I don’t quite know how I managed to settle into a flow state but I’ve been listening to American classic rock from sixties & seventies and just being in my body today.
The excuse for focusing on chores and what is in front of me preparing for a spring print. I’m packing for some travel and doing spring cleaning.
What I’m really doing is as a form of physical somatic integration as I’ve been throwing back more information than I thought I could handle. Or to put it simply, I’m noodling on shit. My mind is compiling.
I do prioritize nervous system regulation but even with a full toolkit of techniques I could feel the strain before I hit this flow state. It was time to breakthrough or breakdown.
I feel as if I’ve broken through to flow. There was no breakdown. I leaned into the turn. And it feels great.
I am intaking as much information as I ever have in my professional adult life. Maybe university study is a close second but I have a foundation of knowledge now that obviously I didn’t have twenty years ago. That foundation has given me more mental agility that I expected to have in middle age candidly.
I expect whatever the end process of this synthesis will show itself when it’s ready and I shall cultivate this playful ease. I trust myself to find the way through.
I was at the dermatologist today. Despite my age (I am forty) I don’t have much in the way of wrinkles. I don’t have anything deep that can’t be managed with retinol and sunscreen.
I started Botox this year only because I was literally the only one I knew in my age and social cohort that wasn’t doing it. I thought this was a good thing.
But it has recently struck me as sad that I don’t have laugh lines. You’d be hard pressed to find me smiling in any pictures. The thing with tamping down on emotions is that it works in both directions. I don’t get that angry either. I don’t have any laugh lines but I don’t know how to scowl either.
I had to be moved and instructed into position today to get Botox as I couldn’t scowl. What kind of person doesn’t know how to scowl? Isn’t the joke that resting bitch face is the default for white women?
If I don’t smile I won’t get laugh lines. But I’m not angry and so I’m not scowling either. When cut down on variance you cut out the highs and the lows. You lose the good and the bad. And that’s its own form of nihilism. Which we’d do all well to remember. To be shielded from life showing on your face requires quite a bit of resources.
I really love a Saturday dedicated to home projects. No matter how busy things are (and it’s not exactly been quiet few weeks) I enjoy the comfort of weekend afternoon routines.
Perhaps some aspect of adulthood is simply meant to keep us within routines so the entropy doesn’t get us without a bit of a fight. Protecting and nurturing the systems that keep us alive is its own spiritual battle.
Some people, like my husband, literally chop wood and carry water. Today he was clearing fallen branches so the mountain water can flow through our small stream.
Spring is slowly approaching so there is a lot to do both inside and outside. I myself was more focused on closet organizing and laundry. Few household chores provide quite as much serenity as clean sheets.
Pushing back against the chaos of one’s own life is so relaxing, I found myself taking a nap on the fresh made bed almost immediately. It would be lovely if I could work more on household chores tomorrow. It’s likely to be other more pressing outside world concerns for me, but I enjoyed the pleasure of a day focused on hearth and home.
When say I enjoy going the extra mile for some bullshit I promise I’m not kidding. I love elaborate shit.
There is very little I like more than elaborate human stuff.
I cannot stress enough regular people that this is a luxury. I have been spoiled for being unable to unpack the human experience. All credit to having been given the opportunity.
If you’d like some signal on this I have done full Naropa courses. I have been to Esalen. I’ve done family systems therapy. I’ve done coaching. My parents took me to a meditation retreats when I was a child.
You don’t need to make it this complicated. Look at this mean and meme you can start small. You can take pride in every bit of gymnastics along the way from here to the Olympics.
There are many networked subcultures on the internet. I myself participate in many on Twitter dedicated to working on what I’d loosely term as “the human experience.” It’s a diverse flourishing ecosystem of seekers.
I myself have many posts tagged under “emotional work” which is the overarching theme of most of how I do this work. Under it you will find family therapy therapy, nervous system regulation work, somatic practices, and even a few hints the spiritual and metaphysical.
There are many footpaths to follow if you are part of the “Pathless Path” contingent looking to find your own way through the forest. There are many more walking through this forest in 2024. The many dislocations of the Great Weirding and The Pandemic break many narratives.
The many nodes of seekers has led to a network strengthening that has given me the strength to continue on this path.
