Radical Modesty

We Love Freedoms Because We Are Slaves

Once, you were a child. Warm confusion. Uncontained happiness in splashes. Freedom was so free, you had no word to contain it in a thought.

Then: a fall here, an angry word from dad, a broken toy..or promise, a small betrayal.

A tiny thing, and more tiny things - with big things mixed in - started accumulating. Maybe you forgot they happened because happiness always blew in like the wind, and then some other thing blew the wind away again.

Tiny carvings in your mind. Life lied to you. 

The story was meant to be this: arrive at the door, keep going, open your eyes and laugh, close them and sleep - keep doing this over and over, doing it differently every day. The ending will be very happy. 

But the story…you forgot it. You were lied to - the fall, the angry word from dad, the broken toy…or promise, the small betrayal. All of those things, all, all lies. And you believed them, everyone.

And so you re-wrote the story, filled in the open spaces of freedom with the lies.

Maybe the lies were thrown under a shadow, and so you didn’t see thema as lies. The shadow grew; grew underneath you, going wherever you went; it grew so long, so large the light in and around your body got eaten up.

But you grew too. You went to school, made some money, found some happy moments - maybe a comfortable life. 

The shadow, the shadow with its lies, crept in. It always creeps in, making you forget the story, or making you re-writing it until you find yourself questioning who you are, what you’ve become, why life is so complicated.

The shadow has made you a slave. You work for the shadow.

When you go to work - to pull those lies out every time another disappointment or pain hits you - you enslave yourself to a story of lies. You believe the lies - and because you’ve believed them so long, they become truths to you. So you put the lies back, and into the dark they go again.

This is why you like freedoms - those tiny liberations which bring you momentary joy.

These freedoms are you getting back to writing the story, making it your own and not the shadow’s.

You’ve been a slave so long that you don’t know it, you don’t work to un-work all those lies, to wake up and realize that what you think you are is not who you are. 

All you have is this nudge at the back of your head - it nudges inconstantly, but it’s there.

And the message of the nudge is:

you were a happy child…you were free…you were given a story to write with the truth of your life.

And now, you must face the shadow, the fat and heavy cape you drag - the one that holds you back from the laugh, from the embrace, from the truth of being alive. Alive: eternally, powerfully, gloriously alive.

You are a slave. Me too.

So let’s break free. Let’s sack the master, and promote ourselves.

We must be laborers now. Free laborers, working to mine the shadow for those lies.

Mine those little lies, those big lies, and bring them into the sunshine. 

Let them gleam - they are jewels to behold, for you now know why you re-wrote the story and careered your life away from the gold.

Do you feel the shadow lightening? You will, for you have withinin you all the labor needed for this work.

It’s the work of a lifetime.

The work that little child is asking you to do.

Betting on Good and Being Wrong

It’s better to believe that some people are good and to be occasionally wrong than it is to believe that everybody is bad and be always right.

A Life of Depression and a Heart of Gold

Depression - the pain without pain. 

Depression - many would consider it hell. 

There are, however, reasons why depression remains a valuable process. One where we are forced to disconnect from the world around us. Yes, this is a risky proposition, a positive feedback cycle - and one which can be fatal.

Most depressions ebb and flow. Others can go on for years. 

It’s important, of course, to medically and therapeutically treat certain kinds of depressions - there are, after all, many biological forces at stake which may need remedy.

But let’s say that there is a kind of depression which - even if needing some treatment - embeds itself within the fibre of some people.

Thought experiment: if you were told that you would live through life with depression, what would you do? Would you automatically assume that your life was instantly not worth living?

Or…

…Or would you consider that maybe this was a journey for you. That life doesn’t have to be a constant stream of un-depression.

What if you realized that pain is transient - that is has a quality that is not as stable as you first recognized?

Try this: put pressure against some part of your body - enough of a discomfort, or even mild pain. Then: close your eyes and ask yourself what it feels like; focus on the feeling; ask “what *is* this? 

Do you notice tiny shifts in its quality? Do you notice something about how you react to the experience? 

Now, try bending into the pain, not away from it. What’s that like?

Perhaps, some lives just have a predisposition to depression. 

Maybe those lives do need clinical assistance. 

But maybe they need more than that. Maybe they need to be told that it’s OK to be a human in hurt. Rather than stigmatizing these lives…rather than over-pathologizing what they feel…rather than over-reducing the crux of being human to a glaze of molecules - perhaps we need to appreciate the brain’s capacity to create light out of dark.

A life of depression may not be fun. It may feel like it’s doomed to un-happiness.

A heart of gold, however, powers the impossible. 

