Jack Oughton - Incessant Typing

Incessant Typing // Jack Oughton
http://jackoughtonwriter.info // https://www.facebook.com/jack.oughton.writer //
2013: CC BY-NC-SA // Wanna chat? Tweet @koukouvaya
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“The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously.” ~ Hubert H. Humphrey
About this book / Preface:
Hi there.
I'm going to try and put you into a box (not literally of course)
You can be placed into two categories.
In the first, you've read my stuff before and presumably have found a
reason for coming back. If this is the case, hello again and thanks for
returning. I look forward to your responses to my ongoing attempt to
stir up controversies and new understandings in your consciousness.
The second category, you've not read any of the stuff I have written
and you've somehow come across this book. If so, hello, and
welcome. I'll give you an outline of what to expect from it…
This book contains all the stuff that is just too weird to go anywhere
that'll pay me to write about it. But it's the stuff that I want to write.
Maybe there are some gems in here for you. I hope so…
I wrote these pieces as things for ‘seekers’ and ‘freethinkers’. And,
that said, this is probably not the kind of book that is going to get a
publisher. But that’s OK, this book was completely written in the
spirit of ‘fuck it, let’s see what happens’. Or as a more…well spoken
writer might term it, ‘embracing serendipity’…
It's also another experiment in self-publishing. Will I get more
readers if I present my work in book format and give it away? Who
knows…?
So lets see what happens.
Also, hyperlinks embedded in the document look like this.
What does the book contain?

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Well, it's a series of essays off of Demysticism, my ‘wisdom blog’ /
‘esoteric’ writings. Since they're written for the web, the essays are
usually short. Which is good for you, the reader. Y’all
(understandably) hate long tracts, right?
The words are an attempt to distill and purify some the most
insightful moments and important lessons that I’ve learned so far.
And then sharing with others
These writings are an attempt at continual reunderstanding and
reinterpretation of what is taken for 'reality'. Challenging
assumptions and rebuilding and improving upon the Zeitgeist.
What to do with the writings
Whatever you want. I’d suggest that you eat it with your brain. It's
licensed under a CC BY-NC-SA license. So share far and wide and
tell people if you want. Or don't if you don't want to. Whatever
works for you.
If you liked it, or you had any powerful insights please buy me a
coffee. Or don't if you don't want to do that either. I thought I'd just
put it out there.
What can you expect to gain from the book?
New ideas presented in the old way and old ideas presented in a new
way. And everything inbetween. And probably some stuff that’s
completely wrong and bollocks. And perhaps a few ‘Aha’ moments.
Subjects touched upon include science, sociology, futurism,
psychology, ‘metaphysics’, spirituality and I suppose what some call
‘self improvement’ (though I’m of the opinion you can turn anything
you read into self improvement if you find a way to apply it…).
Anyway, I don’t claim to be an expert on any of these subjects, I’m
just a curious person.

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Most books have a unifying theme. It took me a while to figure out
this one. What I think I’ve arrived at is what the great Alan Watts
referred to as 'philosophical entertainment'.
Philosophy is often seen as an ‘ivory tower’ discipline. When we
think of it, we often think of stuffy old Greek dudes with beards, or
people writing massive tracts about nothing in particular. Impractical
stuff.
But IMHO philosophy should be something that can be internalised,
applied and lived. Not more junk information. So this is what I’m
trying to write for you.
After some inspection, you might think that it is all shit. This is fine.
As long as it makes you think something. This is the goal.
That's all this book is. One giant invitation to think about stuff. One
giant game trying to be played with your feeling and reasoning
faculties.
Hopefully one that you enjoy as well.
So, are you gonna play or are you gonna sit it out…?

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Part I: The Philosophy
•§• I
“Too much philosophy makes men mad.” ~ Alan Judd, The
Noonday Devil
The first part of this book deals with the slightly longer and
free flowing pieces I’ve loosely defined here as philosophy.
They touch upon a variety of topics. There is no real
unifying subject…

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We Drew The Short Straws
Compared to the history of human life leading up to this point, you
and I are quite lucky.
In fact, if time and circumstances of birth into the world where part
of a competition set in some ethereal kingdom outside of the
physical universe, you and I picked the short straws.
We won.
For a start, we’re alive during a time in history when (for most of
us) human advancement has allowed us to meet all of our basic
survival needs…
Food is an obvious and excellent example…
No more having to chase down a mammoth in the wilderness with
a spear, or to spend hours digging for tubers just to get dinner and
not die.
No more having to even kill our own food, or conceptualise that
for you to be eating that burger, a cow had to have it’s brains
blown out with a mechanical bolt. Thump, splat. Or that chicken to
have it’s head mechanically severed, a few seconds after the
chicken before it in the ‘production line’ suffered the same fate.
Cluck, silence.

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You can eat chicken exclusively until you are completely stuffed,
every day for the rest of your life, and you don’t even have to think
about the grisly scenario.
For some prior generations, meat was the rarest of delicacies. But
you can gorge yourself on chicken daily and it probably won’t take
too large a portion of your salary.
(And no, this is not a rant for vegetarianism/veganism/etc. – I am
trying to make a point about material abundance)
Anyway, in some particularly ridiculous cases, there’s no more
need to know what an actual potato, or tomato looks like, when the
menu is all processed foods coming in abnormal colours.
Disclaimer: I was one of these people when younger.
Isn’t life easy for us?
We are affluent enough to have an excess of calories to worry
about. Instead of starving, many of us are now choosing to dig our
own graves with forks and spoons.
With an absence of real problems, we invent our own, and they
become real problems. No longer in danger of starving, now CHD
or diabetes will bury us instead.

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I say ‘invent’, but I don’t mean to downplay the many causes that
often lead people to such a lifestyle.
That’s another article entirely…
Theory of Constraints
Because we now have the problem and the paradox of choice! Yes,
now we get to choose! Instead of a monodiet of potatoes or
something similarly bland (think 17th century Irish farmers), the
potato lovers amongst us can enjoy hundreds and hundreds of
varieties of spuds. And those who enjoy monodieting can indulge
themselves anyway, nobody is going to stop them. Fruitarians are
cool with us too.
More and more we have the freedom to choose. But what have we
chosen?
As human power over the environment has increased, we have
individually and collectively become more powerful. You, me,
your neighbours, powerful beings all. I mean this literally and
figuratively. We now have access to and use more power than any
other generation before us. We entertain ourselves with a myriad
of electronic devices, do business globally via electronic means,
and carry energy guzzling things wherever we go (think iPhones).
We’re used to them, and it’s a fact of life that energy consumption

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is just a biproduct of being a modern human.
And we’ve all got access to far more stuff than anyone else has
ever had. And with that stuff we can do things.
A Little Knowledge…
With the net we’ve all got access to knowledge that can teach us to
kill a human with our bare hands, or build an atomic bomb. Or to
grow petunias and play the violin. It’s all there – we don’t even
need to enrol in school or bother finding a book on it. And with
Google growing increasingly more clever, we don’t even have to
make much effort in finding the information anymore.
I love Google.
And, in the basic sense, we have access to more raw units of
energy (thanks to the generation and more efficient harnessing of
energy) and we also have access to better technological leverage to
use this energy, as our technology becomes more and more
efficient.
A Little Choice…
We have more choice than ever before; improvements in
manufacturing mean that we can have goods brought to us from
lands we’ve never seen, with next to no cost. My distant ancestors
didn’t even know what China was, but today I can buy goods from

