Ω2Δ

Filed under "Social Organisms." People behave differently in their roles as members of a group than they do as individuals. But you already knew that.

More about Schön here.

Well, the title didn't exactly export properly. That's supposed to be the Greek letter omega, the numeral 2 and the Greek letter delta. (Omega 2 Delta - "Resistance to Change" - get it?)

Damn computers.

Update: The title is fixed. Thanks to Jonathon Delacour. I won't pretend to understand why it works, but it does.

Monday Morning Quarterbacking

The truth doesn't require a catchy slogan. I require a catchy slogan, if I want your attention.

Nobody owns the truth. The truth can't be owned. There's no business model for the truth because it can't be sold. If someone is trying to sell you something, chances are it's something other than the truth.

The truth is less than what you think it is. The idea that it's more is something people have been selling for a very long time.

Someone could sell you their services for helping you discover the truth, and some people do that. Most really want to sell you their authority, because if you found the truth, you'd have little need to buy anything else from them. Where would they be then?

The truth is never what you think. Sorry about that.

Meditation is not what you think either, if that helps. But that's a bit too much like a catchy slogan, isn't it?

Pictures

Please recall my disclaimer regarding photography, I've posted an album of pictures from our latest adventure here.

I'm back...

I returned yesterday from a trip to upstate New York, land of snow and my family. We had a very pleasant visit, which included a hot date with Kalilily. I've got a lengthy report of my visit underway, and it'll probably get posted off the main page with a link from this one after I finish it. I've still got to download my pictures from my camera too. It did snow while we were up there, much to the delight of my daughter, Caitlin.

More about the trip later.

Apple Store Opening St Johns Town Center

Okay, I'm not a photographer, I just take pictures. Bad pictures. Boring pictures. But here they are...

I'm glad I didn't follow my initial plan, which was to arrive about 0600 to get a good place in line. This is Jacksonville, after all, and a town that doesn't stand up at a Springsteen concert without The Boss telling them to is probably not going to get up early to go stand in line for an Apple Store opening.

I was right. There were only 25-30 people in line ahead of me when I arrived about 0835. I think there were probably only a couple of hundred people in line at its largest, but I was surprised to see that there was still a long line waiting to enter when I left.

There was some kind of grand opening ceremony for the St Johns Town Center, which is an enormous shopping center, not a mall. The guy who was doing the talking made mention of the number of people waiting for the Apple Store to open because there were more of us standing in line than there were in his audience. But he needn't have worried, by the time I left the store, the parking lots were filled and traffic was a nightmare. Where all those people came from so quickly, I have no idea.

I'm going to enjoy visiting the store sometime when I have more time to relax and enjoy it. Well, that and when I have some money to spend in there too. It is a pretty nice place, it was quite impressive.

The Mac minis kept shutting down because people (like me) would pick them up to hold them in their hands and feel the weight (fairly substantial), but the cables didn't have much slack and it would dislodge the power connection enough to shut down the computer. They're going to have to play with that a bit, I think.

I looked at Pages while I was there, very nice. They had some nice laptop backpacks and I almost bought one for my trip north tomorrow, but I changed my mind at the last minute. Anyway, that was my excitement for the day.

Oh yeah, I did get a t-shirt.

More Brains...

"Know thyself." Thales

Interesting...

“Although human social systems are far more complex than insect societies, where a reduced set of rules govern the behavior of each insect for a given situation and the group’s behavior emerges from such interactions, these models may be useful in understanding the basic principles and best practices to be considered when developing strategies that will coordinate knowledge sharing in chaotic social settings where a small set of rules applied to local information drives decision-making,” Hollingshead said. Science Daily Magazine.

Might not "save the world," but it might save a town.

"Evil! Pure and simple, from the eighth dimension!"

I love all the new "Apple is evil," stories. Apple is a corporation, it acts in its own interests. When those interests are congruent with those of its customers, people think they're great. When they're not, people think they're evil. The truth is, they're neither.

Examples of Apple "evil:"

Remember Apple II Forever?

Suing Franklin and Orange computers.

The ROM 04 IIGS

Charging for ProDOS Basic.

Killing GS Basic.

Charging for Hypercard.

Killing Hypercard. (Well, letting it die a slow death.)

OpenDoc.

Publish and subscribe.

Quickdraw GX or whatever it was called.

Killed that mail protocol, whatever it was.

Mac OS X! (It wasn't something else... Be, Copland, whatever your particular ox was.)

Killed the clones.

Killed the Newton.

Killed eWorld. (An entire world, wiped out!)

