Delirium

Deliquescence; the light of the world
Pours over me ever so slightly;
In this betwixt place, not yet awake, but far from slumber,
She returns to Me.

Utterances from my sylphic sweet,
Softly susurrant,
Suggesting that I cease from sleep,
And return to the we she used to keep.

We used to keep, our feet firmly in the clouds,
Heavenspeak; aloft freely from our lips as we made our deep,
Pacts before He; Vows about We,
I shed tears when Fate saw her apart from Me…

Incipient consciousness pours over these,
Nerves and cells, always these cells.
Sleep is a prison, wakefulness is a Hell,
But in our betwixt place, She returns to me.

The Importance of Failure

“I have not failed. I have found 1,000 ways it won’t work – Thomas A. Edison

The iconic words of one of our species’ most iconic inventors.

I must admit that at the writing of these words, I am more out of my mind than usual. I’ve spent the better part of today’s waking hours cramming some of the alien concepts of quantum computation into my tired neuronal circuits and have seemingly invoked a kind of delirium. Nevertheless, it has been a productive day of cognition and imagination.

I’ve spent most of the last few months discussing the human condition at length, a trend I will continue today.

For the sake of this conversation, and due in no little part to today’s readings, let us liken life to a computer program. I write this with rapt febrility since this program has contained everything known and unknown, from the single-celled organisms from prehistory on down to the meat machines currently known as humans. This program has allow brains to form through a complex process of self-sufficiency — such a level of advanced computation and reproduction that it continually astounds and bewilders even the most cunning of minds. However, something that should be noted is that this life program has been able to do so through a highly deft process of trial and error.

To keep my frayed nerves from jumping over the edge, allow me the creative license to guide you to a point: the error in trial and error is of supreme importance to the vitality of this life program. Without error, without the pathways which lead to some deadend, the program would spend obscene amounts of time traipsing down alleyways and tributaries which wouldn’t support its goal.

In order to accelerate chances of succes, one must accelerate their willingness to fail.

By utilizing life, I have attempting to circumvent the fatuous new-age, folk psychology that dominates colloquial conversation and root these things in a harder science. To fail is to learn what does not work and one would do right by themselves to understand that quickly and competely.

I am disparaged on a daily basis by what my peers find to be acceptable domains to waste their intellectual faculties. The frivolities of the human condition beckon with gravities that many cannot tear themselves away. I must admit that I spend so much time in the abstract spaces which ponder the nature and fabric of reality, that I find most topics within the social sciences unconscionable. Many of my friends have endured lengthy, vitriolic diatribes bemoaning the triviality of interracial conversations since I have absolutely no interest in something as fleeting as one’s color or place of origin. There are hundreds of billions of galaxies in the visible universe and God only knows how many in the invisible; there are quantum abnormalities which push the limits of conventional physics to the limits of science fiction; there are more neural connections in our brains than stars in the entire universe; do you really think I care about such banalities as the texture of someone’s hair?

What we have failed to do as an entire people is keep out eyes on the bigger pictures, instead we are pulled into the vacuums of petty ideology and invidiousness. As we have not yet fully escaped our animalistic nature, we are still, in principle, dominated by Darwinian principles which force us to compete for resources, although our competitions are highly sophisticated. Complicated and fiercely intelligent, we have deluded ourselves but draping our barbarism in subtlety.

But it still remains.

One of the ways we have propagated this insanity is the hyperproductive, consumeristic society we all seem at home in. Among my favorite articles I’ve perused this year, a piece on the psychosis of an Ivy League education struck a particular chord. In it, the author explains how Ivy Leagues train individuals to be even more neurotic than they received them, not necessarily brighter, but vastly more high-strung, more interested in social acceptances and all out materialistic reflections of knowledge than actual, substantive information. This elitist Darwinism is comical, but on the whole, saddening.

However, all is not lost. Common critical inquiry usually treats time and space on point specific or at the very beast, limited interval, bases. When you look at humans through the lens of a life program, we are but the latest edition to life’s trial and error processing. With countless maxima and minima, countless configurations, and a relatively young species such as we, it is highly probable that our evolution will bring about minds that are capable of escaping such idiocy. We must remember that we are incipient; by the oldest accounts our ancestors arrived a couple million years ago, but homo as we relate to only tens of thousands of years ago. So many cycles must come and go before we are liberated of certain unproductive methods of thinking.

For those interested in more personally applicable morsels of intellectual cud, although me to proffer this. You must fail repeatedly before you can succeed. You must enbrace the process of failing, but detest the result of failure. All this truly means is that you must put yourself out there more and more in order to find your stride. For you perfectionists, you overachievers that have never once tasted failure on a relevant scale, this is nothing short of abominable. However, this is beyond you and your preferences; its positively biological. The program which courses through your veins, the very program which is embedded in your DNA understands that the most effective way to optimality in this universe is by eliminating invaluable branches.

Your brain does it when you learn, it shears off millions of neural pathways that aren’t being put to use.

If I had a take home bit of knowledge: stop taking yourself so seriously, while understanding the gravity of the gift of life. The aversion to failure comes with a brand of haughtiness; you are no greater than the program which animates you, why would you think that failure would end you? It doesn’t define you anymore than your successes do. Nothing defines you. The truth is, there is no definition. One must simply plug on with excited curiosity about the universe around them. Take your self, your ego — whatever you wish to call it — out of the equation and enjoy the totality of the human experience. We all have so much to teach one another that when we get over the bullshit religious partitions, sexual orientiation, gender, race, or whatever nonsense is supposedly dividing us, that we will as a whole understand how to succeed as a species. The other eventuality is that we destroy ourselves and with the going’s on in Gaza, Ukraine, and countless other regions around our beautiful planet, this outcome seems just as likely.

What most of the most virulent individuals on Earth have in common is a lack of ability to take themselves out of the equation. They have placed their precious computing abilities into fatuous ideology; the victim is the planet. For those that wish for better things continue to create opportunities by realizing that failure is an integral part of the process. The only way we will outgrow these ideologies and illusory divisions is by rapidly increasing our willingness to try out new modes of thinking.

bryce

A Boyfriend is Not A Husband

My romantic past has been something of keen interest to my social circles, a notion verified by the funny fact that historically my most popular posts have been those regarding my fraught filled dalliances. Today’s post falls in line with the pursuit of intimacy but is a little different than usual: over the weekend I reached out to a good friend of mine who had recently experienced some love woes and her response to my email was a suggestion that I give a particular topic some quality thought.

Sprawled across my cell phone screen was a simple statement with profound implications: DON’T PRAISE YOUR BOYFRIENDS. The message then went on to say:

“Don’t give a boyfriend the benefits deserving of a husband because he won’t have anything to marry you for, anything that he must continually work for — nothing to fight for. Until the night of your honeymoon, he is simply auditioning for the part.”

Heavy, indeed.

I actually spent most of today in a completely different contemplative domain; the blog I authored this morning had more to do with the frivolity and shortsightedness of ideology, an article I’ll likely publish tomorrow, and therefore, the construction of this post comes from an unusual perspective, but hopefully you readers have come to expect this from me.

