Blog Name

peter-pan-syndrome

2013-11-06T10:25:00-08:00

Peter pan syndrome:

Peter Pan Syndrome is still a thing, but very nebulous. Generally handled as a deprecated condition of prolonged adolescence and inability or unwillingness to shoulder "normal" adult responsibilities. Particularly applied to men, as the gender of the character implies, drawn from the famous "I don't want to grow up!" cry of the titular character. I believe a portion of it is indeed based on the extended adolescent irresponsibility of my and younger generations based on our egocentric view and the relative success of marketing... But I think a far greater portion of it is due to the social contract being offered to such young men is simply far, far worse than it ever was in the past. In short "the deal" offered for growing up is insultingly bad enough that a lot of people reject it, consciously or not.

I believe it predates your generation by at least two... given the cultural worship of youth, it wouldn't be surprising that many see childhood as a favorable state of existence... but in reality, children have very little power, and it's quite a disadvantaged state in comparison to being an adult.

Conceptually it predates my generation by more than two, Peter Pan is not a new story, and it wasn't a new idea at the time. However the wide-spread accusation and or recognition of it is more closely tied to Gen X / Millennial groups. And you can kind of associate that with the pop-culture heroes of the time, such as the eternally adolescent Bill & Ted or Beavis & Butthead.

Yes, I knew I was missing something when I didn't watch Beavis and Butthead... there's always YouTube reruns I suppose.

My favorite author Adam Phillips, believes it is a mark of despair within the culture when children are idolized.... in other pontifications he goes on to elaborate that "what we really need are more compelling examples of frustration"... if you live in a culture which values constantly catering to and meeting instant gratification or instant satisfaction... you have something like what you have today in the culture at large... and it's like a handicap to creativity or originality or living an interesting life... if one cannot bear frustration, one cannot begin the process of creating something because of the superficial overfeeding, in essence.... I'm not sure if this ties in with the peter pan thing, but it seemed related in my mind...

Technology. . .Philosophy

2013-03-04T16:00:00-08:00

I found a few interviews with people who live in "non-duality" which appears to be from a hindu tradition called Advaita.

Did you feel more enlightened afterwards?

Almost, but not really. I liked listening to the interviews - because it was like they had some experience like Prince's experience to where he goes by "the artist formerly known as prince". These people sort of talked about themselves in the third person.

Seems like you could have cut out the middleman and just listened to an interview with prince - but it is probably good to hear such a perspective.

A few other things i learned: you cannot tell who is enlightened and who is not by looking at them nor by their behavior. Spiritual practices are meant to exhaust and commonly do not lead to what the spiritual seeker is seeking for, because their seeking is the problem. The thing is already here happening now. life is happening now - and all the practicing is like a delay to finding what is happening there is nothing one can do to become "enlightened" it just happens.

Some practice is aimed just at making that realization - That is the point of the Zen school, which embraced the notion that enlightenment was a kind of "all at once" realization which could happen immediately with no "practice" but might take other people many years to re-shape their perceptions to enable the realization. If there is no possible way to discern enlightenment from non-enlightenment, nor no possible activity which engenders one state over the other, than they have a word without definition.

Often the thunderbolt and lightning sort of enlightenment experience is proportional to the amount of suffering the seeker went through to get there, though sometimes it is in a series of glimpses and is slowly realized. Often people are disappointed when they get there because it is a flat experience.

chop wood carry water.

These "non-duality" finders seem to avoid the word enlightenment because its so loaded

Sure. Almost irregardless of their status of enlightenment, it is dangerous to use in interviews or in teaching; everyone has strong symbolism already heaped onto it. Notice that Watts never just speaks vaguely about enlightenment, he speaks specifically about sensations and metaphors. For him to just say "well enlightenment is like. . ." would immediately bury his message behind a person's preconceived notions.

The interviews are funny, in part, because language is challenging to use and they understand that... and say things in a puzzling way, but aren't trying to be clever...

Speaking of prince and clever.

Silly!

Yet expertly comedic!

I usually go to someone else for my levity. I tried to explain the info from the non-duality thing, but she was in the middle of writing a presentation, and just said "All those spiritual seekers are mentally deranged."

Well she might have a point, but if we define "spiritual seekers" broadly she probably just categorized > 80% of the human race.

Perhaps. My favorite image from the research was about the wave that thinks it's separate from the ocean and doesn't realize it is part of the ocean. I forget how it was phrased now...