Killed Claris.

The 68LC040 processor.

The "Road Apples." (Compromised hardware designs. One of which I happily owned.)

The one-button mouse.

QuickTime Player ("Brushed metal?!" "Charging for Pro!")

The GeoPort modem. (A software modem that was problematic.)

The $10K Lisa. (Who were they kidding?)

The $8.5K 20th Anniversary Mac. (Who were they kidding?)

The 603ev processor with no Level 2 cache!

What, no floppy????!!!!!

USB? But what about all my ADB peripherals?! What about my SCSI scanner?! You bastards!

"Sherlock!" "Yes, Watson?"

Virtually any change to iTunes according to no less a luminary than St. Cory Doctorow.

Silos! You're trapped in the silo! According to Doc Searls, another internet authority.

They're dicks! According to Dave Weinberger, yet another internet authority (YAIA).

Charging for .Mac. ("Free e-mail for life! I swear I read it!")

Where's the 3GHz G5, Steve??????

All Apple software. ("They're hurting developers!")

Apple retail stores. ("They're killing the independent Apple retailers!")

There's no Firewire cable in the new iPods! No Firewire cable!!!!

Apple has been "evil" for a long time. Even I objected to some of the things above. The Mac web pages are filled with horror stories from people about how Apple mistreated them. People project their hopes and fears on the things before them all the time.

A corporation behaves like a corporation, not like a person. They're different entities. A animal behaves like an animal, not a person. The quickest way to have an ill-behaved dog as a pet is to treat it like a person, because it's going to think you're just another dog and guess what happens?

I like some animals better than others. I prefer the tiger to the jackal, though both of them can really hurt me. I prefer Apple to Microsoft. Doesn't make Apple saints, though Microsoft is a lot like a jackal.

See? I can project too.

Freedom

What is the value or meaning of freedom if one exists in a state of ignorance?

If the nature of ignorance is such that we don't know what we don't know, who can say they are truly not ignorant?

Who believes they are truly free?

The truth has nothing to do with what is acceptable.

Denial.

Anger.

Bargaining.

Depression.

Acceptance.

If something is unacceptable, then what are your options?

Don't believe everything you read.

That goes here too.

Wired World

For Troops, Home Can Be Too Close

Brains

The prefrontal cortex then monitors what the basal ganglia have learned. Its slower, more deliberate learning mechanisms allow it to gather a more judicious "big picture" of what is going on by taking into account more history and thereby exert executive control over behavior, Miller said. Science Daily.

Leap of Faith

I watched City of Angels tonight.

Ow.

ow

Future?

"As a avowed leftist, however, I find this Orwellian future terrifying. Corporate messages controlling our internal self-image, making us into conformist robots spouting corporate bilge in place of personal convictions, and the apparent inevitablity (sic) of all this because of the rational self-interest involved -- it's a dystopian nightmare, not something to be accepted."

I assure you, I'm not being flippant, snarky or cynical when I ask, what makes anyone think this is an Orwellian future?

What's What

I'll be drinking the Kool-Aid this Friday, when Apple opens it's latest retail store, this time right near me! I hope to get there early enough to get a t-shirt, but you know what they say, "Desire is the source of all suffering." I will bring my camera though, and probably my Newton MP 130, just to establish my street cred.

In related Apple news, the rumor mill is reporting an April 15th release date for Tiger, aka Mac OS 10.4. That would be what the french call tres sweet. But you kind of have to ask yourself, if you're going to spring for $129.00 for an operating system, why not spend the extra $370.00 to get a pretty box to put it in? Well, assuming you have that kind of money that is, which I don't at the moment. But when I do...

I'm glad I go to taekwondo, but sometimes it's hard to know why. Saturdays are the 90 minute black belt classes. Today we only had five students. I suspect the beautiful weather had something to do with the low turnout. Caitie wanted to spend the day with her friend, and that's important too, so she wasn't with me. But I was the oldest guy in the class by a good 20 years. We did some plyometric exercises which we haven't done in quite some time. The main one consists of hopping back and forth across a piece of string down the floor of the dojong . This does not sound hard. And judging by how the other students did, it's not. I can do the basic two-legged hop, left, right, left, right no problem, apart from the giant sucking sound which is me gasping for air. One-legged, not so bad on the right leg, left leg forget it. Buckles on landing each time. Bad knee? Who knows? But the real killer was the silly hop, cross your legs as you land, hop, uncross your legs, and repeat. Maybe it was the lack of oxygen to my feeble brain, or just that I was never terribly coordinated to begin with, but oh, did I suck! Good workout though. I am getting in better shape, and a few of my many excess pounds are coming off.

