The Illusions of the Present

Time is the most pervasive imaginary construct currently known to man. All of us use it, all of us need it, because it is an organization of behavior. With an agreed upon organization of behavior we are able to collaborate and coordinate any activity.

But it is still an illusion…

The greatest problem I have as a thinker is that my mind seems hellbent on processing an inordinate amount of information in a very short period of time. Information, however, is derived from many different parts of our existence: some have spiritual origins, other mental, and so forth. Furthermore, there are millions of variables influencing the data we are downloading at any given time, making my job as a seeker of knowledge that much harder.

But time. When thinking about chronology, the passing of time, one cannot help but thinking about spatiotemporal concepts as well. Space and Time. It is for these reasons that we are obsessed with traveling back or forward in time. Can we travel “back in time”, theoretically yes, but I am of the persuasion that we would not end up at a “place” a space, because this world is built on the profoundly imaginary.

Things are not “real” or set in stone, you cannot go back the space that you were in 3 years ago even if advanced physicists figured out a way to back to the time.

You still with me? Good. I’m going to switch gears just a bit, please keep all of these concepts in mind.

Every morning I start out the same way, I read through my business account’s Twitter feed to see whats going on in the markets/business world. Every day seems to be the EXACT same thing: chickens running around with their heads cut off. For those of you that follow the economy, you know that America has enjoyed one of the best half-years in over a decade. The Dow Jones Industrial broke 15,000, the S&P 500 broke 1600 and we had the longest string of high opening Tuesdays in quite some time. The jobs reports came back positive. Durable goods, non-factory jobs. On and on and on… Yet everyday the analysts predicted doomsday. Every morning omens of misfortune. From Ben Bernanke (chairman of the Federal Reserves) quantitative easing regime to Obama’s economic principles, the talking heads continually predicted terrible things.

Most of them have been wrong.

But why? If we are enjoying unprecedented success, why is it that our ability to enjoy the present and make accurate predictions is inveterately off? I am a finance aficionado, not an expert. My opinions on the market do not matter. What I’m pointing to is mankind’s inability to make consistent concrete decisions in the present because of the sheer amount of information available, thus what we know to be the “present” is an accumulation of best guesses and projections, although we buy into the illusion that it is a concrete representation of things.

The present is the most alluring illusion known to man, fitting perfectly with the most imaginary construct, time. The present is a codified timeframe, thus it acts in accordance with the chronological illusion.

I know many of you still don’t understand what I mean by “illusion” and are ready to throw me in a straitjacket but allow me to explain. I understand all of this intuitively and many of my peers do as well, so it is a bit hard for me to explain, especially to someone used to concrete logic. My saving grace is that I am a staunch concrete thinker, rather rigid might I add, so this contradictory ambivalence allows me to exist between the worlds of concretion and imaginative.

Okay, ridiculous philosophy aside, let me explain the imaginary world we live in. Nothing is “real” because everything can be changed. Nothing is “real” because its origins can be found and resolutely refuted. The present is not “real” in that fact that it can be interpreted many different ways and produce many different outcomes. What we tend to rule as “real” is what I called the “aggregate reality” or the reality of the masses. It is a metaphysical body of agreement that many people can see as plausible or understandable. The very nature of life is fluid, a constantly bending, convoluted series of contradictions, therefore, man has had to organize it in such a manner that many different people could functionally use it. Thus time, money, race, and so one were contrived. They were means to collective ends, not concrete ends themselves.

Thats all fine and dandy right? What the fuck does any of this mean, bryce? It means that all you know can be readily made useless. All that you know is probably useless already. It means that everything on TV, everything on social networks, everything on this blog is both true and untrue depending on how, when, and why you look at it. It means that with the appropriate mindset you can “change the present” thus “changing the future”. The one thing we cannot change is the past, for it is a dead illusion whose effects are felt through the various psychosomatic channels.

My take home message: the present offers entirely too much information for the common human being to ever really know anything. Thus at any given time you are looking at man’s best guess about how or what things should be. All of these best guesses taken together comprise society and the global order, what we know to be “reality”. You as a free moral agent and a potential catalyst for change must, must, must understand that the reality we are living in is not the end all, it is not real, it is not “right”, it is not anything.

This information is boundless in potential for use. Struggling to get over a breakup? Realize its not the only reality you can utilize. You can go on without them. Struggling to start that business? Create a reality in the minds of your consumers by communication. Need motivation because you feel like the odds are against you? Understand the reality of those odds can be altered and you can be the victor. Struggling to find the meaning of life? Appropriate an elegant reality and begin to question the universe, question God, question the very nature of being. As a Christian I have used this to not regress further from God, but closer to Him. I understand things not as a limited human, but as a boundless spirit who sees the folly of this illusory world.

