RogerHub

It seems like the next big thing is always trying to combine the knobs and buttons of your life into a single revolutionary new paradigm of luxury. Especially exemplary are the new developments in heads-up display devices¹ and the various misnomers for cloud computing. At a primitive level, we understand the advantages. It’s integrated. All of it is, like a strict building code in a top-dog neighborhood. As human beings, we’re predisposed to patterns because it’s part of our innate behavior. The predictability and uniformity of life comes from the hunter-gatherer era when fewer things to worry about meant an easier life. But, humans, as usual, make bad choices for themselves.

Think about every invention in the world that has stood the test of time. Each does only one thing and it does it well. From the resistors and capacitors of integrated circuits to complex server farms, every level of organization is both specialized and generalized. Lightbulbs and PET bottles have exceedingly specific usages, but their true ingenuity comes not from the object itself, but from the way they are used in conjunction as part of a larger system. On the other hand, things like home entertainment systems are modularized into replaceable interconnecting parts that can be reused in the future². All of the modern world stands on the shoulders of giants before us, and it is only by building off the breakthroughs of our predecessors that we can see farther and farther. So why do modern tech startups insist on starting afresh? No, I’m sorry. That’s unfair. Some of the largest perpetuators of this animalistic ideology are billion-dollar household names who actually do have the resources to push standards into our lives. That’s not too bad. After all, standards, in addition to language and culture, are defined by what we the people make them to be. Then we would all be fine and dandy letting the big guys call the shots if only there weren’t established protocols already in existence.

It’s funny when people are reviewing their risk management and take into account the security strength of the standards they’re using³. In the practical world, the protocols that run everything from our banking system to vulgar forms of amusement are tried and tested. Not only that, they’ve already been introduced to and are supported by platforms and people. It’s curious how we want so badly to change what’s already familiar to us into newfangled all-in-one packages that are good at no one thing in particular. But still, not everything must be so monofunctional and boring. Semantically, cell phones are single-purpose devices. They’re mobile communication, and not for games and diversions. Why would you put games on a Kindle or watch television on a phone? It makes little sense in the presence of consoles and televisions that were created for these purposes. That’s not to say repurposing old equipment for untraditional uses isn’t a commendable hobby for enthusiasts. However, it does seem that society has lost track of this design goal lately.

It’s the end of spring break already. I was on BearFacts yesterday researching about class registration when it occurred to me that they were telling me about picking college courses and planning out a schedule for the first time for courses that will be taught by strangers hundreds of miles away. By that time, everything will have changed and everyone will have moved away. Most of my spring break I spent shut-in cramming physics because of my ridiculously short time frame, so I haven’t really seen anyone for a week now. For brief periods, I could almost pretend that everything and everyone outside of my textbook and notes didn’t exist, as if the big change had already happened. Right then and there, I realized that it’d be no different were I studying three hundred miles north in a smaller room on a smaller desk with no memento of the past aside from the desktop computer I would bring with me. I’ve also started reading this book, Norwegian Wood, and in it there’s this guy who is forgetting all the memories he made from his youth not only because he’s aging, but also because he never expected that he’d ever have to remember the scenery and faces of those particular days, so far in his future. You could disregard him and say that memories forgotten are not worth remembering, but in pursuit of greater happiness, it’s indisputable that reviving better days brings a sort of precious amusement that is so easily lost. Maybe in fifty years or perhaps just ten years, this week of recess won’t make much of an impression like shadows in the mind eroded by many abrasive sunsets. However, that doesn’t mean these days are meaningless or ill-spent ¹. There is necessary contrast between difficult work and childish diversions or bitter valleys and well-deserved highs. This inclines most people to find reasonable that memorable recollections must likewise contrast with uneventful self-improvement², when really there is no necessary relation here.

