philosophy
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The number of combinations
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1 min read
To make anything is to change perception, as every viewer arrives at an interpretation based on the accumulation of experience. Even twins see things differently. People are lean, mean, interpreting machines. Even more, they recreate themselves as they go along. There is no blueprint — perspective is elastic. We create as one, we view as…
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Aging with energy
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2 min read
We are constantly searching for a sense of purpose and accomplishment. Why are we even here — to suck the land dry? We force meaning into the world with the hope that an outer stimulus ricochets back to accentuate the pulse. We risk everything to feel something, encouraged by the mechanisms of error. Life is…
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No preferences
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1 min read
Presets are active, combatant, and not easily contained. The true believer builds their own alleyways that offer no escape. Who are they to play God? Thus we must loosen our grip on preferences and explore neutrality, never clinging to any belief with absolute conviction. Parochialism is a blind spot. Shrouded by significance, we deplete the…
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The all-important gaze
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1 min read
Stuck in a default state of distractedness, we look away for the next magnetic clue. As the gaze proceeds, a sense of familiarity comes to our aid to help us navigate our way in the world. But most of what we perceive is just noise, impeding both our short-term goals and long-term moon shots. We often…
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Imagining life without work
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2 min read
Some people are obsessed with work. It defines them, gives them a structure. Without work, they’d sail away at the mercy of the waves and get lost at sea. But technology facilitates creativity. The accountant becomes a music producer at night, a photographer, or YouTuber on the weekend. He or she identifies more as being…
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Be wary of advice
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1 min read
The fallacy of giving advice is that what works for one person rarely works for another. Advice is unique and personal, a collection of warnings we tell ourselves about how to avoid past mistakes, synthesized and abridged for a recipient. “Unsolicited advice is the junk mail of life.” Bernard Williams The best advice we can…
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The art of delay
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1 min read
You can’t make Bitcoin go up just as you can’t coax a train out of a tunnel. Good things take time and a lot of patience. If you ever get tired of waiting, do something else instead. You could try to relax your tight face a bit or distract yourself into another project. Remember, the goal is…
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Facing opposites
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1 min read
We want to reduce the stress in our lives, yet we keep piling on the number of things we need to do. We travel arms wide open into a tidal wave of responsibilities. We want to restrict the data tech companies collect from us, yet we swipe right at consent—all terms, all conditions, in favor…
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The business of living
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1 min read
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 various situations. They’ll even attend to simultaneous entertainments if it means they can…
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Dealing with everydayness
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1 min read
Distraction takes us away from the stresses of everydayness. We keep our phones nearby because screens help entertain our worries away. But an excess of interference comes at a cost. When we fail to experience things with our senses, the virtual and reality become one. Irreality calcifies into callousness, much to the detriment of human…
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Avoiding the losses
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1 min read
Every story needs a villain that disobeys the rules. Bereft of the drama, we lose interest in the hero’s tale. Every single event that occurs in one’s life prepares them for a moment yet to come. Life begs for a beautiful struggle, where an exaggerated sense of faith begets a David versus Goliath triumph. When…
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Collisions of thought
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2 min read
It’s not about how much information we consume. One can suck all the information out of the Twitter firehouse and learn nothing. News makes our brain fat. After all, it was Aldous Huxley who forewarned that we’d drown in excess entertainment and not care about anything else. Writes Neil Postman in Amusing Ourselves to Death. “Orwell…