January 2024

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January, 2024

January 31 If you feel like you have to get everything done, you won't be able to give your all to anything.

No matter how crowded the morning commute is in New York, there's always a line for the escalator and an open lane on the stairs. I don't think it's because people are lazy; most of them are about to walk a half a mile to finish their commute. I think it's because we can't resist the temptation of ease and comfort. I mean, why would you turn down a free twenty seconds to check your favorite social media feed while magically descending two flights-worth of stairs?

The practice of meditation is not clearing your mind but filling your mind with a singular focus.

January 30 This is why I love and align with Kantian ethics: Kant argues for a faith borne from morality, a "religion of good life-conduct." It empowers me and you as autonomous moral agents capable of discerning right from wrong and endows us with the responsibility to religiously uphold what we reason to be good life-conduct. It's beautiful.

One of the greatest insights from Camus's The Fall:

"God is not needed to create guilt or to punish. Our fellow men suffice, aided by ourselves. You were speaking of the Last Judgment. Allow me to laugh respectfully. I shall wait for it resolutely, for I have known what is worse, the judgment of men."

It has an uncanny kinship with possibly my favorite quote ever from Kant (which I have memorized):

"The pretension that the depraved go unpunished in the world is ungrounded, for by its nature every crime already carries with it its due punishment, inasmuch as the inner reproach of conscience torments the depraved even more harshly than the Furies" (Religion).

Camus argues for the severity of man's judgment as being worse than God's. Kant argues for the severity of our own self-torment as being worse than any consequence man could endure in the world. The synthesis of the two reveals that man is his own moral authority.

A dream is a cryptic message from your past life, the you of yesterday.

January 29 We humans are sensitive to shock: sudden drops, noise from silence, anything that subverts our expectations. But we can manage any outcome and not be immobilized by shock, as long as the outcome isn't so far from our expectations. We are adaptable, but it's not the things that change; it's our expectations of and reactions to the things. At the turn of winter, the cold is a shock and keeps us indoors. Even a week into winter, we change our expectations and brace for the most likely outcome. Warm weather would be a shock.

Remember: You are writing for a reader — someone who exists outside of your head. Make it clear to them and make it matter.

January 28 Live Like a Glacier

• Be in the low places, where everything is abundant.
• Chart a path and gradually move in your chosen direction.
• Value stillness.
• Acknowledge your own majesty.
• Make your mark on the world.
• Grow slowly and consistently, season by season.
• Be noble and reliable, impenetrable.

You are not the boxes people put you in, and you're not how you see yourself. You are an amorphous, obscure thing — always imperceptibly changing.

Our cosmic insignificance is important to remember, as long as it doesn’t lead to us forgetting the agency we have on Earth. We matter in this universe because we matter to ourselves and each other, and because we have the unique ability to decide what is meaningful in life.

Cherish the middle-moments, because most of life happens between where you were and where you're going. Very little of life is arriving.

January 26 I'm not religious, but I am principled.

A great example of riffing on cliches: "Everything in moderation, even moderation"

January 25 It's immoral to cut in line, unless the person in front of you moves more like leg-less reptile than a bipedal mammal and lacks urgency in the most un-American way, where you would otherwise waste your ticket to ride. Then, it's morally permissible to cut in line.

On the Rose Reading Room, in the Rose Reading Room:

Surrounded by beauty and bathed in silence, I hear the thoughts that would otherwise be drowned out by city-noise. There is silence in the city; it's just scarce. It's sacred and must be protected.

January 24 Do you agree that our awareness of death is the source of gratitude? Could you be grateful for what you have if everything in life were not fleeting and ephemeral, if you knew you could have it all forever?

(Revised Springboard from "Majesty and Mortality")

When I am journaling, exercizing, and meditating, I have a negligible amount of stress in my day-to-day. (Of course, there's a chicken-or-egg question here: Do you do those things when you are not stressed, or by doing those things, do you relieve stress?) If I can just do those things consistently, I can operate at a higher level of energy and enjoyment in life.

