Human Life is Worthless

This is another Facebook post from 6 years ago. I wouldn’t change much of anything, except maybe a few less “therefores”. I sound like I’m trying to impress people with my word choice, and it’s not a good look. (Maybe someday I’ll look back at this and think I’m trying to impress people with my self-deprecating comments. Dammed if you do, yadda yadda…)

Human life is inherently worthless; human experience is priceless.

That is to say, I don’t believe in free will. I believe in cause and effect. What happened yesterday dictated what I felt and did today as much as what happened when I was five did–as much as what happened when my dad was five, as much as what happened when the universe was born. It’s an unbroken chain of cause and effect and cause and effect, you see.

Therefore, just as the rocks on the beach are where they are because of forces out of their control, so am I here. So are all of us. Therefore we cannot say we are of any more value to the natural order of things than the rocks–or the plants or the planets or the stars or the rabbits or the fish. We are all one and the same. We’re all subject to time, to cause and effect, to entropy.

What is unique to us is our experience while we are here. That’s what matters.

Being happy and not causing unhappiness in others is the noblest pursuit. Indeed its the only change we can ever hope to bring about.

Like or lump it, it’s how I feel. (I can’t change your mind anyway. You’re only reacting how you were always going to.)

Monkeys Playing Pretend

The following is a post I made on Facebook 6 years ago today. I thought it should live here now. I would have written it with less acid if I were to rewrite it now, but the underlying idea still holds water in my opinion.

We’re just monkeys playing pretend, you know.

When you pull away everything, all the words we use, we’re just animals trying to tear each other apart. We’re not smart, we’re not advanced. Some of us are, sure. But some cats can use a toilet.

As a whole, our species is selfish, hateful, suspicious, and mean-spirited. We have language and clothes and jobs and sports and all these things that make us look like we’re not vicious animals, but it’s just a superficial disguise. We’re lying to ourselves because it’s the easiest way to keep doing what we’re doing.

I’m not saying humans aren’t capable of some awesome, world-changing things. Good things. I’m just saying that I don’t think that’s hard-wired into us. I don’t think it’s part of our DNA. I think it’s a fluke to be a good person.

Why Are You Saying It?

There’s really no downside to thinking before you speak.

Ok, I suppose if you’re in a life-and-death situation and you have to shout “Look out for that boulder!” before your friend gets crushed by a runaway boulder, then there’s a downside to thinking about it first.

But generally, it’s never a bad idea. So before you speak up, ask yourself if what you’re about to say is really worth saying. Ask yourself why you think you should say it.

Is it something the other person needs or wants to hear you say? Or is it just something that you want to hear yourself say?

By putting those words out there, you’re altering the landscape of the conversation. There’s no going back. You’d better be sure that it’s worth it.

I’m not trying to be dramatic. I don’t mean “worth it” to imply that if you say the wrong thing in any situation you’re going to destroy your relationships. But…it is a possibility. Speaking out can be dangerous.

There’s that famous aphorism, Better to keep your mouth shut and let people think you a fool, than open it and remove all doubt. It’s flippant, but the point is sound: When you say nothing, the other person doesn’t know what you’re thinking. They might make false assumptions, but they’ll know they’re making assumptions. They won’t know for sure what you’re thinking.

If you speak up, on the other hand, they’ll know. And they might not like it. More accurately, in fact, they’ll think they know what you’re thinking. You never know how your words will land in their ears. Something you meant as an innocuous comment or even a joke might come across to them as painfully offensive or rude. Then you’ve altered the landscape, and you might not even know it. And even if you do know it, now you have to fix it.

So before you speak, and have to deal with the consequences–big or small–of what you say, just take a moment to ask yourself: Is this really necessary?

Meditation #82: Some ramblings about society

Today is a pretty nice day, and days like this always make me lament having to go to work. A day like today makes me realize what a shame it is that we are all born into this society that we are expected to partake in without question. We have to maintain the status quo to sustain the status quo.

It just highlights to me how unfair it is that we are born into this cycle of having to go to work, having to go places, having to do anything. To sustain the society we live in we have to participate in the society we live in.