Yes, that is a decent metaphor and one that you have some practical contact with.

In my ongoing process of revealing technologies that I think are exciting but will probably horrify you; DARPA wants ubiquitous speech recognition.

Quite provocative. I watched a documentary on Derrida and he was cagey about telling the narrative of his past, because of how it's past and not the present - and so is just a story. With this technology, can all the the past can become the now, searchable outside the boundaries of linear time?

Not any more than you can argue that a story is equivalent to the experience; it is a surrogate at best. I would say this - and a host of similar technologies - has an impact is on forgetting. Human ability to forget things is a powerful ingredient in both our self identities and in the general function of the mind.

It is yet unclear to say if such abilities to record and recall save us from forgetting or shackle us to not forgetting. Chances are it will be some matter of both depending on perspective, but that is a real area of possible important critique.

Oh yeah, that's probably why he was being cagey about memory, because of how the past is not the present and he was trying to emphasize present experience. Yes, forgetting is really essential, after all if it is as Watts says, we are just God playing hide and seek with itself. It is important to forget in order to seek.

Seems like it might be better to not forget in the first place in that analogy...
I would venture that forgetting HAS BEEN a central part of the human mental experience, I'm not sure it HAS TO BE, however.

Forgetting is often a gift - I don't think I would give that up.

It isn't a binary matter, either. You already carry around a smartphone that could - theoretically - record every thought you were inclined to have out-loud. But you choose not to, so in that sense you have an enabling but not forcing technology.

Forgetting and remembering are part of the same thing

I expect we will see shifts in behavior as the default state of the technology changes. For example, right now your cellphone defaults to NOT taking video or pictures - you whip it out and take one when you want to.

I see you're trying to wig me out

What if - for example - instead it ALWAYS took video, but you had a very easy interface to just delete the parts you didn't want after the fact? Wigging you out is just a side-effect - I'm just trying to prepare you for the future, and giving you interesting things to think about.

Humans will remain quite primitive despite these technological advances...

True scotsman fallacy - depends on what you mean by "primitive".

"unenlightened, unaware" - post-primitive. I dunno, can materialism be a type of enlightenment maybe

Unenlightened means nothing, unless you can define enlightened. And people are definitely more aware in sum total thanks to technology but what they are aware OF has changed greatly.

Ok, i was totally out of line by saying "primitive" was less than... primitive is perhaps more than the modern man because he is not divorced from what is happening as revealed through the senses.

Classic philosophy would say that materialism is orthogonal to enlightenment, it is a perspective about the nature of existence which doesn't mandate one particular experience of existence or another.
I wasn't saying primitive was out of line, just saying that it tends to be a very softly defined word; it has implications of progress levels - but if we're talking about human condition you must be able to say "progressing towards what" in some metric to define what is primitive. We can safely say a spear is more primitive than a gun as a tool for killing, but for states of philosophical or experiential being, what can be said to be more primitive? You must have some defined ideal to progress towards - which requires a working definition of enlightenment.

The primitive was enlightened before all the learning and language made him forget - the same as my cat is enlightened.

In one sense, very likely so. They were not distracted by Facebook, twitter, or their commute. What was is what was.
On the other hand, what is still is, and such technologies have expanded the realm of what we CAN be deeply aware of - but perhaps this expansion of domain exceeds our capacity to patrol it, leaving us feeling less enlightened than our forebears.

As we were discussing earlier, how language and stories are not the same as experience. Technology creates an experience, but it is possibly not the same as the original experience - close but not the same

Definitely not, but one can be fully aware of a tele-presence activity without conflating it with reality. In other words, I can have an authentic experience by watching, a moving speech on YouTube. My experience of that recording is authentic, but I did not have the same experience as someone standing there to see it live - but that's OK.
So perhaps this is the crux of such technologies that enable non-forgetting and awareness. Can such technologies increase the surface area of what we can experience and thus increase the possible scope of our enlightenment? Or do they move enlightenment more out of reach by increasing the surface area of what we are now aware of?
Perhaps it is a personal set point for each to determine the "correct" level of technological experience enhancement.

In an interesting take on this, comes from Cyberpunk. Cyberpunk ideas were literature first, but there was a table-top game from the 80's and part of its fictional future setting was people enhancing their basic human capabilities via cybernetic attachments, wearable computers, augmented reality displays, etc. Things now becoming reality.

um, yes, I'm sure the setpoint varies per individual...

