Entropic Flip

Love and Happiness Through The Looking Glass

2011-09-17T09:32:00.000-05:00

This journal entry is for anyone on the outside looking in.
I have recently become on the inside looking out.

The Choice
Something I did not truly internalize until recently in life:
Love and Happiness are CHOICES.
They are internal choices and not external situations.

The absolute definitions for Love and Happiness are defined by the self.
Nobody but you can tell you that your definition is wrong.

You can not control the weather, but you CAN control you.
You CAN control what you DO and how you FEEL when it rains.
And you can CHOOSE to be happy during the worst of thunderstorms.

Like Happiness, Love is a choice.
It is NOT a stroke of luck or a spell that is cast upon you by another.
When you are in love with somebody, it is because YOU are CHOOSING to Love.

That Love will serve you well as long as your accomplice is also a willing participant who CHOOSES to love you back. If there is such a thing as a soul-mate, then your true soul-mate will love you back.

Equilibrium Between The External and Internal
There are limits to how much our interactions can achieve and how much we can alter own way of thinking.

We have standards for Love and Happiness.
We can’t just love anything that comes our way or be happy about any situation that arises.
But the fact is that Love and Happiness are powerful universal NEEDS,
and life becomes easier when we prioritize those needs over our limitations.

"The happiest people are either very lucky or very flexible in their criteria for happiness."
-Matthew Y. Wong, Ph.D.

So our challenge in life is to find that equilibrium between how much we can change the world around us and how much we can change ourselves.

Unconditional Love and Happiness
Marriage is a promise to love, unconditionally.

The breakthrough that occurs in the transition from “Dating” to “Marriage” is the commitment to make the Relationship more important than the self as if it were... a third self.

There might be such a thing as a promise to be happy, unconditionally.
Perhaps this is the original promise that one can make to their first self.

Redefining "Religion"

2011-05-22T10:16:00.017-05:00

The Awareness Problem
They say that in any organization/tribe/civilization, approximately 95% of the decision-making power is held by 5% of the people. Empirical evidence suggests that relationships are a stronger factor in decision-making than actual correctness.

This happens partially because we are genetically hard-wired to seek approval as a form of motivation. That, combined with the fact that one person can not effectively process more than a person's worth of information causes our minds to think in terms of specialization. We delegate the processing of "surplus" information to others in order to preserve precious attention bandwidth.

Delegating Awareness
This cycle of converting information into decisions is the dominant pattern of how humans deal with the unknown. We leverage trust as the commodity that allows us to trade certainty for peace of mind.

"I do not know the answer, but I know somebody that does..."

We are genetically hard-wired to trust. This is not going to change anytime, soon. From the moment we are born, we want to trust and derive pleasure from being able to trust.

Giving Form to the Unknown
Religion is our personal relationship with the unknown.

"I do not know the answer, but I know that there is an answer..."

It may manifest as an anthropomorphized deity representing "the trusted one", or it may simply manifest as avid Atheism and dedication to science. Whatever form it takes, religion is essentially our personal compass that gives us a working mental model that we trust for making optimal decisions with the subset of information available to us.

Faith in Truth Outside the Self
We can not fight the fact that relationships are a more sustainable mechanism for decision-making than correctness. The human brain is optimized for operations within a social structure. Being correct consumes more mental energy than maintaining relationships. Relationships offer a promise of stability in a world where truths can either be unstable, lost in translation, or ineffectual; one's relationship to truth can be the constant second order derivative of those truths. It is much easier for brains to manage a relationship with truth than it is for brains to manage the overwhelming volume of unprocessed raw facts.

Religion is our relationship with everything outside of the self.
We want to trust our mental model of how things work, and some of us may even go so far as to engage in "faith"... trading certainty for peace of mind so that every possible question that could ever exist has a sense of closure that is intrinsic to the mental model we choose as our representative of what truth is.

The Code We Live By
Religion is the algorithm by which we program our brains to deal with uncertainty. When established recipes for verbs become insufficient, we synthesize new plans by running available data through established algorithms... written either by the self or by another.

The personal Code we live by exists because we have an identity that requires an interface between the self and the non-self.

