If you ever find yourself thinking that I'm writing without nuance (for example, "Jim saw a ghost!"), it's a pretty safe bet that you've missed the nuance.
In a world increasingly blind to nuance, nuance appears to vanish (taking, alas, its practitioners with it).
Related:"Missing Chunks"
Friday, September 20, 2024
Thursday, September 19, 2024
My Roommate
I started out in Portugal renting a room in the home of dear old friends who turned out to have become late-stage alcoholics. They'd randomly transform from delightful company to strangling monsters, often flipping several times per day. To them, I appeared to be scrambled the other way, either flinching needlessly like some daffy paranoid in the presence of dear old friends or else baffling them with my positive attitude when they and I were plainly mortal enemies. Gaslit in both directions!
A few weeks in, I was infected by a parasite, losing 30 pounds and becoming so chronically dehydrated that I developed tons of tiny kidney stones. Then I sprained my ankle, permanently over-stretching the ligament so I'd lapse into excruciating pain while walking even months later. Meanwhile, I was viewing a succession of depressing apartments with the stupidest, most arrogantly callous and incompetent realtor on god's green earth, while otherwise spending my time hunkered down on a park bench or in my car, avoiding the boozy chaos. Eventually, in desperation, I moved into temporary quarters which turned out to be next to a marble factory which fired up its stone-cutting machine at 7:30am, sending plumes of caustic rock dust through every wall crack in my rattling cheap apartment, reactivating my long-dormant asthma.
Hang in there; this ends happily.
Finally, I found the perfect apartment, but it was obscenely overpriced. After a series of exasperating and shady realtor blunders and collusions, I faced a choice: continue hunting with the unbearable broker with my wrecked ankle and GI tract and tubercular cough, or else pay the insane asking price to score the perfect apartment in which I could finally unwind and recover.
With gritted teeth, I paid. But then myriad hidden issues with the place kept arising, forcing me to scramble to fix it all in a strange city where I didn't speak the language.
At long last, I reached a position of comfort, ready to begin recovery. And at that life-affirming moment of golden sunshine beaming between clouds, I met my roommate.
But I don't have a roommate.
I'd walked past my office, and, with peripheral vision, noticed someone sitting in my desk chair. I turned my head, and...nothing. But I'd definitely seen and felt someone there.
I am not a ghost-seeing kind of dude, nor am I prone to hallucination. And while the events described above were painful, I was in sound mind because I don't create stress for myself. I just move dutifully forward like an ant, picking up a grain of sand and putting it over there, ad infinitum.
Since I wasn't losing my mind, this was either a cognitive glitch due to an unfamiliar setting, or some sort of weird ghost thing or whatever. Six of one, an infinitesimal speck of the other. I wasn't about to commit to the ghost proposition, but, lingering in problem-solving mode, I surveyed the remote possibility as another potential snag to preempt. So I awkwardly addressed my hypothetical new roommate:
There have been subsequent glimmerings, but they've filled me with hope. Because they only happen when I move unexpectedly. Coming home early, swinging open a door suddenly after a long silence, that sort of thing. At such moments I occasionally perceive a scurrying to get out of my way. Nothing mischievous. More alertly diligent. I sense good intentions. And a benevolent ghost might be better than no ghost at all. I'll take benevolence wherever I find it, even if it's imaginary (in my way of seeing, it's all imaginary, with our role to stoically play through, come what may).
One morning, I was exasperated by the disappearance of my eye drops from my night table. I may have moaned out loud about the goddamn eye drops. And that night, when I went to bed, they were waiting for me on the night table.
My mind went click-click-click. Roommate. Imaginary. Benevolent. I sighed, registered resigned appreciation (whatever the explanation), and treated my eyes to double drops.
Next morning, the eye drops were gone again. I mumbled aloud "Are you just messing with me?" in a playful tone. By nightfall, they'd returned, just in time for bed time.
None of this felt scary. Playful benevolence, real or projected, is never scary. So I considered playing along with the chummy game. Hide the eye drops. See if roommate can find them. But, wait. Perhaps I'd already done exactly that. Maybe I'd been hiding the eye drops all this time and simply forgot. Maybe I'm the ghost.
I don't think so. I'm not descending into senility quite yet. My stomach's vastly better (I healed it like this), I can reset my ankles via a swift sequence of foot movements, my apartment is awesome, I'm making non-surgical yoga progress with my crippled shoulder, and in a few years my apartment may be worth 90% of what I paid for it. I'm neither stressed nor freaked out, and am at peace with the roommate situation. So, no, I'm not fracturing under pressure.
Of course I recognize that the benevolence I'm sensing is projected by my own shifting, healing internal psychic situation. Humans live to project stories expressing their inner states. In fact, that's the whole earthly ballgame. So, given that I'm getting along pretty well with roommate for now, I file it, nonchalantly, under "ain't broken/no need to fix."
As I once wrote:
A few weeks in, I was infected by a parasite, losing 30 pounds and becoming so chronically dehydrated that I developed tons of tiny kidney stones. Then I sprained my ankle, permanently over-stretching the ligament so I'd lapse into excruciating pain while walking even months later. Meanwhile, I was viewing a succession of depressing apartments with the stupidest, most arrogantly callous and incompetent realtor on god's green earth, while otherwise spending my time hunkered down on a park bench or in my car, avoiding the boozy chaos. Eventually, in desperation, I moved into temporary quarters which turned out to be next to a marble factory which fired up its stone-cutting machine at 7:30am, sending plumes of caustic rock dust through every wall crack in my rattling cheap apartment, reactivating my long-dormant asthma.
Hang in there; this ends happily.
Finally, I found the perfect apartment, but it was obscenely overpriced. After a series of exasperating and shady realtor blunders and collusions, I faced a choice: continue hunting with the unbearable broker with my wrecked ankle and GI tract and tubercular cough, or else pay the insane asking price to score the perfect apartment in which I could finally unwind and recover.
With gritted teeth, I paid. But then myriad hidden issues with the place kept arising, forcing me to scramble to fix it all in a strange city where I didn't speak the language.
At long last, I reached a position of comfort, ready to begin recovery. And at that life-affirming moment of golden sunshine beaming between clouds, I met my roommate.
But I don't have a roommate.
I'd walked past my office, and, with peripheral vision, noticed someone sitting in my desk chair. I turned my head, and...nothing. But I'd definitely seen and felt someone there.
I am not a ghost-seeing kind of dude, nor am I prone to hallucination. And while the events described above were painful, I was in sound mind because I don't create stress for myself. I just move dutifully forward like an ant, picking up a grain of sand and putting it over there, ad infinitum.
Since I wasn't losing my mind, this was either a cognitive glitch due to an unfamiliar setting, or some sort of weird ghost thing or whatever. Six of one, an infinitesimal speck of the other. I wasn't about to commit to the ghost proposition, but, lingering in problem-solving mode, I surveyed the remote possibility as another potential snag to preempt. So I awkwardly addressed my hypothetical new roommate:
Look, I don't believe in ghosts. I feel like an idiot right now. But if I'm sharing this apartment with, uh, someone/something, know that I wish you well, and have no problem with you hanging around, and do let me know if you need anything. But I have one request: try not to scare me. I've been through quite a lot, and really need to feel comfortable here. So please make some effort not to scare me, ok?It seemed prudent. Or at least as prudent as one can feel while standing alone in an apartment bargaining with insentient walls and furniture.
There have been subsequent glimmerings, but they've filled me with hope. Because they only happen when I move unexpectedly. Coming home early, swinging open a door suddenly after a long silence, that sort of thing. At such moments I occasionally perceive a scurrying to get out of my way. Nothing mischievous. More alertly diligent. I sense good intentions. And a benevolent ghost might be better than no ghost at all. I'll take benevolence wherever I find it, even if it's imaginary (in my way of seeing, it's all imaginary, with our role to stoically play through, come what may).
One morning, I was exasperated by the disappearance of my eye drops from my night table. I may have moaned out loud about the goddamn eye drops. And that night, when I went to bed, they were waiting for me on the night table.
My mind went click-click-click. Roommate. Imaginary. Benevolent. I sighed, registered resigned appreciation (whatever the explanation), and treated my eyes to double drops.
Next morning, the eye drops were gone again. I mumbled aloud "Are you just messing with me?" in a playful tone. By nightfall, they'd returned, just in time for bed time.
None of this felt scary. Playful benevolence, real or projected, is never scary. So I considered playing along with the chummy game. Hide the eye drops. See if roommate can find them. But, wait. Perhaps I'd already done exactly that. Maybe I'd been hiding the eye drops all this time and simply forgot. Maybe I'm the ghost.
I don't think so. I'm not descending into senility quite yet. My stomach's vastly better (I healed it like this), I can reset my ankles via a swift sequence of foot movements, my apartment is awesome, I'm making non-surgical yoga progress with my crippled shoulder, and in a few years my apartment may be worth 90% of what I paid for it. I'm neither stressed nor freaked out, and am at peace with the roommate situation. So, no, I'm not fracturing under pressure.
Of course I recognize that the benevolence I'm sensing is projected by my own shifting, healing internal psychic situation. Humans live to project stories expressing their inner states. In fact, that's the whole earthly ballgame. So, given that I'm getting along pretty well with roommate for now, I file it, nonchalantly, under "ain't broken/no need to fix."
As I once wrote:
Human beings spend their lives in conflict with imaginary people: mentally rearguing old arguments, worrying about faceless attackers and detractors, reliving bygone humiliations, and generally using our imaginations to make our lives a living hell.
That's considered "normal", but using the same faculty in positive ways to help us cope seems, for some bizarre reason, childish and loopy.
Wednesday, September 18, 2024
Playing the Apple Cycle, Chapter Umpteen
Apple's stock price shot up in July upon announcement of their AI initiative ("Apple Intelligence"), which was expected to drive a massive rush of upgrades, as consumers scrambled to ensure their devices could run these catchy new features.
Two problems:
1. Apple Intelligence won't be so groundbreaking. We're all sick of Siri's miserable inadequacy, but the new Siri is expected to be incremental improvement, nothing radical, and the rest seems a bit servicey and milquetoast...at least for now.
2. iPhone 16 wasn't super alluring (and iPhone 15 pro can run Apple Intelligence), so unofficial initial reports say that sales have been "meh".
None of this is top-line news yet. Experts know this, so the smart money does, too (hence the 10% drop from its peak). But the mainstream - and thirsty clickbait media - haven't quite processed these factors to realize that the expected profit surge (still somewhat priced in even now) likely won't happen in a tumultuous rush. So the general public hasn't been massively gloom-sprayed quite yet. And when that day comes (soon, I'd imagine), day traders will start shorting, and grandma will sell her shares (buy high, sell low!), stoking the familiar vicious circle.
All of which is good news! I sold my shares at $230, and would be very happy to buy anew at the next drop, which will be, as always, hyperbolic.
Long term, Apple Intelligence will improve, Siri will improve, and future devices will be tastier. So while owners of iPhone 13s may not be drooling over the new iPhone 16, at some point Siri frustration will inevitably push them into upgrading. There may be no furious stampede to the Apple Store, but Apple will absolutely pocket everyone's money in the end. So when its stock drops to $200 or below, a 20%+ gain should be easy for patient investors (patience is also rewarded by low taxation of long-term gains).
Per above, an eventual rebound to $237 is justified by what we know now. But new developments will add value. A new Mac Mini is to released next month that's intriguingly tiny and powerful and festooned with USB-C ports. Not as sexy as iPhones, but it could spur a genuine upgrade stampede (though we won't hear even unofficial stats until 2025, leaving plenty of time for gloomcasting in the meantime). And Apple will eventually create a lighter, cheaper version of Vision Pro, which transcends the severe limitations of desktop/laptop/table computing (I discussed those limitations here, though I never actually sprang for Vision Pro for reasons explained here).
Two problems:
1. Apple Intelligence won't be so groundbreaking. We're all sick of Siri's miserable inadequacy, but the new Siri is expected to be incremental improvement, nothing radical, and the rest seems a bit servicey and milquetoast...at least for now.
2. iPhone 16 wasn't super alluring (and iPhone 15 pro can run Apple Intelligence), so unofficial initial reports say that sales have been "meh".
None of this is top-line news yet. Experts know this, so the smart money does, too (hence the 10% drop from its peak). But the mainstream - and thirsty clickbait media - haven't quite processed these factors to realize that the expected profit surge (still somewhat priced in even now) likely won't happen in a tumultuous rush. So the general public hasn't been massively gloom-sprayed quite yet. And when that day comes (soon, I'd imagine), day traders will start shorting, and grandma will sell her shares (buy high, sell low!), stoking the familiar vicious circle.
All of which is good news! I sold my shares at $230, and would be very happy to buy anew at the next drop, which will be, as always, hyperbolic.
