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Reflections upon anything under the sun and beyond. It may not be easy to be a Global Citizen, but it's not hard to engage the Globe.
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The Unbearable Weight of our Nature - 3
Being without the anxiety of becoming No. 3
Human beings are survivors. Our species has been on the planet for a split second of geological time and throughout that brief history we have known feuds, vendettas and wars. From brief tribal conflicts to warring States engaged in bloody conflict lasting decades, to world conflagrations of mass destruction. And all of this is part and parcel of our nature.
Human beings are curious and creative creatures: some however, are more curious and creative than others.
Human beings experience, on a daily basis, many unconscious cognitive biases.
Human beings can be loving and kind. Human beings can also be ultra violent. It seems, at times however, that we are obsessed with violence.
And the show must go on.
The lucky ones among us can peer out through our television sets and bemoan the tragic effects of the dark side of our nature on people far away. We sit in wonder, disappointment and horror at the violent habits of humankind (or here, perhaps, it would be more correct to say mankind). We hope the turmoil will end, or we just want it to go away by some miracle; we may feel helpless, and we may believe there’s nothing we can do. These feelings are only nature after all.
Geopolitics is complex. In light of the current, most recent, “troubles” in Israel and Gaza I’d like to share some reading I’m engaged in as I try to understand the context of the conflict, and as I try to imagine that there could be an end to all of this. I’m reading papers I think are well referenced and “balanced”, and I’m trying not taking sides. I’m keeping an open mind and all that. Like most people, I think it’s simply tragic and I wish there were a way to fix it, but after watching this go on since the 1970s I’m fairly certain, that in my lifetime anyway, we’ll be seeing this conflict erupt again and again.
It's real life for Jews and Palestinians in the Mideast and Diaspora, to share a certain symbolic life. A mosaic of tiles with an olive tree in an obviously bio-dynamic garden. So when do we plant Eden?
First a quick anecdote: the other night I was sharing a drink with some friends. This group is truly international and one of my friends is an Israeli. As we talked about the violence in the Middle East my Israeli friend started throwing pebbles at me (pebbles = missiles) and being engaged in a heated discussion with another person I kept telling him to stop. “Hey buddy, quit it.” But he just kept hurling little pebbles at me. Then I turned to him, and more emphatically said, “Now stop it”! He looked at me and said, “I rest my case”.
What’s a good come back to that? Should I have just started throwing pebbles back at him until we got into a fistfight to the death? My comeback was, “I hear you man”. And that was that.
Like most people interested in history, I read my fair share of books about warfare and wars. All I know from my reading is that despite all the wars throughout history, not one, in the long run, will have lead to anything that would justify to a mother, the loss of her child. Not really. I mean for those of us left standing after the dust clears we can and mostly will justify what happened so we can live with our grief and horror – that’s human nature. But those responsible for starting and fueling conflicts never, ever really achieve their ultimate goals. With the exception of having to fend off an aggressive attack on your homeland, war is good for nothing. And you’re right, I’m not going to tell a troop of Viking raiders that. But I ask you, what kind of 21st Century do we want?
Oh sure, conflict has given us motivation for invention, innovation, and has focused resources on the development of new technologies. Competitive conflict also gives us a place to hang our pride.
WAR IS A FORCE THAT GIVES US MEANING
However, history is not linear; it’s stochastic, fumbling, haphazard and messy and perhaps, not even real (I’m not making a post modernist quip here). When we look back with our post hoc, just so, reasoning, we’ll be compelled to make up stories, sometimes based on good evidence, that try to make sense of events; we’ll find patterns that help us understand and justify our actions, and then we’ll neatly wrap our legends in a nice shiny package that corresponds with our conventional worldview. And above all, we’ll make things fit our cultural narrative. We’ll make sure our pride stays in tact. We’ll guard our identity like it’s been written in stone by you know who. And no matter how we spin it, we’ll all be calling the kettle black.
Human beings are proud creatures.
Much has been written about the pattern-seeking ape. Michael Shermer gives a good description of our patter seeking proclivities in his books, “Why People Believe in Weird Things” and “The Science of Good and Evil”.
But I digress, just a little bit, however I’m still on the major topic of Human Nature.
Has anyone watched the series Gangland about gangs in the United States? There’s a new season for 2014. I guess it’s going to be a long running show. And there you have it, under certain circumstances people can click-up and become quite brutal, and what do you know, it’s all about territory, brotherhood, family, self defense and respect. WOW!
This kind of tribal warfare still exists in the cities of America. Heck, this exists all over the world. And, I guess, we can tolerate it, because we still haven’t found a sociocultural, sociopolitical, or human health solution to the problem of gangs. Focus on the Family hasn’t stopped it, and neither have liberal academics. The police state can’t stem the tide, special forces are impotent in the face of the onslaught, we don’t have enough prisons to house everyone we don’t like either, despite prisons being a good investment. We beg God for mercy and call him great and still it continues. We, human beings, of great and triumphant cultures, have not even had the will to get to the root causes of the problem. But there it is, tribal violence of many kinds afflict the nations of the world, and again, this despite THE BETTER ANGELS OF OUR NATURE.
(And when the Cold War ended where did all the nukes go? More than enough ICBMs to do the job are still there pointing at us. My face! Not my beautiful face!)
I can’t tell you why this is. I’m simply not qualified. I’ve read books about primitive tribes in Borneo, Iwo Jima, mythology, religion, evolutionary psychology, neuroscience and science fiction and I’m still no closer to answering the question: Why do we tolerate this?
World religions and various flavors of secular humanist worldviews all stake a claim that they value morals and ethics, and still, within the tradeoffs we inevitably must make, we seem to stomach violence just enough to never get down to the real causes of violence and root them out.
And having said that, I still think we might be able to get there somehow, but I also feel that some of us are inherently more sensitive to the tragic effects of violence than others. Some people may have a genetic makeup that favors compassion and empathy just a little more than others. Such is the variety of humankind and our dichotomous nature. (I must include a whole lot of middle here too, but the good vs. evil thing is just so entrenched.) And how can you grow up to be peaceful when you've grown up in hell?
In my humble… Here are a couple of places you might find some good information about the perennial conflict in Israel and Gaza. I must emphasize that I am not wise enough, informed enough, or inclined to take sides. I have friends from all sides. The people I know are good people. I’m stuck in the middle in the maelstrom of rationalizations. I’m not religious, but it seems that all I can do is pray for it to end. I’m hoping that clever Globe Hackers will find a way to improve the systems that still allow for things like this to happen. We are adversarial creatures – I know that – and our institutions are there to temper our tendency to get into dangerous conflicts with each other. Yes Thomas Hobbes, I know that. And yes, nothing’s perfect, I get that, I’m just saying…
Now I must beseech you to please click on all the hyperlinks and read a little bit. I know we’re all busy, but if you just have a look it might help things in some remote and mysterious way. Look at all sides of the complex issues involved and think about it a while, and then, when someone starts throwing pebbles at you, you might be able to find a solution that would benefit the hurler and the pelted. You might find a way for the tit-for-tat to end. I think all people are potential agents for good. People are our most valuable resource. If they are treated well, understood and loved they can create great things that all of humanity can appreciate. I know, I know – I’m just saying…
A pro Israel perspective:
MYTH AND FACTS .org
A Joint Perspective:
PALESTINE - ISRAEL JOURNAL of Politics, Economics and Culture
And of course we always have Noam Chompsky to weigh in:
Noam Chomsky interviewed by Hub Radio
The University of the West of England, April 23, 2008
And why not include Chris Hedges:
THE PALESTINIANS' RIGHT to SELF-DEFENSE
And one more from Chris Hedges, just incase you think he doesn't have the creds to be talking about the region.
I know where to get the party lines from; I know the conventional thinking about all of this, which amounts to not thinking about it at all really. We try to simplify complex things – that’s human nature. We try to rationalize our positions – that’s human nature. We find convenient patterns that confirm our biases – that’s human nature. We defend our group’s position – that’s human nature.
So does anyone out there have a feasible “hack” for this particular problem
There is only one way to hack our nature - know your nature.
Please do share.
Peace
The Unbearable Weight of our Nature - 2
Being without the anxiety of becoming No. 2
I have been lucky enough to stumble upon another post that I must share with you. I feel every word of what this person is saying. I'll include a link at the end of this short post.
(Don't forget to click on the hyperlinks.)
Before I start sharing my personal musings on the subject of human nature & culture I'd like to share some simple courses that I've enjoyed. As the weeks pass I hope this social network will include many more people sharing much ado about everything with a curious and vivacious crowd of Globe Hackers.
We need each other to make things work.
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Being without the anxiety of becoming. I would like you to take 20 slow, deep and rhythmic breaths and meditate on that idea. Just take a few moments - 20 breaths focused on being without the anxiety of becoming.
When I do it I feel inspired. I feel alive. I feel greater access to possibilities.
To be truly creative one must expose oneself to as much information, knowledge, wisdom, deep thinking and complexity as one can across as many domains as one can handle for a long period of time, and then be able to edit this input to cut out everything that really doesn't matter. Throw the garbage out and keep the connections that matter. Constraints imposed from the constructs of this process will force one to be creative. While engaging in the process it's inevitable that one will create something, or be more creative. Inspiration is everywhere, if you feel bogged down, delve into something profound - deeply - and you will come out of the effort with ideas and creative actions.
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It's not so much that things are broken and need to be fixed as it's the reality that in most contexts and circumstances things can always be improved, or that new solutions can be found - within the tradeoffs - that might be better than the old ones. If something is out of balance or unhealthy there is usually a way to get back to a dynamic stasis. I don't mean to say that heuristics, or traditions must be changed, there are many good reasons why heuristics and traditions stand the test of millenia. I'm just saying that if it feels like something isn't working, it may be time for a change. And that sometimes, not always, the change will be for the better.
It's important to talk back to power and explore the unfamiliar.
Proximity helps, but it may not be the only determinate factor in friendship.
I've often wondered why I got along with Patrick at the back of my 5th grade class and not Thomas who was sitting right next to me in the same row. I always had a tacit intuition that it's just because Patrick is my-kind-of-people. Today science is exposing new information about mechanisms that influence human preferences. Why are some of us conservative, or liberal, or loyal, or risk takers, etc.? There are all kinds of people. Today science has given us many avenues to understanding what makes us who and what we are. A better understanding of our nature is right there for us to look into. It's not hard or laborious; it's a fascinating undertaking, and it's good for you.
I'm fairly sure that the more we know about human nature, the better we can understand ourselves, and that's a good thing. We need to go beyond just taking things for granted. If we know how we became who we think we are we will have more freedom to grow the way we like. The only way to come close to accessing "free will" is to go beyond a naive understanding of ourselves and our species.
If you want to be mythological about it ask yourself why God doesn't just get rid of Satan? Why does he create a species that has to do his dirty work for him? "I command you to kill the first born..." "We must engage in holy war to spite the heretics." Do we really need EVIL just to access a little bit of "free will"? I wonder. I wonder if people understood their nature a lot better, we would still have so much turmoil in the world. I guess the nature of my faith is that humans can be better people when they know themselves better as a species.
Talk back to power, and explore the unfamiliar.
BETTER JUDGEMENT DAY
The golden rule is a simple and universal heuristic that we should remember everyday. How can any of us really feel good when we know so many of us are feeling terribly bad. How can we tolerate mass extinction just because behind the curtain there may be - A NEW CAR!
Once again, I'm calling for all good Globe Hackers to rewrite the maintenance manual for the Spaceship Earth. We can endeavor to maintain a sustainable environment, dynamic biosphere, and human culture that will last, here it comes, put your pinky to the side of your mouth, raise your eyebrows, squint a wee bit, "TEN THOUSAND YEARS"!
The Mastermind becomes an agent for good.
Here are domains to delve into if you are interested in Human Nature:
Physiology / Psychology / Biology / Neurology / Chemistry / History / Literature / Sociology / Philosophy / and yes, even PHYSICS!
(Just to name a few.)
Here's a link to an OPEN YALE COURSE on the subject:
Philosophy and Science of Human Nature
by Tamar Gendler
It seems that those of us with access and the inclination, for now at least, are guaranteed a good liberal education. Can we all say, "thankful". I hope we can keep it like this, free as free can be - for now.
Here's something else to help you in your quest to better understand your nature. I couldn't possibly be more emphatic in recommending this comprehensive course on critical thinking. Every single one of us can benefit from watching or listening to Steven Novella. It's a must I tell you, a must!
Your Deceptive Mind: A Scientific Guide to Critical Thinking Skills, by Steven Novella
These are just a couple of simple, easy to follow resources I've personally enjoyed. You could also just go to your local university library and challenge yourself by reading advanced textbooks. Who knows, you might even meet someone at the library to go out to a cafe with.