As a high functioning narcissist with a nagging superiority complex, much of my life has actually been a journey of discovery into myself, rather than the exploration of the world around me. My relationship history has been volatile and unstable, the kinds of things found in lifetime movies. Fraught with the fear that I may be the culpable common denominator to my much touted romantic failures, I recently decided that I would take a step back and try to look at things, matters of the heart especially, from ever more objective stances.

A chief problem that I see rear its ugly head far too often is actually a core component of the domain in which I took residence earlier, the complexity of the brain and as a result, consciousness. Earlier I wrote, “Ideology is implemented to illuminate the objective truths of life, but life, or at least the human expression of life, will conform and mold to the subjective limits of a person’s ideology,” a curious oddity that has long-reaching implications. Many of us who consider ourselves deep thinkers believe that in-depth contemplative thought leads one to discovering the truth — the objective truth or at least some component of it — and thus is a pursuit that renders one enlightened. The tricky part is that this is not wholly backed by science; contemplative thought does render some deeper insight which can be considered a form of enlightenment, but the brain more or less operates by restructuring itself as opposed to a rigorous molting and greater flourishing.

Think of it this way: you are given a plain box and told that whatever you find in it is the objective key to happiness. You open the box and find something that you were thinking about last week. You are obviously elated and take to the various forms of communication to herald your discovery. Then some events happen and you open the box a few days later only to find out that its contents have changed; the box is now filled with something else closely related to the lessons learned throughout those past few days.

Although many won’t see the problem with this, remember that I said you would find the objective key to happiness. Therefore, it follows that whatever is inside is some form of universal good, a lesson that could be extended to all mankind, a concept you supported by trumpeting your good news. By seeing what makes you happy, you could in theory help someone else find that which makes them happy and so forth. However, if what is inside the box keeps shifting and changing per the subjective shifts in your own life, how could you hope to find meaningful objectivity?

A bit abstract, but with some time it will make sense. Quickly stated, the brain ultimately learns by restructuring itself and, as aforementioned, this has serious implications on all matters of life.

One major implication is that I cannot tell anyone what a boyfriend or a girlfriend should or should not do nor can I legitimately tell anyone how to treat their significant other. Taking a game theoretical position to its hilt, the best I can proffer is a schema that allows one to probe and survey their significant other and understand what it is that is needed, but even this is rife with subjective flourishes unique to my understanding.

However, for the sake of time and my sanity, I will put out a few suggestions.

Last week, my mom and I got into a lively conversation about how dating has changed from when she was in her 20s to now. She is unnerved by our lack of impulse control when dating one another; even though many in her generation (and those preceding her) dated for notoriously short periods of time, they, in her opinion, exercised more control or wisdom over their emotions. They didn’t give in and fall in love after a week and all the things of that like. While I could’ve eviscerated her point from a variety of different vantages, mostly that her arguments were fallacious, I gave her the benefit of the doubt because I did fundamentally understand where she was coming from and I offered this explanation:

Technology has made it possible for two people to be connected literally every waking moment, whereas, those from earlier generations were bound by the limits of communication in their time. We have no need for impulse control because a person can be instantly gratified at any time. We are supplied with a fresh set of photos, fresh set of life updates, and fresh lines of specified communication at literally the tips of our fingers. This extreme hyperbolic discounting has seemingly given way to unsettling trends tied to such realities.

Thus, the perils experienced by my friend over the weekend went hand in hand with the concerns from my mother, our generation isn’t wise when it comes to imposing limits.

Allow me to add this caveat, humans aren’t very wise when it comes to self-imposed limits. This isn’t an issue of age, creed, or culture, its a problem intrinsic to all manner of humanity.

A boyfriend is not a husband and although this is clear from a common-sense standpoint, common-sense is usually supplanted by intense emotion in matters of the heart. Call it competing motivations from genuinely quixotic individuals. Many of us so desperately want love, acceptance, and the emotional high that comes with these that we will readily sacrifice our usual sense for the next sensation. Although many women are sober and calculating in many aspects of their life, a competing cognition such as the prospect of romantic bliss will be as an EMP to their analytical computer. The same can be said of many men, ::cough:: me.

We are all aware of the benefits of love and we feel intuitively that by becoming a superconductor for the emotive persuasions, we are priming a situation for better vitality, we are maximizing our chances of enjoying true love. However, time and time again, we see that this is just simply not the case and again, we can point to competing motivations as the culprit.

Because our brains are mapping and remapping themselves at trillions of connections per second, our internal workings are exorbitantly complex. Few, if any, of us are truly privy to our inner mechanisms and as a result, we are a hotbed of hidden motivations. The unconscious and conscious minds are not always in synch, thus we are not completely who we think we are and we are certainly not always who we display ourselves to be. For some, this is inadvertent and for others it is an intentional malicious lie of omission; irrespective, the result is the same.

A husband should be a man whom you have established a friendship with, first and foremost. Within a friendship the bounds of rationale and response can be tested. Friendships are often more objective, even if only slightly, allowing two people to observe one another in scores of changing environments and if the brain is good for anything its flourishing in change. When a man is your friend, he is less likely to hide things from you; better yet, less capable of doing so. A woman’s razor sharp intuition is of high value here. You all know when your male friends are full of shit when you see him deal with other less assuming women, employ that logic here.

After you’ve become excited about a man, mentally take a step back. A man that cares for you and wants things to work will understand and see the value in taking a step back as well. There’s an adage going around that whatever relationship you’re in now will either end in a breakup or in a marriage; thats a serious investment. In the time that you’ve established a friendship, you should be able to step back and audit your emotions just as one would do a business or investment proposal. In this time you are able to freely and fluidly explore the why’s and how’s of your feelings and he should be doing the same. Instead of compulsively talking to one another, see how it feels to meditate alone for a day or two. Remember your me time will greatly affect your us time. If you or he are unable to be alone, you are preparing to enter a parasitic relationship and that’s a dangerous reality.

Engage in meaningful dialogue about your future then watch what he does to bring that future into fruition. Many men have smooth tongues, but actions will always speak louder than words. Moreover, make sure he actualizes things to an interfaceable reality. Don’t be quick to fall for “let’s go to the ring shop,” or “I love you and we should go look for churches.” He shouldn’t be lip service and great potential, but someone that sees things to their logical end. A husband is a man of his word and not just empty ones. Hold him to that.

Potential is great, but you must date a man’s reality. You should always stick close to a good man, even if his trappings aren’t all there. However, you should push him to become the best person he can. A husband should seek a wife that draws out and helps actualize his potential. A man that constantly dwells in what he can be is a man of empty words. In the friend phase encourage and push him and watch whether he grows, stagnates, or stultifies.

In your communication, establish the rules of your connection: the downfall of far too many relationships, especially young ones, is that things are not explicitly stated. Goals are ambiguous and major changes bring major confusion. Understand that a boyfriend is trivial, but a husband should be someone you honestly hope to spend a lifetime with. Express your feelings with rapt vitality and go from there. Everything stated should be more or less understood.