But as a game, it needed rules and balance - the fictional limitation on all such enhancements was a loss of "humanity". Humanity was a numeric threshold that when depleted drove the characters sociopathic. Not because things were haywire, but because they were too effective - such enhanced beings could no longer relate to "mere" humans as peers as their awareness, cognition and therefore experience was too different.
Sometimes life imitates art, sometimes art imitates life, but I'm happy to steal good ideas from either. So, going to pre-order your Google Glass?

Do you have a rough definition of enlightenment?

My working definition - which I'm not entirely confident of - is: A deep acceptance of reality - with the implication that to deeply accept reality, one must be deeply aware of it. To attempt to fully accept that which you are not aware of is instead delusion.

Ah, very good, and i like the caveat. I'll withhold my judgments on the google glass deal until i get the non-duality sorted out...

Good priority, just don't let enlightenment distract you from enlightenment.
Speaking of never forgetting, I think this conversation has been a good one. Do you mind if I adapt it for publication?

With apologies to Orbital

Nolan and Nietzsche, Batman and the Übermensch

2012-07-24T17:00:00-07:00

The Penman Begins:

Like many others, I recently saw The Dark Knight Rises, which rounded out my viewing of Christopher Nolan's Trilogy. I rather enjoyed it, and also rather enjoyed the many discussions it has engendered. I have seen people writing that it is a character drama which may eventually stand with greats like Taxi Driver or Raging Bull. I have seen people claiming Bane was unintelligible and the political thrust of the film was muddled and disjoint. I suspect the truth lies between the extremes of these critiques. However, what I did not see is many people noticing that Nolan's Trilogy is a cinematic interpretation of Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra, that also happens to be a Batman story.

Nietzsche's notions of "self-mastery", "self-cultivation", "self-direction", and "self-overcoming" are handled, in that order, in the films. In Batman Begins he learns to master himself via training, and demonstrates that self mastery by handling Scarecrow. In The Dark Knight Batman cultivates himself by expanding his arsenal and capabilities; new armor so he can turn his head, new gadgets, and new skills. He demonstrates his self direction by taking a stand squarely opposite the Joker's chaotic destruction, even when his methods put him at odds with advisor and friend Lucius Fox. Finally in The Dark Knight Rises Batman's struggle of self-overcoming is in the form of self doubt and reclusion as Bruce Wayne, and injury, despair, and imprisonment as Batman. The entire arc is Batman ascendant from mere man, philosophically, to more than just a man… to Übermensch.

The Rogues Gallery

All the masked villains and heroes serve as symbols of an aspect of Nietzsche's take on existentialism:

Batman - The Übermensch, he becomes "more than just a man" to grapple figuratively and literally with good and evil while taking a value and moral stand for Gotham City. He embodies the Kantian Ideal.
Ra's al Ghul - Kantian/Modern-Era ethics. Ra's al Ghul opens Batman's eyes to a grander vision of right and wrong, and informs his definition of justice. However, Ra's also deals only in moral absolutes, and has no regard for the human cost of right and wrong.
Scarecrow - Existential Dread. Scarecrow is the fear of unbounded personal responsibility inherent in existentialism.
Joker - The cruel, indifferent world. A core tenant of existentialism is that the world does not give a shit about you, nor does it matter more than it is valued.
Harvey Dent - Theism/Religion. Harvey Dent is held up as "the best of us" - a moral standard for a better tomorrow. However, after a dust-up with post-modern reality (Joker), Twoface mocks righteousness and is a reflection of the capriciousness of the world.
Bane - Nihilism. Bane seeks the destruction of Batman's spirit, of Gotham, and of Batman's life.
Catwoman - Egoism. Catwoman justifies her near kleptomania in simple personal terms of her own interests "A girls gotta eat"; but is eventually willing to risk herself to pursue an external goal. Thus transforming from naive to enlightened Egoism.

The Big Bat Picture

Following this metaphor, Batman is the moral example Nietzsche, via Nolan, would hold up to the world. Batman is proactive, he intensely develops himself; but for external ends he believes in and is willing to re-commit to those ends despite danger and possible death. In addition to this personal creation and definition of value, goodness and justice, Nietzsche had an important notion of "eternal recurrence". Each film of the trilogy can be seen as an example of the notion of eternal recurrence. Interpretations of what exactly Nietzsche meant with his obliquely described eternal recurrence varies, but I believe it is meant as a thought experiment. Imagine that your life will be lived infinitely many times again, just as it is lived now. Imagine that you will trace the same thoughts, the same actions, the same triumphs and failures. When you imagine this, are your joyous or are you damned? In each film, Batman relives the arc of dawning the cowl and fighting for Gotham - he actively chooses his fate of eternal (well, three times anyway) recurrence. And if I dare say it, by the end of the third one he seemed to adopt a bit of amor fati.