Battlestar Galactica was very good again last night. It's still a little uneven from time to time, and I wonder a bit about the editing, but it's still the best sf on TV. It also happens to be the only TV show I actually watch. Not sure where Moore is taking the whole religion and mythology thing, but it's interesting to watch. Adama's relationship with Apollo was developed a bit more last night, in a very affecting way. Starbuck's character is growing as well. And I just think it's a great cast. I enjoy watching these people each week. No, it's not Firefly, but it's damn good sf.

A week from today I'll be heading up north with my offspring to visit my parents and family in upstate New York. If we can work out the logistics, I'm going to try to meet Kalilily while I'm up there. We've got some conflicts, but there might be an opportunity at some point, so we're communicating to see if we can arrange something.

And that's probably enough of, "Me! It's all about me!"

Carry on.

One more thing...

You know what "authenticity" is in a nutshell? It's the difference between speaking the truth, and trying to sell it.

Think a little harder. It won't hurt. Much.

All ideologies are belief systems. Not all belief systems are ideologies. At least, that's my opinion. I'm neither an author nor an authority. You know... I make all this up.

Ideologies are belief systems that are fashioned with intent by leaders or authorities of would-be groups of people. Everyone has a belief system, and most of it is an unexamined, aggregate system of many beliefs, the purpose of which is to orient one's "self" in "the world." Many of these beliefs we call "facts," because they are provably true. In America, we drive on the right-hand side of the road. This is a useful component of one's belief system because you're less likely to have a head-on collision while operating an automobile. It's also provably true. It has little or nothing to do with ideology.

A common belief that many people use to orient their actions and behavior in the world, which is not "true" in any strictly rational sense, is that we have the power to "make" people happy or angry. Because it is a widely-shared belief, even though not strictly true, the result is behavior between individuals that reinforces the belief.

Neither the rules of the road nor our unconscious beliefs about social interactions constitute what would usually be termed "ideological" beliefs.

An ideological belief would be something like "markets are conversations." It is fashioned with intent. It is presented to you by an authority with the intent that it be embraced, preferably as widely as possible. Is it provably true? Failing that, is it falsifiable? It seems opinions vary. Like much New Age thinking, it is vague enough to mean whatever one would like it to mean. Well then, does it have some utility, whether true or not? While its subscribers would have you believe its utility lies in helping one re-orient oneself in "the world" with respect to markets and commercial activity; its real, intended utility is actually as a banner, or a tag, a marker, a small, easily digested slogan that can be adopted and repeated by new members of the group so they can identify themselves to one another. (It's the secret handshake.)

The originators of the slogan are the group's authority figures. They help to shape and refine the ideological belief system of their members. They are the myth-makers. In order to establish their authority, they must fashion seemingly new insights which are attractive and palatable. These "insights" must be crafted so that those who adopt these beliefs can feel "special," or "unique;" as though they have "a clue," while the rest of us in the great unwashed masses remain, blissfully, clueless.

An effort like this requires a particular facility with language, and a certain flexibility, shall we say, with the truth. If we were to consider for a moment what type of person would be most likely to possess those characteristics, I think most reasonable people would think of lawyers and marketers. While lawyers are not universally held in high regard, they likely comfort themselves with the belief that they are officers of the court, upholding the honorable tradition of the law, members of a profession who are licensed and accountable. And a billable rate of $250.00 an hour doesn't hurt either. Not so, perhaps, with marketers.

So, how better to salvage one's view of oneself as a marketer than to fashion a new mythos, wherein "markets are conversations!" We're all just having an intimate little chat. One thing that is true about the web, it gave every marketer their own printing press. (And what is every marketer really selling? I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.) Marketers, instead of deceiving the consumer on behalf of their customers, instead embrace the consumer as their customer! And then proceed to deceive them on behalf of themselves. Why, it's revolutionary!

And don't get distracted by all the cleverly disparaging words about "New Age" this and that. "New Age" ideas mostly relate to thoughts, beliefs and ideas, that have been around for a couple of millennia or so - they're not terribly "new" in Age or age. Sure, people misuse and misunderstand them, but check back with me in 2000 years and we'll see which beliefs are still being misused and misunderstood. In other words, they've probably "withstood the test of time," if that matters. The real New Age belief you must subscribe to, to be one of the chosen, one of the saved, one of the anointed, is this most recent one that the "web changes everything." And pay attention to the authorities that tell you so. They'll keep you "clued-in," and you can feel hip and exclusively cool at the same time. Together you can shake your heads and bathe yourselves in the warm endorphins of compassionate pity for all those who don't "get it."