Duality is one of the oldest pieces of philosophical knowledge: Adam and Eve, salvation and sin, Sun and Moon, Heaven and Hell, predator and prey, Good and Evil, Yin and Yang, Life and Death. The idea is that nothing exists as one or the other but always both, that two extremes mix in unequal portions to create each thing. It's easy to know this conceptually and hard to know experientially.

Careful with your prepositions — they change the meaning of what you're saying.

Don't: "She is untethered to precedent."

Do either:

• "She is not tethered to precedent" (my preference for this example)
• Or "She is untethered from precedent."

On Whether to Capitalize an Independent Clause Following a Colon

There's a debate among grammarians: whether to capitalize an independent clause when it follows a colon. And here's my verdict: only capitalize that clause if what precedes the colon is a phrase. If both sides of the colon are independent clauses, do not capitalize the second, so that the two appear more closely related.

Don't capitalize when it's a phrase. "There were only ever three kinds of flowers in Nana's garden: tulips, daisies, and red roses."

Do capitalize when the first is a phrase and the second a clause. "My revelation in the valley: There is nothing more noble than a glacier."

Don't capitalize when both are complete clauses. "The E-News panel was malnourished after the Academy Awards: only one woman had a wardrobe malfunction."

Exception: When using a colon to introduce a quotation, capitalize the first word of the quote regardless of whether what precedes the colon is a complete clause.

"I'll think about this idea at least once a week until the day I die: 'The pretension that the depraved go unpunished in the world is ungrounded, for by its nature very crime carries with it its due punishment, inasmuch as the inner reproach of conscience torments the depraved even more harshly than the Furies'" (Kant, Religion).

(Also, don't use a colon to connect two phrases. "My fatal flaw: being too good-looking." In that case, add a verb: "My fatal flaw is being too good-looking.")

On Formatting Bulleted Lists

The most important thing with bulleted lists is parallelism. Whether you use:

• lower-case elements separated by semicolons;
• Capitalized fragments with a period after each item.
• Or capitalized fragments with a period only after the final item.

keep it consistent through the entire list.

My preferred method: Treat the bulleted list as if it were a list within a sentence or paragraph, just formatted differently. Capitalize and punctuate it as a normal list with a few exceptions:

• Capitalize the first word of each item
• Omit commas and semicolons, for readability (and let the bullets serve as those marks)
• And if each item is an independent clause, end each line with a period (otherwise, only add end-punctuation to the final item).

(Note: Bryan Garner says to place the and (or whichever conjunction) at the end of the penultimate item, but then you'd have to add a comma or semicolon before the conjunction. I say, put the and at the start of the final item and capitalize it to avoid commas and semicolons altogether.)

The Paleolithic Psyche

The masculine insecurity is about how well you provide for others. The feminine insecurity is about how well you care for others. And both are insecure about how they appear to others.

You could call these the 1) hunter, 2) gatherer, and 3) tribal insecurities, respectfully.

Then, there are three possible ways to respond to whichever source of insecurity you feel:

• Prey: Assuming guilt, internalizing the pain, feeling fragile, and being non-confrontational
• Predator: Casting blame, lashing out with aggressive language, being dismissive and stubbornly disagreeable
• Sage: Acting from acute self-awareness and radical self-honesty; owning your genuine shortcomings and working to correct them; disregarding the hateful attacks from others that come from places of malice, pain, and jealousy

In a capitalistic society, we get to thinking that what's scarce is what's valuable and that what's valuable is expensive. And that's all true — for material things. Yet, there are things in life that are abundant and valuable but free. In a capitalistic society, we lag in our ability to appraise these immaterial things, these things that cannot be bought or sold and that don't follow the price-and-value laws of the free market. These abundant, valuable, and free things include: community, laughter, silence, sunrises and sunsets, love, and the breath. If you are not rich in life, you can still have a rich life.

How to ski type III: Use your edges to turn while keeping your shoulders square down the mountain, and make your turns longer to slow down, shorter to speed up.

