Form: Mini Essay

  • TRUTH, NATURAL LAW, PHYSICAL LAW (religion) (read it and weep) (advances on hume

    TRUTH, NATURAL LAW, PHYSICAL LAW

    (religion) (read it and weep) (advances on hume, damning of rawls)

    Our brains are smaller than those of our distant ancestors.

    With the evolution of language we were able to learn more by shared calculation: in the form of thinking and reasoning than we could by our own observation, memory, and judgement.

    By communicating using language thereby transferring experience, we extended our perception, could make use of other’s memories.

    But with greater perception and less individual certainty of that perception, we needed a means of judgement. Or what we call, a method of decidability.

    With greater numbers, and a greater division of perception, we required even greater tools of judgement, of choice, of decidability.

    We needed ‘theories’ of the good. And those theories evolve in parallel with the extent of our cooperation:

    –From:–

    “What is good for me?” and “What is true enough for me to act?” using the criteria “So that what I gain by the action is preferable to not doing so.”

    –to:–

    1) What is good for me : what is true enough for me to act without retaliation

    2) What is good for me and good for us : what is true enough to encourage future cooperation?

    3) What is good for me and good for us, and good for all those like us, so that we encourage cooperation of others, and do not encourage retaliation.

    4) What is good for me, and good for us, and good for all mankind, so that we TRANSCEND. (Evolve).

    This problem of decidability is the origin of our myth, religion, and philosophy – and now science. These techniques

    Just as in ethics we start with mythical inspiration, and evolve into ethical virtues, to ethical rules, to ethical outcomes, we evolve from the actions of the individual, to the ethics of cooperation, to the ethics of cooperation at scale, to the ethics of transcendence of man.

    So, to confer decidability upon all, from the young child to the old and wise, the method of decision making must be accessible for use by everyone from the young child to the old and wise.

    A religion comprises a group evolutionary strategy, wherein members are taught metaphysical, mythical, traditional, and normative methods of decidability, by means of analogy.

    Traditional law codifies this strategy in prohibitions. Why prohibitions? Because we can all equally refrain from the violation of that group evolutionary strategy, but we cannot equally contribute to the furtherance of that group evolutionary strategy. We are equal in ability to not do, but we are not equal in ability to do.

    A group’s evolutionary strategy can be successful or unsuccessful in the persistence of the group – such as by being dependent upon local phenomenon that can change: the worship of the sun so logical in the agrarian era, is no longer so logical in an era of trade, or of industry, or of energy, or of information.

    A group’s evolutionary strategy can be successful but violate principle three: in that it encourages retaliation: murder, career thievery, Gypsy petty parasitism, Jewish organized and systemic parasitism, muslim invasion and raiding, Russian low trust propaganda and lying, and Chinese and European ‘Asymmetric Colonialism’.

    A groups evolutionary strategy can violate principle four by inhibiting transcendence – such as islam’s demand for respect and mandated ignorance – or a strategy can construct transcendence: Western Indo European Natural Law.

    A group’s evolutionary strategy can provide the minimum resistance to transcendence and the maximum possibility of transcendence:

    Truth telling law (Truth), Natural Law (cooperation), and physical law (correspondence), the incremental, total suppression of parasitism, under the Common Law. And genetic suppression by the incremental culling of the parasitic from the group by separation, sterilization, and hanging.

    And while we can perhaps tech these concepts to children through repetition, we cannot teach it to them as inspiration, without myth, ritual, tradition, and norm to persist it across generations, and to convey it to all those regardless of age and ability.

    That we require ‘religion’: myth, ritual and tradition, in narrative, literary form is a product of man’s intellectual evolution from innocent and ignorant child to jaded and experienced sage.

    But whether stated as religious narrative, reasoned moral argument, rational justification, strictly constructed law, ratio-scientific criticism or testimonial truth, the actions that result from the use of these forms of communication must produce correspondent results.

