Greg Proffit Writing

Tag: philosophy

  • Wisdom Is The Choice of The Best End and The Best Means for Achieving It…to be continued

    Wisdom Is The Choice of The Best End and The Best Means for Achieving It…to be continued

    Wisdom is the choice of the best end — here is a nice one, Antigua, Mamora Bay at sunset
    Antigua, Mamora Bay Sunset (Photo by Author)

    # 78 on my 99 Life Tips–A List is: Wisdom is also the application of the best means for the most valuable ends. See # 77 above for initial thoughts regarding wisdom.

    In keeping with the string of tips and stories about intelligence, truth, and wisdom, this is the reader’s digest summation. Wisdom chooses the best end, then achieves it by the best methods.

    Easier said than done.

    Getting lost in the weeds of esoteric ideas is no benefit if you want to be wise (and who doesn’t want to be?). Simple answers and concepts are the most helpful to get you and keep you on track. 

    The Best End

    You may wish to grab a Venti-sized latté while you ponder what this means to you. It will take a while. 

    What is the mainspring of your life? What is your ultimate reason, purpose, goal? Why do you do what you do? What is it you’re hoping for?

    The ultimate end of a person’s life dictates their life, morality, their praiseworthiness or guilt. It is the motive behind every decision. It is the mission statement, even if unspoken, deeply buried in the unconscious.

    Wisdom is the choice of the best (most valuable) end.

    Which is what exactly? What is the correct answer?

    America’s founding documents declare it to be, “the pursuit of happiness”—but is the pursuit, or the happiness—the end?

    If happiness; is that the most valuable end? Is your happiness more valuable than mine? It may be to you, but when weighed on a universal scale? Are they not equal?

    And if that has you scratching your head, assuming a belief in God, is your happiness more valuable than God’s? And are you more deserving of happiness than God is?

    That will keep the mental wheels spinning a while.

    Lest we digress too much, a repetition is in order. Wisdom is the choice of the best end.

    Oh, that’s easy, you say. Lots of money is the best, most valuable end. But is it? Is money more valuable than time? What is an extra hour at the end of your life going for on the open market nowadays? A day? A year? Pretty pricey if you can find a vendor.

    Well, ok then, time is more valuable, you agree. But is time more valuable than health, or peace of mind? Would any reader wish to live for eternity with a tormented mind? Or with a debilitating illness?

    No? Didn’t think so.

    This explains why philosopher types are so vilified. So damn many questions!

    Still, you must choose a worthy end of your own if you hope to be wise. Your choice of end shows your wisdom—or lack thereof. A hint: You’ve already chosen an end regardless of whether you know what it is. We all have. But you can move off the default choice, which is to live entirely with regard for your own momentary pleasures as fully as possible, to some more valuable and well-considered purpose.

    The Best Way To Get There

    This is going to have to wait for another treatment of its own. You’ve got plenty to work on.

  • You Cannot Lie To A Tree and Other Truths I Learned By Reading Fiction

    What a beauty. Listen closely, you can hear it’s trying to say something. (Adobe Stock Image: licensed to Author)

    It occurred to me this morning that you cannot lie to a tree. Please allow me the attempt to explain. 

    Since beginning The Overstory, by Richard Powers, trees have become my heroes among creation. I know that seems strange, but my fascination has only grown as I marvel at their presence on this planet and I ponder what they are up to. As one of the characters in the book might say, ”What they do?”

    The more I learn about them, and even as I try to share what I’m learning, the more I realize that my learning is taking me backwards so that I can properly start at zero. My preconceptions have to be shattered and laid aside. They are obstacles. I am like a guitar student coming to a Master. ”I’d like to learn to play guitar,” I say. ”Show me what you can do,” says he. I begin to strum through chords I’ve learned, pleased to show off a few rudimentary elements. ”Stop!” he shouts, before I complete 4 bars. ”This is not guitar! We will need to unlearn these mistakes before we can begin.” 

    This is how it is with trees. To borrow a concept once more from the book,

    ”You can’t see what you don’t understand. But what you think you already understand, you’ll fail to notice.”

    The Overstory, p. 439. From Adam Appich, a character who is a psych professor.

    Thinking you understand trees, you don’t see them. I mean, you see the shapes, but you don’t see them. It’s the same with the people you race each morning to get to work. You see them just enough to avoid hitting their cars when you change lanes. But you don’t have time to see the people. You don’t have time to look. You understand them. They are going to work just like you are. Knowing that tidbit is enough to stop the quest for any deeper enlightenment.

    You see trees about as much as you see people in these cars. (Adobe Stock Image: licensed to Author)

    A weird thought that just wouldn’t go away

    I was thinking on these things when I realized that you cannot lie to a tree. I know, that’s a weird thought to have. But you cannot lie to a tree in the same way that you cannot lie to God. Lies will not impact either one. They will remain unmoved, unbent, unbowed, unswayed. The wind will move a tree more than your lies will. Go ahead and try to prove me wrong.

    Which of your lies will either impact or impress a tree? (Adobe Stock Image: licensed to Author)

    I find that so satisfactory to contemplate. You can senselessly cut down a tree. Or you can treat it like a cash crop. You can scorch it with acid rain and blight. You can foolishly clear out the undergrowth that makes up its nutrient bed. But you cannot lie to a tree. In every conceivable way, a tree is above you. It is unmoved. It is unflappable. A tree is nothing but living, breathing, branching, spreading, sharing truth. No liars need apply.