Triangular Theory of Friendship

2011-05-10T00:41:00.009-05:00

Inspired by the Triangular Theory of Love

Base Elements of Friendship:

Availability (Attention) - Willingness to reach out
Vulnerability (Trust) - Willingness to receive
Commonality (Shared identity) - Willingness to become affiliated

Combinatorial Values of Base Elements:

Consummate Friendship (all 3) - "Hanging out" is something you do together for no specific reason
Dutiful Friendship (availability + vulnerability) - Lack of shared identity
Surface Friendship (availability + commonality) - Lack of trust
Neglectful Friendship (commonality + vulnerability) - Lack of attention

Special thanks goes out to the venerable Eric Boosman for lending his artistic talents to this cause.

Tungsten-Carbide Alloy

2011-04-09T09:01:00.004-05:00

By itself, single-element metals are highly malleable because the molecules of the metal are uniform in size, and this gives adjacent molecules room to move as each molecule acts like a ball joint to its neighbors.

Alloys are created by infusing a large-molecule metal with another element that has a much smaller molecule. The smaller molecules fill in the empty spaces between the large molecules, thereby making the metal seem more solid as the large molecules are fastened into place by the tight packing of small molecules in between the large molecules. Within an alloy mix, the same amount of space can contain more matter because previously unused space is now efficiently filled by smaller molecules.

Density increases. The two elements will inevitably occupy a space that is less than the space occupied by each element separately.

The heavy metal can be quite formidable by itself, but as an alloy, it can become more effective at achieving goals while maintaining a desired equilibrium.

Detecting and Moving Duplicate Files with Perl

2011-02-20T00:56:00.006-06:00

I had used iTunes the wrong way, and it auto-generated numerous duplicate copies of my music files within my music folders (song.m4a, song 1.m4a, song 2.m4a, etc...). Manually deleting those files would have been extremely tedious as the duplicates were spread out across multiple nested folders within my Music directory.

I decided to teach myself Perl this weekend.
My goal was not really to master Perl as much as it was to solve this very specific problem I had created for myself.

Perl is... interesting, to say the least.
If coding wars happened ONLY on battlegrounds of string and file manipulations
... and success was measured ONLY by the number of verbs per keystroke
... then Perl would be far superior to C++.

The program I wrote to move all duplicated files out into another folder for manual deletion lives here:
http://ringofblades.org/Blades/Code/MoveDuplicates.txt

I wrote a second program to move non-mp3 files (*.wma and *.m4a) if an mp3 with matching filename was found:
http://ringofblades.org/Blades/Code/MoveNonMp3Copies.txt

Today, I also learned that servers do not like it when you post files with a .pl extension.

Special thanks goes out to the internet Perl community... Who taught me how to program in Perl without the need for any book purchases.

I used Strawberry Perl... because strawberries are pretty.

Reprogramming the Human Brain

2010-10-01T00:56:00.006-05:00

In mid-2009, I had to understand what was happening and why it kept happening to different people around me, and so I began reading about personality traits with regard to regions of the human brain.

Much research has been compiled from studies done on victims of stroke, cranial injuries, and genetic conditions. I scribbled down a synopsis of relevant findings on my whiteboard (which also included my TODO list at the time)...

From these groupings, certain archetypical patterns became apparent.

An overactive limbic system often leads to an inability to regulate emotions. Selective Seratonin Reuptake Inhibitors are often prescribed to cap the intense peaks and valleys often experienced by those with bipolar disorders and similar emotional imbalances.

Of notable interest is the potential association between anxiety and handwriting.

The temporal lobes are particularly susceptible to outer head trauma. Accident victims with head injuries may exhibit symptoms of damaged cells in the temporal lobe region. This can often affect a person's sense of judgement, language, and morality.

And the cingulate system... this is where your buttons live. Game developers, marketing firms, and drug dealers alike would very much like to have direct access to this region of your brain in order to convert your compulsions into agents of their system.

But they can't get in if you already have a religon.

Intentional Friendships

2010-09-11T16:11:00.005-05:00

I turned 35 exactly one month ago. The theme over the past few months has been to streamline various aspects of my life to make sure that the energy I put into things results in a meaningful threshold of effect.

