Egocentric

So down towards the bottom of the commitments I have made is 'listening' something, a skill set, that has been on my 'to learn' list since just about forever.

And while I'm even less committed to listening exercises than I am to drumming practice (which is to say not very committed) I do from time to time summon up the presence of mind to stop talking about myself and enquire into other people's state of wellbeing.

In fact, I have learned a few tricks. One is to associate with people it is easy to listen to. Exciting, interesting people. Another not very good one is to deflect all personal questions back onto whoever is talking to you. It may not be good, but it sets up listening as an act of martial dominance that I seem to actually be capable of getting my personality around.

For example, if somebody asks me the open ended 'how are you?/how have you been?/how is your life?' I answer them with a platitude 'good' then hit them with a much more specific and conversation inducing 'how did the vesectomy of your rabbit go?' and suddenly, I am listening to them talk.

It's pretty magical to somebody who talks about themselves all the time to get this trick down.

I'm not really conscious of how long this has been working for me, and I am conscious that some people I do the opposite to and try and shut them down (very very rare) but recently I've been noticing that I actually quite often don't have to use the trick at all.

When I start making a concerted effort to listen to people, it coincided with me having stuff I actually wanted to talk about, not just to reflexively control conversation. I noticed that people rarely pay attention to me, I am yet to get into a true duel of listeners. Once I get somebody talking about their life, they tend to just keep talking.

And it's great, it's actually great for me to learn that other people are the heroes of their own stories, to get a reminder that not everyone (read: nobody) actually needs me there at all. And it's not even a damning thing, a scathing indictment of our society.

It's natural. Normal. Good.

In the last season of Qi, they talked about an early psychology study where researchers concealed themselves under the beds of dormitory students to find out what they talked about. It turned out that 80% or something of the time, people talk about themselves.

But I wanted to point to a form of egocentricity I found counter-intuitive, and thus deeply valuable. As I wrote earlier on this blog I've never experienced first hand depression or anxiety, but I have read about it, and recall vividly, reading something to the effect of 'depressives are by nature self absorbed...'

It kind of fractured and rearranged my naive notions of depression, and over time anxiety (which I started to encounter in others long after reading the thing) as somebody who spends heaps of time worrying about shit out of their direct control, like genocide in Rwanda or something.

I've since increasingly learned that this type of egocentricity holds true. While it's natural to be the hero of your own story, in the depressed and anxious (it seems) there's a failure to do the basic differential, an error is made where people assume they are the hero of other people's stories too.

I feel like the 'basic differential' may not be obvious, so I'll illustrate it. If I wake up tomorrow having a bad hair day (currently, highly likely) I may be concerned that I will look bad, perhaps ridiculous or foolish. However, when I walk out my doors into a world populated by people, I can project my own concern for my own appearance onto all those people. The amount of time I spend concerned about my own appearance if 'normal' leaves me little time to be concerned about the appearance of others. In fact I spend almost no time concerned about the appearance of others. If this holds true of others, I need not actually be concerned about my appearance, as everyone else is most likely, preoccupied with their own.

As such, there's only a few occasions in my life where I will be concerned about my appearance, these are times where my appearance enters the domain of somebody else's ego. Like a job interview or a date. Somebody is potentially taking some onus of me, so they will actually be concerned about my appearance. The rest of the time, fuck it. I am default invisible, protected by everyone else's egocentricity.

But say I'm sitting at work, I look over at my friend Jon and he seems withdrawn and miserable - I am inclined to think 'I wonder what Jon is thinking?'

What I've come to experience in people consistently anxious, shy, withdrawn or depressed, is that they are naturally inclined not to think 'I wonder what Jon is thinking?' but instead think 'I wonder what Jon thinks of me?'

Yet these are not the typical narcissists we intuitively think of as egocentric. Note that I'm not saying obnoxious narcissists aren't egocentric, but that the shy sensitive types are often overlooked as really egocentric.

Because they are shy, and they are sensitive, in ways that are baffling and perplexing to me.

I have once pointed out to somebody particularly anxious about the good opinion of others that they shouldn't care because people don't actually care, and it didn't go down well. As in it provided them no relief, and they said I made them feel worse. Careless language I guess, and perhaps people don't possess my same level of opportunism.

The hard thing is, that its hard to notice just how many people you don't notice every day, and realise that you are most likely, not noticed by a lot of people that you will never get to know and will never come to know or care about you over the course of your life.

How many times have you been to 7-11? Did you ever stop to think that you will probably never see the person who served you ever again? It's a Louis C K bit, why don't we have farewell expressions like 'I don't care if you die.' (in the same bit, he also unnervingly pointed out that statistically somebody in the audience was likely to die that night, almost certainly before they ever saw him again.)

I've probably depressed a bunch of already depressed people. But even depressives need to be challenged from time to time. It's not tough love, it's actually argument. An attack on a self-delusion.

Consider: A ship is going down in the middle of the pacific, in the middle of a storm, in the middle of the night. The Cabin crew are roused awake by Captain Ingrid, cool-under-fire, charismatic, born-leader Ingrid. She starts issuing orders and prepping the passengers to abandon ship.

In contrast there's Steve, quiet and unassuming, his worst fears have been realised. He clings to a life vest and patiently stands out of the way as Ingrid takes charge.

I can't know, and neither can you who is the more egocentric character, but I'm willing to bet. Our societal intuition is to label charismatic Ingrid as an 'extrovert' and identify leaders as egotistical, assertive characters. Queit and polite Steve is seen as shy and sensitive (which he is) and an introvert, and therefore we assume he is relatively non-egocentric.

I bet the other way, the situation is, Ingrid is concerned about everybody's lives, and by assuming the organisational role and assuming responsibility for everyone, she is actually assuming the downside risk (drowning - death) for the sake of everyone else. Steve is concerned about his own survival, happy to defer all decision making to Ingrid and interpreting the ship wreck as God's personal vendetta against him. Even the act of getting out of the way may be more motivated by not wanting to be attacked or dragged under by a panicked fellow passenger than actually trying to cooperate so as to maximise everyone's chance of survival.

It's important to not confuse Ingrid an actual leader with many of the self-centered people who vie for leadership in the popular press. A sinking ship is a situation where the responsibilities of leadership, the costs and risks of leadership far outweigh the perks. It's a sad sign of the times that so many positions of power these days involve almost all perks and no responsibility/accountability, such that we need it actually pointed out to us that they are 'leaders'.

There's a double bind, with this lesser appreciated egocentricity. It's not an arrogant egocentricity, it's obviously crippling and costly. An affliction. Imagine having to worry excessively about your hair or appearance based on what fellow train commuters might think of you? I'm exhausted already. But it's generally not true that you don't actually care about people in this bind. Yet, should you express your concern for them, you are reinforcing the notion that they weigh on your thoughts.

I don't have the answer, and the answer can't be simple, else we'd have it already. 

Inactivity

There's this bit early on (relatively speaking) in Tron Legacy where Jeff Bridges (Flynn) devises the perfect plan. Realising that CLU has lured his son into the grid in order to create an escape for himself. Flynn suggests they simply refuse to play, they don't make their escape thus allowing the portal to close and CLU to be thwarted.