This shit is not easy to swallow or easy to practice at first, but once you truly understand that the present — this entire world — is a stage for your triumphant production, you’ll begin operating on levels higher than you believed imaginable.

Who Should Get To Use the Word “Nigga”?

“Nigga”. A word that has been at the forefront of sociological conversations for the last few decades. To some it is a terrible term, reminiscent of an oppressive era full of partiality and bigotry. For others its is a term of identification that has transcended its revulsive origins. But who should get to use it? Is it a free-for-all term as long as there is no malice in it? Should whites, black, Latinos — any culture — be able to stake a claim in the term’s evolution?

I went to high school in one of the most diverse cities in the world, Long Beach, California. Long Beach has a community for virtually every cultural group on the map, which led to very interesting social dynamics in this modern day urban mecca. My high school, the inimitable Long Beach Polytechnic, was practically holy ground for multiethnic interaction; a quick trip through the expansive campus afforded a visitor a glimpse into almost any global region. The blacks by the student store, the whites in front of the 100 building and on the rally stage, the Filipinos by the flag pole, the Pacific Islands behind the 100 building, the Cambodians underneath the northern catwalk. On the periphery, your various Latinos, mostly Mexican stake their claim.

There are bound to be racial frictions, no matter the effort to create harmony…

Nigga. A black dominated term that has come to be a ubiquitous label for younger generations, especially those of the lower socioeconomic classes. For many it is a base term, something muttered out of bigotry and prejudice. However, the usage of the term persists.

There are many “classes” of debate about the word nigga. One is the “nigga” vs “nigger” delineation. Another is the “embrace”. Both are attempts at justification for this controversial word that has denigrated and devalued blacks for decades. Is it modern day prejudice? Is its a pasquillic identifier whose embrace has been a giant “FUCK YOU” to the racism that preceded it?

A riveting debate no doubt.

Now, lets go off the assumption that “nigga” is a bird-flipping, satirical incorporation whose venom has been systematically diluted through rampant overuse by the oppressed population. Under this premise “nigga” no longer is a negative, racial codifier, but something a hell of a lot more nebulous and inclusive. Under this supposition, a “nigga” is no longer just a black person, but often a friend, a cohort, a lazy ass person, a shiesty individual and so on. It becomes this rather vacuous term that is at the discretion of the user…

What if that user isn’t black? Is it acceptable?

Is it acceptable for a non-black, to take a term that was used against blacks yet “de-fanged” by blacks, and include it in their vernacular?

Here is where I bring my contemplative complexity into the fore. I am violating every ounce of Occam’s Razor, but that is neither here nor there.

The problem with a term like this is that it exists in mental grounds that cover more than one area of the psyche. If it were just a term of racial bigotry, no one would use it or care for its usage under any circumstances. If it were simply an evolved cuss word like fuck or bullshit, then we would moderate its usage to only informal instances. But, it covers ground that is still radically sensitive and regardless of its evolution: we still remember who created the term.

So, why should anyone use it?

The problem is, no one should. Its a filthy word when you look at where it came from; however, when you look at why it was wielded in the manner it has been, you see that it was an ingenious power move by the disenfranchised blacks of the time. We know through the Willy Lynch letter that blacks were taught division and prejudice against one another; however, we also know through history that many times the very tools that were used to negatively identify people became the very symbols those cultures took as banners.

Those early users took back power utilizing some crafty reverse psychology.

As the word has continued to become more and more mainstream and its original maligning intent dilutes, should we allow non-blacks an in? At Poly, I heard Asians, Mexicans, and Pacific Islanders use the word just as much as the blacks. The only group that said it in secret were the whites, for obvious social reasons. These non-blacks weren’t referring to blacks in a racist manner, hell, most of them were talking to one another in a matter-of-fact or even an affectionate way. Does this make it okay?

I point back to the florid psychological makeup of the human mind. A non-black person’s argument for the usage of the word is incommensurable with a black person’s. They are coming from two differing parts of the mental construct and therefore have very little in common with one another. When we [as blacks] hear, “well if you don’t like the word, then why are you using it”, most of us rear up in a way that a non-black, especially a white person cannot begin to even fathom. The arguments become intensely biased and subjectivity, negative experiences, and overall divergent discourse take over. Our thoughts: of course we get to fucking use it, your forefathers called us that for a couple hundred years you mindless bastard, when the truth is they have a point.