One area that has reached outside my comfort zone is the way that I have been managing friendships. There has been much sorting over the past few months... many casualties The following guidelines for judging friendship were developed during this sorting process.

Shared verbs are mandatory if a genuine friendship is to be maintained... otherwise, they are a Facebook-only friend
Friendship can generate expectations, which can generate fears... common verbs justify repetitions of proximity. Verbs are the medium through which friendship flows.
Common verbs do not always need to be a collaboration
An inner circle can hold about seven people; any more than that will result in leakage.
The choice is mine as much as theirs. I will be rejected. It won't be personal. No expectations... only trial and error.
Having a routine of verbs eventually leads to having well-defined openings to fill with friendship activites
I do not need to be everybody's friend. Neutral is acceptable and more common than emotional intimacy... after all, there are only approximately seven openings within the inner circle.
People change... It is normal for people to come in as buddies and leave as strangers within one's life... we share wonderful moments with good people all the time... this does not mean that we are entitled to continue sharing those moments if our taste in verbs is no longer a natural match.
Three Axes of Friendship: Identity Reinforcement, Reciprocal Trust, and Mutual Commitment

The Plan
Agency: Cultivate Intentional Friendships.
Time as a Resource: Cull out friendships that feel obligatory.
Directed Target: Imagine what an ideal friend does. Do those things. Be that person.
Technique: To counteract the tendency towards blind loyalty, use the lens of amnesia to filter intrinsic friendship behavior from obligatory friendship behavior.

The Book of Lenses

2010-08-11T14:15:00.011-05:00

Your answer is personal, but the right question can help get you there...

Lens of No History: Would you let this continue if you could only remember the last 8 minutes?
Lens of Infinite Time: How would being an immortal affect your choices?
Lens of the Future Badass: What would your future self do if your future self was a very wise badass.
Lens of Novelty: How much of this is truly sustainable? Would you still keep going at this once the novelty wears off and daily life settles back in?
Lens of Limited Time: If you only had three months to live, would you be doing this, right now?
Lens of Utility: Does doing this yield benefits equal to or greater than the cost of not doing this?
Lens of Androgyny: Would the situation still be perceived the same way if the gender were different? Why would gender be a factor, and is that a rational line of thought?
Lens of Opportunity: If it makes you feel bad, then what can you do instead that would be a better use of your time?
Lens of Verbs: Strip away every noun label and every adjective modifier... Look only at the verbs. Do you still want this in your life?
Lens of Maslow: For the effort you are about to spend time on, which level of Maslow's Hierarchy are you addressing? Are lower levels of the pyramid sufficiently fulfilled for you to be prioritizing this level, right now?
Lens of Three: Pick the three most important things to you in life... health, money, love? Will this serve or work against those three highest priorities?

These are the questions that have worked for me so far.

Thresholds for Unsolicited Advice

2010-05-15T16:21:00.008-05:00

I was recently reminded of the concept of things having value if you suffer for it/earn it...

It made me think of the concept of UNSOLICITED advice... where another person's "wisdom" is just handed over for free. It doesn't ever seem to absorb as well as the kind of advice that people figure out on their own.

There must be a threshold somewhere.... a threshold in which the words you tell a person are not told, but shared. Shared in a way in which the person feels as if they are contributing to the dialog as they engage in a collaborative process towards a truth.

Because truth is personal, and pushing your truth on someone is akin to forcefully rubbing your scent glands on that person in the hopes of making them smell like you.

Anything more than sharing is telling, and people do telling naturally because humans seek validation for their identity.

Anything less than sharing is work (as one may need to do with coworkers)... work in learning and work in accepting the intrusion of another into your personal process... because empathy requires work to manifest.

Sometimes you have to listen, and that is work.
Sometimes you are asked to tell, and that is a privilege.
There is a time and a place for both... and for neither.

New Thing: Try my very best to avoid giving UNSOLICITED advice. I would rather be compassionate than correct. Because that is the right thing to do. This is my advice to you that you should take. Don't be a hypocrite; drop whatever you believe in and take this valuable advice that I am handing over to you for free!