Religious antics aside, a marriage is a partnership. If you are passive be prepared to let your husband lead and if you are aggressive, be prepared to discuss the power dynamics. We obviously live in a society where aggressive and dominate women are frowned upon, however, you know you and if a man loves you, you must explain you to him. In an optimal partnership information is symmetrical and equally accessible, both parties must know as much as possible prior to making serious investments.

Be conscientious that there is another brain attempting to make sense of yours. Take nothing for granted, treat your husband as an extension of yourself. You’ll be all the happier for it.

A husband is not a functional counterpart and a marriage is not an economic transaction. From an evolutionary perspective, you’ve probably chosen an individual from an instinctual, preconscious desire to reproduce and maximize fitness; however, as an advanced being, this does not necessitate cut and cry transactional decorum. A husband should be the man that you are vulnerable with, the man that knows you all too well. A husband is your primary support system and your physical refuge: in your deepest moments of desperation he should be the one you run to and he should want to be that person, every damn day.

I can go on ad infinitum but suffice to say that none of these things define a boyfriend. As is clear, I kept all of this perfectly symmetrical so that at any point you could substitute “girlfriend” and still have the same result. A wife and a husband should be interested in the deeper experiences of the human condition; the relationships I’ve seen last are based on considerably deeper foundations than those that didn’t. Therefore, it follows that there should be some limits on the expressions given to a boyfriend/girlfriend connection. Does this mean hold back and play games with one another? Of course not, but there should be places reserved for the man or woman who has stated that they want to be your forever and acted accordingly. Those deeper feelings of intimacy should be for the person that consistently earns it.

Emotional maturity is important for these types of connections because at this very moment I know many readers are defending their unconditional displays towards boyfriends and girlfriends. I do sincerely hope those trysts work out, but I will stick to my guns and say that certain intimacies are best saved for one’s partner for life. With no investment, no skin in the game, nothing to lose except a few tears, too many people are fine with just walking away. Far too many predators, far too many broken individuals, and far too many people who don’t know or understand themselves stalk these streets. It is better to consciously work through the whole of a person and hold off on the emotional histrionics than give way to someone who can potentially do severe damage, intentional or not.

bryce

The Meaning of Life, Revisited.

“The future alters the past.”

It is not time that is an illusion, but the human condition which apprehends it. For years I was an idealist, ascribing chief status to the mind as the arbiter of reality, only to dabble in materialism, which ascribes chief status to the physical brain structures. With sufficient meditation I have rendered both of these as misnomers.

The human condition is intractably complicated because it is the subject which is attempting to apprehend itself. Therefore, it is not as simple as “observing and notating,” because something that is within the system affects the system; the observation and notation blur the lines of objective investigation. This is what many of the uncertainty theorems and their interpretations of the last century shed light upon; however, given that the last 100 years were dominated by behavioristic thinking, it would take many decades before this problem of was fully addressed.

When attempting to make sense of the human condition, many of us turn to introspection and reflection as a means of finding inner peace. While this is good in theory, the practice of such simply serves to enfold and isolate an individual from the world around them. Although many meditative practices do indeed stress a global understanding of life, the average person simply searches their psyche for meaning and understanding. Its not difficult to guess what this mode of inquiry renders: a highly subjective interpretation.

Our societies are all about socialization and interaction, so what sense does it make to only probe one’s self? Surely, introspection plays a vital role in conscious balance, however, if we wish to push forward as a species, there must be durative dialogue between people. Furthermore, the dialogue must be accompanied by all people attempting to better themselves in the world. What sense does it make if certain people are attempting to connect to those around them while others are doggedly sticking to their myopic views? What you have is nothing more than subjectiveness and anemic tolerance from one person to another. This is a good representation of the world we live in now. We know this more or less sucks.

As a method of addressing this early in 2013, I developed objective conscious modeling as a means to inspire selfless thought in my students and my consulting clients. There are four steps to the process:

1) Look at a situation as you normally would taking close note of your motivations and expected outcomes.

2) Look at the same situation from the viewpoint of someone who disagrees with you, someone you find yourself in opposition to often. This could be someone as close as your mother or an adversary from work or school. Try to objectively consider their motivations and expected outcomes as well as factoring in any influences to these. For instance, various cultural groups interpret occurrences differently.

3) Look at the situation from the viewpoint of someone close to you. More often than not, this will be a family member or close friend whose thought processes you are more or less familiar with. Again, consider their motivations and expected outcomes.

4) Look at the situation from a stranger’s eyes. At first glance, this seems impossible or at the very least implausible, however, rest assured, that it is possible with some practice. The key is to get familiar with the lifestyles of others and with the indomitable penetration of the Internet into our lives, it is very easy to see how others may view things.

These four steps provide a simplistic model for thinking outside one’s own paradigm; they are a direct affront to the run-of-the-mill subjectiveness that so many of us grow weary of. It is commonplace to hear, “well that’s just your opinion,” throughout one’s life; so, the idea is to acquaint one’s self with as many of these opinions as possible to offset the asymmetry of interpretation.

Makes sense, right? Let’s up the ante.

Everything I have just laid out exists within the domain of human reason which is acted upon by a myriad of forces from the moment one is born. Most of these forces are sensory as we grow to recognize our mother or father’s voice, learn their behaviors, and internalize those behaviors to be “true” or “right.” However, as more and more sensory information gets stored within the hard drive of the unconscious, thoughts and notions begin combining in unique ways per the parameters of that person’s psyche. Thus, a personality is born, an admixture of genetic information and social information, and the attentional or mental force, otherwise known as the conscious, begins playing its part. This is origin of subjective opinion. Because these things have accompanied someone from the instant they were born, things seem absolutely real. They may say, “this is my opinion,” but what is being implied is, “this is the truth as I see it.”

The conscious mind drives ration and reason, but it is still a product of itself, still a product of being a human. We have defined what this rationale and reason are and simply regarded it as so.

Being marked by the parameters of humanness, which can loosely be thought of as those things so familiar to a human that they are taken for granted, like creating a system of logic and believing it to be objectively logical, it should not come as a surprise to anyone that we ascribe such an elevated status to ourselves as beings. It is intuitionally obvious to everyone that we are at the apex of the Earth’s food chain and that we are the dominate species in the biosphere. Additionally, no other highly intelligent life has been revealed to the whole of mankind as being extant. Therefore, again, it is intuitionally understandable that we believe ourselves to be highly evolved.

But, that does not change the fact we’re defining things through being human! We cannot escape those things that make us human! We have sentience, we have the ability to reflect and prioritize, we have advanced language, and as aforementioned we have sat atop the global food chain, and this has provided us with a particular understanding that we hold special status and that has affected how we think. However, at no time has this necessitated that we are privy to an elect status in the universe. We are still abstracting and guessing through the human apparatus.

The human condition is an illusion simply because it is an abstraction of what life is. As a human, you possess a structure, the brain, and its processing faculties, the conscious and unconscious minds, which take on the Herculean task of organizing all the sensory information around it in a way that is meaningful and maximizes fitness. We do not see “reality.” We only see a sliver of the physical information in the universe. We don’t see X-rays or ultraviolet rays or gamma rays, we can only infer what they look like. We can’t sense what certain subsonic frequencies sound like, we can only infer what they feel like.

