At a crossroads

There’s nothing inherently wrong if I decide to consign myself to being a cog within the system, but I will inevitably force myself to live with the incessant thought that I am squandering my potential and renouncing my duty in the face of exigent crises.

I won’t be deluded any longer. They cannot hide the truth from me. I will not occupy my consciousness with vapidity. 

They want me to think everything’s okay, that I should just enjoy my life, carefree, to bask in the pleasures of modern society, for the price of my soul, for one-third of my life.

No, and no thank you—I won’t have it.

At this point, the thought of a meaningless, banal, and selfish life is more repulsive to me than death itself. 

I’m going to change the world, or die trying.

“Don’t take life too seriously”

This is a phrase that is incredibly easy to say for the privileged, the ignorant, and the oblivious, and simultaneously a phrase that is incredibly difficult to say for the victims of sexual assault, racial oppression, devastating wars and conflicts, cancers and other diseases, or any other form of abject and unjust suffering that could have likely been prevented if everyone took things a little more seriously.  

No—not every one of us has to necessarily directly do anything about it, as we all have our own roles to play within the societies we live in. But let it nonetheless imbue our consciousness with a certain kind of desperation, imparting upon us a reason for all that we do.

God’s will

What I never understood about the notion of God’s will or any one of the many permutations of it, e.g. God “speaking” to us, God “answering” our prayers, God’s “calling” for each of our lives, is that no one ever seems to provide a viable tool to realistically disentangle truth from the incomprehensibly convoluted web of circumstances within this world. The battle for truth, purpose, and the meaning of life is very far from being as clear-cut, black and white, and straightforward as some people make it out to be. 

While our lives are filled with blessings in disguise, with oppressive trials that turn out to be the source of our greatest lessons, they are simultaneously riddled with misfortune in the guise of blessings, with ostensible miracles and joyful prosperity that in actuality causes us to let our guard down, to relent in our vigilance and foster in us a deep sense of complacency or dissatisfaction, enabling our very own downfall. There are seemingly ruthless and heartless perpetrators that turn out to be victims of unimaginably dreadful circumstances, and purportedly benevolent and altruistic heroes that turn out to be parasites, exploiting the systems we operate under and undermining the fabric of humanity. 

And the most confounding notion of all is that the majority of events or individuals are arguably neither, occupying the uncomfortable nebulous lacunae not only between absolutes, but even between our specific categorizations within the spectrum. The reality is that all the things that exist or occur in our world possess a degree of nuance that we often cannot foresee.

Certainly, not everyone is going to interpret each message from God lucidly and unambiguously, that is, if he is even sending any message to begin with. Plenty of people in the past that claim to have communicated with God have been led astray, and others may have actually communicated with him and lived a life indeed according to his will. The question then inevitably becomes: how do we distinguish a delusion from God’s will? How do we know that these curious thoughts that seemingly wander into our consciousness—these purported answers to our prayers, these words that call and inspire us to do something—are willed by God, by Satan, or, better yet, by ourselves? Is there something inherent to God’s message to us that allows us to be certain it is indeed him? And if so, why is he only sending that message to certain people? And why do we think that the only way he communicates is by directly inserting himself into our consciousness? As I posited in my reflection on prayer requests, I refuse to believe that God is so naive and unjust to arbitrary pick and choose on a whim who he will and will not choose to “speak” with. 

“Don’t make it seem God has done something when, perhaps, he didn’t do anything at all.”

Thinking on the fly

I have a bad habit of replaying past interactions in my mind, whether they were casual conversations, high-pressure job interviews, or tense work proposals or presentations. It seems my mind is inherently desperate in some way to redeem myself, to undervalue my contribution towards a social interaction, to want to fill these lacunae with elusive thoughts that had entirely crossed my mind in the heat of the moment—a poignant question I could’ve asked, a specific and germane memory I could’ve shared, an intellectually stimulating idea I could’ve extrapolated on, or anything that would have likely contributed so much more to the conversation and my ability to get my point across. 

Is it my preference to thoroughly think ideas through before speaking, or is it merely self-doubt? Or is it solely a matter of practicing this form of multitasking between the flow of conversation and the flow of thought? My intuition tells me that it’s likely all the above.

The Future of Learning

Consider the benefits of a widespread adoption of AI-based learning and tutoring akin to Khan Academy’s approach:

• Can be used on demand at any time of the day and in any language.

• Can process large amounts of data, complex information, and calculations light years faster than any human.