One Truth About Truth

2010-02-28T15:31:00.010-06:00

At this point in my life, I've come to the following counter-intuitive conclusions:

Speaking Truth can be a selfish act
Truth is not the ultimate answer to everything
Truth is a means to an end, and that end is validation

I am reminded that most of us are trained to become masters of data, knowledge, and correctness... into knowing things and being able to analyze things, but after all is said and done, we exist in fragile human frames that respond to emotions more so than any truth.

It is this little quirk about us that allows us to smoke harmful cigarettes when we know that it may bring a horrible painful death upon us... because the truth of danger is drowned out by the emotion of want.

And it is this quirk that can make us walk away from a relationship at the slightest sign of strife... because the truth of safety can be drowned out by the emotion of fear.

Inversely, we may stay in a harmful relationship because the truth of harm is drowned out by an emotion that is considered to be "love" by the beholder.

Every time truth gets in a fight with emotion, emotion kicks truth's ass. Always. The only thing that can defeat emotion is another emotion.

Every word, every silence, every action AND inaction serves an explicit EMOTION.

NEW PARADIGM: Shift focus away from truth and towards emotional consequence. Every word and every action that comes out of a person has:

An emotional intent from the source
An emotional effect on the receiver

Ideally, 1 and 2 would coincide, but this is not always the case... because truth is personal while emotions are universal.

You always have a choice... to either be right or be compassionate.

Ultimately, everyone is responsible for the reality they choose to accept. The human brain is infinitely capable of rationalizing any truth as being the absolute truth in their mind. Our brain can essentially talk itself into believing anything or out of attempting anything. No matter what, if somebody wants to believe that something is true, they can find a way to rationalize it. And others can either choose to inform them of other unsolicited truths that are more correct or they can choose to coexist with different truths that lead to common emotions.

On the subject of Twitter/Facebook disdain

2010-02-11T22:31:00.007-06:00

So here's the deal,

You don't have to use Twitter, nor do you have to get on Facebook. You don't have to do anything in this world that you don't want to do. When you do transmit signals into the internet, you expect to get something out of it.... whether it be Twitter, Facebook, or this Journal... there is an intention behind everything. Some useful things that people get out of Facebook/Twitter include the following:

Entertainment
Information
Interaction opportunities that lead to changes in social configurations
Verb opportunities
Solicited advice
Opportunities for expression (yes, this is a valid human need)

Most people suck, and you probably don't want to know them. It is perfectly okay to say that you are happy with your current circle of friends and see no need to expand and maintain links with a group of people who may be acquaintances at best.

The purpose of Twitter and Facebook is to provide opportunities to participate in a network of other people who seek the same. It is a tool, not an obligation.

So if the concept of Facebook and Twitter offend you for some reason, then ask yourself what it is, exactly, that makes you so angry at what other people are doing with their own time. Seriously... try to put this into a sentence made up of vocabulary words. After you've thought about it, consider saving yourself the trouble of dealing with any of it by deleting your account. That would be easy enough to do.

People who actively participate on Facebook and Twitter must get something out of it, and that is why they continue to use it despite the hassles with interface and inundation of unsolicited reading material. It doesn't matter if you don't relate to the motivations of the typical active Facebook'er/Twitter'er... It is very likely that they have different needs for social engagement than you.

In Maslow's hierarchy, social needs are a very real requirement for human beings, humans will degrade if their need for social involvement is not sufficiently met. We live in an age where members of society are generally impatient and will actively seek out the things they want instead of waiting for opportunities to randomly fall into their lap. Most friendships and romantic involvements do not happen the way they do in Hollywood movies, they happen because people put out request signals and somebody else answers them.

So what is your intention for getting on a site like Facebook or Twitter? To know about things? To maximize opportunities? To broadcast information?

If you have no intention, then get off those sites! Other users will only take from you, and you will get nothing out of it.
If you have an intention, then embrace it. Don't be shy about it. The site exists to serve your intentions, and you have a pool of cohorts that have agreed to be in on this social exchange

Whatever the case, participation has always been voluntary and optional. Getting mad at people who use Facebook or Twitter does not really accomplish anything unless it is your goal to revel in being mad about something. Getting mad at frivolous things that really don't affect you is one way of making yourself feel important... but that is a topic for another day.