It seems molecules, and hormones have as much to do with our nature as "nature" and "nurture". If we choose to do so we can find out more about ourselves than we might be able to imagine - through self study, work, thought and meditation.
Our experiences make up a vast tapestry of natural things we hardly even notice. Microbes are there pushing us and enabling us, words on Facebook posts, the moods of crowds, facial expressions, brain injuries, diets, habits of movement, exercise, color, scents, and on and on.... The banal illusion of the permanent self that many of us are boxed into is an antiquated rut, a fossilized road to nowhere. A complex network of energy, matter and motion may be what determines our nature, and modeling that might be the more accurate and liberating pursuit leading us to a more productive and harmonious relationship with reality.
You can find out about all of it. It's a joy to do so.
This suggestion is good for men who would like to understand women a bit better. This trumps "Men are from Mars and Women from Venus" by far, but is still no where near a medical degree.
The Female Brain Louann Brizendine
She also wrote a book on the male brain for the ladies in the house.
Finally, I want to share with you an article I read yesterday. I had the feeling when I read it that I could have written it. You know what I mean. I shook my head and sighed and wondered what I'll be writing if I'm still alive at 70. I let my shoulders slump and I wondered if people 100 or 1000 years ago felt the same. I think we know the answer if we are fans of ancient texts.
I hope you will read this:
The Future Is Not Ours, and Neither Is the Past
At age 70, a writer reflects on the so-called ‘American Century’—and the world it wrought.
July 21, 2014
One more good read:
The Unbearable Weight of our Nature
Being without the anxiety of becoming. No. 1
It seems that for decades I've been primarily concerned with two things: culture, and human nature.
For my next several blog posts I want to discuss these subjects with you. What is human nature? How can we answer that question? After that I'd like to explore the conceptual bridge between human nature and human culture, and how they both flow into each other, and more importantly, that they're flexible, that both continue to evolve.
Globe Hackers aren't utopians, we just think things could be better, things could be different, we believe in the plasticity of human nature and culture. Things change after all, any cursory glance at history tells us that. At the same time, some things never seem to change. There are aspects of our nature that are obviously more fixed. I'm talking about our nature as it naturally is, not our transhumanist potential. And transhumanist potential is not something I would venture to go into. I have my doubts that we can survives as human beings if we go too far in that direction. In this regard I may be dystopian.
I could say that we strive not to be too naive. We're simply curious people, tinkerers seeking the truth within reality, imaging things we can do to improve our situation, and then doing those things.
We're all naturally survivalists. We have an instinct to live, but what kind of life will we be able to live? Here many questions of quality and values arise. Those of us inclined to ponder such questions will add to the dialogue and hopefully grow through the process. We'll do more than merely survive. Those of us who do more than merely survive are the lucky ones.
We're not doomsayers. We simply see things for what they are, when we have the opportunity to do so, when our unique circumstances allows our awareness to combine with profound ethical and moral sensibilities that move us towards an authentic and peaceful life with a whole set of evolving values that take into consideration the profound possibilities that lie in our future.
We're all engaged in our global, commercial world, we are receptive to the many messages flowing from our media sources, and we scarcely understand the influence of these messages on our behavior, mood and mentality, so much so, that we are unable to discern the root causes of our discomfort, confusion and stress. We can barely determine what is true and what is false so we capitulate.
We may be lost in our evolved nature and moved only by the appetites of the beast - our global consumer culture that we think we can't live without.
I have noticed in the media and on the "webs", so many people talking about their beliefs; people who are proud to believe. It seems that in some segments of our culture we're all want-to-be-believers. We'll give up our common sense and poor our energies into being a good member of a group that only believes. It seems safe there so why not? With all the dangers around us; with all the existential threats bearing down upon us; it's much more comforting simply to believe in something, in anything.
But wait, I'm not going to go down that road here. Not this time. I have something much better to share with you. I came across this documentary distributed by Journeyman Pictures in the U.K. I think you can learn a lot from this sober, straight forward, and evidence based film about consumer culture. I urge you to watch this and let us know what you think. It's not as alarmist as the title might suggest.
There are some real gems in this documentary. Look out for the "belly of the beast" story, also, what one commenter postulates we can do once we understand our psychology better, and what another commenter describes as the benefits of sustainable design.
Without further comment I share with you:
Consumed - Is Our Consumer Culture Leading to Disaster?
Statistical Thinking & Defensive Medicine
I've read two books by Ben Goldacre: Bad Science and Bad Pharma, How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients.
Here is a good review of Bad Pharma by Dr. David Healy.
I think both books are must reads for anyone interested in science and health. Most of us have no idea how the human mind can trick itself into tricking people. It's really kind of magical. (wink) The tricks we play on ourselves can lead to devastating outcomes in the real world - I'm talking about death here.
People are all vulnerable to things like motivated reasoning and confirmation bias. Most of us never learned about good statistical thinking. Percentages are thrown around all the time in the media that only confuse an issue while making it seem like the efficacy of a drug, or procedure is clear cut. But what do the numbers, the simple numbers, really say?
Everyday we are bombarded with information about diet programs, exercise routines, high tech healthcare, and the next, next thing in medicine. Most of this information is from the P.R. and Marketing Departments of companies motivated by one primary driver - money. A lot can become confused when it's all about the bottom line.
There are certain sectors of society that would be better off, I believe, if the primary driver wasn't money, if we could at least include some other incentives. For example, sectors of society where it's a question of life and death. In medicine we should have a mix of incentives that are properly paid attention to.
This morning I read an article from the BBC, and I just had to share it with you.
Do Doctors Understand Test Results by, William Kremer
It's important for all of us to understand that doctors and health workers are only human and just because they're wearing the white coat doesn't mean that they aren't vulnerable to making the same mistakes we might make when looking at statistics. I'm guessing that most of you are just as baffled by statistics as I am. I have to expend some energy making an effort to really understand the stats.
If I'm careful, and make an effort to understand good information presented to me in a way that I can readily understand, I'm hoping that I'll be able to make the right choices about my healthcare.
We must also understand that healthcare organizations are just as motivated by the bottom line as your neighborhood pub. I had an allergy once that was quickly "cured" by an injection of steroids, only after a barrage of tests at a San Francisco hospital that ruled out a list of scary conditions including Lupus Disease. These tests cost me and my insurance company over $5,000. I would have loved it if they had given me the steroids first and let me go home.
"It's surprising that in the 21st Century, many still think of doctors as Gods and you don't ask God." says Gigerenzer.
"A physician is someone who can help you but also someone you need to challenge in order to get the best treatment."
Gerd Gigerenzer and Glynn Elwyn spoke to Health Check on the BBC World Service. Listen again to the programme on the BBC iPlayer or get the Health Check podcast.
George Orwell's proposed preface to his novel, "Animal Farm"
I'd like to share this with you. It is, as yet, prescient. My next post will be regarding human nature and culture. Dare I say, throughout our history, there have been insightful people who really could intuit and articulate insights into human nature and culture that are clearly profound and accurate. I hope you enjoy this.
"History may not repeat itself, but it rhymes..." attributed to Mark Twain
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George Orwell
George Orwell
The Freedom of the Press
Orwell's Proposed Preface to ‘Animal Farm’
This book was first thought of, so far as the central idea goes, in 1937, but was not written down until about the end of 1943. By the time when it came to be written it was obvious that there would be great difficulty in getting it published (in spite of the present book shortage which ensures that anything describable as a book will ‘sell’), and in the event it was refused by four publishers. Only one of these had any ideological motive. Two had been publishing anti-Russian books for years, and the other had no noticeable political color. One publisher actually started by accepting the book, but after making the preliminary arrangements he decided to consult the Ministry of Information, who appear to have warned him, or at any rate strongly advised him, against publishing it. Here is an extract from his letter:
I mentioned the reaction I had had from an important official in the Ministry of Information with regard to Animal Farm. I must confess that this expression of opinion has given me seriously to think... I can see now that it might be regarded as something which it was highly ill-advised to publish at the present time. If the fable were addressed generally to dictators and dictatorships at large then publication would be all right, but the fable does follow, as I see now, so completely the progress of the Russian Soviets and their two dictators, that it can apply only to Russia, to the exclusion of the other dictatorships. Another thing: it would be less offensive if the predominant caste in the fable were not pigs[*]. I think the choice of pigs as the ruling caste will no doubt give offence to many people, and particularly to anyone who is a bit touchy, as undoubtedly the Russians are.
* It is not quite clear whether this suggested modification is Mr... ’s own idea, or originated with the Ministry of Information; but it seems to have the official ring about it. [Orwell’s Note]
This kind of thing is not a good symptom. Obviously it is not desirable that a government department should have any power of censorship (except security censorship, which no one objects to in war time) over books which are not officially sponsored. But the chief danger to freedom of thought and speech at this moment is not the direct interference of the MOI or any official body. If publishers and editors exert themselves to keep certain topics out of print, it is not because they are frightened of prosecution but because they are frightened of public opinion. In this country intellectual cowardice is the worst enemy a writer or journalist has to face, and that fact does not seem to me to have had the discussion it deserves.
Any fairminded person with journalistic experience will admit that during this war official censorship has not been particularly irksome. We have not been subjected to the kind of totalitarian ‘co-ordination’ that it might have been reasonable to expect. The press has some justified grievances, but on the whole the Government has behaved well and has been surprisingly tolerant of minority opinions. The sinister fact about literary censorship in England is that it is largely voluntary.
Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban. Anyone who has lived long in a foreign country will know of instances of sensational items of news — things which on their own merits would get the big headlines-being kept right out of the British press, not because the Government intervened but because of a general tacit agreement that ‘it wouldn’t do’ to mention that particular fact. So far as the daily newspapers go, this is easy to understand. The British press is extremely centralised, and most of it is owned by wealthy men who have every motive to be dishonest on certain important topics. But the same kind of veiled censorship also operates in books and periodicals, as well as in plays, films and radio. At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is ‘not done’ to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was ‘not done’ to mention trousers in the presence of a lady. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals.
At this moment what is demanded by the prevailing orthodoxy is an uncritical admiration of Soviet Russia. Everyone knows this, nearly everyone acts on it. Any serious criticism of the Soviet régime, any disclosure of facts which the Soviet government would prefer to keep hidden, is next door to unprintable. And this nation-wide conspiracy to flatter our ally takes place, curiously enough, against a background of genuine intellectual tolerance. For though you arc not allowed to criticize the Soviet government, at least you are reasonably free to criticize our own. Hardly anyone will print an attack on Stalin, but it is quite safe to attack Churchill, at any rate in books and periodicals. And throughout five years of war, during two or three of which we were fighting for national survival, countless books, pamphlets and articles advocating a compromise peace have been published without interference. More, they have been published without exciting much disapproval. So long as the prestige of the USSR is not involved, the principle of free speech has been reasonably well upheld. There are other forbidden topics, and I shall mention some of them presently, but the prevailing attitude towards the USSR is much the most serious symptom. It is, as it were, spontaneous, and is not due to the action of any pressure group.
The servility with which the greater part of the English intelligentsia have swallowed and repeated Russian propaganda from 1941 onwards would be quite astounding if it were not that they have behaved similarly on several earlier occasions. On one controversial issue after another the Russian viewpoint has been accepted without examination and then publicized with complete disregard to historical truth or intellectual decency. To name only one instance, the BBC celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Red Army without mentioning Trotsky. This was about as accurate as commemorating the battle of Trafalgar without mentioning Nelson, but it evoked no protest from the English intelligentsia. In the internal struggles in the various occupied countries, the British press has in almost all cases sided with the faction favored by the Russians and libeled the opposing faction, sometimes suppressing material evidence in order to do so. A particularly glaring case was that of Colonel Mihailovich, the Jugoslav Chetnik leader. The Russians, who had their own Jugoslav protege in Marshal Tito, accused Mihailovich of collaborating with the Germans. This accusation was promptly taken up by the British press: Mihailovich’s supporters were given no chance of answering it, and facts contradicting it were simply kept out of print. In July of 1943 the Germans offered a reward of 100,000 gold crowns for the capture of Tito, and a similar reward for the capture of Mihailovich. The British press ‘splashed’ the reward for Tito, but only one paper mentioned (in small print) the reward for Mihailovich: and the charges of collaborating with the Germans continued. Very similar things happened during the Spanish civil war. Then, too, the factions on the Republican side which the Russians were determined to crush were recklessly libeled in the English leftwing [sic] press, and any statement in their defense even in letter form, was refused publication. At present, not only is serious criticism of the USSR considered reprehensible, but even the fact of the existence of such criticism is kept secret in some cases. For example, shortly before his death Trotsky had written a biography of Stalin. One may assume that it was not an altogether unbiased book, but obviously it was salable. An American publisher had arranged to issue it and the book was in print — 1 believe the review copies had been sent out — when the USSR entered the war. The book was immediately withdrawn. Not a word about this has ever appeared in the British press, though clearly the existence of such a book, and its suppression, was a news item worth a few paragraphs.