    So it is not the method of conveyance that we judge – since the method of argument is a measure of the speaker and the audience – but whether

    The only transcendent philosophy must be natural law of man and physical law of the universe, stated testimonially – the best that man’s words are able to state.

    And therefore the only transcendent religion is Testimonial Truth, The Natural Law of Cooperation, The Physical Law of Correspondence,

    All else is lie to obscure parasitism and predation, or it is error that not must be not tolerated, but corrected.

    If any mythological, reasonable, rational, ratio-scientific argument is incompatible with natural law, then it is merely an act of predation – an act of war – not a religion.

    Christianity and Indo European Paganism are compatible with Natural Law in the production of resulting behavior, as long as inbreeding is prohibited, tolerance for violation of natural law is limited, and the culling of the underclasses by expulsion, separation, incarceration, sterilization, and hanging is encouraged as necessary for the preservation of natural law and the achievement of transcendence.

    The Church may not preserve its dependents at the expense of natural law or at the expense of transcendence. That would be the work of the self interest of the bureaucracy of man, not the work of Truth and Transcendence.

    Curt Doolittle

    The Philosophy of Aristocracy

    The Propertarian Institute

    Kiev, Ukraine


    Source date (UTC): 2016-02-02 04:48:00 UTC

  • THE CATALOG OF ERRORS AND LIARS – INSTEAD, TRUTH IS ENOUGH. I tend to treat argu

    THE CATALOG OF ERRORS AND LIARS – INSTEAD, TRUTH IS ENOUGH.

    I tend to treat argumentative methods as sets of technologies differentiated by their methods of decidability (testing): whether they produce truth or falsehood.

    Mythology (explanatory)

    Reasonableness (The Pre-Socratics: justifiable)

    Reason (The Greeks: Critical)

    Religious Reasoning (The Monotheists: Mythically Correspondent)

    Rationalism (Kant: Internally Consistent)

    Ratio-Empiricism (Hume, Smith, Locke: Empirically Consistent)

    Scientific (Darwin, Einstein, Spencer: Deterministically consistent)

    Pseudoscientific (Boaz, Freud, Marx, Cantor, Keynes)

    Pseudo-logical (the analytic philosophers of language)

    Pseudo Rationalism (Postmodernists)

    Testimonialism (what I do:

    – categorically consistent

    – internally consistent

    – externally correspondent (empirically consistent)

    – existentially possible (operationally stated)

    – Limited and Parsimonious (falsified limits)

    – Fully Accounted (against selection bias)

    – Objectively Moral (consisting only of fully informed, productive, warrantied, voluntary transfer consisting only of externalities of the same.)

    German philosophers tend to treat argumentative methods as methods of teaching: whether they are successful at conveyance or not.

    As far as I Know Kant was trying to restate germanic christianity by justificationary means. He was remarkably successful. But it’s not ‘true’ in the sense that it’s correspondent. It’s just very well structured wisdom.

    As far as I know the entire continental, cosmopolitan, and anglo-liberal programs were dead ends for different reasons. The german possessed the correct vision of man, but an unscientific method of argument insufficiently divorced from religion. The cosmopolitans merely creates series of elaborate lies with which to justify predation on the west. The anglos were so enamored of their wealth and power they assumed all men desired and were capable of

    Man was not ‘kept down and oppressed’. He was not peaceful in the state of nature. He was a rapidly reproducing super predator happily competing with and killing off his own kind. Man was forcibly civilized against his will and against his desire for combating other sets of genes using malthusian reproduction. The entire enlightenment project was predicated on this fallacy. And the Germans, French, Cosmopolitan Jews, Anglo Liberals, and Anglo European neo-liberals were all wrong either in their method of argument, or their group evolutionary strategy, or their fantasy of the nature of man.

    Man is trivially simple: he does what is in his interests at all times. We civilize man by prohibiting parasitism in all forms so that the only method of survival left to him is productive, fully informed, voluntary exchange, limited externality of the same in the market for goods and services.