Notable Interactions

Joker and Harvey Dent Joker's painful awakening of Harvey Dent as Twoface is symbolically appropriate for the corrosion of theology and church that post-modernism made visible. The death of note was not Twoface's, but that of the symbol - Harvey Dent. Just as Nietzsche trembled for the ethical vacuum left since "god is dead", Commissioner Gordon propped up the symbolic legacy for an imagined greater good and social order. Thus religion is shown to be a fiction useful to keep the masses in line, false in its core, yet started with the best intentions.

Joker and Batman The dichotomy of Joker forever attempting to break Batman's self-imposed morals, and Batman being inherently unable to kill Joker can be explained beyond just their personal bents. As the outside world, Joker will always be vexing to people and bring disorder and reason to succumb. Batman as the übermensch likewise is unable to reform the nature of the outside world, but he can control his action in response to it.

Ra's al Ghul and Batman Batman's "but I don't have to save you" resolution to Ra's can be read as the development of philosophy beyond Kantian systems. Nietzsche never developed a damning attack on Kant, but practical behavior seems to have buried it anyway. I defy anyone to prove me wrong; let he who is a pure Kantian refuse to cast the first stone - since that would violate a universally applicable moral intent. In other words, other post-modern philosophy never killed Kantian belief, but it seems it didn't have to since it ran too far afoul of pragmatism anyway.

Batman and Bane Bane is a direct assault on the virtues Batman believes in, the lies he was complicit in, and an attempted perversion of the truths he accepted (That Gotham is worth saving). Against this crucible Batman is left with the simple but challenging decision to accept annihilation or to rise; to overcome his own limitations. This great challenge is the challenge of Nietzsche's philosophy; that one must stand without any irrefutable evidence up for what one believes in - even in the face of a very burly Tom Hardy-esque null hypothesis.

The Lesson for the Rest of Us

When seen this way, Batman's struggle is epic even if it is all internal. He is a man who in desperation and curiosity comes into philosophy. He puts concerted effort into developing his thinking and his exploration of the world. He masters but does not fully accept Kantian thinking, and instead develops a personal definition of right and wrong he can stand by. He defends this belief despite existential dread and the slings and arrows of the outside world, although he makes practical concessions. He stands by the best parts of religion, but does not accept it as a dogma. he is steadfast in his belief although he must defend it repeatedly. When faced with Nihilism, he adapts and does not surrender or become passive.

The most practical lesson from this is the "why". The mental challenge of standing and fighting for your beliefs, of rising to be an übermensch, of daring to define value and justice rather than waiting for them to be thrust upon you is great. Worse still is the gnawing doubt when one does; what if I'm wrong? What if nothing matters?

Well, you should rise and rise again. Stand for what you see as the good. Why? Because you're the goddamn batman, that's why.

The Illusion of Stasis, Mortality and Procrastination

2012-06-12T10:18:00-07:00

I was having a discussion with a friend over lunch, and we turned to the heady topic of The Illusion of Stasis. The basic concept - that people believe the world isn't changing - isn't novel, but it was nice to have a name put to it. At a basic level, this phenomena is more shorthand than it is illusion. The use of symbols and words makes this illusion a near certainty, although perhaps this is why some good lessons in wisdom suggest being wary of symbols. Regardless, I feel its psychological persistence and effects can be significant, and surprising…

Stasis Thrives on Symbols

It is difficult (in English, at least) to have nouns that acknowledges constant change. The word "home", for example, inherently implies a static thing; even though since the last time the same thing was referred to many things may have come to pass. Meals will have been made and consumed, activities done, the structure heated and cooled, imperceptible wear and tear, perhaps even people being born or dying within it. Despite all these changes, the correct symbol to use again later is also "home". All the change is left to other words, assumed shared understanding, or the listener's imagination - which is another way of saying "forgotten".

It gets interesting when you realize that the illusion of stasis is probably killing you.