    Juxtapose that with what we call civilization. On the one hand, a forest is a collection of beings so willing to give and receive truth from one another that they become one thing. A Douglas Fir cannot fool an Aspen that it is something else. The Aspen does not pretend to be a Maple. The Oak has leaves that sample and absorb the off-gassed, chemical condensates of its neighbors, and shares with them in turn. Every tree in the wood shares carbon with every other tree underground through the mycelia of their root structures, assisted by fungi, the most un-heralded, unseen, world-class mediators and facilitators of the planet. The network of sharing is so complete, so entwined, that the forest becomes an organism in its own right. Trees have nothing to gain from pretentious self-centeredness. They have everything to gain from being exactly what they are.

    This collection of varieties alone proves the social superiority of trees to humans. There is no murder, no isms, no inequality…makes ya think. (Adobe Stock Image: licensed to Author)

    The veneer of civilization and culture is sophisticated fabrication

    By contrast, human civilization is hardly anything but lies. Lies that appear in facebook posts, instagram stories, and snaps. Tweeted lies. Spoken lies. Documented lies. How rare to find someone not trying to be more than they are, or not trying to be someone else – or wishing they were. We drive cars we can’t afford to pretend we have more money. We mortgage our lives to dwell in houses that are shoddily and hastily built; they have no architectural finesse, or aesthetic beauty, or soul whatsoever. They do fit neatly on the 3rd of an acre lot sandwiched between two neighbors you smile and wave at, but whose names you do not know. But for God’s sake can they just please keep their lawn mowed?

    No, human culture is a polished veneer of appearances. Its strength is not deep connection, but deep deception. You are more deeply committed to your favorite celebrity (who you will never meet) than to your neighbor. We cannot share life the way trees do because we cannot be trusted to share equally. I wish I had the talent to paint in words the absurdity of the tree-equivalent of Elon Musk, or Marc Zuckerburg, or any one of the despicable Kardashians. 

    This? This is the height of human civilization? Please! Give me a forest! (Adobe Stock Image: licensed to Author)

    Here’s a thought: If you picture the canopy of trees in a forest having an average height that represents their individual net worth, the average height would be 88* feet tall. The Elon Musk tree would tower 23,525,920** feet above the average height of the forest. That’s a large number. Correction. It’s an obscene number. It is twenty-three million, five-hundred twenty-five thousand, nine-hundred twenty-three feet above the eighty-eight foot ceiling of the forest average. In other words 800 Mt. Everests stacked on one another, or 800 times higher than the cruising altitude of a commercial jet.

    See anything sticking 23 million feet above this? No? Didn’t think so. (Adobe Stock Image: licensed to Author)

    That Elon tree aberration is 4455.66 miles above the average tree. That’s a mutation! (That is farther than the distance from New York, New York to Anchorage, Alaska). The Bezos, Zuckerburg, and Buffett trees would also tower way above the ”average height” canopy. Can you even imagine what that would look like from space? 

    [This deserves a WaitButWhy illustration from Tim Urban. Like the ones in this excellent piece on AI. (C’mon Tim, discover trees!)] 

    Trees aren’t greedy – They’re more honorable than people

    No tree would be so ashamedly greedy. Humans have no such limitations on either shame or greed. Trees are way more honorable than people. Trees exist to scrub poison out of the atmosphere, turn it into biomass and energy, and give it back in the form of life to everything else on the planet. The immorally rich exist to squeeze life out of everyone ”beneath” them, use them for their own ends, and excrete the poison of selfishness with its envy, lust, and competition, all while being loved and praised and enamored for doing so. Talk about insanity writ large…

    You will live your entire life and maybe know one or at most two other people. I mean really know them. But you will be coldly calculating to make sure you get as much as you give in every transaction with everyone else. You will cultivate a persona for work, for your kids, for your spouse. Then you will put on a face for the public at large. You will go to church and put on a religious face for the members, and for God. While there, you will have the uneasy feeling that God sees through your piety. He sees beneath the veneer. The degree to which you allow Him to see, will be the degree to which you experience the unfathomable bliss of love undeserved.

    A classroom for a better way

    Go to the woods. The trees will release pheromones to bribe you into carrying pollen for them, or maybe just to get you to stand nearby and breathe for a while. But go there and tell them your stories, and show them your curated life with its glamorous photos of the vacation that will take you ten times longer to pay for than the time you spent enjoying it. Show them your checkbook register, or your stock portfolio. 

    I’m just here to learn. I have a feeling there’s so much you can teach me. I hope I’m not too late; for your kind, or for mine. (Adobe Stock Image: licensed to Author)

    Go to the woods and look. See if you can spot a tree trying to seduce its neighbor. See if you find one trying to impress. Find one that is hustling its neighbor, or conning it. Especially, look for the trees trying to oppress and exploit and abuse and use their surrounding, neighbor trees. You know, the ”hard-working” trees just trying to climb the ladder and get ahead. 

    You won’t find any. No, they just stand still, wave in the breeze, reach and stretch, and branch, and take in what’s there, and give back to everything around them, and practice being invisible.

