Life is worth living

The purest desideratum,
Is the relentless wish to survive.

The other day, my best friend sent me the picture I’ve used as the image for this post and she asked, “is this what the Creator looks like?”

Although my views on God and origin have shifted a bit over the last few years, I found myself staring deeply into the image, lost in the unspeakable magnitude of the framework we call the cosmos. The response was visceral.

Life is an extraordinarily difficult process; I think we all can attest to that. From the simplest bacterium to we complex humans, the force that animates us does not come with a whole lot in terms of explicit instructions. Although our genetic code does imbue us with some basic survival programs, these programs very quickly enter into anfractuous relationships with our surroundings and our sensory percepts; things very quickly degrade into confusion.

Confusion is the hallmark of our species without a shadow of a doubt, but this makes sense given how things are set up and how they’ve unfolded. We went from an arboreal species, advanced monkeys, to hyper-minded creatures with the ability to make deliberate plans and communicate them through natural, highly complex language. As our brains grew to accommodate the increased cognitive demand necessary for complex language, we developed all the metacognitive (thinking about thinking) and abstract abilities that have come to be seen as more or less uniquely human.

In addition, humans are an extremely social species; however, we are paradoxically driven to express our own individuality as contribution to the overall collective and the result is generally a cacophony of ideology and conflicts of self.

Through our history, we have mostly let our minds languish in relative ignominy given that we did not understand them. The mind has usually been seen as a ward of the spirit or soul or a black box of the brain; we have only recently seen the “cognitive revolution” which inspired critical thought about the emergent processes occurring deep within our neural tissue.

So many people have been ill-equipped at understanding the complexities of their own biological and psychical architecture: for millennia, we have persecuted those with mild or severe mental afflictions as weak-willed or demon possessed respectively.

From a top-down and a lateral network view, we have expected those in our populous to gain control over their psychological life and act accordingly.

It has never been that simple.

From genetic abnormalities to pernicious childhood environments, humans face extremely stout obstacles along their journey through life (much like any animal). Nature proper has always been seen as the grounds of random chance and primal interactions, whereas we, being minded creatures, would be able to circumvent the trachles of existence through conscious thought. This makes intuitive sense, but of course, leaves much of the story untold.

As things would have it, humans are just as much animal as any other creature roving our semi-aquatic planet. What we possess is an elegant form of inhibition that allows us to overrule some unconscious drives through learned experiences. Looking at ourselves as advanced animals and our systems of perceptual monitoring as evolved survival structures, it should come as no surprise that they are not without flaw. Our brains do not come fully equipped to do everything necessary to flourish through life. More to the point, we are not fully equipped to even know what those things are. Normal distribution, the “bell curve” most of us are familiar with, again sees to it that different folks have different strengths and weaknesses — genetic diversity in the pool as it were. Therefore, it is not about some stock set of characteristics that a human MUST develop in order to be successful, but that we all possess a mishmash of traits that can be expressed. Our advanced status is still only a phase in the evolutionary tale of the Universe.

So, the perception of life is not as cut and dry as common sense would make it. Life is an extremely simple process: continue to live and express genes for as long as possible then pass on those successful genes to subsequent generations. However, the expression of life, especially for creatures as complex as humans is anything but simple.

I have never battled clinical depression, but I have entertained thoughts of suicide in the last couple years. Extreme stress and few solutions led me to think through myriad ends. So, I can empathize with those that struggle with chronically depressed mood, dysthymia, or endure a major depressive episode. When I have discussed depression with those who fight through it, many of them compare it to having an outrageous weight on their chest. Neuroscience would say their state of consciousness, the very background on which they view both the outer and inner worlds, is pathologically altered.

All manner of personality, mood, and behavioral disorder have been subjectively described by clinical patients and recorded fastidiously in the annuls of medicine and they all reflect a common theme:

Shit is complicated in our brains. Shit is complicated in humans.

With the passing of Robin Williams and fellow schoolmate of mine, Simone Battle — by their own hands — I want to remind you readers the severity of the states of consciousness, the states of monitoring that we all delicately balance on a daily basis. For most of us, this is only rarely a problem, but for others, just getting up in the morning is a Herculean task. To actively engage is barely bearable.

I want to take this opportunity to think about life, human and nonhuman, as a means of describing the overarching narrative of existence.

This distal arm that we coast across the universe on is hundreds of thousands of lightyears away from the center of our galaxy. Our galaxy is one of hundreds of billions in the known universe — the implication being that the unknown or unseeable universe could stretch for trillions of more fathoms. Imbued in the properties of very special types of matter is the propensity to self-organize and increase in complexity, eventually producing things which can independently respond to stimuli. These organisms continue to replicate and evolve, eventually producing beings so wildly complex that they can even be swayed against fundamental survival instinct.

Humans are the only beings that have to be convinced that life is worth living.