Now imagine if you will that some problem of yours were personified. And let's assume you aren't a psychopath. You take that personified person and drop them into a pit they can't climb out of. Then you shut a grate they can't open over their heads, and flood the pit with water.

Soon your problem will be solved, you don't have to do anything, just wait. Wait for the water to rise until their head hits the grate and then shortly afterwards they drown. Except remember we've assumed you're not a psychopath. So what you do have to do, is ignore their pleas for help and mercy and the begging to stop the water and set them free.

It would, I'm assuming, be very difficult.

But many of life's problems have this nature. They simply need to be deprived of oxygen, suffocated and they simply go away. A problem that is solved simply by not engaging it, not thinking about it, not caring. It can be neglected away. But it's just so fucking hard to restrain ourselves and let the problem die.

It seems our very nature is to do something, to act, to try and control, to engage. With a concerted effort, a problem can simply go away, we can become deaf to its pleas for our attention until it suffocates.

Inaction, I have thus come to appreciate, is a very sophisticated technique. It requires I feel, a lot of maturity and self control as well. (Not an actual bounded psychopathy). In some part it relates to depravation, when we are in a position to do something, and if power = the ability to act or do. It means foregoing our power over that situation in order to let the situation resolve itself.

Just as I am now learning to reconcile with my white knight tendencies, that if people can save themselves, that is best of all. I don't need the credit, or often to even assist. I'm getting the outcome I desire, at no personal cost.

It is strange though, to think you can approach your best self, by doing less. 

Deprivation

3 months ago, I couldn't have anticipated the colossal yield of learning that would come from quitting KFC and then subsequently, just about everything else.

I don't think I (and hopefully won't ever) understand what it's like to quit something with serious highs, and serious withdrawal symptoms. But I do believe, in a broad stroke, even with trivial addiction the principles must be the same.

After Christopher Hitchen's death, Sam Harris changed a speech he was going to deliver, to one called 'Death & the Present Moment' which you can watch on Youtube if you got the bandwidth-download limit left, where he proposes that lacking the consolation of the afterlife, all we really have to console us is the present moment, that if we can stop worrying about a future we may not experience and simply be present this can bring you peace if but for a moment.

The catch is, that when you stop believing in an eternal afterlife, and immortal soul, there is nothing to replace that comforting thought. A material view of the universe, if adopted deprives you of that, with no real compensation.

Same to, he has made the point that all of us (in western tradition) live with such deprivation anyway, when we cease to believe in Santa Claus, we simply cease to believe and there is nothing to replace the idea of Santa that is as fun or as good.

So having now gone, I dunno, almost a month without refined sugar, which basically eliminates all dessert, I sat down with a custard apple at my friends place and discovered that a custard apple does not taste anything like custard.

I also saw some comedian on a Conan clip called Arty talk about quitting heroin and getting in shape with a personal trainer who asked him what was wrong and Arty said 'I can still remember the high of heroin and I miss it.' and the trainer said 'a running high is just as good as a heroin high' of which Arty builds a hilarious bit, but not being a fan of trying to reproduce entertainment in written blog form, lets say boils down to - there is no replacement for a heroin high.

And as good as that high sounds, we simply have to face the fact that our lives appear to work much better without it. There I am deprived of a potential experience.

I'm deprived of a lot of actual joy that I have experienced in the past, and in the point of the whole exercise, have to believe I will never experience again.

This form of self deprivation though, I've discovered is a highly useful and transferable skill. Perhaps (though I can't know) a step down the path to that amazing energy bona fide addiction beaters give off.

It's the skill to say to oneself 'that would feel good, really good, really really good then and there, but cause problems down the track. Much as I want to do it, I won't because the price I'd pay is higher.'

Easy to follow, when you are talking about heroin or something. But I believe you can apply this, to not saying 'I told you so.' to a body. You could be right, completely right, you could have been hurt by people doubting and not listening to you, and then fortune has it that you are validated. You have this opportunity to stand up and bask in that validation and you instead deprive yourself, because keeping on your current track is long term better than diverting to a brief moment of self-righteousness.

Can you see? The diet I've adopted in the absence of KFC, McDonalds, Caffeine and refined sugar is pretty unexciting, unstimulating. I'm now pretty much eating to live, not living to eat. On any given day, I could go and get me some biochemical stimulation from Zinger Box meal upgraded to bacon and cheese and upsized with Pepsi or Mountain Dew, and it would probably taste even more amazing for the months I've been deprived, and yet the disruption to my current diet, and chemistry could throw me all out of wack, reset me, I could wind up pretty much alternating between KFC and McDonalds again.

I have to abstain. I won't stoop to the indignity of pretending a Custard Apple is anything like a Custard Tart. And I won't pretend that I don't want to yell 'In your fucking face' when I succeed despite my haters, but I can go with out. There's dignity to be maintained, and the price of validating my own emotions is in many cases to the detriment of someone else's, potentially harming them.

I had no idea, nor could have foreseen such insight. I guess the moral is, try new things, new ways of living regularly, mix it up because you have no idea what will pay off where.

"You think not telling is the same as not lying don't you."

I'm struggling, ethically, morally and I guess just regular brand struggle with this question at the very moment. With any luck I'll have figured out my own answer by the end of this post, if not the end of the sentence. I think I have. But that's okay! I can still remember the quandary.

Let's rephrase it from Jack White's beautiful lyrics into something more cold and clinical:

When does omitting information become an act of deception?

Consider if you will, that I actually did put my second degree to use, and you have come to see me in my financial planner capacity. And ima gonna give you all kinds of financial advice.

I would have to morally, ethically, legally, disclose any conflict of interest. If I advised all my clients to buy my artwork, issued under a more obscure psuedonym than 'tohm' it would be as clear cut an act of deception as can be.

Because it's self serving. I serve myself upside, foist downside onto my clients.

So naturally, if I am providing a service as a professional I have to declare any vested interests. As I would as a public servant, or any policy maker.

But if I am exposed to downside, which is to say, personal risk through disclosure, it gets murkier.

I am tempted to read Sam Harris' latest book, called 'Lying' largely because I have always endeavored to be honest, transparent open. Long before Sam wrote the book, I'd already read Abraham Lincoln's advice on the matter “No man has a good enough memory to make a successful liar.” 

 Given it's appeals to efficiency, ie. that being honest could save me effort - vis a vis, honesty is the lazy man's choice. I've been attempting to emulate Abe for quite some time.

But I heard in an interview that I shall omit to disclose by who, Sam Harris synthesized his findings into - so far as any problems we have are avoidable, we can avoid them by not lying.

Examples of egregious lies are not really of concern to me. I haven't ever, nor anticipate ever putting myself in such a desperate situation. Nor even the more garden variety 'white lies' much concern to me, I don't tell people I'm busy when I'm not, I don't tell people I like their dress when I don't, etc.

The question remains, when is not saying something - a lie. Therefore a problem. An avoidable problem.

I think I have some safe examples.

1. The pre-emptive rejection. I suspect Trevor has a crush on me. For whatever reason though, Trevor doesn't ask me out, make a move, confess his feelings whatever. Could be lack of confidence. Could be that he is reading the situation right, and knows that I would not return his sentiments.

But Trevor, ever optimistically behaves in a way around me that I actually don't appreciate, and kind of wish would stop. I only suspect Trevor is crushing though. He may only suspect that I have no interest romantically in him. His suspicion of course giving him crucial wiggle room into an act of self deception.