    The Takeaway: I learned these truths by reading fiction

    You cannot lie to a tree. But you can lie to yourself and to others. You can tell yourself there’s nothing to learn here. Trees aren’t people, you say. No, thank God, they’re not. I learned all these things about trees, their essential truths, their fundamental importance, and the dire emergency they truly face, by reading a work of fiction. That’s the power that fiction has to reveal truth and change lives!

    NOTE:

    *The dataset for tree heights found the average height was 87.6 feet (88′).

    ** Elon Musk’s net worth is approx. $185B, the average American net worth is the whopping, $692K (which seems very high). 185B/692K=267,341 (this is how many times more Musk’s net worth is than the avg. If $692K = 88’, then $185B = 88 x 267,341 = 23,526,008’ (the height of the Musk tree) 23,526,008 – 88 = 23,525,920’ (The height in feet of Musk’s tree above the canopy average height)

  • We Don’t All Value The Same Things

    Every direction on the internal compass points toward what is valued…

    One of the most intriguing verses in the Bible is this:

    Every man’s way is right in his own eyes… ~ Proverbs 21:2 NASB

    This is a statement, in scripture, that confirmation bias and self-enhancement fallacies are universal. It is not a positive affirmation that whatever you think, and whatever you do, is right! It is a statement declaring that every person believes themselves and the conduct of their lives to be right.

    Clearly, everyone’s ways are not right.

    This raises two puzzling questions: What is right? Who determines what is right?

    Now, I am not making an appeal to you, dear Reader, that you believe the verse is true by using the authority bias and appealing to a scripture that you may hold no truck with whatsoever, which is, of course, your prerogative. I just find it fascinating for such a clear declaration of a linked set of universal biases to be sitting in the middle of sacred texts. 

    Rather, my appeal as to the veracity of the text is to the evidence of your own life. Do you make decisions and take actions because you believe yourself to be wrong? Or, do you do what you do, believing yourself to be right, at least right for you?

    The outworking suggested by the verse has been true for me, and I suspect, has also been true for you. One effect is that it causes us to project our own set of values, norms, and beliefs onto others. We will have a tendency to judge others by standards we hold to be true for ourselves. We may deceive ourselves into thinking that everyone shares the same value hierarchy that we ourselves hold. We may think everyone prefers and is pursuing the same thing. This is not the case.

    We don’t all value the same things. Even long-time couples, whose lives are intertwined in a myriad of ways so that they end up more as one thing, than two separate things, may have different values, different preferences and pursuits. They may entertain different goals and hopes. Enough difference between ultimate ends and there is a problem.

    If we all shared the same values, we could easily produce an algorithm that would assure us of using the appropriate means to achieve the goals we seek. The only debate would be about means, not about ends, since those would all be universally shared and agreed upon. Everything from dietary choices to politics would be easy. 

    But we don’t all value the same things. It is a plausible argument that we should, but most of us are too myopic to look down the road far enough to see what true value looks like, that state (I posit here that true value consists in states of being, not in things possessed) in which you say, ”This is a good as it gets. I am content. I am satisfied. I could ask for no more.”

    In the political realm (which by extension affects the social aspects of Americans, at least), Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence inked in some values. These were well thought out by the political philosophers of his day, vis. ”all men are created equal”, and the idea that each of us has been endowed with some inalienable rights, among which are ”life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”. 

    These Rights, these Values, are a package deal

    These are value statements. If like me, you’re American, you will give hearty assent that these are valuable ends, worthy of pursuing and protecting. But Dear Reader, consider; what is life to a man who has no liberty? What is liberty to a man who is not treated equally? How can either pursue happiness?

    These values are interconnected, they fall apart if pursued singularly, with a willy-nilly disregard for their interlocking nature. Which, of course, is why Governments are instituted among men. (The sentence immediately following the enumeration of inalienable rights above). Inherent in the very idea of government is the individual’s sacrifice of unrestrained liberty.

    Yet to some, having not well considered these things, and believing their ways to be right, Liberty is the highest value. And so they have proven they are willing to use their liberty to jeopardize their neighbors lives during a pandemic. To them, the pursuit of happiness is more important than either equality, or life. But I submit that unrestrained liberty is as equally devoid of true value as unrestrained pursuit of happiness. And is as equally un-American as it is inhumane.

    The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but a wise man listens to counsel. ~ Proverbs 12:15

  • Prelude to a Review of The Overstory…(is that a thing???)

    Ancient Groves Nature Trail though old growth forest in the Sol Duc section of Olympic National Park in Washington, United States – This is what Foresters refer to as “The Understory”

    I love to read. It is the single greatest skill a human can acquire in my opinion. The books I’ve read have transformed my life, and continue to do so. There is something magic about the transposition of knowledge, sensation, emotion, and longing that happens when a skillful author communicates via a form of ancient, abstract telepathy to the reader.

    Some books are better than others. Some tackle subject matter more weighty than others. Some achieve both. The one I’m reading now is on that list.

    I’m only one-third of the way through it and it’s already blown my mind. It actually blew my mind in the first couple of pages by a cosmic connection I’d felt relating to something I’d jotted in my notes as I stared out my picture window at the pairs of willow oaks budding up the perpendicular street centered in my view.

