Tag: Confidence

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Aesthetics Community Internet Culture Startups

Day 1066 and Behind The Scenes of Thousand Scenes Flourishing

We are living in an era of competing totalizing narratives. We assign Jungian archetypes and monomyths to complicated people and complex situations with many variables.

We ship relationships and stan fandoms even as the meme message is that we should be shipping code and forming bonds with other people with agency.

Remember that hyperstition is about bringing a reality into being. We have agency to impact the world we live in. We have more control than ever and anyone can get leverage.

I’m so inspired to see how many communities are facing an uncertain future head on. Sure we’ve had schisms and it’s easy to judge someone else’s sincere revivalism with crass cynicism.

I prefer an optimism about what we can all accomplish when we compete to serve a need better than anyone else. I like specialization as the more knowledgeable that is dispersed widely beyond a priest cast the better we seem to do as a species. A whole world of people is calling to you to own more of the future personally.

You may wonder what you can contribute. And sure some actors are massively more agentic. I never thought I’d be in that rare class and yet I can contribute meaningful to dozens of aligned projects. It’s important to avoid dickriding. Don’t make up stories about your betters. Or at least try not to believe them.

You can be personally better yourself. You can accelerate. Now is the time to arm yourself with leverage as the world shifts. Be wary of messiahs and mercenaries but also know action is expensive.

Strong organizations have healthy value memetics. “Just Do It” frames a broader truth that humans take in a context of millions of other agents. Action is disproportionally powerful when people just play their role.

I fight nihilism. I’m not eager for the end of humanity or our civilizations. I want our flourishing. But neither am I attached to a static vision of my humanity or yours. In the image of God gives quite a bit of latitude for our species’ evolution.

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Community

Day 1065 and Agency

I consider it a positive that the topic of having agency is having a resurgence in many communities with diverse worldviews. The one throughline is that we can shape our world no matter how hopeless odds may seem. All we can do as humans is try to make tomorrow better than today. Optimism has many flavors.

There are many ways you may personally find your own locus of control in your own life. And by locus of control I simply mean tangible things over which you have actual control.

Up don’t mean “monitoring the situation” though I myself doomscroll plenty. I mean deciding that you can impact something by making it happen. You own a thing. Maybe it’s only a small radius over which you have impact. Maybe it’s broad and narrow. Markets have lots of niches for everyone.

I myself take comfort in leaning into what I can do with my skills. And my skills are unique. I am specialized but also don’t mind learning something new. I try to cultivate what they call a high degree of openness. Even though I’m not sure if always do. I trust my capacity to change when believe I can lean on others if I show myself to be capable of delivering in small ways within my specialities. Coordination brings about trust over time.

Don’t assume your betters or the “men in the arena” or someone in charge will handle it. Maybe you are the one who can fix the problem. Maybe you have seen something no one else has.

It’s also possible you are wrong. Don’t be insulted if you need to prove yourself. You should expect others to prove themselves too. Strong networks forward along information to others who show themselves to be trust worthy.

So don’t be tempted to look down on anyone’s choices. We’ve all got to balance human needs which have limits and human wants which are infinite. Not everyone is going to be happy. But we can do our part to own what is real in our own world. Reality is a collective project.

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Community Emotional Work

Day 1057 and Grateful for Disappointment

Thanksgiving is one of America’s strangest and most utopian holidays. We take a day at the end of the fall harvest season, just as we head into the darkest time of the year, to give thanks for having survived the last the cycle.

Everyone who makes it to the Thanksgiving table is symbolically finding a place of security, abundance, friendship and family. Even if it’s just for an hour.

It’s within this bittersweet context that I think being grateful for disappointment is a worthy objective. I say the serenity prayer with that thought in mind.

God, grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.

Serenity Prayer

While I am grateful for all of the things that went my way this year, I am as glad that I have been able to accept the things I cannot change.

The disappointments in life are endless and personal. Our own family stories are shaped by the intimate family dynamics of feeling loved, secure, safe and empowered. No childhood is without some emotional ups and downs.

If you feel disappointment it’s a privilege. You extended enough empathy and love that you could be hurt. The trust required for this is one of life’s most human experiences. To love people that have disappointed us is to find peace with forgiveness. May we invite that forgiveness into our lives.