Long term, Apple Intelligence will improve, Siri will improve, and future devices will be tastier. So while owners of iPhone 13s may not be drooling over the new iPhone 16, at some point Siri frustration will inevitably push them into upgrading. There may be no furious stampede to the Apple Store, but Apple will absolutely pocket everyone's money in the end. So when its stock drops to $200 or below, a 20%+ gain should be easy for patient investors (patience is also rewarded by low taxation of long-term gains).
Per above, an eventual rebound to $237 is justified by what we know now. But new developments will add value. A new Mac Mini is to released next month that's intriguingly tiny and powerful and festooned with USB-C ports. Not as sexy as iPhones, but it could spur a genuine upgrade stampede (though we won't hear even unofficial stats until 2025, leaving plenty of time for gloomcasting in the meantime). And Apple will eventually create a lighter, cheaper version of Vision Pro, which transcends the severe limitations of desktop/laptop/table computing (I discussed those limitations here, though I never actually sprang for Vision Pro for reasons explained here).
Tuesday, September 17, 2024
Scapegoats Are Every Bad Thing
Last month I wrote that the secret to scapegoating is to make contradictory accusations, in order to push every possible hatred button.
"For centuries, we've heard how Jews are inferior, weak, and cowardly and that they run the world, cheat you out of your money, and devour your babies. All those things! So many things!"Here's a nice tidy example:
Monday, September 9, 2024
Loneliness
Both.
Loneliness is a yearning for some non-specific dream person to appear and perform a role. Lonely for "that person" who wakes you up in the morning and waits for you at night, we feel tasked with finding someone to portray that character.
But a real person might not be home in the mornings, or might sleep even later than you. A real person might not be predisposed to waiting, being intensely engaged in some pursuit or another. The Special Someone is a fantasy, and real people have limited ability (let alone interest) in portraying one-dimensional fantasy characters. Real people come with a whole backstory. You can't conjure someone fresh to make the role-play their core function.
If you do find someone willing to enact your wishcast - to do the waking and the waiting - there will be perturbances, because it will never completely or consistently fit your mental fantasy. Always "off", you'll always be lonely. The perfect benevolent character in your head was never a human being. Human beings are ambivalent and complicated. Upsettingly, it's never quite all about you. That's why you can't get no satisfaction.
If you can escape the dreamy realm of role play - of desperately seeking the person to act the part - the waking and the waiting, etc. - then, good news. You live in a world full of billions of people. They're doing just fine, and you can enjoy that they're out there, living their lives obliviously to you. You might occasionally offer some support or encouragement - just because! - but it needn't lead to a "Meet Cute" kindling of a fantasy scenario. You can just let it be what it is, which is pretty good!
I've described two radically different scenarios, but you'll feel lonely in either, because you'll never be awakened nor awaited per that special no one in your head. Caught up in drama, the shortfall feels bitterly lonely, even if s/he's right here right now. But if you opt out of contriving indulgent cinematic tearjerkers in your mind over What's Missing, you'll experience loneliness as a light wistfulness.
You can be free, and able to do whatever you want, encumbered by a light wistfulness.
See also Love Theater
See also Love Theater
Sunday, September 8, 2024
Adjusting my Must-Read Twitter List
I maintain a "Must-Read" list on Twitter, carefully curated to offer a smart, insightful, funny stream of tweets. I don't agree with everyone on the list, but all are reasonably clear-minded and interesting and don't just echo trendy sentiments.
I recently removed Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Elon Musk because both have gone from being trollish dicks who periodically say clever things to a more robust trollish dickishness unrestrained by intention to be clever.
I've resisted this move for years. There's grave danger in closing one's ears to those with whom one disagrees. But I demand nutrition. There must be some enrichment. Snide pique and dorky trolling do nothing for me, even from those with whom I agree (e.g. a lot of the Lincoln Project stuff turns me off, though I strongly support their mission).
I'd love to include a MAGA in this list who offers thoughtful perspective (however flawed), and who doesn't just fling memes and contrived horseshit. I've never found such a person, so I settle for anti-Trump commentary by former Republicans (well-represented on this Twitter list), who help assure me that I haven't been spun into irrational fury and paranoia by cynical profiteers.
It's a concern of mine because while I still strongly disagree with Reagan and GWB, I see now that I was incited into hating/fearing them way too severely. I was spun into seeing them as devils, so now that an actual devil has appeared, I question my appraisal. But with Dick Frickin' Cheney voting Democrat, I'm much more confident. It's truly that bad.
I recently removed Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Elon Musk because both have gone from being trollish dicks who periodically say clever things to a more robust trollish dickishness unrestrained by intention to be clever.
I've resisted this move for years. There's grave danger in closing one's ears to those with whom one disagrees. But I demand nutrition. There must be some enrichment. Snide pique and dorky trolling do nothing for me, even from those with whom I agree (e.g. a lot of the Lincoln Project stuff turns me off, though I strongly support their mission).
I'd love to include a MAGA in this list who offers thoughtful perspective (however flawed), and who doesn't just fling memes and contrived horseshit. I've never found such a person, so I settle for anti-Trump commentary by former Republicans (well-represented on this Twitter list), who help assure me that I haven't been spun into irrational fury and paranoia by cynical profiteers.
It's a concern of mine because while I still strongly disagree with Reagan and GWB, I see now that I was incited into hating/fearing them way too severely. I was spun into seeing them as devils, so now that an actual devil has appeared, I question my appraisal. But with Dick Frickin' Cheney voting Democrat, I'm much more confident. It's truly that bad.
Friday, September 6, 2024
Founder Mode, Manager Mode
If you read the epic tale of the sale of my startup to a major corporation (it starts here), you know my thoughts on the vast chasm between founders and corporate managers, most pointedly stated in this installment:
Well, have a look at this exploration of the gaping differences between companies in "founder mode" or in "manager mode".
Interestingly (and well-explained by my writings in that series), creative types would instinctively roll their eyes at the very notion of "manager mode", while corporate types (aka "puddy pud-puds") would do likewise at the mention of "founder mode". It's every bit as partisan a divide as Harris vs Trump. Yet I think there's something to be said for both. In the epilogue of my series, I strained to be terribly mature, taking a higher perspective:
The best route for creative people with business impulses (or vice versa) is to hatch one's own startup. And then sell out to puddy pudpuds who'll follow procedures to maintain it and apply relentlessness to profit from it.The same analysis was back-linked in this later short posting.
Well, have a look at this exploration of the gaping differences between companies in "founder mode" or in "manager mode".
Interestingly (and well-explained by my writings in that series), creative types would instinctively roll their eyes at the very notion of "manager mode", while corporate types (aka "puddy pud-puds") would do likewise at the mention of "founder mode". It's every bit as partisan a divide as Harris vs Trump. Yet I think there's something to be said for both. In the epilogue of my series, I strained to be terribly mature, taking a higher perspective:
Both sides screw up when they encroach too far on the other's territory. I am absolutely a poster child for the woes of a creative founder hitting a wall after sticking around too long. With some funding, I might have instituted the revenue scheme on my own early on. But I lacked the funds and the time, and that's on me (though, in my defense, I was perennially being drowned by relentless scaling). I should have been talking to investors (learning to polish my shoes, to carefully modulate my voice, and to project gravitas), when I was mostly freaking out about the latest spammer, or getting the newsletters out on time. But, as I've explained, there's a point where you're so locked into daily overhead that the marginal time to push forward disappears.
I make a terrible pudpud, and CNET made a terrible creative founder. I stuck around too long and, paradoxically, they jumped in too early. The operation suffered from my poor pudpud skills as well as from CNET's poor creative skills.
Wednesday, September 4, 2024
Edginess
If you're the least bit embarrassed by the memory of Americans carrying around Mao's little red book, wearing Che Guevara t shirts, and cheering the Viet Cong to seem edgy, maybe you can break that pattern of atrocious stupidity and not make Hamas your edgy righteous paragon.
…while justifiably sympathizing with Palestinians.
Sunday, September 1, 2024
The Futility Threshold
I have some additional thoughts as to what's really happening in the scenario described in my previous posting, "The Fog of Self Awareness". I described how people fall unwittingly into loops, trying the same thing over and over while expecting different results, as a foggy amnesia blocks self-awareness of their predicament.
I attributed it to the need for continuity. You fancy yourself a chef - a conceit which persists despite the enormous mountain of evidence that you're patently no chef. Forced to choose between contradictory views, you can guess which choice most people make.
This provides the basis for most comedy: the buffoon desperately and tenaciously clinging to presumption despite snowballing contrary evidence.
If you try to make the person cognizant of their plight (and manage to survive their reaction), they'll, at very best, nod impatiently and set themselves to do better next time. As if steely determination is what's needed. This also presupposes that previous attempts were performed by a pathetic slouch...even if they tried super-hard then, too!
At a certain point we need to try something else, and not just keep taking the same run at the impasse. At a certain point, we must recognize the futility of our efforts. Let's call that point The Futility Threshold.
However patently true this may be, it coexists with the antithetical truth that determination and grit can be highly effective. Very often we truly must transcend our slouchy selves via redoubled effort. Iteration - enduring poor results until they eventually improve, seemingly by magic - is a fundamental process.
So the threshold of futility is a crucial consideration. At a certain point we need to stop and reconfigure. In our effortful determination, we can fail to notice that we've passed this point, but outside observers do notice. For them, we're hilarious, trapped in an obvious loop without a shred of self-awareness. A fog having settled, we've lost our clarity.
It's the familiar error of using the wrong tool for the job. Maslow’s hammer! Determined pushing is how we get cars out of mud. But past the futility threshold, we must cease pushing, sip some coffee, and chart a new course involving shovels or chains or tow trucks. When perspective freezes, we lose the flexibility to view from multiple vantage points. Our efforts grow more and more futile (and funnier and funnier) while we remain grotesquely un-self-aware.
This has reverse engineered the observation that insanity is "doing the same thing over and over expecting different results." This saying always irritated me, and now I understand why: Anyone who's ever gotten good at anything has, indeed, done the same thing over and over with gratifyingly different results! Iterating in order to improve is the foundational human magic trick!
But only up to a point. The futility point!
The Fog
What about the "fog" - my foggy characterization of the tendency to become too distracted to notice the futility of one's circumstance? The fog which leaves us blind to overwhelming evidence that it's not going to happen even with an extra generous running start? The fog which creates the amnesia about how hard we've been trying all along?
"Fog" describes zones outside the spotlight of our momentary attention. Mental fog seems to rush in to fill an attention gap the way oxygen rushes in to fill a physical vacuum. The absence of Anything feels like an eerie, foggy Something.
A wine expert friend once told me that a tannic wine is either 1. too tannic, or, more likely, 2. lacking in all other tastes. Similarly, "foggy" is a concrete way to describe the "flavor" of a gap; of negative space; of the Ignored.
I noted that "a fog having settled, we've lost our clarity." This describes the experience of frozen perspective. Lithe reframing dispels fog by viewing from multiple vantage points, casting light from all directions...while a frozen perspective feels foggy everywhere beyond the tight tunnel vision. And so we may err endlessly, oblivious to the obvious truth.
The act of balancing attention and shifting viewpoint - i.e. active reframing - not only dispels fog, but also recharges our self-awareness and sparks the creativity to devise fresh methods which can connect effectively with desired outcomes.
I attributed it to the need for continuity. You fancy yourself a chef - a conceit which persists despite the enormous mountain of evidence that you're patently no chef. Forced to choose between contradictory views, you can guess which choice most people make.
This provides the basis for most comedy: the buffoon desperately and tenaciously clinging to presumption despite snowballing contrary evidence.
If you try to make the person cognizant of their plight (and manage to survive their reaction), they'll, at very best, nod impatiently and set themselves to do better next time. As if steely determination is what's needed. This also presupposes that previous attempts were performed by a pathetic slouch...even if they tried super-hard then, too!
At a certain point we need to try something else, and not just keep taking the same run at the impasse. At a certain point, we must recognize the futility of our efforts. Let's call that point The Futility Threshold.
However patently true this may be, it coexists with the antithetical truth that determination and grit can be highly effective. Very often we truly must transcend our slouchy selves via redoubled effort. Iteration - enduring poor results until they eventually improve, seemingly by magic - is a fundamental process.
So the threshold of futility is a crucial consideration. At a certain point we need to stop and reconfigure. In our effortful determination, we can fail to notice that we've passed this point, but outside observers do notice. For them, we're hilarious, trapped in an obvious loop without a shred of self-awareness. A fog having settled, we've lost our clarity.
It's the familiar error of using the wrong tool for the job. Maslow’s hammer! Determined pushing is how we get cars out of mud. But past the futility threshold, we must cease pushing, sip some coffee, and chart a new course involving shovels or chains or tow trucks. When perspective freezes, we lose the flexibility to view from multiple vantage points. Our efforts grow more and more futile (and funnier and funnier) while we remain grotesquely un-self-aware.