The Identity Compass

2009-10-11T08:42:00.006-05:00

For anything to be considered of worthy value, it must be attained through a sufficient ordeal. Suffering is the true currency through which we gain the attention of souls.

Time is the only resource we truly own... we have only a finite amount to spend on ourself and others... and we will never have enough time to please everybody whose path we cross. Disappointment on both sides is inevitable.

"What do I want?"

Truth makes happen what needs to happen... and so when faced with a difficult choice, you can only refer to your personal compass to guide you towards the identity you are willing to bond with... for your truth is your identity, and there is no absolute truth as much as there is a truth that you choose to fall in love with for that time in your life.

To believe in something... to have a policy on your actions is to protect yourself from future regrets by staying true to the identity you have chosen for yourself. When faced with a difficult choice, then the path that coincides with who you want to be is the right path because the difficult choice itself is marked by suffering and, therefore, is a decision of worthy value that can define you, or at the very least, reinforce who you are.

Being who you are might mean hurting others, but it has to be that way because obligation at the sacrifice of identity is never a valid path to happiness.

You always have a choice on who you want to be.
You always have the option to just wake up one day and choose to be "that person".

"What is my identity?"

Sometimes, the situation is too chemically charged to see what you need to see. That is why we develop a relationship with "the other"... the friend, the confidant, the god, the goddess... "The other" is a sentient representation of the universe that we trust with our identity. The other can be a living human being, or it can be something more abstract. We keep a piece of our soul with the other so that if we ever lose ourself, we can simply refer to "the other" to be reminded of our own reflection.

"What do I want to become?"

Choices are an opportunity to expand the definition of who we are. Once defined in a new area, subsequent choices in the future can become more apparent.

My "other" would tell me this:

Let your intentions drive your reality instead of the other way around. Visualize the lego castle you wish to have... and one by one, those missing pieces will find their place because you will explore, and you will discover, build, and place them with your own hands. Define your target: Your self-intended identity, the reality you seek - That is your compass. Follow that, and all of your choices eventually become the choice you needed to make at the time to evolve the complex entity that is you.

Reality Bend Spell

2009-08-12T22:46:00.001-05:00

The first phase of the spell is giving form to the seemingly intangible circumstance... by assigning a shape and definition to that which seems formless, we open up an opportunity to change that tangible form into another tangible form.

Our vocabulary can be a weapon. By giving form to the formless, we cause that aspect of reality to become vulnerable to our intentions.
___

The second phase of the spell is definition of the desired form. This is your target. At the end of the spell, your declaration will become true. Defining a target allows you to decide whether to continue or stop this process.

Once decided, the will to follow through is given a tangible form of its own, and this enables the user to cast the spell with full conviction.
___

The third phase of the spell is the transformation. It requires that you understand the movable parts of that tangible form to surgically alter its signature. No matter how difficult it may seem, You MUST move parts to see changes. The parts will not move without external actions. If somebody else moves the part, you are dependent on their intentions, which will turn out to be either lucky or unlucky for you.

Going from current state to desired state requires verbs.
___

The fourth and final phase is acknowledgment of the new tangible form. This is confirmation that your spell is finished. By declaring that the spell is done, you essentially cast a spell to declare the change itself as having tangible form.

When the change becomes real, its effect becomes real.

Meta-Pattern

2009-07-24T23:25:00.002-05:00

They say that misery is like an old childhood friend that validates our suffering like a badge of achievement. To survive is to live, prevailing over the machinations of a world that refuses to cooperate. We seek out this misery as if it were a missing piece of our very definition, and if we can't find it within ourselves, we end up seeking it in others. And if we can't find it in others, we make up our own misery in the form of a self-fulfilling prophecy... so that we may feel like a complete person content to embrace our woefully incomplete selves, misery and all.

There are those in power who understand this concept masterfully. They understand that you need something to believe in. They will give you something to be miserable about, and from that, they will provide a source of hope to believe in. You will be broken down and reformed to a citizen of their own creation... ready to fight and die for the values that they believe you should be fighting for.

We start out knowing nothing. Thrust into the fold whether we're ready or not, whether we choose to participate or not... we are in the game. We can refuse to believe in the game. We can choose not to participate, but then our world stagnates in a state of frustration as we become keenly aware of events taking place all around us but not with us. We can choose not to play, and we may find others who refuse to play as well... but it won't last... because patterns can't be avoided, and the game is a tapestry of patterns.

