Over the past 23 years, this blog has presented a lot of hypotheses about how things are and how they got this way. I’ve hypothesized about how we got into the current mess of chaos and collapse:
I’ve hypothesized about how this collapse might play out:
and about what the signs of this collapse might be:
I’ve hypothesized about what’s actually going on when we think ‘we’ are in control of our beliefs and behaviours:
I’ve hypothesized about how our stories make us unhappy and unhealthy:
I’ve hypothesized about how our body actually ‘decides’ our behaviours, prioritizing what is most urgent for it, and then doing what’s easy and fun, rather than what is ‘merely’ important:
And I’ve hypothesized about how our bodies might actually ‘determine’ what is easy and fun, in following their primal directive to chemically induce behaviour that maximizes pleasure and minimizes pain (perhaps through activities that resonate with our ikigai):
A lot of these hypotheses (and charts) have changed and evolved extensively over this long period, and some now directly contradict things I wrote earlier. I think they are more tentative and nuanced than they used to be — I’m not nearly as sure of myself, or of what I say and believe, as I once was. Much of what I wrote so confidently 20+ years ago is cringeworthy now.
None of these hypotheses and charts offers any advice. That much at least I have outgrown (I think). These charts just outline theories, hypotheses, stories. We are story-telling creatures, we humans. That’s how we make sense of things. Each chart has arrows to indicate the direction of the plot. They all have a beginning. Some of them end, and some of them just lead to circles that go round and round until the characters cease to exist, or cease to matter.
It’s fruitless to try to figure out why we have this compulsion to invent and tell stories. There doesn’t have to be a reason. Some things just are how they are. And in any case every story is a fiction, just a mental construction.
Why do we feel good when we have constructed a story that we believe to be ‘true’? Again, it seems to me, there is no why. Whether there really is a ‘me’ or not, constructing stories just seems to be what this ‘me’ has been conditioned to do. When we think we ‘know’ something — ie when we have constructed a plausible hypothesis/story and added it at least for now to our beliefs and worldview, there is undoubtedly some chemical reward that encourages us to do so (the ‘aha!’ moment). That’s who we are. Or at least, that’s my story, for now.
Ask why five times, and if you’re thinking you’ll just run out of questions. You won’t come up with any answers, at least not credible ones. Though maybe your answers will make you feel better, if you don’t look at them too closely, which is fine.
I don’t have any answers any more. I only have hypotheses, theories — stories. They can make ‘me’ feel better for awhile, though they have no other value.
What next?, I think, often, when I sit down to write now. What else will make me feel better — give me a dopamine rush — if I develop a hypothesis about it? The pickings are increasingly slim, especially when I realize there are no why answers. Most of what’s written and said in all forms of stories — ‘news’ reports, ‘analyses’, all manner of opinions masquerading as facts and revelations and insights — is about why things are happening. I don’t read or listen to that stuff anymore. There are no whys, merely opinions on causality mostly by people who have a high opinion of themselves and purport to know what, generally, in any complex system or situation, cannot be known. The Dunning-Kruger effect in full force, with the blatherers’ arrogance further amplified by the False Consensus effect and the Overconfidence effect. Tellers of tall tales.
As for the listeners and followers of the blatherers, they can be excused because they just want things to be simple, and because they want to believe that what they already (have been conditioned to) believe is true. (Oops — I guess those ‘becauses’ belie an attempt to answer a why question. Hard habit to break!)
On many occasions I’ve wondered whether I’m running out of things to say on this blog, and speculated that I might soon end up just writing short stories and other ‘creative’ works, where at least their fictional nature is openly acknowledged. Writing apparently helps me make sense of things, especially when those things are complicated or complex. Most of the things I haven’t been able to make any sense of, even to the point of constructing a hypothesis, I now recognize as things that simply can’t, don’t, and don’t need to, make sense. So maybe my work in that area is done, or at least winding down.
You may have noticed that some of my recent articles have ventured more into describing how I feel instead of what I think about things. This is precarious territory. I explore it, and briefly let down the false pretence of objectivity, in my month-end reflections posts, in some of my creative writing, and in my occasional acknowledgements that the three words that perhaps best describe ‘me’ are lost, scared and bewildered. But mostly I avoid publishing such writing, because why should strangers care about what I feel on some subject?
I wrote a satirical song about my thoughts about collapse, and then wrote another about my feelings about collapse. I like them both — they both gave me a dopamine rush writing them — but I’m fonder of the latter.
So it’s possible that I might stretch the indulgence of my lovely and ever-changing small consort of readers going forward, by writing more about my feelings about what’s seemingly happening in the world and inside this increasingly weary body, and less about my thoughts.
What/how am I feeling these days? A shifting mix of these emotions:
Lots of the primal emotions — joy, fear, sadness, and anger. More joy over simple things — pleasures from from my ikigai list, now that I have been blessed with more time to indulge them — lots of dopamine rewards for doing these things:
- Aesthetic pleasures (eg listening to music, being in beautiful places)
- Sensory pleasures (eg candlelight baths, massage, raspberries)
- ‘Observing’ pastimes (eg birdwatching, people-watching, theatre, ‘just being aware’ and equanimously “enjoying the passage of time”)
- ‘Aha!’ learning (eg new discoveries and ideas, new sense-making, exploring new subjects with curiosity)
- Puzzle-solving (eg crosswords, mysteries, finding hidden patterns, AI explorations, genealogy)
- Collecting (eg list-making, data analysis, my personal weather station, funny fridge magnets)
- Social play (eg board games, flirtations, pick-up sports, workshops, conversations with smart people)
- Creating ‘playfully’ (eg stories, music, learning from practice what makes art ‘good’)
- Making people I care about happy doing things that are easy and enjoyable
My moments of fear, sadness, and anger seem to be instinctive, but fleeting.
My ‘judgemental feelings’ — the ones in the left square box above, notably anxiety and shame, are lessening in intensity and duration but not in frequency. But since those two emotions were the main drivers of the depression that plagued and consumed me for more than half of my life (but not, for reasons unknown, over the past decade or two), I expect that as long as this ‘self’ hangs around, those two feelings will too.
Emotions that I have felt especially strongly over the past month (context: tumultuous world events; relatively serene personal circumstances):
- Curious and excited: About the whole subject of human creativity and art, including AI’s positive and negative impact on it. And about the subject of humour, and how it varies and has evolved in different cultures and demographics. And about the whole subject of attention.
- Impatient: With the seemingly poor quality of new music being produced over the past two years.
- Conflicted: Especially about my friends who have ties to Iran.
- Confused: About some seemingly incoherent and incongruous writings and behaviours from a few people I’d come to respect and trust.
- Discouraged: About the seemingly declining competence of almost everyone, in a world of distrust, lack of practice, lack of imagination, and a cult of individualism. And about our gullibility, making the same mistakes over and over.
- Exhausted: I’m getting old, man. Don’t have the resilience and energy I used to have.
- Anxious: About memory lapses. Family history of Alzheimers.
Hopefully, my conditioning will compel me to write about the stuff I’m “curious and excited” about in this list, and not the grouchy stuff in the rest of the list. We’ll see, I guess.