Trade in Your Generic Verbs

Example of nondescript, passive, wordy verbs vs. apt, active, descriptive verbs:

Don't: "My team and I celebrated our championship win as we were handed a huge, heavy trophy."

Do: "I hugged my teammates and hoisted the championship trophy."

Hoisted alone replaced this entire phrase: as we were handed a huge, heavy. I hugged my teammates is more descriptive and three fewer syllables than my team and I celebrated. Whenever you have the chance to swap nouns or adjectives for verbs, do it (e.g., hoisted). And whenever you have the chance to upgrade your verb to one that is more descriptive or visual, do it (e.g., hugged).

When you read the first sentence, you have at least one question: How did you celebrate?

The second sentence answers that question without losing the answer to: What did you win? (the championship). I hugged my teammates and hoisted the championship trophy.

January 23 "A 'mondegreen' is a misheard lyric, saying, catchphrase, or slogan." – Bryan Garner, GMAU

Example:

• "The answer, my friends, is blowin' in the wind." – Bob Dylan
• "The ants are my friends, blowin' in the wind."

(Also an example of how comma placement can change the meaning of a sentence — compare the misheard lyric to "The ants are, my friends, blowin' in the wind.")

The Etymology of Editing

If you're a writer and want to become a better editor, start by understanding the full etymology of these words: concentrate, compress, revise.

• Concentrate: verb: to bring to a common center; to intensify (some action of the mind); noun: that which has been reduced to a state of purity or intensity
• Compress: to press or pack together; to force or drive into a smaller space; to put under pressure
• Revise: to look again, visit again (with the intent to improve or amend)

A talented editor has a practice of revisiting a piece of writing, each time with the intent of bringing it under pressure and scrutiny, so that the whole piece can come to a common center, until it has been reduced to a state of purity or intensity.

There's a level of comfort that makes life easier but makes it harder to do what you want in life. Doing what you want requires growth, and growth requires discomfort.

A microcosm of the greater-New-York attitude: If the lane in front of you is backed up all the way to the intersection and you have a green light, you will go ahead anyway and block the intersection for everyone else who is about to get a green. "If I can't get where I want to go right now, then no one can." Actually, it's not so malicious; rather, it's unconscious. Tri-state area people on the road seem to be blinded by a chronic self-centeredness.

Dreams give you free, daily admission to the museum of your mind.

Why is it that our default state is to delude ourselves and deny ourselves what we truly want in life?

There's nothing more noble than a glacier.

January 22 When to Hyphenate Compound Adjectives

A compound adjective must be hyphenated if it is made up of two or more parts of speech.

Examples:

• "She furnished her home with low-brow art." (adj. + noun)
• "Finger-lickin' good" (noun + present participle)
• "He was the best-fit candidate." (adj. + noun)
• "This establishment offers deep tissue massages, hot-stone (adj. + noun) rubs, and the highly-recommended (adv. + adj.) foot reflexology treatment."

Exception: Some compound adjectives are colloquially written as two words, called "open compounds." These are very few and include phrases like "high school" or "pro bono." You are not wrong to hyphenate these open compounds when they serves as adjectives, but it confuse your reader. (Although, it is incorrect to hyphenate these words as nouns, since they are naturally open compound nouns, like "no one.") If the adjective-phrase* is colloquially common enough, you can omit the hyphen. Otherwise, hyphenate.

• Don't get confused, now. "Adjective-phrase" is a compound noun, made up of two nouns. It's hyphenated because the individual nouns would have different meanings if separate, and if separate and consecutive, the nouns' relationship would be ambiguous.

If a compound adjective is made up of two or more adjectives, you must decide whether those adjectives are coordinate or hierarchical. If they are equal and independent (coordinate), separate them with a comma (and in that case, they in fact do not form a compound adjective). If the adjectives are unequal and dependent on one another (i.e., hierarchical –– see "deep tissue" in the example above), do not use a comma and leave a space between the words (to form an open compound adjective, made up of adjectives).

[[Coordinate and Hierarchical Adjectives]]

Attention is like uranium-235; it's a scarce and delicate commodity — hard to obtain and easy to lose.