    Man was not oppressed. He was forcibly domesticated. And the enlightenment errors of the europeans set free the barbarians. The most serious of which was pandora. Who, once she could open the ballot box, let loose all the ills in the world, that man through his incremental evolution of property rights as a means of suppressing parasitism, unwound within decades.

    So that said, the OP’s question is a matter of angels on the heads of pins. The entire germanic corpus, like the french and the cosmopolitan jewish, and all but the scientific of the anglo, is nothing but a second attempt at imposing christian mysticism upon us with a new argumentative technology that is a mere minor improvement upon the last.

    Truth is enough. If you cannot manage truth, then the question is why you fear it? Is it because one lacks the courage? Is it because the universe is hostile to man? Is it because it would eliminate our ability to act parasitically upon others? Or is it all of the above?

    Truth is enough.

    Curt Doolittle

    The Propertarian Institute

    Kiev, Ukraine


    Source date (UTC): 2016-02-01 05:08:00 UTC

  • “CURT, HOW DOES X PRODUCT COMPARE TO OVERSING?” (for repost to realitybychanting

    http://www.realitybychanting.com/Q&A: “CURT, HOW DOES X PRODUCT COMPARE TO OVERSING?”

    (for repost to realitybychanting)

    Jason,

    If you want to stack the current range of business products they look like this:

    1 – Multiple Point Solutions (they are a disorganized industry)

    2 – Misc variations on 17hats(very small and home business),

    3 – Mavenlink (small business),

    4 – Oversing (medium and large organizations),

    5 – Microsoft Full Stack (very large enterprise),

    6 – Microsoft+SAP (fortune 1000).

    Now at present what separates the enterprise from the SMB are these features:

    1 – Programmable Workflow

    2 – Configurable Organizational Structure

    3 – Multi-Currency + multi tax

    4 – Multi-Language

    5 – Project Accounting (minimum)

    What further separates the platforms from the apps are:

    1 – an api

    2 – plugins or the equivalent.

    3 – Financial Accounting.

    And what makes you a big boy (SAP) is

    1 – Parts, Assemblies, Processes

    2 – Maintenance, records, and routes.

    I don’t care about the SMB sector. What I want is to compete with MSFT in the medium, large, and very large enterprise. And I think we can do that if we can get three more years under us. From there we can move down-market.

    Our opinion is this: if you care about decorated software then you’re a home or small business. If you specialize in financial measurement of departments or teams you’re a medium business. if you have spreadsheet UI”s rolling to an accounting process then your an Enterprise. If you have horrible UI’s customized for tasks that are financially interdependent, then your a fortune x000 enterprise.

    the industry is indeed disorganized by a proliferation of point solutions in the consumer, home, smb, medium spaces. Microsoft is pushing a very legacy product to the web with moderate success, but without changing their paradigm (desktop apps + sharepoint + outlook + project server + crm + dynamics)

    We want to replace the Microsoft stack other than the desktop apps with a single integrated product. (And I am not even sure we can’t do better in apps very shortly – at least, I am sure I know how to, I”m not sure it matters.)

    V1 doesn’t have the full feature set yet, so I can’t claim we’re going to succeed untili we do. But I understand how that all will work, and how little extra work we need to do to create it.

    Screen + Keyboard (evolves to) > Windows+Mouse (evolves to) > Panels+Touch.

    We know from the failure of microsoft’s (obvious) experiment that the tablet UI is not the future of the user interface. Whatsoever. We can see in all the failures, that the 3d user interface on a 2d plane is a failed experiment.

    I am not convinced that a visually overlaid 3d experience (head mounted) is viable if for no other reason than it impairs collaboration on the one hand, and makes it very difficult to monitor employee productivity or behavior in the work place on the other hand. (working consistently on dreary tasks is an unnatural behavior after all).

    We (I am) fairly confident that the panels+touch user interface defeats the windows user interface going forward – because it can be used both on two dimensional as well well as three dimensional user experiences. in other words, it is pretty hard to beat the 2d experience. Just as it is very hard to beat the paper book as a random access search device.