I give Thanksgiving for being able to feel connection with full knowledge of its risks and rewards.

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Internet Culture Startups

Day 1036 and The Right Direction

I’ve been in Europe for the last month. My itinerary included Tallinn, Helsinki and Amsterdam. It was a personal trip with work overlayed on top as the digital nomad as become a regular part of my life.

I have said it before but I don’t take as much pleasure as you might imagine from these trips. Much of the reason I spend so much time outside of America is simply that the State department won’t let in the kind of rare weirdo digital grey tribe talent from the portions of the world the United States has labeled as “bad passports.”

I’ve written about it extensively if you are interested. We’ve reached a crisis point in the dysfunction of our immigration and travel visa system in America and it weighed heavily on me and mine. It’s the most concrete evidence I have that America simply isn’t serious about being competitive in the global economy.

As I head back home to the states, I want to be sure I’m heading in the right direction with my priorities. I’ve been committed to crypto for close to a decade now. I’ve added in more focus as it’s become clearer we can’t rely on fiat and the dollar system. I’ve become part of the artificial intelligence explosion over the last two years. Now that the Network State concept is more formalized and we have rallying movements like e/acc, I feel as if some optimism is cautiously warranted. All it will take is twenty or thirty years of work and surviving the geopolitical tumult. No big deal right?

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Travel

Day 1027 and Fuck It We Ball

One of my founder friends Anton (his startup Chroma is a chaotic.capital portfolio company) has a slogan I find myself referencing in times of indecision.

Fuck it we ball

I’m struggling a little in Tallinn and was considering upending my last week or two on the road here by heading to Amsterdam to attend Balaji’s Network State Conference.

It required some intensive travel logistics but as the timing overlapped a few other conferences in Amsterdam I thought “fuck it we ball!”

And I’m glad I did as with a little help from my masterful travel agent (my husband) I was able to reroute myself to Amsterdam from October 29 through November 3rd. If you are in town for various events like the Urbit or Solana conferences let me know. I’d love to see you!

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Startups Travel

Day 1024 and Rate of Change

I had to slow down for two weeks to balance out my work, my circumstances, world events and my emotions. I always find myself disappointed at slowing down. There is a certain mood taking a hold in my circles. A certain “extropian enthusiasm” has taken root.

And I find myself looking to go faster. I see the need for momentum. I struggle to stumble at the pace I keep now. My heart variability chart, which shows a kind of adaptability stress, is jerky with dips and rises. But I am also certain I’m managing better.

Have you ever felt like it was easier to lean into more? That sometimes things feel smoother when they are faster. Control remains an illusion so why not let it go.

I am thinking of going to Amsterdam for the Network State conference at the end of the month. The flight from Tallinn isn’t too bad and I’m a believer in the need to build systems. I owe much to supranational connections of shared values. And I’d like to us to pursue financial and contractual systems that connect us globally. The state should not be a limiting factor for progress.

And so I am thinking of my own rate of change. What can I sustain in my own daily life and circumstances and how does it stack against the increased rate of change of a future that is arriving fast? I like to think I’ll meet the moment but I’m certain I’ll be humbled by its arrival.

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Culture

Day 1022 and Decision Tree

How often do you rely on other people’s decision? I bet it’s more than you realize. It’s actually mind boggling to me how much we all rely on each other’s assumptions to function. Enough to make the concept of “operating from first principles” seem comical.

Every aspect of my daily routine relies on decisions made by others going back so far we’ve simply lost track. And I’m not even talking about the big shit.

Let me give you a example. I’m writing this post on my iPhone inside of a mobile application called Jetpack. It’s a mobile content management system that’s part of the wider the WordPress ecosystem.

I’ve blogged using WordPress for nearly two decades. I’ve been using Apple products for thirty years. MacOS and its successor mobile iOS have been the dominant operating system for my entire life.

Isn’t it astonishing to think that the software (and hardware) that I use to organize my thinking relies on engineering decisions made by PHP and C developers decades ago?