January 21 The editorial *we*: I should only use we when staying an opinion about us humans. ("We are autonomous moral agents"). And us only has its place for the same: when I'm making a claim about our species or about the human experience. Otherwise, I need to use singular personal pronouns, since I am one writer sharing his thoughts, not speaking on behalf of any group.

Summary: Never use "we think" — only ever "I think we are" (the collective we, never the editorial we).

Don't use periods or paragraph-breaks for emphasis; use them for their true purposes: to separate clauses and ideas and arrange them in a meaningful sequence.

The best and worst part of being an editor: It adds a meta-perceptual layer to everything you read. The pro is that each word and clause has more depth and nuance as it passes through your mind — making for a richer reading experience. And the con is that those meta-thoughts about the words and clauses distract you from what they mean to say — interrupting your act of comprehension with cerebral (and often overly picky and inconsequential) commentary.

Not goes with or, neither with nor. You can use either without neither or not, but not plus nor means or.

Man, grammar-nerds are all punsters and word-players. Check out these books on style and usage:

• Roy Peter Clark's The Glamour of Grammar
• Ellen Jovin's Rebel with a Clause
• Patricia T. O'Conner's Woe Is I
• Eric Partridge's Usage and Abusage
• Eats, Shoots & Leaves

January 20 A rule of English grammar and mechanics is only as valuable as it is relevant to clear and concise meaning-making.

There are few rules I've found in our language that aren't necessary for clear and concise communication. But, in some instances, the language can be clear while breaking a rule. The trick is to know when you're breaking a rule and to adhere to that rule when it would otherwise confuse what you mean.

I am one of a million tech-enabled rats scurrying beneath the city. I am a patron on the NYC subway.

"Beyond the Sea" from Black Mirror is so well written and such a mind-fuck (like most episodes in the series) and a horrific tragedy. The narrative beats hit, and there's a satisfying circularity to the whole thing. But it's so sad. In a way, it plays out the defect-defect scenario of The Prisoner's Dilemma. Also, the Chekhov's Guns and foreshadowing in this one are great, namely the first and last space-walk — where the camera lingers on the tray, showing the process of Cliff removing his tag and giving it to his partner, David. Also also, the ending is such a twist. I thought David was going to kill Cliff and live out life as his replica on Earth. But instead, he kills Cliff's family to render him as lost as his David is, so that they have a chance of finishing their mission. Wow!

A day is a life. Sleep is practice for death. Dreams are analogous to the afterlife. And each morning is a resurrection.

We're obsessed with morning routines for the same reason we're obsessed with superhero origin stories: we long to understand the context of others' successes/failures. What can I emulate? What should I avoid?

The events of the morning are the prequel to the narrative of the day.

Have you ever watched an episode of TV that sounds like a table-read? I have — too many.

Great example of a Shiny Dime: The Second Mountain – David Brooks

Core Idea idea: Success is a feeling.

The key to transformation without trauma is to live in the valley of life. Let yourself be constantly aware of the ways you are missing who you aim to be. Don't climb the mountain with your wares on your back. Leave what you love in the valley, knowing you will return when you fail to or successfully summit the current mountain.

(Ref: David Brooks – The Second Mountain)

January 19 You'd think it'd be easy to be ambitious in New York. That's the default attitude, the background radiation of the city. But it's not easy for me, I think because my true ambitions include living elsewhere.

Be careful making judgement taboo (e.g., "You're too judge-y" or "That was so judgmental"). Good judgment is the foundation of a good life. It's how you decide what to do (ethics) and what to spend your time doing (values/decisions/ambitions). It's not wrong to judge. It's wrong to act like you know better than other people what is better for other people. Judge what you see — for yourself, not for others.

I believe that we humans are the sole source of meaning in the known universe, and that our ability to ascribe meaning to life and to things in the world is a divine power. When we decide something matters, we are manifesting our inherent divinity in the world. (And I believe that there is no meaning given to us by something outside of us; rather, what we inherent from some primordial source is the ability to decide what is meaningful.)

