I was in a bar in Austin, and though it was only mildly crowded, I could not for the life of me attract the bartender's attention.
As time ticked by, and the situation became increasingly preposterous, patrons near me grew aware of the situation, expressing bemused solidarity and watching to see what I'd do.
"Middle-aged men are not supposed to jump," I announced to the small crowd. "It's almost assumed that we can't; that middle-aged femurs and hip bones won't, like, allow it. So it totally freaks people out when it happens. If I jump up right now, it would change the bar's energy. Conversational volume would dip 30%. And the bartender's attention would focus on me as tightly as if I'd pulled out a shotgun."
I gave my new friends a moment to digest this- to weigh it in their imaginations - and then, maintaining the most neutral, bored Depeche Mode expression on my face, I hopped a couple vertical feet in the air, calmly landing right back in my previous posture. As if it had never happened.
Everything proceeded as I'd predicted. And I immediately got my beer.
See also The "Rice Chex" Method to Standing Out in a Crowd and Two Strategies For Deflecting Cellphone Loudmouths
Tuesday, January 29, 2019
Monday, January 28, 2019
Four Trendy Enigmas of Retail Engagement
"Take All the Time You Need!"
This one is two enigmas fused together. You're seated at a restaurant with an extensive menu. The waiter shows up 45 seconds later, briskly intent on taking your order. It has not occurred to him that you might be less than ready, even though your head's obviously buried deeply in your menu (which he knows contains 70 gajillion entrees and combo deals), and you haven't made the slightest eye contact to indicate readiness. Despite all cues and all logic, he is blithely confident that of course you're ready to order. Hey, is this not a restaurant? Are you here to eat, or to dick around with your menu?
You ask him for another minute, he indulgently nods and takes off, and you can kiss that mofo goodbye. He will not return before the ice shelves re-advance. Having lost you in his peripheral vision, he's unable to register your angry stares, even your airport arrival terminal full-barreled waving. With your customer status descended to "nonentity", you are quite literally off his radar. It dawns on you that his "Take All the Time You Need!" was less obliging than cackling.
"Don't Look at the Menu Board"
This one's new-ish. I believe it's completely unremarked-upon, but it's gone viral over the past two years.
You walk into a place with counter or bar service. A large menu board occupies the better portion of a wall, and you stand briefly outside the line of fire to scan it and weigh options. Suddenly your train of thought is interrupted by a worker handing you a printed version of that same menu. They're providing mercy; relieving your pain and gently guiding you to a far better and more civilized experience. Rather than tilting my head 30° upward, wouldn't I prefer to bask in the ease of a 60° downward head tilt?
It inevitably happens the moment I've finally gotten my bearings within the menu board. At that precise moment, I'm guided/subtly commanded to start over, parsing the same data in an entirely different layout/format. With no imaginable benefit. All just because, apparently, the gigantic board - which management put great effort into building and displaying - is an abomination one must not peer at.
The printed version is foisted on you with two unstated but clear intimations: 1. We're doing you a favor, like handing you a towel when you're wet or lighting your cigarette. Isn't this better? 2. This is not optional. You will accept this print version. Only an asshole would refuse. Indeed, if you do decline, workers narrow their eyes and walk away muttering. Sure, asshole, no problem, peer cluelessly up at the board. Enjoy your ungainly slight head tilt! Be a skeevy board-reading rube! Will you be needing to pee into a Pepsi cup, as well? Or have us provide a comfort animal for your visit with us? Let us know what other marginal issues you'll need us to tolerate.
"Do You Need Change?"
I surely don't need to explain.
There is no greater disproof of the free marketer's conviction that business instantly and shrewdly adopts and evolves to serve consumer prefs and needs than the fact that at this late date waiters still ask this most famously irritating of questions. I can only assume it's like direct marketing: a ploy savagely hated by absolute everyone (including its perpetrators), but which is always so dumbfoundingly successful - unrivaled in its success - that, having mixed our signals (i.e. what we say we want versus what we actually do), this is something civilization is stuck with, forever.
"What Were You Looking For?”
In this posting, I wrote:
This one is two enigmas fused together. You're seated at a restaurant with an extensive menu. The waiter shows up 45 seconds later, briskly intent on taking your order. It has not occurred to him that you might be less than ready, even though your head's obviously buried deeply in your menu (which he knows contains 70 gajillion entrees and combo deals), and you haven't made the slightest eye contact to indicate readiness. Despite all cues and all logic, he is blithely confident that of course you're ready to order. Hey, is this not a restaurant? Are you here to eat, or to dick around with your menu?
You ask him for another minute, he indulgently nods and takes off, and you can kiss that mofo goodbye. He will not return before the ice shelves re-advance. Having lost you in his peripheral vision, he's unable to register your angry stares, even your airport arrival terminal full-barreled waving. With your customer status descended to "nonentity", you are quite literally off his radar. It dawns on you that his "Take All the Time You Need!" was less obliging than cackling.
If I understand the psychology, it's something like this: what customers do is they order and they eat and they pay. And they must order to eat and pay. So if you haven't ordered, you're completely outside my workflow; beyond my frame. Just as I don't care where you were and what you did before entering the restaurant, you are similarly beyond my interest in this situation. The play has not yet begun. You are not one of my 25 customers, you are one of the 6,999,999,975 homo sapiens I don't need to pretend to give a fuck about.
Possible workaround: sneak out, then re-enter under disguise and order fast enough to remain solidly in their petri dish.
"Don't Look at the Menu Board"
This one's new-ish. I believe it's completely unremarked-upon, but it's gone viral over the past two years.
You walk into a place with counter or bar service. A large menu board occupies the better portion of a wall, and you stand briefly outside the line of fire to scan it and weigh options. Suddenly your train of thought is interrupted by a worker handing you a printed version of that same menu. They're providing mercy; relieving your pain and gently guiding you to a far better and more civilized experience. Rather than tilting my head 30° upward, wouldn't I prefer to bask in the ease of a 60° downward head tilt?
