(This post is incomplete but I just gotta put it out there)
Once you’ve picked your subjects, I think the most important thing you should do is to familiarize yourself with the syllabus. You want to know the syllabus inside out. You want to know exactly what you’re tested on, what the examiners are looking for, how to please them.
So head over to the SEAB website and save all the syllabuses of the subjects you’re doing. Print them out and look through them carefully.
Calculus in 20 minutes, by Edward Burger. This guy is amazing. He’s incredibly passionate about his subject matter, he knows his stuff inside out, and he’s an incredible educator, too. Here’s him describing how to do mathematics (2 mins). I’ve been checking him out outside of Mathematics, and he’s a phenomenal voice that needs to be shared. I recommend this video even to people who don’t do Calculus.
Richard Delaware from UKMC has an amazing video series on pre-Calculus and Calculus. He helped me understand functions better than I ever did in school.
Statistics and Calculus on Wikipedia. I find it easier, more interesting and compelling to learn something when you know about the history of it, as well as its importance and relevance to humanity.
Introductory Statistics - on YouTube. 8 Videos. Watch everything once to get a rough idea of the whole subject.
Mastering Mathematics Smartly, by Wee Wen Shih. This is the guy that writes the Ten Year Series books for Dyna Publisher.
The first thing I did was to read the Wikipedia pages of my respective texts- Hamlet, Wuthering Heights, The Importance of Being Earnest. I did this to get familiar with the plot. I then torrented the respective movies- Kenneth Branagh’s version of Hamlet. (I got a modern version of Wuthering Heights that was weird and hipster-ish.)
My last blogpost got significantly more attention than any of my other word vomits. (I was going to say “a surprising amount of attention”, which would then follow with “but actually I’m not surprised”, and “obviously all my work deserves everybody’s attention”, and “ha ha I am so narcissistic” and “ha ha I am aware of the self-reflexive loop of recursion going on”…)
Anyway. It’s cool that it received and continues to receive the attention it did, and I think it’s because I was luckily able to communicate something that resonated with people. What was particularly interesting was how little effort I put into figuring out what exactly I was going to say. It was one of the most ramble-without-editing posts I’ve written, even for a word vomit. But I had been thinking about it for a long, long time. At some point earlier in the day I was on the way to work and I found myself thinking, “How do you teach people to be responsible?” A whole bunch of stuff going on in my mind, something clicked. The moment I got to work, I was itching to write, to explore via writing (which is my favourite kind of writing, which is the kind of writing I’m doing right now). And I realize that it makes me happy, that it feels good, and that it’s incredibly powerful stuff. I should write in this state as much as possible, and I should seek this state as much as possible. Easier said than done maybe, but it’s something to meditate on.
I started reading Flow by Mihaly C. a few minutes ago. The concept is not new to me, I’ve seen it described before, I kind of understand what it’s about- I believe it’s been alluded to in popular culture quite a bit, and I’ve heard artists and writers talk about it. Still, I started reading it and before I even got to the first chapter I found myself overwhelmed with thoughts that I had to pour out- so I made the executive decision to pause reading and commence writing, and here I am. This might not be particularly meaningful or insightful in of itself since I’m just describing what’s going on, but I think it’s a habit that I want to cultivate. When the muse comes, you have to act on it. I believe Rework from 37 Signals describes how inspiration is perishable- if you don’t act on it when you feel it, it’s unlikely to set you on fire the way it typically does.
Amused to realize that some of the greatest flow I’ve experienced has been when I’m arguing with people on the internet. I’m not sure if I’ve ever experienced flow as musician. Maybe in bits and pieces, occasionally. The greatest flow I’ve s had would probably be reading books as a child, sometimes when playing video games, sometimes when writing. Well- fairly often when writing. Sometimes I’ve felt flow while doing pushups or even while cleaning the dishes. (I know that this isn’t v tery helpful or illuminating writing, but that’s a price I’m willing to pay to achieve my goal. You’re really not obliged to read this.)
What’s the goal? The goal as a writer is to write 1,000,000 words. Why? Why not? I just plain like the idea. Sure, I could just write “boobs boobs I love boobs oh man boobs are awesome” or something similar, but I don’t want to. That doesn’t gratify me. It’s also unlikely that something of immense value is going to emerge if you’re just shooting for raw numbers. I’m not really just shooting for raw numbers, though. I’m trying to build a habit. That’s what I’m trying to do with my trivial 20 (now 30) pushups-and-squats-twice-a-day habit. It’s small, but I want it to be persistent. I want it to be something I do until I die. I want to write until I die. I want to read until I die. I do think I’d also like to keep improving as a musician until I die, even if I never becoming an established artist. Music makes me happy. Writing makes me happy. Reading makes me happy. Contemplation makes me happy. Reflection makes me happy. Heartfelt conversations make me happy. I believe that effective routines and discipline will make me happy, too.
At the end of this particular word vomit I would ht ave written over 50,000 words in the service of this seemingly pointless indulgence. How do I feel about that? That’s pretty cool. When I was a teenager, me and a friend challenged each other to write novels. We couldn’t do it. I never went past about 2,000 words. And here I am with 50,000. How does it feel? I’m just getting started, man. 50,000 is nothing. It’s unimpressive. I’ve probably written more words just arguing on the internet. I’ve got several hundred pages of Tumblr reblogs. I’ve tweeted 12,000 tweets, and if there are just 4 words per tweet, I’d have tweeted more than I’d have written. 50,000 is not impressive, Visa. And it doesn’t mean anything. I could discard everything and start over. What matters is the flow of doing it. The number is ultimately inconsequential when you look back. It’s just something to work towards.