(On hitchhiking): To get where I needed to go, I had to overcome insecurity.

One of the most overused cliches: "in the middle of nowhere"

If you're not sore, you're not growing.

January 18 A dense, high-quality writing prompt (from Yours Truly): If you had a billboard on the tallest building in your hometown, what would it say?

My answer: "Say what is unsaid."

Sleep is practice for death, and dreams are analogous to the afterlife.

Say "hi" to everyone with whom I make eye-contact.

[[Experiment: Micro-Dose Discomfort]]

The Predictive Power of Convergent vs. Divergent Thinking

One of the most descriptive cognitive traits is one's capacity for divergent thinking. Convergent thinkers value security and want certainty and are more comfortable deferring to an authority, and they make up the majority of traditionally "successful" people. Divergent thinkers are rebellious and skeptical of norms, more comfortable with uncertainty and unlikely to defer to an authority. They make up both tails of the "traditionally successful" distribution. The ones who change the status quo are the success-outliers, and the ones who refuse to change in accordance with the status quo and who have not made the change themselves are the failure-outliers.

Of the Big Five personality traits, Openness and Agreeableness are most impacted by convergent/divergent thinking. The most convergent thinkers are high in Agreeableness and low in Openness (more analytical). The most divergent thinkers are the opposite: disagreeable and uniquely open to ideas/experiences (more creative). The corresponding political extremes are authoritarianism and anarchy for convergent and divergent thinking, respectively.

The most sustainable way of thinking, for individuals and nations, is a healthy mix of both — unequal, though, according to your preferences, skills, and cultural/moral values.

My favorite way to measure this in yourself is to do a word-association exercise. Have someone give you a random word to start, then go for a full minute jumping from word to word, saying the first next word that comes to mind. Record the whole thing. Afterwards, write out all the words you said, and sort them into buckets. The divergent thinker will have more buckets and cover a wider range of topics, making many surprising yet personally intuitive connections. The convergent thinker will go deeper within fewer buckets, compiling extensive lists of closely related things.

Example:

• Convergent: Tree, apple, pear, grape, gourd, fall, Halloween...
• Divergent: Tree, bee, bird, sex, abortion, democracy, Maoist China, Marx...

Note to self: Do the test with myself and friends, count the buckets, and come up with a benchmark ratio of words/bucket as a heuristic to delineate convergent and divergent thinkers along a spectrum.

The easiest way to motivate myself would be to convince myself that I'm special, that I have some divine purpose and that the little things I do have ultimate importance and that it would be a crime to keep my gifts from the world. It's hard to disobey a divine mandate. But I don't believe that.

Another way would be to give in to the idea that I am worthless if I'm not achieving what I want or not remaining disciplined or not always doing hard things. But I don't believe that either.

It would be dishonest and delusional to source my motivation from either the idea that I am "meant to do" great things in the world or that I am worthless if I fail to do great things in the world. Somehow, I need to give time and effort to the things that I value for their own sake — without some delusional self-belief or delusional self-hatred. The things I do are important to me. They are not special and are not important to the world. My ambitions and values should be enough of a motivation. But a lot of the time, they're not.

It's going to take a long time to break this habit of spamming Backspace as I type. But I just discovered that option/ALT + BKSPC deletes one full word at a time. Try it! Instead of hitting BKSPC seven times to delete the word "instead," I can do it in one keystroke. (I also just realized that there's an option on the right side of the keyboard too, which I never hit. But now I can press it with my thumb as I hit BKSPC with my ring-finger.)

We are endowed with inalienable rights — among them, life, liberty, and the pursuit of purpose. Happiness is an unworthy ideal. It's too easily attained and lost. Purpose is unattainable and is found in the pursuit itself — a worthy ideal. A purposeful life is one lived in an unending pursuit of purpose.

Unless you want a twist for a specific and intended effect, maintain parallel structure.

