The Skills Necessary for Constant Reinvention

Fixing and making things, what tools to get and what skills to learn, ...
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Ego
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The Skills Necessary for Constant Reinvention

Post by Ego »

Here is Harari talking about the importance of teaching kids in a new way. No longer do they need data. Now they need to know how to face uncertainty and how to reinvent themselves.

Watch for about two minutes: https://youtu.be/JJ1yS9JIJKs?t=1h11m14s

Social survival in the 21st century will require a constant process of learning and changing and reinventing. Whereas the previous model throughout most of history involved a life divided into two phases - very roughly - the initial phase in which you mainly learn and then a second phase in which you mainly do. This is not going to work any more.

The change is so fast that by the time you start doing, what you learned is irrelevant. So the borderline between the learning phase and the doing phase will have to be completely blurred. And this is extremely difficult for people. It's not easy to invent yourself when you are fifteen. But it is almost impossible when you are fifty.

So, I think we should invest in the kind of emotional intelligence, in the kind of mental skills that will give this kind of suppleness, fluidity for people to be able to keep changing, to keep reinventing themselves, even when they are in their forties and fifties and sixties.


There are different ways to approach this kind of problem. Here are a few that come to mind.

- Which characteristics should we cultivate to deal with this new normal?
- Which characteristics should we eliminate/shun/minimize so that we can be successful in the new world?
- How do we build a mind and a mindset that can deal with accelerating change?
- What can we practice on a daily basis to improve our ability to cope with the coming reality?
- What should we avoid doing?
- How will FIRE benefit us in these pursuits? How will it hinder us?
- What would emotional and psychological Crossfit look like?

Personally, I believe that learning this suppleness and fluidity is at least as important as building a nest egg. How do we do it? That is the question!

What do you think?

steveo73
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Re: The Skills Necessary for Constant Reinvention

Post by steveo73 »

I don't agree with the premise because change has been significant up until this point and I assume that will continue. When I was growing up there was no Internet. I also see no reason why you can't reinvent yourself when you are 50.

I would suggest that people in general should simple engage with the world on their terms. So I love learning new things and that is good for me but it might not be good for every person out there.

I think FIRE is really beneficial to all people however most people won't even consider it. People that work towards and obtain FIRE will always be in a position where they have in my opinion more choices in how they live their lives however people that won't consider FIRE might think that we have less choices. FIRE to me has at it's core a degree of anti-consumerism. The vast majority of people that obtain FI won't be the same people that buy an extravagant amount of stuff.

7Wannabe5
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Re: The Skills Necessary for Constant Reinvention

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

- Which characteristics should we cultivate to deal with this new normal? -modularity, resilience

- Which characteristics should we eliminate/shun/minimize so that we can be successful in the new world? -tendency towards sunk cost fallacy

- How do we build a mind and a mindset that can deal with accelerating change? -drop ego, observe environment

- What can we practice on a daily basis to improve our ability to cope with the coming reality?-relax and observe reality-conditions in the moment in Zones 000-5 -rather than referencing prior beliefs/projections about future that is now present.

- What should we avoid doing? -mistaking consistency of context/environment for set identity

- How will FIRE benefit us in these pursuits? How will it hinder us? -Drop the "R." Keep the "I." Widen focus from the "F." Redefine the "E."

- What would emotional and psychological Crossfit look like?- Not sure, but the winner would be someone like the best contestant in wife-swap ;)

I'm only kind of joking with my last response. Harari is talking about the cycle of learning/achieving competence or mastery/practicing. This is the "masculine" cycle which was often limited to the realm of major career development in the 20th century. In the olden days of the mid-20th century, most females were still limited to the generalist practice of "home-maker" or "house-wife." Beyond this generalist job-title, social identity was only further developed through attachment to spouse. Thus, your identity was Mrs. John Doe, and Mr. John Doe's identity was Senior Account Manager for Acme Flints Incorporated. So, the task/responsibility of seeing to it that your husband had a clean shirt for work would be approached in very different manner depending upon whether your husband's social identity was Coal Miner, Junior Salesman, or Chief Surgeon, but still this same task would be on the generalist roster of each female who was de facto assigned this generalist position/identity. NOTE:One thing that is confusing is that anytime you talk about "work" or "profession", you are talking about a manifestation of masculine energy, so the problem with the system that assigned every female the generalist profession of "house-wife" was that it assumed that all females had the same tendencies/preferences/strengths in their masculine energy. IOW, it's not oxymoronic to refer to yourself as a feminine feminist.

