Life on the curve

What I Would Write

micah — Thu, 31 Dec 2015 16:09:43 +0000

Right now, my mind is a flurry of thoughts, ideas, and questions. This is typical for me, at this time of year, when there’s downtime, when everything is nominally starting over, when I’m reconnecting with my family, and resetting my expectations about life along the way.

With my family, that reset is usually in the direction of the surreal. My grip on conventional reality is loosened, and I start to imagine fresh new possibilities and ways of living.

I had another reset recently, on a speaking trip to Nigeria — fifteen hours of flight time each way, and a world both hauntingly familiar and uniquely alien on the other side.

Through all of this, one of the questions that has been haunting me is: if I had unlimited time to write, what would I write about?

The answer would surely have to include the thing that provoked the question in the first place—the sense that life is open-ended, that the world is full of untapped possibility. To tap into that sense, I turn to my favorite subjects: religion, science fiction, imagination, story-telling, technology, and space travel.

For me, these subjects all point to something about life itself: that it is constantly unfolding, that it wants to be free, that it is gnarly and diverse and unpredictable, rather than secure and stable and constrained. This is, in fact, what we mean by life. The opposite of these things is stagnation, and the ultimate form of stagnation is death.

To choose life is to choose improvisation. To choose life is to choose to face new challenges, and to be provoked to create new solutions to them.

There are many ways we can shirk that responsibility, draw back from the edge, retreat into our fortresses and hovels and holes. If we do that for too long, we end up in a kind of living death, having traded in possibility for security, and opportunity for stasis.

Ultimately, this is a fool’s bargain, because the only real security is in actually living, and for the person who prioritizes security—even what they have is eventually taken from them.

Given life’s bias towards improvisation, the skills we most need in this world seem to be things like play, and imagination, and creativity. This is where science fiction and story-telling and space travel come into play. These are the tools we use to fire up our imaginations, to ignite our creativity, to remind us of the possibilities of new worlds. We need these things, now more than ever.

But if play is important, so are games. One of the best descriptions of life I have ever encountered is the concept of finite and infinite games. Finite games you play to win. Infinite games you play to keep playing. Football is a finite game, while dress-up is an infinite one. ‘Run for President’ is a finite game, while ‘Write books’ is an infinite one.

Of course, life itself is the most infinite game of all.

If we think of life as an infinite game, where our ultimate objective is to keep playing, keep including new people, keep making it more and more fun for everyone — then we’re suddenly in the domain of religion. That, I would argue, is what religion really is: a focus on life at the largest scales, at the most extreme reaches we can imagine.

At these scales, we can only speak in images and metaphor. At these scales, we can only point and hypothesize.

So, of course religion and science aren’t quite on the same page right now. Science helps us see the next few steps ahead. Religion asks us to lift up our eyes to the hills…to the stars…to whatever’s beyond that.

In the gospels, someone asks Jesus what must I do to inherit eternal life? We might also ask, what must we do to play the infinite game?

I think the answer to both of these questions is the same. One of the ways Jesus expresses that answer is this: become like a little child.

Learn to play. Learn to see reality as open-ended. Remind ourselves of other worlds. Dream and imagine and create.

That’s what I think I want to write about. It’s a new year. It’s time to blow the roof off of reality, roll up our sleeves, and get busy playing.

Against Consumerism

micah — Mon, 23 Mar 2015 04:41:34 +0000

I’ve written before about my love for Iron Man 3. In it, Tony Stark faces the hard question of personal identity. Who is he? Who is Iron Man?

At first glance, the answer would seem to revolve around his suit. Iron Man is the guy who wears the super-powered outfit — so as Tony’s anxiety escalates, he surrounds himself with more and more suits, gradually walling himself inside a fortress of armor.

But this is not the truth. As all of these suits are stripped away, Stark finds himself solving problems with creativity, ingenuity, and effort. In that, he finds his real identity: he is the mechanic, the one who creates.

This resolution isn’t the rejection of his technology, it is the recognition that the process of creation — not the artifact — is the substance of what technology and humanity is about. Instead of finding solace in the artifacts he has created, he finds solace in his ability to continue to create and transform.

This is also a core idea of the brilliant Lego Movie. For the Lego people, the essence of heroism is not about holding onto things which can make them safe, it is about learning to see the world as a platform for creativity and play and construction. The moment of enlightenment in the movie is the realization that all of life is play — that all things are constructable and may be transformed.

