Obsidian Noise

Second office this morning. Not the secret one in the secret library hole, but another one, three subway stops away. I walked into the building and through about 400 young, graduating nurses, all in graduation dresses, all made up.

Tough life.

Ongoing and permanent feedback loops, everywhere.

Our sensors, our processors, and our stimulators. Understanding those mechanisms and how they work is important. The invisible loops that work on our heads, the loops that sometimes continue their movement and influence long after the instigating event has stopped, yet that still cycle around, influencing our thoughts, emotions and behaviors…

those need to be understood most of all.

Ever done something and not known why? Or worse, ever done something and regretted it, not because of the mistake but because you’ve made that mistake before and yet couldn’t seem to avoid the repeat? That’s the work of residue loops, swirling and influencing our actions, like the whirls left over by a canoe paddle that’s already three strokes further along.

Solution? Just remember you’re always under the influence of something, and *then* decide how to be. Not easy, but possible.

Rain.

There was a time when Broadway was a dirt road and the only graffiti were the tracks of horses and carriages. This is the corner of the street I now live on.

 They built all the residences at about the same time, all more-or-less at once, covering an entire hill that used to be completely featureless, bordering the first of NYC’s “City College” campuses.

Here it is today:

It’s both comforting and concerning how things change so little. That building, that block, and even the people around the place– the waves of different migrant populations washing around and through Manhattan– is all in a kind of stasis. Things are gentrifying, but have they ever not been? 

This building, here photographed in 1905, still stands… though with a slightly different purpose:

Most of the residents of this neighborhood now have no idea what once was here. They don’t know the history of the buildings they rent, or what they’re now a part of by living in them. I want to print out giant posters of these structures from when they were born and paste them on the sides of what now remains. The entire neighborhood would be a giant walkable gallery of architectural history.

What would the purpose be?

Maybe if current residents saw how substantial and permanent these structures are, they’d feel a bit more proud to be living there, maybe clean up more, restore some dignity to the place and themselves.

Graduation weekend, and then the nicest time of year at my place of work. All the undergrads are gone, the place quiets right down and the gym empties out. Working on a campus wouldn’t be so bad were it not for the students.

Perhaps sometime in the not too distant future all students will be distance learners, attending their classes from home. Think of the cost savings for the university– all students live and eat and play at home, they attend classes through their computers and tablets and do all their work from home.

Of course, the university would have none of that. It would mean that students then pay only for credits, and then the real estate of the campus would be too expensive to hold on to, and the entire model of higher education would have to change. Faculty would work from home, spending their time designing courses that can be “delivered” online rather than teaching them every day, either as asynchronous correspondance-type courses where students mail in their writing and exams, or real-time, direct video-to-video synchronous “virtual” classrooms, or of course a blending of the two. Students will come to campus for some things, like capstone events, maybe exams, other exercises and projects. The rest of the time they study from home or from giant dorms far from the campus.

Perhaps in the those giant dorms they have pretty good amenities– a cafeteria or two, a gym maybe. Maybe some conference rooms for group work, or maybe even some rooms for dialing into their courses instead of doing it all from their dorm rooms. Tutors and TAs might be there. Perhaps a faculty or two could manage some classrooms there, and teach out of them.

And then, accidentally, it’s the university model all over again.

It’s hard to think outside of the system in which you’ve grown. Humans rebuild the familiar wherever they go, despite opportunities for improvement and innovation. If you ask someone to radically re-imagine “school” and describe what it could be like, you’ll find it’s pretty much the same idea we have today. This was studied when Second Life became a hot topic. Classes started being offered in Second Life, where you would attend with your avatar. You’d be assigned to meet somewhere in there, and that place would always end up having 4 walls, rows of desks and chairs, a teacher, etc. In that world there are no rules, not even laws of physics, so your class could be held on a cloud, or underwater, or in a giant sphere. But for the most part, virtual classes in Second Life were identical to their analogue counterparts in the real world.

It’s funny and maybe a little sad and cute.

Worldview: Naturalism and duck sovereignty and responsibility. Duckhood is the measure of all things and the value of the world lies in our interpretation and action.

Ethical Stance: Priority always to duck dignity, equality, and development beyond all alternative systems of beliefs and values.