"Blog or die."

The web doesn't change "everything." Mostly it changes some segments of who gets to be where in the hierarchy. Which is what happens with every "disruptive technology." But don't believe me. I'm not smart, I'm not cool and I'm definitely not an authority.

Watch closely, ladies and gentlemen, as their hands never leave their sleeves! The belief system preferred by two out of three webloggers! Ask for it by name!

Idolatry

Pulled this one out of the cooler, where it went earlier this afternoon.

At what point does it become apparent that, to many, faith in technology exceeds their faith in themselves? At what point does it become apparent that, for some, their faith in technology exceeds their faith in God?

Would Jesus "blog or die?" Would the Buddha lack for wifi under the Bodhi tree? Would Heraclitus offer, "Applicants for wisdom, do what I have done: read 1000 feeds a day."

Is the source of poverty, injustice and conflict found in technology, or in the human heart? If the latter, is any technology necessary, or indeed is any technology sufficient, to repair the defects in our hearts? How will social software accomplish what a few thousand years of religious and philosophical thought have failed to accomplish?

Is the goal of technology to accomplish the good, or is it merely to advance technology itself? Perhaps a better question, do those who advance or promote technology do so to further the good, or themselves?

There's Google for the web, and now Google for the desktop, I wonder when there'll be Google for the heart, or Google for the soul? Or are there no answers to be found there?

You'll find no answers here, either.

Echoes

"I have to admit that it makes me suspicious when the scales fall from our eyes and the brand new paradigm we discover just happens to mirror our latest technology."

"They need to see that markets are not just conversations, but relationships as well."

Reason to Believe

It occurs to me just now to wonder how much L. Frank Baum is still with us. I think that in too many ways we seem to regard the web as some sort of Wizard of Oz, able to give us a brain, a heart and courage.

The Wizard was just a humbug; but in the end, he gave each of Dorothy's companions a reason to believe they had what they already possessed.

Maybe that's what's happening now. We're all on the Yellow Brick Road. Once the web becomes the "ultimate authority," and it tells us that we have brains, hearts and courage, maybe we'll begin to believe it too.

Non Sequitur

I wish to note a parallel between corporations who are said to have stopped innovating because they've achieved a certain sales position, marketshare, or rank in the hierarchy; and writers, authors or authorities, who can be said to have stopped innovating once their particular theme or meme achieved a certain sales position, mind-share or sufficient rank in the Technorati Top 100 to become a pop-cultural reference.

Spring Has Spring

Wow!

Narcissists Unbound

Who are the greater narcissists, those who might subscribe to the ideas of Ralph Waldo Emerson in Self Reliance, or those who spend days upon days admiring their own distorted virtual images in the mirror of the web?

Your call.

Get Tonight's Battlestar Galactica Producer's Commentary Podcast

I'll try not to wax rhapsodic about this "changing the world," but it does kind of change the way we can watch TV. You can download Executive Producer Ron Moore's commentary about tonight's episode here. New commentary each week.

Change the world? Change Yourself

"I was particularly fond of classes like geometry or logic, where I discovered totally new ways of seeing the world. It seemed miraculous that you could begin with rather meaningless premises and end up with a comprehensible world where logical decisions prevailed. Of course, it was several years later, especially while in Vietnam, that I learned just how imaginary such rational worlds really were."

Where I discovered totally new ways of seeing the world. The world didn't change, Loren did.

I learned just how imaginary such rational worlds really were. Again, the world didn't change. And neither had the people. Or at least, not enough of them.

An Excerpt From "Coming to Our Senses"

The following is from Coming to Our Senses by Jon Kabat-Zinn, from the chapter called Odysseus and the Blind Seer, pages 42-44.

We sometimes say "Come to your senses!" to enjoin somebody to wake up to how things actually are. Usually though - you may have noticed - people don't magically get sensible just because we are imploring them to. (Nor do we when we implore ourselves.) Their whole orientation - to themselves, the situation, and everything else - may need an overhaul, sometimes a drastic one. How to go about that? Sometimes it takes a health crisis to wake us up - if it doesn't kill us first.

We say "He has taken leave of his senses" to mean he is no longer in touch with reality. Most of the time, it is not so easy to get back in touch. Where would one even start when you are already so off? And what if the whole society or the whole world has taken leave of its senses, so that everybody is focusing on some aspect of the elephant but nobody is apprehending the whole of it? Meanwhile, what we thought was an elephant is morphing into something more like a monster running amok, and we are stuck unwilling to perceive and name what is so, much like the spectator-citizens in the realm of the duped emperor with his new set of invisible "clothes."