Some of our most interesting days are also the least noteworthy. When nothing memorable happens, we additionally tend not to write nor speak about it, and in this fashion, memories are soon overshadowed and abandoned. This regrettable loss is especially pervasive today when so many different things demand our attention at once. Keeping a journal and writing letters become chores, whereas they are meant to be cathartic as depositories for fleeting thoughts. On the other side, a greater degree of complexity to our society also enables us to communicate and record with such ridiculous convenience. In Code Geass there’s this girl whose memories are regularly rewritten against her will, so she keeps a day to day picture journal that she carries around like a phone. The advantage to this is that digital devices can be acceptably used in most social contexts ³ so they take very little extra effort and instead repurpose a small amount of time and attention that is prodigiously wasted at social gatherings anyway. It’s like a private twitter. I’ve set up a similar system with MMS on my cell phone and a private blog and email account over the Internet. There are times when writing in a moleskin or typing to a blog is more appropriate, but there certainly is an unfilled niche for a more dedicated device to help humans remember the easily forgettable.

Epiphany highs are those times when you feel awakened and renewed after supposedly having a breakthrough. They are very common as adolescents in the course of character development. You find a clever bit of wisdom—change comes from within—and you think it’ll solve all of your personal problems if only one thing were different. For a few weeks, you feel pumped up and excited to live with a renewed philosophy. You might experience temporary successes thinking this is what I’ve been doing wrong all this time¹ But the effects always wear off in the end. That’s when you start looking for another life-changing realization to kick-off the cycle again. In retrospect, all of these profound sayings will end up sounding trite and absurd. No philosophical outlook can satisfy you forever. Perhaps on another day, you might hear don’t fix it if it ain’t broke and experience the very same thing.

As you go through different epiphanies, you have to look in more places. After you exhaust the Internet, you will read books or watch foreign films and television. You can dive into religion or become a cynic, then a optimist, then a classicist and a romanticist. You will encounter cosmology and be satisfied with the stars, or you’ll observe humans and revel in belittling amusement². It feels like something has finally clicked in your life and you’re ready to move on, only to return to where you started when the effects subside. You easily enter a cycle where a pursuit of philosophical wisdom quickly transforms into a drug-like addiction for mental equanimity. Self-help books. Hipster quotes. Journals and blogs. They are all part of your exploits. You want to declare to the world that you’ve found a new lifestyle, a new living attitude that supersedes those of your past and anybody else’s. It’s a manifesto. You, explaining yourself to the world.

The cycle grows shorter, more convenient and efficient until wisdom bounces off of you like nicotine off a habituated synapse. Soon you realize that you’re only able to live when you’re on these bouts of progress—these epiphany highs. But who are we to judge that a tail-chasing quest in philosophy is an improper way to live? The practical problem lies in the delusion that there is something golden at the end of the hunt that will satisfy our curious minds like no other. In reality, it’s difficult to argue that any one way of thinking appeals to everybody. In the meantime, it appears that it’s simply best to take your time, not to rush.

I like to set aside time at least once a week to work on something creative, computer stuff excluded. It’s my arts and crafts time. I can pick something from pinterest to mimic or start another journal or make cards for certain holidays. It’s not about creating something that I can show off or learning a skill. Instead, the time is a sort of mental reset, kind of like meditation or napping. See, when you first learn a skill, it takes a lot of conscious effort. You try to dissect the technique and compartmentalize each of the motions until you master each one separately. This is a low degree of competency: you can do it, but it’s mentally taxing. After a while, the process becomes repetitive and second-hand, and you start losing the conscious component. The sensory perception information starts to bypass conscious thought completely. When we learn to hit a tennis ball or drive a car, we no longer have to think about the specific motions involved. Our subconscious can directly process the copious amounts of information necessary to maintain coordinated motor output. This in particular is the effect I look for.

Direct processing is a curious thing. Idle tasks like sewing and cutting paper easily take up the majority of a person’s motor capabilities, but nearly none of the conscious ones. It leaves you free to ponder things that would otherwise be difficult to focus on, especially with the many distractions of the modern world. It’s no use to sit down for ten minutes and try to reproduce this effect by simply mimicking someone else’s idle activity. No. Your mind has to be fully convinced that there exists nothing for it to consciously process, and only then does direct processing take effect. When we get bored, it’s not because we have nothing to do, but rather, we have nothing we can do given the current circumstances. When the best use of your time is so drastically limited by your location, your situation, whatever it may be, you feel apathetic and bored. Similarly, direct processing is most effective during times when you truly believe you have for lack of better words, nothing better to do. This could be at two in the morning, when the next best thing to do is, well, sleep¹. This could be at the airport, waiting for a boarding call. This could be Monday afternoon in calculus class. For me, it’s Friday night, mostly, when I am at home.

