The Education of Axel Heyst

Where are you and where are you going?
7Wannabe5
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

I very much like your graph, but I would note that in my experience there is more overlap/crossing of Aristocrat and Dirtbag than you indicate ( the realm of the Bohemian), so Middle Class is actually the most money intensive lifestyle.

AxelHeyst
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by AxelHeyst »

That makes sense... I think trying to put multiple lifestyle curves on one plot (even if I made the curves do what I was actually intending them to do) for a post with this audience in mind isn't a good idea.

By the way, this jumped out at me and I thought of you the other day:
Henry Miller wrote:Morally, spiritually, we are fettered. What have we achieved in mowing down mountain ranges, harnessing the energy of mighty rivers, or moving whole populations about like chess pieces, if we ourselves remain the same restless, miserable frustrated creatures we were before? To call such activity progress is utter delusion. We may succeed in altering the face of the earth until it is unrecognizable even to the creator, but if we are unaffected where lies the meaning?
Meaningful acts require no stir. When things are going to rack and ruin the most purposeful act may be to sit still.

7Wannabe5
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Lovely.

Qazwer
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by Qazwer »

Replacing like for like non consumer with a skill to consumer who buys the same thing produced by someone else all things equal would not change ecological impact.
The difference is that all things are not equal. The impact goes both ways. Large scale producers benefit from economies of scale. Large scale producers have knowledge to minimize waste to their profits. But ecological impact is usually not paid for and is simply an externality to the equation. More importantly, home skill production creates different things. Without access to heavy chemicals and systems, home made goods are likely to have less of an environmental impact.
But that is not always true. Look at 18th to 19th century urban living with streets full of excrement. Home lighting causing massive smoke etc.
I think there is something more about how the person chooses to apply their skills in a modern environment rather than just replacing trade. A lot of it is that the pendulum has swung too far away from do it yourself given current technology, people’s preferences and the structure of the economy.

Jin+Guice
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by Jin+Guice »

Responding to the work-ethic debate:

The two things I keep coming back to are 1) lens/ nested models/ level of focus and 2) our brainwashing by industrial consumerism.

Like most things "working" or "being productive" has been co-opted with certain connotations by industrial consumerism. I think most people would like to spend most of their waking hours doing something they feel actively engaged in that they feel passionate about, whether this is fixing their motorcycle, lying pregnant on a 1930s lawn or focusing on just existing in the present moment. However, if you can't decouple your mind from the cultural machine whose highest goal is to employ you producing/ selling plastic so that you can buy more plastic, then their going to sucker you with your ambition to spend your waking hours doing something you feel actively engaged in with people you enjoy. Our culture is very good at taking a want/ need and convincing us to do it in a way that benefits the plastic, while we lose sight of the original want/ need.

Being passionate isn't the problem, it's that "being passionate" gets funneled into doing a job that is mostly a boring waist of time that loosely resembles something adjacent to the thing you are passionate about. A very small percentage of people are aware/ lucky enough to game this system so that their job is doing something mostly interesting that is mostly what they like, and these people torture the rest of us who can never seem to manage. It's amazing how quickly we turn "being passionate" into learning a small skillset and then refocus on trying to make as much money as possible bc that is what marks success.

So the problem isn't work-ethic, it's the funneling of work-ethic into meaningless work that flies in the face of everything you believe in. One must do this to put bread on the table in the only way most of us were taught how. I was a huge slacker in HS, much for the same reasons that @RF said, though I wasn't self-aware enough to realize the reasons why. Once I had a little more autonomy, I became an achiever. Then I got burned out on that.

So, I think the idea of focusing on work-ethic misses the larger point. Don't be an excellent worker or have an excellent work ethic, be excellent. At a certain point being excellent will mean developing the ability to perform tasks that do not have immediate payoffs and "put in work." At another point being excellent will mean recognizing when you have to do some bullshit to get by and being really excellent at minimizing the damages caused to yourself by that need. IMO, you are probably not going to be excellent if you spend most of your waking hours minimizing damages, nor are you being excellent if you spend most of your life pursuing working as hard as you can.



