the loop

the loop, also known as the death recursion into the existential abyss.

it starts when i wonder what i'm doing with myself. then, i start to ponder existence generally. then soon, i realize there is no inherent meaning in existence generally, and whatever meaning we instill in things is just that, creations of my mind. suddenly, nothing matters anymore.

it is a fine line between being passively nihilistic and coming to terms with this emptiness of things.

it is precisely because nothing matters anymore, that the only thing that matters is my peace of mind, whichever way i get there.

quality from quantity

it turns out, with regard to neurons, which are no different in humans or in flies, "with enough quantity, you generate quality".

which is also a brute-force way to do things. we could also give it a nicer name, e.g. constant practice. it's not pretty, but it still works, much more times than we think it might.

change really is hard

even on a practical level, the real change is knowledge and wisdom. i can only change what people know, not what people do.

even when i know, i might not do.

and on top, i often forget what i already knew.

the futility of words

it's been said by wise men that truth and true understanding cannot be described by words. spiritual wisdom, can only be attained via spiritual learning.

so are words futile?

words, in a way, have always been simply a rough sketch and a low fidelity version of things, thoughts, happenings.

perhaps what i might need to remember, is that words can guide us to a space to think, but the words themselves are usually not where the final answers lie.

three easy steps

courtesy of "the insubordinate", the three easy steps to remember:

- do endless research

- push yourself to do plenty of analysis

- have the courage of your convictions to actually make it happen

the two-pronged approach

if everything is predestined, and life is inherently meaningless and all meaning is a solely an artificial construct of the human mind, what's the point of making an effort to do anything?

how does one go from a negative, despairing view to a positive, life-embracing one?

so perhaps, the logic leap is this: if nothing matters at all, the only thing that matters is how we feel. and personally, i prefer feeling nice to feeling bad.

if there's a way to feel good without making any effort in life, then, by all means (we might starve, but perhaps some of us don't mind). for most of us, we aren't quite wired that way. feeling good entails attempting things, achieving things, to get that sense that we're doing, we're fulfilling something. of course, we're mostly focusing on the fulfillment portion - when we fail, it's not really not so good. but if we never try, we're also stuck with the sense of regret. sometimes, it seems like a winless situation. at least, that's how my brain seems to have been wired. not that i wished it to be or not to be wired like this - it seems to just have happened that way.

so the paradox of doing our best and being non-attached will surely remain a paradox, but in a way it's a two-pronged approach to the issue of maintaining well-being. on one hand, being non-attached is the practice of feeling good without making any effort, and accepting things as they are. on the other, we know not trying really doesn't feel good either. so we have to try, and try really hard. before we fully realize the nature of success and failure, the non-attachment part starts to help dull the pain of failure.

so desireless action, is the ideal. non-action for the most part does not work, as the lack of fulfillment is so strong that it can easily start the cycle of hopelessness, overshadowing any progress made on the non-attachment front.

ultimately, when we realize there is joy in action itself, the emphasis we place on results lessen, until, one day, they don't matter much anymore.

the right question

what is the right thing to do?

what is the compassionate thing to do?

to accept that the second question as the "correct" question, one has to accept that compassion takes precedence over personal gain. and to understand the basis of compassion, one needs to understand one's individual role in relation to the wider world. to understand each of our roles, we need to deeply consider and reflect on the nature of our existence.

seeing compassion as the backbone of our lives - this has personally been (and still is to a certain extent) counterintuitive. and if i want to do this with resolve, i have to fully convince myself about this, one step at a time.

respect

sometimes, all we wish for is respect. sometimes, we live our lives trying to get other people's respect.

the nice thing about other people's respect (or disrespect) is fast and visible. if i'm being treated like a nobody, that's probably a sign of disrespect.

self-respect, however, is much harder to locate. there's no instruction manual. but if i think long and hard, i'll see the outlines of it. so it's the exact opposite: self-respect takes too much thinking to understand, and has the tendency to hide under the louder things in life.

but a lot of times, we seem to want to place our desire for other people's respect over our own self-respect.

downward spins and upward spirals

bruce denton, a legendary runner in "once a runner", has a fascinating take on the extreme labors of training and progress. he remarks that some people think progress is a ladder, some others see plateaus, whereas he sees them as geometric spirals. each spin of the circle takes a different distance upward. and some spins even take us downward, just gathering momentum for the next upswing. sometimes we work and practice to the our limits and see no gain; other times we amaze ourselves with no idea as to what happened.

we never know how long the dark hours last, the ones when we are pushing ourselves to the edge yet nothing seems to be happening.

it indeed is likely that it's a momentum-gathering phase - to let our spirit soar higher and freer.