And those decisions rest on top of other decisions made by other engineers. I am in Europe so charging my ridiculously powerful pocket computer that is running WordPress software requires a power adapter as American appliances run on 110 volts, while European appliances are 220 volts.

Decisions, resting on top of decision, resting on top of other decisions rule my life. They run your life too. And it’s entirely possible somewhere in that decision tree someone made a decision for reasons that you wouldn’t make. So try to remember that your life relies entirely on the work of other people that are just as likely to be wrong as you.

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Emotional Work

Day 1016 and Carrying On

It’s been a terrible week. I feel stupid even typing it. How many times can I state the obvious? It’s as if the repetition of stating that I’m in a hard place physically, and emotionally, somehow shames me. Can’t I say or feel something new?

But I don’t have any desire to dig any deeper into the wounds of the present. I am in too much pain. I am deeply emotionally affected by the situation in Israel. In ways I frankly didn’t anticipate. Those horrors overlapping with being sick, being far from home, and having a significant personal milestone, have collectively laid me flat.

I’d prefer to remain silent but the exercise of daily writing pulls at my habits no matter the extent of the misery. And maybe that’s the point. No microcosm of personal suffering or global macro view of atrocity changes the reality. Pain is an equally shared human condition. And we walk through it no matter our circumstances.

I have to assume I am not alone. The ambient misery is both personal and collective. The human experience is terrifyingly universal. I am fearful of my own physical fragility when abroad certainly but it’s bigger than being away from home. I’m afraid of being fragile in a cruel world that is getting crueler.

I’ve struggled to maintain a level head and a healthy routine this week as the whiplash of a hostile immune reaction and steroids took me from one misery to another. Prednisone is a cruel drug. It tamps down any reaction from your immune system. It’s a hard reboot for a physical system gone haywire. How appropriate given the circumstances.

It wasn’t quite how I envisioned turning over from one decade to another. And while I appreciated the stormy Baltic solitude to savor the weight and significance of my personal milestone, I can’t help but also notice that carrying on feels like a heavy burden.

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Emotional Work Politics

Day 1015 and Selfish

I think we are entering a selfish age. High trust societies are built from cooperation. When we get more through coordination than we do from conflict we have an incentive build more. Simple supply and demand can teach us a lot about improving the bargain of trusting each other.

Coordination suffers when trust goes down. But we can’t all maintain the same types of trust across all levels of our interactions. Some areas must remain high trust. Tight industries and clear lines of communication can help.

But we have to become intense skeptics to coordinate in otherwise hostile environments. Civilization has a thin veneer. To selfishly live your own life for your own good is often in conflict with others. The boundaries we tolerate are the rules for acceptable competition. This is how we civilize society. There are laws and then there is power.

Maintaining your own power in a crueler world is knowing when to be selfish to the benefit of other people’s coordination problems. Competition is good.

I am more careful in some interactions now because I see the fog of competing interests. Different rules apply to different people. Knowing when rules do and don’t apply can make you crazy. You’ve judged power and norms correctly when sympathy is with you.

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Biohacking Finance

Day 1009 and Non-Reactivity

I’ve been working on my Q3 investor update all day. I am a little behind my own artificial deadline for it as I believe it’s good to get it out in the first week of the new quarter. I am chasing down a bigger theme in my market insights section that is being refined as I rework my own narrative understanding in real time.

I feel that there is a collective disagreement on consensus reality. We’ve got multiple worldviews that are being hotly contested. Epistemic status humble as the kids say. And so I am doing what I can to get outside the presumed worldview of my own geography and nation and see if a more global perspective is helpful.

But being able to see any of these different vantage points and narratives will require me to be accepting of other competing or adjacent narratives. The presumption is that I can control my own reactions. My body has to be open. So I am here with my Apollo Neuro band sending sound waves to my body while I listen to Endel’s chill program on my noise canceling headphones. I plan to do a Non-Sleep Deep Rest mediation after I’m finished.

I can only give my best performance when I’m sure my body is in a non-reactive place. Parasympathetic is sometimes called “rest and digest” versus its more active sympathetic nervous system partner “fight or flight.” We must assess our world and the many competing perceptions from a place of non-reactivity. It is the only way through the fog of the moment. Never let the stress of the moment distract you.