However, if you unwind the tape another 50 years or so (give or take regionally), within the memory of a few people who are still alive, most men were also likely to have the much more generalist job description of farmer. The division of labor between the farmer and the farm-wife mostly being based on upper-body strength vs. breasts-with-which-to-feed-farmhands-of-the-future. So, identity was more likely to be attached to the particular patch of land you farmed. John Doe who has 50 acres in Westboro County.

Modern technology does not give a f8ck whether you have biceps or boobs, so long as you have a brain, and birth control was improved, so in the late 20th century women in droves were encouraged to enter into the specialized professions and derive their own identity in this manner. The term "displaced homemaker" was invented. I qualified for a displaced homemaker grant to fund part of my graduate school expenses when I was only around 30-lol. I became completely empty-nest when I was still in my early 40s. So, if I had been a female of my mother's generation, rather than my own, that is the juncture where I should have taken my newly released energies and applied them to a new career, but instead of that seeming like a freeing opportunity to me, it felt like more of a lock-in.

Anyways, in the psychological model I reference, what Harari is talking about is having the ability to move fluidly from your adult masculine quadrant (dominant, authoritative, controlled, powerful, offering instruction) into your juvenile masculine quadrant (eager, open, refreshed, energetic, excited, receptive to instruction, submissive.) The difference between the juvenile masculine quadrant and the juvenile feminine quadrant is the difference between the words submissive and vulnerable, given that both words are understood to represent strengths of character. The word submissive has some unfortunate associations, so it might be better expressed as "ability to drop arrogance and rigid-power-structure/defenses, open-mind, offer respect, follow instruction, and, thereby, learn and grow." So, being submissive is like being vulnerable, except vulnerable is more in the emotional and sensual (feminine) realm of "being" and submission is more in the directed thought/behavior (masculine) realm of "doing."

The main point I am getting around to hoping to make with this meandering post is that although the accelerating pace of technological development and cultural change does make the development and maintenance of the energies/strengths of the juvenile masculine quadrant more obviously relevant and important, we should not fail to also recognize that we are living in a world of limited and diminishing resources, and this is a reality that demands the sort of responsible stewardship that is not the forte of the juvenile-masculine left to his own devices. In simplest terms, it is important to recognize that the modern hyper-cyclic-specialized techno-roamer can't feed himself. At the end of the day, he is going home to "Mom" for dinner. Financial independence is subsidiary to masculine independence which is subsidiary to the nurturing environment.

IlliniDave
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Re: The Skills Necessary for Constant Reinvention

Post by IlliniDave »

Maybe the best approach is to strive to never change at all. "Change" implies some sort of anchoring in the past. Without the anchors we can be part of now without having to struggle.

That doesn't help engineer a society though.

Disclaimer: Yes, I had a very melancholy October Sunday afternoon where I hid in a nearby nature preserve and watched the leaves fall one-by-one onto the river to drift with time and the flow away.

RealPerson
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Re: The Skills Necessary for Constant Reinvention

Post by RealPerson »

That's an interesting idea but it is not new. For years we have heard that people will need to change careers every 5 years.

Becoming less adaptable as you age is not necessarily accurate. Some young people hate any kind of change, and some older people are very comfortable with it. I see that more as a personality trait than an feature of aging. The one thing older people may not want to give up is the status that comes with experience. People may need to give up the idea that one day they will have the status of an expert. It goes against our natural primate social structure: alpha (fe)males rarely give up their status voluntarily. It is possible that we are asking humans to act against millions of years of social evolution and reverse ancient structures in a matter of a couple of decades.

ERE is all about adaptability. ERE people are by definition not especially status driven, or at least are willing to give up status voluntarily. Looking around this forum, Jacob and Ego are examples of a willingness to change careers a lot. The word "career", implying longevity, doesn't even apply. 7Wannabe5 and Zalo pursue social and sexual experimentation. I think that this is driven by personality traits more than anything.

But what about expertise and mastery? If it takes 10,000 hours of training and practice to become a master at something, few of us will achieve that. If we will all be amateurs, who will manage the things that require a high level of skill? I would not want to be in a airplane flown by a pilot who just got his commercial license. There are many important jobs that require many years of training. The automation of an airplane cockpit has not reduced the requirements of an experienced and well trained pilot. He/she may need to land the plane in the Hudson.