I began this reflection with Jonny Miller for a reason. Last night he retweeted a public question and answer session and “rapid fire coaching” with Joe Hudson for the next morning.
Jonny had spoken so highly of the Joe’s coaching. I wanted to go. But I was also afraid. Joe said in his tweet “it gets intense” and I wasn’t sure if I was brave enough for it. And yet I showed up.
I thought I’d watch, listen and learn. And then suddenly I found myself in the presence of excellence participating myself with vulnerability. Such is the magic of a true master. My fear was no more. In just ten minutes. Such is the depth of his gift. It’s a gift to experience excellence in others.
The value of an involved family versus the value of an independent life are not being well reconciled for middle aged millennials and their aging Boomers parents. And it seems to be the source of much hurt.
The sadness of misaligned values
Fantasies of a good family life that the elder generations did not prioritize when parenting their own children are now cropping up everywhere in culture.
“Do what we want you to do not what we wanted to do”
I understand how much it hurts to have family tell you they value something when they have acted completely contrary to that.
The biggest mismatch I’ve seen with my friends and their parents has been the hope that their parents would take grandparenting more seriously and being devastated when they simply don’t have any interest.
Now guilt & shame over past failures can be overwhelming as someone approaches the end of their time on this earth. Maybe the freedom at the end of life is more important than time with the next generation. Maybe those grandparents don’t want to be close to their grandchildren. Maybe they didn’t want closeness with their children in the first place. Or maybe some people only want relationships on their terms. I don’t know everyone’s personal values.
If a family didn’t live their values with their children when growing up then it’s hard to expect alignment on preferences that were never shown but only told.
I know it hurts to look at these issues in the face. Maybe it shouldn’t surprise millennials that not everyone in our parent’s generation wanted families and children. Maybe it shouldn’t surprise the elderly generation their values have to come with actions.
But coming to terms with failures in our own past is inevitable. And it’s wise to see them, own them and move on. I’ve now seen the values misalignments in every type of family. Married for 40 years, thrice divorced, mixed modern families, upper class, lower class, working class. All families have self deception on what they actually value versus what they say they value.
Families can claim something is important but don’t act like it. Acting like something is important makes all the difference. If you feel misalignment in your own relationships remember both parties have to change and find the relationship that they actually want.
For such a libertarian state, the alcohol laws seems a bit baffling. But one of the best burgers in town can be found at the bar inside the liquor store. It feel like any sports bar that leans towards country and western tunes. America is an amazing place.
Waiting on our burgers at the bar
And because we are also yuppies we went to get groceries at the local food cooperative of which we are members. My inner hippie loves getting her Dr Bronner from the bulk bins. We went a little overboard picking out some essential oils (Alex loves bergamot and I needed more lavender) and then ground of our not butters.
All the lentils and beans you could want
Having thoroughly covered the country and hippie portions of our day I came home to do some spring cleaning.
Moving from winter to warmer clothing isn’t my favorite seasonal shift. I prefer cozy cashmere and long sleeve black tee-shirts. But I have conferences and professional obligations coming up with travel so I tried out a new paid mobile application for closest organization and packing called Style Book.
I haven’t quire got the hang of it but the basic idea is to take photos of your wardrobe, tag it, organize it into outfits and packing lists and get more visibility into your wardrobe. I’ll have a to play with or more to get it polished but it seems like it has potential.
Style books Home Screen A spring lookA conference outfit
Much of my work is very abstracted from the real world as I am a network state Silicon Disapora type. But I grew up with much more concrete labor in the real world. And I see how people can fear picking up skills if they haven’t had so much as a shop class.
We keep some of those skills fresh living on our own land in Montana. It’s never as much as I hope but everything from hydroponics lettuce to pickling your own vegetables open source home automation and Bitcoin mining off our solar grid is on the table when you want a project.
It’s good to tinker. Even skilled labor like electrician work and plumbing can become a hobby with help from friends and the wealth of instruction on YouTube and Reddit. And you will have opportunities to pass it along to others which builds up your community and skills.
It has become harder and harder find people who are hands on with tradecraft. A friend is building a new outbuilding on his property and an electrician quoted him $7,000 to run 30’ to a new 60a subpanel and a few circuits.
Fortunately, Montana is a state that allows homeowners to pull their own permits and do their own electrical work. So for an $80 permit fee and with some help from Alex, he can do the entire job himself for the cost of materials, about $1,500.