Cultural Ideal: Paideia, Duckanitas and Bildung as cultural-pedagogical visions of duckhood at its best, full development and actualization, as well as being well, doing well or duck flourishing.

Themes

Universal duck ethic that secures dignity, equality, solidarity, and diversity (personal and cultural pluralism) as well as dialogic, caring, empathetic interpersonal relations (autonomy, authenticity and personal liberties as well as duck solidarity and social responsibility).

Intellectual virtues of rationality, critical reasoning, open-mindedness, free inquiry & creativity.

Participatory and deliberative Democratic politics, welfare state, securing both personal liberties and social justice and solidarity.

Holistic education, giving equal opportunities to fulfill potentialities, personal growth, broad education, and active participation in the natural, social, cultural and political spheres of life.

Enemies

1. Religious fundamentalism.
2. Totalitarian ideologies and regimes.
3. Tyrannical capitalism (worshiping wealth, success, instrumentalism, and social Darwinism).
4. Ethical nihilism (including subjectivism, anything goes and all-embracing relativism, meaninglessness and political tolerance.)

Late sleep. I forgot my belt this morning. I have weak coffee from the street and am racing to finish a document before noon.

The lawnmowers around my building make it sound like summer, though I’m wearing a new hoody and a couple girls in the office have their heaters on.

Think about feedback loops.  It’s more interesting than you think.

In a deterministic universe, all things exist in a feedback loop. Technically, if you knew all the loops acting on an agent, and you knew the value of all the loops, you could predict 100% of the time what the agent will do.

More importantly, you could affect one of the loops.

And even more importantly, you could affect one of the loops acting on yourself, and be free from it.

Old Assertion: Create your frame.

New assertion: Willfully affect your loops.

Good monday, everyone.

Busy days. I might have taken on too many things. I’m not experiencing much stress, but am beginning to recognize that I won’t be able to do everything over a singular period of time. I will have to approach these different projects sequentially. That is not such an easy thing.

The reason why completing distinct project types in sequence isn’t such an easy thing is because it’s hard to focus on one with full intensity while knowing that there are other things of equal value and interest that are delayed because of what’s at hand. It can feel easier to work on multiple things at once. I think it’s because when a sudden compulsion arises, it’s possible to take a shallow dive into one of the other projects, get pieces done, and then shift to the next one that comes to mind. That blast of anxiety at what’s not getting done on one project can be addressed immediately. Solved. So why not just do it that way?

Overall the process is less healthy. What happens when you spread yourself out over a few different and distinct projects at once is that you operate reactively. When the compulsion comes, you work on that part. While working on that part, the compulsion comes to hurriedly fix that other thing on that other project, which you then do, which feels nice. Until the realization that the other thing was interrupted and needs to now be restarted. The overall result is that you end up working in response to anxious realizations at what’s not getting done. You jump from impulse to impulse, stressor to stressor, defeating them all as they arise, but somehow never finding periods where they cease to arise. What happens is that you end up being micromanaged by your own sudden remembrances and compulsions.

Working in sequence is rational and self-directed. It’s not easy as pie, because you do think about the list of things ahead, but you’re also not jumping around nervously between things and living reactively. You’re in control: you made a decision about what to prioritize and what the timeline for each project should be, and as you progress through them, you end up with completed work, not mere mini completions of a persistent work in progress. 

“It is better to be at odds with the whole world than, being one, to be at odds with myself.”

Back from a weekend in the woods.

More later.

no time. philosophy term paper due by midnight, but at 6p i’m committed to other things. so i have about 7.5 hours to finish this.

6hrs, actually. training at noon.

let’s see what comes out if i blast the obituary discography while doing this.

catch you all on the flip flop.

So most of last week I posted some things from a journal of ideas. There’s nothing specifically practical there, just idea pieces that seem right to me.

In order to exist with vitality, people need a worldview. They need to make decisions about how they think things should be, and when things aren’t that way, they’ll know exactly what the problem is and can do something about it. So here’s mine, An ethical code that posits:

the enhancement of human development, wellbeing, and dignity is the ultimate end of all human thought and action; giving priority to the values of human dignity, equity, growth and solidarity over any alternative set of values—religious, ideological, economic or national.