To say that life is a miracle is an affront to the life process. Life is beyond implausible. There may be millions of other “Earths” in the universe, however, there are innumerable locations in the cosmos. Places that permit life are the dramatic minority.

Absurdist philosophy, made popular by individuals like Albert Camus, says that the existential crisis that arises in all humans stems from the realization that there is a gap between one’s personal experience of a purposeful existence and the infinitely apathetic, purposeless universe.

What grips me, de profundis, is that within every single vantage point, every single zoom level in any of the 3 spatial dimensions, exists infinitude within finitude. That is, every single fiber down the hypothetical strings at the Planck length possess an infinite amount of complexity and self similarity. A pure, abstract fractal design that is both sequential and parallel; hierarchical and communal.

The human form is not meant to be a form that comes equipped to be birthed, live, then die; instead, we are equipped to experience as many of these vantage points as possible on our journey throughout this ephemeral animation. To see that the infinite cosmos all the way down to the subatomic levels, expresses the same ineffable concepts and that they are both intimately involved in supporting our very existences.

Life is worth living because life has no intrinsic purpose. The liberation in nihilism should not be seen as destructive; instead, it should be seen as an invitation to generate your own explorative, adaptive process. Brains come into this world without innate instructions because an organism must adapt to the world around it; rigid structures are inflexible and flexibility is premium with regards to survival.

One must embrace the amorphous nature of the entire superstructure and wonder at its modularity throughout the respective vantages. One must wonder at how individual bodies undergo homeostasis to maintain life but that individual humans engage in social homeostasis to maintain the life of the species and consequently, Life proper.

I know that it is easy for me to embrace the purview that such a position is entitled to; there are those who become anxious in the face of such structurelessness. My piece to you is to continue to march forward and break down those walls. You must learn to no longer fear the vastness of life and accept the invitation to explore the entire construct, mentally and physically. Some will elect to follow methods laid out before them, other like myself, will choose to blaze new expressible paths. The infinitude of life beckons you and you possess the fortitude to take control of your human experience. It is not easy; it is not clean; it is not an overnight flight, but I promise — I PROMISE…

Life is worth living.

Depression and Fractured Reality

Let me start out with a disgustingly obvious truism: reality is much, much more complicated than it seems.

I have discussed at length the nature of the human condition and how that corresponds to reality, but, as I continue my journey, much more is forthcoming. For those of you that know me personally, the recent trajectory of my journey has brought me into a specialized field of clinical psychology known as neuropsychology. Neuropsychology is the study of the relationships between physical structures in the brain and their corresponding cognitive capabilities and behaviors. In the clinic where I intern, we see many patients on the autistic spectrum, others who suffer from personality disorders such as bipolar and borderline disorders, as well as mood illnesses such as depression and anxiety.

Neuropsych is a relatively new science and as such sits on the frontier of innovation and interpretation. Many of the discussions between our practicing neuropsychologist and myself involve the unique ways in which the brain gives rise to the various behaviors and capabilities that so many of us come to take for granted or just simply don’t understand.

Yesterday the world lost an icon, Robin Williams. Those in my age group know him as an incomparably hilarious staple of our youth, gifting us with so many characters that are now forever idealized in our minds. From Genie in Aladdin to Mrs. Doubtfire, Mr. Williams was nothing short of a laugh a minute; however, as is now apparent, deep beneath the veneer of his humor was a deeply broken man.

The battle of ideology still rages about the relationship between the brain and the mind, but this much is true: they affect each other. For professionals in the fields of psychology, psychiatry, and certain brain sciences, the notion that one can “will” themselves to be happy is a gigantic misnomer. Nor is the idea that “talking to someone” is panacea either. The truth of the matter is how the brain interacts with its environment is still much of a mystery to us.

Although much philosophy and many personal ideas are cast around about how one suffering from a neurological illness should carry themselves, the hard truth is that nothing in the human condition is ever simple. Since we are constantly having to piece together the fragments of existence and decide what questions to put to nature during the process, science progresses usually at an erratic pace through piecemeal activities. New Age and other popular trends attempt to streamline and rest upon conclusions, calling on mystical or alternative means, however, these too, are not without their applicative shortcomings.

Reality is not linear because as the beings apprehending it, we are not linear.

Finding biological correlates to depression has been tough; however, many researchers have honed in on a group of neurotransmitters, monoamines such as dopamine and seratonin, and have hypothesized that greater amounts of these in the synaptic clefts, that is those gaps between neurons, may help to counteract this destructive disease. But, as is far too common, the drugs created based on these theories do not work the same in every individual; humans are as diverse physiologically as we are mentally.

Psychotherapy is the clinical practice of counseling, generally done by a licensed psychologist or social worker. These situations call upon the professional stability and wealth of knowledge by the clinician, but again, the psyche of humans is just as diverse as their physiologies.

