hopelesshappiness.com

Early this week I spoke emotional truth; and I got in trouble for it. I declared to myself then that the rest of the week I was going to keep my mouth shut and make some popovers. I can't remember the last time I had a popover. Probably as a kid.

In fairness, on that day of reckoning, those in power expressed concern, but once I backed off the emotion and suggested that perhaps I had overreacted, they agreed. This agreement allowed us to move forward and allowed them to ignore a truth. I have expressed this truth before, calmly and with data, and it has been ignored, multiple times. The truth I have presented involves an entanglement of worthless private accountability reminders and my inability to take further steps and management's refusal to take further steps. So yesterday, when a version of this same truth, (I was held publicly accountable for a task not even yet due), was brought to bear upon me in this way that I am forbidden from using, I became emotional. As an hourly employee, apparently I can be held publicly accountable, but important salaried individuals not only cannot be held publicly accountable, but also cannot be held privately accountable by anyone that matters, nor can we even broach accountability from an oblique overview without naming names.

When I expressed emotional truth, I did overreact; to the specific circumstance of that day. But in the context of the bigger picture, there is truth that is lost; hidden by calling it an overreaction; a rose by any other name.

So, in this moment of written thought, now toward the end of the week, I have not made popovers, but I have kept my mouth shut. I haven't even written anything for two days for fear of another emotional truth rearing its ugly head. I have been reading fiction, watching Netflix, considering an upgrade from Minesweeper, and hiding from the discomfort of truth. Better that way. Right?

I am going to go make some popovers.

…continuing from two weeks ago.

Perhaps to reach optimal productivity from discomfort, we need to first establish world-wide-spread comfort. If we have a comforted / comfortable constituent base that feels secure in opportunities for education, peace and prosperity, then perhaps the burden of the necessary awareness from discomfort can be properly placed on the shoulders of more thoughtful worldwide and community leaders and experts, who are capable of mitigating existing and unforeseen threats to our long term survival. As long as we have a constituent base mired in discomfort and on the less preferable side of widening wealth and power gaps, we have an audience for populists, despots, tyrants, autocrats, oppressors, and fringe fear-mongering fascists spouting divisive rhetoric. And as long as we have that audience, we will have an us and we will have a them.

Today we spend more on broad interventions toward things like education, peace and prosperity than we do on narrow interventions toward things like climate change, environmental damage and readiness for future pandemics. According to Toby Ord in “The Precipice” today we spend more on ice cream than we do on existential risk. (Ord, 2020, p. 58). Yet from where I sit, our efforts, both broad and narrow, are haphazard and misguided. To me, it appears we have left opportunity out of the equation. To me, it appears that we continue to be blind to the coin flip that occurs at birth. And because of this instinctive ignorance, divisiveness runs rampant and reigns supreme.

We have new leadership in this country. Or do we? For me, leadership is not about intention and rhetoric; leadership is about action and progress. For me, leadership is not about today; leadership is about tomorrow. For me, leadership is not to be boss, or to think I know better or best, or to estrange, or to put others in their place; leadership is to listen and understand, with compassion and empathy. We will see if our leadership is new or merely a candy-coated version of the status quo.

But this is where comfort becomes dangerous. What if our leadership makes their constituency comfortable? Will they then continue to stretch for optimal productivity from the discomfort of existential threat? Or will they be lulled into a comfortable false sense of security? Simply leveling opportunity will not resolve risk. Greater and more equitable opportunity may encourage a more educated constituency to seek understanding and become a more active part of the effort toward long term survival, but if not properly guided, this advantage may also sidetrack or distract us with too many opinions, or (worse yet) we may simply create a larger false sense of security and allow the advantage to be spent on more selfish short-term us-them efforts.

We are in a difficult place. We must seek discomfort to become aware and to encourage change, but we must create comfort to discourage divisiveness so we may work together; or at least work on what is important. And we must narrow the gaps, yet we are still operating on a strong instinct to widen the gaps. It is a multi-level entanglement of contradiction and hardship. In recent months we have seen our government send stimulus payments to individuals. I believe this has helped to restore some sense of validity (and yes, comfort) to many in need. Today I read that the IRS is considering withholding a next round of stimulus payments from those that owe the IRS. Withholding validity from those people who need it most and those people who have suffered most from a coin flip. Today I also read that some Republican leaders in the House and the Senate are once again rallying around Trump; despite some distancing as little as 10 days ago. Perpetuating divisiveness that hurts those people who need cooperation the most and helps to maintain the status quo. Oppression. Our government, our bureaucracy, once again blind to the coin flip, and once again instinctively maintaining the gap, and once again keeping “Those People” in their place.