The fact of the matter is that it is not so easy to come to our senses without practice. And as a rule, we are colossally out of practice. We are out of shape when it comes to our senses. We are out of shape when it comes to recognizing our relationship with those aspects of body and mind that partake of the senses, are co-extensive with the senses, are informed by the senses, and are shaped by them. In other words, we are colossally out of shape when it comes to perception and awareness, whether oriented outwardly or inwardly, or both. We get back in shape by exercising our faculties for paying attention over and over again. And what grows stronger and more robust and flexible through such workouts, often in the face of considerable resistance from within our own mind, is a lot more interesting than a bicep.

Most of the time, our senses, including of course our minds, are playing tricks on us, just from force of habit and the fact that the senses are not passive but require coherent active assessment and interpretation from various regions of the brain. We see, but we are scantly aware of seeing as relationship, the relationship between our capacity to see and what is available to be seen. We believe what we think is in front of us. But that experience is actually filtered through our various unconscious thought constructs and the mysterious way that we seem to be alive inside a world that we can take in through the eyes.

So we see some things, but at the same time, we may not see what is most important or most relevant for our unfolding life. We see habitually, which means we see in very limited ways, or we don't see at all, even sometimes what is right under our noses and in front of our very eyes. We see on automatic pilot, taking the miracle of seeing for granted, until it is merely a part of the unacknowledged background within which we go about our business.

We can have children and go for years without really seeing them because we are only "seeing" our thoughts about them, colored by our expectations or our fears. The same can be true for any or all of our relationships. We live within the natural world, but much of the time, we don't notice it either, missing the way sunlight might be reflecting off of one particular leaf, or how surrounded we are in the city by amazingly misshapen reflections in windows and windshields. Nor do we sense, as a rule, that we are being seen and sensed by others, including wildlife in the landscape - you'd know it better spending the night in a rain forest - and in ways that might very much diverge from our own view of ourselves.

Here's a little bit about the author.

Some Myth'ing Links

Here are a few of the links I intended to include in The Myth of the Intimate Planet:

Prisoners of the Wired World, by Alan Lightman. Link courtesy of Jon Husband.

A brief quotation: "Somehow, each of us must figure out how to measure the "life," our personal life, our inner self, that we exchange for each piece of technology or scheduled project or public connection. This accounting may have to be done item by item, hour by hour, but I believe that it must be done and it can be done only by the individual. Only individuals can measure their own values and needs, their own spirit, their own quality of life."

The numbing of the American mind: culture as anesthetic, by Thomas de Zengotita. Link courtesy of Jon Husband.

"Under that agreement, stress is how reality feels. People addicted to busyness, people who don't just use their cell phones in public but display in every nuance of cell-phone deportment their sense of throbbing connectedness to Something Important--these people would suffocate like fish on a dock if they were cut off from the Flow of Events they have conspired with their fellows to create. To these plugged-in players, the rest of us look like zombies, coasting on fumes. For them, the feeling of being busy is the feeling of being alive."

Society is dead, we have retreated into the iWorld, by Andrew Sullivan. Link courtesy of Jonathon Delacour.

"Atomisation by little white boxes and cell phones. Society without the social. Others who are chosen — not met at random. Human beings have never lived like this before. Yes, we have always had homes, retreats or places where we went to relax, unwind or shut out the world.

But we didn’t walk around the world like hermit crabs with our isolation surgically attached."

How not to buy happiness, by Robert H. Frank

"The prolonged experience of commuting stress is also known to suppress immune function and shorten longevity.27 Even daily spells in traffic as brief as fifteen minutes have been linked to significant elevations of blood glucose and cholesterol, and to declines in blood coagulation time—all factors that are positively associated with cardiovascular disease. Commuting by automobile is also positively linked with the incidence of various cancers, especially cancer of the lung, possibly because of heavier exposure to exhaust fumes.28 The incidence of these and other illnesses rises with the length of commute,29 and is significantly lower among those who commute by bus or rail,30 and lower still among noncommuters. 31 Finally, the risk of death and injury from accidents varies positively with the length of commute and is higher for those who commute by car than for those who commute by public transport."