It inevitably happens the moment I've finally gotten my bearings within the menu board. At that precise moment, I'm guided/subtly commanded to start over, parsing the same data in an entirely different layout/format. With no imaginable benefit. All just because, apparently, the gigantic board - which management put great effort into building and displaying - is an abomination one must not peer at.
The printed version is foisted on you with two unstated but clear intimations: 1. We're doing you a favor, like handing you a towel when you're wet or lighting your cigarette. Isn't this better? 2. This is not optional. You will accept this print version. Only an asshole would refuse. Indeed, if you do decline, workers narrow their eyes and walk away muttering. Sure, asshole, no problem, peer cluelessly up at the board. Enjoy your ungainly slight head tilt! Be a skeevy board-reading rube! Will you be needing to pee into a Pepsi cup, as well? Or have us provide a comfort animal for your visit with us? Let us know what other marginal issues you'll need us to tolerate.
Why did you put that huge board there in the first place? Why have you goaded me into this?
"Do You Need Change?"
I surely don't need to explain.
There is no greater disproof of the free marketer's conviction that business instantly and shrewdly adopts and evolves to serve consumer prefs and needs than the fact that at this late date waiters still ask this most famously irritating of questions. I can only assume it's like direct marketing: a ploy savagely hated by absolute everyone (including its perpetrators), but which is always so dumbfoundingly successful - unrivaled in its success - that, having mixed our signals (i.e. what we say we want versus what we actually do), this is something civilization is stuck with, forever.
In other words, the practice must pay well enough, in the long run, to be worth infuriating slews of customers.
"What Were You Looking For?”
In this posting, I wrote:
One of my pet peeves is when you run into a store, don’t see what you need (you're certain they don’t carry it), and the owner stops you as you exit, indulgently asking what you were looking for. You say “I’m positive you don’t have it”. He kindly replies “Try me”. Figuring you're doing him a favor by informing him of unmet consumer demand, you explain what you were seeking, and he drifts back to his previous task (you're no longer a customer, no longer of interest) indifferently sneering that, no, they don’t have that. Like you’re the asshole.
Apparently dismissed, you silently trod out the door.
Sunday, January 27, 2019
No-Drama Bill Blake
In every cry of every Man,
In every Infant’s cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forg'd manacles I hear.
-- William Blake (extracted from "London")
Most critics interpret the poem as a Dickensian paroxysm of Industrial Age squalor and misery. It's remarkable how nearly everyone overlooks that the manacles are "mind-forg'd". So Blake's actually saying the very opposite thing. It's yet another example of how people categorically resist being reminded that the drama of it all is sheer mental indulgence, and entirely optional. They resist the reminding because they like it this way (even seemingly traumatized horror movie-goers would be irritated to find a good samaritan gently tapping their shoulders during grueling scenes).
In every Infant’s cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forg'd manacles I hear.
-- William Blake (extracted from "London")
Most critics interpret the poem as a Dickensian paroxysm of Industrial Age squalor and misery. It's remarkable how nearly everyone overlooks that the manacles are "mind-forg'd". So Blake's actually saying the very opposite thing. It's yet another example of how people categorically resist being reminded that the drama of it all is sheer mental indulgence, and entirely optional. They resist the reminding because they like it this way (even seemingly traumatized horror movie-goers would be irritated to find a good samaritan gently tapping their shoulders during grueling scenes).
Thursday, January 24, 2019
Yet More Contrast Between Childlike and Adult Learning
I have some thoughts on learning.
Since nobody clicks the links (Damned kids today! Back in the 90's, we clicked every link!), here. Let me paste in the background for you:
Learn Like a Kid
Why People Don't Learn
If you teach adults, the thing you'll hear again and again is "I knew that". Reassembling their dignity after being forced to bear the prospect that they're missing something, adult students will practically sneer if you tell them something even vaguely familiar. "I knew that!"
As the extreme opposite style of learner (my inner nine-year-old never having ceded control), I have no "I knew that" reflex whatsoever. This probably explains my remarkably high tolerance for sitting through explanations (e.g. books, articles, documentaries, etc) of topics where I'm already expert...even when they offer nothing new.
Feeling no impulse to turn away, I find retread perfectly pleasant (so long as there’s nothing wrong/dumb in the explanation, which would drive me crazy). I might tell myself that I’m sitting through it on the chance of some errant chunk of new info I can use. But the truth is, I’d stick around even if no such chunks were forthcoming.
It's partially that my brain enjoys the micro stimulation of hearing familiar things expressed with words and voices other than my own. It's soothing nano stimulation; like cognitive velvet. Another explanation is that having been weaned on 1960's TV, with no remote control and just four crap-tastic stations to choose from, I'm thoroughly trained in the uncritical acceptance of useless sensory input.
But mostly it's that I'm not eager to assemble my dignity; my veneer of wholeness. I'm always learning, because I’m not a complete person infrequently applying patches but a deeply curious/ignorant person perpetually in dynamic formation. I'm not arrived, like some middle-aged dude. I'm becoming, like a 9-year-old. Having never proudly put self-composition behind me, I have nothing at stake in my in-progress condition.
We're not supposed to be able to learn once we reach our 30s, but I seem to be accelerating. I started this Slog at the crusty age of 46, and scant little of it could have been produced by my 36-year-old self. All credit goes to childlike learning - to treating it all like play and being satisfied with gathering sloppy, scattershot comprehension and filling in details later.
But at the same time I've grown comically poor at adult-style learning. I’m a complete blockhead with any sort of online learning course or textbook. When I find myself run through a tutorial gauntlet of sequential steps and procedures, I morph into a dimly obtuse 56-year-old, wiping my glasses and frowning gravely. I was never very good at such learning as a kid (my school grades were good-not-great), but that door's nearly shut for me now.
If that were the only way I could learn....yeesh. It'd be too awful to contemplate.
Since nobody clicks the links (Damned kids today! Back in the 90's, we clicked every link!), here. Let me paste in the background for you:
Learn Like a Kid
If you try to teach adults to wiggle their ears, they'll try once or twice to engage those muscles, fail, shrug, and give up. If it's absolutely critical that they learn the skill, they'll buy a book or hire a coach, and set aside time for diligent, grinding practice.