It is important to distinguish between the kind of censorship that the English literary intelligentsia voluntarily impose upon themselves, and the censorship that can sometimes be enforced by pressure groups. Notoriously, certain topics cannot be discussed because of ‘vested interests’. The best-known case is the patent medicine racket. Again, the Catholic Church has considerable influence in the press and can silence criticism of itself to some extent. A scandal involving a Catholic priest is almost never given publicity, whereas an Anglican priest who gets into trouble (e.g. the Rector of Stiffkey) is headline news. It is very rare for anything of an anti-Catholic tendency to appear on the stage or in a film. Any actor can tell you that a play or film which attacks or makes fun of the Catholic Church is liable to be boycotted in the press and will probably be a failure. But this kind of thing is harmless, or at least it is understandable. Any large organization will look after its own interests as best it can, and overt propaganda is not a thing to object to. One would no more expect the Daily Worker to publicize unfavorable facts about the USSR than one would expect the Catholic Herald to denounce the Pope. But then every thinking person knows the Daily Worker and the Catholic Herald for what they are. What is disquieting is that where the USSR and its policies are concerned one cannot expect intelligent criticism or even, in many cases, plain honesty from Liberal [sic — and throughout as typescript] writers and journalists who are under no direct pressure to falsify their opinions. Stalin is sacrosanct and certain aspects of his policy must not be seriously discussed. This rule has been almost universally observed since 1941, but it had operated, to a greater extent than is sometimes realized, for ten years earlier than that. Throughout that time, criticism of the Soviet régime from the left could only obtain a hearing with difficulty. There was a huge output of anti-Russian literature, but nearly all of it was from the Conservative angle and manifestly dishonest, out of date and actuated by sordid motives. On the other side there was an equally huge and almost equally dishonest stream of pro-Russian propaganda, and what amounted to a boycott on anyone who tried to discuss all-important questions in a grown-up manner. You could, indeed, publish anti-Russian books, but to do so was to make sure of being ignored or misrepresented by nearly me whole of the highbrow press. Both publicly and privately you were warned that it was ‘not done’. What you said might possibly be true, but it was ‘inopportune’ and played into the hands of this or that reactionary interest. This attitude was usually defended on the ground that the international situation, and me urgent need for an Anglo-Russian alliance, demanded it; but it was clear that this was a rationalization. The English intelligentsia, or a great part of it, had developed a nationalistic loyalty towards me USSR, and in their hearts they felt that to cast any doubt on me wisdom of Stalin was a kind of blasphemy. Events in Russia and events elsewhere were to be judged by different standards. The endless executions in me purges of 1936-8 were applauded by life-long opponents of capital punishment, and it was considered equally proper to publicize famines when they happened in India and to conceal them when they happened in me Ukraine. And if this was true before the war, the intellectual atmosphere is certainly no better now.
But now to come back to this book of mine. The reaction towards it of most English intellectuals will be quite simple: ‘It oughtn’t to have been published.’ Naturally, those reviewers who understand the art of denigration will not attack it on political grounds but on literary ones. They will say that it is a dull, silly book and a disgraceful waste of paper. This may well be true, but it is obviously not me whole of the story. One does not say that a book ‘ought not to have been published’ merely because it is a bad book. After all, acres of rubbish are printed daily and no one bothers. The English intelligentsia, or most of them, will object to this book because it traduces their Leader and (as they see it) does harm to the cause of progress. If it did me opposite they would have nothing to say against it, even if its literary faults were ten times as glaring as they are. The success of, for instance, the Left Book Club over a period of four or five years shows how willing they are to tolerate both scurrility and slipshod writing, provided that it tells them what they want to hear.
The issue involved here is quite a simple one: Is every opinion, however unpopular — however foolish, even — entitled to a hearing? Put it in that form and nearly any English intellectual will feel that he ought to say ‘Yes’. But give it a concrete shape, and ask, ‘How about an attack on Stalin? Is that entitled to a hearing?’, and the answer more often than not will be ‘No’, In that case the current orthodoxy happens to be challenged, and so the principle of free speech lapses. Now, when one demands liberty of speech and of the press, one is not demanding absolute liberty. There always must be, or at any rate there always will be, some degree of censorship, so long as organized societies endure. But freedom, as Rosa Luxembourg [sic] said, is ‘freedom for the other fellow’. The same principle is contained in the famous words of Voltaire: ‘I detest what you say; I will defend to the death your right to say it.’ If the intellectual liberty which without a doubt has been one of the distinguishing marks of western civilization means anything at all, it means that everyone shall have the right to say and to print what he believes to be the truth, provided only that it does not harm the rest of the community in some quite unmistakable way. Both capitalist democracy and the western versions of Socialism have till recently taken that principle for granted. Our Government, as I have already pointed out, still makes some show of respecting it. The ordinary people in the street-partly, perhaps, because they are not sufficiently interested in ideas to be intolerant about them-still vaguely hold that ‘I suppose everyone’s got a right to their own opinion.’ It is only, or at any rate it is chiefly, the literary and scientific intelligentsia, the very people who ought to be the guardians of liberty, who are beginning to despise it, in theory as well as in practice.
One of the peculiar phenomena of our time is the renegade Liberal. Over and above the familiar Marxist claim that ‘bourgeois liberty’ is an illusion, there is now a widespread tendency to argue that one can only defend democracy by totalitarian methods. If one loves democracy, the argument runs, one must crush its enemies by no matter what means. And who are its enemies? It always appears that they are not only those who attack it openly and consciously, but those who ‘objectively’ endanger it by spreading mistaken doctrines. In other words, defending democracy involves destroying all independence of thought. This argument was used, for instance, to justify the Russian purges. The most ardent Russophile hardly believed that all of the victims were guilty of all the things they were accused of: but by holding heretical opinions they ‘objectively’ harmed the régime, and therefore it was quite right not only to massacre them but to discredit them by false accusations. The same argument was used to justify the quite conscious lying that went on in the left-wing press about the Trotskyists and other Republican minorities in the Spanish civil war. And it was used again as a reason for yelping against habeas corpus when Mosley was released in 1943.
These people don’t see that if you encourage totalitarian methods, the time may come when they will be used against you instead of for you. Make a habit of imprisoning Fascists without trial, and perhaps the process won’t stop at Fascists. Soon after the suppressed Daily Worker had been reinstated, I was lecturing to a working-men’s college in South London. The audience were working-class and lower-middle class intellectuals — the same sort of audience that one used to meet at Left Book Club branches. The lecture had touched on the freedom of the press, and at the end, to my astonishment, several questioners stood up and asked me: Did I not think that the lifting of the ban on the Daily Worker was a great mistake? When asked why, they said that it was a paper of doubtful loyalty and ought not to be tolerated in war time. I found myself defending the Daily Worker, which has gone out of its way to libel me more than once. But where had these people learned this essentially totalitarian outlook? Pretty certainly they had learned it from the Communists themselves! Tolerance and decency are deeply rooted in England, but they are not indestructible, and they have to be kept alive partly by conscious effort. The result of preaching totalitarian doctrines is to weaken the instinct by means of which free peoples know what is or is not dangerous. The case of Mosley illustrates this. In 1940 it was perfectly right to intern Mosley, whether or not he had committed any technical crime. We were fighting for our lives and could not allow a possible quisling to go free. To keep him shut up, without trial, in 1943 was an outrage. The general failure to see this was a bad symptom, though it is true that the agitation against Mosley’s release was partly factitious and partly a rationalization of other discontents. But how much of the present slide towards Fascist ways of thought is traceable to the ‘anti-Fascism’ of the past ten years and the unscrupulousness it has entailed?
It is important to realize that the current Russomania is only a symptom of the general weakening of the western liberal tradition. Had the MOI chipped in and definitely vetoed the publication of this book, the bulk of the English intelligentsia would have seen nothing disquieting in this. Uncritical loyalty to the USSR happens to be the current orthodoxy, and where the supposed interests of the USSR are involved they are willing to tolerate not only censorship but the deliberate falsification of history. To name one instance. At the death of John Reed, the author of Ten Days that Shook the World — first-hand account of the early days of the Russian Revolution — the copyright of the book passed into the hands of the British Communist Party, to whom I believe Reed had bequeathed it. Some years later the British Communists, having destroyed the original edition of the book as completely as they could, issued a garbled version from which they had eliminated mentions of Trotsky and also omitted the introduction written by Lenin. If a radical intelligentsia had still existed in Britain, this act of forgery would have been exposed and denounced in every literary paper in the country. As it was there was little or no protest. To many English intellectuals it seemed quite a natural thing to do. And this tolerance or [sic = of?] plain dishonesty means much more than that admiration for Russia happens to be fashionable at this moment. Quite possibly that particular fashion will not last. For all I know, by the time this book is published my view of the Soviet régime may be the generally-accepted one. But what use would that be in itself? To exchange one orthodoxy for another is not necessarily an advance. The enemy is the gramophone mind, whether or not one agrees with the record that is being played at the moment.
I am well acquainted with all the arguments against freedom of thought and speech — the arguments which claim that it cannot exist, and the arguments which claim that it ought not to. I answer simply that they don’t convince me and that our civilization over a period of four hundred years has been founded on the opposite notice. For quite a decade past I have believed that the existing Russian régime is a mainly evil thing, and I claim the right to say so, in spite of the fact that we are allies with the USSR in a war which I want to see won. If I had to choose a text to justify myself, I should choose the line from Milton:
By the known rules of ancient liberty.
The word ancient emphasizes the fact that intellectual freedom is a deep-rooted tradition without which our characteristic western culture could only doubtfully exist. From that tradition many of our intellectuals arc visibly turning away. They have accepted the principle that a book should be published or suppressed, praised or damned, not on its merits but according to political expediency. And others who do not actually hold this view assent to it from sheer cowardice. An example of this is the failure of the numerous and vocal English pacifists to raise their voices against the prevalent worship of Russian militarism. According to those pacifists, all violence is evil, and they have urged us at every stage of the war to give in or at least to make a compromise peace. But how many of them have ever suggested that war is also evil when it is waged by the Red Army? Apparently the Russians have a right to defend themselves, whereas for us to do [so] is a deadly sin. One can only explain this contradiction in one way: that is, by a cowardly desire to keep in with the bulk of the intelligentsia, whose patriotism is directed towards the USSR rather than towards Britain. I know that the English intelligentsia have plenty of reason for their timidity and dishonesty, indeed I know by heart the arguments by which they justify themselves. But at least let us have no more nonsense about defending liberty against Fascism. If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. The common people still vaguely subscribe to that doctrine and act on it. In our country — it is not the same in all countries: it was not so in republican France, and it is not so in the USA today — it is the liberals who fear liberty and the intellectuals who want to do dirt on the intellect: it is to draw attention to that fact that I have written this preface.
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http://www.bookrags.com/studyguide-animalfarm/
Animal Farm will no doubt remain a constant classic. Certain struggles never end and are only masked by the fashions or concerns of the day.
"Gramophone culture..."
We may have wonderful technology and huge amounts of data and information at our finger tips, but we may not have evolved enough as a collective to make good use of it. The challenge will remain, how to turn information into wisdom and intelligence, and how to gently control the evolution of human culture so that we might improve our species and ensure the longevity of our wonderful habitat with all of its creatures great and small.
All sides co-opt the concept of "freedom" as their banner cause, but few of us really understand how important intellectual freedom and integrity really is. Intellectual freedom and integrity must be treasured as the foundation of a "progressive" culture.
(We mean to make progress my friends.)
And trust me, certain modes of society or behavior should never be trusted.
"These people don’t see that if you encourage totalitarian methods, the time may come when they will be used against you instead of for you."
We are part and parcel of Space Ship Earth and must endeavor to be its loving stewards. Our intimate connection to our world does not preclude the possibility of our absence from it. This amazing world where our species evolved, and continues over time to evolve, will eventually continue its existence without us. How long we remain guests of our Earth and our Universe depends on what we do. We must learn about what motivates our beliefs and actions.
I would like to see our species continue its curious quest to understand nature for thousands of years to come. Globe Hackers is here to engage with people who feel the same.
We hope to hear from you.
Please read the books, not just the headlines, synopses or reviews. Then have nap, a nice snack and expend some energy thinking about things. It's good for you.
JUST READ ANCIENT BOOKS, OR BOOKS OVER 100 YEARS OLD.
When it comes to narratives (all narratives are created by humans as far as we know) nothing much is really new and most stories are derived from something that came before. For example, ancient flood myths have been told across the world and for thousands of years.
If a book has been around for a long time one can speculate that it contains some value.
This is not to say that all ancient wisdom is the most important wisdom for every age, culture or person, but those sentiments and ideas that survive the test of time and that we share across cultures are things we should endeavor not to forget.