A heart of gold dreams of better things.

Deep in the heart of gold is the acceptance that to be human is to weep until the tears are gone…

…is to think until the thoughts float off weightless…

…is to sink deep down into the ground until the sun shines like a heart of gold.

@RadicalModesty

Je Part Donc Je Suis

Share is the new Think: Je part donc je suis.

Centuries ago Descartes reflected the tonal mode of the emerging civilization of the time, one built on linearity, rationality, thought. 

Cogito ergo sum: Je pense donc je suis: I think therefore I am.

The Thought came to dominate the last five hundred years - even before Descartes came moveable type, which ironed out the oral, curve-linear, feeling mode of previous civilizations. 

The thought is a necessary component in advancing knowledge, spurring intelligent discourse, establishing equitable laws. It remains a critical component of any civilized peoples’ fibre. 

But the Web’s productions, like social and other digital media, are now creating new modes upon which the civilizations now emerging will be built: the Share.

Sherry Turkle and others have used this phrase “I share therefore I am”.

More and more, people are sharing - sharing things which they wouldn’t have shared five years ago without the technologies which make them seamlessly and alluringly possible.

The once main current of thought which powered the last five hundred years of human activity is now being replaced by - among other things - the Share. 

It’s hard to  imagine what a civilization - if it merits that description - dominated by the Share will look.

This is something I - we - are going to have to process a bit more. I’m not sure it’s going to be all good…nor all bad. Beyond both perhaps. But something we may not be ready for - when has our species ever ready for any civilization for that matter?

There is something profound going on here. It’s taken me a while to get dig deeper, but after listening, I think I am hearing the sound of the running stream - a metaphorical stream of tweets rushing onward beyond what we’ve known.

Listen. Do you hear it? 

Nous partageons donc nous sommes!

@RadicalModesty

Become Who You Are

Alan Watts once titled a book of his Become Who You Are - a riff on Nietzsche’s riff on Pindar “Become What You Are”.

It’s a simple expression - a reminder if you will - that you already are who you are, so rather than working hard to escape from your problems, focus being who you already are. (Wow, what a poorly structured sentence - but it are what it are ;)

In our culture, there is an obsession with being happy. Underlying this urge, though, is not so much a desire for happiness as an urge to avert the problems confronting us - the stress, the worry, the bills, the garage door falling. 

The most noble spiritual movements haven’t centered on being “happy” - no, they’ve centered on “being meaning”. Huge difference - and, as an unintended consequence, an arrival into happiness.

Both the teachings of Zen and of Jesus, for instance, include practices for opposing our primal urges: Zen focuses on observing our urges versus just following them. Jesus asserts: turn the other cheek - which is to say: resist your primal urge, turn it upside-down.

Being human is going beyond being animal. We are animals. But being human goes beyond that - sacrificing yourself for another; going on a hunger strike; telling a joke. Even animals are capable of human moments - the dog who runs out into busy traffic to save another dog.

Although this resistance to primal urges may seem counter to the idea of “becoming who you are”, it’s entirely consistent. For who you are is more than the sum of your urges. You are more than your urges. 

You are everything:

• You are an animal
• You hurt
• You laugh
• You cheat
• You sacrifice yourself
• You drink too much
• You drink too little
• You have stinky feet
• You do wonderful things
• You do naughty things
• You breathe
• You fart
• You live
• You die

Who you are goes on and on and on until you no longer go on.

It’s beautiful and terrifying and profound and lonely and social.

It’s OK to be fucked up. 

It’s OK to feel like a wounded heap of abandoned dross.

It’s OK to laugh for no reason.

It’s OK to talk to yourself.

It’s OK to be nervous about a speech you’re about to give.

It’s OK to want acclaim, even if you don’t feel worthy of it.

It’s OK to be modest.

It’s OK to be happy.

It’s all OK.

But you must contend with the meanings inherent in your experience of the world, to peer and feel deeply into what these things are. Because they are you.

The more you resist who you are, the more painful you become. 

When sad, be sad.

When crying, cry.

Be who you are to yourself.

Just be to others what they need you to become - and that means bringing forth something else that you are: not you. 

Don’t reach for happiness. Don’t go for misery and self-pity.

Go for you who you are: which is more than you know right now.

To Forgive Wrongs Darker Than Death

We are imitative beings. We learn by imitation. If we weren’t imitative beings we’d have no language, no culture, no civilization.

Our imitative powers, however, are also our dark weaknesses.

If you hit me, I want to hit back. In theory, this hit-back cycle could go on and on and on, and there’s no guarentee that the “innocent’ one prevails.