If you try to teach kids to wiggle their ears, they return to it again and again at odd moments, playfully experimenting until they finally develop the knack.
That's why kids learn easily and adults don't.
The trick to learning is to do it playfully and immersively, like a child (rather than the way schools have taught you to learn).
Why People Don't Learn
Learning requires feeling dumb for a while. And that's why people don't learn.
Everyone tasked with teaching anything to adults has ample experience with students feeling anxious and embarrassed for not instantly and perfectly grasping some point or other. It's just not about getting something wrong. It's about the unwillingness to acknowledge or display any deficit at all.
People are accustomed to masking their ignorance and other flaws, but learning requires dropping the mask. And that is horribly, horribly upsetting for most people. So they flail to show both themselves and their teachers that they hardly needed instruction in the first place. Believe it or not, this is incredibly common; the rule rather than the exception. Exactly at the moment when receptive curiosity would serve them best, they're trying to prove how very clever they are.
Children don't do this. Lacking a firm self-image, they're perfectly fine serving as empty cups. That's one reason they learn so easily, while adults are famously incapable of doing so past a certain age. It's not a cognitive problem, it's an emotional one. Learning requires feeling dumb for a minute, and that's just a deal-killer.
If you teach adults, the thing you'll hear again and again is "I knew that". Reassembling their dignity after being forced to bear the prospect that they're missing something, adult students will practically sneer if you tell them something even vaguely familiar. "I knew that!"
As the extreme opposite style of learner (my inner nine-year-old never having ceded control), I have no "I knew that" reflex whatsoever. This probably explains my remarkably high tolerance for sitting through explanations (e.g. books, articles, documentaries, etc) of topics where I'm already expert...even when they offer nothing new.
Feeling no impulse to turn away, I find retread perfectly pleasant (so long as there’s nothing wrong/dumb in the explanation, which would drive me crazy). I might tell myself that I’m sitting through it on the chance of some errant chunk of new info I can use. But the truth is, I’d stick around even if no such chunks were forthcoming.
It's partially that my brain enjoys the micro stimulation of hearing familiar things expressed with words and voices other than my own. It's soothing nano stimulation; like cognitive velvet. Another explanation is that having been weaned on 1960's TV, with no remote control and just four crap-tastic stations to choose from, I'm thoroughly trained in the uncritical acceptance of useless sensory input.
But mostly it's that I'm not eager to assemble my dignity; my veneer of wholeness. I'm always learning, because I’m not a complete person infrequently applying patches but a deeply curious/ignorant person perpetually in dynamic formation. I'm not arrived, like some middle-aged dude. I'm becoming, like a 9-year-old. Having never proudly put self-composition behind me, I have nothing at stake in my in-progress condition.
We're not supposed to be able to learn once we reach our 30s, but I seem to be accelerating. I started this Slog at the crusty age of 46, and scant little of it could have been produced by my 36-year-old self. All credit goes to childlike learning - to treating it all like play and being satisfied with gathering sloppy, scattershot comprehension and filling in details later.
But at the same time I've grown comically poor at adult-style learning. I’m a complete blockhead with any sort of online learning course or textbook. When I find myself run through a tutorial gauntlet of sequential steps and procedures, I morph into a dimly obtuse 56-year-old, wiping my glasses and frowning gravely. I was never very good at such learning as a kid (my school grades were good-not-great), but that door's nearly shut for me now.
If that were the only way I could learn....yeesh. It'd be too awful to contemplate.
Monday, January 21, 2019
The Long Tail is a Snare
Twice now I‘ve inadvertently clicked into Beatles-related discussion on Quora, and, ever since, I’ve been besieged with links to Beatles crap - on Quora's site, in their app, in the weekly digest they email me, and in ads which follow me around the Internet. I am a Beatlemaniac. I've been categorized, and so that’s what I am. It's decided.
Cattle-herding is instinctive for Silicon Valley execs. On a mass scale, it's been shifting us toward a society out of a dystopian 1970s sci-fi film, striated by shallow beehive determinism. As humanity continues to evolve beyond its brutally tribalistic roots, we can thank these brainy visionaries for doing all they can to loop us back into all that, only without the actual culture. Advertising long ago metastasized into a beast so pandemic that it can easily wag the dog, and this is where the wagging's left us: Neo Tribalism. A vapid landscape of spiritually empty, utterly silent (aside from the almighty Marketing Message) granfalloons. Enjoy your silo.
Isn’t this precisely the path of Fox News, making hay with extreme partisanship by stoking and monetizing, stoking and monetizing, like efficient dairy farmers whose livestock is us? They do this while purporting to be of service, which would sound hypocritical except for the regrettable but indisputable fact that foi gras geese really do appreciate the greasy feed perpetually sliding into their waiting gullets. We love us some Skinner Box. As I once wrote, a perpetually rewarded lab animal feels downright self-actualized.
We are the most belligerently anti-racist society in the history of the world, yet reductive stereotypes are our bread and butter; baked into our commerce, our politics, our media, and our advertising...really, what else is there?And we never object, so long as everyone diligently tiptoes around tripwire language.
I've fallen in love with the “long tail” of current-day commerce, data, and networking platforms. As a person with diverse and often misfit interests - who doesn’t buy any of the ten most popular breakfast cereals and who spurns multiplexes - I saw this coming in the 90s and have basked in it ever since. I can connect directly with any sort of idea, media, or merchandise, always cutting right in at my point of interest (no one on Chowhound ever asked “So how was your day?”). It’s heaven.
My first glimmer of the potential downside came in 2005, when I observed that marketers had grown so subtly insidious that even conscientious resisters like me could be ensnared by their targeting. I never imagined that it would come to this: that each time I shift attention, my landing spot would be of profound interest to myriad algorithmic klieg lights, dispatching virtual bear traps to latch on and ensure my enduring categorization. I never suspected the long tail was really mostly an infinitely multiband snare.