In that direction lies freedom. In the other direction lies consumerism.

When it comes to technology, our society seems to be caught in a dilemma. On the one hand, we have cheerleaders for the latest gadget, seeing technological advancement as a matter of fashion and lifestyle. Their engagement with technology is about waiting for a larger screen, a glitzier watch band, a sleeker profile. On the other hand, we have the reactionaries who fear that every new thing threatens their humanity. Their engagement with technology consists of looking for something to fear or protest.

These two responses — consumerism and reactionism — are both incredibly unhealthy. Instead of seeing technology as an outgrowth of our humanity, they approach technology as something alien and foreign to us. As such, they cannot engage with it in any meaningful way. They are living like Tony Stark, walling themselves inside a fortress of technological artifacts.

I suspect that consumerism is responsible for widespread ennui, depression, and disengagement. It is an answer which does not satisfy.

But neither does reactionism. Going to the woods only satisfies if it provides the opportunity to chop our own wood, to fell our own trees, to hunt for our own food. In other words, it only satisfies if it gives us the opportunity to engage in technological work and creation.

Few reactionaries make it that far. Instead, they retreat to an artificially constructed world of technological remnants from a different era. Perhaps they use books instead of ebooks, maybe they use TVs instead of computer screens. This is no different than consumerism of a different kind — the operation of fashion and lifestyle choices in a more unusual and self-deceptive way.

Those who have truly gone to the woods — like Kevin Kelly, like many of the Amish — know the value of technology, and know the joy of technological creation. They do not seek to consume, they seek to produce. They do not seek lifestyle, they seek creation.

What is Technology?

micah — Fri, 13 Mar 2015 05:16:02 +0000

A few days ago, I published an essay attempting to explain and define transhumanism. At root, I said, transhumanism is the idea that we can make things better.

One comment suggested that I should add an important qualifier: transhumanism is the idea that we can make things better through science and technology.

I agree that this is the main distinguishing factor of modern transhumanism. In fact, when we encounter older transhumanisms, or expressions of transhumanism not focused on technology, we usually think of them as religions. There are some groups of people today, for example, who believe they can make the world better through mysticism. There are others who believe they can make the world better through politics. Transhumanists are usually thought of as the people who focus on making the world better through technology.

So let’s accept this definition. Transhumanism is about making the world better through technology. But what is technology?

In his book What Technology Wants, Kevin Kelley coins the idea of “the technium”. The technium, he says, is the complete ecosystem of things which have physical presence, and yet which trace their roots to the mind of man.

This includes planes, trains, and automobiles, but it also includes every piece of art ever created, every book ever written, every song ever composed. It includes spoken language, the alphabet, the American justice system, the suit and tie, corporate board meetings, agriculture, farms, fireplaces, Christmas, graffiti, the banana, corn, the poodle, punk rock, treehouses, roads, rope, stories, the Magna Carta, numerals, and the metric system.

All of these things are technology, because they were all created through the application of ingenuity and effort. They began as concepts, creative ideas in human minds, and then spread into the world as physical entities taking shape and shaping their surroundings.

Sometimes, technology is thought of as the application of science. But in actuality, science itself is a technology, a tool which allows us to harvest knowledge from the world, and refine it into comprehensible forms.

Even organized religion, in this broad sense, is a technology. It has buildings and meeting times, mechanisms for communicating important information, songs and sayings, a shared culture, bulletins and church signs and books. It makes use of air travel and roadways to spread the message, it makes use of microphones and meeting halls to keep the community feeling in sync.

Technology is not something new, certainly not something foreign. It is intrinsic to who we are as human beings. We are inventors and builders, we create things.

If you set an ant down in the forest, it will construct an anthill. If you set a human down in the forest, it will begin to construct a technological civilization. It will start with fire, move to shelter, clothing, and then art. Soon it will have built weapons and gardening implements, and begun construction of a small farm. Give it a few generations, and it will have built a village, or even a city. Very quickly, these human beings will be writing music, history, and philosophy — and most of all, telling stories.

Stories are perhaps the most important technology of all. They imagine alternate worlds, alternate choices, alternate possibilities. They invite us to experience the world through other eyes and other hands. They compel us to step outside of ourselves, and contemplate how things could be different. They give us a sense of past, a sense of present, a sense of future. They create loyalty and honor and courage.