Thus, it is absurd, but facile, for us to talk of what the Universe is or does from within our limited context; I mean, how else could we describe it? You cannot explain what you cannot experience, this is the purest example of a causal gap. Hence why it is so damn hubristic to speak of time as the illusion! Time has existed since long before we were a thought in this macrocosm. Time is seemingly a byproduct of quantum entanglement or some of the curiosities of entropy, concepts that we are only just now understanding, yet, we have the audacity to relegate it as some manmade structure? What our ancestors did through sun dials and astrological mapping was derive a system for codifying momentary change. It is intuitively simple to understand that this moment is significantly different than one that just passed or one not here yet.

Therefore, some of the ostensible questions should involve epistemology or what can actually be known, a branch of philosophy that has an illustrious history in the learned communities but seems to languish in the spheres of the layman.

*******

When I first stumbled on the line of occurrences that led to what we now know as quantum physics I was deeply discomforted by how Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg, and Schrodinger were making these giant leaps in such seemingly coordinated ways. This is largely different than what I intuit about the present moment; very rarely are people in tune with one another in different parts of the world, working out deeply complex issues. This naïve line of inquiry would eventually pay off. Of course these scions of academia weren’t somehow magically in tune with one another; the next few decades after Einstein’s breakthroughs would find him unsettled with quantum implications and isolated from the academic community as he searched for a unified theory.

It wasn’t until we looked back in retrospect that this continuity became apparent. What the future does is collapse all of the past into more contiguous strings of occurrence, this contiguity permits the idea of meaning to events. The present moment exists as a probability wave with a preponderant amount of information being generated. We inefficiently search for meaning and significance in the present moment (usually through the faculties of ourselves, ironically) so that we are somehow doing something purposeful. But,it is only when we look back into time that a “clear line” begins to appear. “I was meant to do this” becomes a very real “reality,” only after there are a string of occurrences, consciously perceived, which demarcate clear causal lines.

However, causality in a system as complex as human behavior is not a one-for-one cause and effect system. This is where quantum uncertainty has become so helpful. Looking at the sheer amount of information and its instantaneous collapse upon observation and organization upon retrospection, it is clear that any number of causal lines could be constructed through the scatter plot of occurrence. You are not a doctor because of one clear moment in the past, but a series of lines that converged at various points along your life track. Thus, rigid notions of meaning and purpose are unfounded, since the causal laws are probabilistic rather than strictly mechanistic.

Thus, meaning and purpose are contrivances of the human condition. They are ideas that help deal with the painful gap between the human condition and its status in an otherwise indifferent universe. We attempt to exercise control over the things we hope to have control over and reason our way through per the specifications of our mental faculties. Thus, as an ontological entity, “calling’s” don’t exist. One is not “called” to do anything. Looked at as a bit of knowledge, however, one can delude themselves to believe in a calling only by looking behind them. You can collapse your past into a coherent framework that meaningfully brought you to the here and now. However, as previously discussed, it is still an arbitrarily constructed illusion, but it is one that somewhat makes sense.

What can be the applicability for all of this?

For starters, what Objective Conscious Modeling does is force one out of rigid local thinking through which one considers only a small sliver of the contextual information closest to them. In other words, by expanding one’s cognitive horizons they are able to surmount some of the gravity of the human condition. The human condition is nothing more than a program through which life expresses itself and as such it can be rewritten and modified, but not without considerable effort on the user.

Second, much of the strife within our social communities comes from the strict insistence that life has some objective meaning which we all can tap into. I vehemently denounce this notion. There is no objective meaning to life. The meaning of life is to live within the parameters one has the blessing to define. If you choose to adhere to a particular theology or philosophy, it is well within your right, but don’t get off on the belief that you possess some unassailable truth. You possess a watered down version of the larger structure of life.

This is highly, highly undesirable for a myriad of people and this only serves to edify my ultimate point. The human condition will willingly choose boundary over vacuous freedom because at least within boundary exists quasi-objective reason, purpose, and meaning. Within a larger ideological structure is a type of abandonment of self, objectivity, and adherence to a larger communal set of rules, however, concurrent with these systems is usually nauseating arrogance. Nevertheless, it is much easier to fall in line with the reasoning of some larger structure and arbitrarily amplify it out globally, than to deny the existence of anything as wholly objective and languish in ambiguity. With rigidity is order and with order communication and interaction are possible; after all, we are a highly social species.

To bring this post full circle, this is why I started out with saying that the human condition is the illusion, its the lens that we abstract the universe through. It is highly complex because it is modular, but this modularity is our greatest ally. Imagine your mind, your brain, as the single most sophisticated piece of equipment currently known to man: that is exactly what it is. It is a computer that is self-sufficient and possesses all of the facilities to push itself into ever more effective configurations. There is danger in believing that you know anything objectively because the brain will download that as a command to cease and desist and you will flounder in your own ignorance. Not only is this problematic on a daily perspective, but severely limits one’s genetic survivability.

By understanding that the condition is the illusion, what then is the reality? If we are simply apprehending the universe through the physical apparatus and processing through the mental faculties, what then? This is where I leave it to you to work through.

So many of us possess these undeserved ideas that our notions, preferences, and proclivities are somehow more pure than the next and it is through these prejudices that we apprehend our world.

Imagine shedding those delusions, what could one achieve then?

Imagine if you let go of the illusion that there is an objective meaning to life that all people should be following. Imagine shedding the delusion that your mode of logic was supreme. Imagine if the questions you posed to nature, your Heisenberg choices, were ones of increasing objectivity, increasing global consideration; how much more could you achieve?

The humanness I spotlighted in the beginning of this post is as illusory as any of the other concepts discussed simply because it exists within the sea of time and human awareness. Thus, it is only significant at this moment and constantly poised to change instantaneously. Since a component of your conscious processes project forward into time, an evolutionary marvel might I add, it is very possible that the entire framework of your understanding will change. Your new future will re-collapse and reconfigure the lines of your past.

Imagine how amazing that would be.

bryce

What Do I Actually Do?

I am often asked what it is that I do to make a living. Let me be clear right from the get-go: I do not “make a living” in the traditional sense, much to the chagrin of some investors and Sallie Mae. My job is to be a human and explore this experience to the best of my abilities.

What is doing anyway? Generally speaking, its activity for which one gets paid. But “generally” here refers to the generality of a particular group, namely Americans. I have grown away from the notion of “doing” things to get paid, I prefer to do things because I have a burning need to understand the underpinnings of the human condition…

Let me start from the beginning, a retrograde that is necessary to explain the panopticon that has become my mentality. When I was a kid there was no doubt in my mind that I would eventually become successful. I was naturally gifted in a variety of subjects, but for the most part, uninterested in any of them. As far as education goes, I more so reveled in my ability to not have to work, rather than feel some pull towards this subject or that. I did, however, have a rapt affinity for the conditions of others and I often times found myself as the willing ear to a myriad of my friends problems. People opened up to me and I eagerly absorbed it all, methodically codifying every story, every misplaced emotional particle, and every pubescent modicum of existence with fastidious care.

