5. On all three together
On stories
“Initial condition → Transformation → Consequence” in this barebones version — stories — are the elementary pattern of our cognition. A piece of the colored mozaic. Sets of these pieces of different colors but of the same substance compile into ideas, theories, and concepts.
It's all in this pile, from the ancient hunting storyboards on the caves' walls to the advertising of storytelling courses for 100$ on LinkedIn, from bedtime stories to stories on historical justice. In my bubble of “knowledge” “work,” it's hard to come by a thought more banal than that. But it's not all hopeless; some interesting things remain here.
Any “storyfication” happens post-factum; there's no string of events that would be a set of logically following frames of a storyboard by themselves. Things just happen; if a person needs it, they will conjure a story out of it. Anything that is not a story is simply a noise. The presence of a story means the brain spent some resources conceptualizing it. The set of our stories is the outline of our hierarchy of importance.
Two things follow from it:
- Stories that I spin in my head point to the things I care about. Following them to the source, I can learn about my condition.
- If you want to raise the importance of something in your own or someone else's eyes — build a story around it.
I reflectively recoiled from it before, but now I can consciously leverage it.
There were two reasons to recoil:
- That reflective eye-roll on every mention of “storytelling.” I wouldn’t even be able to type up this section if I could not type without looking.
- I’m not interested in thinking in stories; thinking in symbols and associations is more natural to me.
Fundamentally, symbols and associations are stories as well, but not linear; instead, they work as networks, where reaching one point highlights five others on the map. I assume that's the root of my affection for postmodernism and Kafka's writing. That's also the reason why it's hard for me to line up my thoughts into WikiHow-esque sequences, and it's relatively easy for me to live with shapeless blots akin to alien writings from The Arrival.
On patterns and words
BTW, on language, perception, patterns, and words.
One of the angles to look at the world at large is to imagine it as a process of the universe studying itself. I, the ape with the mediocre provincial education that I am, am one of the modes of said studying process. An ant that plugs the entrance to the anthill with his iron butt designed for this specific purpose is another mode of essentially the same operation. Black holes that suck in whole galaxies are another one. All of these fit the schema: stimulus, reaction, reflection. All of it is attention directed to itself, an internal dialog.
The fundamental feature of my human mode is seeing patterns. My perception apparatus observes events; some happen somewhat regularly; if anything particular happens frequently and robustly enough, the apparatus accepts it as “real,” separates the pattern from the background noise, and gives it a name while we're at it. Now the pattern has a word, a handle I can grab it by. That's the logic behind 50 names for snow in the languages of some northern native tribes (not exactly, but quite), that's the logic behind 300 names for mental disorders in the “developed” tribes of the West. To each his own.
On “I”
Turns out, the “healthy” mode of existence is acceptance of my own place in the network of making sense out of ongoing nonsense; and the expensive and useless attempts to pass by for a disembodied ghost are not “healthy” at all. In a given configuration, I happen to be a homo sapiens, so I guess I gotta live like one: with ego, psyche, neuroses, and all that shit.
It feels like the intellectual bankruptcy of my limited liability corporation; a big chunk of my premises and mental habits go out of the window, at least without me. The “ghost” position provides some benefits; nothing can touch you, and pain can not appear out of nowhere. Very convenient if the baseline for your outlook is “existence is suffering” (though in a less wise, non-Buddhist version of that). Some other perks came in the bundle: a laudable humility, noble contempt for vanity, fucking openness to fucking feedback.
Things of that sort now have to be rewritten. At least I don't have to start with a completely blank page.
Alan Watts has this adage in his lectures: “The biggest ego trip is getting rid of your ego, and of course, the joke of it all is that your ego does not exist.” Until now, my reaction was: “Hm-hm, alright, there's something to it, but all in all sounds like just a clever linguistic exercise.” But now I UNDERSTAND.
“Sometimes I'm right”
Up to this point, these were all things very ephemeral, hanging in the air. But this piece is tangible, simple to grasp, and with very apparent consequences. One of my core beliefs just changed.
I used to believe that each and every of my action or phrase contained a mistake in it. And my mission was to find it. I may admit it's not the dumbest way to operate. But the criterion “the task is solved only after the mistake is found” is problematic.
In a situation like this, the search for the mistake won't stop until the mistake is found. And if it's nowhere to be found, it'll be conjured on the spot. Put on top of that the simple fact that the confidence about the mistake found can also be subject to doubt, and before long, you are suffocated because you're confused about how to breathe, what do I do after a breath in, do I breathe out or do I try to breathe in again but deeper?
And the little sacrifice I had to make was to accept that sometimes my outlook is simply adequate. Sometimes I'm right. Yes, it's a reasonable strategy to test and critically assess your convictions, but the aim is to not break them no matter the cost; the aim is to assess their relevancy, and if you don't hear the pillars cracking, please fuck off for the time being.
Lightning round with bullets because I'm simply tired of expanding on each and every point:
- In addition, to the trust in my cognitive abilities, my body is another thing I can trust.
- The same tasks will repeatedly appear until I find a way to actually solve them.
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Andrey