January 17 It's funny how surprised we are when the winter brings cold weather. If it's below freezing, you can't talk to a single stranger without a comment on the temperature. But this happens every year. It isn't a notable event. The fact that we don't feel the winter's wind in July is a measure of humanity's resilience and adaptability. Not only do we forget how the wind feels but we live as is it won't come again.

(As I type this, my right hand is numb.)

Music taste is one of the best predictors of compatibility for people and places. There are exceptions. Your taste could clash entirely with someone you love. But if your music taste matches a person or place, you're likely to feel at home with that person, in that place. Bwé, my favorite coffee shop, plays Florence + The Machine and Of Monsters and Men and Lorde and Mt. Joy and The Lumineers. At least once per week, I'll work here from 9–5, and only about once per week, I'll hear a song I like that isn't already on my playlist.

(After writing this, I SoundHound-ed three songs within 20 minutes. Honestly, it's even better if your music tastes intersect and overlap with enough variety where you can introduce new songs/artists to each other.)

January 16This may be my favorite Van Neistat video, despite steep competition, and it's not even public (Patreon-only).

• The three-act structure, open question about his 2007 BMW and the satisfying resolution
• His DIY map setup that orients you within the video and geographically on his ride
• The introspective, personal, philosophical voiceover that ties it all together
• The audio add-ins during the edit (commentary that clearly wasn't in the original script), talking about the playback being at 340% speed to simulate the feeling of floating on a bike, etc.

January 15 We so easily forget the fact of death because it is never our reality. The closest any of us can get in life is seeing someone else die, or falling sick and coming close to death ourselves, or maybe even being revived. But the character of life is that you are not dead, so it remains a challenge to imagine death as an inevitable reality.

January 12 Transformation Without Trauma

You don't have to hit rock-bottom to turn your life around. If you have enough self-awareness about where you're headed, where you want to go, and how to get there, you can detect rock-bottom and decide to swim to the surface.

This type of change is gradual, and it's on average more painful, because you're constantly looking for ways to be uncomfortable and challenged and always forcing yourself to do hard things — because you know they are the best things you could possibly do to become the best version of yourself.

No one has ever built massive quads by breaking their femur. But that's how we talk about life transitions: "My attempted suicide helped me find meaning"; "Cancer gave me permission to live the life that I've always wanted"; "My divorce was the reason I developed healthy habits." In the same way you wouldn't wait to break your femur before you started doing sets of squats, don't wait for the world to smack you before you start changing yourself toward who you want to become.

Develop a practice of introspection. Make a habit of doing hard things, when they are true to who you want to become. You'll never have to hit rock-bottom because you'll make every morning a resurrection.

Coordinate and Hierarchical Adjectives

"Long _ lasting flavor" —

how would you punctuate this tagline for your favorite brand of chewing gum?

A. "Long, lasting flavor" B. "Long lasting flavor" C. "Long-lasting flavor"

My first instinct would be to hyphenate, but it's not required. And after I learned what a "hierarchical adjective" is, I've decided for option B.

"Hierarchical adjectives do not have equal rank to the other adjectives in the phrase, i.e. the adjectives exist in hierarchy. This means that changing the order of the words or placing the word and between them would not make sense. For example, the cold December wind could not be the cold and December wind or the December, cold wind. Hierarchical adjectives are used without a comma." – ProWritingAid

— —

This little insight is a perfect microcosm for how I've learned so much about grammar and mechanics without any formal education in it: I've just been curious.

My pack of Wintergreen Extra actually does have that tagline on it: "Long lasting flavor." I scoffed, angry that I had encountered yet another example of a compound adjective (great Grammarly article) that didn't have a hyphen. But then I wondered, "What part of speech is 'lasting'?" Turns out, it's an adjective. "Okay, I'm wrong about the hyphen then."

Next question: "Is it still a compound adjective or something else?" I did a quick search about when to put commas between two adjectives and discovered a mechanics concept I've never encountered: coordinate and hierarchical adjectives. "Long lasting" is, in fact, a pair of hierarchical adjectives and an "open compound" adjective (meaning there's a space between the words, like "high school").