In the social taboo of pre-emptive rejection, I have an opportunity to not be complicit at the very least in Trevor's self deception. Telling the truth, may solve the problems of all the would-be-lunch-cutters called Tonya, Tamika, Sharon and Karen that I am interested in, but it would also put an end to the special treatment, time and attention Trevor lavishes on me. It could also 'ruin the friendship'.

I feel this scenario is clear cut, because I don't actually appreciate the fawning behaviour, that means there's more upside for me to tell the truth 'Trevor we can never be more than just good friends.' Than there is downside 'Are you fucking crazy! I'm not attracted to you!'

2. Trying to be succinct, I have a problem with a 'friend' albeit, a friendship that ends never was one, I believe that shit. I have three options - voice, loyalty or exit. We all essentially have three options. I'm not going to rehash what they mean, but I in my nature summarily reject 'loyalty' (mayhaps only a recent development) which leaves 'voice' and 'exit'.

Here I personally have a clear cut decision rule - if I value and love the person I go 'voice' I actually confront them with my problem and try to resolve it. This can be taxing and energy draining. Otherwise, I just choose 'exit' when I don't particularly value the friendship.

Exit, involves basically just ditching the person. No confrontation, you're just done with them. Is this a case whereby not 'voicing' my problems, and simply cutting them off - I'm committing an act of deception. I guess the crucial piece of information that I omit is 'by not communicating why I left your life, I actually don't care enough about our relationship to try and fix it.'

But the thing is, that my problems with a person are often not isolated. I only ever speak for myself, but simply walking away from a problem can leave that person liable to repeat the same mistakes in their other relationships. Do I have a moral obligation to say 'I'm done with you and here's why...'

In the longterm, such an exchange is pure downside for everybody. But it's hard for me to apply a golden rule, how I'd like to be treated. If my life was potentially seriously held back by the condition of my fingernails, something rectifiable, but nobody was telling me to spare the emotion of such a confrontation, long run I'd really resent being left in the dark.

...

They are two scenarios where I think omission can become, if not an outright act of deception, at least potentially do harm.

I think, I need to disclose. There remain questions of when and how for me, but I am honestly hard pressed to reason a way into feeling better by keeping people in the dark.

Please don't get paranoid reading this that I'm keeping something from you. It's incredibly rare for me ever to have a piece of information I hesitate to share. Like once every 5 years. Hence hencely, I don't really have an answer for myself yet.

Drawtangagain

Today, I ran round Princes Park in 11'44"96 which I should feel great about, but instead I exhaled an exasperated 'fuck...' because on Wednesday I ran it 11'34"57 and it's the first time I've slowed down in a number of weeks. 10 seconds is no arbitrary thing over 3.2km, wednesday me would have beat me today by 45 meters... I think... my mathematics may or may not be complete bullshit.

Anyway, I was thinking as I often do, about Kobe Bryant. I was thinking about a lot of shit though, and I don't want to get too convoluted. But basically, I'm running a lot of late, and surprisingly pretty much injury free despite only taking one rest day a week. And in the space of a month, I've gotten to be almost as fast as I was back in high school days. Kobe? In a minute. Anyway, to get that fast, at some point you need to get your mind comfortable with being physically uncomfortable for relatively long periods of time. Like 12-13 minutes is a long time to be uncomfortable when you can just decide to be comfortable. This grasshopper is the true secret of running, that I am giving away to you. It's actually, like all sports - a mind game. I understand this. But it's kind of unnatural, your bodies all like 'I am not comfortable with sustaining this level of exertion' and your mind is all 'I need to push myself harder!' or in my literal mind's case 'give it away give it away give it away now [ad infinutum]' It's a mental task that needs deep focus, and it's hard to describe as enjoyable or unenjoyable. It's literally uncomfortable, perhaps like eating corn chips, the pointy kind that you haven't chewed enough, it can be uncomfortable but still enjoyable. Kobe? Yes, back to Kobe. He's got an incredible work ethic. Day after day after day of practice and training, that's his job. For most we'd think this work ethic unusual, we'd have to take our annual leave, and then spend our annual leave training daily. And we'd feel really uncomfortable, and probably wrecked, and our bodies may even react adversely to the regime. But for Kobe, that's normal.

Then I came home and read something on my feedly feeder where an artist wrote about beating procrastination. A fine example of domain dependent thinking in me. Over two months I've gotten to a place where I just run, whether I want to or not, because on another abstracted layer of wants and desires, I want to have run. On any given day I want to be able to run 3km in a sub 12 minute time. But in order to do that, I need to keep running.

Yet I'd come to almost the reverse conclusion with my drawing. I was coming to think that procrastination was part of the creative process. Necessary. Yet, I want to have drawn, in virtually the exact same way that I want to have run, so that today I can draw, or run at the same level.

Drawing's slightly different. When I do studies, it's about accumulating knowledge, and muscle memory. Drawing is cumulative, where as physical fitness needs to be sustained.

I think broadly speaking, I procrastinate on drawing for two different motivations -

1. Problem Solving - when I want to draw something specific, there is in my experience a tremendous gap between what you think you can visualise conceptually, and what you can shake out of your wrist onto a page. I mean, when I do portraits of people I know, you learn quickly that even though you can recognise them anywhere on the street, distinguish them from every other person on the planet, you really don't know what you look like. The brain obviously uses some fucken short cut to recognise people. Perhaps a set of facial measurements or something. We think we can close our eyes and envision our closest friends whole faces, but really it's just a few features floating in some mysterious ether. And that works not just with faces but every other composition. This form of procrastination doesn't bother me.

2. Not Feeling It - more so than saying I'm scared, but being scared is a factor. I don't draw because most of the time I don't want to draw. I'm very not addicted to drawing, I possibly wouldn't even call it my passion. (I've come to believe I can live without a passion, and that Ken Robinson may even be doing more harm than he at least thinks he might be, and possibly more harm than good) but the article I read to day, directly challenged me by actually relating to my personal experience. Whenever I get in the zone drawing, it is never because I started in the zone, I got in the zone by drawing. Every single fucking time, once I actually start drawing, I start to enjoy drawing, I can get sucked in. My productivity with each exhibition ramps up.

And now I'm drawing again. And studies too, which generally lead to improvement. Improvements I'm not even conscious of.

The hard thing though, is that I've also come to realise that our societies praise of 'hard work' is a relatively new phenomena, and I think this 'protestant work ethic' where worshipped most leads to failure on a large scale.

My early phase of reconciliation is thus. Throughout my adolescence I always wanted to get a sit up and push up regime going. Just a daily routine. Every time I tried to get it started, I'd reflect on the three months that had passed betwixt then and the prior attempt (or perhaps just conscious desire) and reflect that if I'd just done 10 minutes of them each night, I'd be a lot fitter than I was then. I'd have already been where I wanted to be. Not procrastinating doesn't mean hard work. Or even 10,000 hours. It means doing some work.

I have the same simple observation, that if you manage to get one productive thing done a day, you are going to scream ahead of your peers.

Do You Ever Get Bored of the Internet?

I do. Which I find amazing. Because the internet has literally everything on it I could ever seek out.