I suppose 100,000 will be a nice milestone. 250,000 will feel satisfying. 500,000 will be exciting. I can’t imagine anything after that. Who will I be, what will I be talking about, what sort of impact will I be having in the world, what will I be accelerating?
When Elon Musk was talking to Salman Khan at Khan Academy (YouTube “elon musk khan”), he talks about how he wants Tesla to accelerate the phenomenon of electric vehicles. He knows that it’s going to happen anyway. Nobody is indispensable in the world- not even Led Zeppelin and U2 and Jesus and Leonardo da Vinci. The world is a vast and beautiful complex system and it is not so fragile as to be dependent on a single person. But individuals have the ability to help accelerate things. That’s the difference you can make in the world. You might not be able to single-handedly change the world overnight, but you’re able to make good things happen faster, or slow bad things down.
I want to accelerate humanity’s ascent to space. We’ve sent a few token people up there, for mostly political purposes. We need to get more people up there. To achieve this, I need to develop skills, gather resources, build connections, an audience. I want to be a writer, a popularizer, a diplomat of sorts. I want to help save people time and energy as they figure out what they should be doing with their time and lives.
Of course, I’m still figuring out myself. I need to become a responsible person, first of all. I have a lot of work to do on myself, so that I can contribute more. This is just me defining the mission that I need to serve. A line that my boss used on me that I loved was- you’ve never struggled very much, have you? What is the struggle you need to undertake? Something like that. Struggle. The idea of struggling towards something that you want. Isn’t that beautiful? So much of struggle so far has been about avoiding pain and difficulty and frustration. Struggle to keep some space to yourself, struggle to be comfortable. Now the challenge is shifting, the struggle for meaning, for purpose, to contribute.
It’s fun, it’s exciting, it’s challenging, it’s beautiful. To grow. To be gritty. To achieve flow. This came out of me like water. Back to reading, now.
1: It is remarkably difficult to have an unproductive argument while you’re walking together, and/or holding hands. (I think it subconsciously primes you to remember that you’re on the same team.)
2: Talk in the third person, pretend to be a friend. It’s very therapeutic and allows you to clear a lot of misunderstandings.
INTELLIGENT DISSENT
Find more pleasure in intelligent dissent than in passive agreement, for, if you value intelligence as you should, the former implies a deeper agreement than the latter.
- Bertrand Russell
MASSIVE BEAST
It’s kinda astounding to watch how when The Rock or Lady Gaga posts something on Facebook and you see the Likes and Shares and Comments catapult into the hundreds and thousands within seconds… reminds you that we’re all part of this massive beast of Humanity.
BOOKS NOT DEAD
“For books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them.”
— John Milton
WHERE’S THE VISION?
While our leaders built a system that was exceptional at filling buckets, they themselves must have been internally driven. They were passionate about what they were doing.
After all, they were educated and accomplished- they could have just left Singapore for greener pastures elsewhere.
But they chose to stay and make something of this place. Why? The only explanation I can think of is passion. Vision, too.
Both of which our education system systematically weeds out. What is school for? No, what is it really for?
GETTING OUT OF MARRIAGE:
“But choices have expressive functions only to the extent that we can make them freely. For example, consider the marital vow to stay together “for better for worse… till death do us part.” If you have no way to get out of a marriage, marital commitment is not a statement about you; it’s a statement about society.
If divorce is legal, but the social and religious sanctions against it are so powerful that anyone who leaves a marriage becomes a pariah, your marital commitment again says more about society than it does about you.
But if you live in a society that is almost completely permissive about divorce, honouring your marital vows does reflect on you.”
- Barry Schwartz, The Paradox of Choice
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SUPPOSED MULTIMILLIONAIRE ON REDDIT
“I have a business degree from the University of Washington. Business school does not teach you how to run a business, they teach you how to be a good employee for a hedge fund or a bank.”
“avoid loans at all costs. If you graduate debt free you are already ahead of your peers that graduated years before knee deep in loans. you’d be surprised how much more wiggle room you have and how much more confident you are if you have no debt.”
“every dollar you earn, pretend you only have 25 cents.”
“persistence, you have no idea how many times things didn’t work out for me and I was ready to give up. I kept telling myself that if I keep trying the odds will be in my favor. I hate to say this but a lot of it has to do with who you know and what kind of life you are born into. I was given a lot of opportunities by my family. I think the message you should get across to your students is that no matter how many times they fall they should get back up and try again. I admit i’m not the best person for an example but I hope that they all find their path.”
- Multi-Millionaire on reddit
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WHAT IF CENSORSHIP WAS ITSELF OFFENSIVE
censorship is banning whatever might offend or mislead people, right? to protect them?
what if people are offended or misled by censorship?
because censorship IS offensive; it insults the intelligence and maturity of our people, and it makes us believe that we’re dumb and need to be mollycoddled when we not. the attempt to protect us is hurting us by preventing us from developing a healthy immune system
censorship is damaging to society and a dangerous, offensive idea that should be banned (lol)
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DARTH VADER AND THE PAP
Substitute “humanity” with “Singapore” and “Darth Vader” with “PAP” and it gets interesting and quintessentially relevant.