It is only by shattering the mirror of imitation that we escape this prison of mirrors.

And yet: there is within us an almost mysterious want - perhaps lust - for inflicting wound and wrath on those who wrong us.

What is that feeling? What is it’s source? What *is* it that we want when we thirst for revenge?

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, what does that say about the one who accrues revenge?

If you examine the mechanics of ending evil in the universe, it cannot be achieved by the use of mirrors.

When confronted by this question, what is your answer?: if you had to choose between slaying your perpetrator but letting evil continue, or forgiving her and releasing the world from suffering, which do you choose?

Not all of us would make the same choice.

But when you look up at the moon, out at the planets, beyond to the stars and galaxies - do you think you can pocket them, palm them in your hands and cast them as you please?

So too is it with the weight of sufferings that befall you in this life: to let go of what cannot be lifted is an act of salvation.

For evil is a nothingness. It is not moon, nor planet nor star nor galaxy. It is simply a choice.

The mirror and the choice. They are the two terrible things we all must confront.

You may not have had anything to do with what someone else chose to do to you. It was out of your hand, your reach.

What, then, will you do with the mirror?

For the mirror is within your reach: you can do what it commands or you can smash it with your will.

Your choice. Just note:

That smashing may satisfy that dark want, but obeying that command instantly turns you into a servant - an imitator of a dark master.

A Kardashev Scale for Consciousness

Can the evolution of consciousness be given a scale? That is, is there a way to peer into the history of human consciousness, examine its present and approximate predictions of its future?

The Kardashev Scale was developed to measure technological advancement of civilizations and focuses on energy consumption as the key measurement of advancement (bigger toys, bigger noise).

Kardashev Scale is by no means scientific. But as an intuition pump it helps to put evolution of civilization in some frame to work. Perhaps we can take the idea and apply it to human consciousness. (Then again - maybe it’s kinda dopey, but I’ll go for it anyway.)

Ancient Human Consciousness

What kind of consciousness did our hominid ancestors possess? What was its quality, its awareness, its processes, its complexity?

Contemporary Human Consciousness

For the last several thousand years, we’ve largely been an introspective species - introspection and the ability to be aware of our own consciousness perhaps has been the most powerful influence on the trajectory of our cultural and technological evolution.

Future Human(?) Consciousness

It’s most likely that technology will figure into our consciousness. It already has in some respects:

• Writing had an effect on our memory and moved us away from a primarily oral culture to a written one.
• Digital and other social media are - right now - reshaping how we connect and share and commune. There’s no one mode of communicating: video, audio and text are the dominant modes. So already we are at a cusp of some future change in consciousness, for these technologies open up novel communication and social constructs we enver before realized existed.

It’s hard for us to imagine the future of our consciousness. Is it even possible for that to be one? 

Clearly biological evolution proceeds much slower than technological advancement (although there could be argument for miniscule but ramifying selective pressures on genetic or epigenetic mechanisms over surprisingly shorter time-scales than we would have previously anticipated).

So any future consciousness will be shaped and evolved largely by the influences of technology.

I’m wary of using the word ‘cyborg’ in this post - because I want to highlight the human part of our consciousness. Yet I do recognize that our future consciousness will be cyborg-y. Rather, I would say our consciousness will likely be the complex result of our relationship between us and technology (which is what our current consciousness involves).

So maybe - in sense - we already are at a point similar to our future consciousness. Except: by orders of magnitude. 

Will our our kind of consciousness be more or less peaceful? 

Will our kind of consciousness be more or less healthy?

Will our kind of consciousness be more or less dependent on technology?

Will our kind of consciousness be more or less connected to nature?

And what kind of influence would an inflected consciousness have on our consumption of energy devoted to technological advancement?

That is: what the heck would our world look like if the positive feedback loop between technological advancement and consciousness evolution goes on and on???

In the end, what matter would it make?

After all, the present moment is all that exists right now. Our consciousness of it - and in it - may be the only things which matter most of all. 

Still, the journey is also the stream. And the stream is consciousness.

@RadicalModesty

To Forgive…

To forgive is to conquer without becoming a tyrant.

@RadicalModesty

Russell Brand - Radically Modest

Here’s an interview of comedian Russell Brand. It’s one of those interviews which attempt get a rise out of celebrities. Russell doesn’t fall for that trap. 

In fact, he demonstrates a passionate sense of expression and honesty-of-feeling while holding within himself a center of modesty:

[Youtube link]

The video has made the rounds - which suggests to me that there is a demand out there to address our culture’s fascination with fame.

It’s good to see there are people who can show modesty under tabloid pressure.

@RadicalModesty