Cattle-herding is instinctive for Silicon Valley execs. On a mass scale, it's been shifting us toward a society out of a dystopian 1970s sci-fi film, striated by shallow beehive determinism. As humanity continues to evolve beyond its brutally tribalistic roots, we can thank these brainy visionaries for doing all they can to loop us back into all that, only without the actual culture. Advertising long ago metastasized into a beast so pandemic that it can easily wag the dog, and this is where the wagging's left us: Neo Tribalism. A vapid landscape of spiritually empty, utterly silent (aside from the almighty Marketing Message) granfalloons. Enjoy your silo.
Isn’t this precisely the path of Fox News, making hay with extreme partisanship by stoking and monetizing, stoking and monetizing, like efficient dairy farmers whose livestock is us? They do this while purporting to be of service, which would sound hypocritical except for the regrettable but indisputable fact that foi gras geese really do appreciate the greasy feed perpetually sliding into their waiting gullets. We love us some Skinner Box. As I once wrote, a perpetually rewarded lab animal feels downright self-actualized.
If the subject is a chicken, which is basically a biological device for pecking endless grain, you set up your Skinner box to feed the chicken. And the chicken will never stop responding in the way you've trained it to. It never "gets wise". Blessed with the result it most seeks, there's no reason to ask deeper questions. The chicken thinks it's just killin' it.For similar reasons, I find identity politics disgusting. Sizing up my schnozz and assuming that I‘m dying to vote for a Jew - or, at very least, a WASP who diligently appears on TV chomping matzoh balls, wearing a yarmulka, and pandering to my assumed vested interest in Israel (one imagines me singing the word cantorially, eyes rolling heavenward in Zionist fervor, as my wrinkled garments emit the haimish odor of stale onion and poppy seeds).
We are the most belligerently anti-racist society in the history of the world, yet reductive stereotypes are our bread and butter; baked into our commerce, our politics, our media, and our advertising...really, what else is there?And we never object, so long as everyone diligently tiptoes around tripwire language.
I've fallen in love with the “long tail” of current-day commerce, data, and networking platforms. As a person with diverse and often misfit interests - who doesn’t buy any of the ten most popular breakfast cereals and who spurns multiplexes - I saw this coming in the 90s and have basked in it ever since. I can connect directly with any sort of idea, media, or merchandise, always cutting right in at my point of interest (no one on Chowhound ever asked “So how was your day?”). It’s heaven.
My first glimmer of the potential downside came in 2005, when I observed that marketers had grown so subtly insidious that even conscientious resisters like me could be ensnared by their targeting. I never imagined that it would come to this: that each time I shift attention, my landing spot would be of profound interest to myriad algorithmic klieg lights, dispatching virtual bear traps to latch on and ensure my enduring categorization. I never suspected the long tail was really mostly an infinitely multiband snare.
Saturday, January 19, 2019
Vegetation For Fun and Profit
This point, which I think is important, got buried in a long post back in 2016 ("Creating a Vacuum to Leech Out Eurekas"), so I wanted to circle back to highlight it.
Different processes suit different types of work - and different types of workers. "Nose-to-the-grindstone" effort is useful, but not in all cases.
Creative people vegetating are different from lazy, aimless people vegetating. If you're creative, don't let the superficial resemblance throw you. It's essential to foster a vacuum to leech out eurekas, so this is instinctive behavior. Don't question the process...unless eurekas aren't forthcoming. If you don't jump up every once in a while to follow muse with exuberant action, you are likely depressed. Consider my Unique Perspective on Depression, avail yourself of the Depression Resuscitation Kit, and maybe browse my previous writings on the topic.
If you do jump up and follow muse, but results often frustrate, browse my postings on creativity (perhaps working from bottom up).
If you were to observe me, you'd think I was the biggest slacker in the world. When not in mid-project (actually executing the things I've dreamed up), I spend an awful lot of time sitting around, watching TV, ruminating, hanging out, not doing anything productive. This used to mortify me. I figured I was lazy, shiftless, and broken. I've constantly worried about wasting my life. It's been a huge source of shame since early childhood. But at a certain point I turned around, looked back, and noticed, to my surprise, that I'd actually accomplished stuff, and developed a range of skills, even in my seeming sloth. Magically, stuff got done!
I know now that it's easily explained: creativity is fostered by loosening the belt, by making space for epiphanies. An awful lot can get done via relentless hard work (and I eventually learned how to knuckle down in order to execute my ideas), but creativity is a different animal, and it looks lazy.
Different processes suit different types of work - and different types of workers. "Nose-to-the-grindstone" effort is useful, but not in all cases.
Creative people vegetating are different from lazy, aimless people vegetating. If you're creative, don't let the superficial resemblance throw you. It's essential to foster a vacuum to leech out eurekas, so this is instinctive behavior. Don't question the process...unless eurekas aren't forthcoming. If you don't jump up every once in a while to follow muse with exuberant action, you are likely depressed. Consider my Unique Perspective on Depression, avail yourself of the Depression Resuscitation Kit, and maybe browse my previous writings on the topic.
If you do jump up and follow muse, but results often frustrate, browse my postings on creativity (perhaps working from bottom up).
Friday, January 18, 2019
How to Know You're Being Dumb
If you're having a problem - tech or otherwise - and you google and google without shedding any light (or you find a small handful of other lonely queriers, none answered well), this nearly always means you're doing something really really dumb.
It goes without saying that this only applies to mainstream-ish issues. If you've hit a snag translating Norwegian poetry into Esperanto, or attaching a solid fuel rocket to the roof of your VW Golf, that's a whole other story (though you still are probably doing something really really dumb).
This is something I particularly need to keep in mind. As a very early Internet adopter, who started out surfing with command line tools (via Telnet, Usenet, FTP, Lynx, etc.) and has great fondness for Yahoo for its invaluable curated index of cool web sites, I sometimes forget that nearly everything's now online.
It goes without saying that this only applies to mainstream-ish issues. If you've hit a snag translating Norwegian poetry into Esperanto, or attaching a solid fuel rocket to the roof of your VW Golf, that's a whole other story (though you still are probably doing something really really dumb).
This is something I particularly need to keep in mind. As a very early Internet adopter, who started out surfing with command line tools (via Telnet, Usenet, FTP, Lynx, etc.) and has great fondness for Yahoo for its invaluable curated index of cool web sites, I sometimes forget that nearly everything's now online.