Joseph Campbell
“Star Wars deals with the essential problem: Is the machine going to control humanity, or is the machine going to serve humanity? Darth Vader is a man taken over by a machine, he becomes a machine, and the state itself is a machine. There is no humanity in the state. What runs the world is economics and politics, and they have nothing to do with the spiritual life. “So we are left with this void. It’s the job of the artists to create the new myths. Myths come from the artists.” Joseph Campbell, interviewed by Chris Goodrich, Publisher’s Weekly (1985)
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ON IMMIGRATION AND FOREIGNERS:
“If it’s okay to enrich ourselves by denying foreigners the right to earn a living, why shouldn’t we enrich ourselves by invading peaceful countries and seizing their assets? Most of us don’t think that’s a good idea, and not just because it might backfire. We don’t think it’s a good idea because we believe human beings have human rights, whatever their colour and wherever they live. Stealing assets is wrong, and so is stealing the right to earn a living, no matter where the victim was born.”
― Steven E. Landsburg
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LANGUAGE WAS A SINGULARITY:
“Singularities have happened before: Language was a singularity! This rich inner world with symbols, etc… The pre-language hominids could not have imagined how language was going to change the operating system of the brain!”
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our education systems train us to be interchangeable, not indispensable
-altucher techcrunch
and there are cheaper parts out there. you’re replaceable.
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THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING INTERESTING:
“The truth isn’t the truth until people believe you, and they can’t believe you if they don’t know what you’re saying, and they can’t know what you’re saying if they don’t listen to you, and they won’t listen to you if you’re not interesting unless you say things imaginatively, originally, freshly” – William Bernbach
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DEATH OF A MEME:
“The death of a meme is as interesting as its life. The logic of meme virality is rife with internal contradictions.
The conditions I’ve outlined for the success of the election-season meme — that it is seen as emerging spontaneously, authentically, from the bottom up, allowing the individual to declare their identity, to participate in a distant system, and to ironically mock the performativity of the political process — are also why they burn out as quick as they burned bright. Like a forest fire, memes use up the fuel that allows them to proliferate. […] The meme’s very success ends up making it part of the script, and no longer its alternative.
We stop retweeting and reblogging a meme when its ability to express a unique authentic identity diminishes into the mere performance of mob conformity.” – Nathan Jurgenson
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CREATING HEATHCLIFF:
“Whether it is right or advisable to create beings like Heathcliff, I do not know: I scarcely think it is.
But this I know: the writer who possesses the creative gift owns something of which he is not always master – something that, at times, strangely wills and works for itself. He may lay down rules and devise principles, and to rules and principles it will perhaps for years lie in subjection; and then, haply without any warning of revolt, there comes a time when it will no longer consent to ‘harrow the valleys, or be bound with a band in the furrow’ – when it ‘laughs at the multitude of the city, and regards not the crying of the driver’ – when, refusing absolutely to make ropes out of sea-sand any longer, it sets to work on statue-hewing, and you have a Pluto or a Jove, a Tisiphone or a Psyche, a Mermaid or a Madonna, as Fate or Inspiration direct.
Be the work grim or glorious, dread or divine, you have little choice left but quiescent adoption.
As for you – the nominal artist – your share in it has been to work passively under dictates you neither delivered nor could question – that would not be uttered at your prayer, nor suppressed nor changed at your caprice.
If the result be attractive, the World will praise you, who little deserve praise; if it be repulsive, the same World will blame you, who almost as little deserve blame.”
- Charlotte Bronte
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HOW TO CUSTOMER SERVICE:
“This contrast got me thinking about what we see when a customer takes the time and the effort to bring back something that didn’t work or disappointed her. Sure you could think her as a cost to be minimized. You could make sure that the clerk she speaks to doesn’t have the authority to make a call to do something to help her, and you could definitely write a policy that’s going to minimize unwanted returns from people trying to scam you.
Or you could see her as someone who cares enough about your product to come back, someone who’s ready and willing to be wowed or disappointed right at that moment, someone who may as well be holding up a sign that says, “THIS IS YOUR BIG CHANCE: turn me into an evangelist for your extraordinary service!””
I actually find this absolutely fascinating. James Deen has discovered that his appeal is so powerful that it transcends the industry- and that it makes more sense to strike it out on his own rather than to tie up with any of the big boys. And he’s crowdsourcing his porn, and banging everyday girls who want to bang him. I find this oddly poetic and beautiful, parallel to other industries that are undergoing this flattening process.
TL;DR: Even in porn, the middleman is becoming obsolete. Rooting for James Deen!
“The study of pedestrian movement took off with the urban sociologist William H. Whyte, who in the 1970s recorded walkers’ behavior in the city, noting loitering and flirting; capturing the dynamics of bus-stop queuing; and analyzing how the throngs of people mostly managed to cooperate, instead of dissolving into a turbulent rumpus. What he found is how reliably pedestrians automatically adjust to one another’s behavior. Modeling this behavior is now a field of study, invoking everything from fluid dynamics to behavioral heuristics to describe how we navigate our sidewalks, swollen with people, without saying a word to one another.”
