Deep Surface

From the article Blind to Change, Even as It Stares Us in the Face in the New York Times section:

…the results of change blindness studies and other experiments strongly suggest that the visual system can focus on only one or very few objects at a time, and that anything lying outside a given moment’s cone of interest gets short shrift. The brain, it seems, is a master at filling gaps and making do, of compiling a cohesive portrait of reality based on a flickering view.

“Our spotlight of attention is grabbing objects at such a fast rate that introspectively it feels like you’re recognizing many things at once,” Dr. Wolfe said. “But the reality is that you are only accurately representing the state of one or a few objects at any given moment.” As for the rest of our visual experience, he said, it has been aptly called “a grand illusion.” Sit back, relax and enjoy the movie called You.

I took up Twittering a few months ago, just to see what it was all about. Now I’m hooked, and have even less of a desire to post here. When I consider posting, this is what the process looks like, more or less:

1. An idea forms.
2. I start to write about that idea.
3. The idea turns into several paragraphs that resemble a blog post.
4. Memories of seeing this idea other places come up.
5. With a little research or conversation, it becomes clear that someone else - or perhaps a great many someones have spent time writing about this idea, examining it from many angles.
6. Reconsidering what I have written, it becomes clear that I’m covering no new ground.
7. I feel humbled and wonder about the point of spending more time fleshing out an idea that many others have considered more deeply.
8. I leave the blog post mostly private, often recording it in my Google Notebook and perhaps discussing the topic with family and friends.

Occasionally, I end up posting something before this entire process takes place or or because some personal experience seems worth communicating, but this happens rarely anymore.

There is still this urge to write publicly, to share, connect, and get feedback - all of which helps to reinforce the (apparently false) idea that I am real and have substance. So, in 140 characters or less, I Twitter something about what’s going at that moment, inserting those characters in the stream of many others who are doing the same thing. The only pressure I put on myself is to be slightly interesting or entertaining. If I’m not, so what? Those characters quickly wash by in the stream of others sharing their moments.

My most recent Twitter posts now show up in the sidebar of this site.

A New York Times Article explores the phenomenon of feeling inadequate:

Feel Like a Fraud? At Times, Maybe You Should

Stare into a mirror long enough and it’s hard not to wonder whether that’s a mask staring back, and if so, who’s really behind it.

A similar self-doubt can cloud a public identity as well, especially for anyone who has just stepped into a new role. College graduate. New mother. Medical doctor. Even, for that matter, presidential nominee.

and later

Questionnaires measuring impostor fears ask people how much they agree with statements like these: “At times, I feel my success has been due to some kind of luck.” “I can give the impression that I’m more competent than I really am.” “If I’m to receive a promotion of some kind, I hesitate to tell others until it’s an accomplished fact.” [Emphasis mine]

Read the rest

Of course people feel like frauds at times. This is due to the illusion that there is an individual there controlling the way things happen. This is patently false, even though it is “common sense” and rarely questioned. But there’s a part of us that knows things just happen and there is no one controlling anything, The schism between that inner knowing and the belief that there is an separate “I” within each one of us guiding action and making decisions - that’s what leads to these feelings of fraud.

We all know how dependent we are on the environment. Without oxygen, we die within seconds. Without water, food, sunlight, etc, we die - time is the only variable. We do not exist without the environment there to support us, yet each of us imagines that our thought process is somehow separate, broken off in an isolated bubble where we are independent and make conscious decisions.

One way to see this is to look at thought. Is there ever a time when we decide to think a certain thing? I don’t think so. Thought come up as if out of nowhere, influenced by what we had for breakfast, sunspots, our genetics, the thoughts that came before, and a billion other things. If we can’t choose which thought to think, what makes us believe that the actions apparently flowing from those thoughts have any independent nature?

My advice is to relax into that truth and let go of the fantasy of an independent you. It is luck, fate, and the Universe that makes “your” decisions. There is no separate you.

(Disclaimer: I can see this logically, but still feel separate.)

An inquiry into belief: Dying to the self, seeing things as they are, and knowing truth will make me happier, make my life better.

These questions are taken from Byron Katie’s The Work.

1. Is it true?
Despite all the warnings I’ve read, it still seems true.

2. Can you absolutely know it’s true?
No. I have no idea. In fact, enlightenment is one thing that nearly everyone who claims to achieve it says “it can’t be communicated.” Given that, the idea I have formed around it is guaranteed to be flat wrong.

Can you know more than God/reality? No. Of course not. And I believe that what is happening should be happening, but there’s still the sense that I don’t know that for sure. There is still the desire for things to be different, better. While there is some acceptance of this desire, the subtle discontent with the way things are is not completely accepted. It drives me and helps to keep the idea of a separate me alive - a separate me who must do something to make things different and better. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday I swam 20 laps at the gym, which wiped me out. Over the last ten years, my devotion to health has fluctuated while the body has gradually fattened up and become less athletic. I’d like to reverse this trend and may have found the motivation to install a different pattern - one that trends toward better health until the natural end to this body is no longer avoidable.