The Attention Economy: The Natural Economy of the Net, by Michael H. Goldhaber

"Much more is going on here. One thing is the question of why you started listening in the first place. Well one reason is that I was introduced by the chair, who had your attention already, she was paying attention to the committee that set up this conference, in particular to Brian Kahin. He in turn paid attention to Esther Dyson, who gets paid a lot of attention. And indeed you possibly came here because you saw Esther's name on the organizing committee, and you already had gotten used to paying her attention. A key truth is that if you have the attention of an audience, you can then pass that on to someone else. For instance, if I happened to spot a friend of mine in the audience, or just chose someone at random, I could turn over all of your attention to that person.

Now, the fact that attention can be passed on from someone who has it to someone else, and on and on, is of course a vital feature if there is to be anything resembling an economy. We will return to this general point. But right now, I want to combine the idea that I could pass the whole audience's attention on to you with the thought I introduced before that you can feel in a certain sense that I am paying attention to you specifically - what I referred to as illusory attention. Since I observably do have at least a good fraction of the whole audience's attention, if I were to pay attention specifically to you in reality, by singling you out, I would of course be paying not only my own attention but that of everyone else here, and yet, it would seem to be arriving at you through me."

Those might give you some things to think about.

On Resonance, Meaning, Authority and Futility

Last night's post was one of futility. And that's okay. Futility is a necessary consequence of the way the world "is," and I'm not here to change "the world." I'm not even here to change some rhetorical "you." I'm just here, and let's leave it at that. I'm happy with it.

That whole bit last night about ropes and knots and falling and crap wasn't just a bit of drama for the sake of drama, and it was damn little drama at that. That was merely a reference to how firmly we cling to our views and beliefs about "the world" and our role in it. Nothing I write in here is going to significantly "change" anyone's mind. The cluetrainers will still be riding their metaphorical railroad, having metaphorical "conversations" with "markets," and people receiving random voice-over-IP phone calls will still be whispering sweet nothings about an "intimate planet," while they don't know the name of their next door neighbor. And that's all okay. It's a way of describing to ourselves the world as we'd like to believe it is, or as we'd like it to be, and nothing is going to cause us to let go of those cherished views until they become too painful to cling to. And we've become pretty good at pain relief.

The views I described above are relatively easy to hold on to. They will never "fail." As long as you're working toward your vision, you're doing "good" and you can take some measure of satisfaction in your work. If you're achieving an increase in rank in the hierarchy, you'll believe it all the more. If you're not, you'll be fighting the good fight against the eternal forces of darkness, or something, and it'll still be "good." One very seldom encounters a system crash at the higher levels of belief systems. There's always a new security patch. It's only the lower level routines that can force a "reset," and usually something has to go pretty wrong for that to happen. Catastrophic illness, substance abuse, death of a loved one, divorce, sometimes loss of a job, whatever it is, it's going to be some significant stressor. As irritating as I can be, and I admit I can be pretty irritating, I'm not going to come close to getting you to reboot your belief system. Chances are, absent some significant stressor, you couldn't even do it if you wanted to try. We do everything possible to protect the user from himself.

Still, from time to time, my feeble rantings "resonate" with some people. Resonance is a real phenomenon. I don't know what it is, maybe it's a kind of spiritual empathy, or a lower-level routine whose outputs have been deprecated in later releases of our psychological operating systems. We read something or see something in a movie, and we "feel" some "ring" of truth to it. Sometimes it can resonate strongly. I remember reading Illusions, The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah, back when I was a midshipman at the Naval Academy. That book resonated very strongly with me, perhaps the strength of that resonance had something to do with what was, to me, a stressful environment. Regardless, it never had any effect on my life, apart from that resonant experience. The same can be said for the book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Strong resonance, no real effect. Loved both books, made no difference in my life. At least, not at first, and not for a long, long time.

In order for resonance to have an effect, it has to be converted to meaning. And that's where authority comes in. We are externally oriented, not internally oriented. Perhaps there was some greater balance at one time in our past. But today, with the ceaseless demands for our attention, competition for rank, even our efforts to escape the effects of competition, we are compelled to direct our attention externally to greater numbers of sources of information and stimulation than at any other time in our history. We rely on external authorities almost exclusively. Our internal authority seems to be relegated to doing little more than fashioning a coherent narrative of what we believe our experience and our motivation are, in order that we may continue to effectively achieve rewards in the functions and the roles external authorities have assigned to us, be they our parents, our society, our culture, or our own misguided beliefs, for our own misguided beliefs are usually the product of some external authority. But external authority is very poor at converting resonance to meaning, and narrative is not meaning, whether it resonates or not. In short, we don't "write ourselves into existence." Existence and experience precede narrative. Therefore, meaning precedes narrative. In fact, with meaning, I doubt one really needs narrative.