This has reverse engineered the observation that insanity is "doing the same thing over and over expecting different results." This saying always irritated me, and now I understand why: Anyone who's ever gotten good at anything has, indeed, done the same thing over and over with gratifyingly different results! Iterating in order to improve is the foundational human magic trick!
But only up to a point. The futility point!
What about the "fog" - my foggy characterization of the tendency to become too distracted to notice the futility of one's circumstance? The fog which leaves us blind to overwhelming evidence that it's not going to happen even with an extra generous running start? The fog which creates the amnesia about how hard we've been trying all along?
"Fog" describes zones outside the spotlight of our momentary attention. Mental fog seems to rush in to fill an attention gap the way oxygen rushes in to fill a physical vacuum. The absence of Anything feels like an eerie, foggy Something.
A wine expert friend once told me that a tannic wine is either 1. too tannic, or, more likely, 2. lacking in all other tastes. Similarly, "foggy" is a concrete way to describe the "flavor" of a gap; of negative space; of the Ignored.
I noted that "a fog having settled, we've lost our clarity." This describes the experience of frozen perspective. Lithe reframing dispels fog by viewing from multiple vantage points, casting light from all directions...while a frozen perspective feels foggy everywhere beyond the tight tunnel vision. And so we may err endlessly, oblivious to the obvious truth.
The act of balancing attention and shifting viewpoint - i.e. active reframing - not only dispels fog, but also recharges our self-awareness and sparks the creativity to devise fresh methods which can connect effectively with desired outcomes.
Saturday, August 31, 2024
The Fog of Self-Awareness
A friend faced an unexpected major expense. Living paycheck-to-paycheck, he was stuck. I loaned him the money, which he agreed to repay in monthly chunks. I imposed one condition: he had to self-manage his payback. I didn't want to keep track, or discuss, or think about it at all.
He'd wound up being a paycheck-to-paycheck guy thanks to his lack of organization skills. I feared it might be tough for him to tabulate the repayment, and, sure enough, it all blew up after a few months and I needed to dive into bank records to determine my abashed friend's current debt.
No big deal, but a few years later he hit another snag and needed another loan. I restated my conditions, imploring him to find some way to track payback. No problem, he replied. He'd just note the payments in his phone's calendar!
But if the answer was so easy, why hadn't he done that last time?
Either:
He understood that he needed to take more drastic steps. So will he manage to track his payments this time? Probably not. But it won't be for lack of self-awareness!
Meanwhile...
A Bengali woman in my neighborhood is trying to make a go as a restaurateur, but she has a rather fatal flaw: she cannot cook efficiently. She fiddles endlessly.
It's tough to be a professional chef when one isn't, uh, a professional chef. So her customers wait hours for her to dash out of her kitchen in an aggrieved, apologetic tizzy. Every time!
I tried texting ahead, but it didn't help. She can’t cook to a deadline - any deadline. So I asked her to try texting me five minutes before the food's ready. She agreed cheerfully, and asked a perfectly normal question: When, exactly, would I like it?
As if it mattered! She can't cook to deadline! The question is nonsense! But I couldn't penetrate her amnesia. Fancying herself a restaurant chef, she rotely follows the form of what chefs do. Her self-awareness is less than miraculous. But it's the same fog.
An important unrelated point: If my friend could organize himself, it would help him far beyond the satisfaction of my petty preference. Same for the Bengali chef. It's unreasonable to expect people to rectify their shortcomings for my gratification. I've learned not to take this sort of thing personally!
I've been trying to connect the two experiences and understand the fallacy behind this. I think it hinges on a phrase I used above: "rotely following the form." Both cases involve a false assumption of continuity. She fancies herself a chef. All the contrary evidence remains perpetually behind her. That was before, but the future is bright!
We assume that we own our trajectory, our continuity. We surely have some degree of control. "I've got this!" We imagine ourselves abstractly, as cartoon avatars hypothetically poised to gamely accomplish the task and fulfill the role. Neat, crisp, and squeaky clean! Meanwhile a compassionate amnesia conceals the upsetting disjoint between this cartoon tidiness and the mess that is our reality.
My examples spotlight particularly well-intentioned and sincere people. Imagine how much stickier it all gets when one must factor in snide disregard or even outright malevolence. What if my friend were reluctant to pay back the loan?
In fact, we even project negativity when none is present. This explains the basis for Napoleon's quote: "Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence." The apparent reluctance to take responsibility, and the apparently heedless failure to stave off inevitable breakdowns, make it easy to suspect ill-will.
But even "incompetence" is unduly brusque. It's really just a narrowness of framing. We're naturally foggy in anticipating outcomes, and amnesiac to previous failure which would shake our sense of smooth cartoon continuity. We genuinely imagine our next run will be the good one, putting it all right, even though, past a certain point, we're exhibiting the proverbial insanity of doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different result.
The trick is, as usual, a flip of perspective: own your incompetence. Inhabit the discontinuity. Don't aim to feel smart, aim to actually get smart. By allowing ourselves to feel perpetually messy, we stoke curiosity and kindle creativity to patch holes, clear obstructions, and find new procedures (i.e. the "drastic steps" I urged my friend to devise). Live in the actual mess, not a slick imaginary cartoon. Shake off the amnesia and get real!
In the examples above, I was the one illuminating blind spots and contriving workarounds, while the other person labored to preserve continuity. I brainstormed while they remained stuck in slapstick comedy loops, endlessly assuring "No problem!" as an endless series of rakes slapped their faces.
As they framed it, there was a need to Do a Thing, so they reset - over and over - with steely determination to get 'er done. It never dawned on them that such an approach deprecated their previous efforts. They'd tried plenty hard those times, too! If it were just a question of steely determination, why were they caught in an endless loop? But a protective fog blocks any such consideration. Don't worry; this time I've got this!
Determination is not a cure-all. Reframing is also necessary. Me, I'm a mutant, aware of, and blithely amused by (but never depressed about) my myriad shortcomings and my track record of failure. I DON'T HAVE THIS!
So I work tirelessly to erect scaffolding and baffles and workarounds and levers and pulleys to overcome my propensity for failure and avoid the slapstick comedy loop. I have no confidence in the notion that I just need to really try this time, because I always try hard. That's my baseline! And I recall with crystal clarity the many times I applied full-hearted determination straight through to unmitigated disaster! At least I avoid the fog (while opting out of aggrieved embarrassment in the clear light of my feebleness). I just keep toiling, head down, like an ant.
This flip of owning your messy incompetence allows you to finally connect expectation with outcome; to dispel fog and escape the slapstick comedy loop. Our dodgy, inept lifestream is, paradoxically, something we can train ourselves to masterfully control, because it's real. The hypothetical shiny cartoon, not so much. A pose, by definition, has no substance!
Postscripts
The fallacy I've described affects all kinds of intelligences. AI chatbots have a devilishly hard time helping you devise directions ("prompts") for your future use with them. They labor with brisk confidence, certain they can anticipate their hypothetical reaction, but when you clear the slate (purging memory of the prep work) and try the prompt, it almost always misfires horribly. The bot goes “Huh??”
And something fascinating happens if you let the chatbot monitor the full arc of this process. If you don't erase the prep session, and instead open a new browser window to try the prompt with a fresh chatbot, then show the results to the original bot, it will steel itself to try again with greater determination ("I've got it THIS TIME!") with similar results...over and over. The same foggy amnesia! The same slapstick comedy loop!
At a certain point, I bought a bunch of tools and a stack of DIY books so I could be more of a manly man and FIX STUFF. And I found that each time I tried to faithfully follow instructions, there'd be some unique problem not anticipated in the books. It happened every time, yet an odd amnesia always made it feel exceptional.
Shaking off the fog, I realized that nothing ever goes normally. Even highly-experienced master carpenters reach an "aw, shit!" moment in every job (but they, unlike me, can improvise workarounds). Every day, they go out expecting to Do the Thing, but it's never just that, and amnesia makes the derailments feel eternally surprising.
An associated blind spot is discussed in The Expert/Layman Triage Fallacy (don't miss, too, the follow-up, where I explain how this fallacy is so strong that many people can't even parse anecdotes about it).
He'd wound up being a paycheck-to-paycheck guy thanks to his lack of organization skills. I feared it might be tough for him to tabulate the repayment, and, sure enough, it all blew up after a few months and I needed to dive into bank records to determine my abashed friend's current debt.
No big deal, but a few years later he hit another snag and needed another loan. I restated my conditions, imploring him to find some way to track payback. No problem, he replied. He'd just note the payments in his phone's calendar!
But if the answer was so easy, why hadn't he done that last time?
Either:
1. It isn't that simple...which means more drastic steps are necessary, orMost people would get pissy at this point, insisting, baselessly, that they had it all under control this time, but my friend pulled off a small miracle of self-awareness by fully grokking my point. "I've got this" isn't a universally applicable response!
2. It is that simple...which means he hadn't taken the previous loan seriously (if so, why would I want to loan to him?)
He understood that he needed to take more drastic steps. So will he manage to track his payments this time? Probably not. But it won't be for lack of self-awareness!
Meanwhile...
A Bengali woman in my neighborhood is trying to make a go as a restaurateur, but she has a rather fatal flaw: she cannot cook efficiently. She fiddles endlessly.
It's tough to be a professional chef when one isn't, uh, a professional chef. So her customers wait hours for her to dash out of her kitchen in an aggrieved, apologetic tizzy. Every time!
I tried texting ahead, but it didn't help. She can’t cook to a deadline - any deadline. So I asked her to try texting me five minutes before the food's ready. She agreed cheerfully, and asked a perfectly normal question: When, exactly, would I like it?
As if it mattered! She can't cook to deadline! The question is nonsense! But I couldn't penetrate her amnesia. Fancying herself a restaurant chef, she rotely follows the form of what chefs do. Her self-awareness is less than miraculous. But it's the same fog.
An important unrelated point: If my friend could organize himself, it would help him far beyond the satisfaction of my petty preference. Same for the Bengali chef. It's unreasonable to expect people to rectify their shortcomings for my gratification. I've learned not to take this sort of thing personally!
I've been trying to connect the two experiences and understand the fallacy behind this. I think it hinges on a phrase I used above: "rotely following the form." Both cases involve a false assumption of continuity. She fancies herself a chef. All the contrary evidence remains perpetually behind her. That was before, but the future is bright!
We assume that we own our trajectory, our continuity. We surely have some degree of control. "I've got this!" We imagine ourselves abstractly, as cartoon avatars hypothetically poised to gamely accomplish the task and fulfill the role. Neat, crisp, and squeaky clean! Meanwhile a compassionate amnesia conceals the upsetting disjoint between this cartoon tidiness and the mess that is our reality.
My examples spotlight particularly well-intentioned and sincere people. Imagine how much stickier it all gets when one must factor in snide disregard or even outright malevolence. What if my friend were reluctant to pay back the loan?
In fact, we even project negativity when none is present. This explains the basis for Napoleon's quote: "Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence." The apparent reluctance to take responsibility, and the apparently heedless failure to stave off inevitable breakdowns, make it easy to suspect ill-will.
But even "incompetence" is unduly brusque. It's really just a narrowness of framing. We're naturally foggy in anticipating outcomes, and amnesiac to previous failure which would shake our sense of smooth cartoon continuity. We genuinely imagine our next run will be the good one, putting it all right, even though, past a certain point, we're exhibiting the proverbial insanity of doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different result.
The trick is, as usual, a flip of perspective: own your incompetence. Inhabit the discontinuity. Don't aim to feel smart, aim to actually get smart. By allowing ourselves to feel perpetually messy, we stoke curiosity and kindle creativity to patch holes, clear obstructions, and find new procedures (i.e. the "drastic steps" I urged my friend to devise). Live in the actual mess, not a slick imaginary cartoon. Shake off the amnesia and get real!
In the examples above, I was the one illuminating blind spots and contriving workarounds, while the other person labored to preserve continuity. I brainstormed while they remained stuck in slapstick comedy loops, endlessly assuring "No problem!" as an endless series of rakes slapped their faces.
As they framed it, there was a need to Do a Thing, so they reset - over and over - with steely determination to get 'er done. It never dawned on them that such an approach deprecated their previous efforts. They'd tried plenty hard those times, too! If it were just a question of steely determination, why were they caught in an endless loop? But a protective fog blocks any such consideration. Don't worry; this time I've got this!
Determination is not a cure-all. Reframing is also necessary. Me, I'm a mutant, aware of, and blithely amused by (but never depressed about) my myriad shortcomings and my track record of failure. I DON'T HAVE THIS!