Responding to getting the Green people:

I think the key to convincing most people is doing something they think is cool and then explaining how you do that at their appropriate WL. Most popular belief systems contain a large amount of internal contradiction and most people will agree with you when you say they right buzzwords.

"I wanted to work less because it gave me more time to work on projects which I am passionate about." "I wanted to work less bc I couldn't find fulfillment in paid-employment." "I wanted to work less bc my values did not align with those of my employer." "I wanted to work less to travel more." "I wanted to work less to work on myself." "I wanted to work less bc the capitalist pigs exploit my labor." "I wanted to work less bc taxation is immoral." "I wanted to work less to contribute to my community through volunteer work." It's often assumed that these things are mutually exclusive, but they are not.

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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by jacob »

AxelHeyst wrote:
Fri Oct 22, 2021 1:50 pm
I've had a strange few days with this. With this whole discussion in my head, I went back to the book to take (new) notes and get a good look at the whole elephant. My desired outcome was to be able to explain ERE concisely to friends for whom early retirement isn't an enticing carrot vector.

It took less than an hour for me to become convinced that I have no idea what the hell ERE actually is, and I've been "wrong" this entire time. What I think was happening was that my previous idea of what ERE "is" was my particular collapsed subsystem. When I went back to it, all of a sudden I could see how my previous idea didn't actually fit as the whole thing. In other words, I thought the elephant was a leg. And then I came back to the elephant, but I was seeing a big floppy ear. In my peripheral vision I could see a bit of leg, which was comforting, but this whole ear business was really confounding.
It's really cool watching your brain [processing] "evolve" in real time at such a rapid clip. After reading more (like Roamingfrancis),
I think I know what's happening and may possible have the words to describe it. I think what you're trying to do is to argue ERE (or holistic/systems-thinking) in a rationalist manner. This is also what I tried to do when writing the book. However, this is really like speaking a second language compared to what's actually going on in the brain (it's more than the brain, really, see swordfighting adventures, etc. but that's a tangent besides the immediate point...). Holistic thinking looks more like this https://psychology.wikia.org/wiki/Vision-logic ... in which you do see the entire elephant (albeit in somewhat of a fog). However, since there's no word for "elephant", when describing the elephant one has to start "somewhere" and this is the hardest part: Trying to narrate complex perspective from an "intuitive glimpse". (I sometimes envy those NPs who have the entire narrative mapped out even if they don't seem to grasp the whole thing simultaneously!??).

To get there requires building perspective after perspective after perspective (which if what you're doing now)... until you have so many that they're beginning to float together in a knowing way. It's the coordinate/create level of perspective-building. ~15 years in physics gave me lots of time to practice this. Not all physicists do it this way though. A key point for me was the extremely lucky incidence of picking up a "general book" early that emphasized to "look for similarities" rather than "look for differences". The latter is the usual way to proceed. As such I got almost a full 15 years of experience looking for similarities instead of differences. That is .. integrating instead of differentiating.

I think this is the way to go. It does require translating (more of the same) more rationalizations before using this insight to realize that rationalism is not the way out of rationalism. (It is only the way out of faith as an operational mode.)

Anyway, I might be wrong about this...

RoamingFrancis
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by RoamingFrancis »

For what it's worth, I have noticed my cognition shifting more and more towards symbols and images rather than words. Not quite the vision-logic that Wilber describes but certainly a shift in cognition.

Note on the German - Wilber is using vision-logic as a translation of Vernunft, as used by German idealists. In most other contexts I have seen this translated as "reason," including Kant's Kritik der reinen Vernunft/Critique of Pure Reason

@jacob when did you get into Wilber, psycology, cognitive science stuff? Some point post-retirement I imagine?