The tragedy of Robin Williams perfectly captures this point. Over the years Williams suffered from both cocaine and alcohol addictions, as well as battling the aforementioned depression, which could have been onset by the relapse into alcohol. For an addict, the guilt and shame of relapse is often enough to drive them into depression and often expressing comorbidity, which is the development of additional simultaneous illnesses suchas anxiety.

As I intend for this blog to be highly informal, I invite all of you to do your own research and not just consider the diseases themselves, but the overarching schema of the brain and how it generates both self-awareness (consciousness) and opinions about reality. Too much of our daily interaction is shrouded in the ignorance of under-informed opinion and thus, misnomers continue to propagate. Suicide, the unfortunate result of many of these disorders, has been villainized, feared, and railed against since the dawn of time. Religion, philosophy, and even legislation have condemned those who succumb, a truly disheartening practice. Since most humans are fully operable within the confines of natural selection, the idea of ending one’s own life is resolutely unconscionable. Moreover, many have come to see suicide as selfish, self-centered, and flat-out “wrong.” I will refrain from offering my opinion, but I invite those of you who are mature enough, to consider this.

Life is not and has never been about the primacy of any individual species and this may come as a surprise to those who have never thought about it this way. Humans, although advanced, must remember that they are carriers of this life “program,” this biological force which separates the inanimate from the animate, just like any other animal. Although our brains have been highly modified to organize reality into “human” or anthropological terms, this only exists within the collective psyche of humans. It does not designate reality for what it is.

Albert Camus famously wrote that suicide was an escape out of the absurdity of life; however, this didn’t actually resolve the absurdity of it. If I were to let my feelings about these subjects leak just out a little, I would say that I connect with this idea. For those that suffer from chronic mental illnesses, the absurdity of life and the insurmountable nature of it all, leads to feelings of futility, generally through the expressions of guilt, despair, or low self-worth. The realities that their brains are generating do not possess the capabilities of continually carrying the life program and it is not as simple as them “getting over it” or “remembering whats important in life.”

Imagine yelling at your computer whose motherboard is faulty and telling it to “get over it,” to “remember that its purpose is to compute and discover the beauty of computation.” It simply does not possess the requisite capabilities any longer and sometimes it cannot be fixed. Although psychiatric drugs, psychotherapy, and an overall refocusing of mental effort can work for some cases, they will not always be sufficient, especially in those whose hardware has inexorably failed.

To philosophize about the ethics and morals of suicide and any of its preceding illnesses is absolutely ridiculous. To tell a person that they are wrong for wanting to kill themselves is absolutely ridiculous. Superimposing your beliefs on the subject is absolutely ridiculous. Many people will say, “well I have been there, I have been suicidal,” but again, this is shortsighted. Our individual makeups are wildly divergent from one another; just because you were able to pick yourself up and talk yourself (or got talked) off the cliff does not mean you “understand” what drives someone to actually step off the edge. Perhaps your brain structures were reparable; perhaps the concatenate neurological activity that forms the physical foundation of your reality was slightly different. Trillions of synaptic connections in the brain leads to an unfathomable preponderance of possibilities.

This, for me, is the crux of the problem of being human. We possess the seemingly unique ability in the animal kingdom to be aware of the mental states of others. Our evolution has brought us to a place where we are no longer governed exclusively by instinctual or evolutionary primitive demands. However, few of us understand how to evaluate the states of others. Few of us understand how to interact with one another. We hide behind beliefs and theories, usually unfounded and based on personal experience, or we ascribe to some set of beliefs that have been taught to us. We don’t know how to think, we just do, ad nauseum. The result is a fractured reality, much exposed by David Bohm, and we continually conjecture and posit from the fragmented positions.

For instance, Robin Williams dies and suddenly those in the African American community are up in arms about society “forgetting” Michael Brown, the unarmed man who was gunned down by police over the weekend.

It is this state of fracture which continually inhibits not just the Black community, but our entire species. We don’t understand how to evaluate the course of events or the course of our interactions, so we lead ourselves further and further into the schizophrenic reality of fractured societies. The irony is, the more fractured we think, the more like the primitive animal kingdom we become. Instead of willingly pushing forward as a species through this gifted faculty of advanced self-awareness and awareness of others, we elect to stew in the filth of the ignorance fracture allows.

In 2014 alone, planes have disappeared and been shot out the sky, more unarmed Black men have been murdered by police (who probably also suffer mental illnesses, various complexes to be certain), and the Middle East continues to wage ideological war. To me, it is all related. It is the very nature of how humans, in our current state, create reality, fractured reality. Robin Williams could not face his reality, Israel and Hamas continually force each others’ realities upon one another, and racist police generate a reality of paralyzing prejudice and monstrously end the realities of others.

The brain is a wild, wild place. It puts the most hardcore Siberian frontier to shame because not only have we not even begun to get close to exploring its mysteries, most of us don’t even know how undertake that process. So the derivatives, the social, ethnic, and ideological arenas are weaponized and are brought to the fore, instead of dealing with the common denominator in all of those, the correlated brain states, the mind.