I am screaming inside. Yesterday, three paragraphs above, I wrote “we will see if our leadership is new or merely a candy-coated version of the status quo.” It appears, on multiple fronts, that the question is being answered – We have (so far) entered an era of candy-coated status quo.

This is installment #1 of a sci-fi serial. Installment #1 was posted 1/23/21; appropriately a numerically-ordered palindrome. Follow the links forward from the last sentence and backward from the first sentence of each post.

I am not a scientist. I have no advanced degree. I am not an expert in any field. I am merely an observer here to record what I see.

Your year is 2022. I sit in one of approximately 20,000 warships each with approximately 1,000 inhabitants that include approximately 100 military personnel. “Approximately” because in a space voyage such as this, there is attrition. Each ship has an observer; technically part of the military but typically with no military experience. Twenty-thousand takes on an invasion to overthrow your leadership and appropriate control of planet Earth. We will do so by force and there will be many innocent and seemingly unnecessary casualties, but our intent is not to wipe out your entire population. Once superiority is established and possession is assured, we intend to incorporate the remainder of you into our civilization. We intend to work together to create a livable and mutually beneficial habitat.

You see us as aliens, and you see this as an alien invasion. We can see your news reporting and we understand your fear. We have been in place for 6 weeks. Enough time for the fear to build and enough time to allow us to better assess your defenses and intent so we may fulfill our destiny, your destiny, as efficiently as possible. You do not know our plans. There has been no communication in this 6 weeks and there will be no communication in the next 2 weeks before we strike. It is interesting to watch the worldwide debate between those who want to believe we are peaceful and those who want to strike the first blow.

There are many ways your civilization could come to an end; asteroids and comets, supervolcanic eruptions, stellar explosions, nuclear weapons, climate change, environmental damage, pandemics, unaligned artificial intelligence, unexpected results from scientific experiments, back contamination from space exploration, nanotechnology, an out of control tragedy of the commons, information hazards, biotechnology – to name a few. Six weeks ago, extraterrestrial invasion was nowhere near the top of this list of possible threats.

I will back up by going forward.

My year is 2275. In your year of 2060 one of the aforementioned threats will end your civilization and render Earth largely uninhabitable for centuries or perhaps millennia to come. In your year of 2042, a contingent of humans, in anticipation of the coming end, will leave Earth to colonize a distant habitable planet; though I should clarify that in 2042 the rock we found was technically not a planet. I am a descendant of that first group of colonizers. So you see – I am not an alien, I am one of you; one of us. And though it may seem otherwise, we are not here to harm you, we are here to save us; you simply don't understand yet that we are you and you are us.

We have not mastered time travel, but we have grasped the fundamentals. In this rudimentary stage, we have found that time travel into the past can and does alter the future and (partly because of this) time travel into the future is wildly unpredictable. On our way here we left a small fleet in the cusp where we may communicate with outlying ships on this side and they in turn begin a chain of communication through the cusp and out the other side to your future selves on our new planet. This is one way they will monitor our progress and know if and when it is safe to begin the recolonization. Our future civilization is in danger. We must come back to Earth. But first we must save you from yourself; we must save us from you; we must save you from us; we must save us from us.

This is our fifth time-travel journey back to Earth. Of course, in our present day, 2275, we have ships observing an uninhabitable Earth, but if we are successful in our efforts here in 2022, we are uncertain the effects of what will surely appear as an instantaneous alteration of reality, or if it will appear to us at all; thus our chain of communication. Each of our five trips, we have utilized this chain.

The first two trips were experimental and exploratory. We came to 2052 then to 2045, and in those trips we confirmed 2060. To do so, the trips were necessarily spaced 8 years apart our CalendarTime; 2223 and 2231. (You were not aware of our presence and we changed very little. We gathered information and we planned.