While we contemplate our list of ancient books to read or reread, let's have a moment of silence and take four deep breaths while being conscious of all the books that were never written, all the books that were forgotten or ignored, all the books that have been burned or destroyed, and all the future books that will be written by future authors who, no doubt, will have benefited from the many good books of the past.
Now consider the Roman Stoic Emperor Marcus Aurelius:
Here are 50 aphorisms from Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, Roman Emperor from 161 CE to 180.
1.
Concentrate every minute like a Roman – like a man – on doing what’s in front of you with precise and genuine seriousness, tenderly, willingly, with justice: And also on freeing yourself from all other distractions. Yes, you can – if you do everything as if it were the last thing you were doing in your life, and stop being aimless, stop letting your emotions override what your mind tells you, stop being hypocritical, self-centered, irritable.
2.
How to act:
Never under compulsion, out of selfishness, without forethought, with misgivings.
Don’t gussy up your thoughts.
No surplus words or unnecessary actions.
Let the spirit in you represent a man, an adult, a citizen, a Roman, a ruler. Taking up his post like a soldier and patiently awaiting his recall from life. Needing no oath or witness. Cheerfulness. Without requiring other people’s help. Or serenity supplied by others. To stand up straight – not straightened.
3.
Your ability to control your thoughts – treat it with respect. It’s all that protects your mind from false perceptions – false to your nature, and that of all rational beings. It’s what makes thoughtfulness possible, and affection for other people, and submission to the divine.
4.
Forget everything else. Keep hold of this alone and remember it: Each one of us lives only now, this brief instant. The rest has been lived already, or is impossible to see. The span we live is small – small as the corner of the earth in which we live it. Small as even the greatest renown, passed from mouth to mouth by short-lived stick figures, ignorant alike of themselves and those long dead.
5.
Body. Soul. Mind.
Sensations: the body.
Desires: the soul.
Reasoning: the mind.
To experience sensations: even grazing beasts do that. To let your desires control you: even wild animals do that – and rutting humans, and tyrants.
To make your mind your guide to what seems best: even people who deny the gods do that. Even people who betray their country.
If all the rest is common coin, then what is unique to the good man?
To welcome with affection what is sent by fate. Not to stain or disturb the spirit within him with a mess of false beliefs. Instead, to preserve it faithfully, by calmly obeying God – saying nothing untrue, doing nothing unjust. And if the others don’t acknowledge it – this life lived in simplicity, humility, cheerfulness – he doesn’t resent them for it, and isn’t deterred from following the road where it leads: to the end of life. An end to be approached in purity, in serenity, in acceptance, in peaceful unity with what must be.
6.
Our inward power, when it obeys nature, reacts to events by accommodating itself to what it faces – to what is possible. It needs no specific material. It pursues its own aims as circumstances allow; it turns obstacles into fuel. As a fire overwhelms what would have quenched a lamp. What’s thrown on top of the conflagration is absorbed, consumed by it – and makes it burn still higher.
7.
Does your reputation bother you? But look at how soon we’re all forgotten. The abyss of endless time that swallows it. The emptiness of all those applauding hands. The people who praise us – how capricious they are, how arbitrary. And the tiny region in which it all takes place. The whole earth a point in space – and most of it uninhabited. How many people there will be to admire you, and who they are. “The world is nothing but change, our life is only perception.”
8.
Choose not to be harmed – and you won’t feel harmed.
Don’t feel harmed – and you haven’t been.
9.
That every event is the right one. Look closely and you’ll see. Not just the right one overall, but right. As if someone had weighed it out with scales. Keep looking closely like that, and embody it in your actions: goodness – what defines a good person. Keep to it in everything you do.
10.
Beautiful things of any kind are beautiful in themselves and sufficient to themselves. Praise is extraneous. The object of praise remains what it was – no better and no worse. This applies, I think, even to “beautiful” things in ordinary life – physical objects, artworks. Does anything genuinely beautiful need supplementing? No more than justice does – or truth, or kindness, or humility. Are any of those improved by being praised? Or damaged by contempt? Is an emerald suddenly flawed if no one admires it? Or gold, or ivory, or purple? Lyres? Knives? Flowers? Bushes?
11.
Love the discipline you know, and let it support you. Entrust everything willingly to the gods, and then make your way through life – no one’s master and no one’s slave.
12.
Nothing that goes on in anyone else’s mind can harm you. Nor can the shifts and changes in the world around you. – Then where is harm to be found? In your capacity to see it. Let the part of you that makes that judgment keep quiet even if the body it’s attached to is stabbed or burnt, or stinking with pus, or consumed by cancer.
13.
It’s unfortunate that this has happened. No. It’s fortunate that this has happened and I’ve remained unharmed by it – not shattered by the present or frightened of the future. It could have happened to anyone. But not everyone could have remained unharmed by it. Why treat the one as a misfortune rather than the other as fortunate?
14.
Take refuge in these two things:
I. Nothing that can happen to me that isn’t natural.
II. I can keep from doing anything that God and my own spirit don’t approve. No one can force me to.
15.
The things you think about determine the quality of your mind. Your soul takes on the color of your thoughts. Color it with a run of thoughts like these:
I. Anywhere you can lead your life, you can lead a good one.
II. Things gravitate toward what they were intended for. What things gravitate toward is their goal.
16.
Nothing happens to anyone that he can’t endure. The same things happen to other people, and they weather it unharmed – out of sheer obliviousness or because they want to display “character.” Is wisdom really so much weaker than ignorance and vanity?
17.
Things have no hold on the soul. They have no access to it, cannot move or direct it. It is moved and directed by itself alone. It takes the things before it and interprets them as it sees fit.
18.
Keep in mind how fast things pass by and are gone – those that are now, and those to come. Existence flows past us like a river: the “what” is in constant flux, the “why” has a thousand variations. Nothing is stable, not even what’s right here. The infinity of past and future gapes before us – a chasm whose depths we cannot see. So it would take an idiot to feel self-importance or distress. Or any indignation, either. As if things that irritate us lasted.
19.
The mind is the ruler of the soul. It should remain unstirred by agitations of the flesh – gentle and violent ones alike. Not mingling with them, but fencing itself off and keeping those feelings in their place. When they make their way into your thoughts, through the sympathetic link between the mind and body, don’t try to resist the temptation. The sensation is natural. But don’t let the mind start in with judgments calling it “good” or “bad.”
20.
When jarred, unavoidably, by circumstances, revert at once to yourself, and don’t lose the rhythm more than you can help. You’ll have a better grasp of the harmony if you keep on going back to it.
21.
Not to assume it’s impossible because you find it hard. But to recognize that if it’s humanly possible, you can do it too.
22.
I am composed of a body and a soul. Things that happen to the body are meaningless. It cannot be discriminate among them. Nothing has meaning to my mind except its own actions. Which are within its own control. And it’s only the immediate ones that matter. Its past and future actions are too meaningless.
23.
You take things you don’t control and define them as “good” or “bad.” And so of course when the “bad” things happen, or the “good” ones don’t, you blame the gods and feel hatred for the people responsible – or those you decide to make responsible.
24.
When you need encouragement, think of the qualities the people around you have: this one’s energy, that one’s modesty, another’s generosity, and so on. Nothing is as encouraging as when virtues are visibly embodied in the people around us, when we’re practically showered with them. It’s good to keep this in mind.
25.
I can control my thoughts as necessary; then how can I be troubled? What is outside my mind means nothing to it. Absorb that lesson and your feet stand firm.
26.
No matter what anyone says or does, my task is to be good. Like gold or emerald or purple repeating to itself, “No matter what anyone says or does, my task is to be emerald, my color undiminished.”
27.
The mind doesn’t get in its own way. It doesn’t frighten itself into desires. If other things can scare or hurt it, let them; it won’t go down that road on the basis of its own perceptions. Let the body avoid discomfort, and if it feels it, say so. But the soul is what feels fear and pain, and what conceives of them in the first place, and it suffers nothing. Because it will never conclude that it has. The mind itself has no needs, except for those it creates itself. It is undisturbed, except for its own disturbances. Knows no obstructions, except those from within.
28.
Frightened of change? But what can exist without it? What’s closer to nature’s heart? Can you take a hot bath and leave the firewood as it was? Eat food without transforming it? Can any vital process take place without something being changed? Can’t you see? It’s just the same with you – and just as vital to nature.
29.
To feel affection for people even when they make mistakes is uniquely human. You can do it, if you simply recognize: that they’re human too, that they act out of ignorance, against their will, and that you’ll both be dead before long. And, above all, that they haven’t really hurt you. They haven’t diminished your ability to choose.
30.
Look at the past – empire succeeding empire – and from that, extrapolate the future: the same thing. No escape from the rhythm or events. Which is why observing life for forty years is as good as a thousand. Would you really see anything new?
31.
Don’t pay attention to other people’s minds. Look straight ahead, where nature is leading you – nature in general, through the things that happen to you; and your own nature, through your own actions.
32.
Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now take what’s left and live it properly.
33.
Either pain affects the body (which is the body’s problem) or it affects the soul. But the soul can choose not to be affected, preserving its own serenity, its own tranquility. All our decisions, urges, desires, aversions lie within. No evil can touch them.
34.
Don’t try to picture everything bad that could possibly happen. Stick with the situation at hand and ask, “Why is this so unbearable? Why can’t I endure it?” You’ll be embarrassed to answer. Then remind yourself that past and future have no power over you. Only the present.
35.
Stop perceiving the pain you imagine and you’ll remain completely unaffected. External things are not the problem. It’s your assessment of them. Which you can erase right now. If the problem is something in your own character, who’s stopping you from setting your mind straight?
36.
Remember that when it withdraws into itself and finds contentment there, the mind is invulnerable. It does nothing against its will, even if its resistance is irrational. The mind without passions is a fortress. No place is more secure. Once we take refuge there we are safe forever. Not to see this is ignorance. To see it and not seek safety means misery.
37.
Other people’s wills are as independent of mine as their breath and bodies. We may exist for the sake of one another, but our will rules its own domain.
38.
To privilege pleasure over pain – life over death, fame over anonymity – is clearly blasphemous.
39.
To do harm is to do yourself harm. To do an injustice is to do yourself an injustice – it degrades you.
40.
Objective judgment, now, at this very moment. Unselfish action, now, at this very moment. Willing acceptance – now, at this very moment – of all external events. That’s all you need.
41.
Today I escaped from anxiety. Or no, I discarded it, because it was within me, in my own perceptions – not outside.
42.
Enter their minds, and you’ll find the judges you’re so afraid of – and how judiciously they judge themselves.
43.
Consider the lives led once by others, long ago, the lives to be led by others after you, the lives led even now, in foreign lands. How many people don’t even know your name. How many will soon have forgotten it. How many offer you praise now – and tomorrow, perhaps, contempt. That to be remembered is worthless. Like fame. Like everything.
44.
When you run up against someone else’s shamelessness, ask yourself this: Is a world without shamelessness possible? No. Then don’t ask the impossible. There have to be shameless people in the world. This is one of them. The same for someone vicious or untrustworthy, or with any other defect. Remembering that the whole world class has to exist will make you more tolerant of its members.
45.
Spiders are proud of catching flies, men of catching hares, fish in a net, boars, bears, etc. How they all change into one another – acquire the ability to see that. Apply it constantly; use it to train yourself. Nothing is as conducive to spiritual growth.
46.
To feel grief, anger or fear is to try to escape from something decreed by the ruler of all things, now or in the past or in the future. And that ruler is law, which governs what happens to each of us. To feel grief or anger is to become a fugitive – a fugitive from justice.
47.
Characteristics of the rational soul: Self perception, self-examination, and the power to make of itself whatever it wants. It reaps its own harvest, unlike plants, whose yield is gathered in by others. It reaches its intended goal, no matter where the limit of its life is set.
48.
If you don’t have a consistent goal in life, you can’t live it in a consistent way.
49.
Everything you’re trying to reach – by taking the low way round – you could have right now, this moment. If you’d only stop thwarting your own attempts. If you’d only let go of the past, entrust the future to Providence, and guide the present toward reverence and justice.
50.
It never ceases to amaze me: we all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinion than our own.
Documentary about Marcus Aurelius
Uneven Ground
Heated epistemic and scientific endeavor will never evaporate human foibles. Our evolved nature is too powerful and thrives within a long, random, fractal chain of failures, errors, mistakes and calamities. We must learn to benefit from our mistakes and the mistakes of others if we are going to last and thrive.
No one gives me the right to wander, the right to fail, the wondrous right to get lost. I learned long ago that many of the most important things in life you don’t have to ask for. It’s like the T-shirt – “Just Did It”. You expect things to go wrong, and they do, and you are thankful for the chance to learn from the random and often cruel blows of experience.
Giving yourself the chance to experience beauty. Stop thinking - just look.
