Passion versus commitment

When it comes to marriage in the Western world we let our passion take the lead. We fall in love first, and afterwards, if it seems right, we commit to it by saying the vows. I'm not necessarily saying this is a bad model. I'm not even saying that it is the primary reason for the high divorce rates in the West... Arranged marriages are old fashioned and primitive, and despite the low divorce rates in places where they do arranged marriages, the couples don't actually love each other.

Well, I happen to know some arranged-married-couples who would argue otherwise.

But actually I'm not here to write about marriage; I only planned on talking about passion and commitment. Strange, how did marriage come up?

I was recently thinking about what motivates us to work, especially in the context of volunteerism or the non-profit sector. It feels like it's almost becoming trendy nowadays to be passionate about causes. But is passion the right motivator? From what I know about humans, passion is fleeting. It comes and goes. And that is why we need commitment in (at least) equal measure. Passion without commitment will burn low, fade away, run out and leave us disillusioned.

Yesterday, I asked on Twitter: "Does commitment follow from passion, or does passion result from commitment?" Most people responded, "both," and I agree. As in the case of marrying, passion often leads us to make commitments. But it can also work the other way around. Committing to something can cause passion to grow. And here is why: We tend to be passionate about things that we are good at and know a lot about—things in which we've invested time and energy. (Tweet that!)

Passion waxes and wanes. If you want to cultivate it, commit to something and give it your all. Passion will grow as your expertise grows. As you work towards something for years, gain specialized knowledge about a topic, and become an expert in the field, you will find yourself more passionate about what it is you're doing because you are invested.

So, You Think You're Dreaming?

I seem to have extraordinarily vivid dreams. Often when I describe my dreams to others, they are astounded by how bizarre and also how clear they are. My friend Will likes to joke about how while he is sleeping, I am out roaming the universe at night. And indeed sometimes it feels like I am. I wonder if it's because I've read so much sci-fi. I do think sci-fi works like those of Arthur C. Clark can actually expand your imagination.

Not too long ago I had a lucid dream in which I was walking down a staircase, and then came upon a beautiful mosaic. I remember it very well because of how clear and detailed it was. I remember thinking (in my dream) that there was no possible way my brain could manufacture what I was seeing.

I could see the roughness of the grout between the tiles. I could feel the imperfections in the stone. There were little chip marks, little scratches, and all of the little details that exist in real-life objects when viewed up close. All of that was in my dream. I woke up with the distinct impression that I had actually been somewhere else, somewhere real.

Assuming that I was not experiencing astral projection, the question comes up, where did all that complex detail come from? How could that near-infinite visual data be stored in my head? I know for certain that I had never seen that mosaic before in real life. Was it being recalled from other things I'd seen, or was it actually being generated?

And the data wasn't only being generated (or recalled) and displayed in a static way, but it was being rendered in real time! I could walk back and forth adjusting my point of view, and the image would change accordingly. The light even played across the mosaic form a nearby window with perfect accuracy!

The most powerful computer in the world with top-of-the-line graphics could never display that much detail in real time, with seamless motion and lighting effects. And I find it hard to believe that the brain could either! The amount of data that enters our eyes is so vast! It is one thing to realize that our brains actually absorb so much information, organize it, and make sense of it all. But to generate that much data while dreaming?! Surely not.

I've had enough of these extremely vivid dream experiences to know this wasn't a fluke. Either the brain is far more powerful than we ever imagined, or I really am out exploring the universe at night. The second option almost sounds more likely.

SPF

The Origin Of Things

I am fascinated by the incalculable number of things all around us, things that we take for granted and most often don't even notice. Where do they all come from? Who makes them? How are they made?

There is a knob on the stereo amplifier above my desk. Someone had to fashion that, had to design it and produce it. It must have been manufactured in a factory somewhere. By who? Using what? Did they make an entire machine just to make those particular knobs? Where were the parts for the machine made?

The perfectly shaped little rubber blobs that act as mini stands for my laptop. The strap of my watch, with all it's little separate pieces, ingeniously designed to function. The custom light fixtures in the storage unit I can see from my window. The glass jar sitting on my desk. The valerian root extract inside. The countless little pieces of metal and plastic, attached to just about everything, giving things their shape and structure, holding them together.

There are too many little things everywhere for me to begin to fathom! And the idea that each one of them has a story, a process that they went through, involving people and places, labor, and factories, machines, transportation, trade, money, design, assembly, placement and then sales. It is an inconceivably complex web!