I have been fascinated by complex systems and networks and swarm intelligence for quite some time so it was a pleasure to read this
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EVIL IS NOT OUTSIDE OF US:
“The concept of portraying evil and then destroying it – I know this is considered mainstream, but I think it is rotten. This idea that whenever something evil happens someone particular can be blamed and punished for it, in life and in politics, is hopeless.”
This is something I’ve said to many people over the years, in many situations. I say it to myself all the time and it’s a part of my identity. It’s part of the narrative I tell people. I was a smart kid who did well early on, and then I didn’t do well later on because I didn’t study. I didn’t study maybe because the curriculum was boring, or maybe I have a subtle form of ADHD or something. I didn’t do well because I didn’t study.
That’s true. And it’s true that school’s boring. But the statement “I didn’t do well because I didn’t study” is dangerous, because it lends itself to some suggestive implications. And here’s the biggest implication that naturally emerges in my own mind. If I didn’t do well because I didn’t study, then I would have done well if I had just studied.
Seems obvious and intuitive, right? But it’s not technically true. It’s a logical fallacy, a round-trip. Not A therefore Not B doesn’t mean A therefore B. There could be a whole bunch of other reasons why I didn’t do well, or maybe I could’ve studied hard and still done badly. This is actually scary to contemplate and accept, because it would directly contradict my self-worth and that would be very damaging to my self-esteem. There’s a huge amount of cognitive dissonance there, and it’s an incredibly painful thing to explore. It’s far easier to do badly and think highly of yourself despite of it, than to actually work hard and maybe realize you’re not as good as you think you are. (Which is far more likely to be true.)
Here’s what I’m really getting- I didn’t do well because I was, and am, an irresponsible person. Why didn’t I study? I didn’t know how to, and I didn’t want to, and I didn’t know how to want to. (I often wanted to know how to, and wanted to want to, but those were not good enough to sustain the daily work that I needed to do in order to make a difference to my own life. I often experienced moments where I felt strongly that I was fucking up my own life and ought to turn things around, but these moments were fleeting and could never translate into action, into behaviour.)
My real problem is incompetence at the art or science of responsibility. I am incompetent at being responsible. What makes this doubly scary is, I’ve developed a coping mechanism where I’m really good at pretending. I’m good at talking. Rationalizing. I’m good at pretending to be responsible, at making lofty promises, at sounding like I really care about this or that- and I do, I really do feel like I care about this or that. But how do you measure whether somebody cares? Do you measure the emotional intensity inside their heads? You can’t really do that. (Well, I suppose you could put them in an MRI of sorts. If you asked me how much I wanted to be awesome, and responsible, or how much I love my wife, I expect you would see real increase in blood flow to the brain- the emotions are real, not fake).
But we get to this additional bit here where- what’s the point of feeling like you care, and saying that you care, if your actions don’t communicate to the world that you care? What’s the point of saying and feeling that you love your wife if you go home late to her because you procrastinated at work? What’s the point of saying and feeling that you ought to quit smoking, or work out, if you don’t?
It’s a horrible place to be, and there is very little sympathy for people in this position. You’re just a lousy person if you’re like that. And I have been that supposedly lousy person for a long time- for all my life, really.
I needed to become a responsible person- I need to become a responsible person- and I have almost no real experience in this regard (although I could perhaps find ways to translate these ideas from other spheres… but I get ahead of myself here). I was irresponsible at home, and my parents let me get away with it. Actually, I think my parents are fairly irresponsible people too. Bless them, they’re human, and they put a roof over my head and food on my table and air-conditioning in my room and provided everything I could possibly need… except they never taught me how to be responsible.
They did punish me for being irresponsible, and my teachers did the same thing. But here’s an important question I’m not sure people are asking enough: How do you teach someone to be responsible? Do you do it by punishing them for being irresponsible? Will punishing an irresponsible person teach them to be responsible? Does it help? Do we have evidence of this working anywhere?
My boss has been an amazing figure in my life in just a few short months and he’s taught me that being responsible begins with little things. Keeping track of little things and executing on little promises. I’m good at making grand promises and giving nice long explanations when things go bad- (essentially a variation of I didn’t do well because I didn’t study, but couched in emotive, flowery language that seems to make sense, and communicates passion- a real passion that is there, that exists).
The challenge is to be responsible. And to focus. I think they’re the same thing. If you’re a person who knows how to focus, being responsible isn’t very difficult. If you’re a person who’s responsible, naturally, focus is not an issue.
I’ve received multiple emails from multiple students who are struggling in school and they tell me that they want to work hard and do well but they’re lazy. This sounds almost a little silly to some people, but it sets off alarm bells in my head. Because I believe them. I believe that they want to do well. I mean, who doesn’t? Who can honestly say that they don’t want to be a responsible person, a trustworthy person, someone who is good and effective and reliable that everybody can turn to and count on? Everybody wants to be responsible. Everybody also wants to be emotionally savvy and financially savvy and know how to solve problems.