It took me many decades to find out how devastating comfort can be to the soul, the mind and the body. Those of us who are lucky enough to live comfortable, predictable lives will confront that truth whether we realize it or not. If you don’t actively seek challenges, if you don’t venture out into uneven ground, you will find out, at long last, that the meaning of life is summed up quite simply in a few fateful words: you’re busy and then you’re dead. What kind of life can flash through your consciousness at the moment of death when you have already spend years in the process of dying and you didn't even notice.
The marathon of fighting modern urban diseases with therapies that often contain side effects that can be worse than symptoms you have learned to live with grinds your soul down to a dull edge. It’s a kind of zombification that ultimately leaves you powerless and only able to live with yourself because you're living for others.
We all thrive on a certain amount of stress. The body and mind need it to find its balance, and more importantly, you need to be constantly healing to be healthy. When you hit the weights at the gym, or go for a 17K hike, your mind and body are learning that they have to be ready for an even greater challenge next time. The feedback loops in your system automatically prepare for greater stresses. There are many good resources out there in the technical literature of psychology, sports medicine, and other domains further removed from the human body/mind that delve into this fact.
Brain plasticity allows us to “rewire” our brain by learning new things. It’s well known now that multilingualism provides benefits that can help one to avoid Alzheimer’s in old age. The greater the challenge the more benefits one can reap. Luminosity is a brain training website that purports to proffer these kinds of benefits through online brain games. The jury is still out as to how much this really helps, but most scientists believe it helps to a certain degree at least, and can’t really hurt (unless you trade a long walk in the hills to a seat in front of a screen). If you compare activities like learning differential equations at sixty and becoming conversant in French with brain games on a website, I think the consensus would say that the latter course might be more beneficial. Real challenges in the real world are what are needed: relevant activity that holds your focus, your interest and moves you towards a better condition.
Each era holds its challenges; each era is marked by certain trends and changes.
“If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.” Lao Tse
We can imagine many pathways that we might not want to be on, but we walk the well-worn path through the jungle, because we know what to expect – berries; game; water; safety; friends. There are good reasons why the path is well worn. But we shouldn't think that sticking to the usual path is going to be beneficial to us. A well-worn path is an easy place for ambushes, and a good way to sleep through life until the well-fed Turkey becomes dinner.
Learning from someone elses well-worn path.
Our centers in the brain’s limbic system overestimate rewards while our fear networks hyper-focus on threats. We overestimate short-term pleasures and overgeneralize past bad experiences. Our urbanized, WEIRD, world blast us with messages about millions of unneeded products and services, and bombards us with media images of unlikely dangers.
The wise man says, “don't focus on the similarities, but rather pay close attention to the differences.”
Hong Kong is not the same as Mainland China. Singapore is different in important ways from Indonesia. North American is not South America. One can discuss and debate the positives and negatives of the Anglosphere throughout the last few centuries and still not break the code of what mechanisms produce the benefits inherent in certain culture-spheres; the ever illusive value matrix that produce value.
I have labored exhaustively to explain to my Japanese friends the benefits of a highly competitive, argumentative and adversarial cultures: the kind of cultures that depend on common and civil law, separation of powers, innovation, technology and science. I try to make it clear that any statement, with the possible exception of global scientific consensus and established scientific theory, will never be ultimately definitive and constant. Even scientific theories continue to refine themselves as our tools, techniques and knowledge evolves. An optimal system is in a state of constant struggle within itself and its larger environment. Some must lose; some must fail so that the overall ecosystem can improve. The tragic loss of passengers on a ferry or a plane will save many more lives in the future if we remain diligent in our quest for truth. The harm comes in following the story on TV while ignoring the sunrise.
To technocrats a litigious system can appear to be highly inefficient. “If I were the boss and everyone did things my way, the right way, everyone would finally be happy.” This is an example Voltaire’s best of all possible worlds illusion.
The reality is however, that a system with strong adversaries, vigorous competition, disagreement, struggle and conflict will have the right dynamics to produce greater value for more people and across a greater span of time. If labor is strong, business is strong, research and development is strong, the government is strong, the military is strong, the judicial branch is strong, society is strong, education is ubiquitous etc. – if all constituencies can struggle within a system that enjoys stasis as a result of said struggle – then a State can enjoy a healthy ongoing development and its citizens can thrive. But if only a few of these adversaries are strong, the system becomes corrupted and out of balance leading to brittleness and breakdown. It happens to States all the time. Read some history, or a news paper. It also happens to individuals who avoid getting knocked down.
The timid lose everything eventually.
If people are too comfortable and too well entertained they no longer feel the need to struggle within their communities and society becomes ripe for crisis and long-term breakdown. It is no longer challenged enough to prepare itself for greater stresses.
Each of us has to draw the line somewhere and decide what’s worth fighting for. We can discuss the difference between liberty, license and freedom for the next five hundred years and the conversation will only get better as long as we are engaged. We should never outsource our right to fight for what we believe in. No one needs to give you that right. When your freedom is taken from you a-la Dostoevsky, kidnapped by FARC, confined without due process in a Black Site, or bound up in culture and tradition (how can a traditional society emancipate women?), you have always your mind as a gateway to freedom and the best means of creating the resistance needed to be ever robust.
“Even Silence Has an End.” by Ingrid Betancourt
“I do not agree with what you say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it.” Voltaire
Wherever conditions are right freedom will take hold. Some relative differences between systems really do matter. Never fall into the trap set on the well-worn path, or in the best of all possible worlds. As we train ourselves to learn better, as our knowledge improves, as experience leads us towards wisdom, the constant, painful, small fractures of life will make us more resilient and better human beings. Slavery; Suffer Jets; Property Rights; Modern Transportation; International Trade and so many other things we take for granted required legions of committed people to pay the ultimate price in suffering and blood before we could join a path to a slightly better world; a world that could be lost in a whimper if we stop paying attention to our state of existence - if we get too comfortable.
If you want to remember how things were, go back to the headlines of 1970 or 1909, listen to the voices from the past, go to the source, not to the memory. Memories are fallible, but the past can be accessed right now and give us hope that we are indeed moving forward towards something slightly better. Avoid hindsight bias, and be born again ceaselessly into the present – look forward Gatsby.
All systems must change and will change.
There is a propensity for anyone or any organization with a surplus of power to want to rig the system. It is up to each of us to hold people and organizations accountable. If we slack off for too long it’s too late, weakness makes it impossible to influence events anymore. A malnourished body can't fight disease or sail a boat.
Many of us drink too much, smoke too much and watch screens for too many hours in a day. We depend too much on others while not being interdependent in a way that makes us stronger through the conflict inherent in a healthy community. We know we are getting weaker and we seek only pillows and dreams. The poetry within us slowly fades from a hot ember to a gray husk of ash. We surrender to lifestyles that require a constant battle aided by pharmaceuticals and high tech machines; we call that living longer, I call that dying longer.
Always exercise before screens. After a ramble there is always plenty of time to catch up on public transportation.
Eventually we’ll have exoskeletons, prosthetic limbs wired into our nervous system, all kinds of brain enhancements, printable organs to replace our wrecked kidneys and livers, and performance enhancing drugs and brain implants that will help us merrily conform to the latest artificial forms of marketed needs and fashion. Even though many of these things may improve our quality of life we must be careful. We may become uniform and invulnerable, bored, stagnant and empty. And even at age one hundred and twenty what good will our lovely bodies and powerful limbs be to us if our minds are not agile, vital, free and wise? We are humans, we are but humans, and the desire to be something else could mean the end of humanity. The hidden risks are often the most profound and deadly.
The shiney things we think we need. Hop in the car kids, your daddy loves to drive.
If we can only muster one last breath of courage, seek uneven ground, walk over boulders, get lost in dense unfamiliar streets, push back against the weight of life in new ways, have an argument that matters, feel the loss, feel the pain, push harder and further, your body and mind will tell you what it needs. You have only to embrace a novel challenge. Be silent for a moment and listen and you will forge a new path, a path to the place you really want to be, a path to continued progress through the stresses of existence that constitute vitality and love. What is killing you doesn't make you stronger. What doesn't kill you doesn't make you stronger. To live is a struggle against death itself and the poetic feeling of immortality dispersed in one fine moment.
Vanity, if it makes you antifragile, will always trump arrogance, pomposity, overconfidence, and complacency.
‘March Days Return With Their Covert Light’
March days return with their covert light,
and huge fish swim through the sky,
vague earthly vapors progress in secret,
things slip to silence one by one.
Through fortuity, at this crisis of errant skies,
you reunite the lives of the sea to that of fire,
grey lurchings of the ship of winter
to the form that love carved in the guitar.
O love, O rose soaked by mermaids and spume,
dancing flame that climbs the invisible stairway,
to waken the blood in insomnia’s labyrinth,
so that the waves can complete themselves in the sky,
the sea forget its cargoes and rages,
and the world fall into darkness’s nets.
What is romance if not the greatest expression of human life? Yes, I didn't say romanticism.
The conflict imbedded in loving, when embraced, heals the heart forever.
Survival Tips Online and Hopefully on Lantau
In cities across Asia people don't think much about practical survival. We all have short memories. Most of us aren't very good students of history and so we take for granted the way things are right now. Kids sit for hours playing computer games in shops in Ho Chi Min City, Osaka, Bangkok and Shanghai. I've seen young people on a beach in Kamakura screaming in terror at the site of a fish or an insect. In Asia, education focusing on survival in natural surroundings is shallow and inadequate. Most kids in Asia might spend a week at the most in a national park - if they're lucky.
America has a unique culture predisposing it towards a romance with frontierism, exploration, and rugged individualism. The documentarian and film maker Werner Herzog calls American the most exotic country in the world because of its wide ranging cultural contrasts and extremes.
An exotic and uniquely valuable country like the United States doesn't just pop out of nowhere, there are many reasons why Americans are fanatics about freedom, power, guns, commercial trends and various religions. Think of the European settlers who came to the New World in the 15th Century. They were alone in hostile territories, living in totally new environments and many of them died before making it to their second winter or season. These people were intrepid and they had to be tough. The immigrants who followed in the late 19th and 20th Centuries faced their own set of hard challenges and needed to find ways to survive and establish themselves in their new homeland. They had to be more than resilient, they had to survive so their children could benefit from their efforts.
The World Until Yesterday was a dangerous place. What killed us 70 years ago doesn't kill us in the same numbers now. We are faced with our own challenges.
Today our supermarket culture leads many of us to an eventual battle with diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, stroke and cancer. We live long lives and struggle at the end of our lives with maladies of overconsumption and underactivity. Our distant relatives fought battles with starvation, hostile indigenous tribes and each other.
In my next post I'll write about the benefits of uneven ground; the positive stressors that actually improve our health and quality of life. It turns out that being too comfortable isn't the best way to thrive.
Hong Kong is a never ending construction project.
I'm a big fan of Survival News Online. I live in comfortable, urban and convenient Hong Kong, and in most places we have a convenience store within a fifty meters of where we happen to be standing. Hong Kong is also a territory with 108 square kilometers of land of which three quarters is countryside and parkland. Although most people think of crowded streets, dense neighborhoods with lots of high rise apartment blocks and office buildings, it's a great place to hike and bike.
Each year people get lost, injured and die in country parks in Hong Kong despite their proximity to urban areas. One of my friends is a rescue chopper pilot, and believe me he has some harrowing stories to tell. Many hikers and bikers dress appropriately and carry safety gear while out on jaunts in the beautiful, mountainous parks that afford visitors ample ocean vistas and nature watching. Even when taking precautions one can still get in trouble miles away from the Circle K.
Our world is full of complicated technology that almost none of us understand. We are forgetting survival techniques that helped our species survive for tens of thousands of years. Our world is fragile, anything could happen. How could one have predicted that a 777 would simply fly off course and disappear over the Indian Ocean? Things happen and we can't know why until many years after the event. So if stuff happens, how can we be a little bit more prepared and thrive in our normal urban lives at the same time? Can it be fun to become prepared for unlikely events?
In December we'll sail from Dominican Republic to Trinidad and there's no reason to expect the trip to be anything but fun. We're planning to produce some never before seen video of the region, and its people. Our boat is equipped with the latest survival gear and a very expensive survival raft. Should anything happen and we find ourselves on an island far from people it will take more than a season or two of Bear Grylls to help us get through the ordeal. A little study and a lot of practice is needed. Survival starts with cultivating a mindset, the first step in developing a survivor's mindset is to appreciate the value of good survival skills.
Survival News Online has very good practical advice that has nothing to do with preparing for doomsday. It's important to understand that our comfortable lives are extremely dependent on many things that we have absolutely no control over.
Check out this post about creating a bamboo knife. Don't try this without proper training and safety personnel nearby!
Sailing from Stock Island, Key West to the national park at the Dry Tortugas
Setting out at sunset.