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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by jacob »

RoamingFrancis wrote:
Tue Oct 26, 2021 11:39 am
Note on the German - Wilber is using vision-logic as a translation of Vernunft, as used by German idealists. In most other contexts I have seen this translated as "reason," including Kant's Kritik der reinen Vernunft/Critique of Pure Reason
I can't speak for the Germans, but the Danish word is "fornuft" but the meaning for Danes is closer to phronesis meaning "practical wisdom or sound judgment" which has nothing to do with vision-logic as far as I can tell lest one asserts that judgment (being a moral quality) does not follow from reason (being a logical quality) alone. However, I'm positive that during my "rational era" I was very much trying to derive practical action based on logic and values from first principles which was vernunftig from that perspective. (<- here reveling how I think of vernnuft as a meta-concept).
RoamingFrancis wrote:
Tue Oct 26, 2021 11:39 am
@jacob when did you get into Wilber, psycology, cognitive science stuff? Some point post-retirement I imagine?
Cognitive science when I was 18-20 and figured the answer to understanding humans laid in reductionism. Psychology (almost exclusively personality psychology; I still know relatively little about pathological psychology, I had to ask Limberg what "shadowplay" was for example :-P ) at 21-25. Wilber, SD, and integral theory only since 2021, this year. It's interesting how I was introduced to Wilber when I was 26 or so. "You should read this. I think you'll like it. You sound like you're Yellow" while I proceeded to dismiss it almost immediately as a bunch of woo ("don't tell a physicist that your mind is resonating with other colors on an electromagnetic spectrum") returning to my readings of Ayn Rand and Ludwig von Mises. Quite cringeworthy in retrospect. What a missed opportunity.)

My thinking has been in the form of images and diagrams(*) for a long time (it's very visual(%)). Consequentially my "inner voice" or "inner narrator" is almost silent. I don't have a constant voice in my head except when communicating. I don't do my thinking in words. This unfortunately almost makes writing and speaking a word of labor in that I don't use words to process thinking like someone may be "thinking aloud". Rather I use words to describe what I'm thinking. The transition started happening around age 21-23 or so. Before that I had a constant blabber/conversation going on internally at all times. Instead I now have a constant attempt to create ever more maps of the territory.

(*) Also means I don't suffer the apparently common barrier of thinking in language terms where nearly every word has an antonym delineating a sharp boundary between them. E.g. black/white, wet/dry, here/there, ... I'm very comfortable with fuzziness and full-range except when trying to translate it into words.

(%) Although I'm apparently quite below average in terms of seeing an image internally (I forget what the term is). I only do this well when dreaming (I can do lucid dreaming for very short periods of time usually waking up or losing it shortly after "I" realize what's going on.) So what I have is really the "diagramming" of concepts.

RoamingFrancis
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by RoamingFrancis »

Lol, having a libertarian streak in you certainly makes sense.

I'm new to Wilber (read The Integral Vision and done his intro online course) but am really digging his writing. Do you still think some parts of his thinking are woo? How do you navigate his explicit belief in Spirit?

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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by jacob »

RoamingFrancis wrote:
Tue Oct 26, 2021 6:07 pm
I'm new to Wilber (read The Integral Vision and done his intro online course) but am really digging his writing. Do you still think some parts of his thinking are woo? How do you navigate his explicit belief in Spirit?
No, I'm a convert. (I'll still submit that using electromagnetic vernacular/analogies one something that is not electromagnetic in nature is a bad idea. Now I understand it was meant figuratively but 20 years ago I thought it was meant literally ... as many in the woo-business do.) I have no problem with believing in a kind of creative or creating spirit and its involution into physical laws, etc. that is, everything has a consciousness (wooooooo...) it's just that more complex systems (such as human brains) have more consciousness than very simple systems (such as rocks or atoms). This simpler consciousness manifests as physical laws, e.g. quantum mechanics. This belief aligns the subjective with the objective without contradicting it as far as I can see. It also makes it possible to push a bit beyond instrumentalism.