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China that are cheaper than ones made in the UK. The miracle of
capital allocation and a relatively efficient global logistics system
has allowed that.
And, in the developed world, even the poorest people can go away
and visit foreign lands on a budget tour. Or choose not to work at
all and slide by on benefit payments. Todays serfs are the
overworked, high tax bracket middle class, who have willingly
chosen their own enslavement and 60 hour work weeks and to
carry the rest of the society on their very tired shoulders (at least
economically). But they’ve chosen the ‘career path’ and at any
time can walk away from the job, if they’re willing to face the
consequences.
And whatever the consequences are, it’s unlikely anyone’s going
to starve or be killed.
We are indeed living in miraculous times.
Yes there’s a lot of freedom now. And a lot of choice. Perhaps too
much for many of us.
We won the lottery, and invented a whole new set of problems.
Cos if everything was easy and serene, it’d be boring.
And we’d hate that…

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THE LITTLE THINGS
Something for you to ponder as you go about your day
to day…
A river is comprised of droplets,
A desert is comprised of grains,
A song is comprised of musical notes,
A painting is comprised of brush strokes
A book is comprised of words,
Lasting romance is comprised of individual loving actions,
And your life is comprised of every action you ever take.
So, break formidable and lengthy tasks down into their smaller
parts,
And don’t forget to do the little things daily…

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Have People Forgotten What
Freedom Is?
Disclaimer: I can do this stuff as well. I’m not preaching, merely
commenting.
All possessions are temporary
Life is precious. Time is precious. Time is the currency of life.
When time’s up, life’s up.
Chasing paper…
But money’s acquisition needs not be tied to hours spent.
That is to say many people have worked out how to generate
income out of increasingly less amounts of time working. It’s a bit
of a challenge for many of us to adjust to.
Some people refer to it as ‘passive income‘ – and the opportunity
to obtain it is part of the reason why so many people take to
alternative means of money making, such multi-level-marketing
(MLM) and internet businesses. Though it doesn’t always work,
these things provide the opportunity to decouple one’s time from
one’s money making. Or ‘retire’.
And with that, hopefully spend time on the important things.

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Afterall this is not the industrial age anymore. Technology has
changed how we create and distribute value. It’s even changed
what value is. Now we can make money out of ideas, and we can
automate much of the manual labour that was once done by hand.
The game has new rules, though many people have either
neglected to learn or refuse to play by them.
Acquiring stuff vs. acquiring freedom…
Your jewelry, widescreen TV, sports car, trendy haircut, vogue
clothing will not endure when you die.
Your competitive urge to have more does not make you more than
anyone else. It does not provide an authentic feeling of happiness.
‘Keeping up with the Jones’ is a superfluous system of keeping
score that will take away your time and by extension, your
freedom.
If you chase money solely to acquire these fine things, then when
you expire, that time chasing will have been wasted.
What the fuck does it matter if you are gunning for a promotion at
work and working like a zombie if you are never around to see
your children grow up? When you are on your deathbed you won’t
give a damn about the hours you missed at the office. You’ll regret
the hobbies you didn’t take up or the friendships that you let fade

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away, or the girls you never asked out.
There’s an exercise called the ’deathbed exercise’. It encourages
you to really think about your life from the perspective of your
older self, nearing death. If you really get into it, it can be an
utterly harrowing experience. I’ve tried it a few times and it helps
put things in a brutal perspective.
I think it also made me a little more compassionate.
“How much pain they have cost us, the evils which have never
happened.” ~ Thomas Jefferson
And this is why it is important to distance your thinking from
the work time/free time mindset. Trading time for money and
possessions is like slicing bits off of your life (which is all you
have) to obtain physical materials. What kind of tradeoff is that?
It can’t last forever. You can’t last forever.
Of course, if you accept that you are hiding from family life in
your job, at least there is intellectual honesty there, and room for
change. But if you work like a bastard every week for a family you
never see, examine your situation.
Doesn’t it defeat the point?

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And what about all these toys you buy? Perhaps you enjoy them
for a while, but how much do they really satisfy you, and if so,
how long does that feeling last?
How many thousands hours of your precious life do you have to
spend to get things that will soon bore you. Is it a worthy tradeoff?
This is all personal choice of course.
But there’s a reason why some people cut themselves and some
people throw themselves off of bridges with rope attached to their
ankles. They want to feel more life. More adrenaline.
It’s also the reason why people who work in jobs that they like,
regardless of how wealthy they are, are often content. They do the
work for the work’s sake.
For them, it’s not about trading time. It’s about where the time is
spent.
Think about it…
To me it seems that to be happy with work (and you may disagree)
you need to either
1. Do the thing that you love to do,
2. Get so good at leveraging your time that you need to work

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very, very little time at a job you dislike.
Because internal satisfaction can’t be gained from external things.
We all know this. They’re just a panacea that keep you chasing
more. But we forget. I forget. Maybe you forget?
And for those who feel themselves bound to ‘wage slavery’,
perhaps you need to be more frugal with your money and more
extravagant with your time.

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Dumb Luck
“I've been lucky. I'll be lucky again.” ~ Bette Davis
Definition: I use luck to describe the outcomes of situations
or things, either known or unknown to us.
To those who believe that dumb luck is a myth, or that we
‘manufacture’ all of our own luck, I disagree with you…
There is luck, dumb or cruel, and you cannot discount the random
hand of fate, or the effects of the unknown. Just because you don’t
believe in chance, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
Take for example the lottery winner. Or the man who takes the day
off and avoids the train crash.
Luck’s clearest examples are often the cruelest things. What of the
innocent woman who is shot at random by the sniper on a crowded
street?
There’s little any of these people could have done to either stack
the odds in their favour or have even known what to do. They were
unaware.
Dumb luck.

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Self Determination
Some say what and where we are in life is the result of what we
have thought and done. This true, to some extent. But nurture does
not undo every facet of nature…
Example, if I have a genetic condition that destroys both my
eyesight and my chances at being a fighter pilot, was it my fault?
What if I want to play professional basketball, but never grew past
5’9″?
Surely not…
We are all ‘dealt a deck of cards’ at birth…
Self determination is limited by probability and the unknown. But
to advocate all accountability to luck is insane and disempowering
to the extreme, and I doubt many actually do. Self determination,
self belief, these are obviously good things to believe and live by.
But you put too much stock in your own ‘personal power‘ if you
think they’re the complete arbiter of your life.
The only person to ‘determine’ everything without luck or fate or
probability would have godlike powers.
Timing
But timing is everything. Take Justin Bieber – worshiped and

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despised in equal measure.
I have nothing against Justin, but I think he is a magnificent
example of dumb luck. He’s clearly a good singer and entertains
millions. But, there are hundreds of thousands of vocalists and
entertainers, probably equal or better to him in talent. So why is he
the big shot?
His Mum was uploading videos of his performances at the right
time for someone with the power to make him a star to see. That
guy, Scooter Braun, was also ballsy enough to take a few
commercial risks and make the right introductions. Very astute.
But again, probably a stroke of dumb luck for Justin.
Of course you can manufacture your own luck by arranging things
as best as possible and letting the cards fall as they please. By
knowing how to set things up in a certain way you minimise your
risk or ‘bad luck’. You stack the decks in your favour. Probabilities
improve. You are likely to be more lucky.
But you cannot stack every deck, improve every probability, or
even know everything you need to be stacking. Life has too many
variables.
Thus your luck will fluctuate.

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Think about the woman killed by the sniper. Perhaps the thought
may have crossed her mind a few times in her lifetime that she
could get shot at by a sniper. Perhaps the idea came to her briefly
after watching Phone Booth or Enemy At The Gates. But is it her
fault because she was unprepared this time?
Nobody would say that.
So, for those who beat themselves up for every failure, you can
blame luck sometimes. Or call it fate, or call it responsibility.
It’s never all your fault, or your credit. Just don’t blame luck
for everything.