Robbies Boat Yard = LN 24° 33.4 - W 81° 44.1 Fort Jefferson = LN 24° 37.7 - W 82° 52.4
Ventenar anchored on the left, Ship-O-Fool, and the Dry Tortugas ferry docked at Fort Jefferson, Garden Island.
One of the golden cruising rules for sailing anywhere you’ve not been to before, especially when its going to include tricky shallow entry depths… is do arrive during daylight hours, allowing plenty of time for safest docking or anchorage.
As it was my first time sailing the Caribbean, and I assumed the role of Ventenar navigator/weather girl… reading all I could local pilot guide wise was another worthy investment.
The weather was a tad surprising, for the days we were locked onshore at Key West. The pattern seemed to be 2-3 days of stormy squalls, followed by a couple of days of more stable sunshine… then repeat as necessary. Not the 24/7 Florida sunshine you see copiously advertised on all the holiday brochures! Mucho humidity was a given, which took a Devon belle such as myself at least a couple of weeks to properly physically adjust to. Mega bottled water consumption became a daily routine.
The day we departed was one of squally showers and the occasional thunderstorm - mainly sans lighting - not a good look on a lone sailboat. We left on the back of the worst of it that had punched through for a few days or so post Xmas frolics. A late afternoon slip from the mooring which would see us arriving at the Dry Tortugas the following daytime, critical for a boat and crew keen to weave safely through the considerable shoals and reefs in the area, during a window of more clement weather.
The prevailing conditions still made for an ultra quick crossing with winds averaging the mid 20knts range… but the angles were great for reaching, a Catamarans true forte… Dawn was around 5:30am, though with the lingering dank dull grey skies, we opted for a slightly longer run so as we could sling in a tack and then head 6:00am track into the final shallow bay with a wooden posted marked approach channel that terminates just in front of the red bricked splendour of Fort Jefferson…
Another smart move is to keep at least with reef one, set in on the main sail during night passages, unless you’re 110% sure that light air is going to prevail with you until till dawn. This keeps the pressure off both the lone crew on watch, and yacht speeds calmer. Galloping chaos is better saved for wide-awake mariners during daylight hours!! SV Ventenar has a modified FP Belize rig allowing for three reef points in the main.
This first voyage one night’s sail was a very good way to shake down the whole fledgling Globe Hacker team allowing them to gently slip into the routine of night watch mode. Three mariners means 4hr shifts, split 8pm to Midnight, Midnight to 4:00am, then 4:00am to 8:00am… allowing the crew to spend most of the daylight hours together. Shootin’ the breeze, gibing and all that jazz.
A few nautical miles offshore the Fort channel it’s prudent, polite and indeed necessary to log in with the on-duty Rangers, who act as harbourmasters… via VHF channel 16, mush as you do on final departure.
And as there are no services at all onshore at the fort, you need to have enough food, fuel, water and provisions onboard to cover your stay in total and beyond, making safe transit and docking to a more conventional marina or finish location, for us this was Marina Hemingway near Havana, Cuba. However the Ferry that arrives most days from Key West has a canteen and showers on the back that can be used by cruisers for a small fee.
Some useful Dry Tortugas Park info here
It’s a very interesting and historic stop place for a few days, and the moored cruisers social side over New Year’s Eve worked very well for us. Another Brit’ crew we met sailed over to Cuba at the same time as ourselves.
For those heading westward from the central Caribbean up the eastern USA seaboard, it is a very welcome rest point and shelter too.
Fair winds…
Lighthouse at Fort Jefferson
Why a boat is better than a baby - metaphorically speaking.
“We argue to discover knowing we can't injure ourselves.” I’m paraphrasing a quote by G. Debord I think.
Members of Situationists International
Before talking about why a boat is better than a baby let’s have a brief look at last year’s quibble over scientism that took place online between some intellectuals that I happen to be a fan of. Leon and Massimo make some of the same points, but I tend to like Massimo’s treatment better. I think Leon’s is a slightly too defensive and misrepresents somewhat the spirit of what Steven was saying.
All of these Profs have penned some really fine reads! They have all been criticized roundly for their efforts. When a superstar of academia invokes science to improve the veracity profile of his work, he'd better have his data analysis, facts and stats straight. Treating one's idea with style is one thing, but presenting what one would characterize as scientific fact is another. Superstars are just people. Check out Stephen Corry's response to Pinker's "Better Angels...", "Why Steven Pinker, Like Jared Diamond, Is Wrong." Of course Stephen Corry from Survival International also has a position to defend and therefore an axe to grind. It's up to each one of us to explore and determine what sounds right. Some of us are lucky to have the tools and the time to do just that so let's not waste the chance to dig a bit deeper. Yes indeed, WEIRD people do have leisure time and the right to determine how to spend it.
It seems all sides feel that their point of view is under attack. Oh my! I guess the polemical tone is just too hard for passionate intellectuals to pass up. At any rate, find a bone and pick it dry – what else are we going to do? For me, at least, it’s as exciting to witness as a UFC fight. Only real men and women pick such bones, and argument is great sport.
Malcolm McDowell in "A Clockwork Orange"
(Scientizers? WOW, keep an ear open for that one Leon's piece.)
Check out the essays below:
Science Is Not Your Enemy An impassioned plea to neglected novelists, embattled professors, and tenure-less historians… by Steven Pinker
Crimes Against Humanities Now science wants to invade the liberal arts. Don't let it happen. by Leon Wieseltier
Steven Pinker embraces scientism. Bad move, I think by Massimo Pigliucci
Thinkers are weighing in on scientism from a variety of differing perspectives with a couple of examples sighted in Professor Pigliucci's blog post at Rationally Speaking.
For me these differing points of view have relevance to why a boat is better than a baby, and I'll get to that after I spend a moment pondering the significance of “scientism”.
First of all, I think the term itself is less important than the passion it inspires in people who either champion a certain usage of it or beg to differ with the general concept as defined by any particular “lexicographer”, culture commentator, academic or philosopher (including religious philosophers of course) with an axe to grind with which to defend such things as seem to matter.
For me, the idea of scientism isn't the real issue. I can't imagine a scientist calling herself a “believer in scientism”. “Hi, I'm Betty, and I’m a molecular biologist and believer in Scientism.”
The idea of reducing honest intellectual pursuits to mere dogma or ideology is anathema to me, and dare I say, definitively unsound in its understanding of how I believe the vast majority of scientists or philosophers would characterize themselves. I can't imagine a scientist saying, “I have a scientistic worldview”. They would simply say that “I have a scientific worldview”, and of course that same person probably loves Mozart, The Talking Heads, or forms of Haute Couture. Of course the word Scientistic is not in the dictionary, but scientism is.
I’m pretty sure that Siddhartha Gautama wasn't a Buddhist, and whoever the person was that people refer to as Jesus of Nazareth, although he may have been the son of God, was most probably not a Christian, and whoever that guy Socrates was probably didn't think of himself as Socratic, and Karl Marx would never say, “I'm a Marxist”, anymore than my New Age Christian friends would want to define themselves as Religionists or Christists. It’s pretty clear they are comfortable with the simple, “I'm a Christian”, a surely satisfying moniker until you start splitting those ecclesiastical hairs and articulating your own specific interpretations of your particular literature, in which case you are now an Anabaptist, a Calvinist, a Lutheran, a Pentecostal, or a Charismatic. And on the negative side I'm pretty sure that sexists don't refer to themselves as sexist anymore than racists or classists, would refer to themselves as racists or classists.
So if someone calls me a proponent of scientism why should I care? Sticks and stones…
I just can't imagine hearing a scientist of high moral, and intellectual integrity, saying that he values scientism in such a way that would imply that he thinks scientism to be more important than the practice of good science. Someone who appreciates science appreciates science, not scientism. And a historian who says that scientific tools are of no value to his profession isn't much of a historian these days. Why would a psychotherapist demure from the domains of the science of mind, cognition, neurology or other forms of scientific pursuit that could shed light on and improve their professional practice? So is the quibble that I’ve given you links to above simply academic?
Regardless of the obvious fact that scientists are no more perfect than your average Muslim or Hindu or philosopher or literary genius, it’s perfectly clear to me that all members of these societies are, in their own humble way, probably only trying to become better at whatever they do; to be better scientists, doctors, lawyers, artists, psychologists, chefs, and engineers while at the same time trying to become better people. Am I naive to think this? Are you? If being classified in the former set of descriptive labels aids in the high functioning as an actor in the latter set of descriptive labels, things are probably all good. And, I'll leave certain polemics to Hitch – RIP.
I love to beg to differ just as much as any self-respecting desk chair, layman, uncredentialed, intellectual hack, and certainly some things should never be given a pass despite one’s status as an amateur. I think Massimo’s points are well taken, but I still see what Steven is trying to do. Professor Pinker may be straying a bit from the choir, and Professor Pigliucci is saying to the choir that there is potentially slippery slopes here lest we forget the value and influence various domains have on various domains. It’s not a zero sum game however. What we have here is an evolving discourse and we are all very lucky to have people like Professor Pinker and Professor Pigliucci around sharing their extremely well informed views with us. I’m thankful to be the beneficiary of people sharing their views of substance on subjects of importance and constant interest. When people share their views in a responsible way it shows me that we're listening to each other, and that’s always a good thing.
I wonder if we can expect to hear Pinker on Pigliucci’s “Rationally Speaking” podcast sometime soon. Hearing these guys talk would certainly clarify and crystallize a conversation that can easily be muddied by simple defensiveness, pet peeves, personal loyalties to dogma or ideology, and semantics.
(If you're not criticized, even eviscerated, you aint noth’in.)
OK, so why is this relevant to boats being better than babies (METAPHORICALLY SPEAKING OF COURSE).
Remember the book “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”? This was a huge bestseller in the early 70s and a classic of philosophical fiction. You can read it here if you’re interested.
I bring this up because many yachts people I've met seem to be people with broad interests, do-it-yourselfers who are interested in and obviously concerned with the various systems that comprise a yacht; it’s maintenance, quality, reliability and sexiness. I presume most of you are familiar with the phrase; “this film, car, etc., is my baby”.
It’s an expression that leads one to believe that one’s hobby, activity or project is much more than a passing interest; and developing it, taking care of it, realizing it, and seeing it thrive is very important to you.
A baby is without a doubt one of the cutest, loveliest and most precious things in this world. They are so adorable that it’s hard for anyone to do anything but love a baby. But the thing about babies is that they're not babies for long. Given a year or two they are far beyond the helpless darlings they were while they were only several months old. Children grow up fast don't they? And no matter how hard one tries to manage everything one needs to manage to nurture, care for, protect, educate and develop a child it never seems to be enough, much less good enough. Children soon exercise quite a bit of autonomy; despite the community of caregivers that give them constant attention, one is never completely in control of how a child turns out, even in the best of circumstances. Bottom line: babies aren't babies for long.
I've heard lots of filmmaker friends say that their film is their baby. Some filmmakers have lots of babies and some don’t. Jim Van Bebber made “The Manson Family”. It took him 15 years to make it, and he had to sell his own blood at times just to finance it. There have been many projects that have taken much longer. Some people just won't give up until they finish something and once their baby has left the nest, so to speak, they may feel grief and have to quickly move on to some new project to fill the void.
For sailors and yachts people a boat is an ongoing project. There are various kinds of yachts people of course. Some have lots of financial resources and can buy or lease a super sailing yacht and a professional crew to go with it. They eat gourmet meals, have maid service, and drink margaritas, or whatever’s their pleasure, every night at sunset. These are not the people I'm talking about.
I’m talking about Globe Hackers who sail. They're not afraid to rebuild a generator, pick up an engine maintenance book, troubleshoot an electrical system, air conditioner, or refrigerator, not to mention learning to tie knots, how to hack sail rigging, the finer points of sail construction, and anchor technology. Alex mentioned that he read at least three books on anchors before buying the one we have on Ventenar.
You buy your boat, learn everything about her through trial and error and experience sailing her, figure out what’s wrong with her, and then try to fix or improve her. No wonder men call ships by the female pronoun. But trust me, boats are easier to fix, get to know and improve than either women or babies.
There’s no substitute for experience. Once you've settled on a type and make of sailboat, and made that initial investment, you have many years of ongoing projects to look forward to. The process of maintaining and improving your boat never ends; it’s not supposed to. People who buy boats with the purpose of spending many months a year, or many years sailing on them signed up for an experience unlike any other, an experience that is often frustrating and uncomfortable, but also full of rewards. If you don't like trying to be an engineer, motorman, sailor, navigator, multilingual cultural anthropologist, psychologist, scuba diver, geographer, naturalist, meteorologist, fisherman, and so many other roles, you’re not going to get involved with a boat and global sailing.
For many people sailing a dinghy around a bay or in a nice lake is the most challenging, relaxing, exhilarating and fun experience one can have on the water. Go out late morning and get home in the evening. Grab the tiller, set a course, tack and jibe, trim the sail, feel the wind and fly across the water. It’s a lot of fun indeed. But when you head out into the open ocean with the idea that you want to get somewhere, you're opening yourself up to risks most people never contemplate.