Why use something traditionally negative that you turned positive, then get mad when others want to enjoy that positivity?

“Because fuck you, thats why”

I do not think any non-black should use the term. I don’t use any of the racial terms used against other ethnic groups and I wouldn’t even if they did somehow succumb to mainstreamization. My argument on this one is weak, I use the word nigga because I can and I don’t want others to use it because they shouldn’t and since its our word they should respect that.

I sound like a petulant little child, but that’s what happens when you’re flirting with hypocrisy.

Poignant monikers, regardless of what, only very slowly leave their original implications and connotations. The best practice is to stop using them across the board, but given the novel, hybridized nature of “nigga” and its multidimensional meanings, and the fact that its usage is like a drug, its usage will take many, many years to cease. You can bend, turn, and twist the word all you want. You can say a “nigga” is any person of ill repute (I use that one). You can say that “nigga” is a move of empowerment. It doesn’t matter, the facts are that its a word who very nature is multi-minded and something that has more than one nature is bound to be unstable and full of gray area.

Letters to My Love VIII

Would you chase me to the ends of the earth?
Would you follow me because you understood my worth?
Would you give pursuit after seeing the light inside?
Could you answer if I perchance asked you why?

Presently, I resent the,
The idea of Cupid’s arrow,
Tepid sorrow,
Seems to be what the sun brings on the morrow.

Double minded; Love, I would love to find it,
Would you mind it?
If you had to be the one that reminded,
Me, that We trumped I no matter what I did,

I bid, ibid,
That us two, would too, find the plus sign between I & You.
However I am a nomad, bedraggled bohemian,
Would you be my destination, my hallowed Abyssinia?

Aside: Communicative Breakdowns

For a moment I want you to look at the last argument you had with someone. Take a few seconds to relive the disagreement. What was it about? How did it start? Who was the aggressor?

With these things in mind I want to point you to an unfortunate reality of dealing with individuals: noise.

I introduced noise a few posts ago when I discussed Noise Theory and its implications. Essentially “noise” is the umbrella term for perceptive differences between two individuals or two discrete groups. I look at something one way, you look at something another, we attempt to reconcile the two differing views and suddenly friction arises.

Why?

Because of two words typically used in research: fungibility and commensurability.

Two things are fungible when they can be substituted for one another; two things are commensurable when they can be compared to one another with relative ease. When in the throes of a heated argument what is often happening is that the two opposing views are non-fungible and even more prevalent incommensurable. They are non-fungible because often times the two are looking at the subject matter from positions that cannot be substituted for one another. They are incommensurable because the two opinions are founded on differing perspectives, thus they cannot be compared. The cliche incommensurable comparison is “apples and oranges”.

The more insidious of the two terms is incommensurability because the two are outright arguing over two perspectives that have no corollary parts; nothing is analogous in the eyes of the opponents.

So, next time you are in the heat of verbal battle as yourself if the true nature of your friction is based on the foundations of your perspectives leading to completely different vantages of the issue. This leads to more enlightened conversation.

bryce

Should You Forgive the Man (Or Woman) That Cheated On You?

I was talking to a good female friend of mine last week that told me the saddest thing: no man she has ever known, friend, cousin, uncle — not even her father — had ever been faithful to the woman he was dating. To add insult to injury, she said that watching her father genuinely love and care for her mother, yet time and time again step out on her, ruined her perception of men and monogamy.

Infidelity. One of the leading causes of breakups, broken self worth, and damaged personas. Probably the single greatest expression of selfishness outside of rape that a one party can do to another.

I have been cheated on once to my knowledge by a woman I cared for extraordinarily deeply. It was beyond devastating, like the wind had been sucked from beneath my wings. To make matters worse, I had done everything for her, quite possibly the only person I had been that supportive of. I remember the moment she told me, between the white hot rage and the abysmal sadness I felt, I operated as a zombie for the rest of the day and proceeded to get hammered that night.

Two years later, I would grow to forgive her, I even felt the tingling sensation of admiration again…

Another good female friend hit me up today to ask about this very topic, although her circumstances would prove to be a bit different. As I went through the day I found myself really pondering how I felt about this powder keg of a topic. We’re talking about one of the most volatile, vulnerable substances known to man, human emotion. That good ol’ illogical, hot blooded life force that courses through your immaterial being. That metaphysical plasma that drives you into despair, exuberance, paralyzing fear, and absolute rancor.