By the time I got to high school, I was on full cruise control. Within my first year I had more or less found my lane and even though its duration would bring a few social changes, I thrived in my own bubble. Again, this bubble warranted no predilection in academia and I found my stride as an above average student who existentially did the minimum.

Music was a staple of my childhood, but it was an escape and I had no interest in sullying it with the necessary demands of a life dedicated to it.

College was a nightmare, as many of my close friends have heard me say. My chosen institution was and still is the incarnation of almost every failure I have ever endured. From academia to socialization, I made every mistake that one is warned about in freshman orientation. I chose a major that wasn’t thought through, I got a girlfriend within my first week of school, and I isolated myself socially, a trend that would plague me for the next 5 years. However, these persistent failures forced me into a mode of thinking that would catapult me into the individual I am now; they would come to serve as a benchmark against many of the experiences to come. Everything has a lesson embedded and I had to learn the bittersweetness of failure if I ever hoped to break the trends I was mired in.

I left my first college and embarked on what can be thought of as a sabbatical at a drastically different school. A public institution in the middle of nowhere, I was reinvigorated by the notion of possibility. In a new place where I knew no one, I was allowed the particular solitude of self-reflection; I made new friends, forged healthy alliances and tried new things.

I was discovering what it meant to be a human.

This question, what does it mean to be human, would be the implicit impetus that drove me. Upon my return to my first college, I would begin to understand myself and my need for creative freedom. This creativity was not founded on any principles of aesthetic or classic sensual qualia, but instead would be founded on something proto-sensual. It was focused intensely on the nature of meaning itself.

Meaning presupposes aesthetic; one cannot know beauty until they know what it means to them. For most of my life, I didn’t know what life meant to me. I was going through the motions laid out by the society that provided me a framework. I was an automaton whose actions coincided with the necessities of contribution and therefore meaning was simply a hand-me-down.

My senior year of college I founded my first business and as I got my hands wet with entrepreneurship, I would go into business with a good friend of mine.

This is honestly where the journey of “what does bryce do” begins.

For years I tried to explain what I did, but words usually failed me because I honestly didn’t know what I was doing. I knew that I was injecting somendimension into the social order, but this gossamer answer wouldn’t suffice as an elevator speech. I had no deliverables, I had no proof of efficacy; I could only transfer a feeling.

In this regard, I was your classic Millennial. I was truthfully selling myself as an asset and telling a client to probe me as an objective entity. I tried to teach people how to be a myriad of things and this ultimately led me down the seminal paths to who I am now. It was through my work as a consultant of human nature, what it means to be a human, that I came across those concepts that sparked the proverbial “aha!” moment deep inside my being.

My proclivity is people, even though I am disparaged by who we are at this time. People have, much to the discomfort of millions, siphoned off but a sliver of the human condition and have attempted to pass this off as life. Thus we force our children into flawed educational systems, we swear by illusory bipartisan politics, we argue various religions, and talk through a variety of emotions, all in the name of “reality.”

Let me make this clear, what we experience is not reality as we proclaim it to be. It is a reality, but it is not the reality. This delineation is of paramount purpose.

Everything around you is the eventuality of a universe that began 13 billion years ago. Whether you believe in a supreme creator or not, this is a point that cannot be lost on you. Scientists, scholars, theologians, and philosophers have debated about the course of events leading to now, but the fact remains indelibly pure, this human condition is amazing.

Our brain is plastic; it is an apparatus that not only responds to sensory information, but attentional or mental information. It is in a state of flux, constantly changing and rearranging itself. It is an evolutionary marvel, a testament to life’s resolve to survive, yet, we try to pigeonhole it in the name of arbitrarily created rules and conventions.

This is why I get so up in arms dealing with individuals. In a world where nothing has to be, but so much is extant, the idea that rigid rules or ideas must be is laughable to me.

So, what I have done for a living is continually probe the human condition as a means of discovering what I believe it means to be apart of this condition. My answer is as labyrinthine as you’d expect, the meaning of being a human is the process of creating meaning. This encompasses all walks of life and does not place any pursuit over another; the homeless man is just as entitled to his way of life as the CEO woman.

What I do is make sense of life for myself and attempt to explain that in a cogent framework with a little inconsistency as possible. The obvious result is that it is impossible; life is far too complex and humans are still too far in the existential dark for us to really make ground breaking headway into this massive universe.

Simply stated, I have gotten paid to think about how to help form new modes of thinking in the hopes of inspiring new humans. Every business on the earth is obsessed with making life better for humans, but who, really, has been interested in making better humans for life? I mean, over the millennia we have essentially embodied various types of deterministic societies in which the “have’s” and “have-not’s” were the result of the natural order of things. In this mentalistic society, myself and others like me, have taken up the charge to develop new methods of thinking about age old ideas in the hopes of inspiring regenerative thought.

Social evolution, if I may.

The notion that everyone must be doing something contributive to the economy or to society is one of the major obfuscations for so many. We often times don’t get the opportunity to learn and explore since everything must have a direct “purpose” at any given time. Don’t get me wrong, capitalism is a useful concept, but unfortunately, it contains much disuse once one extracts themselves from the rat race that is society. It amplifies triviality and forces people to make snap decisions. It is fundamentally unhuman.

This summarizes quite concisely why as a kid I was never intrigued by most professions. It took failure, academically, socially, financially, entrepreneurially, and so forth, for me to really get to the bottom of what confounded me. Although my life has been met by very many blessings and a greta number of victories, the lessons learned in my moments of depression, fear, or discomfort elucidated my interests. I’ve never cared much about money, never cared much about tangible things, never cared much about the physical world, quite frankly, but deep within me has been a drive to organize thought in ways that would inspire harmonizing conversation. Discourse that would inspire multilateral disarmament of destructive ideological arsenals. We have been at war with ourselves and our brothers and sisters by proxy since the beginning of recorded history. So much so that we still believe there’s nothing that can be done.

Religious wars, economic wars, ideological wars.

I’ve traversed these last 5 years in search of deeper connections and now that this nomadic journey is coming to an end I have already ascertain the first bits of its chosen successor, an in depth foray into the formal understanding of the human psyche and its physiological counterpart the brain. With neuropsychology I have elected to commit to a series of still arbitrary rules, however, their contrivance is in the name of universal understanding. It is my goal to continually unlock the mysteries of the human condition to the best of my ability, suspending judgment, bias, and ego in the hopes of inspiring the next generation of thinkers.

At times my journey has seemed resolutely impossible, many of my friends and former friends have experienced the ugly side of such a transient existence. However, I am confident that this won’t all be for nought and I am excited about what the endless tomorrow may hold for me.

bryce

Why I’m Not Ready For A Relationship

“Neurons that wire together, fire together.”

I love love. I love love more than I actually love people. I love the feeling that it gives me. I love the sanguinity of it all; every moment one finds themselves ensconced in adoration.

However, much of this has to do with me and the feeling it gives me.

My love life is the butt of many of my friends’ jokes as the years have brought many women in and out to the point of absurdity. Although I in no way echo the sentiments of a Don Juan, my life very much mirrors his: intense, volatile, ephemeral trysts in rapid succession. One of my best friends and I only get to catch up once every couple months and without fail he is greeted by the explanation of some new woman.