    It is very easy to demonstrate that the database structure of outlook/exchange and sharepoint are technologically archaic, and that the new db model is superior for full text search and retrieval (FB/Amazon/Others)

    It is very easy to demonstrate that the design of software using database modification of custom fields is technologically archaic.

    It is very easy to demonstrate that the relationship between the application file and the desktop computer’s file system is technologically archaic.

    It is very easy to demonstrate that the accounting process we have relied upon since the age of sail is technologically archaic.

    The oversing panel model is interesting because it makes it very obvious that there are a limited number of functions taking place in all workplaces that consist of goals (strategy), communication(negotiation), tasks(requirements), protocols(steps), processes (transformations from one thing to the next thing), and measurements and performance statistics.

    And that every organization does these things. And that no interface is unique for that purpose (just as SAP says that if you don’t do it their way, then you’re not special, you’re just doing it wrong).

    But despite procedural models that we CAN change, that people PROCESS INFORMATION differently and CAN’T change behavior (inexpensively), and so they need various ways of working with that information (granular to overview, and simple to dense).

    Now, there is also something very interesting about the Oversing panel model when combined with the Yammer / Facebook model: and that is that context is always preserved. And so every page has a context, and so we can customize the page for the needs of any context.

    And so this means we can create a universal application for the management of all business. And if we dont screw up (which admittedly is always a likely possibility), and can build enough features into it, the network effect will drive the SMB to it.

    Our original idea was to keep the cost down, but the market has shown us that this is unnecessary since organizations willingly pay large dollars for these features even if home and smb users don’t. So we are shooting for a midrange price point that is low enough but not so low as to capture ‘casual’ (amateur) users.

    We will see if this hypothesis succeeds or fails not by oversing’s success or failure, but by whether or not ANYONE solves this generational transformation or not.

    Whether Oversing succeeds or fails is more a matter for those of us involved to determine. smile emoticon

    Thanks for the great question.

    Curt


    Source date (UTC): 2016-01-30 06:10:00 UTC

  • CAREERS. Once in a while I go thru Twitter and look at how some of the many hund

    CAREERS.

    Once in a while I go thru Twitter and look at how some of the many hundreds of people who have worked for me – the ones that I can remember at least.

    And while I have very little in common with these people today, I still appreciate them. Often feel love for them.

    It’s interesting that by and large the people you think will be successful are, and those you feel will peak do. The people who are exceptional by heroics submit to the energy of age. The people who succeed by talent and character persist.

    I also recognize that the people for whom I have the deepest feelings are often the quiet people of moral character.

    They are not the ambitious people so much as what I perceive as ‘good’ people.

    And most of them are probably not people who would assume I favored them most.

    ( Barry. Scott. Kyle. Stuart. … )

    Life is fascinating.

    A friend now dead said that it is unfortunate that just as we begin to master life it ebbs from us.

    Perhaps.

    But it also makes us appreciate it and attempt to assist the younger generation in avoiding our errors.

    Beautiful.


    Source date (UTC): 2016-01-29 00:23:00 UTC

  • (thoughts) A woman (or man) who is very ‘unpleasant’ to you is very difficult to

    (thoughts)

    A woman (or man) who is very ‘unpleasant’ to you is very difficult to ‘get over’. You don’t really realize that you’re effectively being terrorized, you just take life as what it is. Security outweighs the emotional hardship. The uncertain devil you don’t know is more fearful than the devil you know.

    I understand that I am an unstoppable force AND an immovable object. But I’m also extremely tolerant, and flexible. And that it has hurt the women I have left. And that you can still love someone very much – but have different goals the conflcit between which cannot be resolved. (two of my most precious relationships). And sometimes you just cannot make the other person safe enough to be happy (another relationship). And sometimes you are not enough for the other person (another relationship) and she/he leaves you.

    It is much easier to ‘get over’ those who you love and work well with, than those who you try to love and do not work well with, and those who you try desperately to work well with but terrorize you one way or another.