I find though, that it's not hard for me to go without internet connectivity, and am in part grateful to get the fuck out of the house and go somewhere and do something.

Seriously, I aggregate like a million blogs, it takes me 20 minutes to check my feed aggregator. Add facebook and email, and the internet takes only 30 minutes for me to pretty much be done with the internet for the day.

Sure notifications from facebook and emails can crop up and I'll check back in, but really, why do I only really visit 6 sites? What is the boredom a product/function of?

Is it, for example, my search skills. Relatively speaking the entertainment on offer from the internet is infinite. Just I can't find that entertainment, because I don't know what to look for. A 'can't see the forest for the trees' scenario.

Or is it, ... actually I got distracted and now have no clue what my other culprit was. I had one though. Believe it.

Vegranic

So I've been trying to do less thinking (conscious-cognitive) and trust my trusty intuition more (unconscious-magical) so here as a jumping off point is something I thought:

I can't ethically defend not being a vegan. There's no reason for me not to be a vegan.

And so I concluded, that I simply didn't care. I was able to retain a skepticism that Vegan cake-and-eat-it-too claims, like that a Vegan diet was more delicious anyway, was indeed, the claim of a moron. Don't do it! Maybe that's the first thing I will actually say, because my friend Michael warned me not to become self righteous over all the (trivial) addictions I've kicked.

Because a crisp pear is not as delicious as a snickers bar. One is a marriage of fructose and fiber, the other as many sweet delicious calories into as small a space as possible. I could imagine how I could argue that pears were actually more delicious than a snickers. Why don't I? Here's how...

If you deprive yourself of refined sugar until you are past the withdrawal symptoms and cravings, then fruit will be the sweetest thing you CAN eat, without the reintroduction of refined sugar in your diet and your brain will treat it as max deliciousness! Hence it will over power any sensory memory, assuming you have some good reason to not stock up on the cheapest calories available, and you will be genuinely convinced that pears are super delicious.

BUT I have this suspicion in my heart that if I ate a snickers tomorrow, it would taste like crack cocain to me, and I would be having a really good time.

But of course, Veganism is different (unless you do it for health reasons) because your ethical considerations, may ruin animal fats, and honey for you. It may taste delicious but hurt you on the inside. I don't actually know.

Because I'm not a vegan.

But here's my question? Why not? I can close my eyes and picture a head of cattle getting a bolt gun between the eyes, being bled out, skinned, gutted and then cut up. Largely because Jon Safran showed exactly that process in his un-aired pilots for an ABC show. I can picture the industrial scale slaughter of innocent animals, farmed animals and not be moved to become vegetarian. Not even vegetarian.

I can try and empathise with a dairy cow, being hooked up and sucked dry by a machine as part of my daily life. (don't ask me to explain) and that being my life, and how much I'd dislike a life of being milked dry day after day after day.

And yet, I don't care. These techniques don't work for me.

Anyhoo, I went camping, and here's the thing. When you go sit in some wood, you think of it as 'being alone' but when you are sitting still, you look down and then you notice that maybe not biomass way, maybe not kilo for kilo, pound for pound, there's more life clustered around you than in a CBD.

Birds be calling, ants skitter about in a big line, flys buzzing, possums scurry, marsupial mice fossick, moths flutter, kookaburras laugh, fish swim, snakes slither and they all fucking eat eachother.

I mean the food chain exists, kookaburra's eat moths, I'm fairly certain no moth has ever eaten a fucken kookaburra.

Anyway, I went camping and you get to observe the food chain, live among an ecosystem and see the relationships and all that shit.

I got some intuitive spike, that was just 'eating other animals makes sense' not really as far as saying 'eating other animals is natural and therefore good' because obviously the industrial scale farming and slaughtering and exploitation of animals is artificial, a product of civilization. But I'm cool with civilization, and you are reading this I assume on a computer, thus thusly, you must be pretty cool with unnatural things too.

But I'm just picturing a leopard dragging a springbok or something up a tree, and just feel somehow my brain has done something to just think, stripping the meat from a defunct nervous system, is okay. I'm okay with it. I'm okay with someway somehow a horrible death is just part of life, and nobody should lose much sleep for the prey.

Because it's just life. Animals are just whatevering around, trying to live, and sometimes there's a conflict of living interest, and one's life is lost for the convenience of another. And there's something unintelligible there that is not unintelligent. I don't understand it, but it's what I'd honestly have to say when confronted with the most negative vegan campaign sticker on my walk home from the supermarket.

That sticker that asks me: 'Is your body a grave yard?' I'd say 'I don't know, but I'm okay with that idea.'

Actually, I observed that my body is an infinite graveyard that I can just keep putting dead things into and having space for more as a function of time. Which isn't the case with actual graveyards and their sentimental tomb stones that stick around for centuries.

Responsible

I'm ostensibly, big on taking personal responsibility. Avoid writing in the passive tense. Take ownership, apologise all that shit. One of the things that made it luxuriously easy for me to do, was that I've generally avoided being responsible for anything. Thus it was only on occasion I'd have to take responsibility for screwing up something with some friend.

Now though, I manage a band and so taking responsibility has finally become confronting for me, for the first time I feel the temptation to dodge responsibility where I can. See I wrote to the band members this:

first I'm going to put myself on the hook for how you can expect me to react to issues though.

I have been taught (and taught to recognize) that there are 4 ways people avoid responsibility:

1. Denial - The simplest and most common 'No that's not a problem'

2. Excuses - The next most common 'Yeah that problem has to be that way though and this is why...'

3. Blaming - Also quite common 'Yeah that's a problem, but it's Matt's fault.'

4. Changing the subject/Telling a Story - Least common and requires a degree of artistry that most people don't have 'Yes, I see, that reminds me of the first Gulf War, not the most recent which is fascinating because...' 

The only acceptable way to respond to somebody raising an issue is to say 'What can I do?' 

I probably need to print it out and put it somewhere I will notice it until it becomes a habit - the habit being to respond to issues raised with 'what can I do?', not the habits of denying problems exist, making excuses, blaming or changing the subject.

In my job I'm in the privileged position to observe the 4 ways of avoiding responsibility take place all the time. Because I'm cold calling, you wouldn't believe how rare it is for somebody to just say 'I don't want to do the survey' or 'not interested' both these responses take responsibility. Over time it becomes far more insulting (and not to mention time wasting) to hear 'I'm busy' or 'But I don't travel' or 'I'm just heading out' or 'I have guests' or 'I'll tell you what I think of the government'.

Perhaps worst of all is 'I'll let you call somebody else' literally 'please become somebody else's problem' it's one thing to not take responsibility for not doing an understandably boring and tedious and time consuming survey, it's another thing to wish that boredom and tedium on somebody else.

What becomes perplexing is why the skill of taking responsibility isn't innate. Or if it is innate, how we got trained out of it.

I guess we can look to our political 'leaders' whom generally make statements containing no information, and take credit for nothing.

Also perhaps is the society wide Japan-style demerit system we adopt, most visable on bullshit shows like the apprentice where one only gets punished for failure, rather than a merit system where people are rewarded for successes, and failure becomes inconsequential.

Of course, life is a mix some failure is so catastrophic in consequence I can hardly blame people for wanting to wriggle off the hook. There are few noble captains willing to go down with the ship. Such responsibility taking may be admirable but it's also terminal. The person who learns from their mistakes has no future in which to apply such learnings.