Yesterday, I was in the main mail sorting center for Amsterdam. It is a gigantic warehouse full of machines, each one the size of a building itself, and each one full of countless rollers, latches, switches, clasps, belts and unnameable pieces and parts. These machines sort thousands of letters each minute. You can see them zipping by at a tremendous pace. If you thought a paper jam in your laser printer was annoying, imagine if one little letter in one of these machines jammed. They would have to call the professionals; no normal human would have a clue what to do!

All those little parts! I mean, someone must have designed the overall concept of the machine. And then engineers must have figured out how to build it. And then specialists must have specifically designed all the parts for it. And then manufacturers must have produced them--probably using other machines. Where does it end? Where does it begin?

Sometimes, when I drive through the city and look around, the sky scrapers, the bulldozers, the trains, I can't help but marvel at the ingenuity of the human race. We have accomplished so much. We have built so much. We have made things that our ancestors could not have been capable of imagining.

The scope of human imagination is astounding. And the ability to collaborate, and turn ideas into real things is a mysterious phenomenon to end-consumers like me. It would seem just as rational of an explanation (did I not already know some of the background) if I were told that it was all conjured by magic.

After all, what is the difference between technology we can't understand, and magic? We, for instance, discovered and harnessed radio waves: invisible forces that travel through the air at lightning speeds, completely undetected, transmitting voices and information to people far away. Our ancestors would find no other term satisfactory than "supernatural."

And magicians, who know well the secrets of their craft, probably find it quite hilarious that we call what they do magic!

SPF

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Before You Get De-Eared

Few things annoy me more than those people who choose their musical preferences based upon what is fashionable, what is congruent with the subculture they identify with, or what makes them feel validated. People who use music to create or sustain their own self-image should be de-eared.

It sounds harsh. Those who limit themselves to one or two genres, and especially those who ignore particular genres on principle, frustrate me so much because they are missing out on so much undiscovered beauty! To me, it's like being in Hawaii and refusing to go in the water.

Someone overheard me listening to an alternative metal band recently and asked, "how can you like that kind of stuff?" I asked her why she likes bananas.

You see, we all like things for a thousand different reasons. Music is not good on a linear scale, because all music is different, and each type is beautiful for its own reason. I like apples because they are tart and sweet. I like oranges because they are, well, orange. In the same way, classical music is beautiful because it is dramatic, or serene. Metal is beautiful because of its energy. Acid house is beautiful because it makes me feel like I'm floating...

I also get frustrated when people ignore the beautiful or interesting things around them. I remember walking with a girl through the streets of Amsterdam. It was her first time there, and she spent the entire time with her eyes on the ground in front of her. I was so annoyed that she was a visitor in my beautiful city, and wasn't doing it the honor of taking everything in!

I was sitting in a waiting room, and there was a poster on the wall. Someone had scratched out one of the sentences and rewritten it in a more 'proper' grammatical form. It seemed that at some point another person had come along and scratched out his comment, replacing it with a 3rd, more correct sentence. I mused over this poster for a good while, and I looked around at the other people in the waiting room to see if they were enjoying it as well. They were all frustratingly placid!

All of us get annoyed or frustrated when people seem completely unaware, unconcerned, or unmoved by things that we find of great concern, of particular interest, or especially moving (at least I hope I'm not the only one). Sometimes I look around at people and it seems like they are zombies, focused only on eating brains.

That makes me wonder what beautiful and interesting things I am missing out on. Things all around me that I never notice because I am too focused on what I am interested in, like music... and brains. (In 8th grade they made us all play with a real human brain, soaked in formaldehyde, in biology class. It was gross and squishy, but I was the only one who didn't actually get a chance to touch it, so I've always been looking for another opportunity.)

Maybe we all need to slow down and take a step back. We should try to notice things more. We should let beauty surprise us in places that we would never expect. We may discover light where we thought there was only darkness! And you should listen to that genre of music that you've blacklisted because those people like it, and instead try to discover the reason why they like it! ... Before you get de-eared.

SPF

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Dark Timelessness Of Non-Existence

What in God's name am I? I don't mean what sort of animal. I'm quite certain I am human. But I mean, what is my personhood, my consciousness, my self-awareness, my attention? In short, what makes up my mind?

Am I my brain? If my brain were to be in somebody else, would I still be me? If my brain were sitting on a shelf (yet somehow kept alive and active), would I still be me?

I think, yes.