If I could give all humans one admonition, it would be to stop taking the most familiar thing, one’s conscious experience for granted. Stop believing that what you think is “just how things are” or even worse, “right.” Your own prejudices, which you have no doubt justified, your own beliefs, which you have no doubt idealized, and your own actions, which you have no doubt made excuses for, are a complex conglomeration of neurological determinism (that is you are who you are because that is who you are), your environment (which triggers certain aspects of brain activity, lending back to the determinism), and the quasi-indeterminism created by the fact that we cannot trace the origins of every single action or belief by an individual. In addition, reality being so much bigger than individual humans, than Earth’s entire biosphere for that matter, it should be fastidiously considered. Your own ideas, beliefs, and actions should be meticulously raked in contemplation about your own self and doubly so as you consider the collectivity of humans. Before you go off on rants and tangents about anything — suicide, mental illness, or ideological preferences included — take the time to understand what it is you’re talking about and compare that back to the wholeness of life and the universe.

Although we are the latest model of the vehicle of life on this planet, this does not denote an existential primacy, as mentioned earlier. This means we should be even more relentless in our questioning of the very essence of ourselves and how we apprehend the environments around us. Instead of drawing conclusions, we should never stop drawing on bits of information, liked or unliked. Treat every moment as an opportunity to test hypotheses, not “reach” final states of belief. The purest hubris is the idea that anything can be known in finality.

Rest in peace, Mr. Williams. I know that I could never understand your battles and I wish that something could’ve occurred which pointed you back to the beauty of the inquiry of life. I wish that you could’ve found a kernel of faith in something which kept you tethered to our plane of reality, but sometimes the demons of our psyche pull far too hard. I don’t find you selfish, nor will I villainize you unfairly; you fought but you found yourself overwhelmed. I wish you felt the happiness you brought all of us. I hope that wherever you are now, you are free from the pain.

bryce

The Principles of Dogma

Dogma, as defined by Webster, is an official system of principles on tenets concerning faith, morals, behavior etc. While dogma is generally ascribed to large institutions such as churches or governmental organizations, I see these entities as nothing more than aggregations of humans and they are thus eventualities of human interaction. Dogma is a curious phenomena that arises when humans begin to congregate, as individual interpretations of life begin to compete for legislative space, over acts of “standardization” are enacted as attempts to streamline and keep peace.

Isolative cognition (IC) is a term I have come to use for the areas of cognition we access when making decisions within a cognitive bias. IC is a term that for many may be hard to conceptualize, one would have to be familiar with cognitive bias and additionally be able to pinpoint their biases in order to have any deep understanding of them. To merely see the blind spots in another’s thought process is hardly educational, it isn’t until the same scrutiny is applied to the individual that any substantive progress is made.

A society is more than just the sum of its parts, humans, because human interplay creates additional phenomena that are shared by one another. Things begin to emerge which are not related to any particular part, but as a nascent eventuality of interaction as a whole. These emergences are many, laws, rules, normative behaviors, ethics, and so forth. From these emergences come standardized rules of engagement, education, and principles of contributive behavior which try to facilitate an individual’s healthy integration into the whole of the body of society.

The problem is, humans, as explicitly stated ad nauseum on this site, are free moral agents and complex systems of probabilistic functions, thus one understanding of rules and principles may not be shared by the rest. However, in order to establish a cogent, sustainable society there must be normalities in place to govern interaction. Thus, dogma is born.

However, this complex interplay of human activities does not end there; just as man is governed by his or her need for structure, he is simultaneously governed by the cosmic forces of balance. If structure is emergent and instability must also come to the fore; one cannot exist without the other, this is the nature of being human.

Thus, IC becomes problematic as people identify with one set of rules or the other without taking account the essential antithetical principles of human nature. We MUST have balance, if there is evil then good will abound; if there is good than evil will abound.

Dogma, especially in larger, and by nature more complex societies, is rarely a cooperative process. In order to offset the cumbersome structure of a large populace, such intermediaries such as representative democracies and electoral processes begin to emerge. Dogma the evolves into a game of political intrigues, with a representative sometimes operative on behalf of his constituents, sometimes on behalf of his wealthy donors, sometimes on behalf of his own self interest, and usually in a complex admixture of all three. Factor in psychological warfare, conceptually related topics of psychological warfare and class oppression, in tandem with nationalism and a cadre of other -ism’s and one can see just how complex this dogmatic process can become.

Isolative cognition is the most destructive when a relatively informed person begins to sit atop their soapbox. Armed with a large amount of information, but exposed by anemic analytical processes, they skew such concepts like “dogma” as evil, unnatural, or unnecessary. They fail to view their own systematic beliefs of what is and isn’t, their own wishes for clarity, their own dreams of uniformity as forms of dogma. In their bias, they see with such vivacity a clear and concise version of what is, they often times supplement these positions with fervor and passion, mistake their ability to garner respect and persuade as self-evident truths of their moral uprightness, and mislead themselves to think that they are different from the society they hail from.

