Monday, October 28, 2024

The Banality of Two Prominent Miracles

Tickertape

I've previously noted that most people's moment-to-moment mental tickertape is a chaotic miasma of regret, anxiety, disappointment, fallacy, fantasy, delusion, worry, projection, preference curation, and, above all, obsession.

We obsess by endlessly rerunning mental set pieces. We reargue old arguments, project faceless attackers or detractors, relive bygone humiliations, and endlessly suck outrage from various handy mental lozenges, e.g. the awful thing your fourth grade teacher said. It's not all downers, however. We also gloat over grandiose fantasies - and fantasized memories - of our epic journey and manifold triumphs.

If you sit in the window of an urban Starbucks and watch the faces of passersby, 99% appear utterly lost in demented noise irrelevant to their here-and-now.

Sanity is a relative term in the human realm.

Why Most People Do Nothing

I once noted that most people do nothing.
If they sign on, they won't show. If they pledge money, they won't pay. If you hire them, they'll sit in their cubicle and sip coffee. You know how most soldiers never actually shoot at people? How as few as 30% perform all the kills? I've decided that this isn't a saving grace of humanistic morality. It's just another example of how most people do nothing.

I'm not saying they're lazy. I'm not saying they're liars or deadbeats. Just that they do nothing. Most people do nothing.
The reason is that people are busy with their big internal project. The exceptions - the people who do things - are mostly lashing out from this dreamworld; externalizing the rage and desperation burping up from the noise. This can be productive, for example when artists sublimate their angst into their work. But usually it's just raw burps prompting us to start wars, evict tenants, and grind away to afford bigger houses and newer cars; to live a dream that never quite arrives, even when it arrives.

Escape Velocity

But some of us manage to slash a momentary narrow passage through the dense psychic underbrush to produce something transcendent. "It's talent!" you'd conclude. And, yes, it is. But flip your notion of talent. What if everyone's gifted, but few discover or channel the gift?

If that's true, then what, exactly, inhibits them? The answer is obvious: spending their lives distracted and enervated by regrets, anxieties, disappointments, fallacies, fantasies, delusions, worries, projections, and lozenge obsession.

One can always opt out of all that. If you take a break from the big performance and come back to your senses, things clarify and hidden talents express themselves, like magic. You (re)discover the ease, creativity, and wisdom that's been yours all along. We all experience peak moments, and this is what they are.

Tantalizing Awareness

None of this is a particularly tough proposition to swallow. We know that we sometimes get in our own way. We perceive a certain headwind, and recognize that it can be self-generated. It's enormously hopeful that the term "rich people problems" makes Americans smile sheepishly and nod in acknowledgement. We know!!

The Unimaginable Scale

But here's what we miss: the self-generated headwind of indulgently contrived mental drama is not mild. It's more like a 900mph desert siroco, though we're well accustomed to it. When we briefly step out of the storm (which is whipped up by bored comfortable modern people as part of their intense devotion to self-storytelling), we fathom its mind-boggling intensity. Relief from the sandy blast is like entering heaven. It's an entirely different level of existence, though we are inevitably drawn back into the storm, being bored and comfortable and irresistibly attracted to self-storytelling.

We vastly underestimate the tonnage of attention we've been devoting to bullshit and drama. So when we cease and desist for a moment, freeing up attention for more productive use, we find ourselves able to work miracles.
I have a different notion of miracles than most people. To me, they're subtle, and often missed or undervalued. When someone creates a whole that's greater than the sum of its parts, that's a miracle. The Arepa Lady's corn cakes, which can change the tenor of your day, are miraculous. We are surrounded by a plethora of miracles, but normally remain too distracted tracking our epic journey and straining for more of this and less of that to register or value them. Hell, we hardly even notice all the sensationally beautiful trees!
Great achievement and accomplishment are not gifts reserved for special geniuses. They're not video game power-ups. The potential has been there all along for each of us, but forgotten in our frothy, ambitious fervor to dramatize ourselves. Stop frothing, and there it all is, right before your eyes. And it's enormous.