    I wrote this snippet: 

    ”Has anyone ever successfully captured the perfect architecture inherent in the design of a tree?”

    I was thinking of the perfect marvel of engineered branching and load bearing and surface area distribution and how no human architect has ever attempted building anything like a tree.

    Imagine my profound surprise and delight to begin listening to the audible version of The Overstory, by Richard Powers. winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, an incredible story about trees, and how they have impacted and enriched and enthralled and empowered the characters lives. Some of them also received tree messages, so…kinda makes ya think.

     Some of these magnificent spires have been here since the birth of Jesus. Imagine. A thing so ubiquitous as to have become almost invisible. And yet, a thing that we share 25% of our own DNA with, and owe 100% of our lives to. And things without which, there is no anything. No, really.

    I’m becoming more and more convinced that humans, though apparently created last, and ostensibly for the purpose of taking care of our orb-shaped space ride on the outer edge of the Milky Way, may in fact have devolved into one of the least intelligent life forms still alive and kicking on our cosmic home.

    Trees appear to be smarter. They certainly live longer, cooperate better, are more social, and are more committed to sharing their resources to insure their thriving survival together. Maybe we have a still have a slim chance to change that and we can learn enough to move out of the stupidity basement.

    I’ll write more about this amazing book, I’m sure, but I want to heartily recommend it. You will thank me, and trees, if you do choose to read it.

  • Filtering

    I’ve always been curious about reality. I can accept that I am sitting in my office chair, my own hands stretched in front of me, touching hard plastic keys on a bluetooth keyboard, each touch producing a change that adds or removes squiggly marks on the screen in front of me, carefully engineered to look like a sheet of white paper suspended in portrait view. Because I’m not using full-screen mode, I can see my background wallpaper on what is called my ”desktop”. Of course, I know it’s not an actual desktop because my keyboard and my coffee cup are sitting on my ”real” desktop. If I tried to place them on the one in front of me, they’d slide off in a crash because the one with the squiggles is 90° perpendicular to my actual desktop, the wooden one that is parallel to the floor. The flat one in front of me, in 5K-retina-display-glass-and-electricity, also has some fancy hard drive icons on it. These represent physical hard drives, but they are not the ”real” hard drives, just graphical user interface (GUI – pronounced ”gooey”) representations of the ”real things.

    I’m beginning to think that the ”real world” is probably a bunch of gooey icons too. See if you catch my drift.

    The virtual desktop has a ”wallpaper” of nice colors on it, except I know for a fact those colors don’t really exist anywhere except in my own brain. Light is getting in through the specialized openings in my head called ”eyes”, and that light has a variety of wavelengths (all part of a spectrum called ”white light” that is human friendly) that gets interpreted in some fancy way by another part of my brain that is doing the actual ”seeing” (Eyes don’t really ”see” anything at all). Anyway, the seeing part of my brain allows me to perceive the variety of colors, and it fools me into believing the colors are happening on the screen and not in my head. This same deception also happens when I look out the window and see  ”blackness”. (It will happen when the sky changes into vanilla cotton candy in about an hour too, unless it’s foggy, then I’ll get deceived into believing there is such a thing as ”gray” out there.)

    I had to take a break and walk to the master bathroom for a moment to say good morning to my girlfriend. The tile was very cool on my feet. I remained upright without tilting or leaning. On the way back to my office chair, I felt the brush of my cotton pajama pants against my thigh. Sitting here now, I can’t feel these pants at all. (I am still wearing them) I can’t feel the waistband of my boxer shorts. With a little focused attention, I just made myself become aware of the soft collar of my Life Is Good long-sleeved tee shirt. I can feel the luxuriously soft cotton lying soft as a feather against my shoulders, and the barely noticeable cuffs tickling the hair on my arms at my wrists while I type. As soon as I stop trying to notice it, those sensations will go away.

    I just became vaguely aware of some yellow-white and red lights moving slowly from left to right outside the window in front of me, accompanied by a vague whoosh of sound and a slight low ”grrrr”. ”Car,” says my brain. And, I’m just now noticing the muffled white noise of what has to be the shower running in the bathroom, which is on the other side of the foyer wall to my right. In another minute, I’ll be oblivious to it again. 

    Reality is different than my perception of it, or your perception of it. It’s probably as different as your computer file icons are from the gibberish of ones and zeroes that make up the actual files. Philosophers debate this stuff. There is a school of them that suggests there is no matter at all, only ideas presented to our brains giving us the illusion of matter. I dunno, that’s a bit of a stretch, but I digress.

    You know the way you cannot ignore the sound of waves rhythmically crashing when you first climb out of your car at the beach, only to be completely deaf to the sound within minutes? The waves don’t disappear. The sound is still being generated because the force of water is vibrating air at a specific frequency that is still vibrating the cilia inside your ear canal, which tickles your ear drums to begin the transmission of signals along dendrites and neurons to reach the sound processing part of your brain for some info on what those vibrations mean. 

    ”Ahhh,” says your sound engineer., ”That’s waves…we can safely ignore that. Unless you just want to pay attention, then I can also flip a switch to let you hear those gulls that have been circling overhead the last five minutes you’ve also been deaf to. And for good measure, here’s the sounds of some children laughing.” 