I always think of the animals in the wild. When the fox wakes up in the morning, he’s not like, “Well, guess I’ve gotta go do the thing now.” No. When they wake up they think, “I’m hungry,” so they go get food. When they think, “I’m thirsty,” they go get water. When they think, “Ack, a bear!” they run away. They don’t think about it, and they don’t have to ignore their urges.

They just respond to their environment as it happens, and that’s it. They don’t have to ignore their urges to. The fox isn’t like, “I’m really hungry I should go find some food. But, ah, it’s not lunchtime yet. I guess I’d better get these TPS reports done first.” No, they just do what they have to do to survive in that moment and that’s that. But we can’t. We have this structure, and we’re just born straight into it, and we have to do what we have to do to survive within the structure. We don’t get to just do what strikes us in any given moment, because if we all did that then society would collapse. (Or so they say. I’m skeptical of that to some degree, but never mind that for now.)

And yet, although we’re human we are still animal. What we have built, this society, is no less natural than what any other animal builds. More complex, more destructive, more problematic, but no less natural. And like a beehive, it’s built to ensure our survival. We developed this thing called “society” as insurance against an unknown future. We built it and agreed, implicitly if not explicitly, to give it our time and our freedom in return for protection from bad things that could happen. Starvation, freezing to death, being suddenly homeless, getting stabbed in the face, etc.

And yet, we end up giving it so much more, too. It’s like we’ve said, “Alright, society, I feel pretty confident I’m not going to freeze to death or starve naked in the streets. Thanks for that. Now I think what I really want is a leather recliner. I’ll give you some more of my time and my freedom for that, too.” I think what I’m looking for isn’t a return to “nature,” because that’s where we already are. We’re natural, and our society is by extension natural. What I want to find is a simplification, a simple appreciation of not freezing to death or starving naked in the streets, and a contentment that that’s enough. That survival is enough. That comfort and convenience is overrated. Having access to every movie ever made isn’t necessary. Having a car that goes from 0-60 in five seconds is far from fundamental. Even having a house with a different room for every possible activity is hugely overrated. (Seriously, you can only be in one room at a time. Why are you paying for so many empty rooms?)

And yet, perhaps it isn’t the society at all that’s at fault. We don’t look at the beehive and think, “Oh, poor bees. They’d be so much freer and happier if they didn’t have to work for the hive all day.” Of course not. The bees are happy doing what bees do. And ‘happy’ doesn’t even factor into it, really. To be happy assumes there is another way to feel. It assumes feeling at all, and feelings are just tags assigned to thoughts. To a creature like a bee, that doesn’t even come into the picture. They don’t have a consciousness that forces them to assign value to their experiences. That’s something only we higher primates are burdened with. We have the ability to think about counterfactuals. We alone can daydream and think about what life could be like “if only.”

So really I shouldn’t be raising my fist at society, I should be raising it at consciousness. I should be wishing to be as simple and oblivious as a bee.

Meditation #81: Mind matters

“The quality of your mind determines the quality of your life.” – Sam Harris

Such a simple maxim, but it’s utterly true. So simple that it’s easy to forget. Whatever you’re going through, however hard it is, or easy it is, or painful it is, or rough it is, or unexpected it is, or joyous it is, or unbearable it is, or [insert adjective here] it is, it is that way because of your mental state. You can argue, scoff, roll your eyes, offer as many yeah-buts as you can manage, but the simple fact is that if you didn’t have a mind to experience whatever you’re experiencing, then it would have no quality at all.

Meditation #80: Untitled

Today I realized I have everything I want.

It’s Saturday. I was washing the dishes, listening to some easygoing music*, while my wife was reading a Stephen King book on the couch and my daughter was engrossed in a fun video game she’s been playing lately. We were relaxing. It was awesome.