You start out knowing nothing, but eventually, you see the pattern. And as soon as a pattern becomes defined, then a metagame on top of the game becomes apparent. This is the set of rules that build on top of the established patterns in a context of continued discovery and progression. It is at this point that everything becomes an inside joke, and the language moves away from the mundane and becomes more abstract to outsiders. Entire monologues could be conveyed with a simple look. Conflicts can occur before they even start. The threat of permanence leads to a projection of the present into the one remaining unknown that is guaranteed to remain unknown... Amplifying the future and dampening the present.

The lesson I've learned from all this is that the direct path is never the successful path. When you yearn for something, it will elude you. When you embark on a seemingly random path, it will find you. It is the pattern that says that things must be attained through a sufficient ordeal in order to be considered a thing of value. The ordeal can be marked by either suffering or blind luck, but it must feel rare and special in order to be appreciated. Approach directly, and you will obviously be trying too hard. Approach from the side, and it will look like a chance occurrence. We give a piece of our lives to the things that we deem profound, and we demand a proportional ordeal in return for our precious mindshare. This is the nature of the metagame. Always bet on the lucky general.

Whatever It Takes

2009-07-06T01:34:00.004-05:00

We are looking for context. Meaning. We want to know that the things we did do matter, that we matter... and that our suffering and efforts meant something - nothing wasted. The narrative has a happy ending when the random set of generic events come together in a system that makes sense to us... with every observable action having meaningful context. The entropy of the world makes sense when everything has a context... As if the universe were a living sentient entity that one could have a real two-way relationship with.

Every conversation we have, every movie we see, game we play, thing we read, in everything we do, we seek a context that promises the potential to affect our future thoughts in a never-ending drive to modify our own internal genetic algorithms. Anything without personal context ultimately renders the experience empty or irrelevant.

We try so very hard to seek that relationship with our universe. It is the only way we know how to interact with our world: as a relationship with a sentient being. full of context. empathy. with likes and dislikes. To have a relationship with an entity is to have control over how that entity affects us. This control manifests as an identity: the labels that we allow ourselves to wear and the verbs implied by those labels.

We are not looking for truth. We never were. We never are. We are looking for what the truth would promise us: meaning. emotional context. an identity we can call our own. understanding. control. peace with what we believe to be our own truths. validation from an "other".

We seek out this context in the various forms of media and interactions that reflect back at us... mixing ourselves with ingredients to experience the alchemy that makes us... Gravitating towards the edges of silhouettes that belong to forms worthy of our recognition.

So when that little voice in your head tells you to be afraid or just lay down, play it safe, and take it easy, then ask yourself:
"Why not? The truth is... we're all gonna fucking die someday... so let's just do this."

Our emotions, both good and bad, are driven by our own context... and suffering is the currency through which we acquire validation.

Know Thyself... and Others, Too

2009-03-08T20:49:00.000-06:00

We all say that we are self aware. Hardly anyone ever says that they're not... but how do I know if I'm really all that aware? How do we know if anyone is really that aware when they will always tell you that they are?

INPUT
Awareness of the what streams of information exist around us and how we filter those streams would govern our ability to adopt optimal streams for our own purposes.

SORTING
Awareness of how we process the information that we take in allows us to examine that process and make adjustments to our machine as needed.

OUTPUT
The people around us make up the relevant world that we interact with, and the shape of our interactions are the result of the way we use the information that we decide to adopt. We have an effect on the people around us whether or not we intend for that effect. At any one time, we have a choice to either blame external entities for misperceiving our output or dealing with the results of that misperceived output by clarifying and/or adjusting the way we transmit our signal. This signal we transmit is the only window that others have into our own existence.

Taking responsibility for our awareness...

of what we take in
how we sort
and what we transmit

... empowers us to command our sphere of existence as we convert...

WILL (communion - the drive to be)
to ACTIONS (agency - the drive to do).