Our third trip to 2030 (our CalendarTime 2246) we sent several teams of scientists, diplomats, and experts in multiple fields to approach some carefully selected world leaders and explain. We identified ourselves, verified our advanced knowledge and expertise and explained the urgency of worldwide cooperation in the development of certain technologies that would be necessary to possibly avert the coming disaster. Due to circumstance, these technologies had to come about on Earth. Our presence was once again largely unknown. We were received as we thought we would be. We were taken seriously in this first contact. Problems arose when this first set of world leaders, with our support and presence, approached less forward-thinking leaders. Problems led to disputes which led to military actions which ultimately led to a small world war which due to widespread nuclear capabilities kept ground casualties few but nearly, (in multiple close calls), ended in a nuclear holocaust. Fortunately, this outcome was avoided, but due to this intervening conflict a decade passed and by then we knew it was too late to develop the technology to avert the cataclysm to come.

That third trip to 2030 led us to our discovery of preponderant sequentials and the determination that our fourth trip to 2025 should not occur before our CalendarTime 2258 to ensure a revergence allowing that first group of colonizers to be safely off. This fourth trip was planned to follow a script similar to the third trip but with the addition of a strong military presence. We again made contact with a selection of world leaders but this time presented our military force to all of Planet Earth at the same time these leaders were explaining our presence, what would happen in 2060, and the need for worldwide, universal cooperation. The result, (played out on a diverged second possibility track from 2025 to 2030, and on a further diverged third possibility track from 2030 to 2040), was more disastrous than that outcome on the second possibility track from our 2030 excursion, once again nearly making the 2060 event irrelevant.

So here we are. 2022. Our CalendarTime is now 2275, again 17 years later to ensure, (even lacking a revergence), that those first colonizers (on the first possibility track) begin their journey of their own accord so as not to create a divergence extending to our time. By this time – 2275 – we are feeling the urgent pressure of our own impending planetary plight but also utilized these last 29 years to better understand preponderant sequentials. And though we would like even more time for study, we feel we have no choice. Due to this newly discovered Law of Preponderant Sequentials, we are now unable to come back anytime between 2025 and 2040. And any time before 2022 the volatility quotient appears insuperable. After 2040 it will be too late to implement the necessary technology for a chance to avert the coming threat of 2060. So here we are.

The Law of Preponderant Sequentials? It has to do with possibility tracks. Though I don't completely understand the science, apparently to land at a specific TimePlace there must be three possibility tracks very close together. And as long as only one possibility track has been traversed, this is always true. But when a second possibility track is taken, if there is preponderant sequential change that creates a significant divergence, then there is no landing spot. If a landing is attempted in such a TimePlace, it is believed that the craft continues through the surrounding cusp on an unknown path to a further-flung TimePlace. One can think of the cusp as a surrounding sheath to each grouping of three possibility tracks. When a divergence is created, this not only widens the gap between the two possibility tracks, but also enlarges the surrounding sheath thus weakening its walls. A craft can successfully approach the desired TimePlace possibility tracks but is unable to gain solid footing on fewer than three. So, if a landing is attempted it is theorized that the craft topples, falls through the weakened walls of the cusp and upon exiting at cusp speed is immediately projected into an unplanned (depending upon its topple-trajectory) cusp and must land on proffered possibility tracks in order to assess location and recharge-reset for SpaceTime speed if desired or even possible. We have lost three explorer fleets to this Law of Preponderant Sequentials.

There is a great sadness that we have come to this. Though we have seen your future on Earth, some thinkers opposed interference in 2030 and 2025 where you turned against yourselves with no prompting and no casualties attributed to us, the extraterrestrials. We are not alien, but yes, we are from outside the limits of Earth. And though we identified ourselves as such and we verified our knowledge and we drew a direct line from you to us, in hindsight we realize that we are and always have been considered outsiders. And this is the basis for those thinkers who opposed that interference. Opposition not based on good intention, but rather based on separation of time and place, (which of course we have found is actually only separation of place), and perhaps more so based on your inability to connect the dots. Though you would argue, your thought is primitive in that you still see each dot separately. And according to these opposition thinkers, there is no such thing as a dot-connecting-consensus. One cannot just go along with majority thought, opinion or action. One must buy-in; completely. These opposition thinkers predicted the results of 2030 and 2025 essentially as they happened. In this two-hundred-plus years our thought has advanced to where we see that each and every individual, (each and every dot), must decide to reach out fully, 360 degrees, filling their surrounding field with understanding and compassion and empathy, and we recognize the connection, not as a connection, but as an overlapping; an intertwining; an entanglement; a fusion. You are not able to do this, so your world is in danger.

