We are problem solvers. We’re thinkers. That’s the schtick of our species. We don’t need to depend solely on eons of evolution to patch the holes in our life strategies.
We must train our brains to think as well as train our brains to perform valuable tasks. However, society places a premium on focusing on the latter. It’s a big waste of our gift of sentience.
The vast majority of our our non-human cousins (all creatures) have very limited or even no capability for learning new skills. They are born perfect lions, gazelle, ants, and giant sequoia. Gorillas don’t need to spend hours every day in the gym and falcons don’t need to put in thousands of hours to fly. Their skills are literally in their genes.
On the other hand, we have very much flexibility in shaping ourselves into whatever we choose. Our levels of skill may not reach levels of perfection held by perfect scorpions born with a perfect scorpion natures, effortlessly (but deterministically) playing the part of a scorpion. But we can choose skill sets never before seen by any creature, and out of reach of those perfect scorpions.
Of course, we all think. But more and more, we follow the hacks, the polls, the research studies, reviews, the “cookbooks” and “toolkits”, all created by a relative handful of “influencers” we don’t personally know. Today, we even need to question if those influencers are even real. They could be AIs or some team in some organization. Some of my favorite YouTubers seem to have suddenly developed voices beyond the not-made-for-radio voices they once had.
Don’t get me wrong, though. Those sources of information are greatly valuable – just like Prego Spaghetti Sauce and McDonalds. Seriously, they are valuable. Prego and McDonalds offer options when we don’t have the time or desire to create meals from scratch. Likewise, we don’t have time to collect all the information we need to make critically-thought-out decisions. Like most things in our lives, we offload that work to professionals – doctors, plumbers, lawyers, soldiers, electricians, etc. And we trust them to be virtuous.
The problem is that as we offload critical thinking to others, our personal ability to critically think atrophies (assuming it is there now). Our highly-networked, data-driven (soon to be AI-driven) world is much more fragile than it seems. If something were to happen that brought these systems down, it’s critical thinking that will bootstrap it back up.
As long as we maintain our personal critical thinking, to a sharp extent, we can have the best of both worlds – letting experts save us time, but still keep our bullshit detectors finely tuned and our creative super powers jacked.
The Zen practice of meditation unclogs the pipeline between our conscious mind, the Earth-facing side of our brain, and our subconscious mind, which is the sentience-facing side, closer to the essence of who we really are.
Thinking is about designing sets of steps that take us from conditions right now to conditions we desire. Note that “conditions” is plural. Every thing is connected, therefore, there isn’t a way to get through a plan without unintended side effects.
Therefore, there will be minds out there that will object to something about your thinking. From a Zen point of view, that’s great! It’s better than everyone thinking the same things, wanting the same things, moving us prematurely to the punchline of entropy. And those differences never need to result in violence or hatred. Instead, those differences can play against each other in a Yin and Yang dance to a novel solution.
Merry Christmas 2023
Merry Christmas!
Here are three of my favorite Christmas cookies this year that I made.
Notice the Jackson Pollack I incorporated?
Lookdowns (Selene vomer) are my new favorite fish. They’re almost unicorn-like in their sort of coin-shaped, silvery, glistening appearance. They’re like the papio (Hawaiian name for juvenile Jack Trevally) equivalent of a fairy.
The Lunar Bodhi Day
The Lunar Bodhi Day is coming up – Thursday, January 18, 2024. The Eternal Fishnu reminded me to buckle up and see like a Zen warrior. Is that so?
There are a lot of hockey sticks out there! Too many for us to realistically control. Certainly too many to predict what is in the cards for us all. What we collectively call “AI” alone counts as more than one. As Clark W. Griswold, Jr. might have said in Christmas Vacation:
“If there was ever a time to be a clingless, fearless, selfless, serene, detached, tranquil, unflappable, unperturbed, robe-wearing, compassionate, om-humming, falling-tree-watching, one-hand-clapping sack of mindfulness … now is the time.”
We will get through this much stronger, perhaps even thankful for having been pushed to fix many of our bugs … as long as we are mindful of our gift of sentience. It is the one thing Zen Masters cling to because our sentience is what we are.
Faith and patience,
Reverend Dukkha Hanamoku
Bodhi Day 