One must understand, to be informed does not mean to know; unless one is questioning the principles of knowledge — if one can ever know anything — their thought processes are exercises in insanity: repeating a dead process over and over again expecting different results.

How does one overcome IC, cognitive biases, or “philosophical suicide”, if I may borrow the phrase from Albert Camus, you ask? Is it by doggedly sticking to some theoretical objective truth and denying your impulses? Hardly. As discussed, that would contradict man’s existence as a paradox. Although we should actively seek objectivity, the only way life can make any cogent sense is through the eyes of individual experience; to deny that would be deny the human experience, a highly unlikely and virtually impossible process when dealing with a large society.

Instead, people should take their subjective opinions and test them to the hilt. They should understand their particular mental frameworks or schemata and actively seek to undo them. How? One method is to find your oppositional stance and do everything you can to agree with them. My preferred method is to zoom as far out as I can, philosophically speaking, and try to see the connections that I couldn’t from my limited mental vantage point. Another is to see the world as unreal and detach yourself from it, allowing the world to play out as a drama which you passively observe.

You can see why few people achieve philosophical freedom. All of these practices require an admission that the self is unimportant, that your views on life, God, death, humans — everything — are quite frankly useless and you must do everything you can to reconnect to some experience that you cannot readily explain.

So although I may disagree with much of the dogma of this world, I understand it and I understand the necessary, the naturalness of it. It is an organic process to keep things more or less in peace, to keep people with dispositions against investigative thought in a state of relevance, and to allow the globe to keep turning.

bryce

Creating A Better World

The mind is the master of this realm.

It possesses the uncanny ability to affect and alter anything. Humans, however, are woefully unprepared to understand the importance of our glorious minds.

“Mind over matter”. “You are what you think”. These are two adages that have been pimped out for the better half of a century as shortcuts into understanding how the metaphysical can affect the physical, but I want to attack this from a slightly different angle.

What is reality?

If you follow this blog, you know I postulate that reality is best described a collection of best guesses and normality is best described as the average of those best guesses as agreed to by a specific population. I am not so much concerned with super strength or the ability to fly using the incredible powers of the mind, I am focused on creating a better people.

Take a moment to think about where we are in the universe, please. I know that this is an exercise that is unfathomable for most people, but it is the single greatest tool for breaking down an ignorant, self absorbed person. The Milky Way Galaxy is one of hundreds of billions of galaxies that make up our known universe. Our beautiful galactic home is comprised of hundreds of billions of stars and may contain just as many planets. Whether habitable or not is beyond the point…

Our universe is massive. No, I don’t think you understand, it is really, really, REALLY fucking big.

So, when you realize that our gorgeous, yet diminutive blue planet resides on a distal (ridiculously far) arm of an obscure galaxy just like billions of others, you start to see our place in this universe. Thus race, religion, politics, and whatever other manmade (translation: flawed) system of linearity are all small potatoes in the eyes of a knower.

Yet, they must exist for the sake of social organization…

Reality dictates our lives and reality is based on social guesses, trial and errors usually perpetuated by those in power. In countries like our own, which are relatively free and possess protocols which give the people some power over their government (be in political, religious, educational or whatever) “those in power” generally have to answer to their constituents. Thus, by the laws of deduction, we contain indescribable power over our little blue floating rock.

We need only to get our perception together, after all, perception is reality.

But what does that really mean? We live in a world that seems to be irreversibly divided, separated by the most illusory of factors. We see the color of our skin, the supremacy of our beliefs, the divinity of our holy books as so potent that we we alienate then persecute our brothers and sisters because of them. We have spent all of our recorded history clobbering each other on micro and macro levels and for what? Justice? Honor? Peace? Progress?

Bullshit.

For ego.

To this day we are still champions of our ego, yet most of us are so disturbingly entangled in it that we fail to realize our existential pompousness. I call this discrepancy inadvertence because the present moment, with all of its terabytes of information, tends to lead us into doomed places spiritually, mentally, and physically thus causing these irremediable differences. I know very few people that are purposely, knowingly wrong, but everyone on this earth is susceptible to these moments of inadvertent error.

Most of these errors come from subjectivity or interpretations of life’s information. As beings that are acted on by perceptible and imperceptible factors which tally into the millions, we each approach life a slightly different way. In small doses these divisions, these phase shifts, are actually beneficial. They promote diversity and the free flowing of knowledge towards the Great Destination that is enlightenment. However, when multiplied across a society, with its unwitting profane occupying the same influential levels as its cognoscenti, these differences become disastrous.

