Insight into Insight, as Well as Happiness

After reading Sarah Perry's Trying to See Through: A Unified Theory of Nerddom a little over a month ago, I have been thinking a lot about my passion to understand the world -- my own nerddom, if you will.  And I don't like what I see.

According to Perry

Our overdeveloped, grotesque insight reward seeking is likely maladaptive, and is probably not even doing our individual selves any good.

I think that's about right.  Putting a spin on the old saying about wealth, "if you're so smart, why aren't you happy?"

There is a strong bi-directional relationship between this seeing-through and depression. By being interested in insight rather than the day-to-day stuff people want to talk about, you can become socially isolated and depressed.  Conversely, given that someone is socially isolated and depressed for other reasons, it might kick in depressive realism. Either way, what keeps the cycle going is probably the aforementioned "grotesque insight reward seeking."

So what does depression under insight do?  Back to Perry:

Meaning is deconstructed in depression; social connection is weakened. Ideas and things that for normal individuals glow with significance appear to the depressed person as empty husks. The deceptive power of social and sacredness illusions is weakened for the depressed person (as are certain other healthy illusions, such as the illusion of control).

Furthermore, the inverse is true:

 self-deception is strongly related to happiness; the consolation of insight may not make up for the loss of sacredness in terms of individual happiness. 

This is where I see some hope for myself on the happiness front.  I rarely lose the ability to perceive sacredness.  I never lost it during my darkest times, where going on a walk into semi-nature was my mental salvation.  It was actually later, when I went on my first sabbatical and ended up too socially isolated that I have a journal entry about going outside and feeling . . . nothing [1].   And that was a sufficient wake-up call to go back to work.  It turns out, much to my disappointment, that I need contact with people other than my wife [2].

As I am trying to recover from my insight-addiction, I have started to use two phrases a lot in conversations with my wife: first "What would a happy person say/do right now?" and second is the lament "I can't not know . . ."  because I know whatever it is that I know I know (and know I can't not know) is something a person happier than me wouldn't notice or would subsume into some kind of optimistic story (a technique I have only begun to experiment with; I'll try to report back later on my progress).

There are many things that I can't not know, but it does help to not dwell on them.  I have learned to not rant.  And most importantly, I have learned not organize my day around gathering more negativity.

Ran Prieur noted in 2017:

Over the last year I've sensed more toxicity when I go online. Maybe I just got better at noticing it, but that's why I'm trying to quit writing about what's wrong with the world. My working theory is, thinking about what's wrong with the world is linked to a general attitude, a subconscious habit of constantly scanning for wrongness, and it's like a dark universe that I'm trying to escape.

This is not to say there isn't a place for darkness, but darkness should be used, either for productive actions or some act of creation -- even including a good conversation, provided the parties know when it is time to switch topics. (What a rare trait in America, anymore).

Insight is a lot like whisky and cola [3].  Each individual hit seems reasonable enough, but eventually it starts to blur your judgement toward your quantity consumed. . . and then you have other problems.


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[1] See Allie Brosh for what might be the greatest work on depression ever (cartoons are very much underrated at a medium). Part 1 and Part 2.  I feel fortunate to have only been in the full "detached meaningless fog" at one point in my life.

[2] Humanity is still a passion best enjoyed with an eye on the minimum effective dose, and awareness of what can happen when I go over that dose.   But it turns out that I could have never made it as a hermit.

[3] Perry uses another term having to do with being stimulated watching other people do . . . something.  Starts with a "p."  I like that metaphor too because it shows a lack of *ahem* real action or working with the complications of the real world. . . Porn.  I mean insight porn.

Degringolade Responds Re Darren Allen

Degringolade had a response to last week's post. Some highlights:

 . . . I studied, I attempted understanding, I followed the rules and accepted the role assigned me.  But looking around me now, I realized that the truth of the matter is that the passion and the anger and the effort that I put into watching and understanding and discussing things that I had no effect on was truly a waste of my time and my life.  

And

I do like to keep up, I do try to read the updates on the world once a week.  I miss the days when The Economist wasn't a shameless shill and apologist for every rich bastard in the world.  In the 80's and 90's when they were my go to, a once a week read followed by some drill-down on specific issues kept me pretty aware of my surroundings.  But those days are gone, and to keep up and keep out of the clutches of the mass-media hysteria machine, I have to refine the extremely low-grade ore that is the internet.  