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“You are the sky. Everything else – it’s just the
weather.” ~ Pema Chödrön

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On Acting, Roleplay and The
Persona
This is an article exploring role and acting, onstage and off. I claim
to be no expert, and am coming from the perspective of someone
who has done a small amount of theatre, and been an extra on a
few TV shows (which isn’t really acting).
I wrote this because I wanted to explore how acting can help
improve our intuitive, feeling skills and in how we express
ourselves. I’ve no doubt that it also improves upon one’s self
confidence and gives people the mental tools to put ourselves into
new frames of mind and modes of experiencing the world.
“Acting deals with very delicate emotions. It is not putting up a
mask. Each time an actor acts he does not hide; he exposes
himself.” ~ Rodney Dangerfield
Thinking about acting is useful to us as it provokes a
different look into the question of what authentic identity
really is.
We are all acting at least some of the time. Authentic identity is the
spiritual indescribable at the core of who we are.
But how many of us are completely ourselves all the time?

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I think it is the same reason why the man climbing the corporate
ladder goes out on a Friday night to get wasted and have sex with
someone he’s just met. It’s not that his true persona is a ‘sex mad
alcoholic’, it’s that his work persona has not allowed him to
express this part of himself, and he needs to ‘play a different role’
every now and then.
And I’m not talking of multiple personalities, which I think is
quite different, probably maladaptive and describes a belief in one
person believing that they are many.
I instead speak of all the different ways that the self can be
whilst remaining intact.
So, off I go…
If you have ever spent too long in an environment where you feel
you have had to repress aspects of your self, then you know how ill
fitting a persona can be. Especially if the scene has carried on for
too long…
(OK, so I had to stretch the metaphor a bit…)
The ‘Hollywood Set’
Professional actors fascinate me because I still feel I don’t at all
understand how they do what they do.

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Consider the prestigious ‘Hollywood set‘. They’re famous as
much for who they are than what they have done, but the fact that
they are extremely famous doesn’t detract from how good many of
them are at the craft of acting.
" You can take all the sincerity in Hollywood, place it in the navel
of a fruit fly and still have room enough for three caraway seeds
and a producer's heart." ~ Fred Allen
In actors, the worst of them are completely inauthentic. The best of
them, completely believable. So, put another way, good acting is
authenticity.
The Many Faces of Harrison Ford
Actors are people we often see all the time, but take for granted.
To me, the good actor becomes the character they portray. Think
about Harrison Ford as Han Solo in Star Wars. If I see Harrison
dressed conventionally, I’m probably going to identify him as
Harrison, but if I see him dressed in full Corellian costume (what
you usually see him in the film) – I immediate identify him as Han.
It’s kind of strange, but it’s almost like he’s two people to me. And
not to labour a point too much, but when I see him dressed in his
archeological digs, then I identify him as Indiana Jones.
You see where I’m going with this? Harrison Ford is an identity,
Indiana Jones is an identity. Who I identify the person that looks

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like Harrison Ford/Indiana Jones as, is completely contextual. That
person, who we normally refer to as Harrison Ford, has multiple
personae.
Good Actors, Bad Actors and False People…
Some people are almost born onto the stage or screen. Some
actors, like Al Pacino, Leonardo di Caprio, etc, are so fantastically
believable that to me, they seem to be completely assimilated into
the persona they’re playing.
Others, such as Sylvester Stallone, do not always seem to
disappear into their character, despite Sly being an example of
someone who has wonderful passion and intensity in his acting. It
seems that more often than not that he gets typecast in roles that
seem to suit his action man persona. I suppose this is fine, since
he’s very good at that sort of thing. It’s like the
character becomes him.
But I still think he’s a hell of an actor. I’d use the film Cop
Land as my example. I admire Stallone very much indeed.
Bad acting is so blatantly bad, that you usually can’t miss it. Yet
good acting is almost undetectably subtle. Like the best scores and
sound design are weaved into the background of a track, almost as
to be unnoticeable, good acting feels like a part of the reality of the
film or the theatre that you observe. Bad acting often breaks your

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suspension of reality, and it becomes very clear that what you are
watching has been staged.
Persona: Italian word derived from the Latin for a type of mask
made to resonate with the voice of the actor (per sonare: literally;
“to sound through”)
Thinking outside of acting, false people are often too obvious,
right? Depending on how good a judge of character you are, your
gut often senses these ‘political’ types. Those who act friendly but
are trying to use this relationship with you for a reason. And for
them, it doesn’t usually work. You can’t really like anyone that
gives that untrustworthy vibe off. The persona fails, and the true,
nasty face beneath the mask is revealed. Or the persona holds but
you steer clear anyway – knowing what awaits you.
Everybody in some way or another is an actor.
It’s true. Mum bakes a horrible pie? You get an Oscar nomination
for Best Prolonged Food Related Lie. Want to get that promotion
at work? – then play the role of proactive and interested employee
– not ‘I’m Just Here For The Paycheck’.
And there are many other examples…
Authenticity And Empathy
Good acting is not inauthentic, it is completely authentic.

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What is authenticity anyway? In acting, authenticity is reacting to
what happens, as it happens. The script works as a guideline to
direct the emotional performances of the actors. Words are simply
a vehicle for emotion and intangible atmosphere of the production.
It’s like music, where instead of words, the organisation of
harmonic and rhythmic textures are the vehicle by which emotions
are manipulated.
Acting requires a well developed imagination and the ability to
intuitively interpret things as they happen. From what I understand,
‘wooden’ acting comes from the situation where the responses
have not been authentic. A good actor is one who responds
completely to the environment and what happens, as it happens.
Or as you may have heard it said, ‘acting is reacting’.
Like any other act of expression, too much thinking seems to
hinder good acting. Overanalysing. And this is the same with many
other things. Want to talk to a guy/girl? Go talk to him/her – don’t
spend too much time deliberating about what you’ll say. Just say
hello. Then have a conversation. The same is true with acting. In
many schools of acting, actors are told to just do it.
And I think many of us, especially those more afraid to express
ourselves, could learn from this.

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The Persona – Responsibilities and Social Masks
Beyond the name you call yourself and who you think or know you
are, you have many identities and play many roles in your day to
day world…
Ever met someone famous and found that they weren’t who you’d
expected them to be? You may have witnessed the unmasking of a
social persona. There are countless examples of people’s ‘private
face’ being much different to whom they are outside of the public
eye. Read a gossipy magazine and you’ll likely find plenty of
accounts.
Similarly, ever thought about how you have a different role to play
when at a drinking establishment with a bunch of old friends, than
when looking after your kids? Your identity, though fixed to some
extent is very much contextual. I’d argue that what professional
actors do is to change the context of their identities further than
most of us do…
Our identities shift in line with our environment. The media
influences them. Suppose I find a new genre of music (lets say
Country) and a particular artist in it admire. Perhaps I choose to
adapt elements of their dress style as homage, and because I think
it looks good on me. That’s my persona shifting in response to
external events. I may now also identify myself as a ‘country and
western fan’, changing my behaviour, adopting certain mannerisms

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and so on. In this instance the genre of music has personal
relevance to me. You can actually see how it affects me.
Or another more obvious example of ‘musical personae’. Think
about the mild mannered, ‘accountant by day’ type guy who
dresses up in leather, studs and spikes and plays satanic black
metal gigs every other weekend. Or the loving father who makes a
good living touring as a member of a gangster rap group (and there
are many examples of this too).
And then of course there’s the other mild mannered guy who lives
out a second life roleplaying as a dungeon master on the internet in
a MMORPG. Not strictly musical, but a similar idea.
Role Playing Games – Vampires, Elves and Romans
In fact there are numerous subcultures where people practice
roleplay as another means to be themselves. The vampire
subculture is very active online and offline. Many of these
‘vampires’ incorporate an element of vampirism into their day to
day lifestyle, and they will often meet, specifically to role play.
The most popular game I could find being Vampire: The
Masquerade
Another group of roleplayers, usually with more of an interest in
traditional fantasy, are called LARP (Live Action Role Plays).
There are many different LARPS, ranging from fantasy oriented