But much failure is ultimately inconsequential, IF you take responsibility for it.

The point of the legitimate response 'what can I do?' is that when told what you can do, you presumably will follow up with action - some kind of action, people coming to you with a problem may not be rational, nor propose legitimate solutions, the aim though through good will is to achieve a reasonable discourse.

Apologies are also meaningless unless followed up by action (or rather ceasing whatever action necessitated the apology).

Talk is cheap. Even the acknowledgement that you were in the wrong needs to be acknowledged in action.

I believe in taking responsibility because the payoffs are there. I'm a consequentialist, not a Kantian categorical imperitive type dude. I think people respect and appreciate you taking responsibility - it builds trust and attachment.

I think our aversion to responsibility may at core be similar to our attraction to fast food. The immediate short term impact of taking responsibility is that it requires effort of us. But problems and issues get resolved, relationships get lastingly easier.

But we are suckers for short term gains, our aversion to taking responsibility need not come from some deep dark sinister place, it's generally just good old fashioned laziness.

So like everything worth doing, I advocate asking 'what can I do?' because the gains generally outweigh the costs.

Trying to Hear a Plea

My friend Leah wrote this, which I can say if you are strapped for time, what you should read instead of what I shall write here. I guess also that I am writing this post because Leah responded to my question 'what can I do' with 'thoughts?' so really this article, is the context of what I will write here.

I also tread with trepidation of saying the wrong thing, when sharing my thoughts, and I guess much of depression itself must be discussed in the more accurate but less understood dimension of feelings as well.

Here is my clearest thought as to the Plea itself: 'speaking out about depression is an important battle against the debilitating stigma surrounding depression and mental health issues. It is not the cure to depression and mental health issues, speaking out sadly can make this issues worse for the speaker, those hearing the speakers need to not just hear, but listen.'

And so I find it odd, to be invited by Leah to share my thoughts. What I felt immediately on reading Leah's plea and this other piece she wrote 'from inside the illness' was shock. I had no idea until yesterday that Leah suffered from major depression. I also felt scared, perhaps terrified.

But to be clear, and fearing that I am in danger of saying the wrong thing. It's because depression is a terrifying concept to me that I cannot relate to in any of my conscious experiences. I am NOT scared OF Leah, I am NOT scared or terrified FOR myself.

I am scared by the idea that depression can afflict people, debilitate to the point of paralysis, cause them pain to the point were no experience at all can seem preferable to the experience of their day to day life, seemingly unconnected to environmental factors. But I am on the outside, the fear I feel is akin to the fear I feel watching a slasher film, were Leah is not even the actress, but the role of the person who has to creep through the psycho's house. I am a mere spectator trying to identify with Leah.

And that's where it is hard, I have never, ever, experienced depression. The closest I have come akin to depression is grief. I have had the moment of introspection to marvel at how hard it was when grieving to find the energy to shave my face. Yet Leah writes about a paralyzing state where she can't actually get out of bed to go to the bathroom.

Grief is clearly driven by one's environment. Environmental factors, and with the exception of the effects of denial, it's really easy to identify what is causing one grief. When I think about how bad I have felt while grieving, how difficult things become - the magnitude of actual depression is quickly beyond my ability to imagine. I cannot imagine a state of mind that saps more energy than grief, not one I feel I could survive. I already need shock, anger, denial just to survive the pain of grief.

Depression itself then, is thus far beyond any understanding for me that is not cognitive. On the same day that I read Leah's account of having to lower herself out of bed on her knees and then crawl across her living room only to fail and have to crawl back to bed, I had already been up and run an 800m and later that day ran 14km with a friend. I thus returned to my bed exhausted, but in my life exhaustion marks a good day, it is the end of a good day.

To wake exhausted, unable to leave bed is the opposite of my existence. The self defeat felt when one stops on a run must again be nothing compared to the self defeat when one fails to make it to their kitchen or bathroom.

Which means, deprived of personal experience to relate myself to Leah, I have literally no insight to offer, no advice or counsel (as opposed to when a friend is grieving). What I needs must do, is learn what to do. One of the most painful parts to read for me was:

At my weakest and in intense distress I need to find energy in order to downplay and act to make sure friends are comfortable. (This is why people with depression may decline invitations from well-meaning friends to catch up or chat. We don’t have the energy to moderate symptoms.)

I am so glad Leah wrote these pieces, and linked to so many other accounts. I had no idea. But I do feel strongly that nobody has ever really been served by not understanding. I think I/we non-sufferers, our dumb-lucky minority of people free from mental health issues, are always inclined to look for an environmental factor, something to be addressed, fixed - so we can move on. Why beyond blue does such good work and why I think this excerpt from one of the documents on Stigma Leah linked is really important to keep in mind:

There are different types of stigma associated with depression and anxiety, which include: 

 personal stigma – a person’s stigmatising attitudes and beliefs about other people 

(“People with depression should snap out of it.”) 

 perceived stigma – a person’s beliefs about the negative and stigmatising views 

that other people hold (“Most people believe that a person with depression should 

snap out of it.”) 

 self-stigma – the stigmatising views that individuals hold about themselves (“I 

should be able to snap out of my depression.”) 

 structural stigma – the policies of private and governmental institutions that restrict 

the opportunities of people with depression and anxiety (“Mental health services 

and research don’t deserve as much funding as other health problems.”). Structural 

stigma may be either intentional or unintentional. 

When one's mood, emotions and energy levels become detached from the environment, it is unsettling, it is unnatural in the Darwinian sense - every individuals survival actually depends on getting pleasure from eating high calorie foods, feeling secure in one's own home/shelter, satisfied by the attachment one gives/recieves from their partner. Without this reinforcement depression is in very alien territory to me, probably everyone including the sufferers.

So it must feel very very wrong and be very very painful. I shall endeavor to watch Malencholia, but I imagine to the limits of my imagination that this is why Kirsten Dunst bursts in to tears when the meatloaf tastes like ashes. A world in which we can't feel simple pleasures is a world now trying to kill us.

That last statement is a speculative armchair-evolutionary biologist speaking, not somebody who has experienced anhedonia or anything.

I believe Dr Gordon Livingston said 'Mental Health Requires Freedom of Choice' a key and vital distinction I feel in this conversation. For one, the very word 'depression' is bastardized, people say 'I'm so depressed' in a callous and trivial matter, eg. 'I have four assignments due next week I'm so depressed' when in fact you are not experiencing depression at all. But the other side hardest for me to comprehend, is that people just get depressed, and they can't 'perk up' as Ruby Wax was most annoyed by, and they can't just go for a run and clear their head and feel better, and unlike grief there's no reasonable guarantee that the episode will pass with time. People in other words can't choose to be depressed or not, they perhaps (because environments are complex and I feel nobody knows the answers) can't even make the indirect choices eg. eating healthy and exercising to actually bring about some relief from the symptoms. And for somebody struggling to get out of bed, suggesting a 10km jog seems stupid to me.

I do think though, that it's important to understand this shit. I feel very strongly about destigmatising mental health. As a non sufferer, I am not immune to the effects of depression. Clinical depression has cost me a relationship - My first sexual partner dumped me because I ceased to be able to make her happy, I was a misidentified environmental factor prior to her diagnosis. She is now married, and self medicates through long distance running, but it was sobering for me to find out that despite every visible evidence of a happy life - meaningful work, loving partner, passionate hobby... she still suffers from severe depression.

