This post's read time: 5 minutes
Dear Friend #10 090223
Dear,
I am trying something new today, which is to write to you first, see what comes out, and then write a subject at the top instead of just putting a date on it. I want you to see what’s coming.
I’m in an airplane taking a very tedious trip from my cabin, to Bangor, to Queens, to Denver, to nowheresville. I’m exhausted from getting up at 3 in the morning, and of course Denver is 2 hours behind, so it’s starting to look like I’ll effectively have gotten up at 1AM.
These past few weeks have felt like I am gaining a momentum, finding a path I really love, staying ahead of deadlines and accomplishing work I am proud of.
Somehow by feeling burned out and adding more to my plate, I now feel rejuvenated (although some basic tasks like meditation, car washes, regular showers and dishes seem to be escaping me, oops. Who has the time when we’re trying to heal the world?)
But I definitely feel a little bit like I might take a faceplant if nobody lends a hand to catch me soon. I’m listening to Emocore just to stay alert enough to get some work done.
You’ll get the chance to take the world apart
And figure out how it works
Don’t let me know what you find outI need a car, you need a guide, who needs a map?
If I don’t die or worse, I’m gonna need a nap
At best I’ll be asleep when you get backI wanna see it
(Built To Spill)
When you find out what comets, stars, and moons are all about
I wanna see their
Faces turn to backs of heads and slowly get smaller
On the other hand, faceplants are great for humility, and I sure have taken my share in life, relationships, and especially in riding mountain bikes.
I’m beginning to feel a real kinship for certain kind of people, the people who are puzzling things out, writing half-baked ideas down like we have been doing here. We try to lay open our ideas like they are physical things – a trail we are blazing, a mountain we are climbing, or even the means by which we nourish ourselves – a roadkill deer carcass or a planting of the three sisters.
The division between ideas and the physical world is, bizarrely, both far narrower than most people perceive, and at the same time an abyss which many people fail to recognize.
The examples I have in mind here are my friend’s recent post – “I am hearing you universe.” with a section quoted from “The Tao of Pooh”.
I admit I never read this book, but to hear a math teacher share the following with everyone as an example of truth breaks my heart and makes me angry at injustice.
(Deep apologies to my friend if she ever reads the next bit. I am sort of making an example of you, even though there is so much I love and admire about you.)
This language, and the enthusiasm in sharing it, shows a complete disinterest in and disregard for science. Frankly, from someone whose job it is to inspire the next generation of people using science and math, it is ignorant and offensive. This passage is so closed-minded as to carry a damaging heft greater than any racial slur I could imagine.
The antidote, I think, comes best from Richard Feynman, below.
If I were to sum it up in one sentence, I’d say that science strives for the clearest understanding, with the openest possible mind, in the most curious way, so that any discovery can be most readily shared with and add to the maximum understanding and excitement of other people. The express purpose of science is to help us see better, not to obfuscate!
I have a friend who’s an artist and has sometimes taken a view which I don’t agree with very well. He’ll hold up a flower and say “look how beautiful it is,” and I’ll agree. Then he says “I as an artist can see how beautiful this is but you as a scientist take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing,” and I think that he’s kind of nutty.
First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other people and to me too, I believe. Although I may not be quite as refined aesthetically as he is … I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. At the same time, I see much more about the flower than he sees. I could imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside, which also have a beauty.
I mean it’s not just beauty at this dimension, at one centimeter; there’s also beauty at smaller dimensions, the inner structure, also the processes. The fact that the colors in the flower evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting; it means that insects can see the color. It adds a question: does this aesthetic sense also exist in the lower forms? Why is it aesthetic?
All kinds of interesting questions which the science knowledge only adds to the excitement, the mystery and the awe of a flower. It only adds. I don’t understand how it subtracts.
As best as I can tell, the Tao of Pooh seems to be far more intentionally confusing. It is inviting us to look at a blizzard together and when we see shapes in the swirling snows, it asks us to agree we all saw the same thing. This is groupthink, not insight.
Inner Nature, when relied on, cannot be fooled. But many people do not look at it or listen to it, and consequently do not understand themselves very much.
Having little understanding of themselves, they have little respect for themselves, and are therefore easily influenced by others.
(The Tao of Pooh)
OK, so how do we rely on this inner nature? Within two paragraphs we are told that we can change the things we don’t like about ourselves. So that’s not part of inner nature. I’m really at a loss, maybe I need to read the whole book just to rage against. Let me know if you figure it out.
I will confess that some of the ideas in the book are very good and I am not at all opposed to well-contextualized daoist teachings. It’s mostly the awful quality of the writing and logic that I protest.
On the flip side, I have been reading Paul O’neill’s lectures and he’s got such great gems for human motivation, collaboration, communication.
It’s amazing to me what you can discover if you can put yourself back in that position where you’re really seeking knowledge and you keep asking why until you’re satisfied that you really have a grasp and an understanding.
– Paul H O’Neill
He goes on and on about how to use numbers more clearly, how to get people to talk to one another and care about numbers by relating them to real people, he talks about how word-of-mouth can be harnessed by leaders
I especially loved the idea of a theoretical limit, much like Elon Musk’s “First Principles”.
“If it were perfect, what would it look like?” For me, the theoretical limit is perfect. It’s an idea that applies to everything.
It’s used to set up an intellectual construct so that you can take a measurement of where you are and compare it to what perfect looks like.
Start looking for how things would work if they worked perfectly.
I love this. And I love you. My plane is descending, time to go.
Love,
Brad