Naturally, we are not alone; this world is full of actions driven by the will of sentient beings. Interactions with any sentient being involves an exchange, SHARING, or clash of intentions. Being neutral simply makes you a pawn for the intentions of others who manifest their wills in specific areas that they have found opportunity in. If you give up your will to be aware within any of those three categories (input, sorting, output), then somebody else will happily provide a reality for those three categories on your behalf.

To be unaware of yourself and others is to become a passenger in the universe... and quite possibly a victim to the will of others.

This problem is made visible by patterns. Strip away the variables and identify the constants. Every problem has a start point and a desired end point... The solution is a series of smaller problems.

Time is the only ingredient that we do not control. It imposes its will upon us, and we have no choice but to abide by its constraints.

Three Facets of Reality

2008-12-01T13:29:00.000-06:00

Agency - The concept of action. To do.
Communion - The concept of relations to perception. To be.

But what are we doing? What are we trying to be? What is it that we find ourselves expanding and collapsing throughout our lives in various forms? What would our peak expansion look like?

The channels of reality seem to fall into three distinct categories. Always three:

EYE-ANIMA-SOL-SECURITY-WEALTH-WISDOM-MIND-FATHER
CONTROLLER_COMPONENT

Input: Collection Mechanisms

Decisions Interface (AI Logic)

Neurological perceptions feedback loop with experience-based associations and pattern-matching with which to maximize optimal resource access

TRIANGLE-CORPUS-TERRA-LIBERTY-HEALTH-POWER-BODY-SON
ENGINE_COMPONENT

Agency: Sorting Mechanisms

Hardware Interface (Engine Logic)

Physical characteristics such as strength, dexterity, stamina, and constitution through which actions of the other two components flow towards tangible manifestation

CIRCLE-SPIRITUS-LUNA-LOVE-SOCIAL-COURAGE-SPIRIT-HOLYSPIRIT
LOGICALVIEW_COMPONENT

Output: Communion Mechanisms: To Be

Simulation Interface (Gameplay Logic)

Relationships with accessible entities with which to derive meaning and exercise agency on the environment... Agency with sentient entities results in communion and is often achieved through mutual verb experiences perceived as "shared" experiences

EQUILIBRIUM
Our three forces seek an equilibrium with reality by emitting signals whenever we are heading towards something unsustainable with our body, our surroundings, and our spirit. In our journey of collecting resources and sorting them to our liking, we inherently develop a goal for the way the world should be sorted... those things we "need to experience" before we die and lose it all. Sometimes, the "shoulds" are dependent on mind and body to comply, and sometimes they are a burden we place on the world around us to comply with our expectations of the way things should be.

ENTITLEMENT
This is where our sense of entitlement comes from. We feel entitled to HAVE, DO, and BE certain things, and anything less than that is seen as a loss of our self-intended identity's equilibrium with perceptual reality. Entitlement is not a bad thing, but our expectations on ourselves and the world around us don't always pan out the way we think they "should". At that point, we have a choice of either maintaining our current expectations in the hopes of garnering a different future outcome based on changes in external variables, or we can internally change our expectations to seek a different notion of equilibrium.

VALUE
Human brains are inherently not wired to incorporate time and distance into our perceptions of comparative value. We never stray very far from the baby's fascination with what is right in front of us; our brains are hard wired to want what we see, and accept what we see as the pieces that make up our reality, which then contributes to the identity that we feel entitled to. To go beyond the here and now takes mental discipline. An infinite supply of mental discipline would give a person the ability to perceive the value of things beyond time and space... but the farther you go, the farther you peer into the distance and into the future, the more you lose yourself, your humanity, and your conduit to the world around you. Eventually, you'll need to come back to the near and present to avoid starvation, and when you do, the memories of that far life might serve as a blueprint for the actions you will need to take here and now.

The Designer's Intended Value

2008-10-17T20:06:00.000-05:00

Can a quality product be completed without a designer? Sure, if one of two things were true:

Everybody on the production team was fully capable of cohesively visualizing the ramifications of their component before actually implementing it
There was infinite time to iterate on the implementation of bad ideas until they become good ideas

Time is rarely infinite and trusting everyone on the team to maintain a cohesive vision of the product can be a gamble. For that reason, most projects will involve people whose role it is to supplement the team's ability to visualize the details before time is spent on the implementation of those details.