I've also just now decided that a rule for my personal style guide is to hyphenate all compound adjectives except those that are adjective-adjective pairs, and to leave spaces between hierarchical-adjective pairs.

That's how curiosity can quickly turn into learning. Iterate on that model a few hundred times, and you can develop a 95th-percentile understanding of just about any subject. (Note the compound adjective "95th-percentile," comprised of (note the correct use of "comprised" rather than "composed") a number and a noun.)

In Eden, Adam and Eve were inhuman. (To wish for "Heaven on Earth" is to wish you weren't human.)

Potential Buckets for My Core Idea

• The Benefits of Introspection
• The Significance of Dreams
• Platonic Editing
• Original Sin as a Gift
• Transformation Without Trauma
• Closed Loops and an Open Circle
• Intellectual Nomadism

You don't have to hit rock-bottom. Instead of transformation being trauma-motivated, it could be a way of life, where every day is a resurrection.

The disruptive technology of the 60s was birth control.

Why commit to "Inbox Zero?" All that means is that anyone with your email can add an item to your to-do list.

January 11 Writing (composition) is an entirely different skill from editing (compression).

An editor helps a piece of writing improve. A writing coach helps a writer improve, through a piece of writing.

From a Yogi tea bag tag:

The unknown is where all outcomes are possible; enter it with grace.

January 10 Why philosophy is more true than religion:

• It is fundamentally not dogmatic. The primary mode of philosophy is propositional and interrogative, whereas the mode of religion is prescriptive and declarative.
• It's concerned with uncovering what is rather than dreaming of what we wish to be.
• It rests and relies on perpetual uncertainty, but religion's appeal is certainty (assuming a leap of faith).
• No philosophy claims to be the Truth.

I am more apt to worship Prometheus than Jesus.

What do the world's collective genesis stories reveal about how we humans see ourselves?

You are incapable of evil. You have no concept of the future or the past. You can only speak of what is before you, devoid of any insights. You exist without self-consciousness. You have nothing to strive for, yet you are never disappointed. Your only impulse is to subsist. You have no concept of success.

Does this existence sound to you like Heaven or Hell? I assume it's the same answer as the question: Do you aspire to be a sheep or shepherd?

This is what it would be like to live in Eden, otherwise known as "Heaven on Earth." But if you would rather be a shepherd than a sheep, Eden is Hell too.

Revised 2024 Imperatives

Close open loops. Smell your tea. Live your dreams.

Thank Eve for the gift of sin.

January 9 My ideal reader is my future-self. An essay is an astounding success if it would impress the writer/editor I will be ten years from now.

Writing prompt for English nerds: "Argue in favor of your favorite cliche."

How many doors stand between you and what you value? Is your reading chair in the foyer or in the basement? To get outside from my apartment, I have to pass through five doors — and then another 75 yards if I want to touch real grass. I lament that fact. It's a signal that this is not the long-term place for me.

January 8 "Fewer than five minutes" and "less than five minutes" are both correct, but they are not equivalent. The former refers to a specific number of minutes that is fewer than five. The latter refers to any duration of time that is less than five minutes.

January 7 The Big Bang didn't happen 13.8 billion years ago. In a way, for you, the Big Bang happened the moment you were born. All of human and cosmic history collapsed into a singularity, compressed into a file cabinet called The Past. In it is more than you could ever know, yet it's contents comprise the context for your existence, like the prologue for a book you haven't fully written. By living, you are writing it, but you will never publish it. Upon death, it — like all books before — will be subsumed, as it becomes part of what has been. It will become part of the Collective Prologue, to help engender the books of the future.

Man is poisoned by the habit of self-delusion. The only antidote is introspection.

The nicest cars have the fewest miles on them. And this is true for so many things in life. We deny ourselves pleasure of indulgence to preserve purity and to pay homage to beauty.

Try to imagine what it's like to be a fish out of water. Imagine having never felt the force of gravity, never having seen a human, only to have a human yank you from the only world you've ever known and drop you onto the deck of a boat — a sensation you have never felt.