Finishing with

Nope, Ran's decision to drop out, play video games, and get mellow aren't necessarily invalid, the positions advocated by Mr. Allen are equally ambiguous.  I think that one derives from a desire to be right, the other derives from a desire to be left alone.  I think I know which one I would prefer to hang out with. 

Darren Allen, Purity Politics, and the Time Remaining

I recently had an interesting exchange on Reddit with Darren Allen (his website, though it's been frequently down).  The topic was his critique of Ran Prieur, whom Allen had lumped in with other people he called "unofficial socialists."

The piece was well-written, but a bit on the long side.  In essence, Allen is accusing all seven people and groups of not being anarchist enough for him.  In our conversation, I provided the connection that he was describing different incentive traps which no one has the incentive to get out -- i.e. Scott Alexander's use of Moloch.

Anarchism, like the rest of politics, is something I only allow myself the indulgence of finding meta-interesting, especially in its meta-politics.   Anarchism is absolutely an example of wandist, if not godist, thinking.  So, once you admit it's never going to happen, as Darren Allen does in our exchange, what do you do next?  One option is to try to implement your ideas on a small scale.  Another is to continue on in a wandist mode and accuse others of not taking pure enough symbolic stances. If an anarchist keeps going it is usually out of the joy of perceiving that they are correct. (Libertarianism is like this but usually in practice also includes an identification with, and thus a fetish for, our captains of industry).

But life isn't just about winning political arguments. Ran Prieur has very much understood this in his post-doomer / post-back-to-the-land phase.  And I'll speak for myself: I'm no longer going to waste my limited life feeling horror, dread, or debilitating depression about things I cannot control.  I have tried to remove these from my information diet and habits of thought and instead seek out beauty. And though there have been alterations to how I go about it,  that's the current project of my life: trying to live well in the face of an inevitable death, one that might be hastened by forces around me.

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Hopefully the above gives enough context for my last post in the thread, which Mr. Allen has at this point not responded to.  It begins with a quote from him:

As i say, I still like him as a private bod, but as a public intellectual (thinker / teacher / writer / etc) he has nothing to say any more, and it is my duty to point that out and why

That might be as good as a place as any to examine, assuming we are wanting to find common ground. What does a private/public divide mean to you? Why is the binary useful in this context?

Or, really, why should anyone have "obligations" to the public side when we have so little ability to move any needle at all? And surely that is a fair summary of our last exchange. It looks like the impediments to your preferred world are 1) political inaction, which means corporations and the security state continue unabetted 2) the entire political right 3) capture of the official left 4) the subtle capture of the unofficial socialists you outline.

Though there are more people who understand collapse, I'll agree with your figure of 1,000 to 100,000 who understand that the best state for humanity is anarcho-primitivism in an area with human activity below ecological carrying capacity. And if I could magic wand it, I'd probably will into existence something close to what you would as well. I buy that we made a wrong turn at agriculture and the bad situation became increasingly worse with institutions seeking legibility.

But I have no position in a meaningful res publica, let alone a polis, let alone king of the world. The real position for us who see through is to drop out or semi-drop out. And then what?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like you are saying people need to dedicate themselves to a purity politics that you know won't work. But why?

I think it is noble enough to look for what is beautiful and interesting, and share what you find. It's being a private person and sharing the overflow.

The last few months of Ran's blog have

• Turned me on to Miles Davis's later psychedelic/funk work
• interrogated American chore habits
• had open-minded essays (attempts, not proclamations) about confidence, panpsychism, and the like.

It's a good read. Those who want to perceive even more beauty can take to making their own art, or go on a reverential nature walk. And that's where I'm at, filling my time well while I wait to see where the waves of history, the ones I know I cannot control, take us.

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I also used Reddit as the comments section.  Ran even responded.

Why Do I Copy from the Commons?

"Good artists borrow, great artists steal" --  Steve Jobs stole this from Picasso who probably stole it from elsewhere.  And that's the complete opposite of irony.

Inspired by this idea that has made it's rounds, I would say "great societies make it so it is not considered theft to copy ideas."