RealPerson
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Re: The Skills Necessary for Constant Reinvention

Post by RealPerson »

@7W5. A completely different and refreshing perspective. Thanks for your posts. I always look forward to reading them. ;)

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Ego
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Re: The Skills Necessary for Constant Reinvention

Post by Ego »

7Wannabe5 wrote:The main point I am getting around to hoping to make with this meandering post is that although the accelerating pace of technological development and cultural change does make the development and maintenance of the energies/strengths of the juvenile masculine quadrant more obviously relevant and important, we should not fail to also recognize that we are living in a world of limited and diminishing resources, and this is a reality that demands the sort of responsible stewardship that is not the forte of the juvenile-masculine left to his own devices.
Earlier in the talk Harari mentions that we will need to figure out ways to cultivate meaning without work since much of the work will be done by machines. We are already seeing that today. He says that for many that meaning will come from drugs and video games. A world of juvenile-masculines left to their own devices.

So, how do we cultivate meaning without work while avoiding drugs and video games (bread & circuses) and without resorting to the juvenile-feminine solution of procreating to create a little bundle meaning which would further stress our limited and diminishing resources?

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Ego
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Re: The Skills Necessary for Constant Reinvention

Post by Ego »

IlliniDave wrote:Maybe the best approach is to strive to never change at all. "Change" implies some sort of anchoring in the past. Without the anchors we can be part of now without having to struggle.
I don't understand. In my mind, to not change is to be anchored. How is change anchoring?

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Ego
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Re: The Skills Necessary for Constant Reinvention

Post by Ego »

RealPerson wrote:The one thing older people may not want to give up is the status that comes with experience. People may need to give up the idea that one day they will have the status of an expert. It goes against our natural primate social structure: alpha (fe)males rarely give up their status voluntarily. It is possible that we are asking humans to act against millions of years of social evolution and reverse ancient structures in a matter of a couple of decades.
I've got a handful of high-status older friends who allow me into their circle, in part because they've come to recognize as they've gotten older that the quest for status is costly and pays diminishing dividends. It is difficult lesson to learn without actually experiencing it first hand. Maybe in the future sims will help to teach it without having to actually go through the environmentally damaging status seeking churn.
RealPerson wrote:But what about expertise and mastery? If it takes 10,000 hours of training and practice to become a master at something, few of us will achieve that. If we will all be amateurs, who will manage the things that require a high level of skill? I would not want to be in a airplane flown by a pilot who just got his commercial license. There are many important jobs that require many years of training. The automation of an airplane cockpit has not reduced the requirements of an experienced and well trained pilot. He/she may need to land the plane in the Hudson.
Drones are instant masters. I would speculate that we are not far from a time when people will be terrified to be on the road with a human driver.

I think the more interesting question is how do we cope with a world where mastery is no longer necessary. Will we become masters of useless skills simply for the sake of having something to master? I think we are already seeing that. We have an archery range just down the street. A friend bought a few compound bows and invited me to shoot with him. There were a half-dozen people there who were very kind to offer advice to me. They were master archers.

Dragline
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Re: The Skills Necessary for Constant Reinvention

Post by Dragline »

Ego wrote:

I think the more interesting question is how do we cope with a world where mastery is no longer necessary. Will we become masters of useless skills simply for the sake of having something to master? I think we are already seeing that. We have an archery range just down the street. A friend bought a few compound bows and invited me to shoot with him. There were a half-dozen people there who were very kind to offer advice to me. They were master archers.
Yes -- very similar to what the British aristocracy did in the 19th Century with everything from science to gardening to sports. But way more widespread. Probably a good thing overall, actually.

What Dan Pink says in "Drive" about what makes a good employer and job situation is equally applicable to voluntary activities, namely that to be a fulfilling activity, an activity should involve the components of Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose, even if only on a personal/subjective basis.

I think you'll also see a lot more of addictive behaviors as well, though. New technologies and idle time seem to beget them, because human beings are really not designed to be idle without some kind of pacifier to attract (or sap) their attention.