Like most humans, I traditionally placed the chronic demise of these engagements on the fallibility of others; I would accept my culpability, but continually extend a share of the blame to my ill-fated lover. It made the most sense in a narrow-minded sort of way; however, as the situations continued to implode and the casualties mounted, it was clearly time for me to get a grip on who I was and what I was doing to attract such consistent fortune. As aforementioned, it wasn’t as if I were intentionally stacking paramours; quite the opposite, I was desperately searching through the proverbial haystacks, deeply engaging every semi-needle-like entity I could find, interrogating them, sifting them, and ultimately pushing for our connection’s demise.

But it was the implosion of my last arrangement that forced me to look at myself in a new found lens. This young woman and I had hands down the most tempestuous, unhealthy relationship imaginable, yet, we found ourselves intractably mired in the gravity of each other’s beings. We cycled in and out of harmony almost to a predictable clip and each time we chuckled derisively about the insanity of it all. After all, we are all familiar with the definition of insanity. She would always ask me for things that were sacrifices and from my perspective they were unconcionable. They were the types of things that led to misery down the road: switching to a more comfortable, stable job, moving to a new community, operating with a little more cooperation. All of these were fire-engine red flags. Absolutely not. I had dreams. I had aspirations. I would not be one of those people that would settle down and trade my version of glory for someone else’s version of comfort. Fuel for our our constant repulsion.

In my personal meditation, I asked myself some trenchant questions and I scrutinized my previous thoughts and actions. What came through with vociferous force was a realization that I was not prepared to stomach.

I’ve never been ready for a relationship.

Me. Bryce. Hopeless, sappy, woman-crazed Bryce who writes about the blessing of love ad nauseum. Yet, this has always been true.

The opening quote of this piece is an old adage of neuroscience that talks about how the cells of the brain work. “Neurons that wire together, fire together,” is exactly how it sounds, neural connections tend to work together in clusters forming all types of cool circuits. The brain, however, is an organic computer, therefore, when it is wired a particular way, especially in light of these clusters, many types of thinking will influence one another.

The main reason why I’m not ready to be in a fruitful relationship is because I am still in love with myself. Bryce is in a relationship with himself. For just over two and a half decades, I have been dreaming of achieving incredible things, cracking the mysteries of existence, influencing those around me. My thoughts tend to revolve around me and even when I do factor a significant other in, that is exactly what it is, me factoring her in. The previously mentioned tumultuous relationship cyclically imploded because I have been unyielding in my allegiance to myself and what I feel that I should be doing. Her favorite saying was, “its always the Bryce show,” which I found positively unnerving, but with careful consideration, it is undeniably true.

To add insult to injury, I am a shameless perfectionist. Less enamored with particular punctilios, I am restless when I feel that there is something within me that is dissatisfied. Even this very post has been edited more times that I can count because I have to make sure I get across how I feel in the best way possible. I cannot call myself particularly detail oriented, but I will very quickly resort to ruthless nit-picking when I don’t feel things are going the way I’d envisioned. In romance, I am far from demanding for the most part, i am very easy going because the picture has already been set up; I clearly already see what I want and now its a matter of maintaining the image. However, if the image begins to dull or the scenery undergoes an unwanted change, I am impossible to deal with. I employ every rational mode of thinking to explain my desire until I reach a point where I am no longer interested.

It doesn’t take an overly intuitive mind to see how this compounds problems…

There is no one on Earth I’d rather be, a healthy proposition no doubt, but with a mentality like mine, this easily gives way into egomania. Through a paradoxical confluence of ration and emotion, women become temporary infatuations which I can project my arrogance upon. Its no secret that I have been superficial in my dealings, the outward beauty allows me to bask in the glow of my ego. These are the outward projection of my deepest desires and inclinations; but, unfortunately, when their presence is no longer fruitful, when the ration and the emotion runs out, the connection wanes.

As should be clear by now, I tend to engage things in which I maintain ultimate power over myself. I am far from a control freak over others, but my neurosis regarding myself is obsessive. Hence why I disengage someone who no longer holds my attention, I don’t persist trying to influence their actions, I simply move on. This type of thinking has dominated my life, therefore, the type of love I’ve dreamed about is asymmetrical with the type of thinking employed in my daily activities.

This is the oddity of it all: I am enamored by a deeply rapturous love, but I don’t nurture the thoughts or environment to actually reap that. To me, this is the quintessence of the maturation process, discovering a more noble conviction, a more honorable desire buried within one’s self and literally pulling one’s self out of the lesser, ignoble desires. For me, the lesser desire is my self-obsession and the nobler desire is that of a true, selfless love.

I remember a few years ago I had an “aha!” moment where I realized that I’ve rarely been heartbroken because someone was no longer in my life, but instead, I was generally embarrassed by how it happened. I didn’t like the abruptness of it or I didn’t like some of the emotions involved; they made my feel uneasy, but very, very rarely was I heartbroken by the absence of an ex-lover. My thinking is rather independent; I mostly operate with a, “we can replace each other,” mentality. Nothing is really that important. Why cry over someone that can be replaced?

Individuals I engaged became objects of my desire; concepts that could be apprehended and scoured by my conscious and unconscious faculties. Its no wonder they were temporary and replaceable! Many engagements were more fetishistic than genuinely intriguing. Given my natural born set of talents, all the apprehending and scouring rendered more or less accurate understandings of these individuals; I would pour over them and learn an inordinate about who they were usually at the price of mystery. The loss of mystery provokes the loss of interest or patience. Fetishes are but temporary.

An egomaniac wants to have his ego stroked; over the years, I simply wanted to hear that I was all the things that I thought about myself. My ego has always been self-sustaining, but external edification is pure narcotic.

Now that I have completely eviscerated my younger self, I should make note that talking about mentalities and personalities as absolutes is shortsighted. Looking back in retrospect, it is easy for me to vilify my youthful exuberance to find love; however, this isn’t the whole story. Brain and mental states are constantly in superpositions; I was a myriad of things at that time, positive and negative. In no way am I insinuating that I was this vampire, sucking validation and allegiance from poor women who found themselves in my calipers. My conscious intentions were pure, I often fell hard for those women, but, there was still a deep current, hidden motivations, that I was not aware of, and this rendered these connections brittle.

I live much of my life raptly entertained. I have become increasingly proficient at “bare attention” meditating and consequently, I spend a great deal of time simply observing life and everything that comes with it. Through this process these revelations have been illuminated and I am thankful that they happened sooner rather than later.

Suffice to say, I am probably no more ready for a relationship now than before. I still have my vivid dreams of personal success and I still have my dogged resolve to accomplish those per the parameters of my cognition. Perhaps I will come across someone with sufficient gravity to knock me out of this orbit, but that isn’t something I will be necessarily holding my breath for. What’s more, I am not alone in this pathology; much of the criticism of those in my age cohort revolves around our extreme infatuation with ourselves and our abilities. I mean, given the Disney-esque delusions of accomplishment and love, PBS kids and childhood activities that made us all winners, and many of our parents’ inadvertent coddling, it shouldn’t be surprising that our bearings are set rigidly to personal desires. Yes, there is a sense of entitlement, but more accurately, there are goals that we are set on achieving, whether someone agrees with us or not.