So these kids have the same problem I did, and continue to have, and am currently working on. This is the answer to Xavier’s question that has been in my head all this while- how do you overcome what’s stopping you from doing what you’re doing? Here’s what’s stopping me, it’s a fucking neurosis. It’s a life of self-worth built on half-truths and maybe-truths, self-esteem that is dependent on flimsy logic. That’s where the fear comes in. The fear isn’t success or failure, the fear is the very real pain and discomfort that happens when you come to terms with the fact that you aren’t who you claim to be, you aren’t who you say you are, you are far, far smaller than you think you are.
But there is power in acknowledging that. When you face the fear you realise it’s not that scary. When you allow yourself to feel the pain you realize it’s not that painful. Once you acknowledge there’s a problem and you start exploring it, with real conviction, you start realizing that you can fix it.
So how do you fix the problem of being irresponsible? Punishing irresponsible kids for being irresponsible is a losing game. My parents tried it on me, it didn’t work. My teachers tried it on me, it didn’t work. My girlfriend tried it on me, it didn’t work. My friends tried it on me too (in a subtle denial-of-social-acceptance way), and it didn’t work.
Let me be clear- I respond to it. I respond emotionally, viscerally. I acknowledge the truth in their sentiments, I acknowledge that there’s a problem. But like a smoker who says he wants to quit, and means it, I quickly lapse into my previous habits and routines because I don’t know how else to live. I don’t know how else to be.
It’s such a sad situation!
Er, how do you fix the problem of being irresponsible, sorry. You fix the problem of being irresponsible by being responsible for something small. Just one little thing, be responsible for it. One really, really, REALLY little thing. The thing has to be far, far littler than you think it is. As little as “write one sentence a day”, or “do 10 pushups a day”, something really, really simple. And you have to tie it to something that you already do. I did squats in the shower. It works, I now cannot shower without feeling awkward if I don’t also do squats.
Okay, honestly, I don’t know how to solve this problem completely, because I’m working on it as we speak. But I acknowledge that I have a problem, a problem beyond the mere acknowledgement of problems- the challenge is to learn how to be responsible. And I suppose there are many ways to do that. The main thing I’m trying to say is that I don’t think we can teach responsibility by punishing irresponsibility. Maybe I’m wrong. I just had to write this.
I’ve been thinking that there ought to be a universal “practical everyday logic” exam that we can voluntarily take, and we can share our scores with other people if we wanted to, post them on our social media profiles (Verified). That way, we’ll know not to argue with people who fail at simple logic. Less stress for everyone.
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FAITH:
“What would life be without your faith?”
I’m an atheist, but I consider myself a spiritual person. I think we all are.
My “faith” is love, and awe, and splendor, and beauty. Mercy, grace, compassion.
I cannot separate my life from my “faith”. My “faith” is how I make sense of reality.
Asking about life without “faith” is like asking what the world would look like if we did not have eyes (or, to be more accurate, the ability to make sense of the visual information that is transmitted through our eyes.)
Faith isn’t something we put on every weekend, like a hat- it’s embedded in every moment, in every breath, in every decision.
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IMPORTANCE OF DECLUTTERING
And unless you’re extremely organized, a house full of stuff can be very depressing. A cluttered room saps one’s spirits. One reason, obviously, is that there’s less room for people in a room full of stuff. But there’s more going on than that. I think humans constantly scan their environment to build a mental model of what’s around them. And the harder a scene is to parse, the less energy you have left for conscious thoughts. A cluttered room is literally exhausting.
(This could explain why clutter doesn’t seem to bother kids as much as adults. Kids are less perceptive. They build a coarser model of their surroundings, and this consumes less energy.)”
- Paul Graham
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“Some day you will meet someone who cares for neither money, position, nor glory,
Then will you know how poor you are.” – Halford E. Luccock
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Reading, writing, conversing, playing music, painting- I consider all of these pursuits (and countless others) to be a form of thought, of contemplation.
Sometimes we think with our bones.
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STORIES TO TELL:
“Thirdly, I have stories to tell. They may not be the most amazing or the most fantastic of stories, but they are my stories; memories, thoughts, emotions, reflections, recollections, unique perspectives and states of mind that are just begging to be dug out from the corners of my mind and freshly interpreted. My head has always felt like a massive heap of books, ideas, notes, drawings and sketches cluttered in a massive incomprehensible mess accessible to none but yours truly, and even so with substantial effort. Perhaps it is time I tidied up and sorted everything out. Who knows, I might develop new insights on what previously befuddled me, rediscover forgotten treasures and learn even more about myself. What could possibly be more exciting than that?”
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SING YOUR DEATH SONG – TECUMSEH
“So live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart. Trouble no one about their religion; respect others in their view, & demand that they respect yours. Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life. Seek to make your life long & its purpose in the service of your people. Prepare a noble death song for the day when you go over the great divide. Always give a word or a sign of salute when meeting or passing a friend, even a stranger, when in a lonely place. Show respect to all people & grovel to none. When you arise in the morning give thanks for the food & for the joy of living. If you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies only in yourself. Abuse no one & no thing, for abuse turns the wise ones to fools & robs the spirit of its vision. When it comes your time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with the fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep & pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song & die like a hero going home.”
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The Myth Of The Overnight Success, by Chris Dixon:
“Angry Birds was Rovio’s 52nd game. They spent eight years and almost went bankrupt before finally creating their massive hit. Pinterest is one of the fastest growing websites in history, but struggled for a long time. Pinterest’s CEO recently said that they had “catastrophically small numbers” in their first year after launch, and that if he had listened to popular startup advice he probably would have quit.