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scenarios to historical reconstructions of the American Civil War
and Ancient Greek phalanx warfare.
Here the level of player dedication varies from people just out to
have some fun and hit people with large foam swords, all the ways
to groups of people who have created their own unique fantasy
cultures and hierarchies. There’s actually a pretty reasonable (if a
bit exaggerated) introduction to LARP culture in the 2008 comedy,
Role Models.
These are people who willing embrace a completely contrary
aspect of themselves. Often taking new names and behavioural
characteristics they’ve been unable to express as their ‘normal’
selves. Another persona.
And speaking of people getting in touch with other aspects of
themselves…
Animal Personae – Furries, Lycanthropes and Shamans…
If you have been on the internet for longer than 5 minutes you have
probably heard reference to the furry fandom.
Hohoho…
They’ve attracted controversy for all sorts of reasons, much of the

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bad press being unfair in my opinion. But I’m going to skip over
all that, as it takes us away from our subject…
‘Furries’ are an interesting study in persona. Instead of a mask,
many of them wear full body ‘fursuits’ and have another, animal
alias that they escape into in their free time. The community
thrives on the internet, often in places, such as Second Life, where
one can live out an idealised identity, unconstrained by physical
limitations (such as the fact that you were born human, though you
may really feel yourself to be a wolf).
Some of the more serious amongst them legitimately believe that
they have animal souls. Or can shapeshift. In that instance perhaps
they see their day-to-day identities as human beings as an
unwanted persona to live through. It’s food for thought.
‘Furry’ has been around for a long, long time, in some form.
People have physically identified themselves with animals for as
long as there have been people. Many shamanic traditions,
crossing multiple cultural groups, have an element of animism,
belief in shapeshifting, experiences in the body of an animal, and
so on. Lycanthropy & Therianthropy have been documented by
the medical profession for centuries.
It is an almost universal attribute of the various human cultures to
use animals as characters in the stories we tell our children.

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But who told you that you had to be just one person (or animal) at
a time?…
Group Personae – Riots, Sermons and Oratory
Personae also emerge on a larger, collective scale. I’ve already
spoken quite a lot about emergent phenomena, so I’ll make my
examples here brief. But take for example any ‘crowd situation‘,
such as a sports game. To some extent, especially during moments
of great passion and energy (like a scoring event), individual
personalities seem to merge into a larger mass. Sometimes people
‘lose themselves’ in the seething social energy of a football riot, or
a powerful religious sermon.
The individual persona merges with the group, if only for the
briefest time…
Conclusion: Who Are ‘You’ Anyway?
Whoever you want to be…
What I’m trying to get at with all this is that we can all be so many
different people over the course of our lives and in the day to day.
We have digital identities, aliases of our construction, the people
we think we are, the people we try not to be, the people we like to
be sometimes, the people we have to be in certain situations. We
change our manner of speaking to suit our environment, we change

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our dress depending on where we go.
Because personae are just like the clothes that we wear, we have
some that we are fond of, and wear more frequently than the rest.
And some that we just take out for special occasions.
Human beings are like a more complicated version of the
chameleon. Changing our appearances just as quickly as we
change a multitude of other aspects of ourselves. Including the
very way we think and look at the world.
This is free will and you have the right to exercise it.
And it leads to the dangerous idea that if you don’t like what
you are right now, you can choose to be someone else.
Freedom means you are unobstructed in living your life as you
choose. Anything less is a form of slavery ~ Wayne Dyer
Whether we are conscious of it or not, we act every day. We act
upon things to get things done, and we also act in the metaphorical
sense…
We fulfill the social roles and functions that fit us into the societies
that we comprise. It’s obvious in how we choose our careers; the

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person appointed as a policeman has to act as ‘guardian of the
peace’. The woman who becomes the midwife has to be that
supremely attentive, nurturing person. But when either of them
finish their shift they can go home and be almost anyone they
want. Maybe the policeman has his own desires for chaos and
destruction. Maybe the midwife does as well. And once the work
persona is done with, the devilish sides can come out to play…
And this can be very healthy. Perhaps the word is therapeutic. Both
individually and for society. It’s probably not a good idea to take a
position of power without an outlet for one’s baser instincts which
are completely at ends with the job description. We are all human
after all.
And there’s another way to allow the ‘other’ aspects of ourselves
to thrive.
The actual, theatrical craft of acting. Which may have more
benefits than you think…
It can be a way to get in touch with our intuitive, feeling, side, or
try out new personae, like you’d put on clothes in a department
store changing room.
For example; never been that much of an outgoing person, but
really want to be? Fake it ’til you make it. Act. If you need to, start

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in a dramatic environment where it doesn’t feel so weird, and get
some practice in. Allow the aspects of the character that you want
to be to integrate into who you are.
It’s been done before, over and over again. General George S.
Patton was obsessed with military history. He modeled himself
after everything he knew of Alexander The Great. What part did
this have in his success as a military commander? Or perhaps
Arnold Schwarzenegger, who at a young age idolised
bodybuilders like Reg Park, and decided that was who he would
become. And he did. In fact he even described the process that
took him to the top…
“What you do is create a vision of who you want to be, and then
live into that picture as if it were already true.” ~ Arnold
Schwarzenegger
And whoever you are, there’s usually someone or something happy
to tell you who or what to be. Think of the modern media
landscape and ‘lifestyle’ brands with their ‘consumer
demographics’. You are not a demographic…
But whatever the world tries to make of you, true self resides there
always. We are most happy when we are being the person we want
to be at the time. Though who we want to be can change. After 12
hours working in a stock exchange, we may no longer want to be

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the full stress, hard charging commodities trader. We may want to
be the caring father. Or watercolour painter. Both are perfect for
the time they are chosen.
So embrace every aspect of yourself. Embrace all the personae.
Because at the end of the day, they’re all you really.
"You have to have a certain persona to be a star, you know, and I
don't have that. I'm a banana." ~ Harvey Korman

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Pain Is Humanity’s Common
Ground
Pain…
A unifying, universal element of the human experience.
A place where we can build empathy and truly connect with others.
Because, despite our multitudinous differences and completely
unique lives, everybody has experienced pain. We don’t want it but
we must all endure it. Sometimes collectively, and sometimes
personally.
But we’re not in it alone.
“I feel your pain” is one of the most understated yet significant
things one human can say to another, if sincerely meant.
It’s an admission of connectedness and unity. A reminder that we
don’t and shouldn’t suffer the human condition in isolation.
We are there for others, others are there for us. It makes it easier to
bear.
A Buddhist exercise in compassion teaches us that, as we regard

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people, to remember and repeat the following silent mantra; “This
person wants love, doesn’t want pain”.
A simple reminder.
If we’re finding it hard to show compassion, maybe we can
remember that this person, on a foundational level, wants to love
and not to suffer.
Yet we are so quick to forget this, as we struggle and fight to carve
out small places in some of us see as a ‘dog eat dog world.’

