Soundbyte Psychology

What we are best at we criticize ourselves the most on, whether out loud or in secret. This is a natural effect. We know the most about what we are great at. We have images, heroes and idols that we consider great. We are not them. The very knowledge that adds to our greatness provides us with equal knowledge of what all WE ARE NOT. Yet, others will tell us. It is a fact that they do not know any better, or they would know what you ARE NOT. They are not wrong, however. Neither are you. Neither are you right. You are great, but you are not everything. You never will be.

‘If you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all.’ Or so goes the saying. This is especially true in corporate franchises, which create clones of stores for their customers. A new opening is just more of the same, except that it has now taken that space in existence and filled it with something that is not new at all. This is how the world becomes smaller, when the finite space of the world is filled, more and more, with ‘just more of the same’. This danger comes at a cost of losing the world itself, until only uniformity with less variety remains. Shop independent.

You’re in a restaurant. Why are you there? You’re a waiter/waitress, a really good one. Your pay amounts to very little. You survive off tips. Because your tips are your life, you have become better and better at waiting. Then, just today, the word comes from management that your restaurant is switching to tip-share. That means all customer tips go into a pool, then it is divided up evenly at the end of the shift. Do you still perform as well, even if any increase in tips will go, primarily, to other people? You don’t, do you? If you were a customer, would you then prefer to visit a restaurant with a tip-share system, or one where your money went to award or punish the person who waited on you specifically? It’s an important question, as communism is tip-share, whereas fascism would have management receiving most of the cut and choose who gets paid and how much. Capitalism, caught right in between these two, means the waiters and customers getting more of what they deserve.

I use passwords of about fifty characters. I’m not suggesting that others do the same, but there are some simple guidelines that many major tech firms have suggested. Here are the ones I’ve compiled:

* Make your password at least ten-characters long.
* Use a combination of upper-case and lower-case letters.
* Include numbers and special characters (such as a $ or !).
* Do not include words in the dictionary.
* Do not write it down on paper or a post-it.
* Above all, make it something you will remember but that others wouldn’t guess.

If a password ever needs to be shared with someone else, send the login-name using the phone or an instant messenger, then send the password thru a completely different service. Once the person no longer needs access, immediately change the password.

An object has form within the space around it. The space around and within it is the object’s negative space. Euclid and Archimedes, two of antiquities greatest mathematicians, understood this concept. So, too, did the philosophical sages of India and China. The eye is drawn to the space an object takes up, but the negative space surrounding an object is as important when it comes time to understand it. It is an aesthetic and logical imperative. Without the empty space at the center of a wheel, it cannot connect with an axle in order to fulfill its function. Without the arrow in the FedEx symbol, the subconscious draw to “go with it” is not transmitted. The function of emptiness is connected with the function of the material. To study one without the other is to miss the whole.

The potential–the target–is Infinity. We measure towards this target to the very limits of our precision. We cannot attain the Infinite in life, only increase the area of Infinity that we have measured and understood. The detractor–the doubter–will claim then that this endless pursuit is without meaning if no absolute can be taken as treasure for such efforts. Those who pursue this potential, however, and taste even one measure, are oft found to claim that nothing but this effort has meaning.