Thursday, January 17, 2019
“Crazy and Stupid“ is Acceptable
“Crazy and stupid” is not evil.
“Crazy and stupid” is not evil.
“Crazy and stupid” is not evil.
It’s a truism I absolutely must learn to internalize in both my macro and my micro. And it’s very hard. “Crazy and stupid” is awful, corrosive, exasperating. It seems like The Worst Possible Thing. But it’s not. There is genuine evil in the world, so anyone (including the crazy and stupid) who’d never imagine going out of their way to deliberately harm is a “5” at very least.
A person can be nasty, selfish, derelict, uncompromising, unreasonable, willfully ignorant, and astoundingly unpleasant without scratching a nanometer toward actual evil. They can inadvertently ruin lives and knock over every worthy thing without being evil. The end result of “crazy and stupid” may be indistinguishable from the end result of evil, but intentions do matter.
All non-evil people are on our team, and that, alas, includes “crazy and stupid”. “Crazy and stupid” is the bottom rung of acceptability, not the bottom rung of humanity by a very long shot.
“Crazy and stupid” is not evil.
“Crazy and stupid” is not evil.
It’s a truism I absolutely must learn to internalize in both my macro and my micro. And it’s very hard. “Crazy and stupid” is awful, corrosive, exasperating. It seems like The Worst Possible Thing. But it’s not. There is genuine evil in the world, so anyone (including the crazy and stupid) who’d never imagine going out of their way to deliberately harm is a “5” at very least.
A person can be nasty, selfish, derelict, uncompromising, unreasonable, willfully ignorant, and astoundingly unpleasant without scratching a nanometer toward actual evil. They can inadvertently ruin lives and knock over every worthy thing without being evil. The end result of “crazy and stupid” may be indistinguishable from the end result of evil, but intentions do matter.
All non-evil people are on our team, and that, alas, includes “crazy and stupid”. “Crazy and stupid” is the bottom rung of acceptability, not the bottom rung of humanity by a very long shot.
Wednesday, January 16, 2019
Soothing the Baby
As I grow up, I feel more and more compelled to toss certain esoteric thoughts out there among the 180 quadrillion web pages in case they’re helpful someday - even if they’re of scant current interest.
In a lifetime of finding myself ahead of curves (that's a complaint, not a boast), I’ve noticed that once crowds catch up, my voice is rarely necessary - or even heard - amid the torrent. But in certain realms, where I'm extra ahead, there are chunks which might remain missing. So I’ll risk confusing and exasperating regular readers by occasionally posting such chunks for the possible (if unlikely) use of other people in another time. Which is to say: you may well want to skip this (if only because it’s long!).
I started teaching myself yoga and self-hypnosis when I was around 11.
Actually (it's a bit blurry) I might have read most of those later, trying to understand what I had experienced. But before all else I needed to learn to relax.
Yoga and self-hypnosis both showed me how maddeningly difficult a proposition the notion of "relaxation" is. You could spend an hour splayed out on the floor, breathing deeply and progressively relaxing each muscle group, and however relaxed you might feel, it's still a pale shadow of full-out relaxation.
If you practice relaxation - plus these extensions - sufficiently, you can, in time, learn to fully relax - float-not-fall! - within the blink of an eye, even amid life turmoil. Self-help authors at that time wrote about "the relaxation response". I didn't read their books, because it was something I'd already learned.
To briefly review, having mastered superficial relaxation, I spotted the shortfall and acknowledged my self-deception ("I'm sooo relaxed!"), bucking the innate human impulse to feel that we're doing everything right. I resolved to go further, beyond the mere posing. I committed and persevered, learning that I can’t fall, come what may, and that stress is entirely elective.
And then, finally, I added love.
Lying on the ground, relaxing into a primordial state - a heartbeat from actual corpse-hood - I alighted on the recognition that no one chooses that route. They're all in pain; confused and lost. Knotted up in anguished flailings, they knoweth not what they do. Nor do I.
When a baby screams and writhes in angry hunger, we don't condemn or punish the baby, nor do we try to talk sense into it. We don't allow ourselves to be triggered into raging back. Maturely recognizing its innate helplessness and non-comprehension, we hug the baby. Empathizing with its blameless emotion, we look past the tight, red, hysterical face, the shrieking and flailing limbs, the gross spittle. We...just...soothe the baby, period.
Shedding all armor and yielding to the gravity beneath the floor, I indiscriminately soothed every baby everywhere, large and small, surrendering myself - my very molecules - for the cherishing comfort of even the most seemingly loathsome...who need it most. I pleaded to no one in particular to be atomized into a spray that might infinitesimally erode the massive, massive mound of human pain. Overlooking the stench as if it were an innocent stinky diaper, I reached out with arms and ear lobes and toenails to embrace what I’d previously regarded as a contemptuous herd of stupid fucking assholes, including (especially!) any who'd gone out of their way to do me harm. I forgave, not via weighty judgement, but as we forgive babies for their tantrums; shifting my framing to deem them loveable.
With a hapless gesture of utter stupidity and hopeless hope (the heart is an idiot), my heart swiftly expanded to swallow it all - the entire universe - whole (this sounds like metaphor, but did not feel like one). I immediately recognized that this transcendent embrace had always been there, perpetually underpinning the bustling veneer of worldly drama, for me and, equally, for any of us. Within this framing, there was no individuation; only a unity of love embracing love.
This, too, was practiced until it became reliably accessible upon demand (I was a kid who practiced lots of stuff; juggling, ear wiggling, celebrity impressions, boogie-woogie piano...and this felt like more of that). I tried to discuss it with others, but there was a puzzling disconnect. It couldn't possibly have been anything special, because I was just some shmucky kid with merely pretty good grades and who rated no more than middling esteem from authorities and peers. So I couldn't fathom why everyone stared blankly when I'd matter-of-factly bring it up (first with my mom, who listened impatiently to my tale of heart expansions and atomized sprays, finally breaking in to suggest that I go outside and play so she could finish making dinner).