Depending on the industry, these people are called Producers, Directors, Project Managers, or Designers. The idea is that the cost of thinking is cheaper than the cost of doing production work before finding out that it was a bad idea, solution, or plan. The consequence of bad design is a bad product at best and an unfinished product at worst.

So... what are the broad metrics of a designer?

Pre-Visualization: Using associative cognition to set a good target in conjunction with analysis of resources to ensure that the target is completed in a form that satisfies the original aesthetic/pragmatic intent. Resources include time, people, tools, and feedback. Iteration can't be avoided, but it does have a cost associated with it. Therefore, one who is really good at pre-visualizing will be of higher value than one who does not hone this ability at all.
Two-Way Communication/Relationships: Debates will happen. People will not blindly follow. Reading minds is not standard practice. The designer is not always correct and is unlikely to know everything. Unless the designer is going to implement everything her/himself, this person will need to deal with people factors.

Nobody is perfect, and the same holds true for any Designer, Programmer, Artist, or whatever it is that describes any function for a human being.

The designer is the person who can hold it all in the head and communicate it to a team of collaborators: Scheduling, Planning, Creative Direction... these are all skill sets that can be contained in one person but may need to be delegated to others for large projects. Knowing when to delegate is key along with other skills such as knowing when to take a gamble or cut losses.

In Japan, this job function is not called "designer". Instead, they are called "planners". This seems to be a more accurate term as the emphasis of the function is not on creativity as much as it is on problem solving.

Going Meta

2008-08-16T17:05:00.000-05:00

If you live in a one dimensional world and go meta on that world, then you imagine what a second dimension must feel like by making conjectures about how occurrences in one dimension may have repercussions on that one dimension based on calculations that involve a hypothetical second dimension
Similarly, if you live in a two dimensional world and go meta on that world, you imagine a third dimension where things are happening in the two dimensions based on effects/occurrences within the third dimension
If we consider time to be the fourth dimension. Then going meta on the current state of our three dimensional world is merely taking time into account as we make our calculations of current state as a function of time.
We could take time into account for our calculations of a one dimensional world or two dimensional world. It is possible to go meta on any non-apparent dimension for any existing model of current state because meta is merely taking a dimension into account that has always been there whether it is perceived or not
Perception is in the eye of the beholder. Reality is what you choose to believe. We all live in our own delusions whether we believe that or not. The simulation model of current state is merely a delusion that we choose to believe based on stimulus and perceptual filters. We need a simulation model in order to predict states as a function of imperceptible dimensions
We have the option to deal with the complexity of personal relationships by "going meta" on them. We can do this by believing in a personal model that is congruent with our current stimuli and perceptual filters:

We have, within each of us, the ability to broadcast signals that can be absorbed by others
We absorb signals generated by others
Signals we absorb will influence future generated signals from ourselves
All of us are universal broadcasters, capable of broadcasting signals that we have never absorbed, but major factors that determine the broadcast probability of a specific signal are...

Proximity of the receiver to the sender
Past absorption of that particular signal within the sender
Frequency of past instances of signal broadcasts from the sender
Sender's awareness of the signal potential

Every signal we are capable of broadcasting can be involuntarily broadcasted in a way that conflicts with our intentions. This occurs most often when the sender is not aware of the signal's existence or does not comprehend its potential repercussions
There are no absolute good signals or bad signals... those definitions come entirely from the receiver based on the receiver's personal reality which derives its criteria from past stimuli and perceptual filters.
Although the sender's criteria for positive and negative may conflict with the receiver's criteria, neither criteria can be said to be more valid than the other as they are both derived from personal delusions of potentially equal conviction.
Existing in a bubble without any outreach to society means that you will not affect society in any way, which means that you will not generate signals that enter the societal consciousness of signal flow, which means that the burden of acknowledging your existence falls solely on the self... if you were to exist within a self-contained bubble
Survival is not enough: The self is an insufficient validator of existence. Our species is hard wired to be externally motivated. Thousands of years of societal breeding have favored humans who are willing to do things for other humans. To give ourselves a reason to wake up in the morning, we are compelled to validate our own existence by generating signals within the range of valid receivers so that we can feel a sense of agency in the world that goes beyond just mere survival.