All at once I had these thoughts simultaneously:

I am really happy right now. There’s no pressure, nothing to do, nothing to worry about. My beautiful family is happy, too. Everything is peaceful.
Other than the setting, this moment encapsulates exactly what I want my life to be. I’d rather be on a boat, or in a camper van, or on some rural Japanese farm, than on the 23rd floor of a concrete apartment building in China. But even then, it really, really could be worse.
What I’m always working toward is being able to have this moment. When I fret about how many words I’ve written today or how well my books are selling, it’s always because I want to achieve the kind of financial independence that would allow this sort of thing to happen all the time.
Why does it matter if this happens all the time? Why does any time matter right now other than for right now? The world could vanish tomorrow, or in five seconds. I could die of a heart attack. The sun could go supernova. The entire universe could blink out of existence when the one little boy in Brussels who is dreaming it all up opens his eyes. Heck, for all we know this moment is the only moment that has ever existed.

All of these thoughts cascaded into my brain like an avalanche of self-awareness, and I was overcome with a sense of completion. I still want a future where I have the freedom to have relaxing days like this whenever I choose, or at least more often. But I recognize that if I spend more time living in the moment, then it doesn’t matter how often those days come around, because the only one that matters is the one I’m currently experiencing.

*If you’re curious, “Here But I’m Gone” by Curtis Mayfield was the specific song playing when this epiphany occurred.

Meditation #79: Don’t start the thinking.

When you wake up first thing in the morning, don’t be eager to start thinking right away. Don’t be quick to pick up yesterday’s thoughts. Let them come to you in their own time if they really want, and only then after they’ve done it with enough force to make it apparent that they’re not going away. Try to avoid the habit of waking up in the morning and thinking to yourself, “Let’s see, what was I on about yesterday?”

Maybe I’m the only one who does that, anyway.

Meditation #78: Another one about choices

You want to be a better person? That’s easy: make the choice that a better person would make.

Bam, you’re a better person.

It’s really that easy. You are as good (and only as good) as the last choice you made. Not the next choice, because the future doesn’t exist yet. And not the choices you made last year or last week or even yesterday.

All that matters to who you are as a person is the last choice you made.

Ok, so the last choice you made was to order Coke instead of Pepsi? That’s not exactly life-changing, sure, but it still serves my point: You are the kind of person who drinks Coke. Oh, you’re not? You drink Pepsi every other time, it’s just that because reasons you chose to order Coke this time? Sorry, nope. You are a Coke drinker.

I’m not saying you’re always a Coke drinker. You’re thinking about this wrong if that’s what you think. You are right now a Coke drinker. You can’t pretend it’s otherwise, based on some fictional future or remembered past. What matters is now, what matters is this choice.

More importantly, though, this applies to things like being honest, being reliable, being healthy, being responsible. If you want to be an honest person, all it takes is to make the honest choice. Want to be reliable? Make the reliable choice. And so on.

It’s not about changing your life, or fundamentally rewriting your personality. Those aren’t possible, anyway, because your life and your personality are both just the choices you make. So if you want to change something, make a different choice. Not next time. Now.

Meditation #77: This is your job

Don’t get grumpy when you have to do something you weren’t expecting or you think you’re above, and don’t say “This isn’t my job.” It is now. Whatever it is you’re doing in any given moment is your job, or else you wouldn’t be doing it. Don’t do it and pretend like it’s not yours to do, because that’s going to make you unhappy and probably effect the quality of the work you’re doing.

As with all things, ask yourself if it’s something you can change. If it is, change it. If it’s not, do it. It’s your job.

Meditations #76: Tabs, tabs, tabs, tabs.

This may come across as less of a meditation and more of a complaint. I try to make these posts as universal and abstract as possible, but sometimes there’s just something very specific about modern life that has to be addressed.

I think tabbed browsing can be blamed for the downfall of my attention span and productivity.

It’s gotten to the point where I’ll Google search something I’m interested in, open tabs for the first fifteen results I come across…then proceed to read none of them because it’s overwhelming and I don’t know where to start.

Gone are the days where you would just click on a link, read it, then click the back button and find another link if you were still curious. Tabbed browsing has made it possible to replace research with just clicking. (At least in my life.)

I’m going to try to make a concerted effort in the future to not open links in a new tab unless I’m really worried about losing the page I’m on for some reason.

Now I’m going to post this and close the tab.