Lacking any context for the experience - and finding no one able to offer any - I took comfort in the unshakable knowledge that this is simply how things truly are beneath the noise and distraction, recognized or not. This truth requires no more attention or maintanence than is necessary to preserve the starry night sky during daytime, so I let myself be pulled back into worldly drama, losing first the immediate access and eventually becoming entirely detached from the Knowing...without ever registering a disconnection. As I recently wrote:
The Knowing had resembled the ecstatic fullness of creative epiphany; a premium upgrade version of that more familiar sort of insight/inspiration. As a musician, I would struggle in vain, as does every artist, to "bottle" my muse; to make it accessible upon demand. I never came close (here’sme playing on a good night, when the juice actually flowed). Still later, I bumpily toiled, post-Chowhound, to rekindle my Knowing, finding it difficult to muster the requisite hapless stupidity and experiencing similar slippery frustration. Eventually I was startled to notice that I was indeed able to "bottle" the Knowing...and the creative muse along with it (voluminously cataloguing the secrets thereto here in this Slog).
Potential framings are infinitely diverse. It is only within the more familiar cinematic/dramatic “my-life-is-like-this” framing that all pain and disappointment reside. From that perspective, I'm a musician who'll soon lose his hearing, a gourmand whose daily aspirin therapy (for a heart condition incurred while eating healthily and exercising regularly) has ravaged his stomach to the point of a lifetime sentence of bland food, and a craft beer superfan no longer able to drink (ibid). I still endure some punishing social headwind from my principled refusal to manipulate and from the misfit juju stemming from my commitment to unsettlingly throw myself completely into everything I do. I've grown terminally disillusioned by The Big Video Game and, mysteriously, can’t seem to interest people in what I consider the most uniquely useful food resource ever created for a mobile device (even being the guy who’s previously done the same for the early Internet).
In terms of drama, it’s a dire predicament. But having been granted every genie wish - notably the aforementioned bottlings - and having weaned myself from the habit of obsessing over What's Missing (another priceless genie grant) and, most valuable of all, discovered that framings are lithely, instantly re-selectable (the proverbial wish-for-infinitely-more-wishes), I want for nothing. As I once wrote, "Ascetics, perennially misunderstood, only look austere. Their internal reality is completely different. Shake off the ash, and the embers glow brightly."
Footnotes:
1. The links (all jillion of them) are essential.
2. Again: all resistance is actually you (remember the after-effect of a shot to the head). So the screaming babies are all actually you. Per the horror film cliché, it's coming from inside the building!. This connection is not apparent (nor even coherent) from within the everyday dramatic/cinematic framing of who we pretend to be and what we pretend to do, but it’s patently obvious from a deeper, more sober perspective. No need for mental gymnastics, however. None of this requires intellect. Be lazy. Take the shortcut. Let go and experience it all as love embracing love and see for yourself. If it doesn't work, you're not relaxed enough...or haven't added umami (recipe, above).
3. Years and years after all this, I stumbled upon Theravadin Buddhism’s “Metta Sutta”, the juiciest part of which says:
With a boundless heart
Should one cherish all beings;
Radiating love over the entire world
Spreading upwards to the skies,
And downwards to the depths.
A few years after writing this, I spent a week exhuming my childhood via school papers and artwork, documenting it in a series of postings (here they are in reverse chronological order). The final installment placed my childhood into the larger context established in the above narrative, which, out of sheer amnesia, treated my childhood trajectory as springing from out of nowhere.
In a lifetime of finding myself ahead of curves (that's a complaint, not a boast), I’ve noticed that once crowds catch up, my voice is rarely necessary - or even heard - amid the torrent. But in certain realms, where I'm extra ahead, there are chunks which might remain missing. So I’ll risk confusing and exasperating regular readers by occasionally posting such chunks for the possible (if unlikely) use of other people in another time. Which is to say: you may well want to skip this (if only because it’s long!).
I started teaching myself yoga and self-hypnosis when I was around 11.
The notion of "teaching oneself" may be paradoxical, but I've taught myself all my life. This very Slog, which may appear to be teaching you, is really me teaching myself while you eavesdrop (as I recently noted, 95% - perhaps much more - of human communication is actually self-directed; the only difference with me is that I acknowledge it).I'd borrowed a dopey book about self-hypnosis from the library, and, though I recognized its shortcomings, it stimulated enough exploration that I was eventually able to devise my own approach (I haven’t used it in many years, however). As for yoga, I'd worked through many of the poses on my own while reading a slew of books on Eastern spirituality (most memorably: "Powers of Mind" - a lightweight massmarket treatment that happened to ring my bell - plus classics like "Zen and the Art of Archery", "Introduction to Zen Buddhism", "Siddhartha", "The Way of a Pilgrim", "Be Here Now", and the first stanza of the Hsin Hsin Ming - aka "Verses on the Faith Mind by The 3rd Zen Patriarch" - which was as far as I was able to get for years without falling into reverie. Also stuff by Castaneda, Salinger, and certain elements of "Dune" (a bizarre combo, yes, but booting up in knowledge is always jagged because unknowing is the father of knowing).
Actually (it's a bit blurry) I might have read most of those later, trying to understand what I had experienced. But before all else I needed to learn to relax.
Yoga and self-hypnosis both showed me how maddeningly difficult a proposition the notion of "relaxation" is. You could spend an hour splayed out on the floor, breathing deeply and progressively relaxing each muscle group, and however relaxed you might feel, it's still a pale shadow of full-out relaxation.
Spiritual practitioners inevitably overestimate their progress - again and again, as mere pinholes of surrender feel like cosmic gushers. Spirituality has a Dunning-Kruger effect of its own, leading the clueless to prematurely deem themselves holy masters or whatever, which explains all those rotten, greedy, sexed-up gurus we've heard about. The truism "a little knowledge is dangerous" should be translated into Sanskrit.Yogis practice relaxation in "corpse" pose, and the name offers a lovely clue. Once you've laid there, yielding completely to gravity and feeling yourself as being breathed rather than actively breathing, certain you're as floppily relaxed as can be, my trick was to mentally compare myself to an actual corpse. If you were honest, you'd concede that your muscles remain a roiling hive of twitchy hyperstimulation and your mind's madly atwitter. If you were to drift into sleep (let alone death), your body would splay out in drastic contrast to this superficial oh-look-at-me-I'm-so-relaxed posturing. You call this relaxation? Pffft.