    It is one thing to miss someone who you enjoyed, and try shake off the memories of someone who made you stressed often. Some people never recover.

    The math is about right. It takes about a year per four years of relationship.


    Source date (UTC): 2016-01-26 08:19:00 UTC

  • GOOD MUSIC? DEFINE GOOD? (worth repeading) Good music is judged like all good ar

    GOOD MUSIC? DEFINE GOOD?

    (worth repeading)

    Good music is judged like all good art: (a)craftsmanship(materials and processes), (b)design (aesthetic appeal), (c) symbolism.

    The more capital in each a,b,c, the better. The more durable the capital the better (the longer it remains in the vernacular)

    After all, that is what beauty means to mankind: the presence of resources.

    And especially if we add additional ‘resources’ by way of innovation (invention).

    Some works are well crafted, well designed, and symbolically immoral.

    Craftsmanship refers to dept and complexity.

    Aesthetics to the emotional associations it evokes through the use of properties of sound.

    Symbolism (meaning, content) refers to the narrative in correspondence with the other two.

    So deeply crafted, emotionally experiential, poetically deep.

    And in all three dimensions: inventive.

    I could compare a series of reasonably well known songs that use very simple techniques reliant upon just the voice, in increasing complexity. I would consider all of these songs objectively good, despite their range.

    Greensleves – Anon.

    Scarborough Fair – simon and garfunkle

    Hallelujia – jeff buckley

    Cursum Perficio – Enya

    Fiddle and Drum (a capella) – Perfect Circle

    O Fortuna (Carmina Burana) – Carl Orf.

    Hallelujia Corus – Handel

    We refer to these as hymns (ballads to god-nature) or ballads (hymns to love).

    In the pop genre we know how to create the ‘perfect song’, of which my favorite: “smells like teen spirit” is I think the current place holder. The staying power of Knickelback is that they have systematized if not industrialized the process of producing this category of songs.

    Lets take another series and explore the border between hymn and anthem:

    Canon in D minor – Pachelbel.

    Kashmir by Led Zeppelin.

    Sober by Tool.

    Passive by Perfect Circle.

    ( could go on forever here )

    Most of the history of rock consists of Coming of Age Music (Celebration Music) – the joy of opportunity.

    Strangely it’s hard to find a lot of great stuff in there.

    I mean, we can go thru every movement in music and do the same. And yes, I like chick pop also. I just understand that it’s novelty, not art.

    It’s hard to Beat bach, but Mozart and Beethoven are still more popular. Why? Applied to joy and celebration rather than to … you know. That churchy stuff.

    It is hard sometimes to separate a great VOICE or a great RECORDING, from great music. The usual example is one of my favorite recordings: Gimme’ Shelter, which is really a great recording but you can’t really repeat the experience again. And any number of female vocalists can sing anything, and its beautiful because they have a great voice, but it is not the music that matters so much as their production of it.

    I have a thing for the voice, key, harmony, tempo, volume changes, and the use of silence. Possibly because I was in Chorus through I think 6th grade or so. And because of singing in church. But my taste dissipates rapidly without them, so a lot of dance/house rap music is uninteresting tom me while interesting to some other aficionados. I consider their work a technical investigation, but like the philosophy of language, a dead end.

    Most advancement in music over over the past 40 years has been happening in sound for film and video games. Not in popular music.

    I think that in retrospect we evolved new distribution models: phonograph/club, am radio/car, fm radio/stadium, videos/television, portable digital and spectacular film.

    And that as the quality of the recording and playback increased, so did the richness of the material. ie: 50s/60’s sounded good on shit equipment. 70’s/80’s a little better. We got to late seventies and they started to mix loud. WE got to punk and they started to vary volume, we got to nineties and they started to combine everything. And since then the movement has been in the great movies and gaming, not so much the consumer space – which has produced a set of race-class-driven formulas for the satisfation of identities. And it’s not really collectively innovative any longer.