    (Sidenote: It is said that people living in proximity to Niagara Falls do not hear it.)

    That’s the way our brain handles everything, all the time. We may think our conscious selves are being presented with all the information that’s available in our sphere of awareness, but in truth, the normally functioning human brain is a gigantic stimulus gatekeeper. It filters out way, way more than it allows to knock on the door of awareness. It only lets through what it determines is really essential for whatever it guesses you’re most likely to need to navigate the next microsecond successfully. It does this so quickly, that many neurophysiologists believe that most of what we perceive as ”real” is actually the brain’s moment-by-moment predictions of what is ”real”.

    Like your computer icons, the predictions represent reality sufficiently for you to interact without having to sort through the messiness of what’s being kept from you in DOS or UNIX world. Meaning, the perceptions we have of reality are our brain’s predictions (icons) about what the next moment holds in store, which means we are all caught in a milli-second lag and never quite able to…catch…the…present…moment. 

    Sidenote2: (This is what makes improvisational Jazz, or the creativity of a Grateful Dead jam so much fun…they are sonic efforts to catch up to the elusive NOW of things. And the effort is happening between the band members, and between the band and the audience.)

    The brain captures and catalogues all incoming stimuli, maps it, creates a baseline, stamps ”reality” on it, feeds it to the interpreter part of us that needs to know where the edge of the bed is in a dark room, and then starts filtering out extraneous info while feeding the predicted-hallucination-labeled-as-reality back to the interpreter part. The brain is very, very good at picking up on subtle shifts in the catalogued stimuli, but it acts with equal speed to quickly put new information into the existing ”reality hallucination” unless the new stimuli is so disruptive that it requires the generation and presentation of a new hallucination, such as the refrigerator suddenly making ice and the brain has to feed you a reality that tells you:

    1. the fridge is making ice, or 
    2. Someone is breaking into the kitchen through the door leading to the garage.

    OK. Enough of that. You get the general picture, right?

    The gist is, there’s just too much information to pay attention to all of it at the same time. Our brains, somewhere along the line, determined that all the sensory info doesn’t have the same level of importance, so it creates a hierarchy to give the part of us that pays attention a break, since it’s a known fact that dude in charge of paying attention cannot focus on one thing for very long. 

    This is a GOOD THING, because we cannot give equal attention to all things simultaneously for very long and remain what is commonly referred to as ”sane”. 

    So…the brain filters. It predicts. It predicts based on what I guess is a learned history (possibly an innate pre-wired assumption) of the spectrum of ”normal”. From this baseline, it follows that the picture of reality shown to the owner should not be changed very often, and should not be changed very abruptly, or dramatically, unless such measures are unquestionably called for. 

    The other day, I was on a walk. I wasn’t consciously paying attention to the landscape I’ve walked through a hundred times, caught up instead in listening to an audiobook, when I glanced into the empty field with the dead tree beside the sidewalk I was casually descending, and for a hair-raising moment I saw a knee-high tall coyote standing about 20 yards away. Its tail was up, its head was swung in my direction, eyeing me. I had that brief explosion of of WTF adrenaline…you know that explosion? Then, in the next instant, the coyote vanished and became a perfectly aligned clump of dried brown grasses and a scraggly shrub that had been the coyote’s bushy tail only a second before. 

    This was funny. And it was revealing. I’m willing to bet you’ve had the same thing happen before. Maybe you walked into a room and there were some clothes thrown over a chair in a way that for an instant startles you into believing a person is sitting there, and you have that momentary panic. The brain filters out most data that reaches our conscious ”pay attention to this” ops center, but it has no qualms throwing out a hallucination of a coyote (or an unexpected person sitting in a chair) to protect you if needed. And every time your head shifts, whatever new information comes into your visual field has to be scanned, categorized, assessed for threats, assembled into a new hallucinatory reality puzzle, labeled ”real” and ”ok” and fed to the ops center. 

    I’ve jacked with this whole system and this whole process quite a few times in my life. Not too recently, but I can remember. Oh boy, can I remember…

    But think with me, even if you’ve never done acid, or mushrooms, I bet you’ve been sitting in your car stopped at a traffic signal when all of a sudden you have the distinct feeling of moving when the tractor trailer beside you rolls forward. Right? You haven’t budged, but your brain interpreted the new stimulus of the moving trailer as YOU moving, and gave you all the accompanying physical sensations just to complete the hallucination for you. It’s so ”real” you press hard on the brake to stop your unmoving car from ”moving”. Tell me that’s never happened to you.

    That same brain that can make you feel like you’re moving, is making you feel like you’re sitting still, or standing, or whatever right now. And that’s cool. It’s ok, but it is very, very subjective. 

    Your filter, is not my filter. I cannot feel your clothes. I do not see the same sky you’re seeing. I do not hear the same sounds. Studies have shown that even people who look at say the color ”blue” will perceive variations in hue, tone, intensity, depth when asked about ”blueness” on a more granular level. So…the conclusion is we don’t all see the same blue. That’s because there is no blue OUT THERE…your blue lives in your head and my blue lives in mine. 

    I know, weird stuff, right? But, I’ve always grokked out on this kinda stuff. And let me tell you…it has IMPLICATIONS. But…that’s probably enough for today. 