And isn’t that a wonderful pro-social way to learn, build and make things with others? Be the labor you want to see in the world.
I’d describe her experience as literal shape rotation with what is a “memory palace” visualization of the world.
I can’t imagine not having inner monologue. I have a bicameral mind and can picture imagery and movement in my head and discuss it with myself.
Her description of her thought process is akin to having filing system and seeing her thoughts in that system rendered in a flexible database. It’s like she’s a computer.
Other reactions to this video have churned through my mind. Is self awareness maladaptive? Would a future intelligence find this bicameral mind inefficient and go back to unicameral. What other forms exist? Can we toggle it up and down? Is it a gradient in humans of types of cognition and the inner voice is just a processing error?
Can’t find it in the thread atm but thanks to the person who made this. “The end point of this thinking is self awareness is maladaptive”
Oh my god, I get it now. The bicameral mind is still in the process of breaking down. Inner monologues are holdovers, doomed to be outcompeted by more efficient mind
Is this “breakdown” a the shift away from perceiving the voice as external to the self? Is it the erasure of the voice wholesale? What will artificial intelligences make of these differences in human minds? Is this special? A tiger isn’t bicameral.
I think this is relevant to our moment in artificial intelligence development. A Finnish mathematician wrote one of the best science fiction novels I read in the last decade on quantum minds and memory palaces. There is a side plots with embodied intelligences on Mar.
The Quantum Thief is a science fiction novel by Finnish writer Hannu Rajaniemi and the first novel in a trilogy featuring the character of Jean le Flambeur; the sequels are The Fractal Prince and The Causal Ange
Wikipedia
I’ve got a hazy theory about Nordic decentralized engineering culture and mental organization. It’s not a coincidence that fifteen years ago a Silicon Valley Finnish computer scientist wrote some of the best science fiction about a theory of mind that was interior and perfectly organized right?
I may need to go read Julian Jaynes.
An un-cameral mind, as proposed by Julian Jaynes in his theory of bicameral mentality, refers to a state where cognitive functions are divided between two parts without consciousness or meta-reflection. In this non-conscious mental state, individuals lack the ability to reason, articulate mental contents, or have executive ego functions like deliberate mind-wandering. The breakdown of this division led to the emergence of consciousness in humans, characterized by the capacity for introspection and autobiographical memory[1][3].
Jaynes suggests that ancient people in the bicameral state experienced auditory hallucinations as commands from gods, guiding their actions without conscious evaluation. This theory has influenced discussions on consciousness, language, and culture, although it has faced criticisms and debates. Despite differing opinions, Jaynes’s work remains a thought-provoking exploration of the origins of consciousness and continues to inspire research in psychology and consciousness studies[3][5].
Sources [1] Bicameral mentality – Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameral_mentality [2] The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind http://www.compilerpress.ca/Competitiveness/Anno/Anno%20Jaynes%20Bicameral%20Mind1.htm [3] The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origin_of_Consciousness_in_the_Breakdown_of_the_Bicameral_Mind [4] Retrospective: Julian Jaynes and The Origin of Consciousness in … – jstor https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/amerjpsyc.125.2.0237 [5] The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind https://www.amazon.com/Origin-Consciousness-Breakdown-Bicameral-Mind/dp/0618057072
I saw someone else say meditation is literally teaching people how to run a monocameral emulator. I’ve done these types of exercises as a child. It sounds a bit Bene Geserit but mental exercises around focus was part of the German theosophical tradition that gave us Rudolf Steiner.
I wish I’d be a bit more organized on this but I’ve been fully back on work so this will have to do for today.
I am in a lot of pain today so I’m not thinking as clearly as I’d like. But I have learned to be sanguine about misery over the years.
When you have chronic illnesses you can either become a victim to them or accept them as part of the tapestry of human experiences.
I have had a framing that I’ll butcher today as I can’t recall any past artful coinages. It goes something like one can be existentially happy even if one’s circumstances are miserable. The opposite applies as well. People can have happy daily circumstances and be existentially miserable.
I feel like that no matter how much I may bitch and moan about my life that I am ultimately happy about my lot in life. I’ve got nothing to complain about and when I do complain it’s quite likely that kind of misery actually makes me happy.