In any event, we seem to have little need to construct meaning anymore. We can rely on external authorities to do that for us, be they Dr. Phil or President Bush. Whichever one is congruent with how you see your role, because your role has become your life. When confronted with significant stressors, we have many avenues of escape. We can take a pill, we can abuse a substance, we can even run away to a new job in a new state with a new wife. We can write reams of new narrative. All to avoid some pain. All to avoid taking responsibility for our own lives. All to avoid becoming the authority in our lives. And we are facilitated, we are enabled, in our efforts at avoiding becoming our own authorities, by the external authorities who ceaselessly demand our attention. But most of us, if we're lucky or good at our roles, won't even have to run away or turn to Dr. Phil or some charismatic religious figure, or a good scotch, or the healing power of beer. Most of us will just keep plugging along performing our roles with some facility and success, never troubled very much by feelings of "resonance."

But if we're lucky, we fail. If we're lucky, we find we can't run away because, "no matter where you go, there you are." If we're lucky, the complicated and rigid narrative structure we've erected around ourselves to explain our lives to ourselves will come crashing down around us. If we're lucky, we'll wake up each morning and it will be February 2nd, Groundhog Day, and it'll be cold out there every day.

If we're lucky.

Because then we'll be forced to turn inward, and begin to discover meaning and authority. Internal authority. Sure, we may need help, and help is available. To borrow a Joseph Campbell quotation, because I know he irritates some people:

“We have not even to risk the adventure alone; for the heroes of all time have gone before us; the labyrinth is thoroughly known; we have only to follow the thread of the hero path.

And where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the centre of our existence; where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world."

I lifted that from this weblog, and an entry that, it may surprise you, or not, I don't happen to agree with. But that's okay too. If you ask me, he's trying to incorporate resonance into narrative, and that makes for better narrative but it doesn't make meaning. I don't want to pick a fight with Mr. Paterson, I was happy to see him quoting Joseph Campbell. For all you know, he may be totally right and I'm totally hosed. Your call, I'm not going to quarrel. Thanks for the link, Hal.

But that gets us back to futility. I recall reading lots of things in my unhappier days, things that had resonance, things that I thought I understood and believed. Things that I incorporated into my narrative, but which didn't seem to help me feel any happier, to experience less suffering. But I know now that they had no real meaning. To me. I had to construct that. And now they do have meaning, they do have some effect, and they are of some positive consequence. Quoting Joseph Campbell is one thing, a good thing. It won't really mean anything until you walk the labyrinth. No social network is going to get everyone to walk their own labyrinth. Social networks are far more likely to be used to avoid the labyrinth. Get a new job at Microsoft. Get some more page rank. Share a little Google-juice. But when you find yourself with no way out, save through the labyrinth, remember Joseph Campbell. You might even remember me. But maybe not. Doesn't matter. Taking the journey matters.

Rise and shine, campers. And don't forget your booties.

The Myth of "It'll get better when..."

I've been working, as I've made the time, on something called The Myth of the Intimate Planet. It's been an interesting effort thus far, and a little bit frustrating. I set out to try to persuade you of something I happen to believe, or more accurately, dissuade you of something others believe, and who seem to wish for you to do so as well.

I've decided that's not what I want to do. Because I don't believe it is something I can do. I have no power over what you wish to believe or not believe. Any array of facts and statistics, analysis and informed opinion, reason and evidence I could assemble could be met and matched by an equally compelling array of facts and statistics, analysis and informed opinion, reason and evidence. Paragraph after paragraph of exposition (Mark Bernstein put that little thought in my head), could be countered with equally verbose exposition, probably greater - what the web likes to call "fisking," or "fact-checking my ass." An arms race in links of sorts, were anyone to care enough to argue the point. In the end, it'd all be just wasted effort, a competition for authority, for rank in the hierarchy, a zero-sum contest in rhetorical bludgeoning. We've all had quite enough of that, I think.

So instead, I'll just offer you my opinion. Maybe tell you a story. In the end, you have to make up your own mind. Even if it's to make up your mind to believe me or some other authority. That's not the outcome I wish for, I assure you. I'd just like to have you think for a little while. Don't believe me. Just think.

For a long time, I was a very unhappy guy. Sure, you think I sound unhappy now, but you should have seen me back in the day... I digress. Part of my problem was what I believed about myself and my circumstances. As a result, I felt as though I had no "power" to change things. Since the (then) present situation was nearly intolerable, I had to project some improvement in my circumstances into the future, based on some foreseeable events. I would tell myself that "it" would get better when I got another promotion. And "it" didn't. I would tell myself that "it" would get better when someone else got a promotion, and "it" didn't. I would tell myself that "it" would get better when I got to shore duty and "it" didn't. I could recite to you a long litany of foreseeable events that I believed would relieve my suffering, and all of them came to pass, except the relief of my suffering.