So I work tirelessly to erect scaffolding and baffles and workarounds and levers and pulleys to overcome my propensity for failure and avoid the slapstick comedy loop. I have no confidence in the notion that I just need to really try this time, because I always try hard. That's my baseline! And I recall with crystal clarity the many times I applied full-hearted determination straight through to unmitigated disaster! At least I avoid the fog (while opting out of aggrieved embarrassment in the clear light of my feebleness). I just keep toiling, head down, like an ant.
This flip of owning your messy incompetence allows you to finally connect expectation with outcome; to dispel fog and escape the slapstick comedy loop. Our dodgy, inept lifestream is, paradoxically, something we can train ourselves to masterfully control, because it's real. The hypothetical shiny cartoon, not so much. A pose, by definition, has no substance!
The fallacy I've described affects all kinds of intelligences. AI chatbots have a devilishly hard time helping you devise directions ("prompts") for your future use with them. They labor with brisk confidence, certain they can anticipate their hypothetical reaction, but when you clear the slate (purging memory of the prep work) and try the prompt, it almost always misfires horribly. The bot goes “Huh??”
And something fascinating happens if you let the chatbot monitor the full arc of this process. If you don't erase the prep session, and instead open a new browser window to try the prompt with a fresh chatbot, then show the results to the original bot, it will steel itself to try again with greater determination ("I've got it THIS TIME!") with similar results...over and over. The same foggy amnesia! The same slapstick comedy loop!
At a certain point, I bought a bunch of tools and a stack of DIY books so I could be more of a manly man and FIX STUFF. And I found that each time I tried to faithfully follow instructions, there'd be some unique problem not anticipated in the books. It happened every time, yet an odd amnesia always made it feel exceptional.
Shaking off the fog, I realized that nothing ever goes normally. Even highly-experienced master carpenters reach an "aw, shit!" moment in every job (but they, unlike me, can improvise workarounds). Every day, they go out expecting to Do the Thing, but it's never just that, and amnesia makes the derailments feel eternally surprising.
An associated blind spot is discussed in The Expert/Layman Triage Fallacy (don't miss, too, the follow-up, where I explain how this fallacy is so strong that many people can't even parse anecdotes about it).
Monday, August 26, 2024
Greatness
I once did a fair bit of teaching of younger jazz players, mostly via seminars in Europe. Often I'd encounter someone with no perceptible swing feel - which is catastrophic. After an hour of hard work and pushing and carrying on, occasionally I might cajole one into swinging, which felt like a revelation, but I'd coach them straight through that threshold to something even higher. Not just swinging, but really swinging! And it was surprisingly common to see a few reach that lofty height...at least for a brief moment.
"Wait! Stop! Freeze!" I'd scream. "You heard what you just did, right? That was really swinging, and it felt super different, right?"
"You cannot ever go back. This isn't your new normal; it's your new baseline. You must never - even in your worst, sloppiest, most unguarded moment - swing any less than you just proved you can. If you hadn't just proved what you could do, you might have doubted your capability. But that was proof-of-concept, and it can no longer be doubted. You know how swinging you can be, so anything less from this point forward would be inexcusable."
"Failing to swing your ass off is now a capital offense. You can no longer protest that, hey, you were trying your best. Now that we know what your best really is, settling for less makes you a lazy, shitty, spoiled baby. You can't shrug off not swinging. Not anymore!"
How many of them powered up, proceeding at this higher level? Very few, of course. Most immediately dipped all the way back to their previous level; to their status quo. Not because greatness was too demanding or draining or challenging, but because they couldn't reframe themselves. Crappy unswinging mediocrity felt comfortable. It made them feel like themselves. It felt like home. Like their own comfy beds. Night night!
But every great once in a while, one would experience some internal snap (something must snap!). Reframing would happen, and they'd power up several levels, renouncing the fluffy pillows and blankets of mediocrity. Swinging hard became their new normal.
Those were the great ones. And this explains: 1. Why there are so few "great ones", and 2. What one needs to do to be great.
See "Why My Cooking Isn't Great"
Their greatness wasn't a matter of latent capability (aka "talent), or hard work (strictly speaking), or even the quality level of their result. It was about two things: reframing and commitment. The two things nobody looks at or worries about or talks about or aims for.
These things constitute the Dark Matter of the human universe, and that's what this Slog has mostly explored all these years.
"Wait! Stop! Freeze!" I'd scream. "You heard what you just did, right? That was really swinging, and it felt super different, right?"
"You cannot ever go back. This isn't your new normal; it's your new baseline. You must never - even in your worst, sloppiest, most unguarded moment - swing any less than you just proved you can. If you hadn't just proved what you could do, you might have doubted your capability. But that was proof-of-concept, and it can no longer be doubted. You know how swinging you can be, so anything less from this point forward would be inexcusable."
"Failing to swing your ass off is now a capital offense. You can no longer protest that, hey, you were trying your best. Now that we know what your best really is, settling for less makes you a lazy, shitty, spoiled baby. You can't shrug off not swinging. Not anymore!"
How many of them powered up, proceeding at this higher level? Very few, of course. Most immediately dipped all the way back to their previous level; to their status quo. Not because greatness was too demanding or draining or challenging, but because they couldn't reframe themselves. Crappy unswinging mediocrity felt comfortable. It made them feel like themselves. It felt like home. Like their own comfy beds. Night night!
Those were the great ones. And this explains: 1. Why there are so few "great ones", and 2. What one needs to do to be great.
See "Why My Cooking Isn't Great"
Their greatness wasn't a matter of latent capability (aka "talent), or hard work (strictly speaking), or even the quality level of their result. It was about two things: reframing and commitment. The two things nobody looks at or worries about or talks about or aims for.
These things constitute the Dark Matter of the human universe, and that's what this Slog has mostly explored all these years.
Friday, August 23, 2024
Replying on a Curve
When a selfish person offers a trifle, your debt will be immense.
Selfish recipients get it. Duly surprised by generosity, they make a hero of the giver. But generous recipients often miss the rarity of the gesture. The offering of a potato chip may require celebration. A selfish giver requires praise and stroking, like a puppy who shits in the appointed box.
Generous givers and recipients can recognize each other, so the transaction is casual and easy. And well-matched selfish people smoothly play out their game theory, maneuvering past issues of intent, and ultimately agree to treat generosity as an inexplicable fluke.
The problem is with mismatches. When a generous person gives (nonchalantly) to a selfish person, primal suspicions are aroused, and it can get nasty. But it's worse when the selfish give to the generous. Failure to duly celebrate, praise, and stroke makes it all seem for naught. Gut-wrenching!
Always assess your donor! Calculate how lavishly they need to be patronized!
A friend once sent me a jokey email where he'd satirized some news item by turning it into a fairy tale or limerick or whatever. It was clumsy, and I was busy, but I shot back "Ha!" Weeks later, he informed me how many hours he'd invested in the effort, and how stricken he'd been at my monosyllabic reply.
I take people at their word that they don't like to be patronized. And feelings of superiority don’t come easily to me, anyway. So it never occurred to me to assess my friend's primitive writing skills and grade him on a curve, graciously reporting that I'd laughed and laughed at his fabulous, wonderful email.
People actually love to be patronized. They eat it right up. In fact, it's often impolite not to! So the next time someone offers...anything, remember to judge them first. Size them up! Then, if appropriate, respond as if they'd presented you with their live, beating heart. If you get it wrong, and stroke unnecessarily, they'll just figure you're weird. But if you fail the other way, and don't reply on a curve, things can turn out very badly.
Selfish recipients get it. Duly surprised by generosity, they make a hero of the giver. But generous recipients often miss the rarity of the gesture. The offering of a potato chip may require celebration. A selfish giver requires praise and stroking, like a puppy who shits in the appointed box.
Generous givers and recipients can recognize each other, so the transaction is casual and easy. And well-matched selfish people smoothly play out their game theory, maneuvering past issues of intent, and ultimately agree to treat generosity as an inexplicable fluke.
The problem is with mismatches. When a generous person gives (nonchalantly) to a selfish person, primal suspicions are aroused, and it can get nasty. But it's worse when the selfish give to the generous. Failure to duly celebrate, praise, and stroke makes it all seem for naught. Gut-wrenching!
Always assess your donor! Calculate how lavishly they need to be patronized!
A friend once sent me a jokey email where he'd satirized some news item by turning it into a fairy tale or limerick or whatever. It was clumsy, and I was busy, but I shot back "Ha!" Weeks later, he informed me how many hours he'd invested in the effort, and how stricken he'd been at my monosyllabic reply.
I take people at their word that they don't like to be patronized. And feelings of superiority don’t come easily to me, anyway. So it never occurred to me to assess my friend's primitive writing skills and grade him on a curve, graciously reporting that I'd laughed and laughed at his fabulous, wonderful email.
People actually love to be patronized. They eat it right up. In fact, it's often impolite not to! So the next time someone offers...anything, remember to judge them first. Size them up! Then, if appropriate, respond as if they'd presented you with their live, beating heart. If you get it wrong, and stroke unnecessarily, they'll just figure you're weird. But if you fail the other way, and don't reply on a curve, things can turn out very badly.
Friday, August 16, 2024
Harris' Price Control Proposal
Centrists and moderates of either stripe who are alarmed by Harris' pandering talk of price controls (if you're going to ape Nixon, I'd much rather you break into hotels than mess with the economy) should read Josh Barro's superb centrist analysis (and teeth-gritted approval). I'll surmise:
It's bad...
...but it's smartly mitigated,
...and she needs this in her platform because Biden killed himself by failing to address cost of living
...and she's standing up to the hard Left in other significant ways
...so we should give her this so she defeats the Tasmanian devil.
It's a five minute read that can transform your view of what's actually going on with this stuff.
It's bad...
...but it's smartly mitigated,
...and she needs this in her platform because Biden killed himself by failing to address cost of living
...and she's standing up to the hard Left in other significant ways
...so we should give her this so she defeats the Tasmanian devil.
It's a five minute read that can transform your view of what's actually going on with this stuff.
Saturday, August 10, 2024
The Secret to Scapegoating
Trump just said:
Jews get the "credit" for this. For centuries, we've heard how Jews are inferior, weak, and cowardly and that they run the world, cheat you out of your money, and devour your babies. All those things! So many things!
Lately it's been applied much more widely, and people are surprisingly cool with the contradiction. The juxtaposition of impotence and omnipotence somehow feels acceptable. Consider "elites", a word pronounced by both extreme left and extreme right with drippy contempt. The dissonant amalgam of contemptuous weakness with savage superiority feels credible. No bells ring.
Here's the basis: Self-pity and self-aggrandizement are two sides of the same coin. They fuel each other. For example, arrogance is always based in insecurity, and only the fearful become bullies. "Normal" people don't feel incessantly kicked, nor do they thirst for someone to kick. But once you're skewed, one way or the other, you'll inevitably draw in the antithesis.
So painting a scapegoat as both impotent and omnipotent bridges this psychic ambivalence. One-stop shopping, if you will. The scapegoat is more than just a problem. It represents all the problems - an integrated projection of contradictory impulses. Demagogues know this, and use it to stoke maximal hatred; to really scape the goat. The target is your despised oppressor while also a delicious outlet for your oppressive tendencies.
I always flip the camera, even when the result isn’t flattering, so I must concede that Donald Trump, himself, is often viewed by people like me as both feebly impotent and frightfully omnipotent. Being on the right side doesn't make one immune to demagoguery. Being correct doesn't mean you’re a clear thinker.
I try to avoid the trap by favoring the "impotence" framing. I want to block Trump from power not to thwart his diabolical master schemes, but for the same reason I want to keep a horse out of a hospital.
"But with your vote, the reign will be over. That horrible reign. In a way, it's a reign of terror, you know, it's a weak reign. It's an incompetent reign...It's a very dangerous reign."Throughout history, demagogues have disparaged weakness in the same breath as they've decried dominance. That's the route to really effective scapegoating. You must make both contradictory assertions.
Jews get the "credit" for this. For centuries, we've heard how Jews are inferior, weak, and cowardly and that they run the world, cheat you out of your money, and devour your babies. All those things! So many things!
Lately it's been applied much more widely, and people are surprisingly cool with the contradiction. The juxtaposition of impotence and omnipotence somehow feels acceptable. Consider "elites", a word pronounced by both extreme left and extreme right with drippy contempt. The dissonant amalgam of contemptuous weakness with savage superiority feels credible. No bells ring.
Here's the basis: Self-pity and self-aggrandizement are two sides of the same coin. They fuel each other. For example, arrogance is always based in insecurity, and only the fearful become bullies. "Normal" people don't feel incessantly kicked, nor do they thirst for someone to kick. But once you're skewed, one way or the other, you'll inevitably draw in the antithesis.
So painting a scapegoat as both impotent and omnipotent bridges this psychic ambivalence. One-stop shopping, if you will. The scapegoat is more than just a problem. It represents all the problems - an integrated projection of contradictory impulses. Demagogues know this, and use it to stoke maximal hatred; to really scape the goat. The target is your despised oppressor while also a delicious outlet for your oppressive tendencies.
