wealth.  This is done in order to gain enough followers that can then be used to generate actual wealth.

Indeed Instagram itself is a service that has always been free which paradoxically made it’s creators extremely wealthy.

As John Steinbeck once noted, “A fake fortune [is] just as good as any and it is possible that all fortunes are a little fake.”

We might return to our game of monopoly and note an interesting way the game differs from our reality of money.  All players start out with an equal amount of money.

This is somewhat socialist idea.  People are not handed any money when they turn 18 and enter adulthood.  Well perhaps some are handed money, but the vast majority are not.

We can reimagine Monopoly to be a little more accurate.  Before the game is started, the starting pot of money might be divvied up into random amounts so that perhaps one person would get a hefty sum, others would get a little and others still would perhaps start with a debt.  Then a roll of the dice would determine which player is allocated which sum.

Imagine trying to play that form of Monopoly.  Starting with even just a little debt ensures that a person’s first roll onto the board is almost guaranteed to require more debt in order to continue.

How fun would that game be?

And yet this is more in line with how the population enters our game of “Real” money.  This may have it’s benefits.  And the drawbacks are perhaps clear with our reimagined game of Monopoly, but the underlying question has nothing to do with money real or imagined and everything to do with cooperation.

If money is the medium through which strangers cooperate, and if at the end of the day ‘Cooperation’ is truly humanity’s greatest superpower, we must wonder if our systems of money and price are well optimized for cooperation?