My love life has been a reprise of the “or not.” I have been unwilling to yield to any other bearings and if I were to be honest, I never intended to. It has always been my way or get the fuck out of my life way. This is not salubrious to any meaningful emanation of love and thus, will never satisfy my quixotic nature.

So, how will I reconcile these seemingly antithetical “neural circuits?” well that’s for me to work out, I suppose. I know that my outlook on things is certainly different than it was even just a few months ago, so perhaps I’m finally drifting in the right direction. Regardless, I am happy with my current trajectory in life and I am hopeful that this will continually inspire enduring progress. I haven’t shed nearly enough my of self-obsession to warrant any massive changes, but it should be a fun journey nevertheless.

bryce

Science and Religion

“All is vanity.” Ecclesiastes 1:2

Among my few and far between heroes David Bohm has stood apart. I first stumbled on his literature late last year and since then I have found myself pouring over his work. A physicist by trade and a philosopher by proxy, his views of holism and social evolution never cease to be an inspiration for me.

In the three years since I graduated my life has been obscenely philosophically based and rightfully so: philosophy merely requires an inquisitive mind; the particular details of any craft can be grafted in via formal education at a later point. My flavor of philosophy has somewhat undulated, but for the most part I have stuck with a small set of notions, while spending the rest of my time probing for what I could actually believe.

It has been in these moments of suspension, that is, the suspension of all other notions, that I have come to understand the world in my present state; the discipline it takes to forego conclusions comes with due reward: glimpses of universal understanding. Granted, my definition of understanding may differ than the traditional sense, I tend to speak more of abstractions than concrete truths, but nevertheless, these understandings are nascent. When one exercises a will to stop imposing their will on everything, one finds a certain pervasive brand of understanding.

Scientists and religious figures are one and the same to me and this is because science and religion are mediums by which humans attempt to explain their worlds and the worlds around them. Now, of course, the methods they employ in this excursion for understanding are dramatically different, a point I will address in a moment, but for now I wish to offer a unique tableau; one which supports a holistic world view not unlike Bohm’s.

Without trudging into the technicals of brain function or launching into a monologue about philosophy of mind, let me take a moment to discuss how a human apprehends reality. Science has painstakingly shown that the human brain does not “see” “reality” as it is. Our eyes are only tuned to a portion of the light spectrum, our ears are only tuned to certain frequencies, and we can only feel so many vibrations. The brain and its peripheral sensory system can only process so much information. The mitigating factor in this process in has been Evolution itself; most of what we are and what we sense was developed into us to achieve maximum survivability, ala Darwinian natural selection. Our brain is the product of evolution. Therefore, as we attempt to ascertain what is “real” and what isn’t, it is important that we bear in mind that we do not possess all the apparatuses necessary to achieve that end.

Science has embraced that, religion has turned to wielding disproportionate power in the name of gossamer progress.

However, science is not free from the taint of human fallibility; we are constantly having to go back and update what our antecedents proffered as concrete truth. Even in a hard science like physics we have gone from Newtonian rigidity, to Einsteinian relativity, to quantum uncertainty, and we are bound to discover even more. Science as a concept is not in the business of proving anything, especially not a subjective “truth,” although you would be hard-pressed to convince certain groups of its practitioners that this was so.

The tableau, the elegant scene, I am attempting to paint is one through the lens of the human condition. David Bohm and I share a belief that there is an intrinsic wholeness in all things, man and nature, yet, many have become disillusioned to this notion through quotidian circumstance. Our day to day lives, our attention focused on our preferred time intervals, and our evolutionary ability to recognize and respond to changes and differences have upheld these arbitrarily forged barriers between concepts. It is easier to see the pursuits of empirics and spirits as fundamentally different, not the trickier notion that they are merely domain-specific.

Man, through this evolutionarily received apparatus, is relegated to see the universe through his humanness. This humanness is presently inescapable. Science with its materialists and reductionists cannot escape it and religion with this faithful zealots and prayerful wishes cannot either. They wish for the same thing, yet, given the focus on their domain differences and the proclivity of man to hold his ground for the fear of losing his sense of self, we persist as slaves to our homo designation.

I am the consummate scientist; I am enraptured by what I can see, feel, and touch. However, I am also a deep spiritual adherent; I am inspired by what I can intuit, sense, and reflect in my moments of silence. While the components of my body may give rise to this thing known as sentience, my sentience is given permissible autonomy to inquire about additional ways of being. Though I is bound by the very materials I am constructed by, I am given infinite possibility by the quantum nature of my cognition. I am the result of superimposed brain states, not the automata that so many hardliners wish to see. I do not have to overly spiritualize or overly quantize or I can choose to spiritualize or overly quantize, the results will be much the same.

A sprawling, vibrant panoply of life. A horn of wealth that is free for anyone willing to consider without subsequent judgment.

bryce

Is Social Media “Real” ?

Taking a brief break from the atmospheric realms of abstract thought, I turn my attention to some unsettling notions brewing on the timelines of my various online presences. The notion at first glance seems tenable, “social media isn’t real.” I mean this follows, right? Social media is remote and, by that account distant, phenomena which really has no true force on one’s life, right? Right?

This is a problem that can be approached from a couple different ways, but lets first take a moment to question what constitutes real. What is reality? A few posts ago I discussed this very subject and its something that continues to drive me in my private meditations. For the sake of conversation, lets consider reality, “receiving, interpreting, and organizing stimuli.” The process of living in a reality is taking the sensory and extrasensory (if you believe in such things) stimuli and organizing them in a way which creates stability. The brain processes stimuli and through its complex processes a mental state is derived.

This places social media square in the realm of “real.” Why? Because social media presences are nothing more than the virtual manifestation of someone’s thoughts. Whether parody or genuine expression, the processes that bring one to type out a message and send it to the public realm are incarnations of will.

The argument against social media is that it is all entertainment, much like a movie or a TV show. This, again, is myopic. Entertainment, even those things which are acted out, are still “real.” The scenarios may be artificial drama, but they still interact with the audience in a very real sensory way. In the domain of day to day reality, much of what one sees is not artificial drama, but actual interaction between two people.

Moreover, by the account of social-media-as-real naysayers, none of what one sees in life is actually real. Or more precisely, everything is real and unreal simultaneously. This is because one cannot know for sure the intentions or motivations of others, but this does not preclude them from experiencing very real physiological or psychical effects. One cannot say for sure what is dramatized and what is “true,” but these domains overlap one another.

What is real to one person may be unreal to another. Who is right and who is wrong?

Social media is another means of communication; therefore, one should account all the going’s on in their text messages as unreal. Last I checked, people were expressing genuine emotions and mental content, even if that content was somewhat shrouded in the ambiguous haze of intentionality. But intentionality, well, complex multi-intetionality, if I may, could be ascribed to one’s own household. There are many interactions within one’s own house where the complexity of behavior boils down to the complexity of intention; does one then relegate the actions taken by their mother as unreal?