I always flip the camera, even when the result isn’t flattering, so I must concede that Donald Trump, himself, is often viewed by people like me as both feebly impotent and frightfully omnipotent. Being on the right side doesn't make one immune to demagoguery. Being correct doesn't mean you’re a clear thinker.
I try to avoid the trap by favoring the "impotence" framing. I want to block Trump from power not to thwart his diabolical master schemes, but for the same reason I want to keep a horse out of a hospital.
Wednesday, August 7, 2024
Approaching from "Normality"
How did America, a majority racist nation in 2008, elect a black president? Obama was normal. Smart. Competent. Positive. American. He didn't run as The Black Guy; he ran as a smart, competent, positive American who happened to be black.
How did America go from snide jokes about "faggots" to sharply majority pro-gay rights (including marriage) in 20 years? The movement took the tack of "We just want to love who we love, like any American." Not "a gay thing"; an American thing. The message was delivered by boring, well-dressed, reasonable people, not dudes defiantly flaunting their nipple clamps.
Why will Harris/Walz overwhelmingly win the next election? Positivity, smartness, American. Per those other two outcomes, they'll make the other side look weird and messed up. Not via recipricol snideness and extremity, but approaching from the center. From normality. That's how you do it.
Can someone - anyone? - please absorb the lesson of all this? The moment a critical threshold groks this, that's when life on earth will shift into gear...if we haven't blown ourselves up first.
See my series "A Case Against Empowerment"
They canned Shapiro because 1. Better to push through one breakthrough at a time (you can't have a black lady and a Jew), and 2. The MAGAs are right that the extreme left would not rally around a Jew on the ticket. Both calculations are smart realpolitik, and I heartily agree with the choice.
That said, it makes me extremely edgy to watch Democrats fumf and mumble and hand-wave around this, because nothing's creepier than watching gentiles fumf and mumble and hand-wave around touchy Jewish questions (I know in my mitochondria where that leads). Also: try as I might, I can't muster a gram of excitement at the prospect of a VP who "LOOKS LIKE ME" or whatever the hell the phrase is. Given a choice between a Jewish candidate and a Methodist/Muslim/Catholic/Venusian candidate who's .1% more competent or electible, of course I'd pick the latter every damned time. Tribalism and identity politics are incompatible with the lesson we need to be absorbing right now.
How did America go from snide jokes about "faggots" to sharply majority pro-gay rights (including marriage) in 20 years? The movement took the tack of "We just want to love who we love, like any American." Not "a gay thing"; an American thing. The message was delivered by boring, well-dressed, reasonable people, not dudes defiantly flaunting their nipple clamps.
Why will Harris/Walz overwhelmingly win the next election? Positivity, smartness, American. Per those other two outcomes, they'll make the other side look weird and messed up. Not via recipricol snideness and extremity, but approaching from the center. From normality. That's how you do it.
Can someone - anyone? - please absorb the lesson of all this? The moment a critical threshold groks this, that's when life on earth will shift into gear...if we haven't blown ourselves up first.
See my series "A Case Against Empowerment"
They canned Shapiro because 1. Better to push through one breakthrough at a time (you can't have a black lady and a Jew), and 2. The MAGAs are right that the extreme left would not rally around a Jew on the ticket. Both calculations are smart realpolitik, and I heartily agree with the choice.
That said, it makes me extremely edgy to watch Democrats fumf and mumble and hand-wave around this, because nothing's creepier than watching gentiles fumf and mumble and hand-wave around touchy Jewish questions (I know in my mitochondria where that leads). Also: try as I might, I can't muster a gram of excitement at the prospect of a VP who "LOOKS LIKE ME" or whatever the hell the phrase is. Given a choice between a Jewish candidate and a Methodist/Muslim/Catholic/Venusian candidate who's .1% more competent or electible, of course I'd pick the latter every damned time. Tribalism and identity politics are incompatible with the lesson we need to be absorbing right now.
Friday, August 2, 2024
Missing Chunks
There's one quality tying together my fragmented identities. As an entrepreneur, as an artist (writer and musician), and as a yogi, nothing gets me more excited than to spot something missing in the world. I feel compelled to fill it, if possible. At such moments, I feel called.
This Slog is that. I fill gaps here. Mysteries resolved, errant strands connected, fallacies revealed and dispelled. Many note the eccentric skew of my viewpoints, but they view through the wrong end of the tube. I'm finding fresh explanations, and fresh explanations feel ghostly. They're slippery and eery, and reside far outside our comfort zones. What's comfortable? Ignorance and conformity! But I can't let a status quo sit undisturbed. It's not my nature.
By filling chasms, I become chasm. Inhabiting blind spots, I disappear. While I amiably chatter away, dissuading trepidation and normalizing epiphany, my form dissolves. I'm playing for the other team, or so it seems, in whichever game people might be playing.
I don't say the usual things people say in a world where billions say the same 20 things over and over. I do have conventional thoughts, but I don't feel compelled to offer them, lacking any compulsion to be the Guy saying the Thing; to stick my face into a cut-out and holler "Woah, look at me! I'm that guy! Now it's me saying it!"
No, I pitch in the other stuff. The missing stuff. The unsaid. But as I do so, the stuff remains missing...and I join it! Tail wagged, I fade, though I couldn't feel more vibrantly right here.
The goal was never to be recognized as The Guy Who Supplies Missing Pieces. It's not about me. I work like an ant, eagerly offering sand grains, one after another. Ideally, those efforts would offer people a sense of fullness. Yelpers complaining ignorantly about the greasiness of a Sichuan restaurant might download my cheap, fun-to-use app and quickly get up to speed re: eating in any sort of restaurant. Slog readers behold credible new takes on vexing mysteries. These, along with other efforts (Chowhound being a monumental exception), failed. I'm not embittered, just confused.
But I've had an epiphany: I'm standing on an enormous empty landmass watching a small iceberg crowded with innumerable people drifting away. And, to them, I'm drifting (insofar as they notice). And neither framing, of course, is "right".
So allow me to address my childhood self, who embarked on this experiment. He's sent me many useful notes and reminders (catalogued here), and now I'll toss one back at him, reporting results. Here goes:
This Slog is that. I fill gaps here. Mysteries resolved, errant strands connected, fallacies revealed and dispelled. Many note the eccentric skew of my viewpoints, but they view through the wrong end of the tube. I'm finding fresh explanations, and fresh explanations feel ghostly. They're slippery and eery, and reside far outside our comfort zones. What's comfortable? Ignorance and conformity! But I can't let a status quo sit undisturbed. It's not my nature.
By filling chasms, I become chasm. Inhabiting blind spots, I disappear. While I amiably chatter away, dissuading trepidation and normalizing epiphany, my form dissolves. I'm playing for the other team, or so it seems, in whichever game people might be playing.
I don't say the usual things people say in a world where billions say the same 20 things over and over. I do have conventional thoughts, but I don't feel compelled to offer them, lacking any compulsion to be the Guy saying the Thing; to stick my face into a cut-out and holler "Woah, look at me! I'm that guy! Now it's me saying it!"
No, I pitch in the other stuff. The missing stuff. The unsaid. But as I do so, the stuff remains missing...and I join it! Tail wagged, I fade, though I couldn't feel more vibrantly right here.
The goal was never to be recognized as The Guy Who Supplies Missing Pieces. It's not about me. I work like an ant, eagerly offering sand grains, one after another. Ideally, those efforts would offer people a sense of fullness. Yelpers complaining ignorantly about the greasiness of a Sichuan restaurant might download my cheap, fun-to-use app and quickly get up to speed re: eating in any sort of restaurant. Slog readers behold credible new takes on vexing mysteries. These, along with other efforts (Chowhound being a monumental exception), failed. I'm not embittered, just confused.
But I've had an epiphany: I'm standing on an enormous empty landmass watching a small iceberg crowded with innumerable people drifting away. And, to them, I'm drifting (insofar as they notice). And neither framing, of course, is "right".
So allow me to address my childhood self, who embarked on this experiment. He's sent me many useful notes and reminders (catalogued here), and now I'll toss one back at him, reporting results. Here goes:
Associating oneself with missing chunks doesn't fill gaps, no matter how insightful or ingenious the effort. On the contrary, it makes you a missing chunk! Illuminating the invisible leaves you invisible.
But, most of all: severing from preposterous drama leaves you offstage.
If you're sincere enough to not be merely playing an offstage character as a conceit, congrats for your sincerity, but it means you've vanished. The show happens on-stage, buddy. And you can't separate from it without appearing to separate from it.
Wednesday, July 31, 2024
More on External Result
Following up on my previous posting, here's another sparse effort to explain the primacy of framing:
Tuesday, July 30, 2024
Depending on External Result
Same guy, resorting to an example (good one, too!) to illustrate his point:
In their defense, the ancient Greeks, along with everyone else prior to 1839, had to work a lot harder to grok this concept. The inception of photography, and, later, movies, really brought framing front-of-mind (not that we've done much with it).
For any mystics in the house, note that the internal stuff is equally external, because it's still stuff. Your kernal is pure awareness. Subjectivity parses objects both "inner" and "outer", but you're the parser, not the parsed. You are The Framer.
Of course, the moment you slap that label on, you start identifying as a thing - object, not subject. Can't be helped. Things are more alluring than spookily intangible awareness. So we're back to the races, so to speak, at least until we reframe back to spaciousness (which sounds like some grand, exalted state, but is no more elusive than any other framing).
Sunday, July 28, 2024
Revised Gettysburg Address
Abe, the text looks ok to me, but you leave yourself open to criticism unless you really hammer home your empathy, etc. Don't assume they'll recognize you're the Good Guy here. Please consider the following revisions:
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are sadly engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are regrettably met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come, lamentably, to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave, sadly, their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether heartbreakingly fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we sadly can not dedicate -- we sadly can not consecrate -- we sadly can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and (lamentably) dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our regrettably poor power to add or, unfortunately, detract. The world will, sadly, little note, nor, regretfully, long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be mindfully dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who, sadly, fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored and regrettably dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they, sadly, gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly and heartbreakingly resolve that these lamentably dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not sadly perish from the earth.
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are sadly engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are regrettably met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come, lamentably, to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave, sadly, their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether heartbreakingly fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we sadly can not dedicate -- we sadly can not consecrate -- we sadly can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and (lamentably) dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our regrettably poor power to add or, unfortunately, detract. The world will, sadly, little note, nor, regretfully, long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be mindfully dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who, sadly, fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored and regrettably dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they, sadly, gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly and heartbreakingly resolve that these lamentably dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not sadly perish from the earth.
Saturday, July 27, 2024
Binary Extremism
Extremists both Left and Right are okay with dismantling the American experiment to insulate their feelings and make everything their favorite. Democracy ends not with a bang but an entitled whine.
The extreme Right is further along in this process, so we're correct to focus our attention and resistence there. Moderate conservatism no longer exists, because MAGA extremists have subsumed the whole structure, like a wolf pack taking down an elephant. So that's our big problem at the moment.
But the extreme Left is rife with the same angry kooky performative entitlement, only with different agenda points. And it hasn't yet subsumed the mainstream Left, so it seems as fringe as the extreme Right did pre-MAGA. So, for now, the rant below is just some writer shouting on Twitter for clicks. For now. But imagine a figure cut from this cloth who's charismatic enough and shameless enough to really rile up the crowds, screaming from lecturns about stuff that touches people's emotional buttons and channels their latent rage.
Moderate liberals wouldn't have a chance trying to contain such a figure, because they have only boring things to say. Extremism is, alas, galvanizing. And whiny angry entitlement is like catnip for a society of bored aristocrats who live to cosplay victimhood.
Same as the Right. Same as Trump. It's the same societal predicament.
But America prioritizes freedom of expression over enforced niceness, because dehumanizing those who don’t fit your niceness bill is how extermination happens. The Germans didn’t find my ancestors nice.
Everyone has a different notion of niceness, each as fiercely righteous as yours. The Solomonic answer is tolerance. No contingent (not even if they're certain they're correct) gets to to dictate to the rest of us how to think, speak, or feel. It’s beautiful, though rarely nice, and it requires everyone to tolerate expression they deem intolerable.
Alas, it's notoriously hard to persuade aristocrats, or narcissists (much less aristocratic narcissists), to tolerate an aversion. A princess is increasingly vexed by smaller and smaller mattress peas.
The extreme Right is further along in this process, so we're correct to focus our attention and resistence there. Moderate conservatism no longer exists, because MAGA extremists have subsumed the whole structure, like a wolf pack taking down an elephant. So that's our big problem at the moment.