However inflammatory emotions may be, they are woefully shortsighted and require the other immaterial faculties to offset them. I always hear people talking about “following one’s heart” but the truth is it is best to examine your heart through the objective lens of purpose. See, I am a proponent of maximizing function, reaching the pinnacle of desire. I like to believe that one who spends time praying, meditating, thinking, or examining the world through the eyes of wisdom can indeed find what they want from the world. They can indeed find purpose. That purpose is made manifest in love as the cleaving of one heart to another.

There is a quote floating around the internet, “A person can love you and still cheat. The same way we love God and still sin”, which I personally find to be problematic on several levels. The most poignant is the fact tha God’s love, agape, is not the same as passionate love, eros, which makes the two non-fungible. They are not replaceable, therefore, they are not comparable. You are not in an erotic relationship with God, there is no “monogamy” so to speak, no intense desire for one’s body.

HOWEVER, the relationship one has with God is the reason why a person SHOULD forgive the individual that cheated on them on a personal level. This does not necessarily mean you should take them back, it means you should not hold a grudge against them, speak ill of them, or in anyway belittle or denigrate that person. If they are a liar, a cheater, and an overall awful person, be glad you are finished with them; pray for them, pray for their growth and metamorphosis as a person and go about your business. That is forgiveness.

Now, whether or not you should take them back adds a level of complexity that ties into a statement I made earlier in this article. If you, operating in enlightened mind, enlightened spirit, or by what you believe to be the right choice, it is acceptable to give that person another chance. If they are genuinely penitent, sincerely apologetic, and are willing to prove both through words and more importantly actions that they truly love you and will not betray your body, trust, or spirit again, AND you love them just as strongly in return, I say give them another chance.

We are all imperfect creatures and we are bound to make mistakes, mistakes that should be obliterated from the memory banks of our loved ones, not used as future leverage. There is a limit, of course. Fool me once shame on you, Fool me twice shame on me. There comes a time when you have to put your foot down and protect your vulnerable emotions, rather than be the constant floor mat of a man or woman that clearly does not value you.

With that stated, I implore all of you to seek wisdom through these difficult situations, but always try to look at things objectively. Put yourself in other people’s shoes, try to keep those primal emotions in check. Forgive and allow forget to have its place if earned. Anything else? Leave, it isn’t worth it.

If you yourself are a cheater, do not try to rationalize why you did what you did. Instead understand that you have a deficiency that needs to be addressed. If you wanted to mess around, just be single; if you want to be with that one person, then commit to them. A double-minded person is a cancer to all people around them, they live under two different masters, which we all know is impossible. Anyone can forgive a mistake made in passionate moments, but the serial infidels have deep psychological or developmental issues that are the cause for their indiscretion. Check yourself before you wreck yourself, or worse, someone else.

bryce

Letters to My Love VII: Completion

You are my softer side, my humbler side,
My soothing side, my more beautiful half.
You are the quiet intensity, and this gnawing propensity,
To bring you back to me,
Fuels my ____-centric tendency,
You were my perfect intimacy,
Never soiled by carnality,
Yet I always felt the absolute finality.
Wife.
A word thrown out so liberally,
Yet in your embrace I felt perfect liberty,
I was short on chivalry,
But long on emotion,
I was a commotion of immature notion,
The quotient of divisive erosion,
Of what I believed was true.
Yet my True, my Truth, was deeply seeded in you,
And as I receded to Blue,
I watched your heart get pulled to another brother,
My lover deep in the embrace outside of my cover,
I suffered, abandoned child to mother,
I hovered, astral rejection with a predilection,
To move on…..
Yet a man chooses his wife.
And I chose you so many years ago,
With hand holds and tears shed, I knew in my head,
This bride to be was the bride to me,
Should I be willing to heed the call.
You were always the fairest of them all,
My mythical princess brought into incarnation,
God’s Divination in bodily form, yet I needed the wise man’s patience,
So I could know Her again.
Hold Her again.
So I tell You again, seeking lover from friend,
That I hope you’ll Know me yet again.

Letters to My Love VI

Sunlight filters through the apartment window,
Dawn’s glow as I slightly reposition my elbow,
For hours my arms have held you tightly,
For on my honor I protect you nightly,
Knightly I fight for thee,
Now as night gives into the wee,
Moments of immature morning,
And I take these instants to get to sorting…

17.
We met when we were 17.
Immediately she was my heaven’s queen,
I was a projection,
skating through dimension’s sheen…

I am on quantum landscape.
Fringe science as I shift between two worlds.
I peer down at your halo,
Your image is transfigured,
I am transfixed, how could a mere man resist,
My fingers upon your wrist I willfully enter your dreamscape,
Never before did I imagine dreams came
True.
Enlightened consciousness between I and you.