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On Normality:
I’m going to talk a little about the social construction of
‘normality‘ and why changing how we define it can help the
collective shaping of a better world. It all comes down to standards,
though you may end up fighting ‘the herd’…
Bathing and killing people – what is normal anyway?
One way to define normality is as ‘what we are accustomed to and
come to expect’.
Normality is an attribute, not a constant or a ‘truth’, and is relative
to the person and situation.
For example, nine out of ten people may think daily bathing is
normal. One other may have a different idea. To him, bathing less
could be perceived as normal.
Is he a ‘dirty’ person? Or are the others just obsessive in their
bathing? Who’s right? It’s irrelevant. It is a point that can be
argued either way.
Some of us become accustomed to doing ‘extraordinary’ things…
For example;

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A hardbitten soldier: taking human life is normal.
A butcher: splitting the ribs of animals with a knife is normal.
An architect: seeing buildings that originally existed only in
his/her head is normal.
A concert pianist: practicing 8+ hours at the piano a day is
normal.
What we become accustomed to comes from the activities we
choose and the environment that envelops us. These things form a
cocoon of expected and predictable events and things that make up
an ordered life. A comfort zone.
We get used to them. On some level we associate them with our
safety. We begin to entrench, and keep doing them to stay in the
place we know. This is great if these things are what we really
want and make us happy, and maybe not so great if they are simply
a superficial means for you to feel safe.
Some people seem accustomed to challenging normality and this
zone of familiarity as time goes on, but this seems to be ‘less
normal’. From what I’ve seen, many are happy to just set in their
ways

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So, consider what ‘normal’ things you are participating in
with those around you.
As I said, normality is often socially constructed. Do the norms of
your various social groups help or hinder you?
Is it ‘normal’ for you and your friends to be broke? Perhaps by the
standards of your friendship group this is ‘normal’ – but is it what
you really want? If you should be the one to start saving or
investing your income a little more wisely, how would that affect
your standing in the group?
Wealthy people seem to associate with other wealthy people. Is it
‘normal’ for them to be wealthy?
What about in other areas? Does normal mean a mediocre standard
of performance to you? The Japanese have an oft-quoted saying
that roughly translates to ‘the nail that stands tall will be
hammered down’. Another word used to describe it is ‘tall poppy
syndrome‘ – the idea that people of unusual merit or achievement
are ‘cut down to size’ by their peers.
It’s origins appear to go all the way back to the ancient world, in
which one or various kings had his most eminent citizens put to
death in an attempt to retaining power. I’m not sure if it worked.
It used to promote a culture of superior teamwork that stifled

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individual achievement to some extent. Individuals who chased
their own dreams or grew ‘too big for their boots’ faced ostracism.
Or as some like to repeat these days, ‘there’s no I in team’.
But we clearly aren’t in feudal Japan anymore, and though
teamwork gets many things done, a culture of conformity is often
not the environment in which it feels safe to innovate or push
boundaries. To stretch an already tenuous metaphor, why not have
every nail or sunflower standing taller? – moving the standard
ever upward…
Introducing… The Idea Of Calibration
If you calibrate a device, you find something that is objectively
accurate, and set your measurements to it. For example, you can
calibrate the brightness on your monitor by using a diagram. Your
eye (subjective) becomes calibrated to a colour value (objective).
Calibration has also been applied to your personal standards,
whether you are aware of it or not. What you now define as ‘right’
is a personal calibration. What you define as ‘normal’ is also a
calibration. And the nature of calibration is that you can change
what your standards have been metered too.
I.e at some point, taking a lead from the environment that
surrounded you and the stimulus you were exposed to, you decided
that some level of a personal attribute was ‘normal’ or the status

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quo.
So, what are you calibrated to? The lessons of your parents? Holy
books? Social norms? Your personal code of ethics?
Calibrate your kiddies…
If you have children, why not encourage them to associate higher
standards and pushing boundaries with ‘being normal?’
Is it normal for your child to be told no, over and over? To be told
off. Does your child’s environment suggest that normality is not
doing anything new and remaining completely safe – so safe that
there is little chance for new experiences, perspectives and people?
For many families this is done with the best intentions but stifles
young questing minds all the same.
And it’s understandable, we want the best for our children, even if
that entails being a little …over cautious in how we care for them.
Perhaps we care too much?
But experience is the surest teacher, and if ever there’s an age
we’re learning, childhood is it. It seems like a shame to withhold
that opportunity for our children. It could save them years of
learning these lessons, in a far more expensive environment, and at
a much later date…

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Because, some lessons you have to learn eventually.
Outro: Is Simple
Much of personal motivation and the way that society plays out
collectively is just a striving towards perceived normality (via
groupthink) and a stable world.
‘Normal’ is not what people tell you it is. It’s whatever you want it
to be.
So make your normal better.
TLDR
 We could all have better standards, even if it seems the
majority wants us to settle for mediocrity.

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“You are the sky. Everything else – it’s just the
weather.” ~ Pema Chödrön

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The Importance And Art of
Listening
“Everything has been said before, but since nobody listens we have to keep
going back and beginning all over again.” ~ Andre Gide
I bet you reckon listening to people is pretty important.
But have you really thought about how important?
We all need to vent every now and then, be listened to, and feel
validated by the act of others considering what we have to say.
Sometimes we just need space to talk and express ourselves in
words. And some of us, even more than others…
Why else would people write so much poetry that they’re so very
reluctant to share with others?
And feeling like nobody’s listening to you can really, really drive
people mad.
For an example, ever see the film Falling Down?
There’s more to listening than a lot of people think. Broadly
speaking, you can divide it into two varieties.

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There’s what I’d call ‘conventional listening’ – this you do to
obtain information; discuss things in the normal sense, make small
talk in uncomfortable social situations and hold ‘less intense’
conversations with people you know.
Then there’s active listening – which is done by the listener to
specifically help the speaker. In active listening, the listener
actively makes an effort to listen and clarifies that he/she’s
understood the speaker. This hopefully leads to a dialogue with
greater understanding, and leaves the speaker with a feeling that
they’ve been really listened to.
The different effects these two kinds of listening can
be profound.
You can do listening wrong
Often we do the wrong kind of listening at the wrong time, which
is no good for anyone
The reason why I love some of my closest friends so much is
because we all give each other space to speak. It’s actually rare
and refreshing…
Because I feel the quality of listening where I am is usually
substandard. In conversation it very often feels that people are
just racing to fill spaces in dialogue.

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In fact, it’s not even dialogue at all – it’s often like a series of
vaguely connected monologues.
Nobody really gains anything from it, and I don’t like these kind of
conversations at all.
Ever experienced what I mean?
Ever done it?
I think we all have… at least a few times
But we can learn our lessons and be forgiven.
Everybody’s talking but I can’t hear a word…
You probably notice that in the western world, many people
are unhappy…
Or think they’re unhappy. Some think they need psychotherapy,
when all they really need is a listener. Or a counselor. Just a little
space to talk about their problems in a nonjudgemental
environment.
Why do they need this? Because they don’t get this kind of
listening from the people in their normal day to day life.

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“Being heard is so close to being loved that for the average person
they are almost indistinguishable.” ~ David Augsburger
Perhaps they don’t have a friend that they can count as a
‘confidant’.
However, this can go both ways. Sometimes people try to turn their
friends into their counselors (without consent and often without
realising it). This is actually a very bad thing for both parties.
Because if this kind of ‘helping relationship‘ isn’t done right,
there’s a transfer of something I can only describe as ‘negative
energy’ from speaker to listener.
And it can destroy relationships.
Example;
Consider the scenario when someone calls a friend purely to
‘vent’. Often the listener feels ‘put upon’ to provide a solution, but
all the talker wants to do is vent.
This is often the problem in male/female relationships. ‘Solutions
oriented’ men want to offer practical remedies to their woman,
whereas she just wants to explore her feelings. At the end of the
miscommunication masquerading as dialogue, the speaker feels
just as bad and the listener feels like shit too.
Because it’s all been done wrong.