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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by RoamingFrancis »

Cool :) excited to see where this goes for you

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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by figmenter »

jacob wrote:
Wed Oct 27, 2021 7:12 am
This simpler consciousness manifests as physical laws, e.g. quantum mechanics. This belief aligns the subjective with the objective without contradicting it as far as I can see.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2zokTZXIPQ

This interview with Dr. Stuart Hameroff touches on these same notions.

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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by AxelHeyst »

October Renaissance Report
This was my last month at @mooretrees’ place, helping out with their bus build. It was overall an overwhelmingly positive experience. We joked that it was the First Popup ERE Community experiment. We also learned about the ERE friend effect: after I arrived, apparently her electric bill went ‘down’. We assume this is because everyone (myself included) were on best low-consumption behavior as a result of peer pressure to conform to in-group values. Imagine if we had a whole gang of us together…

Image

On Thursday the 28th I loaded up my bike to ride 600 miles south to rendezvous with DGF in Tahoe. I got 100mi before the oil drain plug fell out. :/ Someone with a cargo trailer picked me up within an hour and dropped me back off at Mooretrees’. With a new plug and filled with oil, the bike would turn over (good, not siezed) but not start.

I called up DGF and asked her, precisely, how much she loved me. Turns out quite a lot. She drove my truck up the 600mi, we chilled for a day, then we drove 600mi back south the next.

I’m now enjoying cohabitating with DGF again in a small house she’s renting from a friend in Tahoe. We’ll be here for a few weeks then head south to the family land for our Winter Quarters, with further builds and projects planned. Here's a teaser for one:
Image

Economic
October came in at 0.8jafi actual expenses, 1.04jafi "lifestyle" CoL, and that includes the unforeseen expense of having DGF drive 600mi to "rescue" me when my moto broke and then is driving 600mi back down south (I paid for her fuel to come get me of course). My TTM Lifestyle CoL (which includes annual expenses like truck insurance and registration) is now down to 1.4.

Image

Interestingly, if I were to get rid of my truck and somehow be able to not spend money for shelter still, I'd be pretty close to the 4%SWR zone.

Since we're back to thinking we'll do the RTW trip starting next March, it's unlikely I'll be doing any land purchases next year. I have a chunk of post-tax money that was earmarked for land purchase that is now just burning a hole in a savings account. I ought to do something less stupid with it. The most obvious move is to just fold it in to my PP and readjust positions accordingly, which is what I'll likely do. It’s not clear to me that SHV or equivalent is any better than a savings account right now. I might need to do another burst of self education so I can attempt to parse wtf is going on with current macro economic trends. I don’t understand the concepts well enough from books written 5+ years ago to apply them to today. Those podcasts that were recommended earlier might help.

DGF is here in Tahoe picking up nanny and housecleaning gigs. She’s clearing $50/hr for one job, but averages between 35-45. She works the jobs she wants and says no to the ones she doesn’t. She’s also preparing art cards for sale that she typically does around the holiday season. She’s basically semiERE AF and has really started to internalize the ERE mindset wrt expenses. For her the primary carrot vectors are freedom-to be able to make her art and crafts, and have a low ecological footprint. Having her so enthusiastically on board is amazing. She is struggling with friendships because she’s going through the n+2 barrier with her friends (with both ERE and psychological development, as she’s been doing a lot of internal work the past two years).

Intellectual
[All the discussions going on in my journal and the ere2 forum.]

Physiological
I’m doing the Reddit /bodyweight Recommended Routine 3x/wk, and it is feeling like something I can maintain consistency with. On rest days I do extra stretching, yoga, and foam rolling for my super tight hips (gluteus medius mostly, it seems).

There’s a great 1mi walk with several hundred feet of vert behind the house we’re staying at, topping out with a view of the whole lake. We do it most days.

My ankles and back continue to prefer that I wear my vibrams (and focus on maintaining good walking posture with sacrum tucked down, etc). Vibrams obviously aren’t great in winter. I found instructions for constructing winter moccasins, which I plan to attempt to make by mid December or so. Hopefully they’ll keep my feet warm but allow the barefoot walking mechanics.