I've also in my life, while been a victim of sexual repression driven by homophobic stigma, despite myself being hetero normative.

My point being, that I am not the real victim, but I am a victim. Don't simply think because an issue isn't your personal one, doesn't mean it's not personal. You are being naive if you think that depression will never effect you, because you don't have depression, or how LGBTQ's are treated won't effect you because you are straight, or that racial discrimination won't effect you, because you are white. You owe it even to your potential friends and partners and family, that these issues get dealt with. That the changes occur.

My sister told me the stats run up to 60% of women suffer from anxiety or depression by adolescence. These issues are virtually guaranteed to affect you.

What I think about now though, is the next time I see Leah, or her boyfriend through whom I met her (on their first date I believe), and what I'm supposed to say or talk about, or whether to not say anything at all. Again Dr Gordon Livingstone cautioned that the longer an illness persists the more it becomes a part of a person's identity, and I'm sure Leah no more wants every conversation to be about depression even while she champions it's understanding and destigmatisation. I'm really glad and proud and relieved and inspired that Leah did share her experience with me and everyone who wishes to know about it, but I'm sure she wishes she didn't have this illness, and wants her identity to consist of what she chooses to do.

Leah is a talented and professional artist, a hero assuming the downside risk for others unable or unwilling to speak, stunning, a friend, an excellent party host and I for one am not shocked or scared enough by depression to forget these things that draw me to her.

Nor is Leah my only friend afflicted by major depression, but she is one of the few to extend to myself/us the credit that 'I don't understand' is not the same thing as 'I can't understand' so I'm going to keep reading and watching and try and make the most of this opportunity.

Heuristic #2

This one I gots from Dr. Gordon Livingston:

"How do they make you feel?"

It's a decision rule for whom you allocate time to. It's how you assess the quality of your relationships. Keep it simple - better/worse.

It's a valuable rule of thumb for me, because my mind makes so much noise to confuse the signal. Don't worry about who someone is, or why they do what they do, keep focused on how they make you feel.

On Paper

On paper, I am indistinguishable from a loser, and in many regards, that makes me a loser. Until things change.

Change perspective, and I'm currently ascending a peak of the grand trio - mental, emotional and physical health. All interconnected and inseparable of course.

Yet just before the weekend, my Dad voiced his concerns to me, and asked me if I 'was alright' and my immediate reaction was - 'boy are we on different pages'

I was blindsided. I would have thought that if there was any moment in my life to put myself in the 'least risk' category of whatever, it would be now. Yet my dad can't distinguish me from a junkie.

And on paper, I must admit, I am identical, the only difference is that I'm exposed to some future upside, whereas the future upside of substance abuse is merely the cessation of substance abuse. I could I guess commence the cessation of being an artist (the true subject of the conversation) but that is a very different possible upside to being an artist.

One trouble, that we are actually all faced with, is what we can demonstrate about our well being. It's easy to demonstrate financial capital, hard to demonstrate social capital. It's easy to demonstrate home ownership, it's hard to demonstrate ones exposure to a future successful art career.

And yet, people with savings and deeds to houses commit suicide, get divorced and snort things up their nose as much as people who don't. Happiness alludes us all to more or less the same extent. 40 year olds with beautiful children manage to have extramarital affairs and lose those children. People with full time contracts accept (on a right now, daily basis) severence packages.

People lose their houses, or plunge into negative equity, the great upside for them is that things look great until they go wrong. The exact opposite if you will of my lifestyle.

The price, I guess of being an artist is the willingness to look terrible on paper, and be prepared for that picture to remain the reality into the future.

An artist dies a death by a thousand cuts until eventually they expire. But occasionally they are going to score big time and be set for keeps. Truth be told, our parents will always be much more comfortable with the reverse.

People have received more damaging talks from their parents over the years, but still I was filled with disappointment and sadness. I almost ate refined sugar.

Flipside Upside

Okay, so today it really hit home, what the fuck I can't eat in my abstinence only approach to beating addiction. Particularly annoying since I'm really only quitting all these addictions to experience trying to beat addictions and not over any actual health concerns.

So after lunch with a delightful friend, and lunch was easy. What next? No caffeine, no chocolate, no icecream, no soft drink, no alcohol and perhaps most cripplingly - no pornography.

It's really the first challenge I've faced, at all. No coffee and cake. None for tohm.

But this is what I've discovered. Quitting addictions is a good idea, because you find almost naturally yourself being forced to actually do and eat what you are supposed to be doing and eating.

Because one of the first things you notice, is that you are often at a loss. Once you take all the refined sugar and caffeinated beverages out of my diet, you are pretty much left with a lump of protein. So without it even being part of the plan, I motherfucken started eating fruit and vegetables again.

Same same, once checking tumblr for more nubile pictures was no longer part of my daily routine, I actually started writing the emails I never got around to before. And I've picked up running, am slowly getting back into drawing and drumming. It's great.

The ability for one decision to cascade into a whole bunch of positive outcomes. This I guess is the common sense that outsiders can see when they naively urge somebody to quit their addictions. But the social factor is unavoidable. If after lunch, instead of coffee and cake, the done thing was a bucket of the Colonel's finest chicken, my task would be that much harder. Thankfully, I've never drunk coffee. Or as I said to friend Ann today 'Coca-Cola is pretty much how I like my coffee' so my task is not impossible. But after a big salty bowl of Ramen, it is still fucking hard not to eat something packed with pure columbian sugar.

I managed it though.

Osprey & Lyre Bird

Osprey = Sea Eagle.

Yes the Eagle, charismatic predator. Have I ever confessed this before, but that I am incredibly superstitious?

Seems crazy I know for somebody most sympathetic to deterministic, rational, materialist, anarchist view of the u.n.i.v.e.r.e, but yes, it's true! like most explosive athletes, I am highly superstitious.

And I've been feeling predatory for the last I dunno 6-8 months? Like I've had my teeth back the fuck in, and I remember an interview with Earthworm Jim designer guy talking about how he had one level where Jim is out of his suit and a really helpless worm character having to just avoid obstacles. Then you get your suit and machine gun back, and how in testing players go ballistic with the machine gun.

Like that.

You know, just like the good old days for me, in Ballafornia where I played 'who defers to who' on the footpath. I only had to defer to one Senor Ash Coates whom due to superior genetics and attending a school with more liberal rules regarding facial hair, had a full beard. But man when two adolescent kids pass each other on the footpath of Ballifornia's 'street' it was an exhilarating game of chicken every fucking time.

But anyway, I've had a bunch of important revelations, sort of thematically clustered, and that generally is good enough for my mind I don't need a coherent concise theory of everything.

The first came via Enneagraph, a personality test a friend posted to facebook, where I discovered I was 'Type 8' - Aggressive. It also described me as 'healthy' and this kind of fucking reaffirmed Gabor Mate's 'When the body says no' type message.

And then you know, I read a lot of One Piece, and Monkey D Luffy is you know just the latest most popular reincarnation of a very enduring archetype. And shit like One Piece is kind of a relic, in terms of being the same story as when I was a kid, and going back to the fairytales and shit of brothers grim.