Your sailboat is a ticket to the University of an Exciting Life. Once you have one and start to spend time on one you start your learning curves and feedback loops going. You begin to appreciate mechanics, engineers, cooks, crews, sail designers, electricians, carpenters, relationship counselors, etc., primarily because you have to become them. You may not be an expert, or even very good at it, but you simply have to know your way around your boat’s systems and the people on your boat. Your boat will never grow up. Your boat will always have room for improvement, as will the people who sail her. Your boat is an ongoing project until the day you abandon her or prepare her for her next owner. Owning a boat is owning the right to do one project after another just to make your experience doing what you love as good as your imagination wants it to be.
Some philosophical discussions will never end no matter what the state of the art in science, engineering, mathematics, or the humanities seems to be at a given time. There are questions that will take generations to come even close to answering, questions that defy all of our current technology, tools, processes, and theories du jour, and may still leave us pondering on our deathbeds. We are smart animals for sure, and our knowledge will evolve as long as we continue to progress. We will undoubtedly learn a great deal more if we are lucky and continue to survive in a relatively stable state of affairs. Our technology will continue to provide amazing benefits, our medicine will get better with fewer deleterious side effects, but one can't honestly remove the human from the practice of medicine, science, engineering or the development of technology. We are the drivers and we are not perfect. We create the tools we think we want at the moment. Regardless of what domain you feel most comfortable in, most of us are generalists, or else have much narrower interests, and therefore less able to practice complicated disciplines at anywhere near the standard that professionals involved in such pursuits require.
We can’t figure all the probabilities or mitigate all the risks. We don't have the gifts that we claim for the gods.
The sailor who's circumnavigating the world, the sailor who lives to keep sailing year after year, is most likely the sailor who’s not afraid to dabble and who’s most respectful of the experts. In a sense, our most precious "baby" is our mind, our most important constant project. Knock on teak – as long as we are healthy and able.
We were fortunate to meet a lovely couple who are really living the life. Charles and Hillary Badoian live full time on their catamaran and are dedicated to living an adventurous life. They are true Globe Hackers. Intelligent entrepreneurs whose business, Boardroom Events, focuses on developing the right connections to improve best practices for constant, intelligent business evolution through intimate boardroom meetings perfected for [BE] midmarket CIO forum.
One thing to notice in the above handmade video is their dedication to redundancies throughout their boat's systems. Redundancies are not only good for managing risk they are great long term investments leading to profitable growth. They have also made their boat easier to maintain and rely on simpler systems that they can improve and are antifragile. I hope to see these people again and share an adventure with them. They're the real deal.
Deconstructing Good Decisions
What does it take? Please explore the links in the text.
“100% of the shots you don’t take don’t go in.” Wayne Gretzky
Wayne Gretzky
Please forgive the evangelical nature of this essay. We feel it’s important, as we begin building this community, to make clear certain values that shape our worldview and provide the emotional energy and impetus to “Hack” our lives out of an ordinary and sometimes stifling existence.
Globe Hackers are on a quest. Some of us have known it from a very young age, while some of us came to it only after many years of experiment, exploration, dabbling and failure.
We are avid fans of many domains of inquiry. We may not be experts, but we love experts; the heavy lifters of their domains who delight and surprise us and confirm our faith in humanity.
Globe Hackers delve into subjects, are not afraid of complexity, and want to share their journey towards a greater understanding of our world. We don’t concern ourselves too much with the beliefs one may hold in the realm of myth and religion, but we do care about your thought processes. We accept that we are mortal. We are deeply concerned with reality here and now. We want to know what things brought us to our current state of affairs and where we might be able to go from here. We delight in progress, in seeing things improve incrementally, in a broadening circle of justice and dignity for all human beings.
Before we go on we'd like to refer you to a three-part interview with Neil deGrasse Tyson on Moyers & Company. We feel the tone of this conversation will help to frame our approach to the world.
PART ONE / PART TWO / PART THREE
For the fist time in history technology exists that allows small groups of creative people to approach a specific audience directly without having to muster too many expensive resources. We’re counting on the “free-world" of the Internet and the smart TV to allow us, hopefully for a long while, to share our passions with you.
We also hope that this effort will contribute to a burgeoning new community of "Globe Hackers".
We’re excited to get started.
First we'd like to make a few bold statements:
- Knowing what you think isn’t as important as knowing how you think. (We believe this to be an important fact.)
- Understanding your thought processes, elements of your evolved psychology, the way your physical brain works in conjunction with your nervous system, mapped on to your body and out into the interwoven fabric of your social economic and cultural circumstances is crucial for a person facing the unique challenges of the 21st Century. Take a deep breath. (We need the scientific method, and a good understanding of what the scientific method is to accomplish this goal.)
- A mind is a terrible thing to waste! Everyone today needs a high-quality, well-rounded education, starting with refined critical thinking skills.
- It is of the utmost importance to understand that humanity may be, right now, closer to facing its own extinction than one might wish to ponder. We may also be the cause of our own extinction. (A terrible fact that requires us to face reality.)
Point four is a horrific prospect. The first three points are more positive, but the last point has the potential of casting a shadow over the first two. This is a form of negativity bias.
Another common bias is the halo effect where things like being taller and better looking than average can give people a strong impression that you must be great at your job, or a better person than might really be the case. If a man in a lab coat told you that humanity would likely be the cause of its own extinction would you believe him? What if a tall, handsome, white, and obviously wealthy middle aged man in a tailor made suit told you the same thing? How about an old lady? What if you heard a mythical story passed on across millennia by word-of-mouth that related the same eventual outcome, or perhaps you read it in a holy book from a major religion whose sources are yet to be known?
I may be an old lady but I'm not stupid!
The negativity bias is just one of a long list of cognitive biases that afflict our thought processes every moment of every day. They evolved in our species for good reason. We need to react more quickly and emotionally to surprising events in our environment if we are going to survive to reproduce. We don’t like getting burned twice. Strangers can be dangerous. Existential threats are everywhere.
We tend to remember an unkind word from a good friend for years while we forget the constant stream of kindnesses she continues to afford us over the course of a long friendship. Kindnesses are taken for granted while meanness is taken as a red flag – “perhaps I can’t trust this person after all”. Our evolved species-wide self seems to say over and over again, “be careful, there are many dangers out there – it’s scary to trust”. You may indeed be wise to exercise constructive paranoia, a term I picked up in Jared Diamond’s “The World Until Yesterday”. Basically, it pays to be cautious. Also, mental shortcuts (heuristics) are much needed when you have to think fast.
[Simple Heuristics That Make Us Smart / Game Programming / Heuristics Made Easy]
For most of us, once we have absorbed the initial sting of an unpleasant interaction, and had a chance to weigh in rationally and carefully the balance of good and bad experiences in a lasting relationship, we can let the meanness be washed away by the stream of acknowledged kindnesses. “That hurt, but all in all, he’s a pretty decent person.”
Daniel Kahneman describes two modes of thinking in his book thinking fast and slow: system one and system two. Our cognitive biases are double-edged swords that may arise out of the duel-process model of the brain.
Here is short list of cognitive biases:
Anchoring / Availability Heuristic / Bandwagon Effect / Confirmation Bias / Endowment Effect / Framing Effect / Gambler’s Fallacy / Hindsight Bias / Loss Aversion / Group Think / Google Effect / Hindsight Bias / Pareidolia / Dunning-Kruger Effect / Egocentric Bias
A lot has been written about cognitive biases over the past few decades. A quick Google search will yield lots of good information on the subject. I seem to remember hearing something about it in a psychology class when I was a student. After graduation the subject of cognitive biases didn’t cross my mind until many years had passed and I had already transitioned from being a gypsy mystic to being a fan of science, reason, engineering, technology and most of all, humanity. Having been a student of the humanities, and a life long fan of human beings and their achievements, I find it very hard to understand why anyone would have anything against humanism. Can’t we be humanistic and still believe in ghosts? We are all humans after all.
While traveling recently I saw a book at an airport bookstore, “The Art of Thinking Clearly” by Rolf Dobelli, I picked it up, flipped it over, and read a blurb on the back cover by Nassim Taleb. I’ve been a big fan of Nassim Taleb since 2007 when I read his book “The Black Swan”. I opened the book and found it full of easy to comprehend treatments of common cognitive biases. I bought the book, read it on the flight, and now keep it handy on a bookshelf near my desk. After the flight I told a friend of mine that this is the one book that I’d like to see in every hotel and motel room in America, right on top of the Holy Bible in the drawer next to the bed.
“Welcome to your CNN and Art of Thinking Clearly partner hotel.”
FOOLED BY RANDOMNESS / THE BLACK SWAN / ANTIFRAGILE
Many of us are thoughtful people, curious by nature, experts in our narrow fields of interest, and responsible members of our communities. We are kind to our neighbors, fun at parties, loving towards our friends and families, entertaining and smart. Granted, I may just be generalizing about the WEIRD subset of humanity: WEIRD meaning, Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic. Social scientists have a bias toward research in the domain of WEIRD.
I recon most of us are nice WEIRD people; people wrapped up in our relatively narrow worlds, fending off perceived existential threats while trying to acquire some much-needed attention along the way. Most of us are just trying to fit in! The banal obsessions of our species lead to the paradox of having to become slaves-to-fashion in order to feel free.
We struggle within the realm of our reality, learning as we go from what is at hand, and doing our best within the limits of our inherent abilities. Some of us are luckier than others; some of us have innate talents, like a good ear for music, or more fast-twitch-muscle-fibers.
An NFL Running Back where fast twitch is the name of the game.
Some of us have more drive, energy and focus. And there are, of course, people with much less of an endowment from birth. Others may have made poor decisions despite relative good fortune and taken a bad path in life, while some people are simple too lazy to contribute much of anything. There are many types of people in any culture. The spectrum is wide with lots of layers of gray.
Yet we all need to belong.
I suspect life is challenging for most of us. My grandmother used to say, “It takes all kinds of people to make the world go around.” Indeed it does so we'll try not to make too many sweeping generalizations about populations of people.
Biased Sample Fallacy / Hasty Generalization
Psychologists like Jonathan Haidt, whose recent book, “The Righteous Mind – Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion” work hard to identify mechanisms in society and attributes of certain types of people that will produce either a tendency towards cooperation and understanding, or a tendency towards alienation and conflict. Exploring deep cultural divides requires a helpful, nonjudgmental tone, from a scientific perspective. Taking an evidence-based approach when dealing with highly emotional human issues requires discipline and aplomb. When done well the results of such work can help us bridge culture gaps and dampen conflicts between highly contentious groups, reinvigorating dialogue that may lead to breakthroughs in public policy or solutions to stubborn practical problems.
A small subset of people are focused on larger areas of interest, more complex in nature, requiring a great deal of effort and discipline in order to obtain the skill sets, language, techniques and tools required to pursue their interests. These people may start life with financial means or in poverty, and yet, for some reason, because of many fortunate choices, many accidents of fate, and a naturally curious nature are able to find their passion in life and pursue it with zest, sincerity and commitment.
While on their path there is another quality that animates their actions, a desire to serve a larger constituency than themselves, their immediate dependents, their in-groups, or their masters.
They may have it in their minds that their community, society, or even humanity deserves the fruits or their focused, long term labor and attention. These people recognize a greater, more integral experience in the guise of their individual existence. They may feel a spiritual sense of being part and parcel of the ephemeral, yet meaningful life they enjoy every moment they are engaged in their purpose. And most of all, their purpose coincides with reality. Enthralled by nature , and desirous of knowledge, they never stop educating themselves.
It’s ironic that a dedicated public servant like Margaret Thatcher would comment, “There is no such thing as society: there are only men and women, and there are families.”
We are obviously social animals, but are there only individuals and families? One can understand what she meant only when one makes an effort to understand the mind of Margaret Thatcher. The puzzled mind of an individual is indeed a hard thing to solve. But no one can deny that “Maggie” was a player and for a while had a profound effect on the world.
For some of us, learning about our Universe and our place in it, is a sacred vocation requiring great sacrifice. Most of these dedicated people work in anonymity, for relatively modest compensation, for many, many years before a truly exciting result can be achieved.
When they finally get lucky, after all the hard work, their reward is mostly, simply, a transient feeling of accomplishment that only their team can really appreciate. They are mostly modest, although they may be extremely competitive, stubborn and aggressive in their ways. They are common people except for their unquenchable fascination with their ability to learn something, make something, prove something, and show something for what it is. They are not mere commentators or witnesses – their hands are dirty and their minds are taxed.
Leading from many domains
Their tools, of course, are their brain and body, reason, language, mathematics, and the scientific method, along with the indispensable emotions that animate their actions and relationships. These things, more than anything else, provide them with the ability to see the truly mysterious, the truly wonderful, the truly amazing nature of reality, and the journey never gets boring. And when they arrive at some grand understanding, their sense of love and humor only gets better, simply because they are nourished by their efforts.