  • Un-Social Media

    Be careful how you Brand

    This past Tuesday, Twitter banned me for a week. I was scrolling along when I came across a tweet expressing outrage over Lauren Boebert. The freshman Congressperson from CO set off an alarm when passing through the newly installed magnetometer on her way to the House Chamber. She then refused to allow Capital Police to search her bag. I read about her refusal, thought about the context of the January 6th attack at the Capital, became ”righteously indignant” and I tweeted a reply, ”Throw her skank ass out!”

    Within minutes, an information screen appeared notifying me that I had broken Twitter’s rules against ”harassment”. I chuckled inwardly that my 5 words had somehow triggered a response from Twitter’s harassment algorithm. I’d seen much worse. But sure enough, my account was to be limited to read-only or Direct Messaging my followers (which I do not do on any social media platform). I was in the penalty box. 

    I’d like to say I rationalized my sophomoric tweet because I had knowledge of Boebert’s past criminal record. I knew of her boast that she would carry her Glock around the Capital. And in her first week in Congress, she had live-tweeted Nancy Pelosi’s movements during the siege of the Capital. Knowing these things prompted my off-the-cuff tweet. I was justified, right? But we humans confabulate rationalizations for everything we say or do. The fact that I had reasons, doesn’t make what I tweeted acceptable. The scary thing is, it was purely spontaneous. I didn’t think. I typed. My words appeared on the screen. I didn’t give a moment’s hesitation to consider the implications of my tweet. It was snarky. It was pithy. I waited for the likes and retweets to roll in….

    I become a different person when using social media than I am in face-to-face or telephone conversations in real life. My hypothesis is that I am not alone in that behavior, but that doesn’t excuse mine. I would never have said those words to Ms. Boebert in person, no matter how disgusted I feel about her politics and actions. That’s not how I speak to people in the real world. And in RL, I don’t feel compelled to ”like”, reply to, comment on, or repeat everything I hear. 

    Imagine a gathering at your kid’s __________(football game, school play, music recital). You park your car, climb out, and make your way to the venue, other parents and students streaming in the same direction. You are aware of faint snippets of unintelligible conversation floating to you in the air. There’s laughter, there’s a murmuring hum of voices below the threshold of comprehension. As the crowd begins to congregate, compressing and concentrating nearer the ticket booth, the conversations become clearer. You feel a compulsion to join in. You want to be recognized. You have a voice, and you’re determined to speak up and comment. A stranger nearby says to her companion, ”Hey, let’s go to Chili’s after this.” You lean in and crow, ”Ooh…I really like that place, don’t you love their margaritas?” Then, pleased with yourself, you turn around and begin to yell to those behind you, ”They’re going to Chili’s after the game! THIS!” pointing and gesturing at them for all to see. You are so happy to be participating. You can feel the rush of dopamine. But within seconds, several others overhear and begin to shout you down, ”Chili’s? Oh hell no! It sucks!”, ”What kind of a loser eats at Chili’s?” Soon, a heated argument breaks out. Tempers flare. Harsh words are exchanged. You feel deflated, confused, ashamed. Crazy, right?

    That level of interaction in the real world is NOT social. It’s not normal. It’s not desirable. It is intrusive, distracting, unproductive, and weird! It is socially destructive. That scene would violate every social norm hardcoded into a human from birth. But, tell me that fictional scene doesn’t play out on twitter and facebook every day. 

    Social media apps and platforms make us different. Anonymity allows you to be as crass and contemptuous, as ugly, mean-spirited, and vile as you can summon the nerve and the wit to produce. Dish it out and take it. Be quick though…someone else is going to beat you with the perfect zinger!

    With the ban on my account implemented, I still had access to scroll though the feed of tweets, but I could neither like them, reply to them, nor retweet them. No interaction. No following of new clever people. No liking their *Chef’ Kiss* rebuttals in 280 characters or less. I instantly and irrationally felt ISOLATED. I felt invisible (and not in a good way). I was going to fall so far behind that in a week’s time there would be no possibility of ever…catching…up. I inwardly chuckled at my pathetic predicament, realizing how absurd it was to feel that way over tweeting snarkitudes with complete strangers, for God’s sake. I have a measly 250 Twitter followers. So…none…in the Twitterverse. 

    Only a small handful of my followers know me in real life, and when we get together, we don’t gather with pocketfuls of heart stickers to plaster all over each other.

    Like I said, I’m different in real life than I am on social media. You probably are too.

    BUT NOT EVERYONE IS DIFFERENT…

    Many use social media to ”brand” themselves. They want to be popular; to be ”influencers”. They carefully integrate their digital, virtual selves with their real life selves (which makes one wonder just how ”real” they are). This behavior is one thing if you’re selling a product, or a reality tv show, but what if you’re an elected official? What if you’re a politician using the power of social media to make incivility and outright hostility your brand? The United States is living through the consequence of that sad result right now.

    We can observe what happens when politicians of either persuasion carefully curate their statements to stay ”On Brand”. This enables them to build a tribe of fiercely loyal supporters and followers; ones who will share a near vicarious identification. But a politician who builds loyalty by being an attack dog against the other party can never be conciliatory or compromising without risking the loss of those same followers who will only support the attack dog. And a politician who creates a following based upon the least common denominators of race, creed, or religion can never be a success as a statesmen able to unite disparate portions of the electorate around the greatest common denominators of humanity, dignity, citizenship, and a shared planet.