You tend to hear about startups when they are successful but not when they are struggling. This creates a systematically distorted perception that companies succeed overnight. Almost always, when you learn the backstory, you find that behind every “overnight success” is a story of entrepreneurs toiling away for years, with very few people except themselves and perhaps a few friends, users, and investors supporting them.
Startups are hard, but they can also go from difficult to great incredibly quickly. You just need to survive long enough and keep going so you can create your 52nd game.”
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MUSIC FROM CHILDHOOD (FF6 boss theme)
I was listening to this earlier- a song from my childhood- and somehow it “makes more sense” now than it did before.
It occurred to me that my ear has expanded over the years, that I’ve discovered new and more interesting and complex ways to listen to music.
And I realize this applies to so many things- to everything, really. My mind has been broadened, my understanding of beauty enriched.
Even if infinity is always infinitely far away, striving towards it is almost always beautiful, and worth the toil.
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CREATIVITY IS CONCEPTUAL COLLISION:
“Tom Robbins says you can’t manufacture creativity or wonderment, but you can pull yourself out of context so dramatically that you gawk in amazement at the ubiquitous everyday wonders you’re culturally conditioned to ignore. I think this is key: To get new ideas we need to see the world with new eyes–we need to evoke a novel way of seeing things. For me that involves throwing myself into new situations. Some of the thinkers I respect the most have credited travel, walks in the park, and marijuana as creativity catalysts. Really, its anything that triggers free association and the right conceptual collision. We need disruption of the profane so that we can engage with the sacred and creative.”
- Jason Silva
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BE HAPPY WHERE YOU ARE, MISSED IF YOU’RE GONE, THRILL OF GREAT WORK:
“If your happiness is based on always getting a little more than you’ve got…
then you’ve handed control over your happiness to the gatekeepers, built a system that doesn’t scale and prevented yourself from the brave work that leads to a quantum leap.
The industrial system (and the marketing regime) adore the mindset of ‘a little bit more, please’, because it furthers their power. A slightly higher paycheck, a slightly more famous college, an incrementally better car–it’s easy to be seduced by this safe, stepwise progress, and if marketers and bosses can make you feel dissatisfied at every step along the way, even better for them.
Their rules, their increments, and you are always on a treadmill, unhappy today, imagining that the answer lies just over the next hill…
All the data shows us that the people on that hill are just as frustrated as the people on your hill. It demonstrates that the people at that college are just as envious as the people at this college. The never ending cycle (no surprise) never ends.
An alternative is to be happy wherever you are, with whatever you’ve got, but alway hungry for the thrill of creating art, of being missed if you’re gone and most of all, doing important work.” – Seth Godin
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“Tell everyone you know: “My happiness depends on me, so you’re off the hook.” And then demonstrate it. Be happy, no matter what they’re doing. Practice feeling good, no matter what. And before you know it, you will not give anyone else responsibility for the way you feel—and then, you’ll love them all. Because the only reason you don’t love them, is because you’re using them as your excuse to not feel good.”
— A Hicks
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“Ugly is irrelevant. It is an immeasurable insult to a woman, and then supposedly the worst crime you can commit as a woman. But ugly, as beautiful, is an illusion. A matter of taste, a whim, an eye, a beholder, an opinion, a spin, light crossing the frame, paint, projection. The moment. Context.”
— Margaret Cho
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Old friends pass away, new friends appear. It is just like the days. An old day passes, a new day arrives. The important thing is to make it meaningful: a meaningful friend – or a meaningful day.
- Dalai Lama
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In the movie, Bangladeshi laborers speak openly about how their wives cry in their absence, their struggle to make ends meet on their $18 daily salary and their dreams of providing easier lives for their children. During the intimate conversations, the construction workers do their best press out smiles, but at least one man is brought to the verge of tears as he reveals that an on-the-job injury means he can no longer work or provide for his family.
don’t be a sucker:
protect and insure yourself against collapsing systems-
build your savings, learn, learn, and get the hell out if you have to-
but never get jaded. never kill hope.
if you go, go in pursuit of building your dreams.
make some magic.
you don’t have to hate where you’re from…
you just need to know what your principles are,
and run at them with all your heart
===
Now, at that time in my life [around 2008], it felt very much like, ‘OK. The record business is broken. The model is broken.’ I’d go through periods of having to look in the mirror and say, ‘Let’s see. I just made an album I spent a year working on. I turned it over to the record label to get manufactured. It leaked, and I’m online, just boiling furious, at fans who’re talking about how much they love this new album, that they just stole.’
And then I’d think, ‘Wait a minute. They’re not standing outside my house, bootlegging copies out the back of their van, y’know, to make money. They’re sharing their excitement about songs I’ve written, and music I’ve done. And they’re excited about it. And I’m pissed off at ‘em, because what? They didn’t wait until a month from now, when they’d have to drive to a record shop (if they can find one,) to buy a piece of plastic they don’t want, then rip it back to their computers, to…man, this sucks. Ok, something’s not right.’ Or they can buy it from iTunes at a lower bit quality, which at that time was also copy protected, which I was strongly against.