Technical
Well, my moto’s busted, maybe significantly. Good! Now I can learn moto mechanics. I knew I’d never learn until it broke and I had to fix it. Once I get it to the family land I’ll take a serious look at it.

I started mending an old pair of jeans that had massive knee holes and a few other holes, according to this method. DGF has her book Mending Matters. I’m really enjoying it and am planning further seeing projects.

My first small mend:
Image
Currently working on the massive knee patches.

This is part of an effort to cultivate high quality analog leisure activities, develop useful skills, give my brain something to do that doesn’t involve screens or obsessing about ere theory (I need a break every once in a while), and do creative stuff. The Renaissance ideal, digital minimalism, and The Deep Life all smooshing together into a singular theme for me.

Social
I got to meet a lurker friend of Mooretrees! That was cool. Also another forumite. I'm up to 5 forumites and a lurker met in meatspace. Going for a high score (what is the high score I wonder?).

Ecological
This also fits under 'social': I cold contacted an ecological designer/builder I'm inspired by, and got a response. Hopefully it turns into a longer conversation, but I'm also trying to develop a better practice of building relationships with people I'm inspired by and would jump at the opportunity to get involved in projects with.

Emotional
Coffee makes me happier and more pleasant. Switching to tea even makes me taciturn. It’s possible that I’d return to my normal sunny self if I gave it a month or so, but I’m not sure I want to try it.

I got some good advice from folks earlier this month on how to not get upset by other people. The truth is, allowing myself to get upset at other people *is* the emotional growth opportunity here for me. I’m a tai chi master at never ever getting upset. And it has some serious drawbacks (volcano patience, for one). Sometimes getting righteously pissed and telling people off is the appropriate thing to do, and I’m not well practiced at it.
Last edited by AxelHeyst on Fri Nov 05, 2021 4:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.

AxelHeyst
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by AxelHeyst »

Miss Lonelyhearts wrote:
Fri Oct 29, 2021 1:35 pm
One must internalize the Green critique! The Green critique is/will be different from Blue “everyone must work” and Orange “guess you couldn’t hack it, buddy?” My guess is it’s more in line with, “that level of independence sounds appealing to me, but I’m concerned that to achieve it I’ll have to reduce my commitment to The Work,” whatever that individual’s Work is. To succeed you’ll have to show that the Work can be carried out with equal or greater efficacy under the ERE framework. Insofar as this is true (and I think it is), this should be an easy sell. But it also entails leaving behind part of the Green identity (losing the martyr complex and cultivating greater detachment).
Pulling this in here from the Green origins thread. That bold bit totally nailed what I was trying to articulate up-journal a bit as the issue with why many in my peer group aren't enticed by the RE carrot. Having this framing knocked loose the following:
----
I think the biggest reason not to pursue ERE (or FIRE, or even voluntary simplicity) for [some] is that it seems like a distraction from The Work.

Many people are motivated to pursue their careers not because they want more money or status, but because they are genuinely devoted to The Work.

The Work is unique to every individual, for me and a lot of my friends it has a lot to do with Climate Change, resource scarcity, environmental toxicity, and the like. Others may be focused on social justice issues, or education, or whatever.

To people who are motivated strongly by a sense of purpose, anything with the word “retirement” in it comes off as irrelevant at best, unethically self-indulgent at worst. I want to convince you of two things in this post:

First, most people who pursue early retirement are probably doing the world a favor, so let them be - they're probably allies of a sort.
The overwhelmingly common experience of work is that it’s a bullshit job, with psychopathic bosses, cranking out widgets that probably ought not be made anyways, in a byzantine and dysfunctional organization that is beyond any hope of reform. These jobs are sucking the very souls out of those unfortunate enough to have them, but no good alternatives are obvious. There probably aren’t enough worthy jobs to go around - not everyone is fortunate enough to be a creative designer of deep green whateverthefucks for Earnest Genuine World-Betterers LLC.