Stories are the engine of human change. Stories are the fuel of our ongoing development. Without stories, we would not be human in any recognizable sense. Without stories, we would not be able to shape our world.

So technology is not the shiny new Apple watch. Technology is not the internet or your laptop computer. Technology is the set of things we have created, the work we have done, the ingenuity we have applied to the world around us. Or, to sum it up:

Technology is every technique, method, or system created by the human mind in order to make the world better.

Spaceships & Christmas

micah — Sun, 21 Dec 2014 03:43:26 +0000

For some reason, I’ve always associated space exploration with Christmas.

No, I don’t think it’s because of that movie Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. I think it’s deeper, going back to something elemental in my childhood brain.

As a kid, I was an idealist. When I learned that there were poor people, I thought we should give them money. When I imagined growing up, I pictured opening a grocery store where everything was free. And when I learned that we were trapped by earth’s gravity, I thought that we should build rockets.

I was always trying to invent things. At age 3, I was trying to build forts and airplanes. At age 5, I was trying to build robots and time machines. I didn’t have any doubt that these were things we could do — I knew it was just a matter of time.

And so when I heard about black holes, I knew that they were out there. And when I learned about the Theory of Relativity, I had no trouble believing it. And when adults cautioned me that they really weren’t sure about any of this yet, I thought that they were quite silly. Of course there were black holes. Of course time dilation was possible. Of course the universe was massive and ripe for exploration.

For me — in my innocence and idealism and naiveté — inventing new technologies and exploring the universe was the most obvious thing in the world.

As a society, we tend to be much more cynical. We worry much more about practicality and pragmatism. We are concerned that big aspirations point to some sort of psychological deficit. We’re like the Freudian psychologist in Miracle on 34th Street: desperately trying to diagnose all the happiness and optimism as some sort of repressed trauma.

This is why I am so inescapably Christian. And why I resonate so deeply with transhumanism. Because in them, we celebrate this idealism. We celebrate this naiveté. We look upon the universe with childlike innocence, and see a glorious place to explore.

And that, really, is what Christmas is about. It’s the time that our society sets aside to celebrate the naive, and to indulge our idealism. It’s the time we dare to dream great dreams, and make big wishes, and sing audacious songs about a radically better future.

And when we decorate our Christmas trees, is it any wonder that we string them with twinkling lights, and point them towards the stars?

Medium vs Message

micah — Mon, 20 Oct 2014 00:48:03 +0000

For me, there is a deep philosophical conflict that runs underneath everything I do and think. It makes me constantly question and measure and analyze — holding everything I’m doing up to inspection, trying to figure out how it matches to the two different impulses that battle for my soul.

The first impulse, maybe my deepest impulse, is to be a purist and an idealist. That means being a revolutionary, being willing to forsake my friends and my family and my society, and run headlong into the future. This is the side of me that is drawn towards the Anabaptists, the pioneers of non-violent resistance, the anarchists and the rock musicians, the vegetarians and the libertarians and the poets of whom the world was not worthy. This is the side that leans towards gnosticism, that wishes to escape the body, that sees itself as living in the Matrix, battling for freedom against the illusions that control.

The second impulse is to embrace the world. This means seeing the intense wisdom in the things that are, understanding them as manifestations of a deep order, embracing a sort of conservatism and orthodoxy that values the traditions and rituals of society, the customs and values layered on over time, the real value of family and friendships and childhood and marriage and organic, earthy, rhythmic life. This is the impulse to build on what is here; it is the impulse to invest in business, to be involved in local politics, to compromise my ideals, to buy organic and grass-fed and fair-trade, to own bluegrass music and the newest iPhone. This is the side of me that is drawn towards Judaism and Eastern Orthodoxy, that wishes to embrace the body, to extend life into the hundreds of years, to dabble in power, pursue influence, and own land.

The second impulse comes to me by way of a wonderful childhood. A large, energetic and creative family, adventures all across the country, an ancestry full of people who liked to invent things and dreamed of making rockets. It also comes to me by way of books: the very act of reading draws me into the physical world and the way things are.