It becomes very clear, if you can remove the emotion from the equation, that the delivery system is broken. And the relationship between fans and artists and record labels is also broken.”
— Trent Reznor on the music industry
Here’s a simple idea worth exploring- what goes on inside your brain affects what happens in reality. What you do. How you effect the world. Not sure how predetermined things are but my experience suggest some degree of randomness in mental activity. Yet these random thoughts and ideas and activity tend to be funneled through familiar structures and lead to non-random habits and routines.
The analogy I liked was that of a cunning jailbreak. There is no escaping our heads (or is there? One can, within the brain, experience a sense of transcendence). We really need to learn more about these things.
Jailbreak- if you want to leave your existing brain-jail, you’ll have to plot it. This can seem silly. Why should anybody have to play tricks on themselves? But we do, and these tricks WORK, and believing ourselves to be above them is the quickest way to fall into the trap. (Perhaps this doesn’t apply for people who already have coded discipline into their subconscious. I have little inkling of what that feels like.)
(Whoops, I published that prematurely.)
The best thing in my life right now, apart from my awesome job and the fact that I have a home of my own, is the daily fitness routine I have developed. I do squats in the shower and I keep track of them on my kitchen wall:
This is working out very well for me. I have been progressively polishing off one of my oldest limiting beliefs- that I will always be skinny and have weak chicken legs. I could do pull ups and pushups but I was never fit enough to comfortably run 2.4km, so I kinda grew to assume I’d always hate those runs. I ran around the block at my place several times but I never developed flow at it; it was never pleasure.
Doing pushups and squats is kinda pleasurable now. Pushups have always been kinda pleasurable for me if I’m moderately fit. Squats and runs never. I always had chicken legs.
Coupling squats and showers for me has been what I call a “jug of water solution”. The jug of water story is trivial-sounding but significant. I once cleaned out a jug from a cupboard at my parents’ place and filled it up with water before putting it in the fridge. I never had to tell anybody that I did it, or why it ought to be done- but once it was implemented, it stuck. Everybody used the jug of water, and refilled it whenever it was empty. It became the new norm without any argument. Its value was self-evident, and the means to sustain it were self-evident too.
Since then I’ve always kept an eye out for similar jug-of-water solutions. Squats in the shower is one. Another seems to be to keep a book by the bed. My wife and I were talking about our childhood reading habits and she described how she would read books before going to bed, and she would fall asleep while reading (why is my pillow so hard?) and then go right back to reading the moment she woke up. I completely related to that. Somehow that habit fell along the wayside over the years as new and more compelling distractions become available. I’m interested and curious to rediscover and re-establish that habit to see where it leads.
===
Sometimes a word vomit needs to be done from scratch. 2 things on my mind. How do I convey to people the importance of doing things for yourself? I can preach it at length or I can just put it out there and demonstrate it. Trivial issue.
2nd- how do I resolve the recurring problems- lack of focus, inevitable distraction? It seems to me that the solution necessitates meditation. Breaking from a pattern requires nothing short of a cunning jailbreak. I need the sort of clarity I can only get from emptying my mind and allowing the solutions to rise gently to the top of my mind.
I’m thoroughly convinced that we needed to go to space. I now think I’m also convinced that mediation is equally important, if not more important- for the same reasons. Expansion of human consciousness for the purpose of diminishing human suffering and improving human wellness. We can talk about the futility of life once we’ve solved poverty and every major problem faced by earthlings. (The entire question is a bit of a trap. We have not yet devised a method to transcend our brain chemistry, so we are limited to working within it. We all seek chemical highs one way or another. Consistently, the best ways include exercise, meaningful relationships, growth, mastery, all that good stuff. A lot of times, what feels like despair can be traced to low blood sugar, dehydration, sleep deprivation, a lack of mental clarity. This isn’t to imply that depression isn’t a real and horrible sickness that afflicts the best of us- it is. I’m just saying that we have to remember that we are animals with chemicals in our heads, and it’s worth experimenting with multiple things to see if anything works. It’s possible that nothing might; but you owe it to yourself to at least try.)
Space, and meditation, expanding human consciousness to diminish human suffering.
The challenge is to do it in a sustainable way. There are many things that give you a real moment of illumination- like an intense attraction to a beautiful stranger with whom you hit it off perfectly. But such romances are often fleeting, ending up as a positive memory and little more. The challenge is to build something analogous to a lasting, happy marriage. Something that’s a commitment rather than an experience, something that’s built and nurtured.
Here’s how education should begin- What’s interesting and exciting about the world? What’s worth being curious about? Do you know why you’re in this building? Real reason and fake reason. Real reason is to train you to be compliant factory workers, interchangeable, dispensable. Prepare you for life? What is life? What do you want to know? What do you want to do? For the working world?
What is the working world? People work to earn money to pay for things that other people work to produce. And people are paid to make you think and feel that you need more than you actually do- to exploit your weaknesses and impulses and subconscious desires to make you buy the shit they’re working so hard to produce. And the funniest (or saddest) thing is that they are not immune to their own effects. People working in marketing and advertising are susceptible to their own wiles and keep doing what they doing to earn money so they can buy shit too. What is happiness, what is pleasure, what is joy, and why do we believe that climbing the social ladder will yield it?
What is interesting, fun, exciting, beautiful? Who are the best teachers you’ve had?