Buckminster Fuller once calculated that the world and society would probably be better off if some large percentage of the work force were simply paid to not work, because the resource consumption associated with commuting to work, maintaining offices, and the production of whatever it was they were doing, wasn’t actually a net positive to society.

In other words, there are a bunch of jobs out there that literally aren’t worth doing. It’s unlikely that people working these jobs are going to get paid to quit, so instead their next best option is to reduce their expenses, save up a bunch of money, and retire after 5-10 years of white knuckling through their BS jobs.

I’m not saying that’s an *ideal* scenario, but it’s certainly a reasonable strategy for people in that circumstance. The takeaway here for people who are committed to The Work is that people who choose to retire early are likely a kind of ally to whatever it is you’re trying to accomplish. For example, the “secret ulterior motive” of both Jacob (ERE) and Mr Money Mustache is to get the middle class to reduce their ecological footprint, in addition to having better lives.

[Also, cite Depletion and Abundance, Sharon Astyk, pg. 69, about how 'make work' circularly prohibits people from living better and more integrated lives.]

Second, the practice of ERE, specifically the Renaissance Ideal of being broadly skilled, financially independent, and resilient, almost certainly should be thought of as a crucial component of Your Work.
Years ago, when I first came across ERE, I basically said “no thanks, too busy doing The Work.”

After almost two years of going down the rabbit hole of ERE, I see that what I’m learning — and UNlearning — is folding into My Work in a huge way.

I see ERE as The Work at the private, inward-focused scale. One’s career (however creatively one wants to define it) is The Work at the public, outward-focused scale. They balance and inform each other in a really powerful way.

Imagine being an uber-green and sustainable architect, but you live in a drafty McMansion with formaldehyde coated furnishings, weak-sauce insulation, and an oil-burner furnace. That’s a hefty cognitive dissonance that will create tension in your professional and personal life. Few people who are into sustainability (say) professionally will tolerate that extreme of a dissonance, of course, but a lot of professionals have their personal lives aligned only at a superficial level. That was certainly true in my case.

A key here is that ERE is about much more than some frugality hacks. It’s ultimately about changing how you think, from a linear cause-and-effect mentality to a systems-thinking, complex and loosely coupled mentality. Your own life is the best sandbox to develop this kind of thinking because you don’t have to convince anyone else to tinker with it (well, except for spouses, but that’s a whole ‘nother series of posts), feedback is quick, and failure is cheap.

Another big deal here is that the more financially independent you become, the less beholden to The Hand That Feeds you are. If a project is pushing the boundaries of what you’re ethically comfortable doing, it’s much easier to refuse [link to the perturbation of refusal] if you have 10, 20, or 30 years of living expenses saved, than if you rely on each paycheck to cover your bills. More grandly, you’ll be freer to pursue wilder ideas, take time to really think over what the best way to approach The Work is.

Modern work is rife with what Cal Newport calls the frenzied ad hoc hive mind approach to getting work done. It’s great for looking busy, but it’s terrible for getting deep thinking done, and we live in times that call desperately for some good, hard, deep thinking. The less beholden you are to swimming through such turbid waters, the more you’ll be able to take a breather and get a solid perspective on things. This could take the form of sabbaticals, long breaks in between employment, breaking off to do your own thing (since you’ll have a long personal runway), or just simply being able to take a less frantic approach to work because you don’t *need* the money.

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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by jacob »

To add a few bits, paraphrase somewhat, or perhaps just demonstrate my lack of reading comprehension by repeating:

Every color has some idea of what "The Work" is. For Orange, it's advancing their personal career. A great(ly ironic) example is how the supposedly enlightened officers of the 1980s Startrek:The Next Generation are still sacrificing everything for their careers. For Blue, it's serving God or whatever is at the top of the hierarchy, e.g. the nation as seen in "Thank you for your service". Orange serves themselves. For Green, it's about advancing and including everybody as they are. The 'Green Work' is increasing social equity which maximizes when inequality is low. Conversely, Blue and Orange strive for inequality at either a collective or an individual level.