The method I propose for bridging the gap between peoples is called objective conscious modeling or the creation of decisional matrices. This model is very, very simple: it calls for a person to think outside of their normal tendencies. It simply says: how would ______ react to this? How would my ally react? My enemy? A stranger? An alien? A mind that can seamlessly transition from one opinion to another is the most powerful force known to humankind, that person possess cognitive dexterity.

Why is cognitive dexterity so potent?

Because this tool gives the thinker the power to influence through organic processes. Sure, it is facile to think that manipulation or other ill reputed methods of charlatanry are the most effective means of coercion, but those methods do not solve anything. Tricking a person only leads to anger, bitterness, and usually a latent call for revenge by succeeding generations. For millennia man has been trying to wrest control of this realm from his brother via subversive tactics, an assassination here, a coup there. The cycle never seems to stop.

Why is it that we cannot end racism, here and now? Why can’t we solve global hunger? Some people may give you some circuitous answer which translates into impotence, but I can give you a very pointed answer right here: we do not trust one another, nor do we trust ourselves in moments of uncertainty or duress. We do not strive for cognitive dexterity because we are too busy stoking the flames of our ego. We don’t believe in the viability of alternatives, we are actively fighting against belief systems which detract from our own. The most insidious is again most of us are not even aware that other ways of doing things are possible, ignorance becomes the vehicle of decision.

To make matters worse, human beings are not really honest creatures although we are not incorrigibly dishonest either. As Dan Arielly in his brilliant book, Predictably Irrational, points out, we are dishonest up unto some socially acceptable threshold. That dishonesty multiplied by a particular population makes communication, progress, and harmony impossible to achieve. We lie out of what we believe to be self preservation or for some “greater good”. These lies, ranging from white lies on down to straight manipulations, become infused into the minds of a people, driving more wedges between brother and sister.

You never know when one is being dishonest.

This translates into a world of superciliousness, divisiveness, and all manners of errant behavior. We will forge endless adversarial relationships without ever taken the time to understand that person or people. We will forge mutual relationships with people that had no business being around us.

We create the world we live in now.

All because of our minds. Our brilliant, but misunderstood mind. Under these circumstances the mind becomes clouded, we forget our place in the universe, effectively shackling our potential to create a better world.

bryce

A Good Man’s Heart

A man’s heart is nothing to play with,
Something to slay with seems to be the perception
Most women play with,
Broken hearts and broken dreams,
Reams streaked with streams,
Of dried tears shed from these queens,
Their kings abandoned their thrones,
At a moment’s notice so it seems.
He flirted with the sovereigns of other nations,
Such blatant disrespect pushed her patience,
Now her stations broadcast words cynical,
The cyclical, typical, physical emanation of critical
Postures towards love.
The bad man fucks over the good woman,
Now she’s a “bitch” at the flip of a switch
Confronting the good man….
But a man’s heart is nothing to play with.
A virtuous man’s heart is something you stay with,
Something you pray with, gray with,
Embark on a journey of faith with.
Just face it, if you traced it,
Back to the origins and spaces,
His graces & charms & arms are genuine reflections,
So don’t judge his collections on past connections,
Flawed predilections,
Truth is in his words, sincerity in his actions,
Destiny is in his eyes and with that satisfaction.

bryce

Success vs Failure: Your Mind

The world is finally catching on to the fact that the mind is the new frontier for virtually all commerce. As ephemeral things such as brand loyalty, employee-employer dynamics, gender roles, and race constructs morph and bend, more and more managers & strategists have had to apply traditonally unconventional knowledge to solve new problems in the 21st century. VB ICON likes to believe that it is on the forefront of one of these new paradigms, but the fact remains that a new zeitgeist has descended upon us…

The mind is the new mine.

As some of you who follow my blog, you may remember that I break up the human existential condition into 5 parts: Mind, Body, Heart, Soul, and Spirit. This is an offshoot from the conventional Christian breakdown which has only the Flesh (body), Soul, and Spirit. I add in the Heart and Mind because they have qualities which I believe can be observed and dealt with separate from the other components and this expanded construct has also led to several of the cathartic realizations I’ve had over the last year and a half. Although each component complements and affects the others, they maintain what I believe to be very distinct differences which, once understood, can lead a person to greater enlightenment and a bump down the path of self actualization.

What is the mind? I am not going to venture into an ontological debate about where the mind exists because quite frankly my answer involves multiple dimensions and a whole slew of esoteric, theoretical components that aren’t my main focus tonight. So I will simply say this about the mind: it is the conscious. It is the place where all neutral information goes to be considered and meditated on. The brain, the physical component of the mind, is simply a computer which receives and sends out signals, whereas the mind interprets those signals for the purpose of creating perspectives and opinions. Using inductive reasoning, one can see how the mind is affected by the other components of existence… The spirit, which some may call the conscience, offers positive uplifting information. The body simply seeks maximum, short term pleasure. The heart offers undifferentiated emotion, skewing the interpretation off things this way and that. The soul though, for me, is rather neutral; its manifestation will be comprised of how the individual mixes the other components.

