Dynamic Hypocrisy

Machine Learning will eat up all of my data, and eventually learn that I like bright high-contrast National Geographic landscapes in my Instagram feed. But will it know that right now at this very moment — what I really want is video round-up of babies laughing? 

It’ll know that I love sushi and dim sum, but at this very moment I want a greasy diner burger? 

It’ll know that I listen a lot to indie bands, but at this very moment I want to know about any local hip-hop battles going on? 

It’ll know my past preferences. But will it know my mood? And further than that, will it know the vector that will surprise me based on my current mood, and my past experiences? 

That’ll be the thing that pushes it over from the uncanny valley of suggestion, and into magical.

My 23-year old co-worker just asked me if know what “No soup for you” was. 

And I was went, “Yes?” because it felt like a set up to a prank. Of course, I knew what that catch phase was. Seinfeld. Delicious soup. Soup Nazi. Duh. 

But he didn’t. Generational gap? Normally yes. But I’m not so sure. 

Because I now see Seinfeld quotes in his Snapchats. It might be more “Culture Consumption Delay.” 

He had no disdain for older media. He just hadn’t discovered it yet. And a few more episodes and seasons–he’ll know Seinfeld as well as I do. There won’t be a gap anymore. 

While I personally in the past has said “Nah, that was before my time,” or “That was for a different generation.” This upcoming group of people are merely just exploring their Netflix queue. Which happens to transcend release dates and schedules. It’s just all there. Waiting to be consumed. 

It’s no longer 90’s Must See TV. It’s just TV. 

I would read articles about social media addiction with a quiet disdain. How quaint that people would fall to little notifications and likes and comments. What a silly thing.

11 years later having been bathed in Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, etc., etc. I find myself addicted to seeing if anyone else saw my content. And how easily I check the apps to fill the quiet still moments between waiting for life to happen. 

I make no excuses, but rather have to admit to myself the obvious: social creatures like social signals. We’re now spoiled with them. We’re the same species that gawk at all the lights in Times Square and Vegas. So duh how I find myself in this situation.

Now what to do with it? I don’t know. My baseline is fundamentally changed. The lack of updates is now a feeling of inadequacy.

When it was more mild, I could use it as a trigger to start creating again. The antidote to receiving is to give. I still do that I suppose. (It explains how I magically have four scheduled blog posts on this site already. Go me?)

But how I can reset my baseline? Not sure on the social equivalent to methadone would be. I’m gonna go looking, and I’ll tell ya what I find. “Like” this post if you support that idea. 

Multi-stage rockets as they fire off a series of explosions, they shed the previous housing of the last blast. Getting lighter so the rocket has to carry less and less as they continue to fire off the different stages. 

I imagine making an AAA blockbuster videogame. All the bells and whistles. Downloadable content, secret stages, beautiful cutscenes. 80-100 hours easy. $60.

Then take the optimal play-through, the perfect run. Perfect camera angles, and keep all the cutscenes. 90 film in the theatres. $16.

Remove the visuals, and keep just the music. $10. 

Turn the logo into a sheet of stickers. $2. 

Tweet a coupon for the collector’s set. $0. 

Take away the computer. Take away the pen and paper. Take away the hands and mouth. Take away all of those things, and a professional creative would still be making things. Their mind would still spin and imagine new songs, or art, or design, or solutions to problems. That’s the wondrous beauty of a creative who fosters their imagination.

Imagination is easily one of the most powerful mutations humans ever maintained. It led to inventions and growth and complexity. At its most basic and prehistoric, it allowed us to imagine where food might be, or where it would be safe to rest. The ability to dream up potential worlds, and plan accordingly is, again, most powerful.

But in our contemporary world, where few of us ever encounter bears or tigers, we still maintain our ability to imagine and plan. At its best, we have the creatives, the inventors, the artists. But at its worst, our brains spin wildly imagining the dangers we may face, the challenges we may encounter. And our anxieties react accordingly as if they’re real even though they’re no more than a thought in our brains. 

So on a night like this as I’m in a troublesome transitionary period, my cherished imagination works against me. It spins wildly trying to figure problems of problems, and plan solutions of solutions. And no rational thought can overcome each pang of anxiety that each world my brain starts dreaming up. 

I know it’ll be fine, and that everything works itself out. But on a sleepless night like tonight, that peaceful world is only one among the infinite number of nightmares being spawned in my brain. I don’t have a poignant end to this one, just the unsettled churn of thoughts that hopefully will slow down enough to get a little sleep.

Because that cosmic basic idea that it is us all alone, each of us, and everyone else is different, then that puts us in an impossible situation, doesn’t it? Who is it who’s going to get enough attention from the world? Who’s going to get enough out of the world? Who’s not going to be overrun by an infinite number of other beings — if you’re different from all the other beings?

Robert Thurman, “We can be Buddhas“

I keep going back to this TED talk. I’ve watched it probably dozens of times by now. Looking back I’m not sure what attracted me to the video. Because time and time again, it’s clear that the concepts he talks about is the furthest from how my brain likes to operate. And yet the very same video is the object that always exposes the very flaws of how my brain likes to operate. 

I pulled this excerpt not because it’s the poignant takeaway. But rather it’s the poignant takeaway for particular neuroticism of the day. It’s a strange phenomenon to be in a new city. Once the honeymoon luster of newness recedes a bit, there’s a striking loneliness that washes over. 