Kundalini

I never write about kundalini (an enormous energy rush experienced by fervently earnest spiritual seekers when they really really "let go"...or sometimes by normal people who spontaneously fall into letting go while buttering their toast and never know what hit them). It's not worth discussing the particulars because few know or care about it, and those who do are kooky.

Don't go to Wikipedia for more information. Don't Google. Literally 100% of what you'll find is nonsense. This is because two kinds of people discuss Kundalini: 1. People who've never experienced it, yet still consider themselves experts (thousands of kundalini teachers will cheerfully accept your money without the slightest notion of what they're teaching, apart from dogma they've swallowed from teachers up the ladder), and 2. Kundalini newbies, who are invariably unhinged from the extremely disorienting experience.

A handful of us view the topic from a long vantage point, having spent decades integrating and normalizing kundalini energy. Most never reach this point, because it often takes a lifetime to kindle the first spark. But veterans tend not to mention kundalini, because 99.9% have either never heard of it (or are happily filled with nonsense about it), and .1% are whacked out on the most potent of natural highs, having lost all perspective and reason. So why bring it up?

But I combine two unusual qualities: I write for essentially no one, anyway, and I have indeed spent decades integrating and normalizing kundalini. So in this overlooked corner of the internet, I'll explain it in a level-headed way which apparently no one has previously thought of, and perhaps someone will eventually stumble in from a web search and appreciate the perspective.

It's the same explanation as above. You need to flip assumptions.

Shifting attention momentarily away from bullshit appears to ignite super powers, but it really works the other way - the bullshit concealed what was always there. This explanation covers the Attention end of things, but we don't just pay (obsessive) attention to bullshit, we also invest our energy in it. Oh, boy, do we invest!

If you pause frantically shoveling coal into your psychic oven (metaphorically speaking), your energy frees up. Loads of it. It's not mild. It's shocking. And it's enormous.

We are so accustomed to lavishing attention and energy into meaningless mental fluff that, when we pause, miracles appear to happen. Kundalini is the energy end of it, and the staunchest atheist would describe its rush as heaven-sent.

But here's the long view, unavailable elsewhere to my knowledege: Yes, it feels like all the power in the universe. But that's only because you have, for years and years, been frittering away all the power in the universe to build and maintain a huge interior realm in your head. And this effort was orders of magnitude more ambitious than you realized.

For example, everything you conceptualize about the planet Neptune is in you. Is there a "real" Neptune "out there", too? Let's say, for simplicity, that there is. But you certainly maintain and model an inner Neptune. And a Toledo. And a Roman Empire. And an Andromeda Galaxy. Pile on top of all that emotionally fraught tales of struggle, victimhood, triumph, plus the myriad details of your Persona - and keep all those plates diligently spinning - and you've created a monster. A universe. A monster of a universe!

Imagination is a light caprice when one envisions sentient cats operating a bagel shop. Such whimmy stuff is less substantial than a soap bubble. But the aggregated result of many years of obsessive, immersive, focused imagining is another thing entirely. It's a structure, however immaterial, and we never quite parse its vastness, because, being so close to it, it feels like humdrum normalcy. Fishes don't realize they're swimming, and humans don't know they're building and powering immense internal structures. Each of us is like Atlas, needlessly imagining a need to hold up the entire world.

Until, that is, we let go. Whereupon energy previously sunk into The Project suddenly becomes available. Un-channeled, it sprays wildly. The initial impression is one of potent glory, but it quickly becomes overwhelming, and there are burn-out issues. Eventually, with much patience and forbearance, this energy reintegrates and normalizes. It's a whole thing.

Like the genius spurring great accomplishment, the energy is like ruby slippers. It was always with you...but forgotten. You were distracted by a realm of stories and drama and epic derring do. That's where your attention and energy went, and, upon opting out, Allah, Jesus and Buddha seem to welcome you to a cosmic party.