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Other times the negativity of the speaker’s situation weighs down
on the listener, who just isn’t ready to ‘take on’ that burden.
Especially when the listener feels unable to help (which is often
the case). This can lead to a feeling of powerlessness in the
listener.
At times like this, the listener finishes the dialogue like they’ve just
taken an emotional beating from a friend. They often feel guilty
that they can’t help. And sometimes the listener even feel resentful.
And still, the speaker’s problem hasn’t been solved.
So don’t be that person dumping your problems on other
people.
Because we’ve all known that negative, toxic person, right? The
one who brings everybody down.
With these people, the process of listening can be much harder
work than we’d expect.
And speaking of listening as hard work…
Introducing… The Samaritans
Ever heard of The Samaritans?

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They’re a UK charity and one of the best examples of the
incredible good that can be done just by actively listening.
The Samaritans is comprised of people who volunteer to listen.
They man phone lines, counsel in person and respond to letters,
emails and text messages from suicidal or desperately unhappy
speakers. Often, The Samaritans are the only people that a suicidal
or near suicidal person feels they have left to speak to.
And it works! The stated aim of the organisation is to reduce the
number of deaths via suicide, and as far as I know, they’re seeing
results. For decades The Samaritans have been the ‘last line of
defence’ for the suicidal person in the UK, their phone-lines open
even when more ‘official’, governmental organisations such as the
NHS’ mental health helplines are inaccessible.
I wonder how many lives they’ve saved, just by being there and
properly listening when nobody else would.
Samaritans listen with a compassionate, non-judgmental ear. They
don’t offer suggestions, and don’t criticise, no matter how dire
your actions or your situation. Each of them is trained in active
listening and many of them have years of experience hearing the
most heartbreaking scenarios. Very often they have to counsel each
other, as hours of this kind of listening takes it’s toll.

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Pretty tough.
Their example shows us how important a kind, listening ear is, and
what listeners themselves may have to go through.
Conclusion: How to ‘get’ wisdom…
And there’s an another obvious, but often overlooked thing about
listening properly. You might actually learn something useful.
Well, depending on what you are listening to of course…
“Listen or thy tongue will keep thee deaf”

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Ownership And Denial
"Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim
at, with originality, which they should never bother about." ~ W.
H. Auden
Those who own their choices live closer to authenticity and
reality.
Ownership is accepting what happens and the state of affairs as it
is now, and it is not as common as you may think.
Sometimes people in bad situations (jobs, marriages or anything
else) haven’t fully accepted that their choice has led them to where
they are. Or the extent of the situation they’re in.
This is denial. People deny ownership of their circumstances. But
their circumstances are the same, and not seeing the problem
doesn’t make it go away, as we all know.
Think about the mother who refuses to acknowledge that her
initially ‘spirited’, now very delinquent son is getting worse. Or the
artist who refuses to listen to the constructive criticism directed at
his work, and thus never makes improvements.
It's that old cliche of 'burying your head in the sand.'

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We all do it…
I think everybody has an element of denial in their life. How many
things we deny, and the extent of the denial is a matter of degree.
We’re all a bit deluded, but some of us develop full blown
‘Delusional Disorders’ (as classified in the DSM-IV) of a paranoid
or grandiose nature. Hopefully this doesn’t describe you, or me.
So, I’ll use me as an example – to some extent I am in denial that I
may not have a future as a music producer or composer. My odds
of success are probably quite small. Perhaps I’d do better if I spent
more time working in areas where I have already seen results, such
as writing.
But I have always wanted to make a living out of music and I will
never give up on it.
So perhaps I am not completely in denial, since I accept this fact,
even as I fight against it by continuing to do what doesn’t seem to
work! I think I am moderately deluded. I have unrealistic
expectations, and it’s just a facet of my stubbornness.
Dealing with the ‘blind spot’…
The first step to solving a problem is knowing that there is one in
the first place. But actually seeing that there is a problem is one of

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the biggest. We don’t want problems, or at least, we want to be
entertained by superficial problems. We create small dramas and
diligently keep the larger ones out of perception where they may
do us psychological harm.
And this is why there can be such a blind spot. Some problems just
seem too big to face, let alone solve.
So the problem can be described as this:
We deny some of our potentially biggest problems so strongly
that we’re often not consciously aware of them.
And at times like this need an objective third party, perceptive
enough to notice our floors, assertive enough to be unafraid of
hurting our feelings, and compassionate enough to tell us for the
right reasons.
This person can give us the brutal reality check we need.
So who’s watching out for you?

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Distraction Vs. Inspiration
Simply put, there are three ways to
experience the world…
You can try to focus on nothing at all (which is very hard, your
mind needs something to chew on)
You can focus on distractions – we need distractions to entertain
us, and sometimes dull the existential pain (which we perhaps feel
as Dysthymia or boredom?).
You can focus on inspiration – this is material which ‘nourishes
your soul’. That inspires you to do ‘important’ stuff. It gives you
ideas and/or the drive to implement them.
But whatever you choose to focus on will in some way affect the
way you spend your life.
And you can choose.
The Balance…
As with everything, there’s a balance between distraction and
inspiration. Perhaps for many of us, we have spent too much of life
focusing on distractions.

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Yet, this is understandable, if you take a look at our world today.
Especially our media landscape…
It all seems arranged against us. The media is far more full of
distractions than inspiration. Sometimes I wonder if it is not a
conspiracy of some kind to distract us away from thinking for
ourselves more and doing bigger things.
And then it occurs to me that it probably just comes down to
market forces.
Because distracting you is profitable…
The main distraction today is advertising. The consumer
economy wants you to spend your money. People with goods and
services to hawk go hungry unless they can convince you that you
want the latest ‘hot item’.
Cos it’s harder to make money out of people who are inherently
focused on their own ‘thing’ and who aren’t looking at the ads,
right?
Thus, one ad executive’s inspired copywriting or advertorial image
is a distraction for multitudes. Take the example of being on the
Internet… did you ever see a place so full of distraction?!
Wherever there is this much information available ‘on tap’ –

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distraction is inexorable.
Let’s start with Youtube as an example….
You can visit, seeking ‘useful’ information, such as the multitude
of tutorial videos available there. But, after a momentary lapse,
you find that you’ve instead spent 35 minutes watching videos of
cute baby animals. Or street fights.
Has this ever happened to you?
And outside of Youtube, the internet world is full of banner ads,
popups and popunders. Like the Youtube example, all of it can
conspire to create sudden changes in direction that take you far
away from where you wanted to go, before you’ve even realised
what’s happened to you.
Unmindful Internet use often sets you on autopilot, like a dog
chasing a stick. This is fine if you are browsing for entertainment.
And probably not fine if you are trying to be inspired or get
any work done.
Onto TV…
Another example is TV. Usually it’s pop culture programming,
frequently punctuated by advertising which ranges from blatant to
subtle. Or the news, which provides a whole lot of information
which, hopefully, leaves you ‘informed’.

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‘Informed’ about information that you can’t really use…
Because unless you trade commodities or genuinely enjoy hearing
about what’s going on (accepting that it’s filtered through an
editorial agenda and strongly tinged with a sensationalist slant) I
believe that the news is feeding you junk information most of the
time.
Will you do anything about the horrible images of that car crash?
Asides from feel distressed?
Probably not. How can you…?
And watch out for (my) generalisations…
Of course one man’s distraction is another man’s inspiration.
And some people do enjoy being informed. They often become
journalists.
And, inspiration can be found in the strangest places. Perhaps one
of these soap operas tells a tale that really moves you to do
something. Or there’s a fictional character that you use as an
inspiring, possibly heroic example. And it’s not uncommon for the
news tells to uplifting stories, should a producer deem it
‘newsworthy’.
It is important that I try not to generalise too much (if I haven’t

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already!)
Because one thing is not always the same thing to everybody.
My point here is that as you consume information, you can
consciously ask yourself “is this distracting me, or inspiring me?”
And then you can ask, “What does it inspire me to do” – “or what
is it distracting me from?”
If no answer comes, keep asking, until something of an answer
emerges.
When you get an answer, then you can decide if you want to do
anything about it.
You can either continue with what you are consuming it or stop
and do something else.
The choice of your focus is always yours.
And as I said before, inspiration comes from the most unexpected
places and often requires you look for it. But distraction is
everywhere.
Guard against distractions and seek inspiration.