    I suggest, operationally speaking, the era of ‘unity’ that we saw under the advent of the universalist movements made possible by mass media, will break into mini-markets and stay that way.

    Curt Doolittle

    The Propertarian Institute

    Kiev, Ukriane


    Source date (UTC): 2016-01-26 05:24:00 UTC

  • MEN, WOMEN, FRIENDSHIPS, OPPORTUNITIES, AND DISCOUNTS Men tend to have a larger

    MEN, WOMEN, FRIENDSHIPS, OPPORTUNITIES, AND DISCOUNTS

    Men tend to have a larger number of looser friendships, and women a small number of deeper friendships.

    This is partly because of how we judge each other – women need psychological similarity whereas men need utilitarian similarity.

    It is also a matter of what we do with friends. And what we need friends for. Women put men in the friend zone for certain reasons: capital extraction. (discounts).

    Men put women in the friend zone for three reasons: long options on sex, long options on her associations, long options on her emotional support (as a psychologist).

    And men put men in the friend zone for lots of reasons: the safety of the pack. assistance in self improvement. Options on opportunities. And someone to imitate or learn one or more skills from.

    Now also, men have many strategies available to us: research information to create opportunities. Create relationships and collect and exchange information to identify opportunities. Organize in pursuit of opportunities. Produce and opportunistically seize identifiable opportunities. Produce consistently independent of possible opportunities. Produce as little, consume as little, and relax as much as possible. These strategies depend upon our natural abilities. (this is probably something that doesn’t occur to people)

    I would say that if you mean that we should be cautious with others rent-seeking and discounting, that this is true as far as it goes.

    I think it is better to seek to understand the individual male’s strategy, and to limit one’s self to it.

    I mean, those guys in college that figure out how to make money doing just about everything – they are amazing. But so is the scientist and so is the craftsman, and so is the laborer.

    I think what isn’t amazing – what we must watch out for – is a disconnect between a man’s abilities and his strategy.

    The same for women. I think we are too easily led (I certainly am) by their attention, when we have zero option of obtaining returns.

    Parasitism is not unique to gender. We are just wired to tolerate the parasitism of women because options (lottery tickets) on sex are so valuable to us.

    Men give women attention, the way that the poor buy lottery tickets: a very, very, very remote hope that they know will never occur. So that they buy the experience of the fantasy.

    So I think your (James) message is to preserve all your capital. But I am too well aware that every person I meet is a cheap put on opportunity, and I treat them as such. Hence, make a good impression but always be too busy to invest in the fulfillment of others’ opportunities unless it benefits you as much or more than them.

    In business I usually say this “Work with partners with whom you have equal economic interest”. Otherwise you do not have the same interests.

    Cheers


    Source date (UTC): 2016-01-25 02:44:00 UTC

  • THE PURPOSE OF A UNIVERSITY EDUCATION: SORTITION There is no course in universit

    THE PURPOSE OF A UNIVERSITY EDUCATION: SORTITION

    There is no course in university that is not better found in books – for much less money. But education is not the purpose of the university: filtering is.

    University does provide an environmental laundry with which to cleanse yourself of the idiocy of the majority, and carry on discourse in non-colloquial terms. It allows you to associate with the ’employable’.

    So, if you are talented, employable, or able to employ others, then the purpose of university is to seek opportunity. And to leave as soon as you have found it there.

    If you are untalented but conformist, the purpose of university is not to fail – to show you can endure following direction ( “sucking dick” ). Most of life requires calmly and predictably following direction.

    If you are both talented and can enjoy following direction, then you can do a term as slave labor, and increase your debt, by going to graduate school.

    If you are untalented, and unwilling to follow direction (“suck dick”), then the purpose of university is to take the only four year vacation that you will have for the rest of your life.

    At the end of your ‘tour’ you will be certified as employable for having found a way to muddle through without getting ‘fired’ (discharged).

    And you will have been property sorted into unemployable, tolerably employable, beneficially employable, training others to be employable, and entrepreneurial.