But no. Calm down. This is your normal default energy level, previously channeled into obsession. It's impossible to anticipate the massive scale and intensity of that energy, though you can get some small idea by sitting in that Starbucks window, watching passersby whose attention and energy - lots of both - are noticeably trapped in an expansive universe contained in their heads.

Oh, Henry!

So: miraculous outcomes aren’t divine gifts. They're always available, but we lose sight amid mental machinations. So we imagine ourselves incapable...then conjure extra juicy drama by lamenting our incapability.

Once you realize it was all self-inflicted - that curating and inhabiting a strangling miasma of heightened drama was your idea - staggeringly vast resources of energy and attention are freed up. But it would be silly to triumph in that moment, despite all the power-ups - i.e. the freed-up brilliance and energy. There's little glory in being slightly less fervidly idiotic for a goddamn minute.

But here's the bombshell: Even seemingly futile dramaturgy builds and manages realms of fabulous ambition. It's all dazzling creation. If we're not crafting spaceships and symphonies "out there", we're building towers of brooding discontent "in here". Either way, the miracles never cease.

In the broadest view, the same indefatigable creative spirit produces a diversity of impressive results, including ones other people never see and which bring the builder pain and anguish (is it so strange to suffer for one's art?). So really, your departure from the maelstrom was mere caprice. Just another framing choice among multitudes, none of greater or lesser value. 





Sunday, October 27, 2024

A Fresh Explanation of the Social Awkwardness of Smart People

Most people would shrug and say, hey, nerds are skewed. Non-neuro-typical or whatever. That's why they seem weird.

But no; plenty of neuro-normal people are both smart and socially awkward. It's this: smart people receive a nonstop series of disapproving stares, and this gives them flop sweat whenever they try to talk to someone new. They know it's only a matter of time before they get the stare. Anxiety is high..

Why are they stared at disapprovingly? It's not because they're smart. It's not that they use big fancy words. Knowers of big fancy words rarely feel compelled to use them (that's something pompous people do, not smart people). And it's not because they want to talk about, like, Kepler. Intelligent people quickly learn not to mention Kepler in normal conversation.

The problem is that they don't say the usual things the usual ways, and this disturbs people who have collapsed into communicating via stock dialogs, where each party mumbles the expected line.

The current level of conversation is shockingly low, and sinking rapidly. Smart people can't keep up with this descent, at least not convincingly. It's not that they wish to elevate conversations with big words and Kepler talk. It's just that they have a devil of a time speaking canned lines. And if you don't do that, you're the odd kid at the playground, so you get punched in the face a lot, so speaking to someone new means flinching at the impending punch in the face.

That's what this is. It's not some egghead thing. It's not about being too smart for the crowd. Most can easily dial down to normal smalltalk, but not the utterly mind-dead grunting most of us currently expect. In the 1950s, regular people spoke brightly, in full declarative sentences, and listened to the response. Smart people fit in fine back then, and had much less social anxiety. But they can't gain fluency in the language of snarky thoughtless bullshit, which gets them punched in the face a lot, which makes them nervous trying to talk to you.

My Quora answer on "How to tell if someone is intelligent?"

Friday, October 25, 2024

Rare Immigrant Cuisine Crossover Point

When it comes to singular outposts for rare immigrant cuisines, there's a crossover point between "naive nice try" and "feckless grudging implementation."

Nearly all ramen in Lisbon is cooked by Nepalis, the Ecuadorians of Lisbon. And most of it is below this crossover point, somewhere between bad and naive not-so-nice tries.

But while even the best Nepali ramen shops are completely devoid of Japanese flavor vibe, they can be delicious in their inauthenticity. That's the level of "naive nice try".

At Macau Dim Sum, despite the Nepali waiters, I got the impression (right or perhaps wrong) that it's Chinese-owned. And I beamed widely when plates arrived, and things looked more or less right, if not stellar.

Nothing's quite good (and the sticky rice in lotus leaf "tamales" were repulsive - freezer burnt and dry - because who in Portugal would ever order them, and what was I thinking when I did??). But goddamn if I didn't nonetheless appreciate this feckless grudging implementation after a multi-year dim sum drought.