We may never really know exactly how the Universe came to exist, but we do know that this is an empirical question, not only theoretical or philosophic. With our amazing human skills, tools, and passions we can actually pursue an honest answer to big questions. Only a few things can prevent this: the fear of facts; the abhorrence of gathering data; the shirking of our responsibility to perform rigorous analyses of our rational and scientific findings; and our avoidance of global peer review.
Despite recent discoveries of hundreds of planets orbiting other stars in our galaxy, and the almost mathematical certainty that there may be life out there, to the best of our knowledge, we are the only creatures we know of with the brain power to develop fantastic tools that help us understand our Universe. We are the only species we know that expends an exorbitant amount of energy and resources trying to understand, describe and manipulate nature.
This was not always so of course, for tens of thousands of years we lived in small groups hunting and gathering, surviving in a relatively simple ways. There is a great literature out there about our social evolution, our haphazard journey towards civilization, reason and science. And now that we are here, enjoying the fruits of that epic adventure, we find ourselves compelled to share what has inspired us along the way, what excites our imagination and urges us on in the face of an always-uncertain future.
This has all been said before, but I must start this venture with an homage to these precious things that inspire us.
The ascent of man and woman
Our species has existed for only approximately two hundred thousand years, a mere fraction of time when one considers how the earth was made and the evolution of life on earth. For much of that time humans had to take death-defying risks just to find water, gather food and hunt. Life was full of dangers and life spans were much shorter; warfare and death by another human’s hand was part of a normal day-to-day existence. This was true all over the world until, from around five thousand years ago, we started our ascent towards civilization. Our journey until today has been long and arduous, fraught with many destructive conflicts, and natural disasters. Until very recently we had to contend with virulent infectious diseases that wiped out large numbers within populations, we had no idea what caused these deadly illnesses, we had no idea what the mechanisms were behind the violent upheavals of volcanoes, or the cracks in the earth caused by earthquakes. We were virtually in the dark relying on our imagination to create stories to explain the many mysteries that lay all around us.
Yet throughout our past it has also been normal for us to keenly observe our environment, to experiment with materials, to invent new methods of planting and processing food. We have learned through trial and error what plants are good for certain things, how to husband animals, how to use fire and minerals from the earth. One look at the ancient cave paintings of Lascaux, ancient flint tools, a Roman aqueduct or sewer, the Great Wall of China, or irrigation systems in ancient Indonesian rice terraces will leave anyone with the impression that for a very long time human beings have been amazingly clever and creative.
Magnificent 2000 year old structure for water supply.
However, even now we remain quite parochial, with very little experience other than that which was afforded us by many deterministic accidents of circumstance. If we are lucky, the day we were conceived was tantamount to winning the lottery. If we are unlucky, the most we can expect is a very challenging if not hopeless fight for survival, recognition, dignity and justice.
St. Augustine of Hippo
“Charity is no substitute for justice withheld.” Saint Augustine
So you see, we all won the lottery, but what have we done with our winnings?
There may be two major perspectives that define two typical camps of people; one camp is driven by stories, they are true believers and require no great burden of evidence to trust what they believe; they are comfortable in the bosom of their faith. The antithesis of this camp of faithful followers is a breed of humanity that is much more empirical and evidence driven. These kinds of people value data and the means to interpret data in a clear and coherent way. Before they take their fist tentative steps toward formulating a theory, they will test it experimentally, and present their findings to their peers. As I have intimated above throughout this essay, they are self-motivated in many respects and constantly searching for something useful that can help them present a more accurate model of nature. Eventually these theories lead to practical tools, technology, medicines, knowledge, and wisdom. Their worldview also leads to better decisions, choices that will hopefully contribute to the longevity of our species and to an even better ability to explore our Universe in peace, and in harmony with nature.
Simple illustration of how the scientific method flows.
Over the next ten years “OUR INTELLECTUAL LIFE”, one of the WEB TV shows we are producing, will attempt to help you better understand the amazing history and evolution of the human mind. We will explore our current Global intellectual culture, its direction and attributes, and its impact on contemporary society. We will come at this from a long historical timeline, through to the present with a keen eye on the future. We are doing this because we are in awe of human accomplishments, while at the same time being acutely aware of humanities shortcomings. We feel that the time has come to get things right.
We don’t believe we are a small and insignificant species, a puff of smoke, the slight of hand of a supernatural being, a fearful insecure species destined to cause its own extinction, or to be wiped out by a creator only to leave this wonderful Nature that we share with all living things on this great Earth behind, devoid of human consciousness. We want future generations to continue our journey for us and can only imagine how wondrous the future will be.
We are optimistic, and we are realists. We maintain a constructive paranoia while still trying to succeed and get on with the adventure.
We can imagine a future where we are happy to do great things for each other, where we go forth using the marvelous quiver of tools we have developed to maintain the common good. Our more primitive evolved nature may find quantum mechanics, mathematics, complex systems theory, probability theory, emergence, and other aspects of contemporary intellectual life unfamiliar and uncomfortable to gauge, and yet, these are the accomplishments that define our species more and more with each passing year. As we transcend our demons and reach for the better angles of our nature we make yet more progress towards the ultimate understanding of the Universe and ourselves.
Carl Sagan author of "The Demon-Haunted World" (Link above)
“Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception.”
― Carl Sagan, The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God
Our scientific, technological and rational achievements are invisible to most of us. This is a wonderful thing. With no real effort on our part we are able to benefit from the hard work and inventive creativity of untold legions of inspired people. But there is danger inherent in not understanding how our 21st Century world works. It's not wise to take things for granted. With every new system we are able to take for granted we are losing other, perhaps more simple ways of getting on in the world that may be difficult to reproduce should we find ourselves suddenly without electricity, modern transportation, computers, oil, water, food, institutions, or elderly people with crucial knowledge from our recent past. We might wish to place a social burden on each and every one of us to have a basic understanding of where we came from and how our world works. We should entreat each other to take advantage of every educational opportunity we can afford, and to share our knowledge whenever and wherever we can.
There may be many people in the world who fear the evil in stories, who fear their neighbors, who fear the outsider; whose fear permeates their every decision in life, and who are committed to a narrative of base human emotions acted out on a grand mythological stage. Our enemies, and the sum of our fears may indeed define some of us; some of us may complacently surrender to the selfish side of our psychology; some of us may only wish to seek the grace of God; some of us may diligently labor to prepare for the prophesied fight at the end of an epoch. It does indeed take many kinds of people to make the world go around, but one truth should not escape any of us – we are all human.
To turn away from the light of reason, from all that we have learned and created on our great journey towards an accurate understanding of the Universe and ourselves, is, for Globe Hackers, the sum of all evil.
To make good decisions in our world we need to educate ourselves, we need to practice clear thinking, we need to fight against cognitive biases that impair our judgment, we must identify and understand fallacious logic where we can and endeavor to become familiar with why we are here, now, in these circumstances, with these great inventions and still facing the potential of destroying ourselves.
You may not believe that we have caused our global climate to change. But how many of you think that a neutron bomb is just a fabrication? How many of you can fail to identify a dying sea or infertile soil? How many of you can deny that some human beings cause great evil and suffering in the world? How many of you can say that your reasoning and beliefs are infallible?
What causes us to make decisions that have deleterious or even horrific outcomes?
For those of you who are wedded to ancient stories until the end of time, we must strongly suggest that if you are willing to truly engage the miracle that you are, your stories will evolve. The narrative is changing. While you are in possession of your body and brain, use it or lose it. If you ignore your mind, how it works, and what it is, if you refuse to utilize this amazing gift of curiosity, reason and intellect, you betray everything you are and every good thing that humanity has created.
Prepare yourself.
Let’s try to avoid making the same mistakes over and over again. It is only in strong community with each other that we can keep our leaders honest. We have to carefully input into the feedback loops. We can’t sit on the sidelines and expect things to work out. We may need to help each other; we may need to invest in society to achieve a great society. What is certain is that none of us can do anything alone, not with any great effect.
Example of feedback loops during a decision making process.
Let’s make a pact to continue to discover everything we can about our complex and volatile world. Good decisions can only come from people who are always trying to know more. People who are actively trying to improve the quality of their awareness and knowledge. Human potential and human growth requires a life long effort.
A Globe Hacker will find a solution or invent a new tool for many reasons. She will contribute to her community, sometimes for nothing but a pat on the back or the simple incentive of the joy of personal accomplishment. A Globe Hacker is a natural lover of living and champion of life.
Sometimes the best things in life are unpredictable.
But don’t worry, not everything here at globehackers.com is so serious. We also want to bring you informative, humorous and practical content that will entertain and delight you.
We hope you will join us.
Hackers are Heros
Benjamin Franklin was one of the greatest hackers of all time.
We just had to share this TED talk "Catherine Bracy: Why good hackers make good citizens". It persuasively describes what we mean by "Hacker".
Karaoke night - Marina Hemingway.
One of the most thrilling aspects of sailing is arriving at your destination. It's been days at sea grinding away on the waves, sailing towards your way points and finally you've arrived. It's time to get your land legs back and see what the marina has to offer.
Just docked at Isla De Juventud at sunset.
Usually, at the very least, you can have a shower, get cleaned up and stretch your legs while you take stock of the facilities at the marina.
Most sailors are friendly, we like to find out where people come from, check out their boats, and swap a few stories. Later it's sharing food, drink and GRIB files to help you plan strategy for your next passage. Everyone in the marina is a potential source of vital information that can help you on your journey.
But today let's not get too technical and simply show a bit of fun. I guess most people know what Karaok is (pronouced Cara-OK, not Kari-OKie). At Hemingway Marina in Havana we met a nice crew led by Mr. Sato who were circumnavigating the Globe - now that's one major hack. One of his missions was to share the oh so Japanese pastime of singing popular music at one's local bar, snack or pub. Karaoke is pretty much standard entertainment in most cities around the world these days, but just in case you didn't know what it was, Sato-san makes it a point to gather friends together for a nice night of drinking, snacking and all around good cheer.
And I must say, there's no better way to get close to knew friends than the humbling experience of singing into a microphone with bad echo effects to a corny, low budget, video. I'm sure we all hate to admit it, but it's good fun.
Winging it...
Part of being a good hacker is being willing to wing it. No matter how hard you plan things, or how badly you want to maintain control, you're never completely protected from unwanted stuff happening, unforeseen changes, or things spiraling into chaos.
It may take some hard knocks to learn this but once you do hopefully you'll develop the ability to deal with things with a cool head.
Traveling presents us with all kinds of opportunities for anxiety and troubles and the only way to keep yourself from melting down under adverse circumstances on the road is to take it all like water off a duck. Things may be going badly now, but they'll be fine later. Allow yourself more time than you have and realize that whatever deadlines you have can and will be missed sometimes and that it's not the end of the world. If you miss a flight or can't book into a hotel just roll with it.
Ask questions and seek help - you'd be surprised at how helpful people can be when you are polite and friendly. Keep your eyes open, by all means, and watch your back, but don't let that stop you from reaching out. Treat people with dignity and respect, and don't be afraid to seek assistance until you find it.
I had one plan for getting to Key West from Ft. Lauderdale and after having flown from Hong Kong for 13 hours and connecting to another flight from Chicago to Ft. Lauderdale, I decided to skip taking the shuttle down to the keys and check into a hotel for some much wanted rest.
In the morning, after calling the shuttle service, I found out that I couldn't get a reservation until 4pm. Waiting 6 hours to catch a van for a 4 hour drive didn't sound appealing so I went to the airport and found a flight boarding at 3pm with a flight time to Key West of only 30 minutes. Bingo! That's for me.
Now I only have to hang out in Chilli's for a while, have some of that good old franchise American Mexican food and read my book for a few hours.
Let's hope things keep going this smoothly. A good hack can be as simple as going with the flow.
It begins...
We look forward to many years of adventure, fine journeys with great people. Most of all, we look forward to sharing with you, useful information, compelling drama, how to guides, and anything else that can to help make your journey as fulfilling as possible.
Don't let anything stop you from achieving your dreams. Wake up, and be who you are.
Flying out of HKIA
The first step is getting there, that's the easy part when you are simply flying from point "A" to point "B". Once you have arrived at the boat yard the work begins. Ventenar was on-the-dry for most of 2013 after having explored the Bahamas. Before heading out we had to make sure everything was ship-shape, and that any improvements on the boat could get done before departure. And of course, everything from top to bottom had to be cleaned, swabbed and parts painted.
After multiple trips to this hardware store, marine supplies store, carpenter's shop, and visits by other service providers, and mechanics, things started to take shape. You eat, work on the boat, and once in a while go out on the town. All in excited anticipation of the journey to come.