I taught a little yoga at one point. Once, while my students strained to touch their toes, grunting and cursing their stubborn hamstrings, I asked them to imagine someone walking in and shooting us all in the head. Wouldn’t we all execute flawless, effortless forward bends en route to collapse? Your hamstrings, in and of themselves, are not the problem!Back to my childhood: I devised two visualizations to bridge the impasse and enable deeper relaxation. Once you’re as relaxed as possible, try this:
I’ve just accounted for the brevity of my teaching career, but this was actually a fantastically useful observation. It normally takes decades for practitioners to notice that their resistance is them.
No “you”...no resistance!
1. The PoleYou never needed to clutch that pole or branch. Your clutching was always entirely pointless...as was every iota of stress you've ever invited into your body. Never, ever, would you have fallen. You can’t fall. It's/he's/she's got you (you don't need to personify the everything of everything).
You find yourself in a vast blue sky, clutching a very long horizontal pole receding infinitely in both directions. There's nothing else to grab at, so hands and feet wind tightly around the pole for dear life. Having faith that you'll float, not fall: unpeel a hand, and notice that it doesn't drop. Then repeat with a foot. Then another foot. Then, finally, your remaining hand. The pole, disregarded, disappears, leaving you calmly, blithely afloat.
2. The Tree
You're sitting on a sturdy branch of a mature tree, facing the trunk, with a saw in your hand. Now saw away at the branch.
If you practice relaxation - plus these extensions - sufficiently, you can, in time, learn to fully relax - float-not-fall! - within the blink of an eye, even amid life turmoil. Self-help authors at that time wrote about "the relaxation response". I didn't read their books, because it was something I'd already learned.
To briefly review, having mastered superficial relaxation, I spotted the shortfall and acknowledged my self-deception ("I'm sooo relaxed!"), bucking the innate human impulse to feel that we're doing everything right. I resolved to go further, beyond the mere posing. I committed and persevered, learning that I can’t fall, come what may, and that stress is entirely elective.
And then, finally, I added love.
Love is the ultimate secret ingredient shaker bottle, ripe for sprinkling. The bottle we forgot we had at the back of the fridge. It's life's umami, and cosmic de-icer. It’s the solution even where it seems incongruous; the forgotten foolproof trick reliably up your sleeve; the smartphone feature you keep forgetting about.At this time I was a cynical, bitter little shit. I'd discovered early how cruel and ignorant people are. My family had trained me to view fellow humans as a contemptuous herd of stupid fucking assholes deserving neither respect nor sympathy, and this proposition was not a hard sell. I already bore scars from random cruelty, and had witnessed dishonesty, corruption, and antagonism gratuitously wielded even where truth, propriety, and kindness would have better served. At a very young age I was already fed up (and, shamefully - though predictably - beginning to display touches of needless cruelty of my own).
Jamaican and African athletes don't win those track and field medals because black people are super fast. It's because running is the most viaible route for elevating their beloved families from poverty. That's not just a powerful motivator, but, much more importantly, it’s a complete reframing of the situation, likely inaccessible for an equally talented athlete from, say, Düsseldorf.
And consider all those Oscar and Grammy winners deflecting their credit and glory toward god or whatever (i.e. anything beyond themselves). You might roll your eyes, considering them ditzily brainwashed by corny superstition, but when human beings work for a Higher Purpose (anything beyond themselves) - all faculties neatly aligned by the indefatigable flow of maximal love - that's when serious greatness is possible. Those who’ve never won Oscars or Grammys would do well to pay attention when such people freely reveal the secret.
Would you at least concede that works dedicated to dead loved ones tend to suck a little less?
Lying on the ground, relaxing into a primordial state - a heartbeat from actual corpse-hood - I alighted on the recognition that no one chooses that route. They're all in pain; confused and lost. Knotted up in anguished flailings, they knoweth not what they do. Nor do I.
When a baby screams and writhes in angry hunger, we don't condemn or punish the baby, nor do we try to talk sense into it. We don't allow ourselves to be triggered into raging back. Maturely recognizing its innate helplessness and non-comprehension, we hug the baby. Empathizing with its blameless emotion, we look past the tight, red, hysterical face, the shrieking and flailing limbs, the gross spittle. We...just...soothe the baby, period.
Shedding all armor and yielding to the gravity beneath the floor, I indiscriminately soothed every baby everywhere, large and small, surrendering myself - my very molecules - for the cherishing comfort of even the most seemingly loathsome...who need it most. I pleaded to no one in particular to be atomized into a spray that might infinitesimally erode the massive, massive mound of human pain. Overlooking the stench as if it were an innocent stinky diaper, I reached out with arms and ear lobes and toenails to embrace what I’d previously regarded as a contemptuous herd of stupid fucking assholes, including (especially!) any who'd gone out of their way to do me harm. I forgave, not via weighty judgement, but as we forgive babies for their tantrums; shifting my framing to deem them loveable.
With a hapless gesture of utter stupidity and hopeless hope (the heart is an idiot), my heart swiftly expanded to swallow it all - the entire universe - whole (this sounds like metaphor, but did not feel like one). I immediately recognized that this transcendent embrace had always been there, perpetually underpinning the bustling veneer of worldly drama, for me and, equally, for any of us. Within this framing, there was no individuation; only a unity of love embracing love.
This, too, was practiced until it became reliably accessible upon demand (I was a kid who practiced lots of stuff; juggling, ear wiggling, celebrity impressions, boogie-woogie piano...and this felt like more of that). I tried to discuss it with others, but there was a puzzling disconnect. It couldn't possibly have been anything special, because I was just some shmucky kid with merely pretty good grades and who rated no more than middling esteem from authorities and peers. So I couldn't fathom why everyone stared blankly when I'd matter-of-factly bring it up (first with my mom, who listened impatiently to my tale of heart expansions and atomized sprays, finally breaking in to suggest that I go outside and play so she could finish making dinner).