On a weekend day close to my 36th birthday (April 9th), I intend to do a Birthday Challenge, which will include:

• 36 Laps in this same pool (35 is a mile)
• 36 Miles on my road bike
• 3600 Feet in elevation gain while hiking.
• 36 Pull-ups in a row
• 36 Push ups in a row

Aside from the pull-ups, I realize this wouldn’t be hard for a serious athlete, but this body hasn’t been seriously athletic for a long time. If my fitness level improves faster than expected, more may be added to the list. Or maybe I’ll do something goofy to cap the day off, like eating 36 pieces of sushi as a friend suggested.

So why am I really doing this? Or who is making this commitment? As I seen it now, I’m nothing more than a collection of patterns formed from an infinite set of influences that appear converge in an apparently separate body-mind. In reality, I think the separation between me, these converging influences and the environment is arbitrary and ultimately non-existent:

Here are some of the influences, programs and patterned preferences that appear to lead to this commitment:

• The cultural drive toward health and fitness.
• The fear of death and decrepitude.
• The belief that healthier equals happier.
• The desire for community and the support of friends family.
• The knowledge that my grandfather did 42 pull-ups on his 74th birthday and my uncle is still in better shape than I’ve ever been.
• The continual drive to define myself.
• The grasping for any arbitrary external activity to help avoid more time spent looking internally at nothing (or what I really am).
• The general move away from what is toward an imaginary vision of what could be.

In the end, it really doesn’t matter - as this quote from the birthday challenge website succinctly states:

“My doctor told me that if I take perfect care of myself for the rest of my life…
I’ll get very sick and die.” - Rodney Dangerfield

Still, it just seems like a good thing to do.

In this video, Sam Harris has the balls to put his credibility on the line and attempt to sell mysticism to a room full of Atheists.

It’s great to see such a brilliant man - a neuroscientist and respected author - espouse views that are close to my own. Yes, it makes me think I’m brilliant too, but only until I remember that I don’t exist and don’t know anything. There are points where I disagree with him about the results of meditation or the reasons to pursue a mystical experience, but they are fairly minor. In fact, the points where I disagree are areas where I have no experience.

Anyway, if you are entertained by thoughtful ideas and have an hour to spare, watch the video. It’s probably more interesting than an hour of TV - and there are no commercials. Thanks to C4 for the link.

Taking this blog offline was done partly out of fear, so it’s back up again.

But what was I afraid of? Condemning comments? Lost friends? The idea that someone would look up my morbid, amoral musings and I’d be denied a job in the future?

The better question here really is, “who cares?”

I don’t believe there is someone here to care, just the illusion of a separate self. But there is not the direct and certain knowledge of non-existence, so I figured perhaps it would be a good idea to continue putting stuff out here. If there is really no “me,” who am I protecting?

I don’t believe there’s really anything of importance I or anyone else could say - which is another reason the blog was taken off line for a while. Importance and meaning are fleeting. They get obliterated with one honest look at the vastness of space and time. Still, there is this urge to write, to share these opinions - which disappear even faster into space and time.

Seeing that fear held me back is a good reason to write - so I’m reminded with every revealing post that there is nothing to fear if there is no one her to protect.

And so am I, along with everyone you know and love. And everyone you don’t know.

This is the best advice that seems worth giving lately - consider death. It’s residue from reading Jed McKenna’s latest, Spritiual Warfare several months ago. Try looking that title up on Amazon. Woe to the fundamentalist who orders this book instead of one of the many available for helping in the Biblical Fight Against Yourself.

Death is not something most of us think about much. It’s something we avoid thinking about. Which is too bad because it’s the only thing that we can be sure of. Thinking about death as often as possible is healthy, contrary to popular belief.

Noticing the inevitable end we must face can help us pay more attention to what’s going on right in front of us. It can help us to consider our actions from the perspective that we really don’t know if we’re going to die in forty years or fifteen minutes. Death can bring clarity to what’s really important for each of us. Death can help us make decisions. The Grim Reaper is a great life coach.

Hans Rosling was the first speaker at the 2007 IDSA Conference I attended recently. He gave a design oriented version the talk he gave at TED where he quickly debunks some long-held assumptions about the difference between first and third world nations. He does this using time-based data visualization tools that far exceed anything I’ve seen in Excel.

“Ignorance is not the problem - preconceived notions are.”

This quote from Hans kicked off several days of similar sentiments about the design process and “design thinking.” along with a variety of other interesting perspectives.

Rosling’s enthusiastic salesmanship of visualization tools was inspiring. He proved how much easier it is to destroy preconceived notions when statistics are combined with clear graphic animation. Here’s more about Rosling from TED. His software can be found at Gapminder.

Links to Rosling’s TED talk have been well circulated though the web. I felt like posting it here because his comment about preconceived notions reminded me of Byron Katie’s The Work and other variations of inquiry. If we question our preconceived notions - all of them - we are likely to find that there is nothing left of our previously stable reality, helping each of us to become an “empty vessel” as described in Buddhism.

As a designer, If I question my preconceived notions, boundaries fall away and a higher level of creativity becomes possible.