But the extreme Left is rife with the same angry kooky performative entitlement, only with different agenda points. And it hasn't yet subsumed the mainstream Left, so it seems as fringe as the extreme Right did pre-MAGA. So, for now, the rant below is just some writer shouting on Twitter for clicks. For now. But imagine a figure cut from this cloth who's charismatic enough and shameless enough to really rile up the crowds, screaming from lecturns about stuff that touches people's emotional buttons and channels their latent rage.
Moderate liberals wouldn't have a chance trying to contain such a figure, because they have only boring things to say. Extremism is, alas, galvanizing. And whiny angry entitlement is like catnip for a society of bored aristocrats who live to cosplay victimhood.
Same as the Right. Same as Trump. It's the same societal predicament.
If you don't know the story of the Nazis in Skokie, it's an essential and remarkable document of American values, and you should at least scan the Wikipedia page.Calling someone a cat lady is not nice. The exterminators of millions of my people marching to lament the incompleteness of that operation also is not nice.
But America prioritizes freedom of expression over enforced niceness, because dehumanizing those who don’t fit your niceness bill is how extermination happens. The Germans didn’t find my ancestors nice.
Everyone has a different notion of niceness, each as fiercely righteous as yours. The Solomonic answer is tolerance. No contingent (not even if they're certain they're correct) gets to to dictate to the rest of us how to think, speak, or feel. It’s beautiful, though rarely nice, and it requires everyone to tolerate expression they deem intolerable.
Alas, it's notoriously hard to persuade aristocrats, or narcissists (much less aristocratic narcissists), to tolerate an aversion. A princess is increasingly vexed by smaller and smaller mattress peas.
Sunday, July 21, 2024
Handling Offensive Language
Here's how we solved the "offensive language" issue on Chowhound, in terms of community management and moderation: We weighted Context.
Remember "context"? Consideration of intent? You know, the part completely ignored by the mechanism of detection and calling out of sinful utterance by packs of vigilant anti-racists patrolling social media and rotely pattern-matching terms on their frequently-updated kill lists? What you meant or who you are hold no place in it. Even if you're Albert Schweitzer, if you've used the term, you take the hit. Period.
We opted to handle human language issues humanely. So this is what we came up with: Any provocative language used with obvious anger or disparagement was deleted (our main problem was with the underlying nastiness, not the words themselves). So this was a no-go:
"Benefit of the doubt", just like the olden days! We weren't morality police meting out punishment. Our job was to create an environment for different people to express themselves in different and colorful ways. And if you needed to be shielded from certain words you found upsetting, we suggested that you reconsider whether the Internet was really for you. It's not the Internet's job to shower you with only your most favorite words, opinions, and ideas. It wasn't Chowhound's role to foster an experience to your perfect specification. That's not community, that's a narcissist's reflecting pond.
It all came down to considerations many of those same people would claim to cherish: tolerance and diversity. Communities tend to enforce conformity of expression and opinion, and we fought that dynamic, recognizing Chowhound would be best if it drew the richest, broadest, and most varied cast of characters. We refused to buff our conversation into an NPR-friendly sheen to gratify a fragile contingent, even though I myself carried around a WNYC tote bag.
My favorite poster was FEDEX GUY - my actual FEDEX delivery guy, fwiw - who'd fling terse, misspelled, highly vulgar tips for obscurities no one else had on-radar. He did not fit in, which I recognized as a shortcoming on our part, but I loved seeing him trudge in amid the Batali acolytes (out-squealing each other over some to-die-for sweet corn crema) with his coarse language and brusque manner. My philosophy of community morality was Rodney Kingism. "Can't we all get along?"
Here's another thing I learned: once you allow people to start weighing in on what offends them, there is literally no end to it. People would much rather talk about that than tacos or har gow. Luckily, in those days, you could still tell a crowd to cut it out and have only a few of them stomp off in a tiff (one of our most veteran posters decided she couldn't remain part of a community where the term "White Trash" was permissible, though the term appeared in the title of a bestselling cookbook, and was never used pejoratively).
Remember "context"? Consideration of intent? You know, the part completely ignored by the mechanism of detection and calling out of sinful utterance by packs of vigilant anti-racists patrolling social media and rotely pattern-matching terms on their frequently-updated kill lists? What you meant or who you are hold no place in it. Even if you're Albert Schweitzer, if you've used the term, you take the hit. Period.
We opted to handle human language issues humanely. So this is what we came up with: Any provocative language used with obvious anger or disparagement was deleted (our main problem was with the underlying nastiness, not the words themselves). So this was a no-go:
"The Jewy kitchen served me two lousy meatballs."But provocative language that was not obviously angry or disparaging could stay. For example:
"The knishes were Jewy wonderment".More sharply provocative terms received greater scrutiny, but still weren't rotely deleted. "Don't miss the stupendous kike kasha!" would have been permissible, because intent is unmistakably positive (though cloddish).
Kids, "kikes" was a naughty term for Jews. You haven't heard it because we made the word go away, which is why everyone just loves Jews now. See? It works!The inevitably objection was: "But how can you know?" And our reasonable answer was "If you're unsure, it's clearly not 'obviously angry or disparaging.'"
"Benefit of the doubt", just like the olden days! We weren't morality police meting out punishment. Our job was to create an environment for different people to express themselves in different and colorful ways. And if you needed to be shielded from certain words you found upsetting, we suggested that you reconsider whether the Internet was really for you. It's not the Internet's job to shower you with only your most favorite words, opinions, and ideas. It wasn't Chowhound's role to foster an experience to your perfect specification. That's not community, that's a narcissist's reflecting pond.
It all came down to considerations many of those same people would claim to cherish: tolerance and diversity. Communities tend to enforce conformity of expression and opinion, and we fought that dynamic, recognizing Chowhound would be best if it drew the richest, broadest, and most varied cast of characters. We refused to buff our conversation into an NPR-friendly sheen to gratify a fragile contingent, even though I myself carried around a WNYC tote bag.
My favorite poster was FEDEX GUY - my actual FEDEX delivery guy, fwiw - who'd fling terse, misspelled, highly vulgar tips for obscurities no one else had on-radar. He did not fit in, which I recognized as a shortcoming on our part, but I loved seeing him trudge in amid the Batali acolytes (out-squealing each other over some to-die-for sweet corn crema) with his coarse language and brusque manner. My philosophy of community morality was Rodney Kingism. "Can't we all get along?"
Here's another thing I learned: once you allow people to start weighing in on what offends them, there is literally no end to it. People would much rather talk about that than tacos or har gow. Luckily, in those days, you could still tell a crowd to cut it out and have only a few of them stomp off in a tiff (one of our most veteran posters decided she couldn't remain part of a community where the term "White Trash" was permissible, though the term appeared in the title of a bestselling cookbook, and was never used pejoratively).
Saturday, July 20, 2024
Surgery and Noodles and Indulgent Self-Dramatization
A couple of postings ago, I said:
What's really going to happen? I'll have the surgery, and it'll suck, and then it'll get better, and the noodles will be awesome and the luxe flying will be a mild tickle and then something else will suck and get better. We're raindrops slowly working down windows, not heroic protagonists.
I'm not ashamed to publicly confess my backsliding and foolishness. Being agile about framing doesn't mean I always choose perfectly. If I can catch myself within two or three days, that's viable. Just so long as I don't spend decades or lifetimes steeped in nonsense!
I'm bragging about it. I'm flying business class to Kuala Lumpur, in a cool private compartment, and staying several weeks to devour street food, after swanning around Doha, and I relish your envy. I'm mostly just curious to see what saying this feels like.How did it feel? Well, in the aftermath it felt, as it always does (which is why people need to chain smoke this stuff) tacky and insufficient and fast-fading. And the dramatic arc-building and poignant complaining left me feeling like crap for a couple of days. I foolishly wrote myself - framed myself - into melodrama. I cocked up a whole story for myself to feel a part of, which is what I used to do years ago, in my misery, before I learned to opt out of dramatization and got real.
What's really going to happen? I'll have the surgery, and it'll suck, and then it'll get better, and the noodles will be awesome and the luxe flying will be a mild tickle and then something else will suck and get better. We're raindrops slowly working down windows, not heroic protagonists.
I'm not ashamed to publicly confess my backsliding and foolishness. Being agile about framing doesn't mean I always choose perfectly. If I can catch myself within two or three days, that's viable. Just so long as I don't spend decades or lifetimes steeped in nonsense!
Friday, July 19, 2024
The Factor of Relevancy in Trumpism
John Podhoretz, the intellectual editor of the conservative journal Commentary, tweeted this during Trump's typically deranged convention speech last night:
Before you sneer with completely appropriate contempt, consider one word: "Relevancy." Roll it around in your mind, because it's an underexplored factor in the MAGA phenomenon (and in all authoritarian grabs).
What we're seeing from our pricey ringside view of authoritiarian takeover is not just the usual greed and ambition driving enablers and go-alongs. There's also something more relateable. And this calls for an analogy!
Here's how I replied - or, actually, replied to Tom Nichols' ridicule of Podhoretz:
Twitter doesn't offer space to really drive home my point, which is about relevance. No film critic can remain relevant while calling crap movies crap. So they don't. And that's 1. normal and 2. squirmingly unpleasant for them.
Film critics are nothing like your nephew Josh who hits the multiplex to catch up on developments in the Marvel Universe or to see stuff blow up. Film critics study Bergman and Tarkovsky. They're highbrows, every one of them. But none would last a week if they let their contempt show, because they write mostly for Josh. It's an excruciating gig. Imagine if food critics were compelled to eat mostly in chains, and had to find something non-snotty to say about them, over and over and over again.
If you want to make a living at it, you can't make yourself irrelevant. You must eat the dog food, and like it. And the same is true for principled conservative writers and editors in a movement completely subsumed by Trumpism. They nearly all loathe him, but their choice is binary: play along and remain relevant, or stomp off and disappear forever and let their family starve.
You or I might indignantly demand that they take a goddam stand, even if it costs them their careers and relationships and ability to feed their children. This is because we are disgusting narcissists who see other people as two dimensional cartoons. How about you? How eager would you be to make yourself irrelevant in your world and go find yourself a new career? Let's play a game: Think of something that sucks about your line of work (I'm sure you can come up with something!), then quit, then go find another whole realm. I'll wait!
Real people play along to stay relevant. Democrats do it all the time. How often do you self-edit to avoid clashing with the expanding litany of taboo thought and speech? How hesitant are you to engage on social media with even mildly non-doctrinaire conversation? How clean do you keep your nose to avoid the withering glare of staunch mouthy cohorts, present and future? How much of yourself have you self-smothered to conform to conceits you privately consider daft?
Podhoretz' tweet was a glimmer of truth, encased in a desperate cry for help, masquerading as a snarky rebuke. Any conservative publicly rebuking Trumpism will lose career, context, and relevence. And if that sounds like the sort of brave stand you yourself would heroically take, no. No, you wouldn't. I know human beings, and here's what they do: they fantasize about being stand-up valiant people - and, under the cover of anonymity or while silently daydreaming, they'll be flamboyantly vocal, stockpiling mental evidence of their gnarly heroism. But they won’t put career and social standing at risk to take a stand. People don't do that.
And, worse of all, it's not evil. It's relateable. God help us.
What we're seeing from our pricey ringside view of authoritiarian takeover is not just the usual greed and ambition driving enablers and go-alongs. There's also something more relateable. And this calls for an analogy!
Here's how I replied - or, actually, replied to Tom Nichols' ridicule of Podhoretz:
Film critics are nothing like your nephew Josh who hits the multiplex to catch up on developments in the Marvel Universe or to see stuff blow up. Film critics study Bergman and Tarkovsky. They're highbrows, every one of them. But none would last a week if they let their contempt show, because they write mostly for Josh. It's an excruciating gig. Imagine if food critics were compelled to eat mostly in chains, and had to find something non-snotty to say about them, over and over and over again.
If you want to make a living at it, you can't make yourself irrelevant. You must eat the dog food, and like it. And the same is true for principled conservative writers and editors in a movement completely subsumed by Trumpism. They nearly all loathe him, but their choice is binary: play along and remain relevant, or stomp off and disappear forever and let their family starve.
You or I might indignantly demand that they take a goddam stand, even if it costs them their careers and relationships and ability to feed their children. This is because we are disgusting narcissists who see other people as two dimensional cartoons. How about you? How eager would you be to make yourself irrelevant in your world and go find yourself a new career? Let's play a game: Think of something that sucks about your line of work (I'm sure you can come up with something!), then quit, then go find another whole realm. I'll wait!
Real people play along to stay relevant. Democrats do it all the time. How often do you self-edit to avoid clashing with the expanding litany of taboo thought and speech? How hesitant are you to engage on social media with even mildly non-doctrinaire conversation? How clean do you keep your nose to avoid the withering glare of staunch mouthy cohorts, present and future? How much of yourself have you self-smothered to conform to conceits you privately consider daft?