    The university sorts. In truth, the university sorts before the first day in the classroom. After that it’s just survival.

    Because wage labor is a matter of survival.


    Source date (UTC): 2016-01-24 16:26:00 UTC

  • TRUMP VS PROGRESSIVES – DIFFERENCE IN TECHNIQUES (Contrast conservative aristocr

    TRUMP VS PROGRESSIVES – DIFFERENCE IN TECHNIQUES

    (Contrast conservative aristocratic mythology that demonstrates intertemporal effects, with progressive underclass pseudoscience that obscures intertemporal effects.)

    Lets look at his technique:

    a) He uses hyperbole to get media attention, and draw criticism, which they then use to distribute his meme. He has the most airtime. And spends nothing to get it.

    b) Nothing he says is substantially false – it’s hyperbolic. It’s not false.

    c) His tactic (and the conservative tactic) is to shame against extracting resources to transfer from good families to bad.

    d) Conservatives (aristocracy) use hyperbole to illustrate the intertemporal effect of scale: Kant’s “if everyone did this” test.

    Ergo: CONSERVATIVES SPEAK IN THE LANGUAGE OF MYTHOLOGY

    The progressive trick is to do the OPPOSITE.

    a) state something that is technically true but practically false.

    b) almost everything they say is substantially false.

    c) their tactic is to shame into extracting resources from good families to bad families.

    d) Progressives (socialists), use pseudoscience and pseudo-rationalism to obscure intertemporal effects “so that as many people as possible can get away with this.”

    Ergo: PROGRESSIVES SPEAK IN THE LANGUAGE OF PSEUDOSCIENCE.

    Hence: My work on Testimonialism….. Fix them both. Truth is enough to restore the west. But truth and hyperbole are compatible, while truth and pseudoscience are not.

    Curt Doolittle

    The Philosophy of Aristocracy

    The Propertarian Institute, Kiev, Ukraine


    Source date (UTC): 2016-01-24 15:57:00 UTC

  • ON CREATIVITY – TRAINING YOURSELF INTO ‘THE ZONE’ (worth repeating) You get much

    ON CREATIVITY – TRAINING YOURSELF INTO ‘THE ZONE’

    (worth repeating)

    You get much better at getting into “the Zone” that you find in the shower (or as you’re just waking up), if you practice writing. I can get almost the same experience just writing. But it’s true that either the shower or driving is hard to beat.

    After the first year or two of writing an hour a day it takes declining effort, finally approaching zero, to write what’s in your brain – shower or no. Why? Because you train yourself to stay in ‘the zone’ and not ‘come out of it’. I used to run from the shower and write it down as fast as I could, by reciting it to myself. I just did what every writer recommended. Don’t try to be better. Just write. You will get better. Best advice I can give is to ignore spelling, puncutation, sentences, and just write a stream of consciousness. then go back and make sense of it. Over time you will get better at organizing your stream of consciousness without effort.

    The real problem that most of us have to overcome is that our imagined visions FEEL like they’re sensible. But until you write them down you haven’t TESTED whether they’re sensible.

    This experience is a cognitive illusion – or bias – that lets us get inspired by an opportunity, yet work to obtain more information until it’s born out or not. It’s evolution at work. Our brain gives us a chemical reward that says ‘keep investigating this opportunity’.

    But we can’t confuse that intuition with understanding. If you can’t state something, you only intuit that there is a relation. You don’t in fact understand that relation, nor can you test it by articulating it.

    I ‘knew’ a lot of what I am doing today in 1986. I knew it in 2001. I knew it in 2006. I knew it in 2009. And I knew it in 2012. But what I learned in each of those drafts, was that I knew nothing at all. I intuited something. But it wasn’t until 2012-2013, and maybe into 2014, that I knew what I intuited. Meaning, that I could write down the roadmap that I intuited as a mere direction in …. what… when I was twelve?

    Your mind is always path-finding. Train yourself to use it.

    It takes a lot of time.


    Source date (UTC): 2016-01-24 15:08:00 UTC