What I mean by that, is that I realised Luffy actually helps people, saves the day, by fighting.

Here's the distilled thought all this lead me to: "I can't save you, you need to save yourself, but I can help you. I can blow everything up, so you have to save yourself."

Much in the same way, that it took me so long to overcome my existential crisis by realising that I'd known what to do with my life when I was but a child, I had realised that the conflict I introduced had had an intuitive sense to it, an intuitive altruism all along.

Aggression without anger, Phil Jackson called it. Just as predators can play a vital role in keeping eco systems healthy, so too does conflict play a role in keeping our society healthy.

Take a short walk from there to this video:


Being assertive, and aggressive is all well and good, but life is not binary, there's a food chain of aggression, and while it may feel pretty good to be a wolf among sheep, or a fox among hens, life needs it's Golden Eagles hunting the wolves and foxes of the Mongolian steppes. And just so, while the Golden Eagle may be king predator their, it's jumping off the wrist of a Hunter, the king predator of all. Yes, it is the hunter that takes the lions share of the presumably delicious wolf meat.

The comic vagabond, might refer to this food chain, as the spiral of death and killing. But the point largely is, that by being aggressive one doesn't necessarily prey upon the weak, but can with training and practice prey upon the predators.

And I guess also, to identify with the poor poor wolves, if I or anybody get too preoccupied with being a predator, and beating up on the weak, chances are we can forget our places, or more importantly our potential to be in the middle of a predator-prey continuum.

It was the remembering of this video, and it's many portents, auspices and ill omens that had me pause for thought about the predator I was spreading my glorious wings.

Then I went on holiday. I badly wanted to see a sea eagle, to observe it's majesty, sea eagles hunt the much more realistic prey of fish and eels. One year there was this massive old eel on it's deathbed stranded in the sandy shallows of the river of my soul and this Sea Eagle was hanging around watching and waiting for it's chance to grab a huge meal.

And the sea eagle this time round was sighted, it in fact dropped one of it's catches onto the bonnet of the ranger's car, to retrieve it's now dead kill. But it was not sighted by me. It alluded me.

But on the last day, around dusk, I was walking my meditative trail, and I came across a lyre bird. Here, here was my spirit animal. That bird the indigenous rated as 'the most beautiful bird in creation' a mimic, a chameleon of sound.

And I realised, in this place of snakes and lace monitors and eagles and insects and all manner of predators, this lyre bird survives. And is beautiful. And that more than their courage and aggression, these freedom fighters, these Luffy's and Musashi Miyamoto's and Phil Jackson, and Golden Eagles... they are beautiful. They are beautiful at heart and that is a common thread.

A thread I need to keep hold of.

Pretty Little Addictions

Gabor Mate said we are at our most judgemental and least compassionate of addicts when we are addicted ourselves. And our whole society is addicted, in one way or another. If I read the papers I'm fairly sure I'd see reports of societies compulsive addictive behavior.

Anyway! So I'm no exemption, so this year I started kicking my addictions to see basically if I could. It started with KFC, which I ate around 3 times a week. I ate it for the last time on December 31st, 2013. At first I merely compensated for the lost saturated animal fats and salt by eating McDonalds more frequently (I can't recall the last time I ate at HJ's) but this increased my experiences of shame, and with all fast food eatariums one never wants to need to be there as often as the kids behind the counter need to be there to pay their rent/cigarettes. So about three weeks later, I kicked McDonalds as well.

And that was basically it for junk food.

Prior to kicking McDonalds, I also abandoned pornography. I'd posted previously that Porno had become too hardcore for me, the way people were treated in porno videos had stepped up to a level that it was becoming impossible to depersonalise. But then I discovered that tumblr is basically full of butts, very attractive butts, in still photographic images and it was kind of a return to the good old pre-internet days where you hoped to get in the dorm on school camp with the kid who had managed to snatch a Playboy or Hustler. That except thanks to the internet it's like having 10,000 hustler magazines delivered every day. But I just dropped it, from my daily routine. Tumblr is gone. Pornography, nixed.

Australia Day was the last day I drank, and although I've never really been able to handle drinking, I don't really include it among my vices because I'm pretty indifferent to drinking. It's not a compulsion, I seem to randomly go 4 months at a time without drinking, and people I see quite frequently often remark that they've never seen me drink, or never known me to drink. So it don't really count, except in so far as I quit it now, I say no rather than merely not drinking without any conscious reason.*

Then I went camping, and had a good opportunity to kick what I felt was the hardest one for me - caffeine, particulary my sugar filled caffeine delivery system - Coca Cola and Mountain Dew. I had one week to get over the withdrawal then like someone exiting rehab back into their regular environment I was tested by the sudden availability of coke, mountain dew all around me. I have actually declined a free bottle of coke proffered to me by a friend.

It wasn't that hard. This is the concerning thing. I just made a decision, and then my vices are all falling like dominos. I experienced almost no withdrawels, felt better really quickly, esteem keeps picking up. It's been really really easy, to the point that I'm almost getting addicted to quitting stuff.

But you may notice, all my addictions are pretty lame. How is this exercise meant to make me compassionate towards those struggling with addictions to alcohol, painkillers, mdma, heroin, crystal meth... less judgemental.

The hardest thing has been when the thought enters 'well surely I'm not never going to drink Coke again in my life. There'll be some occasion like trekking through South America where a refreshing coke becomes the trustworthy option over tap water or something and it'll be no big deal...' because when I try to contemplate that I have quit something for good the exercise seems nonsensical, ridiculous. It's made me understand why the mindset almost has to be 'one day at a time'

The second thing is, that I'm sure I was only able to quit caffeine because I had the opportunity to remove myself from my environment. I was kind of leaving it till last, but saw an opportunity to be done with it, and did it. But had I not basically left society behind for a week, would I have had the will power to kick a drug ingested by 80% of the worlds population on a daily basis? I can't say, but I could at least guess: not by now.

The other thing, I have to consider is why I'm an unfair comparison to other people's addictions? Why in other words has it been so easy for me? These are my two best guesses:

1. Lack of stressors. Basically since the live exhibition, my life has been free of it's two leading sources of stress. Even so, both my 'major headaches' I viewed as net-positive on me, they stressed me the fuck out, but promoted a lot of growth, perhaps in the same way that drinking non-lethal doses of poison can make a body immune to poison. But by disassociating myself from my most stressful relationship (and hence graduating from psychotherapy) and putting the live exhibition behind me, I simply don't have any stress or anxiousness in my life, therefore, seeking the comfort of refined sugar, saturated fats, caffeine, and the mastarbutory aid of pornography has all been quite unnecessary in a stress management regime. In fact, a stress management regime has been unnecessary.

2. Infatuation. If you haven't been up with my posts, I basically became infatuated, and that means my brain has been getting doses of it's own good drugs for a couple of months. So, put simply, the kick I get from sugar or caffeine is all pretty limp compared to the buzz and excitement that comes from infatuation. It's winding down now to where infatuation has to translate into action, lest it translate into fear and frustration so it is kind of scary to think I may get discouraged, and turn back to my vices.