• Carries around no emotional baggage that might affect consistency in teaching, is infinitely patient and eliminates virtually all feelings of contempt, shame, and judgment

• Far less likely to spread misinformation and imparting personal biases within the subject material

• Will likely be far cheaper than hiring traditional tutors

If we continue sucking the life, joy, and humanity out of the learning process by centering it around inane, rote memorization, by exalting the standardized test, by glorifying the prize of accreditation that is the college degree solely as a means of generating status and money,

If our present culture places all the emphasis on conformity and compliance, shaming everyone that either refuses or is unable to meet these arbitrary standards, fueling this worldwide epidemic of mental illness and suicide,

If we continue to foster our complacency towards this backwards, outdated, and blatantly counterproductive education system, 

What advantage do we have left versus a computer? What reason is left to persist our faith in human pedagogy? A motivated, compassionate, erudite, patient, and wise teacher can work wonders in transforming our next generation of citizens; it is a teacher that takes advantage of the positive human aspects of pedagogy through inspiration, passion, and connection—not all the malignant aspects of contempt, shame, and judgment that are characteristic of so many interpersonal interactions within the current status quo of the education system. The only problem is that there is a stark paucity of such teachers, and certainly no systems and no culture to foster them and harness their potential.

It’s about time we learn our lesson. Will we consign one of the cornerstones of human civilization to obsolescence and admit defeat to our very own creation, or will we finally decide to stop basking in our comfort and complacency, to finally challenge the status quo, to finally begin to genuinely ask ourselves the question: “What is school for?”

Yes, you can.

“Concentrate every minute like a Roman—like a man—on doing what’s in front of you with precise and genuine seriousness, tenderly, willingly, with justice. And on freeing yourself from all other distractions. Yes, you can—if you do everything as if it were the last thing you were doing in your life, and stop being aimless, stop letting your emotions override what your mind tells you, stop being hypocritical, self-centered, irritable. You see how few things you have to do to live a satisfying and reverent life? If you can manage this, that’s all even gods can ask of you.”

— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

Yes, I can.

To take things for granted

I find it particularly interesting that either we’re innately psychologically engineered to or that our culture inculcates a certain dissatisfaction of our lives, nearly always irrespective of the suffering in comparison to others. Isn’t it interesting that the vast majority of us living in our posh and insulated first world countries are equally or more dissatisfied than those living in less privileged societies across the world? 

It just requires one step back, a moment of quietism and perspective to see our lives merely as they are, to liberate ourselves from this oppressive milieu that pervades our consciousness as members of this society, to detach ourselves from the norms and conventional modes of thought that manufacture this insatiable desire that incessantly prods and pesters our subconscious for more or better. 

Yes—it inevitably creates progress. It inevitably moves our society forward at an exponential, unprecedented rate of growth. But we have to also acknowledge that for some things, enough is enough. Not everything in our lives needs progress, improvement, change, and forward motion (or an illusion of it). Certainly, there are things that do need to change, that do need to truly be better. But if we never truly ask ourselves what all this is even for, then how can we know if our efforts are worthwhile? Is this really the kind of world we want to live in? Is this really the culture we want? Are these really the stories we wish to tell ourselves, even if they’re not making us happy?

The Fear of Missing Out

The truth is that we all “miss out” equally. When we really think about it, when we consider the staggering scale and complexity associated with everything that we could ever do in our entire life, we actually accomplish very little in our lives. Irrespective of the degree of ambition or initiative we have to cross off every item on our bucket lists, we nonetheless exhaust an infinitesimally small fraction of this daunting realm of possibility. The fear of missing out makes no real distinction between variety of activity and uniqueness of life experience; it is predicated on a spurious assumption that having more types of activities is inherently good, as it purportedly allows for more variation in our actual unique experience of life itself. 

But what if our experience of life is as much about what we don’t experience versus what we do experience? If we begin with the premise that we are primarily defined by our experiences—the interconnected sum of all the moments in our lives, regardless if they were moments of happiness or sadness, of pride or shame, of momentous importance or stark inconsequentiality, of joy or oppression—and then interpose the desire to alter those experiences by way of external influence, we can very easily begin to elicit the inherent flaws ingrained within this short-sighted philosophy of life. The reality is that we are who we are only because of the incredibly specific set of circumstances that belong only to ourselves. 