7Wannabe5
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Re: The Skills Necessary for Constant Reinvention

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

IlliniDave said: Disclaimer: Yes, I had a very melancholy October Sunday afternoon where I hid in a nearby nature preserve and watched the leaves fall one-by-one onto the river to drift with time and the flow away.
So, you were in your juvenile feminine energy relating to Nature as the adult feminine energy source. The ability to express feelings and allow yourself to experience them without instantly trying to "fix" them shows that you have strength in the juvenile feminine quadrant. Also indicates that you are likely artistic :)

For a variety of reasons such as genotype, environmental conditioning, and cultural training, I have a history of being bloated in my adult feminine quadrant and hyper-active in my juvenile masculine quadrant. So, if I was not super self-aware, and I had been in your company yesterday afternoon, I might have attempted to take responsibility for your feelings and help you "fix" them with offer of pie OR I might have exhibited behavior like that of a 9 month old mutt terrier who can talk. Then, because people who are often in their juvenile feminine energy are also often in their adult masculine energy, you might say or think something "Why can't you shut up and sit still?", and then I would silently vow to never, ever bake you a pie again.

Anyways, that's why it's important to not think of your personality as completely set in stone or static. It is commonplace or easy to seek higher function in realms where you are already fairly comfortable. Stretching yourself to be more like somebody you are not is much more difficult, but also more likely to result in greatly improved functioning overall. Unfortunately, you may also have to go through an awkward phase where you drop some of your higher functioning. For instance, if you temporarily dropped your adult masculine functioning towards juvenile masculine functioning while maintaining your juvenile feminine functioning, you would find yourself in the realm of behavior between juvenile feminine and juvenile masculine which most other people will react/respond to as "cute." This is what happened to me coming at the problem from the other direction and choosing to drop my adult feminine energy towards juvenile feminine energy while retaining my juvenile masculine functioning.
RealPerson said: Becoming less adaptable as you age is not necessarily accurate. Some young people hate any kind of change, and some older people are very comfortable with it. I see that more as a personality trait than an feature of aging. The one thing older people may not want to give up is the status that comes with experience. People may need to give up the idea that one day they will have the status of an expert. It goes against our natural primate social structure: alpha (fe)males rarely give up their status voluntarily. It is possible that we are asking humans to act against millions of years of social evolution and reverse ancient structures in a matter of a couple of decades.
Right, that's why it can be very difficult to get old men to take you to new restaurants. It's not just status, but knowledge of territory that comes into play. You have to say "I like going new places." about 10X for every time you say "I feel hungry." if you want to create a vacuum into which behavior such as that might fall. You can't just say "Let's go to that new Thai place." like you could to your sister, because most men are more oppositional defiant than your sister due to testosterone poisoning in the womb ;)

Some people in some cultures are more likely to take pride at being good or strong in the beta (follow) vs. the alpha (lead) or independent (lone wolf) role. If you take a step back from the system in which you are currently enmeshed, it is pretty easy to see that you can only begin to learn in follow mode (with very rare exception of being able to learn solely from experience in the non-human mediated environment.) When we say that somebody is an "independent learner" we usually mean that they are able to self-direct enough to learn from interaction with author of book or by taking apart an engine that was previously built by somebody else, and then putting it back together, rather than having to be hit by a stick and forced to recite multiplication tables.
7Wannabe5 and Zalo pursue social and sexual experimentation. I think that this is driven by personality traits more than anything.
This is actually a good example of how behavior (manifested personality) can be a combination of inherent temperament, social conditioning and environment. Zalo and I do not have the same inherent temperament, but we exhibit the same behavior because he is a young man who exhibits some high level adult feminine strengths like empathetic listening, and I am an old woman who exhibits some high level juvenile masculine strengths such as being game for adventure. If Zalo did not have adult feminine skills/tendencies then he likely wouldn't self-describe as poly-amorous, but something more like "player." If I did not have juvenile masculine skills/tendencies, then I would be more Polly-Anna than poly-amorous.

The trade-off for being locked in the adult masculine realm of status/dominance/power enthroned in your well-defended kingdom is lack of the ability to experience freedom/fun/adventure of exploring new realms. I have to struggle to keep myself tied to my current commitment of 7 years towards mastery/completion of permaculture project. Other people might have to struggle to periodically cash in their chips and set off on new venture. One thing I have considered is whether it might not be better to only achieve FI on a 7 year cycle rather than a lifetime cycle. What if you lived in a realm where you had to turn in or cancel all of your accumulated cash, assets, certificates, licenses, contracts every 7 years and start again from scratch? How would that change your behavior?
Ego said: So, how do we cultivate meaning without work while avoiding drugs and video games (bread & circuses) and without resorting to the juvenile-feminine solution of procreating to create a little bundle meaning which would further stress our limited and diminishing resources?
You are right that "bundle creation" is the function of the juvenile feminine heading towards adult feminine OR the adult feminine heading towards juvenile feminine once again (seed,stem,bud,flower,fruit,fall,winter,spring...,), and you pose a very good question that I have pondered myself. The best solution I have come up with is that there has to be a "baby", but maternal energy can be sublimated in a self-aware fashion towards other "bundles." First course of action being forthrightly taking on the responsibility for "mothering" yourself. IOW, engage in self-aware self-care rather than self-abuse/abnegation/neglect/indulgence. Real human mothers obviously exhibit authoritative behavior as well as purely loving care-taking behavior, but "meaning" occurs when you attach emotions to purpose. Once you have loved on you hard enough ( :lol: ), then you will naturally be better able to love on some "bundle" in your environment that doesn't necessarily have to be a human baby or anything like a baby, it could even "just" be an ideal like justice.