So fuck, what I'm seeing clearly now, is that the general populace has it arse-backwards. People with addictions don't need to kick the drugs to get their life in order. They need to get their life in order to kick the drugs. I've spoken with those wonderful, amazing people that have beaten serious addiction, and they have to do things to do so that most of us would find unimaginable, or naively simple.

Basically, they have to ditch their entire social circle. To cease associating with other addicts, with other misery, with other pain. So pause for a second and consider who's in the room next to you and imagine having to make the decisions necessary to never see them again.

You could be naive and say that obviously ditching your partner, housemate, family is very different from ditching an addict. But it's precisely your partner, housemate, family that define your sense of normal. They are what make whatever vices or even bad habits you have okay. There's a harder road to be walked, and that's mustering up the will to basically go against the grain of your own social circle. But just imagine how your partner, housemate, family, work colleagues would react if you said 'and tomorrow I'm going to quit my job and become an artist like tohm.'

In other words, to beat addiction is to introduce conflict. Disorder. Just as I realised while away on retreat that being a vegetarian/vegan isn't just a personal decision but a social one. We live in a society really fucken averse to conflict. If somebody is trying to get over addiction, you got to have their back.

*to be fair, I did adopt a conscious rule not to drink with any of my friends that I suspect 'need' to drink for the medicinal anxiety relieving benefits of alcohol, because I am anti self-medicating. This did lead to awkward exposures because for convenience sake I would tell these friends that I had quit drinking, then get busted by them at other social events where the company were to the best of my approximations drinking recreationally.

Heuristic #1

Comes from Warren Buffett:

'Never risk something important, to gain something unimportant.'

He then proceeded to explain that if somebody offered you a revolver with 6 chambers but only one loaded, and offered you a million dollars to put it to your head and pull the trigger, most people wouldn't do it. But few people recognise situations where they are offered $1 to pull the trigger on a gun with 1 million chambers. The risk of losing your life may be much much smaller, but the gain is so trivial, you just shouldn't take that risk.

I think this is a good rule of thumb to live your life by. 

Anti-Break Up

Ima not talking about 'the hook up' but rather, what transpired today at my psychology session. See thanks to government schemes I still had sessions up my sleeve, but today after running the two BIG epiphanies I had during the Christmas breaks by her, I informed her I didn't need to see her anymore.

Which like a breakup you never know, and nobody does, it is more on principle than in practice one says 'I'll never need to see you again.' But it's done, we did it and it feels so similar to a break up except it's the exact opposite with a psyche and that's the thought I wanted to share with you.

Instead of a conclusion to a relationship being brought about by the failure of the relationship, concluding a relationship with a psychologist indicates success. It's like this joyous, happy parting of the ways. Perhaps what Matt Damon was trying to express in Good Will Hunting when Ben Affleck goes to pick Matt up for work on the construction job and he isn't home, and then Casey Affleck moves from the back seat into the front and you're all like 'he's gone and that's the best news ever'

The first time I ever saw a psychologist, it was a time when I was losing my shit, like really losing my shit and I only got three sessions because it was on an EAP. My parents offered to foot the bill for some extra sessions if I needed it, but I figured I didn't since Joe told me the same thing every session and I'd just refuse to hear it, know what I'm saying? But I remember our last session it started pouring rain, so he gave me a lift the few blocks back to where I live. And Joe said 'I'm confident you'll make a full recovery' and that meant a lot at the time because it was really hard to believe. But I did, I got my mind back together and enjoyed better times than I ever had before.

But the difference was that that while successful was a sink or swim departure, and I managed to swim. This time, you know, there's no expiration of sessions, no dropping the patient off on the last ever meeting. I let myself out the door with the blessings and good luck of my shrink. 

I'm a normal healthy individual. Now I just need to convince the world of this fact. And I will. I'm confident.

Jazz Talk

So I was at an information session on super, and how they were investing stuff. This was prior to my degree when my interest in finance was just blossoming (before it withered and died) and they were saying a lot of things about dollar cost averaging and other investment things. But he was talking about the asset classes performance of the previous year (then 2006 or some shit) but the presenter from the managed fund made a point he needed to make: "profit = risk, and property performed best therefore it must be the highest risk."

It's a principle certainly, profit = risk. And you can derive from that principle another one: no profit = no risk.

Now let's talk about Jazz. I've only recently had the point of Jazz, particularly free jazz explained to me. It's about being open to new listening experiences, for the performers - communication. Of course it's also about experimentation, an open state that leads to creativity.

But I feel an injustice is being done. Jazz as a genre of music is low risk. And it must be, because it is so much less profitable than pop. Counter-intuitive yes, how can 'boy meets girl, boy loses girl' be more risky than playing free jazz that drives certain crowds out of the club.

But it's simple, everyone can assess and subsequently reject any particular sample of 'boy meets girl, boy loses girl' whereas one requires some kind of expertise or standing in a community to accept or reject an experimental jazz tune.

Experimentation, is a low volatility, tinkering approach that can produce happy and sad accidents. That is why I value free jazz, and Jazz's influence on the evolution of mainstream pop music is phenomenal. But the profitability out of more vanilla three-chord progressions is undeniable.

Jazz is your classic technology industry where the innovation is rare and hard fought for, and rarely does the inventor reap any profit beyond recognition from fellow experimenters. But it isn't bold and brave and furthermore, is not entrepreneurial. It's low risk, guaranteed to make no money and virtually guaranteed to not speak to an audience.

One can fail at pop, because it is a high risk genre to experiment with. Devolution of music into noise can ruin a pop composition. Not the case with free Jazz. The majority of free jazz music is certainly not worthless, discovering what doesn't work is still progress, but that doesn't mean that it is worth listening to. In the same way that practicing scales or rudiments is not worthless, but not worth listening to.

So Jazz away, audiences and performers can stand to gain a lot, but no kudos for being risk takers, it is the antithesis of risk taking.

Central Question of My Life

That alas, I do not ask often enough:

'What would the tohm that loves you do?'

In my case I feel it is both necessary and sufficient.

Management

Last night the band I manage had their first gig under my reign as manager. So it's official, I've finally made management though not in the way Mother predicted. It's really really really strange to have people actually listening to me not just out of interest but with the intent to act on what I say.

The strangeness is exceeded only by the privilege and honour of it.

I find Pineapples Inherently Funny

Probably due to lovable comedy show Psych.

But anyway, disturbingly the other day, and I'm just going to ask you to accept that somebody asked me 'which fruit would you beat somebody to death with?' because these are the kinds of questuroos I get asked. And I didn't even need to hesitate -

Pineapples.

Then I got stuck in a giggle-loop, I'm actually really good at self-hypnosis. Most of us are as children, our fun and games are real to us, well I retain that ability, probably because I just never stopped playing.

Anyhoo, I could actually... and this disturbs even me... hear my victims cries of minor pain, discomfort and overwhelming confusion as I wailed on him with a pineapple in each hand, and I couldn't stop laughing.

And then I realized that I could never explain to anybody else satisfactorily what exactly it was I found so funny, and this revelation has one reliable reaction from me.

I lose my shit.

I fucking lose my shit completely.

Anyway, think about it, pineapples are the perfect thing to wail on somebody with.

Years prior I had written a work document 'pineapple club' which was just the rules of fight club with the additional stipulation that everybody had to use pineapples to fight with.

So it wasn't even new, but it was still gold.