Virtually every individual who did anything remotely important in this world only did what they did because of the very specific way by which they chose to go about their lives. If we truly believe in a “fear of missing out,” all the success stories we learn about are actually failure stories. Martin Luther King, Jr. would be a failure; why didn’t he feel obligated to travel the world, go to more festivities, or get involved in more hobbies, when he instead consigned himself to the strife associated with leading and advocating for the civil rights of his people? Steve Jobs would be a failure; ninety hours of work per week is certainly going to increase his chances of missing out on all the joy and entertainment he could have going out with his friends or family. 

It isn’t about a variety of activities. It isn’t about “missing out,” because we all “miss out” on the opportunity to live out someone else’s unique experience of life, however banal or sensational they seem on the surface. It’s about embracing the vastly different walks of life we each possess. It’s about recognizing that while we don’t necessarily have to be proud of everything we experience and don’t experience alike, it will nevertheless ultimately define who we are and what we achieve.

Yes, you should keep using “should.”

Over the years I’ve noticed a trending subset of progressivism that rallies against the word “should,” as it is a term often fraught with shame, self-doubt, self-hate, and an impertinent form of judgment, constituting a pernicious predisposition towards conformance to seemingly self-evident societal standards and norms. Anti-should proponents argue that we should ignore the toxic elements of conventional thought that is the source of all things we should do, and instead look within ourselves for answers regarding what is truly right for us. At its core, this notion is based on the premise that each individual has a unique identity that is completely disparate from external influence. It falls within the same train of thought that I found problematic with Martha Beck’s Finding Your Own North Star, where she attempts to adumbrate human identity with this fundamentally flawed bifurcation of the “essential” self and “social” self, the former being a mode of consciousness unadulterated by our socialization and our circumstances, factors that in turn ultimately define the latter as its counterpart.

The problem is that human psychology is incredibly complex and messy; it rarely, if ever, strictly confines itself to such clear-cut divisions. As humans, we exalt the notion of free will—we desperately want to believe that we’re in control, that we’re the ones in charge, that we will shape our destiny, that we do indeed understand these endlessly convoluted networks of cause and effect. We want to believe that there is some inexorable part of us, the intangible being that constitutes “you” or “me.” But the reality is that our socialization and our individual circumstances—factors that are virtually completely out of our control—define the vast majority of our identity; the sum of these external influences inevitably imbue themselves within each and every one of our actions, our words, and our thoughts. If we truly decide to use these terms to define ourselves, the “essential” and “social” are fundamentally inseparable, so much so that it becomes nearly impossible to distinguish between either. An individual denuded of socialization and external influence is not one that retains an essential self; not only would they have no social self, but they would have no self and no identity to begin with. 

The truth is that we cannot liberate ourselves from the psychological grasp of “should.” It is as human of a tendency as our desire for love or for war, for friendship or for rivalry, for truth or for purpose. It is an integral component within our tendency to conform; as Seth Godin would say, “People like us do things like this.” What all this is, is a constant battle of acculturation, of which “should” gains the most prominence in our cultures. The anti-should proponents are merely arguing for a different should by saying we shouldn’t use should in the traditional sense of using the word. And the reason this movement has not gained significant traction is because it appears to fight against our very nature. As Seth Godin would also say, “Ideas that spread, win.” So instead of tearing apart the fabric of our own language, instead of hurling ourselves into a dizzying battle of semantics and the baseless rhetoric that is characteristic of so much self-help content out there, we must recognize that in the end, all there is to do is to fight for a culture we believe in. That is, to fight for what we all should do, to make the world a better place and to live a life we’re proud to live.

Seasons and Emotions

How do we know when it’s spring? Clearly, there are seasons in some sense (at least in most parts of the world), but isn’t it slightly strange that we assign an arbitrary day—a strict cutoff line where one season “ends” and one season “begins”—to what is, in fact, an incredibly moderate, gradual shift of average temperatures over time? 

When does winter end and spring begin? Where does the state of being “sad” end and the state of being “happy” begin? Much like the seasons, there is neither an end nor a beginning to our emotions. We have a predilection towards giving ourselves concrete terms to make sense of the world we live in that is proliferated with these kinds of imprecise and inexact states. There is nothing inherently wrong with these mental shortcuts; I’d imagine we’d be overwhelmed if we were to constantly have to delineate each and every detail of our state of being to every single person we interacted with. 

But in the interactions that truly matter—the ones that are responsible for determining how we love one another, whether in friendship or relationship—don’t merely let the blunt tool that is our language ultimately deter us from understanding the incredible nuance in how each of us feel.