The Twins

How curious these two;
Similar in so many ways,
Yet different as nights are from days.
But they were bonded.

Sister and brother; fraternal by all means —
Four years separated them, but the twinship lived on.
The kindship lived on,
The friendship lived on

Openness, trust, transparency, and loyalty.
Ride or die shit a blood pact like two convicts,
Trapped in a box but trusted to survive,
The love of the other kept the other so alive.

When he met success he promised she would thrive
Even if he had to sacrifice a chapter of his life
That is promise that he carried deep inside
And knew the type of power he could tap just through this pride.

Connected, through blood and air
They recognized each other.
Needs and wants etched as clearly as digital fonts
They protected one another.

The Mutable Reality

My current pursuits, both theoretically and experimentally, involve untangling the enigma that is ‘reality’. I am a firm believer in the primacy of the social environment as the actuator of thoughts, therefore, I have come to grips that much of my obsession over what is and what isn’t stems from my conservative Christian background. My parents were never the Bible thumping, closed-minded sort, however, I was socialized into believing a very rigid framework of physical life; although our explicit belief in the supernatural added a metaphysical dynamism that is still extant today.

When asking, “what is reality?”, it captures perfectly the essence of cognitive dissonance. Dissonance is best described as ‘friction’ that arises when two thoughts are in opposition to one another. For instance, many married couples experience extreme dissonance when the wishes of their mother or father go against the wishes of their spouse. To hold these oppositional cognitions in the mind causes discomfort which naturally leads a person to think or do something in response as a means to reduce this discomfort. Such actions may be to shut down completely, become emotional or even detached, and eventually try their hardest to avoid the topic altogether.

To ponder reality is to test the precipices of sanity. The principles of relativity tell us that spacetime is the substrate in which we all sit within depressions caused by the massive objects around us such as the earth, sun, moon and so forth. This substrate, the fabric of reality, seems so diaphonous, so thin, yet, it is obstreperous to the point of statistical impossibility. On a mental level, to consider what consists of reality is to contemplate factors that have affected us at every point and these constant stimuli are the hardest to consciously detect; they’ve been hardwired into us as “real”. On a physical level, intense scrutiny of this fabric at microscopic levels yields a world of ‘quantum foam’ or intractable probability. Its almost as if the fabric itself works to keep us from truly understanding it.

I personally believe that much of the problems trying to find truth is that so many of us hold on to the idea that there is an interfaceable, absolute truth somewhere deep beneath the folds of existence. While this may or may not be true, another question comes to the surface. If there is some all-pervasive truth, how would we be able to find it in the first place? We interface life through our conscious projection of ourselves. This conscious awareness is purely abstract, taking the abstractions of life and processing them into some cogent application. This implies a very subtle understanding of limit, a true paradox that seems to be a cardinal underpinning of reality. Although abstractions are infinitely malleable, they are usually limited by the faculty perceiving them. In layman’s terms, although the mind my be able to conceive and create an incalculable degree of input information, the output information is still limited to that mind’s specifications.

Thus, reality does become the progeny of the mind; perception does indeed become reality from this vantage point. However, given that cognition is merely the computation of computations, an infinitely recurring sequence of recursions, one can say that perception is not reality either. If a mind is capable of infinite creation then its finite emanation does not constitute the whole of its abilities. Your perception is the finite expression of what you believe is, but that is not the end all for a faculty that possesses outsized ability.

Nothing must be, yet everything is.

What can be said, then? George Orwell introduced a concept in his famous book 1984 that revolutionized the way that many think. It is a concept I have discussed on this blog, doublethink. Doublethink is the ability to hold two opposing concepts in one’s mind and believe them both. For those acute readers, you should be thinking back on the cognitive dissonance described earlier in this article. Cognitive dissonance is the discomfort and most people do things to resolve this discomfort. I, as well as former theoretical physicist, David Bohm, and current dean of Rotman Business School at University of Toronto, Roger Martin, believe that the answer to the struggles between cognitive finitude and infinitude lie in one’s ability to thrive in that dissonance. That is, you take no sides, you favor no opinions, and you consider as much of the information available with equal curiousity.

Nothing must be, implies that in and of themselves, nothing on this earth must be anything. Nature and the cosmos thrived for billions of years before us and will thrive for billions more years after. The only intrinsic concept in the entire universe of existence is the fabric itself that gives rise to all phenomena; beyond that, everything is a derivation, an arbitrary meaning, created by the conscious being observing it. Yet everything is, implies that as conscious beings, we will create these meanings and this process of understanding is critical to the fitness of our species.