    This is an unintended, serious consequence of the ubiquity of social media, and its adoption as the preferred means of communication by political figures. Politicians feel pressure to align their real life demeanor with their social media persona in a way that a normal citizen like me, doesn’t. 

    A hardline, anti-otherside social media presence will not jive with a patient, openminded, tolerant, conciliatory RL personality. If my hunch is true, it goes a long way towards explaining the very recent deterioration of political discourse in our era. Politicians are too often protecting and projecting the social media version of themselves, which may be the worst version of themselves. Every public figure knows they are one tweet, video upload, or facebook post away from having their RL self plastered all over the SocialMediaVerse. If they are known for being mean to the other side on Twitter, heaven forbid they should fist-bump with them in the real world.

    It’s one thing for a non-public, non-elected person to be a jerk on social media. It’s quite another to have to live up to that expected ”jerk-ness” on the floor of the House, or in a debate, or during an interview. To be sure, many members of both parties are doing a fine job being consistently uncivil in RL as they are on social media platforms. I’m saying that’s not a good thing. And the possibility always exists for 280 character tweets, or out of context facebook posts, or instagram stories to become embedded with more ”meaning” to the audience of indoctrinated followers than the politician intended. Those tweets may just radicalize. The hate-soaked, loaded words may flip a switch in the hearer that creates responses and behaviors that is not exactly civilized. This is just another way in which social media may actually be making us all less ”social”. 

    So, these concerns and my twitter jail time have me thinking about some bigger questions…

    Healthy social interaction requires healthy boundaries with healthy restraints. The threshold from individual to social is the moment another person enters the picture. Most people exercise the degree of self-censure and self-restraint deemed appropriate by social customs and norms, given the context. Less restraint out with friends drinking beer at a hockey game than when gathered with family around the Thanksgiving table. Absent mental illness or gross neglect, most people grow up acquiring basic social norms that have been passed from generation to generation. These norms allow society to achieve cooperation; thereby handing off the baton of education, culture, behavior, identity, innovation, and government to one another and to each successive generation.

    When an individual breaks the norms, the group responds to censure that individual, either rehabilitating him, ostracizing him, or punishing him with expulsion in one form or another.

    Behaviors that are bad for the group are bad by definition. 

    Ethical behavior cannot exist in any meaningful way if there are not at least two people present. If it takes two to tango, it takes two to…Ethics? Ethic? An individual alone on the earth cannot practice ethical behavior. He certainly cannot sin against his neighbor. Certainly, the concept of Morality introduces a discussion of how one conducts himself towards God, but even the Bible teaches, ”how can you love God whom you have not seen when you don’t love your brother whom you have seen.” 

    An aside: I find it interesting to recall the Genesis story, that Adam, having been created before Eve, spends an indeterminate amount of time alone before succumbing to the operation that brought the second human being forth. As head gardener, he takes care of the flora. As Zoologist in residence, he names all the animals. As the Priest, the Congregant, and the Worshipper, he walks with God in the cool of the day. But there is no record of him having sinned. And this, despite the recorded declaration that both the tree of life and the tree of knowledge were present in the garden. One might derive from this cautionary tale that it takes at least two to sin against God. In fact, the NT concept of ‘faith’ is a transliteration of Hebrew and Greek words that combined connote much more the idea of ”total dependence upon”, than merely ”mental acquiescence in”. 

    Until Eve appeared, Adam was completely dependent upon God for communion and companionship and all the fruits derived therefrom. It was God who said, ”It is not good for man to be alone.” and thus initiated a search for a help meet for Adam that culminated with Adam naming the animals (thus beating Aristotle in forming the system of classification of EVERYTHING that defines Western thought), and finally, when no suitable help was found, to Eve herself being formed from Adam and presented to him. 

    Adam’s percentage of dependence upon God and attention to God lowered from one hundred per cent to some lesser unknowable percentage. We may surmise that it was this opportunity for co-dependence that created the context for temptation to act against the will of God and his command not to eat of the tree of knowledge, or in other words to become ‘self-reliant’, believing themselves capable of acting independently of God and that such action would produce a better outcome for themselves than continued dependence would produce.

    The NT has a simple, terrible, concentrated warning. ”Whatever is not of faith is sin”. The essence of sin is to act as if there is no God. To act independently of God. Alone in the world, Adam was keenly aware of his dependence. He was no less dependent once Eve arrived, he was just less aware of it.

    Without a doubt, individual expedience and utility are essential to survival. A solitary figure, alone in the world, doesn’t have the ability to sin against anyone and he doesn’t have to consult anyone’s interests but his own. He can howl at the moon, He can urinate outdoors, and not wash his hands. He can hunt and kill for the shear bloodlust and sport and adrenaline rush of it. Hell, he can go so far as to refrain from wearing a mask (since there’s no one else he might infect). But throw another person into the mix and that unrestrained individuality becomes destructive to the group, whether that group is a marriage, a family, a tribe, a company, or a state. 

    As an individual matures, one hopes he learns to cooperate. He learns to harness his individuality for the communal, collective good. If he doesn’t so mature, he is free to be a recluse. But he isn’t free to interfere in the freedoms of all other persons.