And depending on the intensity, I find I react differently. Sometimes I start reaching out to old friends in past cities. Or think about hobbies to take up. But other times, I cope by shielding up. To try to normalize the feeling as if it doesn’t sting. 

The danger of that is, ironically, if I actually succeed. Because that’s when you feel the most alone. When you accept it as normal.

So as a remedy I keep a playlist of videos I call “baseline rewatch.” A set of videos that reset my brain, and remind me of concepts that my brain resists. And Robert Thurman’s TED talk is the lead video. The strongest reset switch. So I’m gonna go watch it again. It’s time for another reset.

I construct litte social games. My brain is a little too mechanical to really suss out how relationships or friendships work. I have to test out scenarios, and see what happens to really understand a dynamic. So I try to get people to articulate assumptions. Or shift implications to see why they were implicit to begin with. Or explicitly change the rules to see what happens. 

One of my favorite articulations is “floating debt.” It started with my friends in high school. Being Midwest suburbanites who happen to have the metabolisms of teenage males—we worshiped at the altar of Chipotle fast food. It was nestled in the brick faux-downtown of a suburb called Maple Grove, Minnesota. (Faux because it really was just an outdoor mall that spanned barely four residential blocks. Not four city blocks.)

At some point, while we frequented this Chipotle and ate 2,000 calorie burritos, we started paying for each other’s meals. It was explicit and purposeful. And we always said out-loud “floating debt.” Because money was precious back then, and you had to affirm with everyone that they would be paying you back. 

Which seems petty now. (And it was.) But it was also comforting. Because it also made explicit that we would be hanging out again. That we would stay friends. Don’t worry about the $8.75 because I got you next time. 

The funny thing is that also because we were teenage males with no attention span, we soon forgot who owed who how many burritos. Which to my rational brain was a pleasant extra conclusion to this social experiment. That ultimately in a long-term friendship, the exact dollars and cents owed in either which way didn’t really matter. $8.75 or $20 or $10,000 (Well, $10,000 still matters a bit…) but point being, it’s little details that I don’t have to fret about.

It all works out in the end.

I’m relatively smart in the sense that I occasionally say intelligent things. But I’m also really dumb because I often forget the very intelligent things I say. Today’s thing that I just remembered is that it’s nice to feel useful. (That’s the rational noun, the emotional equivalent is “needed.” Both are nice.) 

What’s beautiful is to be useful in the way that lets you be the most “you.” Helping a person cross the street is great, but a chef cooking a meal that someone loves is bliss. Writing a coherent paper is fine, but publishing the thesis of which you truly care about? Joyous. It’s invigorating. It renews itself in energy. 

Life’s journey is of a multitude of adventures all occurring simultaneously. It’s chaotic, winding, and overwhelming at times. So it’s worth being able to find the individual threads to make sense of it all. And I think of those threads is finding what you feel good doing, and finding people who need you to do that very thing. 

I think I want to light paths. I have only passing interest in what paths any one person takes. (I mean I care, but unless it’s like the path of heroin—I’m not really interested in passing judgement.) But I do enjoy seeing someone at a crossroads, and helping them decide which one to take. To shine a bit of light into each path, and listen to where they think they want to go. That’s fun. That’s joyous. That’s bliss.

take solace in what victories you have. don’t cheapen it by pointing out everything we haven’t done. you’ll never be happy.

This was written by a random human being who goes by the alias of “GrandeDorito” on the internet. It may seem I’m being sardonic, but this a really great thing that humans are able to do.

Living everyday like it’s your last is just the weirdest concept to me. It seems like it leads to unreasonable decisions. I could possibly see living everyday like it’s your last two to three months. 

Because then I would you know call that used-to-be-close friend, but never found the right time to actually do that. Or book that vacation I’ve been putting off because I’ve been trying to budget my finances. But even then, part of living everyday like it’s your last two to three months is that I would be calling funeral services, and pricing out reasonable plans. Or selling major furniture pieces to declutter the house. I don’t want to leave my family the burden of all that in two to three months, you know? (Not to mention, they probably only have two to three months themselves…)

Maybe if I lived everyday like it was my week, things would be a bit frantic, but even then the decisions you make get a little unreasonable. I would most likely skip a day of work to go skydiving or something. But I would not definitely read that book on my shelf. Because who would read a book when you only have a week left! Or go exercising? Or get that 60,000 mile oil change? Why would I do any regular car maintenance for that matter? 

And that’s with a whole week to work with. So a singular day? Preposterous. It’s nearly impossible to anything sizable with just a day. No paintings. Maybe I could write a poem. But only free verse. Iambic pentameter takes at least a few days to iron out. At least! 

So I’ve decided to live everyday like it’s my last five to seven decades. I’m going to get regular oil changes. I’m going to read that book on the shelf. But I’m also going to take that vacation. Maybe that’ll involve skydiving. I can do that research from a number of my pieces of furniture. Or even call that friend from the same couch. 

The convenient thing about aphorisms is that it creates an easier framework to initially suss out the philosophy behind it. But the danger is forgetting that you’re supposed to eventually dig deeper to find said philosophy. So to live mindfully, and appreciate both the things you do decide to do, and the things that you decide not to do. All of that is hard to do everyday, but I don’t need the fear of death to motivate me. It is satisfaction of remembering and experiencing is what is the key. 

And a solid funeral plan set in advance. You really don’t want to burden your family with hard decisions in their time of grief. Just common sense.