However, the truly perceptive minds will not try to make an absolute meaning; they are aware of the universal paradox besetting their mind. The Lemniscate Theory, a philosophical axiom, states that we are infinite beings living within the confines of the finite. We exist asymptotically to life, death, and certain physical constants (which may or may not change as we evolve). Thus, one must accept and embrace the tendency to become rigid, along with the necessity to be flexible. One must be willing to adopt the principles of doublethink, to accept and reject, to no accept and not reject, any and everything, including one’s own experience and concept of self. The reason that most of us have a hard time understanding the subtleties of reality is because we have grown fond of our own minds, we’ve fallen in love with our own experiential data, disregarding the phenomena of others.

There are epistemological and ontological questions abounding endlessly, of course; however, these imply a sense of absolution, something that may or may not actually be interfaceable with our current conscious set up. This sets up a perfect explanation for our species; a sort of fractal explosion of expression… As this system proliferates, we exist as discrete identities sharing relevancies on various levels which could, in theory, be mapped out and analyzed. But even that analysis would be subject to analysis and so on, ad infinitum.

To contemplate the conception of reality is a beautiful process of growth. A common misnomer is that dialogue directly means communication between two people. Actually, the root words are, dia, which is “through”, and logos, the word. In other words, dialogue is discovering a meaning through the words. A dialogue can occur within one’s self or within a larger group. Many of these ideas were made clear to me through David Bohm’s, On Dialogue, however, I had begun developing a proto-understanding throughout the last few years.

Reality is about seeing one’s self in all dynamics and contexts; an individual and a collective; subjective and objective; linear and nonlinear. By contemplating these oppositional pairs as dyads, one begins to see just how reality is constructed; more pointedly, one begins to see why the world is the way that it is.

Pondering reality brings one to the edge of current conscious understanding and it chomps at the bit for whatever is next, if there is. An articulated journey into one’s construction of reality begins to fashion together a coherent framework, even if one is aware that the way they think effects it. Getting an accurate read on reality is not unlike Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, where one can only get a partial measurement of a quantum system. If you accurately measure position, you cannot accurately measure velocity and vice versa. One cannot accurately ponder reality without affecting one or more variables; this may be frustrating to some, but my admonition is to consider why that is frustrating. By questioning the processes by which you react and respond to this expression of life, you come to understand this whole thing just a little bit better.

Life, reality, is an infinitely variating construct. Not unlike the descriptions of God within religious groups, life is both infinitely complex and infinitely simple. Thus, it can and will mutate. Its derivations can be mutated; they should be mutated. People should play with the expression of life as whimsically as sport or art; its meant to be stretched and contracted, probed and scrutinized. However, one should not consider it abstract or absolute; it is a fractal, a fractional dimension, which perfectly occupies both. It becomes self-evident then collapses into pure theory only to reemerge at some other point as concrete again.

Let your reality be free.

bryce

Stratagems

The best laid plans are undoubtedly dubious,
Far from indubitable they are doubly dangerous when digging for diadems.

Men and their crowns;
Man and his delusion,
To deny his own fallibility as he increases inclusion,
In his triadic collusion of mind, body spirit,
He sediments his way and refuses to hear it.

But what is truth?
Oh the value of epistemics,
The endemic inclement inquiries of what is and isn’t,
Knowledge at least.

Let our eyes feast on the infinite hubris,
The interpretation, the variability, the insubordination,
The degradation of information as exchanged denomination,
The nascent, new places that man’s mind takes his mental spaces.

Let us consider the stratagems.

Patterns of Humanity

Time and The Fallacy of Human Experience

One of my many problems is that I have no deep inclinations towards this subject or that. I recently took one of those “brain tests” to see which hemisphere of my brain was dominant and the result was that I rely on both equally. Now, there is no scientific data backing the statements that “left-brained” people are more creative whereas “right-brained” people are more logical, however, there is a tendency in society for people to line up along these lines. We must always remember that science is evolving and changing, therefore, we may very well see these delineations come to mean something someday.

I digress.

My mind places no supreme importance or supreme interest on the rigidity of science or the fluidity of creativity, I rest more or less at some ambivalent equilibrium, taking deep gulps of both worlds as I see fit. Thus, I possess superficial knowledge in a slew of areas and rarely venture to try to understand in depth anything in particular.

With this reality, I tend to pull on all worlds when I make statements about the world around me. I will tug on the principles of time dilation and spacetime paradoxes as well as spiritual and metaphysical factors when describing such things as the human condition. I see these two worlds as one and the same, neither possessing any more credibility than the other. Any discrepancies we may believe to be nascent are nothing more than the current limits of understanding; we will some day find science and spirituality inexorably linked de profundis by some advanced discovery.

1984 hosted one of the greatest drafts in professional sports history. Hakeem Olajuwon, Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley, and John Stockton, all picked within the first 16 choices, would all go on to become Hall of Famers. As we look back in retrospect, things seemed to be so obvious. Olajuwon had owned at the University of Houston; Jordan was the Naismith Player of the Year; Barkley had been dominant at Auburn; Stockton was one of the most heralded players at Gonzaga. Yet, Sam Bowie was chosen over Jordan, Barkley, and Stockton. Bowie would go on to be regarded as one of the biggest draft busts in history.