And yet, the things that drive the second impulse also drive the first. My big family has mostly held to a religious tradition that I regard as entirely radical and revolutionary. I was taught to think for myself — my informal religious education was on the need to abandon the customs of society, culture, and family, and to strike out on my own. Books too, whose very heft seemed to draw me towards materiality, usually held stories of the call to leave behind the known in favor of the unknown. As a child, I felt the pressure of these award-winning children’s books — a pressure that told me I must abandon family to seek out new family, that my childhood world was an illusion that must be overthrown.

It was as if the medium was telling me one thing, and the message was telling me another. The medium of family told me to hold on to family and heritage and tradition — but the message of my family told me to think for myself, to strike out on my own, to discard inherited ties and bonds. The medium of books told me to hold on to culture and heritage and education — but the message of books told me to abandon it all in favor of my own radical ideals.

Maybe it’s this tension and churn that keeps the whole thing viable. Maybe it’s the paradox of this whole situation that makes it work. But it’s not a tension that resolves cleanly. It doesn’t wrap up neatly at all. Somehow, somewhere, these two things make sense together, in the light of some bigger and more glorious impulse, and I’m always hunting and searching for what exactly that is.

Politics is Metaphysics

micah — Mon, 15 Sep 2014 03:46:44 +0000

I watched Atlas Shrugged last night. Not a great movie. Nevertheless, it was thought-provoking in several ways.

One might be forgiven for thinking that this movie was about politics. The cameo appearances from political pundits, the focus on government, regulation, and industry, the people who seemed to have supported its creation — all would seem to suggest that this is primarily a piece of political propaganda.

But it’s not. It’s metaphysical propaganda.

The core argument of the story — poorly told as it was — is that the essence of mankind is creative work. Further, that creative work can only happen when a person is completely free, and the best way to cultivate creative work is to focus entirely on your own self-interest.

That last bit is the part I’m most skeptical about, but we’ll come back to that. The main point — that mankind is, in essence, the creative worker — is a metaphysical claim, and all the politics in the story are really peripheral to it.

It occurs to me that this may be the case with most politics. Most political stories we see are not really about the mechanics of government or the legal system. Most of them are simply proxies for bigger questions that people are already fighting over. And many of these bigger questions ultimately connect up to subjects that border on the metaphysical: Are humans intrinsically good, socialized towards evil? Or are humans intrinsically evil, socialized towards good?

We’ve fought over these ideas for eons, and are still fighting them today. Only our expressions change.

I think about this kind of thing when I overhear political arguments that seem overblown or irrelevant to me. I remind myself: these people aren’t fighting about politics, they’re fighting about what it means to be human.

And given the significance of that subject — to everything from our understanding of the cosmos, to an individual’s ability to get through the workday — I’m not surprised they fight.

Aspirations

micah — Mon, 01 Sep 2014 04:06:17 +0000

I hear a lot about how our society sells us on consumerist wants, how magazines convince us we look ugly and need to look better, how car commercials make us lust after cars we don’t need, how our whole economy is premised on the empty ideal of keeping up with the Joneses.

This concept has even been extended to Facebook. Facebook, studies say, makes us unhappy by showing other people at their best. This makes us feel like our lives are worse than they are, and we become dissatisfied and unhappy.

I’m sure all this is true, and is a valid critique of our culture.

But there are few times when I’ve felt happier than when I had something big and ambitious to aspire to. In fact, one of my chief disappointments in growing older is that society hasn’t risen to the challenge of giving me new things to base my aspirations on.

Of course, the aspirations I picked up on weren’t things like “have a bigger house”, or “drive a nicer car”. They were more like, “be an epic swordsmen and start your own airline”, or “speak twelve languages and go rock-climbing on the weekends”.

In fact, after being drawn in by all the aspirational lifestyles the magazines were selling, one of the first aspirations I actually ever developed for myself was to be a magazine publisher.

These kinds of aspirations didn’t leave me dissatisfied with my life. Instead, because I knew I could jump in and work towards them, they gave me meaning and purpose, a sense of open-ended possibility, and a pulsing creative energy. They didn’t limit me to some predefined rat race; they showed me the doorway to greater and grander things than I had yet imagined.

Why I’m a Conservative Fundamentalist Liberal Progressive

micah — Thu, 28 Aug 2014 14:23:48 +0000

I’m a conservative in that I know the world is complex, and I know that simplistic and feel-good solutions don't often fix things. I look for the mechanisms that make the world go. I know there is a deep wisdom in the way things are, and I’m skeptical of efforts to overthrow and replace things haphazardly or willy-nilly.