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Because the process of seeking, finding and creating inspiration
makes for an inspired life.
“Always remember, your focus determines your reality.” ~ George
Lucas

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Chasing Greater Pleasures
Sometimes, the greater pleasures in life come only once you’ve let
go of the lesser ones…
But so many people will never realise these greater pleasures.
This is because they fear losing what they have far more than they
are inspired by mere promises of something better.
Because ofttimes, when it’s right in front of you, it’s ohhh so hard
to resist it.
Yet some of us do, anyway.
Some people call this ‘delayed gratification’…

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Embrace Destruction
Destruction is…
…not a thing that should distress us.
It is the process of (re)creation.
Nature periodically destroys itself so that it may be renewed.
Forests burn down, and new growth springs from the ashes.
Stars build complex elements within their cores, and then blow
themselves apart in supernovae. This seeds the universe with new
materials. And then new stars reform from these seeded materials,
to build more elements and blow themselves apart, again and
again.
This is how the earth got here.
Your body sheds skin, and turns over the cells which comprise you
on the inside. In a number of years the stuff that you are made of
has completely changed. Your brain, which does your thinking, is
not the same brain, a decade later. Your body has destroyed and
recreated itself.
Yet you are still here, anchored by your consciousness.

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In the business world, ‘creative destruction’ is the process by
which outdated ideas are destroyed and replaced with ones that
better serve the marketplace (us).
All that dies and decays on the earth, nourishes other life.
Destruction is just the other side of the coin of existence.
Inevitable, integral, beautiful and as perfect as everything else.
Embrace it.
“The urge to destroy is also a creative urge.” ~ Pablo Picasso

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Part II: The Thought Experiments
•§•II“It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter
how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's
wrong.” ~ Richard P. Feynman
The second part of this work deals with a category of articles
I call ‘thought experiments’. These are non formal exercises
in thinking that can help you test scenarios and concepts
using nothing more than your mighty and creative brain.
Thought experiments have overturned everything from
quantum mechanics, to computer science, pop culture and
science fiction. In fact, one of the ideas that helped Einstein
formulate one his Theories Of Relativity came from a
thought experiment imagining what the world would look
like to a beam of light.
So perhaps play along and see if they give you anything to
think about…

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Apophenia
If humans are ‘pattern recognition
machines…’
Then perhaps there are a number of latent patterns of perception
which make for happiness and a life well lived.
And all we need to do is interpret them…

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Godlike Understanding
Here I try to speculate at how omniscience and omnipotence might
work or feel, logically. As far as I can see none of these ideas can
prove or disprove the idea of a God…
As human knowledge has advanced, it appears that the causes of
more and more phenomena are becoming clear to us.
If human understanding can be placed on a continuum where the
value of 1 represents complete understanding of the cause of a
thing, and 0 represents no understanding at all, maybe
‘randomness’ represents a value below 1. Randomness: the
incomplete understanding of causal effects?
Let me elaborate…
In times past, humans used various ‘unscientific’ explanations to
natural phenomena. Crops failed? Angry god. Comet? Angry god.
Famine? Angry god. You get the picture..
God: Original cause and solution to all your problems.
Where there have been things unexplainable through empirical
observation or science, we have reverted to a supernatural
explanation. Humans gotta know, right? However, now that
science is advancing, the amount of supernatural explanations we

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use is decreasing. They are obsoleted by new discoveries. Some
say that ‘The God Of The Gaps’ is shrinking.
As I understand it, randomness suggests an element of uncertainty,
but can be accounted for and worked around. For example, we can
leave space in our calculations to account for randomness and fully
expect this will affect our final result. We can account for
randomness but it means that the outcome can never be known
with certainty.
Possibility of Random Outcome: Uncertainty.
Possibility of Random Outcome: Everpresent.
Therefore, Uncertainty: Everpresent due to randomness.
‘Practical’ Impossibility
So, using statistics we can plot the probable outcomes of a
situation. The more results we get from our uncertain situation, the
closer we get to certainty in our predictions of how this situation
may play out in future. But we don’t ever get to certainty. For
example with a coin toss, the odds of getting heads 186,000 in a
row are ridiculously small, and coin tosses tend to even out
towards a 50/50 distribution in the extreme long run.
Even so, we can’t be certain that it won’t happen to keep coming

Page | 69
up with heads, no matter how ridiculously improbable, and
therefore we do not have complete certainty. In the practical sense
we can say it is almost impossible. But is anything really
impossible?
Trying To Define And Comprehend ‘Godlike’
A godlike/limitless understanding would imply absolute certainty
in all outcomes. Godlike power would mean that all endeavors set
into motion would work out absolutely flawlessly. In prediction,
there would be no randomness, as all outcomes would be known or
controllable (there’s that godlike power again). In a real sense,
things would be predestined because you’d know what they where
before they happened.
Put another way, perhaps random things prevent destiny, unless
there is some way of understanding so much that we could know
the outcome of events that were previously deemed random. Thus;
no more randomness.
It’d be a bit crap though. Why would you play a game of chess if
you knew the outcome of the game in advance and any move you
made changed nothing?
I can imagine two Godlike perspectives…
1. Someone who knows the outcomes of everything yet is unable
to interact in any way to alter the fixed path of events. Some sort of

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cosmic observer. Omniscient but not omnipotent. Perhaps the
loving God who sees all of our suffering but can change nothing.
2. Someone who can change any single variable and know exactly
what sort of limitless causal consequences this would take. This is
closer to a Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics.
Such a creature would exist within each universe within the
multiverse (and there would be an infinite number of them), and
would probably see how ‘tweaking’ the effects in one environment
caused cascade effects on all the others. Omnipotent and
omniscient, and unable to act on anything apart from everything.
Such a being couldn’t be ‘disentangled’ from the multiverse,
because as part of everything, it has to exist. Similarly, since every
effect is in some way linked to everything else, every action it took
would cause an infinite number of consequences.
I guess this is closer to the traditional monotheistic conception of
an all-powerful deity. To say that this God was everything would
be literally true, since this being would be tied into everything and
every effect, which would be linked to everything else.
I think I’ve said ‘everything’ so many times it is starting to lose
meaning.

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Here’s my main point;
What if there is an ultimate destiny, and randomness is simply the
symptom of a deficit of understanding?
For example, we are uncertain of where a coin lands, as we haven’t
quite grasped some bigger explanation that allows us to predict
where coins land with complete certainty. Knowing every
infinitesimal variable (which is practically impossible) might
allow us complete certainty in our predictions.
Another way to consider would be to think of the paradox of
predicting the future, which is similar to the well-worn
grandfather paradox of time travel; which applies to the past. To
recap, you can’t go back in time to kill your granddad because if
you did, you would not have been born and therefore couldn’t go
back to kill your granddad. Capisce?
OK – now lets loosely apply this to predicting the future, thinking
of how causality may disrupted by something else, namely
observer affect. Or put another way;
Perhaps you can’t see the exact future, because by observing it,
you change it.
And if that where the case what would that do to our hypothetical
omniscient being?