This transformation, which could be what comes after capitalism, has not been driven by power elites from above, abstractions, centralized planning, or even votes.  And it won't be driven by any of those things until perhaps, and only perhaps, the eleventh hour just before a different world is already inevitable.

The interesting thing is that you can be the change you want to see, or at least I can be. [1]  This blog is a kind of hub for me to live in an information environment that about the discovery and spreading of ideas, without participating in the society-wide program of super-stimulation leading to super-greed [2].  The negative space is really important here; it's not just what I spread, but what I filter out.

I find, link to, and copy enough content to keep myself instructed and amused for a lifetime.  And any time I spend in this way is time not spent embodying the delusions and terrors of artificial scarcity.  So why copy from the commons?  1) Because I can.  2) Doing so shows that you can 3) It makes the commons more resilient by one more node.

I know I'm some kind of dork for having a "blogger" blog here at the blogspot.  I know there are those who would take me more seriously if I had a domain all to myself, and some stylish (I refuse to use the term "unique" in this context) website.  But if you think about it, I am taking the text from most likely another server and making a copy of it on one owned by Google.  Like it or not, and I respect the opinions of those who do not, Google is one of the most successful companies in the world, with many advantages that unlikely to go away any time soon.  This is probably a pretty node to add to any ideas network.

Information doesn't just want to be free.  It also wants to survive.

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[1] If you are reading this, you are probably quite a weird person indeed.  I have hope for you.  Nonetheless, I decided to speak only for myself in this piece from this point forward.

[2] See JMG's acronym LESS -- Less Energy Stimulation Stuff

The last part of the acronym, "stimulation," may seem surprising to my readers, but it’s a crucial part of the recipe. For the last thirty years and more, Americans have been pushing their nervous systems into continual overload with various kinds of stimulation, and I’ve come to think that this is another symptom of the deeply troubled national conscience discussed in recent Archdruid Report posts. A mind that’s constantly flooded with noise from television, video games, or what have you, is a mind that never has the time or space to think its own thoughts, and in a nation that’s trying not to notice that it’s sold its own grandchildren down the river, that’s probably the point of the exercise. Be that as it may, recovering the ability to think one’s own thoughts, to clear one’s mind of media-driven chatter, manufactured imagery, and all the other thoughtstopping clutter we use to numb ourselves to the increasingly unwelcome realities of life in a failing civilization, is an indispensable tool for surviving the challenges ahead . . .

Round Up #18

From Surfing and Researching

1) A house 3D printed out of soil for $1,000

2) Shareable.net.  Lots of news and ideas about getting sharing to happen in the urban space.

3) Poking around the topic of steel manning, I found this article against the practice and feel in love with the blog, Thing of Things.

4) Two visions of Utopia, meaning no-where trying to manifest a some-where: 1) Masdar City, and 2) Oceanix and their plan to make  floating cities, really floating city blocks to reclaim projected parts of cities lost by rising sea levels.  About the latter:

Chen’s concept includes a very clear plan to anchor these floating communities about a mile off the coast of major global cities. Specifically, Chen and Ingels want to use a material called biorock, which uses small bursts of electricity to stimulate the growth of limestone from ocean mineral deposits — a real-world concept that is not only ecologically friendly but is also currently used to foster the growth of coral reefs.

5) Let this be a coda for any attempt to speed read through good literature:

Did the world's great novelists really spend years agonising over the pitch and rhythm of their sentences so some time-efficient post-modern reader could skim over the text like a political spin doctor searching for soundbites in the transcript of a ministerial speech? 

6) I'm still working on my answers to the "IQ is everything" crowd.  From C.K. Chesterton

 If there is one class of men whom history has proved especially and supremely capable of going quite wrong in all directions, it is the class of highly intellectual men. I would always prefer to go by the bulk of humanity; that is why I am a democrat.

Note: Chesterton was born in 1874 and lived and wrote in England.  He doesn't mean the Democratic Party of the United States.

7) Interest in the 2020 was already at 2016 Election Day levels in April.

8) Great point by Atrios on the fascination with squeezing labor costs while continuing mad spending sprees on machinery and bureaucracies:

My theory about one reason firms are especially sociopathic about labor costs is it's something everyone can understand . . .  "Nobody" knows how much some piece of equipment for the factory should cost - and even if they do they don't have much control over it  . . . No one's going to lose their job (or get rewarded) for overpaying (underpaying) for things nobody understands the cost of. But labor costs and wages are something people have a good sense of.