Kobe Bryant, perennial All-Star and 5 time NBA champion, was picked 13th in 1996.

What am I driving at? Bear with me.

Humans, in my humble opinion, are mostly speculative creatures. Even that statement, which is disgustingly speculative, is speculative. Speculation serves many purposes in the various contrived worlds of human interaction; in financial world it allows for arbitrage and liquidity, in philosophy it allows for freer thought and intense consideration. But speculation is an imprecise practice and even when someone considers themselves truly informed, the principles of reality make your observations nothing more than an educated guess.

As we interact with one another, we seek out patterns and parallels, then categorize these patterns per the frameworks of our cognition. Thus, in the world of professional sports, speculative observation looks for patterns in college (or international) players that mimic the successes of those that preceded them. When a pro scout comes to an NCAA game, he is looking for patterns of movement, demeanor, and professionalism thatlook like the specifications created by the culture of the NBA. These, however, are not 100% predictive, as any scout will tell you, however, they are used as if they were.

When dealing with one another, we must create these rules and standards of engagement or else we are only nominally communicating with one another. The human mind is set up to understand things often through associative thinking or comparing an unknown situation or set of variables to something known. Thus, as free as we would all love to be, a standardized model is the natural eventuality of consistent observation; we look for things that look similar to our model. Ergo, a hedge fund manager looks for arbitrage opportunities that look like his last great trade and the NBA scout looks for footwork similar to his last successful recruit.

To see this as reality is fallacy. It is nothing more than a contrived model that is comfortable to one person or another.

What happens when that pattern becomes increasingly agreed upon by a group? That fallacy becomes more and more tenuous and its instability increases. Its failures are more easily exploited because nothing is ever meant to be a strict, hard reality, but temporal suggestions. The world is a wildly evolving place, things happening organically and inorganically, patterns emerging then wickedly diverging, it renders normalization useless.

But, as aforementioned, creating normalized models is a natural tendency of conscious thought; its how we best work our way through life.

This paradox sets up, when approaching from another angle, the state of things in the world. It is why we have such rampant confusion, such bickering and infighting about this or that, because the models we come to agree with are generally ours and no one else’s. They may have many, many similarities, but inevitably two people will run across pervasive differences in their understanding. This problem increases exponentially with three people and becomes a veritable madhouse when looking at large groups, countries, or the global population en masse.

To look at patterns you feel the most comfortable with then cast interpolations is a functional way of thinking, but, you will find yourself at odds with those around you. Further problems arise when you consider the tendency to interpolate from within a particular paradigm. To cast “objective” opinions from within the belly of subjectivity is ludicrous; you are only miring yourself further within interpretation.

The fallacy of human experience is such a complex topic because the fallacy itself is comprised of dozens, maybe even hundreds, of smaller more proximal fallacies. Even at this very moment, you are either agreeing with or rejecting this post using a host of thoughts based upon your understanding and preferred patterns. My very construction of this post is based upon my understanding of patterns….

Begging the question, is there anything ever really known or are we merely speculative creatures, bound to conjecture, opinion, and interpolation?

bryce

Alien

Stark juxtaposition, wondrous tableau,
The activation of his mind’s eye turns his life into a show,
He multilaterally exists inside and out,
As he is aware that he is a stranger in his own land.

What creature is a man that becomes aware of his Self?
He who climbs the mountains of sentience,
He who ascends to the summit of existence,
Leaving behind all hopes of illusory normalcy.

Perspicuity, high functioning acuity,
Assuredly has created for his mind fluidity,
Evulsed from the realms of illusions,
His conscious goes into collusion

A fusion with his spirit, he mimics deliquesence,
The essence of his presence reveals extant elegance,
He no longer blends in to picture, his quiddity far too puissant,
His very steps on this earth bring him to the step of the Elysian.

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

People are Stupid

I hope the immature title caught your attention

I have been in the midst of a 30 month long state of transition, arguably another year longer, but I like to think of its genesis as the summer of 2010. This was a time that everything I knew, everything I had held on to, was cast into the wind and has ultimately led me to who I am today.

The world is an illusion and I do not mean that in a conspiratorial way, but as a statement of fact. Illusions are fake things appearing real, or more appropriately, something appearing different than its true form. There is an old adage which I frequently cite which states simply, “That which never changes is real, that which changes is unreal”. This is a weird, spiritual way of stating an overlooked reality of humanity, that very little of what we sense or perceive is real.