Podhoretz' tweet was a glimmer of truth, encased in a desperate cry for help, masquerading as a snarky rebuke. Any conservative publicly rebuking Trumpism will lose career, context, and relevence. And if that sounds like the sort of brave stand you yourself would heroically take, no. No, you wouldn't. I know human beings, and here's what they do: they fantasize about being stand-up valiant people - and, under the cover of anonymity or while silently daydreaming, they'll be flamboyantly vocal, stockpiling mental evidence of their gnarly heroism. But they won’t put career and social standing at risk to take a stand. People don't do that.
And, worse of all, it's not evil. It's relateable. God help us.
Wednesday, July 17, 2024
The Worst of Times, The Best of Noodles...
“I saw this guy hitting himself in the head with a hammer. I asked, "Hey, buddy, why are you hitting yourself in the head with a hammer?” Guy replied “Because it feels so good when I stop!”
— First joke I learned as a kid
I spent a lot of 2023 either in bed or in hospital due to various health maladies. 2024 hasn't been much better, adding a shoulder meltdown (I'm walking around with a splint, like a Revolutionary War soldier). I'm currently on hold for comprehensive shoulder surgery, whose recovery involves months of unremitting childbirth-style pain. Final recovery in six months, best case. And then I have four other surgeries queued up, including the same on my other shoulder (which is 50% as bad and gaining fast). I don't normally complain (unless there's some insight to be shared in the process), but you'll see why in just a minute.
I recently observed that people in their late 50s and early 60s ought to consider spending a bit more. Plus I need a reward to look forward to during my recovery, to enjoy before I undergo the remaining surgeries. So I have a plan!
The opposite of Portugal is Malaysia (and, like many antitheses, they touch; there is a small remaining strain of Portuguese culture in Malaysia, including one tiny remaining settlement, though this Portuguese connection is not where I'm headed with this). I showed last week how the soul of Malaysian and Portuguese pasta resemble each other, but that was the most tenuous possible stretch. Really, if you want SEA noodles - or anything the least bit Chinese - you won't find anything of the sort here. I've had maybe three East or Southeast Asian meals in 18 months, all on trips outside Portugal, and have gone a bit gastronomically stir crazy, despite eating like a god every blessed meal here. What's more, I've been storing up Malaysian food tips for quite sometime via Google Maps chowhounding.
So here's the plan. Six months after surgery, I will fly to Kuala Lumpur and stay at Tian Jing Hotel, superbly located and reasonably priced in Chinatown, full of street food. I'm bad with jet lag, so I will fly on Etihad Airline, which offers free stopovers in Doha, taking a few days to acclimate and to finally eat in this Persian restaurant I've been fascinated with for years.
Because I need a really shiny reward to look forward to, I'll treat myself with two indulgences I normally wouldn't take in a million years:
1. Because I will be weak and feeble, I'll fly business class (Etihad is super luxe in business class, and also surprisingly reasonable - circa $2800 round trip), and...
2. I'm bragging about it. I'm flying business class to Kuala Lumpur, in a cool private compartment, and staying several weeks to devour street food, after swanning around Doha, and I relish your envy. I'm mostly just curious to see what saying this feels like.
I'm normally as distant from Judaism as a Pashtun warlord, but there's a line from the Torah I like very much: "If you're going to eat pork, the juice should run down your chin."
I soon recanted the boast, the complaint, and really the entire fucking thing.
— First joke I learned as a kid
I spent a lot of 2023 either in bed or in hospital due to various health maladies. 2024 hasn't been much better, adding a shoulder meltdown (I'm walking around with a splint, like a Revolutionary War soldier). I'm currently on hold for comprehensive shoulder surgery, whose recovery involves months of unremitting childbirth-style pain. Final recovery in six months, best case. And then I have four other surgeries queued up, including the same on my other shoulder (which is 50% as bad and gaining fast). I don't normally complain (unless there's some insight to be shared in the process), but you'll see why in just a minute.
I recently observed that people in their late 50s and early 60s ought to consider spending a bit more. Plus I need a reward to look forward to during my recovery, to enjoy before I undergo the remaining surgeries. So I have a plan!
The opposite of Portugal is Malaysia (and, like many antitheses, they touch; there is a small remaining strain of Portuguese culture in Malaysia, including one tiny remaining settlement, though this Portuguese connection is not where I'm headed with this). I showed last week how the soul of Malaysian and Portuguese pasta resemble each other, but that was the most tenuous possible stretch. Really, if you want SEA noodles - or anything the least bit Chinese - you won't find anything of the sort here. I've had maybe three East or Southeast Asian meals in 18 months, all on trips outside Portugal, and have gone a bit gastronomically stir crazy, despite eating like a god every blessed meal here. What's more, I've been storing up Malaysian food tips for quite sometime via Google Maps chowhounding.
So here's the plan. Six months after surgery, I will fly to Kuala Lumpur and stay at Tian Jing Hotel, superbly located and reasonably priced in Chinatown, full of street food. I'm bad with jet lag, so I will fly on Etihad Airline, which offers free stopovers in Doha, taking a few days to acclimate and to finally eat in this Persian restaurant I've been fascinated with for years.
Because I need a really shiny reward to look forward to, I'll treat myself with two indulgences I normally wouldn't take in a million years:
1. Because I will be weak and feeble, I'll fly business class (Etihad is super luxe in business class, and also surprisingly reasonable - circa $2800 round trip), and...
2. I'm bragging about it. I'm flying business class to Kuala Lumpur, in a cool private compartment, and staying several weeks to devour street food, after swanning around Doha, and I relish your envy. I'm mostly just curious to see what saying this feels like.
I'm normally as distant from Judaism as a Pashtun warlord, but there's a line from the Torah I like very much: "If you're going to eat pork, the juice should run down your chin."
I soon recanted the boast, the complaint, and really the entire fucking thing.
ChatGPT Guesses Dish Names
I had ChatGPT identify some food pictures I've recently taken. It did extraordinarily well.
Guess: Borscht (Ukraine)
Result: Correct
Guess: Cassoulet (France)
Result: Correct
Guess: Garlic Stir-Fried Water Spinach (Kangkung Belacan)
Result: Incorrect (Stir-fried Snow pea leaves, Cantonese)
Guess: Har Gow (Cantonese) aka shrimp dumplings
Result: Correct
Guess: Cozido à Portuguesa (Portugal)
Result: Correct
Guess: Tagine with prunes and beef (Morocco)
Result: Correct
Guess: Francesinha à Moda do Porto (Portugal)
Result: Incorrect (Bitoque, Portugal)
Guess: Portuguese Hake (Portugal)
Result: Correct
Guess: Arroz de Pato (Portugal) aka Duck Rice
Result: Correct
Guess: Feijoada à Transmontana (Portugal)
Result: Incorrect (Feijoada de Javali, Portugal)
Guess: Maçã Assada (Portugal) aka Baked Apple
Result: Correct
Me: “Bonus question: There's something slightly unusual about the way they prepared this one."
Reply: "Roasting the apple in a way similar to how meat or vegetables might be roasted, which is less common for fruit."
Me: "Very close....they used exactly the Portuguese method of roasting fish."
Guess: Hailam Mee (South East Asia)
Result: Correct
Result: Correct
Result: Correct
Result: Incorrect (Stir-fried Snow pea leaves, Cantonese)
Result: Correct
Result: Correct
Result: Correct
Result: Incorrect (Bitoque, Portugal)
Result: Correct
Result: Correct
Result: Incorrect (Feijoada de Javali, Portugal)
Result: Correct
Reply: "Roasting the apple in a way similar to how meat or vegetables might be roasted, which is less common for fruit."
Me: "Very close....they used exactly the Portuguese method of roasting fish."
Result: Correct
Tuesday, July 16, 2024
SEA Food Glossary
I've only been to South East Asia once - to Singapore - and I was overwhelmed by menus and foodie conversation full of Chinese terms - and, worse, local pidgin versions of Chinese terms - describing dishes we know by other names. I saw very few unfamiliar items there, but nearly 90% of the terminology was lost on me. Yikes!
I've since looked and looked, but no one has produced a decent glossary. A complete one would be impossibly broad (working far into Indian, Chinese, and Indonesian cuisines, just to name three), but I've created one (PDF download) with the help of ChatGPT focusing on the Chinese end of the spectrum, whose names are less familiar (I'm already cool with roti, biryani, rendang, et al).
It contains nearly 100 terms, 75% of which may be unfamiliar for serious American/European hounds (I included super famous items just for completeness). The descriptions should jar your memory, but always remember the Limster trick: Google Images is your best friend during moments of Chowzheimer's Disease. If you're an experienced eater, never google food names. Google-image them!
Other glossaries I've built (none downloadable):
Filipino Food Glossary
French Food Glossary
Oaxacan Food Glossary
Finally, along similar lines (but so so so much more), the best and most ambitious thing I've ever built: my smartphone app, Eat Everywhere.
I've since looked and looked, but no one has produced a decent glossary. A complete one would be impossibly broad (working far into Indian, Chinese, and Indonesian cuisines, just to name three), but I've created one (PDF download) with the help of ChatGPT focusing on the Chinese end of the spectrum, whose names are less familiar (I'm already cool with roti, biryani, rendang, et al).
It contains nearly 100 terms, 75% of which may be unfamiliar for serious American/European hounds (I included super famous items just for completeness). The descriptions should jar your memory, but always remember the Limster trick: Google Images is your best friend during moments of Chowzheimer's Disease. If you're an experienced eater, never google food names. Google-image them!
Other glossaries I've built (none downloadable):
Filipino Food Glossary
French Food Glossary
Oaxacan Food Glossary
Finally, along similar lines (but so so so much more), the best and most ambitious thing I've ever built: my smartphone app, Eat Everywhere.
Monday, July 15, 2024
Soulful Serendipity Simpatico
Left: Veal spaghetti at Chafariz Snack Bar, Setúbal, Portugal
Right: Hailam Mee at Yut Kee Restaurant, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
There's often deeper simpatico in serendipitous similarity (soulfully rendered) than in some hasty attempt at authenticity.
Processing Hamas Support Through the Lens of Vietnam Protest
It's 1970-ish. I'm a bright eight year old. Carried by the moment, I choose sides, aligning with the younger generation which is touchy about being sent to distant rice paddies to murder Vietnamese strangers and likely return in a coffin (as did several neighbors). The other side, with their crewcuts and cufflinks, seem morally disconnected, so I instinctually chose my side. We had Jimi Hendrix, they had Perry Como. There was never any doubt.
I had a thumbnail notion of the Cold War and I grokked the logic of domino theory. Evil tends to expand, and the cancer must be stemmed. But Republicans seemed hyperbolic in their anti-Communist paranoia. What's worse, they kept calling people like me "Commies" - an awfully disturbing association given their stated desire to mow down Communists en masse. Maybe we were next, after they'd won the rice paddies.
Then Jane Fonda went on the radio over there to spew propaganda at conscripted troops risking their lives, and I felt my first-ever pang of Centrist moderation. Same with activists who expressed solidarity with the Viet Cong. The Left had gone too far - the Viet Cong were plainly abhorrent - but I still dearly wanted us out of Vietnam.
At my tender age, I held a rather narrow view, wired into the immediate. Local kids were dying in distant jungles. Winning the war would scarcely improve my life, but merely serve the paranoid whims of creepy shitheads like Richard Nixon. It seemed simple.
Now, with the better part of a century of experience, I better understand the view of the creepy shitheads. Isolationism had been strongly debunked only three decades prior. I still would oppose intervention in Vietnam, but now I see complexity where I previously beheld simplicity. It's not an improved me, just one with more framing options.
I'm no expert on the Middle East conflict, but I know enough to firmly conclude that there is no righteous party. Each side claims righteousness by reciting a litany of atrocities committed by the Other, and both litanies are full-to-bursting. And, as I predicted, the Israelis were cynically - and quite successfully - baited into barbarism by the Hamas attack.
But that's me, with my broad, higher framing. Younger people, more narrowly framed, behold the latest barbarism in a non-contextualized freeze frame of Right Now. And they're not entirely wrong. Barbarism is barbaric, regardless of one’s litany of atrocity. If you slap a kid in public, your statement of justification will do you little good. You're now The Child Slapper. Never mind that this was the kid’s plan all along.
I use my Vietnam memories to better relate to the Left's Middle East take, generally. Regarding extremists who've gone as far as to embrace Hamas out of rote solidarity with the enemy of perceived bad guys, I recall the somewhat milder contempt I felt for Viet Cong boosterism. At the time, I could distantly relate to the fools who chose that route. So I revive that impression in my effort to re-associate Hamas cosplayers with civilization; to at least distantly relate to fools who went that route.
I had a thumbnail notion of the Cold War and I grokked the logic of domino theory. Evil tends to expand, and the cancer must be stemmed. But Republicans seemed hyperbolic in their anti-Communist paranoia. What's worse, they kept calling people like me "Commies" - an awfully disturbing association given their stated desire to mow down Communists en masse. Maybe we were next, after they'd won the rice paddies.
