Tag: philosophy

Categories
Life & Philosophy

Awareness makes all the difference

Awareness makes all the difference

With the right instructions, the unfamiliar becomes manageable.

We follow the recipe with the hope that the convoluted reality seeps away into the froth. Directions become one less drain on our cognitive load.

Yet, had we followed our instincts we may not have gotten lost in the first place.

Adhering to Google Maps may lead us off the bridge, submerged into water. Writing with predictive text or auto-correct makes us prisoners of the information universe.

Knowledge is visceral, reality is learned. Shut our eyes on the open road, and we carve our own self-destruction.

Artificial intelligence is there to guide, not to provide all the solutions. One follows the prescribed path of his or her second-brain gadget, all the while gut-checking programmatic veracity. There are consequences for bequeathing all thought to the outer robot.

Awareness makes all the difference in inferring the future. Aliveness never goes full-on auto-pilot.

Keep the eyes on both the donut and the donut hole.

Categories
Life & Philosophy Poetry

Came, saw, and self-conquered

Came, saw, and self-conquered

The choir of one conducts an archaeological dig of the self.

What else to expect other than massive truth bombs?

The head is the instruments of instruments, yet it can’t outsmart the amygdala. The prehistoric brain fires on all cylinders.

The inner-narrative searches beyond the mask anchoring down any Shakespearean stage.

The ego has the power to build and the power to destroy. Once undone, there are no lily pads to jump to next.

Categories
Life & Philosophy Tech

Life as protest

Life as protest

The revolution is in consciousness — passing and going into aliveness with a jolt of caffeine.

We can fool the brain into thinking that we’re more jazzed up than we are.

But one’s attitude and perspective don’t change overnight. We grow into ruthlessness through restlessness.

The audacity of hope is an oddball talent.

We once looked to religion to save the world. Now, we look at a few individuals who take big chances.

Entrepreneurs want to be gods.

Elon Musk basks in the simulated world’s glory, where he exploits his mental software to rewire predestined code. Always in overdrive, Musk creates endless opportunities to break the mold.

We can control our destiny if we’re crazy enough to believe it.

Categories
Life & Philosophy

Ignoring the inner-critic

Ignoring the inner-critic

We paint from what life gives us. We are the sum total of our experience.

But how often do we underthink our motivation and overthink action? Sometimes, it makes sense to think big and pull the life out of ourselves.

Stop doubting and start doing

The doer is a different breed. Dreams are meant to be followed, broken, failed at, and remixed.

There’s nothing more disruptive than someone chasing a so-called “pipe dream” with consistency and patience.

Why is the inner-critic so afraid to break the shackles and live up to their best?

To doubt is to do — doing is a way of building up courage and establishing narratives.

Categories
Life & Philosophy Psychology

Gagging on the dizziness of freedom

Gagging on the dizziness of freedom

Devoid of context, an abstraction so genuine it steers clear the badge of authenticity.

We, meaning-seeking creatures are lost in the dizziness of freedom. We follow an inner narrative only to see it conflict with the ideal stories we tell ourselves.

Dreams are saturated with misleading formulas that destabilize our consciousness. The truth lies between the lines, soaking in the gray space.

We may drink it black or flatten it with white, knowing all along that the coffee is the mere vehicle for imbibing caffeine’s truth serum.

Awake, finally embracing the certainty of being forever lost. We gag on two sips of Americano and spit anxiety back out again.

Categories
Life & Philosophy Tech

The art of doing nothing

The art of doing nothing

Relaxation is an art, antithesis to our ‘always on’ culture.

But it takes work to do nothing. Those tiny hits of dopamine are addictive.

The route to super-consciousness is paved with roadblocks, the least bit unplugging from the maelstrom of 24/7 news and unnecessary push messages.

We crave novelty

Chasing the rectangular glow for entertainment produces intense cognitive clutter. All the engagement makes us less happy in the end.

Distracted into busyness, we begin to decay into inanition. We miss the events unfolding in our day, permitting evil to spread as a consequence of blindness.

When we’re interacting in excess, we miss out on recharging and thinking. Disconnection is the only way to put the mind back into the mix.

The goal is not just to relax, per se, but to be free from collecting screen souvenirs. What we want to strive for is long-term serotonin.

We fight for the present to turn idleness into concurrent exploration. Time ticks to the clock as the mind does to the brain. Breathe and stop, we can stave off the ludic loop.

Surrounded by accelerated context, moments of silence seem to be the only way to make anything click.

Categories
Culture Life & Philosophy Poetry

The business of living

The business of living

The temptation to linger in maximum comfort — life isn’t a warm shower, you know.

One typically extends a staycation at the sight of pleasure or during a pandemic, displeasure.

People are adaptable, prepared to extend or narrow their comfort zone in a variety of situations.

They’ll even attend to simultaneous entertainments if it means they can get on with the business of living.

Moving across the stream, pinging into and around rocks, life thrives when you stop looking for happiness and absorb all the scars.

Where there is joy is pain, and lots of courage in between.

Categories
Life & Philosophy Productivity & Work

What comes next

What comes next

We are always becoming, making inferences about our future.

Often times, such guesses lead to mistakes. But error is the only way we can untangle the morass of uncertainty.

Effort frees the mind from the nagging question of “what if?”

“Imagine living your life without being afraid to take a risk and to explore life. You are not afraid to lose anything.”

The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz

In doing a voluntary act, we take responsibility for all that comes next, plus all the tension that comes with pushing forward.

The floodgates to life open when we pay attention on purpose. And then we self-assess as an antidote to so-called problems.

Without all the scars that come with risk, we’d crumble rapidly.

Categories
Life & Philosophy

Turning problems into opportunities

Will.i.am

Opportunities and problems go together, often masked as one of the same. It’s your perspective that determines how well you exploit this dialectic.

It’s always easier to play the role of a pessimist. Bad thoughts are typically stickier than good ones. Optimism is harder to produce.

However, when you look at your challenges with a pragmatic lens, you realize there’s hope.

There will inevitably be some wins along the way, even if they’re incremental. After all, the Chinese word for crisis combines the characters for danger and opportunity.

“The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.”

William James

The mind quickly identifies fake and forced positive thoughts. It also catches you from falling into a morass of negativity.

When you run away from a problem because the amygdala has told you to play it safe, you pass the opportunity by.

Dancing with the tension between thought and action motivates the search for solutions. He who hesitates caused by the dizziness of anxiety — a type of failure in advance — is sure to be lost.

Categories
Life & Philosophy

Navigating tension

gif by @boglio

Some amount of tension is healthy.

The ability to hold two opposing ideas simultaneously often yields a new idea, containing elements of each.

The tension between art and commerce encourages a blend of innovation that prevents the pitfalls of being tied to labor. We are not our jobs, no matter how tied employment is to identity.

Toggling between effort and acceptance unlocks a more dynamic human. Like a hand plunged into cold water, our fingerprints express themselves at unbending stiffness.

The synthesis of oppositional forces compels one to navigate perceived strain, ensuring that the odds help form a new, superior whole.

Self-control is the centerpiece that gives us a shot at generating a creative resolution toward embracing the dialectic.