Lacking any context for the experience - and finding no one able to offer any - I took comfort in the unshakable knowledge that this is simply how things truly are beneath the noise and distraction, recognized or not. This truth requires no more attention or maintanence than is necessary to preserve the starry night sky during daytime, so I let myself be pulled back into worldly drama, losing first the immediate access and eventually becoming entirely detached from the Knowing...without ever registering a disconnection. As I recently wrote:
It's hard to distinguish between real remembering and the remembrance of remembering. You'll feel certain you still have "the gist" of it - a sort of mental snapshot - even though actual remembering is no longer available. The gist of remembering smoothly dissipates into the fog of forgetting. While remembering remembering, you can easily forget that you've forgotten.I had, thankfully, taken the time to send myself forward some well-considered reminders and bread crumbs (including one of the above visualizations), foreseeing that I'd lose my way back. A decade or so later, I fell briefly back in through a different doorway, via the desperation and depression that had accumulated since my turning away (it's much more painful to recently have Known and forgotten than to remain perpetually numbly unaware). Then, with careers to pursue and web sites to wrangle and restaurants to find, I disconnected once again for a very long while.
The Knowing had resembled the ecstatic fullness of creative epiphany; a premium upgrade version of that more familiar sort of insight/inspiration. As a musician, I would struggle in vain, as does every artist, to "bottle" my muse; to make it accessible upon demand. I never came close (here’sme playing on a good night, when the juice actually flowed). Still later, I bumpily toiled, post-Chowhound, to rekindle my Knowing, finding it difficult to muster the requisite hapless stupidity and experiencing similar slippery frustration. Eventually I was startled to notice that I was indeed able to "bottle" the Knowing...and the creative muse along with it (voluminously cataloguing the secrets thereto here in this Slog).
Potential framings are infinitely diverse. It is only within the more familiar cinematic/dramatic “my-life-is-like-this” framing that all pain and disappointment reside. From that perspective, I'm a musician who'll soon lose his hearing, a gourmand whose daily aspirin therapy (for a heart condition incurred while eating healthily and exercising regularly) has ravaged his stomach to the point of a lifetime sentence of bland food, and a craft beer superfan no longer able to drink (ibid). I still endure some punishing social headwind from my principled refusal to manipulate and from the misfit juju stemming from my commitment to unsettlingly throw myself completely into everything I do. I've grown terminally disillusioned by The Big Video Game and, mysteriously, can’t seem to interest people in what I consider the most uniquely useful food resource ever created for a mobile device (even being the guy who’s previously done the same for the early Internet).
In terms of drama, it’s a dire predicament. But having been granted every genie wish - notably the aforementioned bottlings - and having weaned myself from the habit of obsessing over What's Missing (another priceless genie grant) and, most valuable of all, discovered that framings are lithely, instantly re-selectable (the proverbial wish-for-infinitely-more-wishes), I want for nothing. As I once wrote, "Ascetics, perennially misunderstood, only look austere. Their internal reality is completely different. Shake off the ash, and the embers glow brightly."
Footnotes:
1. The links (all jillion of them) are essential.
2. Again: all resistance is actually you (remember the after-effect of a shot to the head). So the screaming babies are all actually you. Per the horror film cliché, it's coming from inside the building!. This connection is not apparent (nor even coherent) from within the everyday dramatic/cinematic framing of who we pretend to be and what we pretend to do, but it’s patently obvious from a deeper, more sober perspective. No need for mental gymnastics, however. None of this requires intellect. Be lazy. Take the shortcut. Let go and experience it all as love embracing love and see for yourself. If it doesn't work, you're not relaxed enough...or haven't added umami (recipe, above).
3. Years and years after all this, I stumbled upon Theravadin Buddhism’s “Metta Sutta”, the juiciest part of which says:
Should one cherish all beings;
Radiating love over the entire world
Spreading upwards to the skies,
And downwards to the depths.
A few years after writing this, I spent a week exhuming my childhood via school papers and artwork, documenting it in a series of postings (here they are in reverse chronological order). The final installment placed my childhood into the larger context established in the above narrative, which, out of sheer amnesia, treated my childhood trajectory as springing from out of nowhere.
Fake Tracking
USPS purports to offer "tracking" on first class mail that has no bar code (yeah, I know they inkjet coding data on the bottom of the envelope, but that's for sorting, not tracking) and is thus inherently untrackable. The faux-tracking info, if you're foolish enough to check it, is laughably useless.
Whenever you call AAA for help, they always say "90 minutes". The truck might show up in five minutes or in three hours, but they always tell you "90 minutes". So I just made my first roadside assistance request via Internet, and was given a nifty tracking web page that counted down 90 minutes from my initial request. Every 30 seconds the page refreshed...without change. In fact, the tow truck came and left 20 minutes ago, and it's still continuing that same countdown.
I have an idea to monetize our increasing tolerance for such bullshit. The life expectancy of an American is 76 years. So I'll build a smartphone app, "CroakTimer", which counts down to your demise (there'd be an optional "notification" feature - with suitable ringtone - as a pricy in-app purchase). The app's obviously a luxe proposition, so I'm figuring I could charge circa $900. At first launch, it will ask your age, subtract it from 76, and commence the count down, with a daily sham "refresh".
Whenever you call AAA for help, they always say "90 minutes". The truck might show up in five minutes or in three hours, but they always tell you "90 minutes". So I just made my first roadside assistance request via Internet, and was given a nifty tracking web page that counted down 90 minutes from my initial request. Every 30 seconds the page refreshed...without change. In fact, the tow truck came and left 20 minutes ago, and it's still continuing that same countdown.
I have an idea to monetize our increasing tolerance for such bullshit. The life expectancy of an American is 76 years. So I'll build a smartphone app, "CroakTimer", which counts down to your demise (there'd be an optional "notification" feature - with suitable ringtone - as a pricy in-app purchase). The app's obviously a luxe proposition, so I'm figuring I could charge circa $900. At first launch, it will ask your age, subtract it from 76, and commence the count down, with a daily sham "refresh".
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