But what I can't wrap my brain around, is this: am I my brain, or do I inhabit my brain? All evidence seems to point to the idea that I merely am my brain. Yet, I don't believe it. They say that every psychological occurrence in my mind, every thought, is simultaneously a physiological event in the brain. Ok. But that doesn't explain me.

During brain surgeries, they have shown that when they stimulate a certain place in the sensory cortex of the brain, the person will feel a sensation corresponding with the place they stimulated. They might poke here, and the person will feel as if someone touched their hand. They might poke there, and the person will feel as if someone is tickling their toes.

I suppose then, that if the technology existed, a scenario like in The Matrix, is perfectly plausible. We could exist in a reality completely separate from reality by connecting our brains to the proper sensory inputs. Of course, we all know it will be the gaming industry who will invent it!

What if someday, then (I really believe this to be probable), we are all just brains sitting on a vast array of shelves, connected together, without the need for bodies, living in a real-as-reality virtual existence, where the discomforts of real-reality don't have to irritate us anymore, and we can make up any reality (or set of realities) we want? Who would need (or even want) the real world? Of course this has been the subject of science fiction novels for decades.

But my question is what exactly is sensation? I see the mechanism of sensation, but where is the point where the neurological message is received? Just because a neurological pathway is stimulated in my brain, where am I to receive that message? Light waves may enter my eye at a particular frequency, my retina will pick them up, and my optic nerve will send a signal to other nerves in my brain, but at some stage I experience color.

But where do the signals end up? What good is a message if there is no one to receive it? Is the neurological pathway transmitting data me? If a packet of binary information is sent across an Ethernet cable to a computer, the website is only rendered if that packet is received and interpreted, and eventually displayed in a web browser. What good is the cable sending signals to other cables? But all I see in the brain are the cables!

Am I the cables? Power cables being lit up with data, transmitting in circles? Who experiences the signals? Are the signals the experience? It's a complex pathway consisting of millions of nerves that activates and is flooded with electricity and neurotransmitters, and... then it stops. Who is on the receiving end of that message?

If the signal is the sensation, then do cables, computers and circuit boards sense?

Imagine I were to die. Ok. Now, say my brain was perfectly preserved. All brain activity has long ago ceased. Much later, one of those clever brain surgeons pokes something in my inactive sensory cortex, suddenly stimulating the sleeping neural pathway that would cause the feeling of my hand being touched. Now, if I am my brain, would I not feel that?! Even though I am not concious, even though I know nothing, would I not still experience that sensation?

If the message is the experience, then yes, in the dark timelessness of non-existence, I would indeed feel someone touch my hand!

But it makes no sense to me. How can the mere activation of neurological pathways cause me to sense anything? There must be a recipient of the messages, on the other side of the brain. I can only conclude that I inhabit my brain. How can the thing be self-aware? How can the cable feel?

This is a conundrum that has bothered me for many years, and I cannot properly articulate it with words. I've tried here, and I don't expect you to see what I see. How can I craft my words to stimulate the same neural pathways in your brain that have been stimulated in mine?

I feel trapped in here.

SPF

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Set Your Mind To It!

I can fix water pipes. Who knew? I just repaired my grandma's copper piping that provides water to her garden. I'm not a plumber, I'm just a guy with a will to get things done.

Actually, I've been doing all kinds of handy stuff lately. Remodeling, installing floors and shelves, running cables through buildings, putting up light fixtures, working on cars and bikes, fixing enormously complex computer problems, setting up Linux servers. I have no training in any of this stuff.

People always tell me it's so amazing that I am able to manage the IT department considering I've had no training at all. My instinctive reaction is to say, “you could do it too!” All it takes is a little patience and perseverance.

All I know about computers, or about any other handy work, I learned by trial and error, critical thinking, logical deduction, reading and research, lots of inquisitiveness, and simply continuing to have at it until it's done.

People tell me I have a special gift for figuring things out. I suppose that is possible. But I think it has to do more with the mere willingness to set your mind to it. I think all of us are far more capable of doing things than we know. We far too often give up, or don't try at all, because we assume we won't be able to do something.

Here is a good example: I started getting so many requests to fix peoples' personal computers, I was overwhelmed. So I decided to start charging €3 per 10 minutes. Very soon, all the requests stopped! People, at least in most cases, were suddenly, as if by magic, able to fix the problems themselves!

If you're reading this, I want to challenge you. You know that problem that you're waiting for the repair man, or your dad to come over and fix? The kitchen sink... or the computer? Try giving it a go yourself... Be patient, be inquisitive, and set your mind to it. I bet you'll be surprised!

SPF