Then Jane Fonda went on the radio over there to spew propaganda at conscripted troops risking their lives, and I felt my first-ever pang of Centrist moderation. Same with activists who expressed solidarity with the Viet Cong. The Left had gone too far - the Viet Cong were plainly abhorrent - but I still dearly wanted us out of Vietnam.
At my tender age, I held a rather narrow view, wired into the immediate. Local kids were dying in distant jungles. Winning the war would scarcely improve my life, but merely serve the paranoid whims of creepy shitheads like Richard Nixon. It seemed simple.
Now, with the better part of a century of experience, I better understand the view of the creepy shitheads. Isolationism had been strongly debunked only three decades prior. I still would oppose intervention in Vietnam, but now I see complexity where I previously beheld simplicity. It's not an improved me, just one with more framing options.
I'm no expert on the Middle East conflict, but I know enough to firmly conclude that there is no righteous party. Each side claims righteousness by reciting a litany of atrocities committed by the Other, and both litanies are full-to-bursting. And, as I predicted, the Israelis were cynically - and quite successfully - baited into barbarism by the Hamas attack.
But that's me, with my broad, higher framing. Younger people, more narrowly framed, behold the latest barbarism in a non-contextualized freeze frame of Right Now. And they're not entirely wrong. Barbarism is barbaric, regardless of one’s litany of atrocity. If you slap a kid in public, your statement of justification will do you little good. You're now The Child Slapper. Never mind that this was the kid’s plan all along.
I use my Vietnam memories to better relate to the Left's Middle East take, generally. Regarding extremists who've gone as far as to embrace Hamas out of rote solidarity with the enemy of perceived bad guys, I recall the somewhat milder contempt I felt for Viet Cong boosterism. At the time, I could distantly relate to the fools who chose that route. So I revive that impression in my effort to re-associate Hamas cosplayers with civilization; to at least distantly relate to fools who went that route.
Saturday, July 13, 2024
Just Run-of-the-Mill Recent Eats
Restaurant Safibel is a fish restaurant run by an elderly woman who does pretty much everything. She's harried and grim, yet insists on baking desserts herself, a rarity since perfectly good bakeries stand ready to supply. Her nut tarts are exquisite. I'm pretty sure I'm the only customer ever to compliment her for them. Here, that actually means something.
The Bombay-born chef of Leitaria Montalvao knew I was coming and specially prepared an off-menu dopiaza just for me - perhaps the first ever cooked in Portugal.
None of them know my background. I'm just the exuberant American who comes around. But I'm eating extremely well here in Setúbal, pretty much the Utica of Portugal. No one understands how great this place is, including the natives. The small community of American immigrants sticks to shiny joints on the main drag.
I'm the only chowhound in this entire town. Perhaps a bit lonely, but I can't complain, as I'm like a kid running freely around a chocolate factory. Still nowhere near bored, and I've scarcely made a dent in the options of a town with a population smaller than Green Bay, WI.
Dr. Becky Science Videos and the Mystery of Dark Matter
There are vast numbers of people of varying qualification explaining science news on YouTube. Especially astro-physics, which attracts more laymen attention than, say, molecular biology.
Becky Smethurst, an astrophysicist at the University of Oxford who goes by "Dr. Becky" (because of course she does), has blasted right by all of them. When a given piece of astronomy news hits, all the YouTubers cover it, but Dr. Becky's channel inevitably produces terser, cleaner, clearer, saner treatment. And her graphics and charts are beautifully selected.
Those eyeballs don't glue themselves, however, so Dr. Becky compensates for lack of clickbait hyperbole via general exuberance and cuteness (every video is followed by a blooper reel where, tee-hee, she mispronounces, like, Chandrasekhar or nucleosynthesis).
Me, I disregard the spoonful of sugar and go straight for the medicine. It's great to have astrophysics news directly from someone in that community. You can really get a sense of the momentary consensus.
To bury the lead, it's impossible to overstate the importance of dark matter as a scientific mystery. A mere 5% of the universe is composed of material we've observed or theorized. The rest of it...who knows?
We're working like gangbusters to figure it out, but you can't exactly stay abreast of news because there is no news, per se. We know literally nothing about dark matter because it's only inferred. If your husband often comes home late from work but his office phone line pepetually goes to voicemail at 5pm, you can be reasonably certain there's another woman...but only as a theoretical notion, not an actual person. It's exactly like that.
Dark matter represents a scientific crossroads that will be remembered as long as there are humans to remember. It's a much higher-level mystery than the rest. It's worth taking your vitamins and losing a few pounds to improve your odds of finding out in this lifetime.
Naturally, a splinter group has arisen to insist that dark matter is not real, and that it's just that we fundamentally misunderstand gravity. They propose that gravity, unlike other basic physics laws, varies in different circumstances, and they're hellbent on finding anomalous gravity situations, each of which sparks headlines about the death of dark matter.
The leading cadre are the MOND (Modified Newtonian Dynamics) supporters, who apparently just got a boost from some strange gravitational lensing results, as explained by another YouTuber, Sabine Hossenfelder (who at this point is more science explainer than scientist, and she was never directly connected to astrophysics). Dr. Becky hasn't covered the gravitational lensing paper, so I suspect Hossenfelder's enthusiasm was premature. But we'll see. I'm MOND skeptical, but nobody is dismissing it out of hand.
Two Dr. Becky videos to get you started:
How do we know how much dark matter there is in the Universe? - a great 16 minute tutorial to bring you up to date.
The search for dark matter on Jupiter - an extremely kooky proposition, since dark matter is normally assumed to be way out there, and certainly not in our neighborhood.
Becky Smethurst, an astrophysicist at the University of Oxford who goes by "Dr. Becky" (because of course she does), has blasted right by all of them. When a given piece of astronomy news hits, all the YouTubers cover it, but Dr. Becky's channel inevitably produces terser, cleaner, clearer, saner treatment. And her graphics and charts are beautifully selected.
Those eyeballs don't glue themselves, however, so Dr. Becky compensates for lack of clickbait hyperbole via general exuberance and cuteness (every video is followed by a blooper reel where, tee-hee, she mispronounces, like, Chandrasekhar or nucleosynthesis).
Me, I disregard the spoonful of sugar and go straight for the medicine. It's great to have astrophysics news directly from someone in that community. You can really get a sense of the momentary consensus.
To bury the lead, it's impossible to overstate the importance of dark matter as a scientific mystery. A mere 5% of the universe is composed of material we've observed or theorized. The rest of it...who knows?
We're working like gangbusters to figure it out, but you can't exactly stay abreast of news because there is no news, per se. We know literally nothing about dark matter because it's only inferred. If your husband often comes home late from work but his office phone line pepetually goes to voicemail at 5pm, you can be reasonably certain there's another woman...but only as a theoretical notion, not an actual person. It's exactly like that.
Dark matter represents a scientific crossroads that will be remembered as long as there are humans to remember. It's a much higher-level mystery than the rest. It's worth taking your vitamins and losing a few pounds to improve your odds of finding out in this lifetime.
Naturally, a splinter group has arisen to insist that dark matter is not real, and that it's just that we fundamentally misunderstand gravity. They propose that gravity, unlike other basic physics laws, varies in different circumstances, and they're hellbent on finding anomalous gravity situations, each of which sparks headlines about the death of dark matter.
The leading cadre are the MOND (Modified Newtonian Dynamics) supporters, who apparently just got a boost from some strange gravitational lensing results, as explained by another YouTuber, Sabine Hossenfelder (who at this point is more science explainer than scientist, and she was never directly connected to astrophysics). Dr. Becky hasn't covered the gravitational lensing paper, so I suspect Hossenfelder's enthusiasm was premature. But we'll see. I'm MOND skeptical, but nobody is dismissing it out of hand.
Two Dr. Becky videos to get you started:
How do we know how much dark matter there is in the Universe? - a great 16 minute tutorial to bring you up to date.
The search for dark matter on Jupiter - an extremely kooky proposition, since dark matter is normally assumed to be way out there, and certainly not in our neighborhood.
Friday, July 12, 2024
Apple $232
So when Apple's new improved Siri comes out next year and some problem with it gets tons of press, and the stock price falls below $200, you'll all buy shares without my pushing you into it, right?
On the one hand, it takes patience to wait out these long Apple cycles. On the other hand, taxes are awfully low on long term capital gains!
And, speaking of cycles and patience, the stock market is white hot right now. When everyone is losing their mind buying hand over fist, the smart move is to sell. And vice versa. Selling now ensures you'll have the cash to pick up bargains in the coming downturn.
On the one hand, it takes patience to wait out these long Apple cycles. On the other hand, taxes are awfully low on long term capital gains!
And, speaking of cycles and patience, the stock market is white hot right now. When everyone is losing their mind buying hand over fist, the smart move is to sell. And vice versa. Selling now ensures you'll have the cash to pick up bargains in the coming downturn.
Sunday, July 7, 2024
The Rehashing Mind
I'm easily confused, so I ponder and ponder until I've brewed up some insight. Even if it takes decades! I'll go to the ends of the earth to understand better when things don't make sense to me.
I've suddenly realized, after decades of gear-spinning, that this inclination is 100% normal. Everyone does this; they nurse their confusion points, unconsciously spin gears, and periodically rehash hot topics for reconsideration. But there's an essential difference in my case: I don't dramatize it.
Sit in the window of any urban coffee shop and watch pedestrians stroll by. They're palpably consumed with mental rehashing of sore points. Re-litigating old arguments, contriving more clever responses to That Horrible Thing That Person Said, and reexamining for the hundred thousandth time their waistline, their bank balance, and ten thousand familiar points of aggrieved confusion. And scant few of them exhibit any joy.
I do what they do, but (thanks to lots of meditation) without the angst. By opting out of self-triggering and stress, I enjoy some bandwidth - some peaceful spaciousness - to muse bemusedly. There's room for insight to gather and connections to be made as sundry flips and framings are tried on for size. La dee dah. And the insights bring joy.
I'm not desperately trying to seize the reins, straighten it all out, and make things go better. I dispassionately peer at knots, obstructions, and outcomes through a microscope, crisply decked out in my starched laboratory smock, while nearly everyone else screams and flails within a virtual reality helmet perma-strapped to their heads. They experience no distance; no remove.
Summing up: The mind’s rehashing faculty can be used for contemplation as well as for the standard neurotic self-torture. In either case, we follow instinct, aiming to trigger an epiphany which might reframe the matter and put it to rest. But you can't force it. You can't squeeze it. You can't push a string! As in all sorts of learning, it's most effective to adopt a playful, childlike approach.
I've suddenly realized, after decades of gear-spinning, that this inclination is 100% normal. Everyone does this; they nurse their confusion points, unconsciously spin gears, and periodically rehash hot topics for reconsideration. But there's an essential difference in my case: I don't dramatize it.
Sit in the window of any urban coffee shop and watch pedestrians stroll by. They're palpably consumed with mental rehashing of sore points. Re-litigating old arguments, contriving more clever responses to That Horrible Thing That Person Said, and reexamining for the hundred thousandth time their waistline, their bank balance, and ten thousand familiar points of aggrieved confusion. And scant few of them exhibit any joy.
I do what they do, but (thanks to lots of meditation) without the angst. By opting out of self-triggering and stress, I enjoy some bandwidth - some peaceful spaciousness - to muse bemusedly. There's room for insight to gather and connections to be made as sundry flips and framings are tried on for size. La dee dah. And the insights bring joy.
I'm not desperately trying to seize the reins, straighten it all out, and make things go better. I dispassionately peer at knots, obstructions, and outcomes through a microscope, crisply decked out in my starched laboratory smock, while nearly everyone else screams and flails within a virtual reality helmet perma-strapped to their heads. They experience no distance; no remove.
Here's how they reach that point: at first, they pretended to enjoy fake drama - like seeking out rollercoasters and horror movies for momentary thrills. But having over-invested in the pretending, they lose cognizance that it was their choice to begin with. The world freezes into malignity as they forget that the whole proposition was - and remains - elective. They forget their freedom to reframe!For most people, the tedious replaying of woeful mental tapes feels like torture. Nothing good ever pops out. No golden ticket! But the rehashing is not the problem. If you can relax into it, and toy with it, and dilate rather than constrict - like learning to steer into a skid! - it becomes contemplation, sparking epiphany and insight. It's a framing thing!
Summing up: The mind’s rehashing faculty can be used for contemplation as well as for the standard neurotic self-torture. In either case, we follow instinct, aiming to trigger an epiphany which might reframe the matter and put it to rest. But you can't force it. You can't squeeze it. You can't push a string! As in all sorts of learning, it's most effective to adopt a playful, childlike approach.
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