So, is social media real? Of course it is and of course it is not. It causes real psychical responses and transitively, real physiological responses. It isn’t strictly the pursuit of fabricated drama; although, as aforementioned, complex multi-intentionality does play a role. It is a variation of the innumerable abstractions humans manipulate in order to express the complexity of their existence. Thus, it is neither real nor unreal and it is both simultaneously. For those dissatisfied with this ambiguous answer, a more precise response would be that there is no need for “real” or “unreal.” These are merely abstract concepts with no consistent validity outside the realms of one’s own mind; but this is the stumbling block of humanness.

We are unable to receive, integrate, and organize data in a way that is consistent between individuals. We may have some superficial relevancies, but as we probe deeper and deeper into the nature of expression, the interpretations become more and more disparate. Physiologically speaking, our brains may be very similar, but they have many dissimilarities which lay the physical foundation for our mental differences.

Much of our objective “reality,” the shared day to day experience we call society, is driven by things ignorant discarded as “unreal.” The better question to ask one’s self is what can truly be understood and what is doomed to be the fodder of interpretation.

bryce

The End of Reason

Concomitant with consciousness seems to be a deep conviction that one’s life matters. To matter, much like many of the other phenomena belaboring a human’s faculties, is a subtle one rife with as much interpretive shifting sand as anything else. Notwithstanding, the notion that something matters is understandable in any passing conversation.

Yet, shifting the mental context away from one’s own existence, one must acknowledge a frightful occurrence: that many lives are passed which warranted no granduer, left behind no legacy, contributed to no bodies of knowledge. Infant mortality, freak accidents, and early terminal illness are only a sliver of the possibilities to truncate this essence of animation; there are those that live a full bodied life and will never be thought of again.

The idea of a legacy is a truly egoic one, is it not? However, it is a digression from the finer point I am trying to make.

In one’s life, especially in the considerations of those young people attempting to forge their way through, they must settle upon something they wish to do. Our generation has been reared, conditioned some might say, to search fervently for those veins in life whose terminals are some larger civic duty. We have been programmed to work to save the world.

I know I suffer from it. Much of my angst stems from the terror that I am not getting closer to a place in which I can affect the change I wish to be, to commandeer the axiomatic saying. When I go in for a project or consider a job, it must align with this very palpable sense of duty to which I’ve dedicated my life. Anything less than that is unconscionable.

Moreover, the social pressures from our peers only act to exacerbate this anxiety. As we exchange information, especially behind the smoke and mirrors that is social media, we are doubly assaulted by the “grass is greener” sense of existence. Every direction we turn there seems to be someone inching closer to his or her own holy grail of accomplishment, all the while decrying their own sense of anxiety. Locked in the drama of this posturing is where most of us find ourselves at any given time. Yes, others may be suffering, but look at how much more they’re doing. They’re genuine, they’re motivated, they’re significant.

Sometimes I try to imagine the last week of a citizen of Pompeii’s life just before he or she was encased violently by Vescuvius’ awesome power. I imagine myself a solder locked in dialogue about a campaign or a merchant bringing his goods to market. Perhaps I am a mother or an uncle and I am thinking about heading to the hills to visit another member of my family. Mundane, right? I wonder of he or she considered at any point whether or not they’d be significant. Surely, there were those who had ambition; does ambition not come with some concurrent expression of significance? Can someone be ambitious who does not ascribe to their essence some level of importance?

For the last three years I have embarked on a journey that no word or words can describe. Tens of thousands of dollars lost, respect earned, lies told, projects stalled, clients impressed. I have found myself standing in penthouses overlooking beautiful landscapes and laying on the floor of my parents’ house counting tears.

Has any of it mattered?

From the particular moment which I am in now, no. So much so, that I barely even hold on to the belief that mattering is a thing. What does it mean to matter outside of the context of one’s own subjectivity? One must create the references by which they compared occurrences or concepts then apprehend those occurrences and concepts and finally make coherent contrasts between them. Upon arriving at one conclusion or another, one must, in my opinion at least, realize that this is an exercise in futility. Most, if not all, that assaults our psyches is the contrivance of the environment we find ourselves in.

I have often asked myself if we can ever escape our own “humanness;” that is, can we ever step outside what makes us human and objectively observe it. A few months ago I thought of a model based on game theory in which one simulates objectivity by continually observing clusters of players and behaviors. If you are reflecting on yourself you say, “I am thinking (level 1). I am thinking about thinking (level 2), I am thinking about how [why, what etc] am I am thinking (level 3), I am thinking about how I am thinking about how I am thinking (level 4) ad infinitum. However, even this reeks with the ineptitude of human reason. One cannot fully shed his own motivations or convictions; even at the limits of his questioning, the question he chose to ask drips with the residue of his cognitive fog.

Thus, “mattering” is the quintessence of humanness. It is an anemic term we use with and against one another as a benchmark in conversation. Like anything, it is, in and of itself net neutral; it is not positive or negative, right or wrong. Doing something that matters can be as simple as mentoring an adolescent into adulthood. However, to question whether what you do or do not do matters is to inject a delusion of directionality into it. Its placing parameters around things that will continually be limitless.

When one reflects deeply enough, they reach a void. All men come to it, this I can say with certainty. The void is massive; so massive that it is virtually impossible to distinguish whether it comes from within or without. The void is the “edge” of human reason. Its the point where things no longer make rational sense and information streaming in has no intelligible symmetry. Some acquiesce and go the path of faith; they affront the void with God. Some retreat and live a life of relation: they simply do what they’ve been taught; they live a life in relation to what they know. Others, such as myself, confront the void with faith nor cowardice; we turn around in a circle and marvel at how absolutely absurd it all is.

We are born and we are raised by individuals who themselves are incapable of figuring it all out. We are educated; taught abstractions about the universe around us and tested on our ability to apprehend, retain, and recite. We are sorted according to this ability and given higher levels of knowledge. We are then subjected to the aggregate of beings who assign arbitrary values to this knowledge and we trade and exchange for the duration of our lives. Encircling us are orbital structures, religions, laws, rules, communities, and so forth, all of which we are demanded to be cognizant of.

We inch further and further into complexity while proclaiming that things are simple. Through this circus act we turn inward on ourselves and ask, “what will I do that will matter?”

We pinpoint the things we think are problematic that can be as big as the world or as small as the hole in our upstairs bathroom wall.

Given the infinitely gyroscopic ability of our minds to observe, interpret, and organize, we then try to make sense of everything in the face of the void and we try to bridge the gap between us and the void, for that is truly what we define as “mattering.” Figuring it all out and shoving it in the face of the entire theater of life. It isn’t about curing cancer, it isn’t about getting gobs of money, it isn’t about raising successful children, those are all subjective and imprecise. No, what we truly crave is lasciviously decadent sensation of going out with a pristine understanding of why we did it, why we remained, why we prevailed.

If there is any such sensation — better yet — if there is any such answer, I can guarantee that is not found in any job listing or classroom. I would wager that it isn’t found in any house of worship or any library to boot. I would go as far to say that it isn’t found in any conversation between two humans or even within the confines of anyone’s mind.

Yet, those are all the places we search when discussing what matters.

bryce