The mind is then an extremely interesting component. As the wellspring of conscious thought, the mind is the seat of practical intelligence. The mind is exceptionally malleable, prone to changes as one ages or gains more information. The mind is where we create our biases and our subjectivities, it is literally the site of our views on life. In our conscious we look at ourselves and assess such things as self worth or self efficacy. Our mind is generally the vehicle through we engage in introspection or an evaluation of the effectiveness of all our components working together. Therefore the mind is an extremely instrumental place. I mean it is the faculty through which we express our conditional free will; I say conditional because all of us are bound by something. Nevertheless, the mind is the progenitor of action and therefore something that we should all vigorously strive to understand.

As aforementioned, our mind is defined by an intricate latticework of predispositions and biases. These arise from experience, childhood development, parental relations, and natural personality propensities. However, most of us are unaware and will vehemently deny that we have success crippling biases. Why? Because many of these biases lurk deep within our subconscious and are very comfortable places where we tend to hide our insecurities or general ignorance. Thus the mind becomes bogged down by useless information that only serves to hinder us and never actually bring anyone forward. This is why so many women will make the conscious decision to stay with an abusive man or why a person who hates their job will be paralyzed with fear to pursue alternative careers. These same deeply embedded neuroses lead people to constantly blame others for their shortcomings or only accept limited responsibility. Under these hindered mental conditions you find those who complain, those who judge, those who lash out in insecurity, and a myriad of other observable symptoms.

Sound like anyone you know? Perhaps maybe yourself?

Those who are not currently doing what they’d like to be doing or passionately pursuing some goal are living in failure. This does not mean that they are failure, but instead are living in a state of failure. These people have allowed their circumstances to define them and have acquiesced to the torrential current of life and simply quit. They had kids, got married, got fired, had too many bills and just began surviving. They really stopped believing in the dream. I know you’ve heard shit like this before, but really its true. Those who achieve, those who truly accomplish in life are those who refuse to bow down to the relentless pressure of life; they instead fight back with a pressure that overpowers life’s obstacles. They are objective about their struggles, not blaming others or blaming the economy, but instead shouldering the blame then coming up with a practical solution. They sacrifice every goddamn drop of energy they have. Why? Why are these people so resilient? Because they believe in whatever it is they are trying to achieve.

Here’s how it all works. The mind is a remote control and the game is being alive. We are all nothing more than self fulfilling prophecies with chance, luck, some Providence and occasional misfortune peppered in. When the mind believes in a goal, obstacles become minor inconveniences, its simply shifts gears and maneuvers around them. Thus those who achieve seem to have some upper edge, some superior intellect or unfair assistance helping them, when in fact they are simply those that align with a goal. Now here’s the kicker, we are all believing in something, even those not achieving their aspirations. Most of us have programmed our minds to accept life as subpar, we think God is punishing us, or Jesus wants us to learn a lesson. We think that maybe it wasn’t our “destiny” or God’s will for us to be the lawyer, doctor, or CEO we once envisioned. That is all nonsense. Utter nonsense.

Your mind will act on the physical because your mind controls your actions. Your actions control your opportunities because the harder you work the more fertility for opportunity you generate. Mate that with wisdom, prayer, meditation, and an acute eye for analysis and you suddenly have people who are “successful”. They aren’t special or more talented; by thinking and acting they allowed their prophecies to be self fulfilled.

This is the most important lesson as we look towards a shaky future. Geopolitics are uneasy and the world is poised to go through a very uncomfortable transition, it is imperative that those who are ripe begin to get their minds right for success. This is not New Age thought, most of these principles can be found in virtually every culture, Judeo-Christian, Islamic, Asiatic, and Sub-Asiatic all have versions of this simple core principle. YOU ARE WHAT YOU THINK.

If you think you are shit, you will commit actions which prove you are shit. If you think you are a 24 year old CEO, you will act in ways that prove and eventually realize you are a 24 year old CEO. The physical realm is an eventuality of all the intangible realms and right now the mental is one primed for investment.

bryce

Men and Love

Some of those who have been reading my blog may wonder why I write so much on love. I cannot provide a succinct answer to that, however, what I can provide is a framework that is being fleshed out by my overactive brain: Love is one of the universal expressions that all people can interface with. It is not a language per se as many different people speak different languages and dialects of love. However, this rapturing emotion is a focal point in human evolution. Love of course is not limited to just intimate love, there are many variations of it such as companionate and familial. Though the intentions and ultimately actions each of these emanations differ, they are all conceived from the same basic wellspring. Furthermore, love is also fundamentally human. It is highly illogical by many standards, yet exceedingly logical in the heart of the person. Thus as our understanding of love evolves, we as an advanced sentient species will evolve as well.