Normally, I'll prefer the deliciousness of a naive nice try to the mediocrity of feckless grudging implementation. A delicious fake beats crappy authenticity. But desperation drives a good hound mad. Note: the radish cake didn't come like that; I'd ripped into it ferociously before remembering to take the shot.

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Autocracy Fallback Insurance

I know you're besieged by political propaganda and donation requests. Sorry. I've now done this precisely once in 16 years.

Floridian Jim Brenner is 50-50 with his opponent for a congressional seat, one of three potential flips to break the GOP's supermajority hold. Andrew Tobias, a smart good guy who knows everything about political funding, says that, even with so little time to go, donation would seriously help this very key contest (he explains how here).

Even if you're a conservative, you should see the necessity of breaking the supermajority - i.e. the rubber stamp for DJT. It's our best fallback insurance. I just donated an order of magnitude higher than my normal. Please join me via this link.

Thursday, October 24, 2024

Reviewing the Flips

To review:
Tough guys are cowardly
Patriots love tyrants
Flamboyant victims are coddled aristocrats
Homophobes are gay
Anti-racists are racist
Control freaks are incompetent
Bullies are terrified
Machos are sexually insecure
Smiley people are vindictive
The pompous/arrogant are dimwitted
The artsy are uncreative

Selfish people feel overly generous
Generous people feel overly selfish
You can be smart or you can feel smart, but never both

Secure heterosexuals don’t try to act flamboyantly heterosexual
Secure non-racists don’t try to act flamboyantly anti-racist
Genuine people don’t flamboyantly project genuineness
Honest people don’t flamboyantly project honesty
Kind people dont flamboyantly project kindness
Smart people don’t flamboyantly project intelligence
Great singers became singers because they wanted to sing, not because they wanted to be singers


...and a non-poseur’s bright equanimity is built atop reframed melancholy

Wednesday, October 23, 2024

Failure Seeks Redemption

With my health issues (presently daunting but not incapacitating) and general confusion (my well-trained instinct amid confusion is to reeeeelaaaaax, which is nice but doesn't leave me super productive), I couldn't figure out how to get an absentee ballot in time for the election. And it's too late. So I won't vote.

My shame goes deep. I am in no way unaware of the epochal significance of this lapse.

I need to take this one. It's not a fluke I can shrug off. This goes on my permanent record. This is a pitcher giving up a grand-slam home run in the playoffs. This is a dad failing to safeguard his kid. This is a chef serving bad chicken, giving customers diarreah. This happened. Not some "mistakes happen" aberration. This solidly happened.

Fortunately, I have an immutable conviction that every moment starts fresh. The scroll of my lifelong narrative is no burdensome weight (nor an enriched delight). It all rides on Now. The current moment is the only medium in which I can express my agency. So, remaining focused in the eternal Now, I strive still, with steadfast determination stoking creativity, as you'll now witness.

If my confession influences you to try just a bit harder to get out and vote - or to convince others to do so - it would redeem my failure. What a massive favor you'd be doing me. And I don't pretend to imagine I deserve it. And I apologize for pressing you to work harder on my account. But I do request it.

Tuesday, October 22, 2024

Shilling is Now a Criminal Offense

Having spent eight years engaged in titanic struggle against shilling shitheads degrading my labor-of-love effort to guide fellow food lovers to deliciousness (and to support the unsung geniuses who provide it), this gave me the most intense orgasm of my life:

Saturday, October 19, 2024

The Creative Caveman

I redid last week's posting on Jealousy. When I posted it, it seemed clearly written. But after setting it aside for a day, I realized it was a jumbled mess.