The most recent thing I’ve made is a thread-bound notebook using copy paper and the scrapbook paper leftover from my February 14th day cards. Sewing itself is a peculiar process, though I was not really sewing but driving a needle through thirteen layers of unyielding paper. At first, I used simple lateral force to shove the pointy end through, piercing a hole until it reached all the way to the last sheet. It was precise, but made my fingers sore. Then, I thought of what I knew about impulse and shear stress and the mechanical advantage of nails². The thing about hammering a needle is, one well-placed strike with perfectly-aligned orthogonal force and a follow-through to maximize impulse is much more effective than a series of misdirected hits or one forceful lopsided slap. Threading a needle and getting the stitches to line up is very frustrating. It’s natural to use more force and become angered from the result, but this only worsens the situation. It’s a playful mental game. In order to thread properly, you need mental equanimity³. Maintaining peace of mind also contributes to the effects of direct processing. This trend can be clearly tracked as my stitches are more and more aligned near the bottom of the notebook’s binding.

Direct processing does not necessarily require quiet, only quietude. For example, social interactions in most people often (and necessarily) dissents to direct processing, especially when a large number of factors (people) are involved. The complexity of such situations quickly becomes overwhelming for conscious thought, and so is better left to unconscious direct processing of stimuli. Emergent properties in your speech (one in particular: wit) are the result of direct processing, while more profound properties (compassion, evaluation, judgement) are indicative of higher-level conscious processing. At a basic level, anybody who interacts with human beings understands this. It’s unacceptable to apply thought to every social scenario, but insightful to do so for some.

This kind of wisdom certainly can be helpful. You can consciously trigger your brain to switch to direct processing. Your conscious thought will yield to direct processing if you simply remind it of the disadvantages of judging everything, and so, you can avoid delayed responses or completely absent ones. When someone says they are feeling off or out of it, they really mean that they’ve lost track of their direct processing. It’s like how you can’t sleep when you keep thinking about sleeping. This is not always effective, but a quick fix for such uncomfortable situations is to descend momentarily into deep analytical thought, then jump back to the surface, continuing the shallow cycle of stimulus-response. If ever you find that this mechanism stops working for you, it’s a sign that you haven’t been thinking enough.

One of our most bizarre social stigmas is against the trumpeting of good deeds. We are taught from birth that real charity shouldn’t bring attention to itself, that selflessness is somehow better when it passes undiscovered to all but oneself. But in a society of open-minded individuals, this paradigm may honestly be one thing holding back progress. This ideal which is taught across cultures and religions¹ did apply at one time in the past when the world was not as connected as it is now.

The advent of globalization has done wonders to the standards of the First World, primarily that an individual need no longer live walled in by the limitations of social and governmental precedents. The communities we build online transcend these historical boundaries and cultivate a generation of people in which Indians and Pakistanis can laugh and play together. The world of the past needed such ideas as the discreet execution of philanthropy because an isolated and unconnected part of the world would soon succumb to grandiloquent exhibitions of self-righteousness. Some of the greatest architectural and political wonders of the ancient world were direct results of these sanctimonious displays. It’s very clear why such a stigma had existed universally². However, things have since changed.

The problem with retaining this old tradition is simply that the world is now different. On one hand, isolated communities are no longer the norm in the developed nations of the world, but more importantly, the luxuries of globalization have changed the fundamental nature of human societies. Many of our life philosophies no longer come from our ancestors or books, but from the influences of our peers. Our generation of transcendence is proof of this. The world is connecting. If we are to be influenced by our peers, it makes sense that models of character should not be hampered by centuries-old traditions of hiding charity. Without the violent risk of small communities falling into ignorance and dogma, our thinking now needs to change. Whether we choose to announce good deeds or cover them in secrecy is not important. This very question focuses excessively on appearance and not enough on the deed itself. In reality, we should neither strive to publicize nor conceal selflessness. The nature of our choices should be discussed and debated to the fullest extent, indeed, with respect to the idea that good people influence good people. If the whole world were to clean up trash and leave conveniences in total privacy, there would be no more precedents of goodness left. Showing your positive intentions should not be shameful, for that only detracts from what can be accomplished by its effects.