When my kids were babies, and I was totally fed up with being a mother because they were driving me crazy, I would purposefully choose to do something like give them a bath and dress them in clean pajamas. The act of caring renews the feeling of love, and the feeling of love inspires the act of caring. It is my belief that you will not have meaning in your life if you do not choose to engage in caring acts. IOW, I don't think that BRUTE literally ought to adopt a puppy, but he ought to do something like unto that. Other people, like maybe some of the economically-challenged mothers your wife works with, need to focus on limiting taking on or creating too much responsibility for caring for others before caring adequately for self. If I was the blue-haired matron Queen of the World, I would marry BRUTE off to one of the more self-aware members of the economically-challenged young mothers group, and thereby kill two birds with one stone. My friend who is worth something like $50,000,000 ended up adopting the illegitimate (not his) child of his long-time drug-addicted girlfriend after she turned 18 (he was already in his 70s.) It's going to end up happening one way or another, sooner or later, so it would be better if some intelligent design was applied earlier on.

IlliniDave
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Re: The Skills Necessary for Constant Reinvention

Post by IlliniDave »

Ego wrote:
IlliniDave wrote:Maybe the best approach is to strive to never change at all. "Change" implies some sort of anchoring in the past. Without the anchors we can be part of now without having to struggle.
I don't understand. In my mind, to not change is to be anchored. How is change anchoring?
To change you go from something to something else. The from gives an anchoring to the past, a reference point from which the change is measured. So you don't change, but at the same time you don't "not change". To use a popular expression, you just go with the flow, always. An unchanging state of constant change. :)

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Re: The Skills Necessary for Constant Reinvention

Post by IlliniDave »

7Wannabe5 wrote:
IlliniDave said: Disclaimer: Yes, I had a very melancholy October Sunday afternoon where I hid in a nearby nature preserve and watched the leaves fall one-by-one onto the river to drift with time and the flow away.
So, you were in your juvenile feminine energy relating to Nature as the adult feminine energy source. The ability to express feelings and allow yourself to experience them without instantly trying to "fix" them shows that you have strength in the juvenile feminine quadrant. Also indicates that you are likely artistic ...
...
...
...
Is it really that complicated? To me it was just sitting at the riverside and letting my mind clear.

RealPerson
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Re: The Skills Necessary for Constant Reinvention

Post by RealPerson »

Ego wrote:I've got a handful of high-status older friends who allow me into their circle, in part because they've come to recognize as they've gotten older that the quest for status is costly and pays diminishing dividends. It is difficult lesson to learn without actually experiencing it first hand. Maybe in the future sims will help to teach it without having to actually go through the environmentally damaging status seeking churn.
Totally agreed. It takes a toll to get to the top. Once you get there, the view is not a good as it seemed from below. How much one wants to stay at the top depends on personality and the amount of effort needed to stay there. This is where ERE has been really helpful to provide perspective for my previously unbridled ambition. My wife would even say I am more mellow now. :lol:
Ego wrote:Drones are instant masters. I would speculate that we are not far from a time when people will be terrified to be on the road with a human driver.
Drones don't carry people. If one crashes...oh well. I would not travel in a drone flown by an amateur.

Automobile drivers are not masters, unfortunately. They are an illustration of how 10,000 hours without a desire to master a skill still leaves a person an amateur. Because they are amateurs, technology such as driverless cars will be a huge improvement. If all drivers on the road were masters, driverless cars would be convenient but probably add little to road safety. I would personally love to have a driverless car.