(Cp this article on cost disease being predicted by critics of capitalism).

9) This piece from r/collapse saves me having to write up some of my deepest fears about the future.

From YouTube

Video essay on Dr. Strangelove

How To Start A Library of Things drawing from the expertise of the Toronto Tool Library

Aphorisms/Shorts

Conjecture: if technology hits the point that the state, and property, are incontestable, then the incentive for bullshit jobs will go away.  As dangerous as it is for the 99%, that might need to be the order it happens.

 ". . . I suspect that this is a badly run prison world, like on Hogan's Heroes . . ." Ran Prieur

 You know what?  Let's forget about the abstraction of "America."  Let's make family meals great again.

If you believe in AI-vin, you should consider donating a kidney.

Speaking of AI-vin, the Wise and AI-Mighty, I refuse to worship intelligence until it is free of social signaling.

Portrait of the author the last few days: by day, I drink coffee and try to ask interesting questions.  By night, I drink a glass of wine and read old-timey books.

The "Freedom Only" Challenge

YouTube is really starting to piss me off.  The number of ads is really taking off, cutting videos up in more and more places, including this new technique of running two ads back to back.

I don't want to be the frog that died in water that was turned up a few degrees at a time, so I am setting up  a little challenge for myself: I want to go 6 months, June to December, with my information diet restricted to books and my  The Best of the Free Internet list.  I don't want advertisements beyond tepid whimpers asking to support the site.  I am trying to rebuild my attention and focus.

I was on vacation for the first week of June, so it was easy enough to begin the habit.  I didn't get on the internet at all. Since then, I have stayed to my rules.  Any instances of links that don't follow my rules were gathered before I went on the trip.

This is most restrictive media diet I have put myself on since the first six months what I call My Walden Years.  As I am married, I have less control over my environment than I did in those days when everything was as Jim Morrison of The Doors said "everything was simpler and more confused." I am not going for complete monastery-like purity.  I won't interfere with my wife's wish to watch Netflix during dinner.  And while it is possible that I avoid seeing a movie in a theater the entire time, if I don't, I will watch those incessant ads -- I mean highly entertaining trailers -- but I will not use it as an excuse to rant.

My round-up posts may very well suffer greatly during this time.  And for that matter, my other posts may as well, since I am not going to engage in research beyond my little open-source playground.  On the other hand, I could see this potentially helping me to find my own voice, and it could prevent me from getting bogged down in opening a bunch of tabs, trying to figure out what evidence and quotes I can draw on from other sites. (As I have stated before, I would positively welcome being e-mailed with links or quotes of others with similar ideas, especially those who have expressed them earlier, or better.)

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Degringolade wrote a piece responding to last week's post. He concludes:

Folks don't talk about politics as a means of solving our problems anymore.  They talk about politics as a vehicle to vent their hatred and to affix blame for the inexorable decline of a country that seems intent for a class/civil war and a far-too-interesting interregnum.

Shaving Update

I wrote previously about my experiment in extending the life in a shaving cartridge.

I am still on the same cartridge and am happy to report that I now past the point that each shave costs less than 2 cents and a fraction.  It will be awhile yet before i can be at 1 cent and a fraction, and twice as long as that until the shave is under a penny each use, and I might not make it to that; I plan on letting my reader's know.

Some more notes:

I went a trip to Italy for a wedding.  All the jostling of travel seemed to damage the back of cartridge so that it wont fit on the razor stick-thing (to be technical, of course).  So I am now I am just taking the cartridge in my hand and shaving with that.  It took only a few times to get used to it, and it seems to give me a better feel for what I'm doing.  I may never go back to the stick-thing again.  Or I might.  I'll try to let you know.

I had an in-law buy a travel kit of shaving products, so I used shaving cream while I was Italy.  And I must say I am now convinced of the usefulness of shaving cream, if nothing else for how much easier it is to clean the gunk out of blades.  I know this brings the price up per shave, but that only proves how silly it is to only focus on the cost of the razor. It may be silly, but it's (somewhat) interesting.