I offer fresh connections, explanations, perspectives, and insights here, at least on good days. Credible ones, too...usually. Perhaps not always air-tight or fully-baked, but that would be asking too much. I imagine that fresh credible ideas are interesting and worth consideration, if I make it a good read. That part is essential. If it turns out blurry (a writer can't always tell!), that's a problem, even if the ideas are strong. Here's why:

We're not built to swallow fresh ideas and perspectives. Our tribal, conformist minds struggle to ingest that sort of thing. A caveman or two in each tribe was gifted with the slippery ribbon of human creativity, but evolutionary adaptation ensured that the others would resist endless efforts to reinvent and reframe sloth hunting and tool-making.

The gang might have appreciated a couple of Herbie's early hits - e.g. his clever trick for rain-catching - but inevitably would come to ignore his exhilarated flow of preposterous, annoying eurekas. They were, after all, busy, with sloths to hunt and tools to make.

Novel thinking is an irritant (because it doesn't swallow easily; we need to apply limited assets of effort and concentration) and a distraction (who has time to entertain this crap?). We're built to favor familiar thinking so we can get on with it. At most, we might consider a fresh rewording of some familiar message.

Fortunately, truly fresh ideas, explanations, and connections are exceptionally rare. How often do we encounter such things? Step back a light year or two and you'll notice there's little new under the sun. Just incremental retreads, with, at most, an enticing new angle on the familiar.

It bores me terribly. So I use my writing skills, honed from decades spent coaxing bologna sandwich eaters to venture out for Cubanos, to make the swallowing part easier; to make my exhilarated eureka flow (EEF) worth the effort and concentration of entertaining such crap. I strive to be a more entertaining Herbie.

But when it fails, yikes.

Friday, October 18, 2024

Fake Tough Guys

From today's Bulwark article "All the Ex-President’s Cowering Men":
“They would risk nothing by speaking publicly about the threat of Trump. They would risk nothing by urging a vote for Harris. Sarah and Cassidy and Alyssa run those risks. Yet they are doing what they can. Mattis and Kelly and Romney and Bush are not.”
Forgive me for losing my composure: Those sanctimoniously patriotic "don't tread on me" anti-authoritarian Constitution-humping tough guy motherfuckers all turned cowardly in the face of genuine threat (yeah, Romney did a few things, but Romney always does "a few things"). You can forgive them or not, your choice, but please don't waste the moment by ignoring the lesson they unintentionally teach us.

My father would wax on and on about what a thoughtful and careful head-of-household he was. He told me how, when he bought our family home, he'd checked topographical data to ensure we didn't lie downhill from significant moisture. No Russian bombing targets, etc. Everything gamed out carefully, smartly, nothing too safe for his family. What a super-diligent solid good guy.

One night we pulled into the driveway after a vacation. I, a small child, ran to the house and found lights on, door glass broken and utter chaos within. I ran back to the car, hollering, "Dad, someone broke into the house!"

He didn't pack us in the car and drive to a payphone to call the police in case the bad guys were still in the house. He didn't instruct me to steer clear of, at least, the broken glass. He didn't even go first. His shocking response was "Whudda you want me to do about it?" as he wearily, phlegmatically hoisted himself from the vehicle to approach the house long after the rest of us had begun to survey the damage.

Not his finest moment. And, to be fair, he was dead tired, and nobody's on top of his game every minute, and he suffered from depression, and he gave me useful stuff, too.

But I sure won't need to learn this lesson a third time: This is how it is with people who strive to seem some certain way. This is the truth behind poses - principled patriots, thoughtful providers, any of that weighty gravitas bullshit.

Genuinely solid good guys (and gals!) aren't weighty. They quietly do their duty when called upon to do so, because they're doers of things, not stoking empty images as Thing Doers. Seemers are uselessly lost in the epic mental movies in which they star. They're never genuine. You cannot count on them. Don't fall for it!

Another Go-Round for my Lincoln Project Ad

Looks like Lincoln Project will be producing another ad based on my 2020 script, which, last time, served as their final ad of the cycle. It will once again serve as the closer, and I'll link to it when it comes out (though, as always, news developments can disrupt production plans).

Here's the 2020 version, including my original script. Maybe the result will be closer this time. But I'm sure it will be great, however they do it.

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