@7W5. I had fun reading about the old men and new restaurants. I love trying out new restaurants, even though we rarely eat out. My wife won't go to a new place unless she has seen the reviews on Yelp, Tripadvisor, Google, etc. I never knew that makes her more masculine and me more feminine. :shock:

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Re: The Skills Necessary for Constant Reinvention

Post by BRUTE »

7Wannabe5 wrote:The word submissive has some unfortunate associations, so it might be better expressed as "ability to drop arrogance and rigid-power-structure/defenses, open-mind, offer respect, follow instruction, and, thereby, learn and grow." So, being submissive is like being vulnerable, except vulnerable is more in the emotional and sensual (feminine) realm of "being" and submission is more in the directed thought/behavior (masculine) realm of "doing."
very good thought, and it sounds a lot like Taleb's thoughts about stability - the option that's more "stable" in the short term is less "stable" in the long term. in the same way, being more "vulnerable" or "open" in the short term leads to more resilience/antifragility in the long term.

brute has learned this lesson with regards to "vulnerability" or "openness" many times. he thinks the true answer is Nihilism.

any kind of mental structure one adheres to is "closed mindedness", and will eventually fail. all of humans' ideals are merely calcified heuristics than worked well a few times and that they got attached to. "women belong in the kitchen", "a real man never cries", "never called in sick, ever", "it's unacceptable for the kids to scream in public", "three slaps on the back of the head will improve memory in any child" (actual thing a super old lady teacher in brute's school said at a PTA meeting^^), "good school, good university, good job", "life-long career", "a family sticks together", "girls like nice guys", "girls like assholes", "money is everything", "money isn't important", ..

these are all ideas, and they all worked for some humans for some time. but they will all fail for some humans at one point. Nihilism is the rejection of all ideas for their own sake. nothing is holy.

this is similar to the "change means anchored" thought expressed by IlliniDave earlier. the world "change" implies that there was something anchored, something held on to, something one "was" before one "changed".

He says that for many that meaning will come from drugs and video games.
check and check. problem? :)

7Wannabe5
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Re: The Skills Necessary for Constant Reinvention

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

IlliniDave said: Is it really that complicated? To me it was just sitting at the riverside and letting my mind clear.
All human behavior is very complex. No model, including the simple psychological model I find useful and/or amusing, can adequately encompass it.


RealPerson said: I had fun reading about the old men and new restaurants. I love trying out new restaurants, even though we rarely eat out. My wife won't go to a new place unless she has seen the reviews on Yelp, Tripadvisor, Google, etc. I never knew that makes her more masculine and me more feminine. :shock:
No. It makes her more adult and you more juvenile ;)

RealPerson
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Re: The Skills Necessary for Constant Reinvention

Post by RealPerson »

7Wannabe5 wrote:
RealPerson said: I had fun reading about the old men and new restaurants. I love trying out new restaurants, even though we rarely eat out. My wife won't go to a new place unless she has seen the reviews on Yelp, Tripadvisor, Google, etc. I never knew that makes her more masculine and me more feminine. :shock:
No. It makes her more adult and you more juvenile ;)
Love it!

7Wannabe5
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Re: The Skills Necessary for Constant Reinvention

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

@BRUTE
People who cling to paradigms (which means just about all of us) take one look at the spacious possibility that everything they think is guaranteed to be nonsense and pedal rapidly in the opposite direction. Surely there is no power, no control, no understanding, not even a reason for being, much less acting, embodied in the notion that there is no certainty in any world view. But, in fact, everyone who has manage to entertain that idea, for a moment or for a lifetime, has found it to be the basis for radical empowerment. If no paradigm is right, you can choose whatever one will help to achieve your purpose. If you have no idea where to get a purpose, you can listen to the universe.

Donella H. Meadows- "Thinking in Systems: A Primer"
Truth, purpose, and meaning are different animals. You can't examine a brain and decipher whether a human being is experiencing truth, but you can examine a brain and decipher whether a human being is experiencing meaning. The problem with easy paths, such as drugs and video games, to "meaning" is that they are more likely to quickly and frequently dump you into boredom and ennui or, obviously, have unfortunate side-effects, than the more complex paths. One reason why the practice of attempting to care for something that is complex, like a baby or social justice, lends itself to making your brain light up with meaning, is that it is impossible to master such a practice. That's why a devoted gardener will choose to suffer through yet another winter when she is 93 years old. She knows spring will come again, and with spring another opportunity to f*ck-up in grand fashion.

BRUTE
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Re: The Skills Necessary for Constant Reinvention

Post by BRUTE »

brute fails to see how building a more difficult hamster wheel for himself creates meaning.

7Wannabe5
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Re: The Skills Necessary for Constant Reinvention

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Green Eggs and Ham

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