So a "you're not your khakis speech" could go like:
You are not your service to your hierarchy. (anti-Blue)
You are not your success in the hierarchy. (anti-Orange)
You are not your service to your community (anti-Green)
You are not your success in [integrating] your communities (anti-Yellow)
You're the all-singing...

People will strenuously object to having the personal values that define their identity/entire way of thinking peeled away.

So the solution is found at the next level but only after one has experienced deep discomfort at the present level and eventually questioned deeply held values.

In each case, the approach seems to be one of "look, you've been failing with your current approach for so many years now, ... now, here's where you can take the methods you already know but direct them in an entirely new direction defined by different values". In other words, keep your technical skills, but adopt a new framework.

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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by AxelHeyst »

I think I was trying to figure out how to convince people to consider/do ERE in a way that obviated the need for that crisis/disillusionment process. Probably (part of) what you meant upthread by saying that I was trying to come up with a rationalistic argument for ERE. Your "not your khakis' categories are great, and helps articulate why my attempt to run around crisis is a dead end.

Bringing in the DVP>C framework, trying to boot people into that crisis is pushing the Dissatisfaction button. But there's a fine ethical line between pointing out the largely obvious, and trying to push people into the mudpit of despair.

There's probably lots of folks who have plenty of dissatisfaction, but lack the V and P (heh) to do anything with it, so they're 'stuck' in a cycle of pushing down/denying the bald-faced facts of their Dissatisfactions. This describes my experience well. It was mostly pure luck that I got into ERE at a point when I was receptive to a solid P and V (hehe). So maybe a productive way for me to think about this is to assume that there's enough dissatisfaction out there (covid, great resignation, the Western Fires, COP26, etc) that it's not necessary or useful for me to add much to that, and focus on providing example of vision and plan that is relevant to these minded folks. This:
jacob wrote:
Fri Nov 05, 2021 5:02 pm
In each case, the approach seems to be one of "look, you've been failing with your current approach for so many years now, ... now, here's where you can take the methods you already know but direct them in an entirely new direction defined by different values". In other words, keep your technical skills, but adopt a new framework.

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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by AxelHeyst »

Project Analog
It occurred to me that there's a set of skills and skill-pursuit methods that makes sense while working FTE, and a different or marginally overlapping set of skills and methods that make sense when post-FTE, either RE or semiERE. This is purely a function of available time and energy, and is pretty obvious once you think about it, but I think there can be a disconnect when someone who is FTE sees someone who is either RE or semiERE pursuing skills in a certain way. Also, there is a switch in mental approach that needs to be got through when switching from one mode to the other, and not understanding what that switch consists of can cause issues and frustrations. I'm going through this figuring-out process right now, so I can't say anything more useful about it at the moment.

Somewhat relatedly, I still have an urgency hangover from FTE - and I haven't been FTE since July 2020. I'll be working on something - mending my jeans, for example - and after 45 minutes or so I'll get twitchy and feel an overwhelming sense of urgency to switch to something else, check comms, etc. Of course, I can't totally blame this on FTE - my relationship to digital tools is a big contributor here, despite a fair amount of work I've done on digital minimalism. All my attempts at mindfulness - both eastern and westerns forms of meditation - have gotten derailed sooner rather than later, with my last contact with the practice going something like standing up abruptly going "fuck this bullshit! I have shit to do!" and then I go off and fart around with a screen somehow. Oh, yeah, self? Is that the super important stuff you had to do that you didn't have time to sit and think about nothing for a whole ten damn minutes?

I'm tired of this squirrel energy (D).

And - there's a lot of stuff I want to do (V). I have a bucket of new sewing projects in mind, a cabin to build, various writing pursuits (including learning italic and Spencerian script with dip pen), physical exercise, outdoor adventures, friends to hang with, dishes to learn, alcoholic beverages to make, wood to chop, water to carry. When I look at my list of projects that stoke me out, very few of them require the use of any kind of screen. Those that do don't actually require a large portion of the time to be spent on a screen. Writing blog posts, for example, can be done longhand and then typed up and scheduled.