Attempting to slice the world into static things and then specific, enumerated verbs that happen to or because of those nouns engenders this illusion, but saves us from the difficulty of attempting to communicate constant all-encompassing change. While an important idea, most people have the understanding that everything is changing when pressed with some Socratic questioning. If most people understand this, is the illusion of change anything beyond a cute philosophical reminder of the difference between the symbol and the actual? I think so, especially in some specific cases.

More Than a Cunning Linguist

Where I believe this illusion tends to alter behavior is in concert with the mother of all human fears; mortality. The illusion of stasis becomes not just a linguistic convenience, but a very comforting construct. This moment extends forever, as long as I don't look behind the curtain of the noun life and see constant change.

I have seen this part of the illusion become expressed as procrastination. Had that bug-fix sitting at the top of your to-do list for a while now? Sure, it might be there because it is a hairy problem, or you need more information, or it just isn't fun. Or, maybe it is still there because you know after that bug is another bug, and then some refactoring, and perhaps a new library, a new program, maybe a new career and eventually . . .the grave. If you just leave it there in stasis at the top of the to-do list, the other things aren't coming yet. It works as a cognitive shield. It obscures what would come after and so keeps the world still for a little longer.

Of course, this doesn't have to be about bug-fixes, any area where you have more resistance to change is more likely to produce this illusion. Perhaps it is your home repairs, your family, or any arena where the implied finality of change is particularly scary. Rather famously people invoke the illusion of stasis with car repairs - if they don't take the car in to the shop, they won't find out what is wrong with it. If they don't know what is wrong with it aside from that wobble in the brakes, they can just keep driving it as though nothing else can go wrong.

This illusion can even be institutional rather than personal - astute minds have already identified it in the release cycle of software.

Gut Check

I doubt this all goes roaring through your head (or, I hope not) when you check your to-do list. However, you can just do a gut check to see if it might have an influence. Imagine that task was, poof, done. Are you excited or just weary about what comes next? If weary, it may be worth spending some time seeing if those lingering tasks are cognitive shields instead of just delayed.

Well, That Was Demoralizing - Now What?

Unfortunately I don't have a cheery resolution to the fact that human lifespan is finite - except to repeat the wisdom: this constraint imbues life with sublime meaning, once you can look past the existential terror. <blockquote>"Time is the fire in which we burn."
-Delmore Schwartz</blockquote> More practically, I think there are good ways to prevent this illusion from clogging your to-do lists and making you hesitate instead of emboldening you.

1. Gordian Knot Approach. Just take it off your list. Time will progress and something else will surely come along. If the original to-do was critical, it will find its way back on to your to-do list. This approach isn't always applicable, but it will work more often than you might expect.

Deep Breath Approach. Just start on the task despite your resistance - preferably with a technique like timeboxing. This approach can work for smaller tasks, especially when realizing the cause of the resistance alone helps you re-frame your attitude to it some.
(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻ Approach. Sometimes (but not too often) calling out the illusion of stasis for what it is may lead to you reevaluating the way the item got on your to-do list, or even your career or life. If what you reasonably foresee as your future "hidden" behind that item is making you cringe, it might be time for some bigger changes than just sorting the list.

Profound Thoughts From Other People

2012-05-30T11:28:00-07:00

Rather than mostly profound original thoughts written here, this is a collection of profound thoughts from other people, with light commentary. Someone please mock me appropriately if I do this too often, as an alternative to real thought.

Pinboard Blog
This writing is a well thought critique on the various efforts to technically implement "Social Graphs", via RDF or other means. I think that, in so much as this problem has "a solution", it is realizing that attempting to specify or collect anything but a dim proxy of a social graph is a mistake. If you must, instead attempt to design pipes through which some actual social juice can flow. You may help define the culvert, but you will not define the stream.

Up and Down the Ladder of Abstraction

Bret Victor
This page is not so much a post or even an essay, but a Masterwork of interactive teaching. The thesis is delivered in perfect keeping with itself, and I find myself envious of the insight and experience required to produce something this thoughtful and useful.

The American Suburbs are a Giant Ponzi Scheme

Underpaid Genius
The title of this piece is fairly descriptive, but you may be impressed as to how far-reaching the implications are. This helps frame the rather infamous mortgage-based securities implosion of 2008, as well as show how corrections or contractions are likely in other markets. In the small, it may provide some perspective to think about personal lifestyle design and values.

Solutions to Life's Dumb Problems (Part 3)

2012-05-10T14:15:00-07:00

1
2
3
4
5
:::ruby
def foo
 puts "Don't worry, be happy."
 # What were you expecting?
end