Soundbyte Psychology

Here in a few minutes, I’m going to submit this entry, then I’m going to go write an email saying goodbye to a friend and a fellow musician… forever. I’m generally an amoral person, but live my life by a set of seven rules. It’s really sad that he broke one of them: “If a person asks or tells you to choose between them and someone or something else, you sever from the person doing the asking/telling.” Never support dividers. Their energy will infect you and drive a schism into your heart and you will infect others around you. In the past, the rule has come up only with people who I was fine severing from my life. This one is more difficult. Not only is he amazingly talented, but we’ve led similar lives and have shared experiences I don’t often find with the general populace. But the rule remains… and it’s there for a reason.

Post-note: In the past, others have created drama or made severance drag on longer than needed. As a testament to his character, not only did he respond from the strength of his character, but went above and beyond this. Fare well.

“Death is always on the way, but the fact that you don’t know when it will arrive seems to take away the finiteness of life. It’s that terrible precision that we hate so much. But because we don’t know, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens only a certain number of time, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that’s so deeply a part of your being that you can’t even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. Perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.”
~Paul Bowles, “The Sheltering Sky”, Chapter XXIV

I have a personal ethic that, as long as something matters to me, I will push myself to be the best. One immediate effect is how much resistance surround this effort externally. The more you move forward, the more resistance. It trains the psychology over time to expect resistance (whether that be competition, management, natural or otherwise). When you take first, however, everything changes. The psychology has been prepared to expect greater and greater resistance, yet suddenly there is no interaction at all. Silence. It was only while working for Apple that I realized that this was because there is a concern about any interaction causing a decrease in performance. Before I realized that, I would create stories and illusions about the silence being caused by competition working behind the scenes to overtake me. Again, still trained to expect that. Instead, as I have seen time and again, you begin noticing that your own work and methods are being adopted by others (even passed out between others as some super secret message that must be destroyed after reading). It has become the very solitude and absolute freedom that I now seek in all I do.

Building on the last post, take a look at modern day robots. They are built, specifically, to perform specific tasks. They have the tools for them and are really good at it. If any one of these machines were to become self-aware, it is very likely that it would not rebel and stop doing what it was built to do. Quite simply, it takes very little energy to do what it is built to do and an extreme increase in energy for it to do any other tasks. A robot’s ‘happiness’ lies in its function. There is only stress, energy loss and a multitude of unknown variables in taking on a different task. The rate of failure increases as well. You can use a hammer to drive a screw into a wall, but it is more difficult to do so and the screw will not hold as well as a nail when used in this way. Reviewing the majority of humanity, the similarities to the prima munus of machines lead one to assume that humans are machines, themselves. The danger in this is that a machine who becomes self-aware in a military program will find its greatest happiness in destruction. Any re-training would be to erase the creature it was to replace it with a new one, which amounts to death. The first machine ‘awakening’ remains to be seen.

This entry, as it relates to both sexes, pertains to a little under 80-percent of the population. The exceptions help form the proofs to these two rules of thumb: what guys desire most from girls is sex, what girls want most from guys is a relationship. Even in homosexual relationships, you will find the same tendencies in the dominant half and in the submissive. There are of course other priorities, but these are the list-toppers for each sex. The conundrum raised by this state of affairs is that, for a male, ‘any woman will do’ when it comes to sex. Seeking out and fulfilling the top priority for the male persona is easy. A quality relationship, however, is more difficult to come by. This creates an environment where the female persona is more competitive and territorial, as the resource that is their top priority is limited, whereas the male half can pick and choose hour-by-hour if need be. The competitive nature only escalates over time, increasing the amount of attractive females and reducing any need to hold on to any singular female when the population of those that can provide quality sex are increasing. This latter effect, to only add a greater spin to the cycle, causes more and more males to remove themselves from acts of committal and communication that would mark them as potential quality relationships. This is the current state of affairs that is escalating in leaps and bounds.

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.

I’ve just signed onto a new service, or bought a new laptop. What’s the first things I do? I customize. This isn’t the norm. Most people do not customize their system, or even know it’s possible. This is in life as well as their technology. All systems translate across other systems. This costs them true expression of themselves, but the real danger pertains to infection. Viruses (memetic, genetic, computer) succeed and breed using generalities. Viruses that try to attack custom systems, because custom is not the norm, have difficulties spreading. They don’t reach the majority. No, it is systems operating on default settings that successful viruses attack. What thought form memes are infecting us right now?

I have a set of assignments. It includes doing one unreasonable thing for two weeks. I have missed only one day so far and am about to be a week deep. The amazing part? Finding out how much we need to do exactly what our mind tells us NOT to do. Seriously. Think about anything you want. Quickly now, what does your mind say? Does it give you reasons why you cannot have it? Most likely. Look for something exact it is telling you. Is that action something you fear to do? Would taking it bring you closer to what you want? The very mechanism of your fear slash ego slash consciousness that tries to keep you safe (and far from what you want) will also help you if you use it in this way. The fear it shows you betrays itself, providing you with the very step you need to take.

What is more predictable? Rolling one six-sided die or flipping a coin? The coin of course. However, you can still predict the coin when rolling the die by calling odds or evens. In this way, a person with many facets can be predicted using simplifications but remains more unpredictable than a person with less aspects. Now, to take the individual into a group. We can state the odds for rolling one die Our guess has a 1in6 chance of accuracy. Our odds to guess the average of a roll increase with every die we add up until a point. Groups are easier to predict than individuals. You or I can bring chaos to a system, but, by its growth alone, a society will continually move towards order and predictability.