And the thing is, and this is a fact that I still have to remind myself of every once in a while, I can do whatever the hell I want. Actually yesterday I had this fantastic moment - I'd left north Tahoe that morning, dropped by my friend's land in the hills where they've got their shipping container house and had coffee with them, and then continued on through the central valley en route to my shipping container build. There was an inversion layer and the foothills were in thick fog, visibility <200m. And all of a sudden the condition of my autonomy, curiosity, initiative, sense of adventure and exploration, and risk and consequence in the world sort of cohered in my mind and I realized that I was free in this really amazing and dangerous-feeling way, somewhat like that sense you get when in a RPG and you can wander around and do anything and you know there are Quests and Storyline behind every rock and in every tavern. Except in this sensation I was having there's the conscious knowledge that I can die, or hurt other people on accident or on purpose, and in this moment that risk/danger made it so much richer and worth experiencing and letting myself exist within.

....and screens make me blind to that magic. Maybe that means I'm weak-willed, but I'm fine with the explanation that the world's richest corporations are filled with the world's smartest people, and their one job is to pwn the shit out of my attention so they can sell it to other companies that want to buy their stuff. An incidental effect of this is that I forget that the world is full of magic. They're not trying to disenchant my experience of reality, but it is what is happening.

So I'm designing an experiment, Project Analog (P). It's very much like Cal Newport's suggestion in Digital Minimalism, but it goes a bit further since I'm semiERE and have more freedom. For a month (for starters) I'm going to not have anything to do with screens (computer, phone, tablet, tv) except for one day a week. On that day I can use the computer however I like between first light and sunset. I still want to be able to post here, to my blog, update my spreadsheet, check email, intake news and tutorials, etc. During the rest of the days, I won't even use a screen to check the time or as an alarm. I'll have to figure something else out.

The idea isn't to "take a break". It's to attempt to rewire the way my brain works and how I experience reality. The first month is about information gathering - I might tweak the rules after a month, keep it the same, or change it entirely.

The biggest sources of friction or potential failure I see (C) are 1) the viz studio work, 2) setting up meets with friends, 3) Designing builds, since I think in 3d modeling programs, and 4) Getting tutorials and reference information. I'm going to leave the house phone number with my business partner and friends so they can get a hold of me. The other points I'm just going to have to figure it out.

2Birds1Stone
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by 2Birds1Stone »

Really interested to see how this goes for you. Killing screen time is one of the first projects for DW and I next year. Last year, whilst traveling we experimented with not having any cell/data connection on our phones in Portugal and after a few days you got used to the fact that if you pulled out your phone to impulsively check FB, news, weather, stock performance, there was no new information to be had! And that impulse to reach into the pocket subsided completely!

Maybe getting an old school flip phone without internet access would be a good compromise so you're not completely unreachable or have a way to reach others in an emergency outside of the house?

theanimal
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by theanimal »

I’m also really interested. Id like to do something similar myself but I don’t think as extreme to start. I do wonder how you’ll be able to connect with others. A flip phone like 2B1S suggested might be the ticket. You can still call others if need be but all the addictive aspects of a smartphone are lacking.

Salathor
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Re: The Education of Axel Heyst

Post by Salathor »

Let us know how it goes! I'm far from a digital minimalist, although there are some things that I avoid entirely (social media other than this forum, etc.). That said, since quitting in October I have noticed my computer use time is probably down by ~6-7 hours per day, which is quite nice. I still play video games, use the computer to write fiction, etc., but I did all those things before too AND was on the computer for 8 hours a day at work. It feels a lot better to be going this way than vice versa.

I'll be curious to hear whether, at the end of the experiment, you feel like you have gained something or if it just an alternative option (ie., something neat to try but you don't really feel better for it). Good luck!

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