It’s a warm Sunday in San Francisco. I spent the last two hours writing, but I would like to go to the park now, so I’ve left this post in a sort of stream-of-consciousness state. But I like it nonetheless, and hopefully you will too.
I noticed that I was semi-consciously trying to manage the way people perceived me all the time. I’d do this by emphasizing certain things about myself, guiding conversations in particular directions, or controlling the way I reacted to things people said. Whatever purposes this may serve, it isn’t much fun at all. So as a countermeasure I decided to start the habit of labeling such thoughts whenever I noticed them. Labeling is useful because it builds the ability to observe your own thoughts instead of being consumed by them. In order to label successfully, you have to inspect thoughts as they arise. This creates a separation between the watcher and the watched; this separation strips thoughts of that sense of importance. So instead of unconsciously falling into a pattern of trying to impress someone, I can see the desire to do that, silently note it (“oh, the mind is trying to do that thing again”), and continue not doing it. I had a writing block on and off over the last few months because I was grappling with this tendency. I could write easily before I realized I was trying to project a particular self-image through the writing, and I can write easily now that I’ve mostly dropped it, but the interim state of trying to control the readers’ opinions of me and recognizing that I was doing it was really unpleasant and made me slightly disgusted with everything I wrote. Rereading that stuff felt like opening the fridge and being greeted by that vague sour smell that indicates something is wrong long before it is visually apparent. I think I have a healthier relationship with that desire now, and I’m happier for it.
There are a lot of different things that can serve as a central pillar of life. For example: romantic love, career ambition, impact on the world, wealth, fame, security and stability, novelty, belonging, the pursuit of knowledge, admiration from others. Some of these things are great. I like money as much as the next guy, romance is a lot of fun, belonging is pretty cool as well. The pursuit of knowledge elicits a pure, clean joy that is unlike anything else I have ever experienced. But as I’ve investigated myself it seems like my game is fundamentally about freedom. I am not saying that this is the best goal, or the only goal worth pursuing—but I think it is my goal, so let me elaborate a little on what freedom means to me.
Thoughts tend to have a charge to them. A thought may be unpleasant and cause one to flinch away from it; or it may be desirable or attractive in some way, and invite the thinker to become immersed in the thought, and to extract pleasure from imagining it. This seems fine and normal, and maybe it is normal, but there are some troubling consequences. The polarization of thought over time dictates action, as one learns intuitively that certain actions lead to certain stimuli which lead to thoughts and mind-states with a particular charge. In many cases the value of the charge—positive or negative—and the magnitude are arbitrary, and simply based on experience and habit. So one ends up dancing in the palm of feelings that were frozen in place by, for example, some minor hiccup that happened at age seven and believing that this truly is the nature of life, that life is about constantly thirsting after belonging and community, or filling a bottomless pit of meaninglessness, or whatever. Life isn’t about either of those things, as far as I can tell, so this way of seeing things is one key impediment to freedom. As I understand it, one aspect of freedom is the ability to think thoughts without experiencing an associated polarization, and the ability to choose actions based on what seems fun and interesting, and not because there are underlying (imaginary) needs and fears that are constantly applying the spurs to your sides.
I’ve worked as a researcher for three months now, and putting aside all the technical stuff I’ve learned, I think one of the essential realizations is the simple fact that I’m not fundamentally better than I was a year ago, nor would I be in any way diminished if I were to be fired. Validation interacts with those imaginary feelings I talked about in the previous paragraph, but it has no bearing on reality. I find this both sobering and freeing; there are things nobody can give you, and similarly there are things nobody can take away. This too is freedom.
Research is a war of attrition. There are many days where I am frustrated beyond all reason and want to shred my notebooks and never think about entropy again; and maybe at some point I really will throw in the towel. But I think that’s fine; I came to this subject, the theory of evolution, because I love it. As with all relationships—if this ceases to be the case then it will be time for us to part. It is better to let something die quickly than allow it to decay while still living. Acknowledging that that which begins inevitably ends is a third aspect of freedom.
So this is where this post ends. There are many related ideas that I would like to investigate further, but the sky is blue and the sunlight is calling. Until next time.
Do you think some people trigger that self-image-shaping desire more than others when you're talking to them?
I think sometimes it's possible to be destructively attached to freedom; to find oneself spinning in a void, with little to grip