I’m a fundamentalist in that I look for absolute principles upon which I can base my life and my action. Like axioms in geometry, I eliminate any principles that are not absolute or that do not scale. And then I try to live by those principles, as consistently as I possibly can.

I’m a liberal in that I care deeply about humanity and the world and life in general. Compassion is my highest value, and I see no justification for the vast amount of violence still lingering in the world, nor for the needless deaths that happen every year due to political machinations and corruption. I cannot justify laws that sacrifice lives to enforce some arbitrary value system or code.

I’m a progressive in that I believe in the advancement of human equality, human rights, and human freedom. I believe humanity must move forward, and neither tradition nor vested power should stand in its way.

Why did I write this? You might think it is because I believe there should be no differences between us — that, really, all of these categories are the same. But that’s incorrect — I think legitimate and healthy disagreement is essential.

But disagreement only works when it is real, when there are different viewpoints being presented in a robust and thorough way. And unfortunately, the vast majority of debate and argument I see in the world is not that.

Instead, I see caricatures of opposing viewpoints. I see people mocking the other side. I see people comparing each other to Hitler, or implying some connection between a sincere expression of opinion and all the murders committed in history.

That helps nobody. We only learn from each other when we are open to seeing the value in other viewpoints. We only learn from each other when we are open to being challenged. We only learn from each other when we can say:

“Here’s my viewpoint. It probably sounds crazy, and I understand why you would reject it. But here are the reasons it makes sense to me.”

Or even better:

“I don’t agree with your viewpoint, and that might mean I don’t understand it well enough. Can you explain more?”

When we’re able to do that — to have open and honest discussion, debate, disagreement — then we will grow as individuals, as a culture, as a society. We will all benefit, ideas will flow freely, and people will be willing to listen to what we have to say.

Agree or disagree? :)

Consumerism

micah — Sat, 23 Aug 2014 17:42:31 +0000

When I think of consumerism, I think of companies without values — or more precisely, companies without opinions. That is, they’re not doing anything wrong, but they’re also not fighting for anything right.

But should they be? To what degree do we want businesses to be taking sides, having strong opinions, advocating for favorite causes?

Remember, to the extent that businesses take sides, some of them are going to be taking sides against us. And if we want businesses to have strong opinions, we’re going to have to take this as a good thing.

Is that what we want? Every purchase to be infused with some value decision?

I don’t know the answer to that. But I do know this: anything I start is going to be opinionated. I have no interest in bland disengagement. I have very little interest in money for its own sake. If I’m not fighting for something, I’m not likely to be involved.

Being Human

micah — Mon, 09 Jun 2014 15:20:00 +0000

It’s very common to hear people re-iterate the fact that we are human.

“I’m only human”
“I’m finally getting in touch with my own humanity”
“The inhuman treatment of prisoners…”

But nailing down just what is being talked about is a little tricky. In philosophical and theological circles, human is often used as a synonym for limited.

This, I think, is weak.

Of course, it’s true that we are limited. At any given moment, we have constraints on our action, and are forced to make choices between different outcomes, based on the energy and resources we have at our disposal. We are always making decisions under duress.

But, to listen to mythology and theology, this is also the situation of the gods. It is the fate of all beings; divinity doesn’t get a free pass.

So what makes us human is not fundamentally a contrast with the divine. The contrast must be with something else, something much closer to home.

This past month I’ve been walking every morning. I spend a lot of time in a mental world — thinking, writing, coding — and walking makes me feel a little more in touch with aspects of myself that tend to fade from view. I enjoy the feeling of stretching my legs, venturing out into the world, taking on a little of the elements, experiencing the sense that I could keep going, that other places are within reach. It reconnects me to my trips overseas, to my childhood spent hiking through the woods.

And I often summarize this by saying that it makes me feel more human. And by that, I mean that it makes me feel less one-dimensional.

Being human, I think, is being nuanced. It is being complex and layered. It is having connections with our body, our selves, and the world around us. It is answering to hunger, and being compelled to write.

This complex of nested relationships that we live in imposes a lot on us. It’s easy to see that as being limited, or operating under constraints. But what it really is, I think, is an insistence that we don’t live in just one area, defined by our jobs or our family or our thoughts. We live in a wide-open world, and we are beings built to be just as open, just as nuanced and nested and deep, as everything around us.