    It is the presence of another human that is the contextual genesis of morality and ethics. Ethical behavior is that which tends to the increase in overall good to the group in very general terms. It being obvious that in a group of two, one being a selfish millionaire, the other being a broke and destitute homeless person, if the millionaire becomes a billionaire while the homeless person remains broke, the aggregate ”wealth” of the group has grown, while the aggregate ”goodness” has not increased, and has even diminished.

    A primary role of society is to sort out for itself what is ”good”, and to promote that ”goodness” to all members. The means, adoption, cultivation, and enjoyment of that goodness is what we call civilization. The format and means for advancing civilization is what we call politics. It is just here that philosophers have historically played their most important role. By thinking through and sharing their ideas of ethics, aesthetics, and politics, they serve to civilize us. The basic tenet of social and therefore civil intelligence is to project oneself beyond oneself appropriately at every occasion of interaction and social intercourse. This takes a strength of will and of character far greater than succumbing to the baser tendencies of Nietzsche’s übermensch, or superman, whom Nietzsche lauded as the epitome of human-ness, a being who would be ethically impelled to exert as much dominance as his strengths, gifts, and resources allowed. I reject the ”super-man”.

    It takes no special strength of will, no special insight, and no special skill to consult my own happiness at all times and act as selfishly as my might allows. But to restrain those impulses in the pursuit of lifting up another, of relieving another’s suffering, of elevating the shared corporate ”goodness”, those are skills to be practiced for a lifetime. To cultivate a wider perspective, to walk in another’s shoes, to see with their eyes, to put oneself in their place: in short, to love thy neighbor as thyself; that is a purpose worthy of a human being.

    It is no accident that the first word of the United States Constitution is the word, ”We”. 

    I’m glad for my Twitter ban. Having my hand slapped and being told to behave like a good boy is the perfect opportunity to step back, think about who I really am, and realize that I’m a different person, projecting a different persona on Twitter. Who have I been doing that for? For ME…not for We. It made me feel better about myself to exercise what I considered clever snarkiness on Twitter. And realizing that now…mid ban…makes me reject that Un-Social self.

    That’s not who I am, nor is it who I want to be. Thanks to Twitter, I have the chance to pause and consider. I have the chance to exercise restraint and contribute only that which is positive to the conversation. I have the chance to be social.

  • Which Do You Prefer?

    Every person, myriad times throughout each day makes decisions about what to say or do from the menu of options available to them at the time of the choice. 

    This bears unpacking a bit. You are reading this right now. You could have chosen to do something else instead. But reading this showed up on the menu of choices available to you and you chose to do so. This process was in play before you knew about it, and it will continue now that you do know about it. 

    Not all options are available to choose at all times. Neither of us can fly to the moon, or even across the room under our own power, for instance, even if we desired to do so. And, to be certain, there is a catalogue of historical debate amongst philosophers and behaviorists over whether or not any of us is truly free when we choose any action. That is the age-old debate over ”free-will” vs. determinism. I am unqualified to dive too deeply into those waters, though I have taken a swim in them from time to time.

    I’m writing to bring attention to the fact that when we act as if we are free to choose, there is something driving and impelling those choices. That something I will call ”preference”. There are two or more options available on the menu; and the one we choose is the one we prefer. How could it be otherwise? 

    I’m writing this now, at this moment, rather than doom-scrolling through Twitter, crawling back into a warm bed, going for a walk in thirty degree drizzle, reading news, turning on the television, etc. I’m writing because it is what I prefer to be doing with this slot of time, energy, and attention more than anything else I could be doing. You are doing the same thing.

    It is important to note that preference does not equal desire. I have desires that I may actually prefer more than my current choice, but at the time of my choosing they were not on the available menu. I desire to be walking a secluded beach with my girlfriend in seventy degree weather with a light breeze in our hair, watching the sun come up over the ocean. But that is not on this morning’s menu. I’m sure you have desires like that.

    Our choices are driven by our preferences. This phenomenon is a fact we experience over and over. This is what makes the concept of free will feel true. Seen in that light, no one can take away another’s free will, because there is no power that can be exerted to take away another’s preference as long as more than one choice is available. You may severely limit the menu of options available to an individual. You may wickedly create for them a reality that is a constant choice between the lesser of two evils. But you cannot take away their ability to choose what they prefer from the remaining options.

    This realization has helped me interpret both my own choices and behaviors as well as those of  others. Watch what someone does or refuses to do. Listen to what they say or refuse to say. You are seeing the external manifestations of their internal preferences, moment by moment, event by event, day by day.

    I am overweight because on the whole, I prefer it to the effort and attentiveness that is necessary to lose the extra pounds. I work for my self as a commissioned salesman, with all of its accompanying risks, because I prefer it to a rigid schedule and losing autonomy in my workday.

    The example of overweight-ness is illustrative of the fact that preferential choices happen in the moment. They are myopic. They are not contemplative of the long game, unless…unless you put that contemplation on the menu. Because to be sure, I prefer health to obesity, in general. I prefer activity to lethargy, in general. I prefer self-control to sloth or gluttony, in principle. 

    A key then to making better choices, is to pick those which will be a balance of preferred outcomes both in the present and into the future.