Have you noticed that you, in a state of disarray, can approach 5 people with your problem and receive 5 different answers? Or you can be certain of something one day only to have the whole body of that concept challenged the next? Information is one of the most illusory constructs in this world based on the nature of what information is: information is a description of the world, seen and unseen around us. If the predominance of things around us are in fact illusions, constantly changing shadows of potentially real concepts, then information becomes a virtually useless thing.

Information frequently follows the zeitgeist of its time, it is loosely constructed around the prevailing opinions, concepts, and social normalcies of the era during which the conscious is interpreting it. We have shifted into a dispensation, a time frame, during which too many prevailing theories are allowed to compete for the same brain space. Humans in the last 15 years have taken immense steps in connecting the world, a world that used to be defined by strict cultural paradigms. The result is a social topography that is now utterly confused as more and more people mix and mesh information as they see fit, often times taking vital principles and axioms out of context, and proclaiming them to other confused individuals.

We see this everyday. Every time one logs on the social network of their choice this reality confronts them. It manifests itself in a variety of ways, but most often as a general irritation when you see differing perspectives. You find yourself asking: “how the fuck did you come to that conclusion?” or “Dude, just shut up.” To make things that much more difficult, you then have to see yourself inside this cycle of stupidity, realize that you are probably contributing massive amounts of misinformation or just slightly incorrect interpretations to the fold. Information is passed under many different aegises, religious information always seems to command the most pretentious sort of authoritative amnesty, but we will derive our belief systems then promulgate accordingly.

So what then, Bryce? Are we a pointless species, trading useless cognitive commodities because there is nothing else to do? Yes and no. Yes in the sense that there really is nothing else we can do, humans are social creatures and we must communicate and what we communicate IS information. But because I am the type of person I am, I am trying to discern what is from what isn’t. The “what is”: is information that can profit without disillusioning the individual. The “what isn’t” is of course the opposite.

The questions I find myself asking then, whose opinions are actually valid? Whose thoughts are those of actual profitable and whose are interminable dross? Whose mind actually resembles the only Truth the only Real in the universe, The Almighty God (regardless of your religious proclivity)? Whose semi-truths bring harmony to the earth and whose strife?

Let me provide a few more examples of why I am going down this tract as I bring this post to a close. Last week I saw a young woman put on Twitter “never apologize for who you are, be true to yourself no matter what”, to which I replied “what if I’m a racist ax murderer hellbent on ethnic cleansing?” (or something to that effect). This is another one of those illusory, faux wisdoms attempting to appear real and it is a COMMON adage propagated by those in my age bracket. Another example, well a class of examples, is illustrated by the fact that most conventional wisdom is countered by other conventional wisdom that is DIAMETRICALLY opposed to it. Most accepted human wisdom is utterly hypocritical to some other parcel of insight. Example: “good things come to those who wait”, whereas in the world of business “good things come to those who aggressively work”.

There are infinite examples of these binary, ternary, and quatenary informational clusters, which seem to exist in a constant state of flux. Instead of trying to conceive a informational stream with one of these wise adages at a time, man should always be in the practice of evaluating instances with an informational cluster, comprised of multiple interpretations and perspectives. As our globe continues to shrink and we continue to trade cultural capital and more distinct familial and experiential capital, perhaps this best vehicle of informational transit is through these clusters.

I want to conclude by bringing this back to my opening paragraph in which I stated that I am still steeped in a state of transition. I used to be a person with absolutely rock-solid perspectives and beliefs. i was determined that every single modicum of information I had at my cognitive disposal was as close to the truth as a human mind could be, because I was of course familiar with my deductive and inductive faculties which derived these existential, spiritual, mental, and romantic answers. I think that also is a serious, serious disability in humans…. It isn’t so much the information we believe to be true, but the processes we employ to come to our conclusions. Mental processes are so rife with invalid biases that one can only expect to come to some outlandish conclusion, but to the chagrin to the state of progress around them.

Although I am sure of everything, I am also unsure of everything and this is the genesis of all my thought processes. I’ve learned, the hard way might I add, that my judgments mean nothing, my positive, rational qualities mean little, and my willingness to listen to others are undermined, if I don’t get a handle on how I receive and process information. I no longer wish to be a hypocrite, a flip-flopper of cerebral content merely patching serious social wounds with words and beliefs that sound good at the moment or worked one time because I heard someone else say it. I no longer wish to be blinded behind the veils of abject illusion, constantly believing things that my limited sensory organs and abundantly imaginative cognitive faculties push out.

I have long relished my self appointed position of agent provocateur in terms of human interaction. I challenge everything, tonight is no different. I challenge each and every one of you to look at your decisional matrices, the premises on which you make choices, and determine if you are contributing to the social soup of confusion or actually providing any life savers to bring us into a new age of understanding. If information is to have any real value again, we must be willing to pierce the veil, my friends, pierce the veil of illusion and discuss ways to organize the masses annals of knowledge into practical, timeless applications of success.

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