Calm technology. Slow thought. Peace.

We need a philosophy of Slow Thought to ease thinking into a more playful and porous dialogue about what it means to live.

~ Vincenzo Di Nicola from, https://aeon.co/essays/take-your-time-the-seven-pillars-of-a-slow-thought-manifesto

We can each do some things, and not everything. Choose wisely.

Journaling

I find that whatever hindrances occur I write just about the same amount of truth in my journal; For the record is more concentrated, and usually it is so very real and earnest life, after all, that interrupts. All flourishes are omitted.

~ H. D. Thoreau

A vast con

I’m frequently, acutely aware of the ephemeral nature of everything I create. As I’m writing—right this moment—I’m sitting outside. The notebook computer I’m typing upon has a display—the “lid”—which is maybe one quarter inch thick. It even feels thin when I reach out and grasp it on both sides between my thumbs and forefingers; Thin, like grabbing a pinch of salt feels thin. Visually, around the display I see the table, the lawn, a tree, a garden, a shed, then other trees, houses… an entire, real world that I could, in but a moment, stand up and move into. Then I grasp this little display… everything I create is “within” the pinch of my fingers… then I tip the display towards me, and glance behind the display… nothing I create is behind the display either… from the other side—say, a passer-by’s perspective—I’m just a person, hyper-fixedly staring into the other side of the small, opaque, grey rectangle they see.

We’re at the end of a vast, multi-faceted con of internet users, where ultra-rich technologists tricked their customers into building their companies for free. And while the trade once seemed fair, it’s become apparent that these executives see users not as willing participants in some sort of fair exchange, but as veins of data to be exploitatively mined as many times as possible, given nothing in return other than access to a platform that may or may not work properly.

~ Edward Zitron from, https://www.wheresyoured.at/are-we-watching-the-internet-die/

But, boy howdy! what a universe is pinched into that thin, living, little square that I see, from my point of view.

Possibility

I have rarely sat down at my desk with something to say, other than I am ready. The sitting comes first, turning up with a certain alertness to possibility. Only then does the idea feel free to settle. It settles small and very tentatively, then, through your active attention, it can grow into something much bigger. Sitting in a readied state can sometimes last a long and anxious time. But you must not despair! I have never found a situation where the idea refuses to come to the prepared mind.

~ Nick Cave

Voice of sadness

It’s blinding when I see something put clearly and realize just how stuck I’ve been on my own imperfect understanding. Here, have 6 what-ifs.

What if, to the contrary, positive thinking represents a biased grasp of reality? What if, when I was depressed, I learned something valuable, that I wouldn’t be able to learn at a lower cost? What if it was a collapse of illusions – the collapse of unrealistic thinking – and the glimpse of a reality that actually caused my anxiety? What if, when depressed, we actually perceive reality more accurately? What if both my need to be happy and the demand of psychotherapy to heal depression are based on the same illusion? What if the so-called gold standard of therapy is just a comforting pseudoscience itself?

~ Julie Reshe from, https://aeon.co/essays/the-voice-of-sadness-is-censored-as-sick-what-if-its-sane

All of those sentences are just couched as what-ifs to entice people to read them and consider. My opinion? Just delete all the “What if” parts and capitalize the new first letter of each of those statements. Go ahead, reread them as statements instead of questions. What if, indeed.

Reset

Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.

~ Anne Lamott

Zen and the brain

I picked up this book off someone’s bookshelf, thumbed through it, gave it the page 88 test, and decided it was interesting enough… and borrowed it. (It is vanishingly rare that I borrow books. I normally just buy my own and hand the potentially borrowed book back to its owner.) Over a year passed with the book untouched.

I picked it up again and spent an hour with it hopping around and again decided I did want to read it. So I bought my own copy and returned the loaner. Then one day I was preparing for some podcast conversation and (as I often do) I thought about what books I might have which are related… and, for the third time I landed in this book. I dove into the index, found something interesting related to the podcast conversation I was preparing for and got lost reading for an hour.

Okay, fine. Apparently, it’s important that I read this book. So the other day, I cracked it open at the very beginning. I find that while I often skip chapters in a book, it’s always useful to read the introduction, preface, foreword, etc. Below is the literal first paragraph in this book, which I’d not seen in my first three visits.

During rare, spontaneous moments, experiences of very special quality and great import emerge from the depths of the human brain. To each person, these awakenings seem awesomely new. What they convey is not. It is the simplest, oldest wisdom in the world. The message is that ultimate meaning is to be found in this present moment, infusing our everyday lives, here and now. But one can’t predict such major peaks of enlightenment. Their insight-wisdom is next to impossible to describe. Even so, these fragile events inspired our major religions in ways that still shape our cultural development.

~ James Austin from, https://www.librarything.com/work/65668

If you see the book, you’ll think it’s going to be some left-brain, hyper-analytical, what forest? …it’s just trees, sort of thing. At least, that’s what I thought, each of those first three times I visited. Turns out, it’s actually 850 pages of, “Woa! That’s interesting…”

Until next time, thanks for reading.

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