Letters to My Love V

Allow me to titillate your imagination,
Explore the depths of your inner mind,
Allow me to journey through your deepest emotions,
Permit me to cherish what I come to find…

The one that’s mine.
You are, indeed,
In idea and in deed,
I’m freed by being bound to the one I need.
A seed.
Thats what our love was before springing as a mighty tree…

The Almighty sees that just as the honey bee’s,
Savor the sweet nectar of the beautiful flowers,
I thrive off the ambrosia which blossoms in your soul,
With you, I grow to be whole,
Light the fire under this coal,
Stoking the flames of enchantment,
So I chance it,
You and I, I and you
May these professions be True.
And the processions lead two,
To become Illustrious One.

You Too, Can Be Awesome

I recently made the decision that graduate school — business school — is the next major hurdle for me. Having scaled the Kilimanjaro that is private undergraduate schooling and currently scaling the Everest that is entrepreneurship, I am ready to attack the Mount Whitney that is B-School. Given that I am a bit of an elitist and a perennial perfectionist, I’ve set my sights on Harvard and its 10% acceptance rate.

Yippee.

However, I am rather stress-free while thinking about this Herculean task, not because I am a wunderkind but because I tend to look at life much, much, much differently than the average person.

There is nothing that I want to do that I cannot. As in there is nothing on this planet that I cannot accomplish once I set my mind to it. Peering at the world from the inside out, I am a sheer force of nature and I have every intention of completing all of my dream tasks. Ivy League business school included.

Why do I have such dauntless confidence?

Is it because I was born this way? Fuck no.

I was a scrawny (still kinda am) kid with nappy hair and big ass glasses. I didn’t think I was shit except for the second or third name on a list that was organized in alphabetical order.

What changed was my senior year in high school. I literally did everything I wanted to do and I never looked back. I chose one school: Loyola Marymount. Got accepted. I chose one girl: started dating her. The following summer I needed a new car and a bunch of other things: secured them. I needed a new job: got hired during the interview. The following summer I wanted to play college ball without having touched an organized game since middle school: got a scholarship to play D2 ball.

I willed my way through college tuition fiascos. I willed my way through a major a hated. I willed my way into the seed money I needed to start my first business. When my car broke down 2 months before graduation I walked 3 miles to and 3 miles home from school everyday. I crossed the graduation stage and came into my first high net worth client. I willed my way into a Marina Del Rey penthouse. I willed my way into my contract with the Long Beach Unified school district. I concocted creative strategies to get myself and my business partner in front of C-Suite executives. I willed myself through 12 months of absolute nightmare professional and personal circumstances. And I’m willing myself through the process of picking up the pieces…

Is all of this because I’m just an awesome person? Fuck no.

I see my life like a movie. Not any old kind of move. Fast and the Furious. Rambo. James Bond. Unrealistic suspense and action movies. I look at life as one enormous stage through which one has a million and one chances to prove themselves and do over until the moment they pass on to the next world. I live and I live very fucking hard. Pure, unbridled, relentless living.

At the end of the day, the world is what you make of it. Cliche saying if there ever was one. But I sincerely pose this statement as a mantra for you to live be. Your life is what you make of it. If you choose to exist on the existential sidelines, watching the Mark Zuckerberg’s of the world succeed, saying, “man I wish I had a mind like his”, you are doing yourself a great, great disservice. If you are afraid of failing to the point of paralysis, you are doing yourself a great disservice.

Life is about living, my friends. Living abundantly. Not everyone is going to go to Harvard. Not everyone is going to build a billion dollar company. Hell I have fantasies that I know will probably never come true but they are because I have my priorities lying elsewhere.

When you start to really put your mind to this crazy little hooker we call living, you’ll be surprised how much you can achieve. How “elite” you can be. There are so many “elite” posts in the world, you are bound to become one of few at something. So go ahead, put on your black tuxedo or your little black dress and prepare to zip line out a 44th floor window on some James Bond 007 tip.

bryce

Noise of the Moment

It is much easier,
To look back at the past
And see the coming storm,
Than to peer out from the present
And make sense of the clouds.

Genuflection is best carried out
For matters of the future,
For the regrets of the past
Can never be corrected,
Not even by Divine hands.

The Noise of the Moment,
Raucous and Shrill,
Dies every second,
— tomorrow — yesterday will lie Still,
Dead to the senses,
Yet all your defenses will mount up
To answer yesterday’s sounds.

I knew it. I knew it.
Had I known, I would’ve eschewed it,
Yet I excused as a passing titter,
Soul resist from being bitter,
You knew better. You knew better.

bryce