This was a good thing.

Something happens when you run out of things to tell yourself. When you get to the end of your rope, and you've tied the knot, and the sweat in your palms from the fear you're feeling makes you lose your grip on the knot, and you start to fall and you have no idea where the bottom is.

This was a good thing. (Plus, it was all in my head.)

It wasn't a good feeling. I knew it wouldn't be a good feeling. I fought as long as I could to avoid feeling that not-good feeling.

I failed. I failed miserably. But it was a good thing.

To make a long story short, I learned something. I didn't learn it right away. It didn't come to me in a blinding glimpse of the obvious. It wasn't bestowed on me by some otherworldly authority figure. It came to me slowly, and often painfully. "It" never gets better. "It" just is. The only thing I had any power over was me. "It" would never get better. But I could.

And I did. And I still am. And sometimes it's still painful. But pain is temporary, like everything else. Emotional pain, that is. People suffering from chronic physical pain have a challenge in that regard and I would not wish to diminish or disparage their suffering.

Here's the thing: Most of the time, we can think of "it" as "the world." Sometimes it's "your life." Most of the time, we tell ourselves "it" will get better when... democracy is the norm in the middle east. "It" will get better when there's universal health care. "It" will get better when we're all wired up to the internet and we can all be sharing and self-correcting and fact-checking each others' asses. (Now there's an unwelcome visual.) "It" will get better when everyone's aboard the ClueTrain. "It" will get better when intellectual property laws are amended. Pick your problem, "it" will get better when your solution comes to pass.

Except "it" won't.

"It" will be different. And maybe "it" will be better in some way, but I think on closer inspection things may not be as "better" as we might wish to believe, just different. You probably don't believe me about this part, and this is the toughest problem I encountered in trying to fashion some compelling argument to persuade you of this. So let's just say this: Yes, the world today is demonstrably better in many ways than the world of the past. It's demonstrably worse too. Yes, the future may be better than the present. But here's my preference: I prefer any world in which I am alive in it. There's only one of those that I can experience. I prefer the present, however it may be, because I am alive in it. Whether it is better or worse than the past or the future makes no difference to me. I'm not alive in the past or the future; at least, not in any way that I can experience. So I prefer the present. I prefer to be right here. And it's not bad.

Here's the thing: There is no end to the number of ways the present is "deficient" in some manner. Even when everyone is all wired together in one great egalitarian small-pieces-loosely-joined, maglev-cluetrain-riding, manifesto-issuing, fact-checking, democracy-loving, fucking emergently intimate world, there will still be some son of a bitch saying, "it'll get better when..." What? We all have neurological frigging implants and we can talk to the dolphins? And "it" will never be "better" enough. Someone is always going to want you to get onboard their cluetrain. Someone is always going to want you to believe in their vision of a better future. And God damn it, I've said it before and I'll say it again, someone is always selling you something, and you pay for it with your time and attention. Caveat emptor.

Some people believe this is a good thing. I don't think they're as right as they think they are. You can think whatever you want. And I hope you do.

To the extent that we act out of our roles as members of groups on behalf of groups, and pursue these efforts to make "the world" better, to "change the world," at the expense of the time and effort it takes to make ourselves better, we're the poorer for it. And I think "the world" is the poorer for it as well. Did I say do nothing about "it?" Do nothing about "the world?" No. But don't overlook or undervalue the opportunity and the responsibility for doing something about yourself either. And don't misunderstand what's at stake when someone asks you to buy into their vision, to subscribe to their beliefs.

Now get out.

Ted Goranson

Ted Goranson is a freakin' national asset! I don't know where he finds the time to locate and play with all this very cool software, most of which I'd never heard of before he wrote about it in his About This Particular Outliner column. This month's edition is another winner with several very cool apps I'd never even learn about without his column. Great guy.

Celebrating Five Years of Mumbling

I seldom do these birthday greeting things; and when I do, I usually do them late, as I do here. But I just wanted to note Steven Vore's commencement of his sixth year weblogging. Last Monday.

Well, fiddlesticks!

MacWorld on Tour in Orlando is postponed (cancelled, more likely).

Just when something cool and Mac-related is supposed to happen someplace where I can actually attend, it evaporates.

Sigh.

The Center of the Known Universe

"Yahoo listened to my pleas..."