唐太宗百字箴

耕夫役役，多無隔宿之糧。織女波波，少有御寒之衣。日食三餐，當思農夫之苦。身穿一縷，每念織女之勞。寸絲千命，匙飯百鞭，無功受祿，寢食不安。交有德之朋，絕無益之友。取本分之財，戒無名之酒。常懷克己之心，閉卻是非之口。若能依上所言，富貴功名可久。

i was 11 years old when my school teacher made us memorize this. i only remembered the first two phrases, but glad to have rediscovered it.

all the nice gadgets we have - phones, laptops, high tech sportswear, i do forget someone actually made them. as the recent foxconn suicides have reminded me, things are not as nice, clean, mechanized as we might think. workers are treated like machines, in claustrophobic factories doing the exact same thing, every single day.

knowledge is always the first step - at the very least, find out what we can about the people who are making our new toys. it's not so easy, they aren't exactly having a lot of free time to go around blogging about their experiences.

the futility of individual effort

what could one person possibly do to "change the world"?

the standard motivational answer is: look at any of the significant events in the world - inventors, leaders, entrepreneurs, they are the same as us, just human beings.

sure, but look around. how many of us look like we are secretly great leaders in the making? and here we don't mean managing directors, CEOs - are there people who might be doing things of significance to the human race?

in essence, we are insignificant, our efforts are insignificant, that much we know, even though it may not be hugely helpful to dwell too long on that concept on a day-to-day basis.

to view it from another angle, well, nothing the human race will do will really move the dial. the universe is 13.7 billion years old. the human race has been around for 100,000 years in total (if that, depending when you start counting. civilization started only 10,000 years ago).

to put it bluntly, the efforts of the human race are insignificant, let alone an individual.

is this reason for nihilism then? when nothing matters anymore, is there anything left? perhaps peace of mind, or perhaps minimal pain, during our time left on earth?

so then - individual effort is thus maximizing the peace of mind? if that involves a larger cause, so be it, but that's simply a by-product?

urgent vs important

it is kind of hard to remember what the important things are, over the great noise of urgent things.

of course, not every single minute of our lives can be devoted to doing the things that we deem as important.

but, certainly, we spend a heck of a lot of time doing things that are urgent.

the first step, might be to spend a little time contemplating what things are important, that might not be so urgent, until it's too late.

testing extremes

when things travel at the speed of light, our notions of time break down.

when things are viewed at the quantum level, our notions of space break down.

when we push our bodies to the absolute limit, the links between our bodies and minds break down.

when we examine our consciousness deeply, our normal notions of the self, me, i, all break down.

i wonder why i seem to like finding out what happens at extremes, i've always considered myself a rather moderate person.

but truly, all the cool stuff happens at the extremes.

why do i do these things to myself?

sometimes, decisions made under clear, rational thought do not seem so apparently clear and rational right after they're put in action. in fact, they seem masochistic, insane, and reckless.

running a marathon usually seems to be a fine idea. in the middle of a marathon, it seems to be a absolutely horrible idea. towards the end of a marathon, it becomes a better idea again. after finishing a marathon, it's definitely a great idea.

of course, crashing out of a marathon kind of sucks. that's when the letting go of expectations really comes in handy.

hindsight is the clearest, foresight is occasionally clear, the duringsight is the blurriest.

look at me!

i am so cool.

i am so smart.

i am so successful.

i have so many superior achievements.

i have so many friends who comment on my facebook status updates.

i have so many people who respect me because i am so senior and experienced.

and the real questions are...

am i still in a school popularity contest?

what am i using my apparent "smartness" for?

remind me, what exactly is the big deal about success?

are these achievements really mine, isn't it only a matter of circumstances?

do i rely on these dopamine boosts to validate my existence on this floating rock in space?

do i treat everyone else with the even more genuine respect, because they deserve it more than me?