The last few poems I published to this blog deal with the emanation I cherish the most, that of course being intimate love. Intimate love is similar to a cultural background, religious choice or life philosophy in that it interferes with virtually every part of an individual’s condition. Intimate love will affect everything from one’s professional life, their hobbies, views on people, views on God and so forth. Negative experiences with intimate love often times lead people to adopt exceptionally pessimistic outlooks on life, especially involving human interactions, even if those interactions have nothing to do with love. Intimate love is crucial in the development of both sexes; an overwhelming amount of psychology and sociology deals with the benefits and adverse affects of intimate love: the psychology of marriage, gender dynamics, differing outlooks from region to region and so forth.

Thus for millennia, a prime focus of many great minds and prolific authors dealt with the machinations of man’s quest for intimate harmony. Intimate love is a powerful energy, both destructive and vitalizing depending on how it is harnessed, transferred, and ultimate transmuted from the realm of the intangible to the realm of the tangible.

As a man, I am a schizophrenic. One side of me believes wholeheartedly in chivalry and honor, while the other is a hedonistic pleasure monster that merely seeks temporary, physical fulfillment; the latter is (depending on your philosophical/religious background) either a remnant of the sinful self or a hailing back to the our primitive evolutionary heritage dominated by natural instincts. With the young woman I am currently dealing with, I want nothing more than to be her Prince Charming. The words I choose to communicate, the sentiments I attempt to get across are as authentic as they are acquired, but also in me are the classic signs of male virility, the urges, the desires, the gripping need for physical release.

How in the hell does this last paragraph apply to love and what the f*ck is my point you ask ?

Both genders wage several internal wars against their past, their current, and their perception of the future. Each of those time frames come with certain artillery for and against the quarry of their battle. In terms of love the war of the past looks a little like this: A young man who comes from a single parent home and has never seen a stable relationship struggles with finding the purpose in trusting his girlfriend. All he saw from his mother and her old boyfriends were lies, backstabbing, cheating and inequality. Furthermore, his first love his senior year of high school, cheated on him over their Spring Break. The war of the current: He finds himself wondering why he needs love in the first place. Though his current girlfriend has provided him the bulk of what he’s looking for, there still exists inside of him the need to explore the world at large, why confine himself to this woman, who may not be “the one”? If there even exists such a thing. The war of the future: If he does choose unwisely then what ramifications does that have on his future? What if this woman does cheat? What if she isn’t his soul mate? What if he decides to walk away only to find out that she was the one?

Embedded within all three of these wars is the quintessential male struggle: providing love and support constrained by monogamy, a binding, symbolically lifetime choice or simply choosing to keep intimacy as far away from his Condition as possible. I cannot say that either is “right” or “wrong”, because each man will have to choose for himself, however, it is imperative that every man clearly state his intentions outright, to avoid any misunderstanding.

Men have for centuries been baffled as to what they should be. Should a man be a warrior? Should he be a poet? A peacekeeper? As the generations unfolded it became clear that a man should be all of the above. A protector or his flock, a masterful wordsmith in the art of diplomacy, and a man that promotes the principles of peace. The problem is a little hard for me to capture in words but I will try my hardest. Any time mankind gets to choose arbitrary amounts of compounds to make up a whole, different groups will emphasize different compounds. So, one group says that a man is 65% warrior, 10% poet, 25% peacekeeper, while another says no man is 33.333% of each. When you zoom in on how that applies to love, one can begin to see the unfathomable complexity that is human interaction. I’m focusing on men because I myself am one, but every person on this earth is fighting so many different things internally and externally, visible and invisible that it seems implausible for anyone to be sane enough to actually attain anything.

Therein lies the beauty of human existence, because that statement is absolutely true. We all hang in the balance between sanity and insanity, simply because this life has far too much data for us to actually comprehend.

So then, what should a man focus on? Faith. It pains me to come up with a seemingly cop out answer like that, but I’m going to show you why this is the answer. According to the Bible “faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen”. What are the unseen things hoped for, specifically regarding love? Fulfillment, “happiness”, satisfaction, passion. Faith creates an environment in which every battle within you must acquiesce to a single unified goal. Faith also causes the various components that comprise you to align with that same goal. Faith organizes who a man is, causing him to mold into the authentic individual he is supposed to be. Through prayer, meditation, and the aggregation of wisdom a man widens his stance thus stabilizing him in preparation for love. He will understand who he must be to a woman, to his friends, competitors, etc. The intimate love will then sequester into his condition, priming him for the perfect fit for his mate.

Everybody talks about faith, but how does one actually get it? 1) God has already placed a measure of faith in everyone, simply ask Him to activate and expand it. 2) Diminish the ego. Through deep meditation and introspection, discover what parts of you are toxic and work to shrink their hold over your life 3) Pray for wisdom 4) Speak your goals (not just regarding love) daily. Literally say them. Define the man you want to be and recite it daily.

These are preliminary things a man can do in order to love healthily. They will reduce the effects of the internal wars, while opening him up to a world of enlightenment.

bryce