The exact equivalent for humans would be for you to be yanked out of your seat by an alien tractor-beam in the middle of a meal, brought into a space ship, measured, tossed around by giants, and either murdered, dissected, released back to Earth, or ejected into the vacuum of space (the equivalent of a fish being tossed into a cooler). That's horrifying.

January 6 Every morning, when we wake, we make a leap of faith; we assume that this is reality and that a dream.

Core Tenets of My Personal Philosophy

Expect nothing from the world and the world of yourself.

Reality is my perception. Changing my perception means changing reality.

Everything I know to be unconditionally True will change. Nothing is absolute.

Man's pathology is self-delusion, and the antidote is introspection.

A life lived in pursuit of Truth is one lived unreconciled. So, be an intellectual nomad; don't dwell in dogma.

Stagnation is evil, but stillness is essential.

I dream because I am human. I am human because I dream.

Endeavor to understand, not to be understood.

God is the self idealized, and I am God unrealized.

Say what you know is unsaid.

There is no best way to go, but there is a worst way: to follow.

Nothing is absolute. Everything I perceive to be True is conditional or, in fact, completely uncertain: a matter of faith, not inviolable knowledge.

January 4 If you're using metaphor to develop or explain an idea, choose one main metaphor, and return to it throughout the piece (like a theme). Too many comparisons and disjointed figurative language will muddy the message and prevent your reader from having any concrete takeaways (partly because each new metaphor carries a context-load).

To omit the truth is not a lie. But if you're asked a direct question about the truth and aren't willing to reveal it, the only honest answer is to decline to answer. As soon as you prevaricate, you compromise your honesty.

prevaricate (v.) to avoid giving a direct answer or deviate from the truth (The child chose to prevaricate when asked who had broken the vase.)

Passing interactions and long-term relationships both have great potential, but relationships have a different degree of effect. At best, a single interaction could lead to a revelatory conversation or an unforgettable experience, or it could lead to a relationship. At best, a relationship is the medium through which you approach the best possible version of yourself. One is day-changing, the other life-changing.

I don't prioritize myself above all else. I prioritize my future-self above all else.

January 3 Life gets exponentially harder the more energy you spend avoiding hard things. Life gets easier the more readily you do hard things.

You can't control how you feel, only how you respond to how you feel.

January 2 A few great examples of economic writing/storytelling in song lyrics:

Sexting, sonnets / Under the tables – Caroline Polachek, "Billions"

I overheard that she was nineteen / She's got a fake ID and a nose ring / Those kind of girls tend to know things / Better than I do – The Backseat Lovers, "Kilby Girl"

Bathroom towels were cool against my head / I pressed my forehead to the floor / And prayed for a trapdoor / I've been here many times before / But I've never made it to Graceland – Florence + The Machine, "Morning Elvis"

All of these lyrics lean into words that are dense with meaning and visually rich. They create a scene and imply something about characters. The dense words: "sexting," "sonnets," "Graceland," "trapdoor." The visuals: "fake ID and a nose ring," "Bathroom towels were cool against my head / I pressed my forehead to the floor," "Under the tables."

And this is what you need if you want to write economically: careful, purposeful word choice and rich, immediate visuals.

There is not time for everything, but there is time for everything that you value — only if you don't let your time be consumed by what you don't.

January 1 "It's a long way to the top (if you want to sells some books)." – Angus Young

If you want your ideas to have the most impact, do the work to entertain your readers. Humor and narrative pull eyes down the page — not insights and takeaways. No matter how valuable or mind-blowing a concept is, delivering it without a joke or a story will stall any reader's progress through your essay.

The more you have thought about an idea, the more you'll have to say about it and the fewer words you'll need to communicate it.

There's a slippery relationship in life to find among doing what you must, doing what you want, and doing what you value. The things you must do get in the way of the things you want to do, and the things you want to do often contradict what you value. The ideal is to want to do the things that you must do and to only want to do things that align with your values. Under that impossible scenario, no matter what you're doing, you're always doing what you want. It is impossible, but you can approach that way of living.

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