Why do I keep thinking about education? I think it’s because the process of thinking about it makes me feel like I might be figuring out how to educate myself. Maybe I should skip the middle step and just go straight to sorting myself out. I’m going to start scheduling and deleting drafts to tidy up my blog a little.
Humans build businesses and corporations that exploit human frailties and weaknesses. They exploit the human need for chemical hits, they exploit the illusions that humans are victims to. Corporations have made humans their collective bitch. Businesses fail and adapt and evolve quicker than animals do, so you could say that from an “enlightened” or “higher” perspective, humans exist to serve businesses. (If businesses could talk, that’s what they would say, just as humans say the same about animals and the earth.) The corporation is a superior living entity to the human being (so was the kingdom and so is the nation-state) in the sense that it is more robust to failure, and for the time being seems more capable of exploiting humans than vice versa. Some humans create corporations hoping to empower themselves by enslaving others, but few manage to escape unscathed- they are unwittingly enslaved themselves, by ambition and the trappings of wealth.
This isn’t to say that businesses are inherently bad, no, not at all. Businesses are way more cunning than that. They know that they have to empower their victims to some degree so that they’ll be kept alive. Unenlightened businesses are parasites that kill their victims (this is totally fine for narcotics, for arms-dealing, for alcohol, for fast food), while enlightened businesses are symbiots that empower their hosts. (This requires an entirely different rhetoric from what I’m using, but I’m sticking with the current style for dramatic effect.)
Businesses and corporations have helped to boost standards of living, they have helped to combat disease, sickness and famine. They have brought abundance, healthcare, knowledge and information to the masses. They have enabled us to better understand ourselves and the processes that we are governed by (which subsequently allows us the luxury of criticizing the manner in which we receive these luxuries. A Few Good Men.)
Hopefully, as people get more enlightened and more aware of how people use businesses (and businesses use people) to exploit people, we’ll demand that the exploitation is replaced by empowerment. Business should be about the creation of real value for people, not the exploitation of human frailty and weakness. Hopefully we can build an immune system to protect ourselves against this so that we can get the good while keeping out the bad.
Businesses are animals, bags of human beings chasing profits and growth. The question arises whether we can rewire the neurochemistry of businesses, and if so, can we use these large superstructures to rewire the neurochemistry of individuals? It seems plausible, given evidence that people are influenced by their surroundings and social circumstances. (It would be so easy to become prescriptivist and use such rhetoric to do horrible things to people, though. It’s important to earn legitimacy through honest discourse.)
We seem to have drifted from the central focus- what the fuck does it mean to be a human being? Quick recap- it involves being a bag of chemicals chasing chemical hits. There are certain trends and patterns in the way we seek our chemical hits. Natural selection has selected (randomly) for social animals, so many (most) of us are wired to get pleasure from meaningfully contributing beyond ourselves. (Or the illusion of doing so.) Self-expression. Pleasure. All of us seek pleasure and it’s fucking ridiculous how little we talk about it in polite conversation. (Deja vu- I mentioned this the last time, didn’t I. Oops.)
What is school for? To prepare kids for life? Well, adults, what are the most important lessons you’ve learnt? I should ask people. I shall.
A random thought/insight/expression: Social life is an elaborate dance of conquest and desire in subtle forms. I want to write about this, to write about the “problem” of lust, or the human condition that is lust, a desire for conquest, endless desire, to conquer others, to conquer land, to conquer people- psychologically, emotionally, physically- sexual conquest… what it is to live with that and to make sense of it and to realize that we treat people very differently depending on how they manifest those desires. And nobody teaches you how to do it right. But we disproportionately reward people for getting it “right” and we punish people for getting it “wrong”. Right and wrong are of course arbitrary concepts decided by whoever is in power. This should probably be a separate article altogether and I think I’ll write one about my personal experiences and perspectives.
What are the lessons? All greatness begins with baby steps. It’s important to solicit negative feedback from friends (says Elon Musk). It’s important to persist and to work hard and to fight for something that you’re psychotically obsessed with (making the huge assumption of course that there’s anything in your brain that allows for psychotic obsession, and that your obsession is something healthy and positive and desired by the masses.)
Clearly we need to understand people’s brains better, and how we behave as people, and study is so, so important. Hail thee, scientific method. If only you were applied more rigorously across all fields, at all times, that we might learn at a breakneck speed and realize our potential as a species. Man, imagine if we could bring plants to Mars and grow them there. It would be the furthest that Earth-plants have ever been, and we, that is, human kind, would function as Earth’s sort of “gardener.” What if that’s what we are? What if we’re supposed to spread plants from Earth to beyond, and that other planets aren’t actually meant to be bare and barren? Of course all of this is hogwash and a liberal application of the human need for causes and meaning. There’s no such thing as “meant” or “should”. That’s just us imposing our will upon reality. But we can, so why shouldn’t we, as long as we’re not really hurting anyone? We have to be critical and turn inwards on ourselves- in a healthy way- so that we can grow and learn. Natural selection has selected for us to be this way.
We’re all animals, after all, chasing our chemical hits. The question is, how do we align ourselves and our environments and our societies such that we create optimal conditions for the maximal realization of these chemical hits in a way that is positive, sustainable, healthy and non-damaging to humans and to nature?
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