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Protip: Don't go back in time to kill your grandad
TLDR/Summary:
▪ Could randomness simply be a lack of understanding every
single variable within a situation?
▪ Therefore; would an all powerful being know so much that
randomness was no longer a consideration?
▪ But – is it possible to know every exact outcome, if your very
observations affect what you are observing?
▪ Could an omnipotent being take any single action without
creating an infinite set of repercussions (butterfly theory)?
▪ Would an all powerful being by it’s very nature be forced not to
intervene in the nature of the universe to maintain free will?

Page | 73
Time's Arrow
“This thing all things devours: Birds, beasts, trees, flowers; Gnaws
iron, bites steel, Grinds hard stones to meal; Slays king, ruins
town, And beats high mountain down…” ~ J.R.R Tolkien – The
Hobbit
Where is the empirical proof of time?
It is true, that we feel something pass every day. Or at least we see
evidence something passing; stuff getting on, stuff falling apart.
Progress…
But is time change? (Put another way, is the motion of time’s
arrow evidence enough for time?)
Crux of the argument:
How can we empirically observe time if we are forever trapped
within it?
What can we measure time against? Entropy; is that the corollary
value?
Can we have entropy without time? It seems not…
When we ‘do science’our method often is to look empirically at
something from a detached position, that we may learn about it.

Page | 74
Except, you can’t look at time from a distance, because you are
always ‘inside’ it. Relativistically speaking you are trapped in the
reference frame.
Within time where are our reference points? We use times and
dates, right? But they are all relative to each other, not measured
against some universal standard.
There is not a detached position to calibrate all of time’s progress
to.
If someone moves one goalpost, you’ll notice. If someone moves
both goal posts, you’ll probably notice. If someone moves the
entire field and you with it, would you notice?
Relativity:
How would we know if time’s progress rate has changed, if all the
clocks had calibrated to keep to this new rate of passage?
It’d be like travelling in a car that accelerates, yet with the dial
remaining constant despite of speed changes. In this car you can’t
see properly out the windows because it is terribly dark. How
would you know that the car were speeding up, slowing down or
even moving at all, if your senses and your instruments were
deceiving you?

Page | 75
You couldn’t get out and verify if the car was moving, relative to
the ground. You can’t get ‘out’ of time to see what it is moving
relative to. So, similarly, how would we know that time were
changing? How would we even know that it ‘was’?
Is there a spoon?
Consider the importance of relativity…what is relative to time?
Everything?
What would a being outside of time experience?
Perhaps considering what it would be like to exist without time
will help us better think about its ubiquitous nature.
If time where plotted as a fourth dimension, what would a being
that where outside of time perceive, if it could observe time
discretely?
The First idea is that it’d see everything will have happened all at
once, the Second idea is it will have seen that nothing will have
happened at all.
If the first case, how would it differentiate discrete events? It’d
just be like a long exposure photograph that’d merged into a mass
of undifferentiated information. If it were able to interact with the
universe, maybe it’d be stuck in the mass…

Page | 76
If the second case, surely the being couldn’t exist without time.
Because in this instance time is only present when things happen,
and therefore since nothing could have happened there could have
been no time and no being.
If you took time away as a value (as in you removed the fourth
dimension), what would happen? Would the nature of everything
fall apart? Can time stop?
Why does anyone care anyway?
Because every scientific measurement we take, or observation we
make happens within time. It constrains everything.
Everything we do in our lives happens within the boundaries of
time. We only exist within a certain set of temporal and spatial co
ordinates. Put another way, you cannot be located at any point
without a time and a place to find you.
We take time for granted as we have always experienced it, yet
what we really know (in the personal sense) of time is felt
subjectively.
We put faith in the existence of time. An eternity for the fruit fly is
a day in the human life. There’s the relativity again, except it is
more perceptive.

Page | 77
I quote Alan Watts, fountain of wisdom and philosopher of no
philosophy – “I have realized that the past and future are real
illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and
all there is.”
So are the timepieces in a way, reinforcing an illusion? A clock just
measures time; it is not proof of time, just as a ruler does not
prove that an inch exists.
But… Space: Evidence for time?
Evidence for time seems to come from the idea that you and I can
occupy the same space because time exists. For example
(disregarding the motion of the earth through the solar system, the
solar system through the galaxy, and the galaxy through the
universe), if you have been to the foot of the Eiffel Tower, you
have occupied the same space I have at some point. It therefore
follows that, obviously, time can put a distance between things
happening at a single point in space. If it didn’t I might walk into a
dinosaur or a Cro-Magnon villager in Croydon, UK which is where
I live and where they will have once lived.
So, I suppose, it follows that for things to change, time must
pass.
But is this evidence enough for you? I’m not sure we’re seeing the
whole picture on time, or if we are using it as a conceptual

Page | 78
placeholder for something much more complicated. Maybe time is
an illusion or a simplification.
I wish my brain had more computing power.

Page | 79
“Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well
as the earth.” ~ Henry David Thoreau

Page | 80
Ranges
Intellectual Abstraction Into What Data and the
Physical World Represents
Disclaimer: Geology and the stock market are complicated. I don’t
offend your intelligence by presuming differently, but I make some
gross simplifications in the differences between them for the sake
of metaphor. Thanks…
When you look at a volatile stock chart, you may notice that in
some way it resembles a mountain range…
It has peaks and valleys, jagged edges and all the formations of a
sharp area of the earth’s geography.
What does it represent? By design, it represents a consensus in
value, as projected by humans and plotted over time.
You may see this same jagged formation on the surface of the
earth. Certain mountain ranges have harsh jagged edges that
resemble more volatile times in the history of the stock market.
Other, more hilly ranges resemble times of less volatile mood.
The stochastic formations of the earth’s surface are the natural
result of statistical probability. The values of the stock market

Page | 81
are the same thing. The sum of sentiment makes the trendline of
the market. The collective agents (such as the rock and material)
which make up the structure of the earth’s surface, form the sum
which resembles a trendline. The surface is the trendline(?)
Here is the Question:
We plot a graph of the stock market to represent the action of this
market over time. In a way we know what it represents (well, we
designed it after all!).
Perhaps, the shapes of solid things around can be thought of as
graphs. Except instead of being plotted by man, they are plotted
from the physical data going on in the background in our real
world.
It is interesting to look at the shapes around us as plots of
information. And if they are graphs, what is the data they
represent?
Definitely they dictate geological data. We can analyse, and using
the mathematics that understands pressure formations, work
backwards and plot their formulation. We can use mathematical
models to plot geological changes and ‘growth’ of a mountain
range. So, in a way, by representing them as 3d objects these
mountains are ‘graphlike’ manifestations of the data used in our

Page | 82
mathematical model.
3d > 2d
Of course there are a few differences. On earth, all natural solids
(graphs?) are plotted in 3D, which would lead us to think the graph
has more variables (to account for an extra dimension), though the
same jagged pattern is unmistakable. As far as data goes, plotting
in 3 dimensions gives us a larger range of possible variables to
work with, within the same space.
So what does nature plot?
Though consciously designed to plot stock market data, without
any labeling, or prior knowledge of subject matter, a graph of the
stock market may hold very little meaning for the reader. With no
labels on the side to indicate what the values are, it just looks like
a jagged line.
Nature’s Games
I think that the stock market is a ‘game’ environment. Here I define
a game as an environment in which different agents play out under
a certain set of environmental rules, and there of course is an
element of chance. If there wasn’t any chance involved it wouldn’t
be interesting, ‘cos we’d know the outcome and would lose all
novelty and sense of unpredictability. Just because it is a game,
doesn’t mean that it is trivial.

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