dreams and basic needs

let's for a moment assume we are among the lucky ones on the planet, with our current basic basic needs of food, water, shelter fulfilled. (no matter how smart or talented we are, if we were born in say zimbabwe, our chances of having basic basic needs are not so high).

our next goals become i) improving our basic basic needs to some appropriate level that satisfies our perceived basic needs, ii) securing a future, or some kind of guarantee that our perceived basic needs will continue to be fulfilled, and perhaps iii) rainy day money/resources for the yet-to-be-determined disaster.

then, we move on to satisfying our "actual" needs, nicely shaped by the 3,000 ads we are exposed to every day.

so how basic are our basic needs? what about our basic basic needs? how low can we go? what is the bare minimum? the bare bare minimum?

now, juxtaposing this against some particular dream we have (assuming for now it's not owning a ferrari or some equivalent). usually something we'd pursue when money was no longer an issue. there are two ways to satisfy the money problem. the first way is to make lots of it, to reach the mythical level of having "FU money". the second way is to find satisfaction in our true basic needs, as opposed to our "actual" needs. it is entirely possible that the former is easier for some of us.

if that dream requires large amounts of capital, then the added task is to find others who share your dream. if we truly are living on the bare minimum - we're actually giving ourselves a better chance of making that dream a reality.

but of course, we don't want our families to suffer. yes, we want the best for them. isn't it selfish to try to achieve whatever grand goal we have at the expense of their welfare, especially if you are the breadwinner of the family?

well, what about a conversation? what about their dreams? would you be willing to live on the bare minimum to fulfill their dreams?

demoralization vs inspiration

it's really easy to get demoralized.

it's really hard to get inspired.

and the extension of this...

it's really easy to demoralize other people.

and it's really hard to inspire other people.

who pays what for what?

"We were born in America; had terrific parents who saw that we got good educations; have enjoyed wonderful families and great health; and came equipped with a 'business' gene that allows us to prosper in a manner hugely disproportionate to that experienced by many people who contribute as much or more to our society's well being." - Warren Buffett in his annual letter to shareholders, Feb 26, 2010.

this cuts to the heart of something that has long bothered me (and still), and i first came across this in 2008, reading Sasha Dichter's non-profit manifesto. in this, the part that got me thinking was the following:

"How much is your time worth? Start at the low end: if, instead, you had worked at a big company or started your own company or worked at an investment bank or a consulting firm, how much money would the world pay you for your skills? A few hundred thousand dollars? A few million dollars?

That’s your baseline. Now ask yourself: how important is the problem you’re trying to solve? Are you trying to make sure that women have a safe, affordable place to give birth? Creating a way for people to have clean drinking water so they and their children don’t fall ill? Protecting refugees from genocide? Providing after school tutoring for at risk kids? Giving people with chronic disease a place to come together and support one another?"

does society have it right in terms of who pays what for what? depends who you ask and the definition of "right", but the best and most impactful school teacher who changes the lives of thousands of kids simply won't be paid as much as an investment banker, that much is a fact of life.

it is up to the individual, i.e. myself, to come to terms with the issue of relative value.

picking one: fairer or better

pretty much everyone seems to wish for a fairer world, where we don't have people like us consuming 100 gallons of water a day, and others consuming 2.5 gallons a day. the latest from science news seem to tell us such a sense of fairness is a result of both genetic wiring and cultural upbringing, even though it doesn't seem to make sense on an individual level.

but then, pretty much everyone wants to be better than others too, whether it's better skilled, better possessions, better social position. even if not better/best, at the very least not the worst.

for the unenlightened, this is a pretty interesting trade-off.

how much betterness is one willing to forgo for a fairer world?

identity crisis

there does seem to be a difference between an existential crisis and an identity crisis.

the former is basically "why do i exist, and why do humans, or anything else for that matter, bother to exist?"

the latter, seems to be more of a "who am i? am i a different and unique individual? can i be special and fit in the rest of the crowd at the same time? what does everyone else think of me anyway?"

apparently most people go through a bit of an identity crisis throughout their teenage years, grow out of it, and is usually no longer an issue for the rest of their lives.

maybe, as we grow older, we realize, we may be somewhat special to a very few people, and very unspecial to everyone else. and since sitting around bemoaning what people think of us isn't very constructive, we stop really worrying about it.

but maybe i've only partially outgrown it.