Those thinkers opposed to the incursions of 2030 and 2025, agree with our current military action. There is no other way to save you; to save us. We will advance your civilization more than 200 years by destroying powerful and dangerous individual thought and by subduing less powerful but still dangerous individual thought. Many of you recoil when you hear this, but you misunderstand. We do not want to destroy individual thought. We have to destroy powerful, dangerous individual thought. We see no other way. Once power is destroyed, we subdue less powerful dangerous individual thought by creating more opportunity for productive, beneficial, compassionate individual thought. Individual thought no longer has to be divisive. For millennia, divisive thought was critical for survival. Today, divisive thought is dangerous.

So here we are. 2022. Cusps are everywhere, each one housing three possibility tracks. It is not knowing where to look; it is knowing how to look. Since our arrival six weeks ago, we have dropped operatives into your civilization as far back as 1970. In two weeks we intend to wrest control of the world's nuclear arsenal. We know we will not be entirely successful, but if we are not largely successful, you may destroy yourselves before we have a chance to save you; save us; save you. And yes, there will be many innocent and seemingly unnecessary casualties; on both sides and because of both sides. It has taken considerable effort for us to regress and think again in terms of us and them. If / when we have secured your nuclear capability, we will selectively eliminate danger. Then we will begin creating opportunity for productive, beneficial, compassionate individual thought. And perhaps by doing so, we will avoid the coming Apocalypse and grow once again into us.

So here we are. 2022. Though there is no such thing – it is time.

This week I heard a psychologist on a documentary say “We translate perceptions and experiences of being better off than others materially, to being better than others. The mind makes that translation…” In Capital in the Twenty-First Century, a documentary based on Thomas Piketty's book, Psychologist Paul Piff, University of California at Irvine discussed an experiment in which pairs of participants played Monopoly modified with the flip of a coin at the start allowing one player to roll two dice each turn, (the other rolled only one), and the two dice player received twice the money for passing Go. And though the outcome, based on a coin flip, was a foregone conclusion, not one advantaged winner recognized this. Not only did they attribute their win to greater skill, the rich player was also more demonstrative, more rude, and he or she helped themselves to more pretzels than the poor player. When similar analysis has been carried out differentiating real-life actuality, researchers have found that when poor people were rich players, they were every bit as obnoxious as rich people who were rich players. So why do we humans seem to instinctively want to perpetuate and widen wealth gaps when we are one of the rich? How do we not account for and/or even see the coin-flip at the start? To me, these instincts appear to operate on multiple scales and in multiple arenas, and they appear to be more driven or as driven by power as they are by financial well-being. This wealth/power dynamic is interesting in that I see wealth as power, yet not all power, (especially not small-scale power), equates to wealth. So, as opposed to monetary wealth, is it this desire for power that blinds us to our personal coin-flip? And perhaps encourages us to pardon those who have received a more advantageous coin-flip? And is power actually control? And is control actually survival instinct individually interpreted as meaning or purpose?

These questions feel obvious. This thought feels redundant. Can I pull anything new from this week's consideration?

I still work from home 3 or 4 days a week. When I go into the office, I walk; about one hour, one way. When I work from home, I walk (about 25 minutes) to a coffee shop, sit down and drink down about one-third, then by 6:30, (or sooner if it becomes uncomfortably unsocially distanced), I walk home. This morning there was light snow, falling and on the ground. The air was clean and crisp and pleasantly cold. I am not a fan of winter, but on occasion, I can appreciate it. This morning, all things seemed possible. This morning I hopelessly hoped for a clean, crisp, pleasantly cold cluster of possibility to settle into other minds clearing out heated, instinctive, sometimes hateful efforts toward individual power, individual control, selfish survival; a clearing of the mind enabling recognition of the injustice set free by the mere flip of a coin. Now I sit here actively, (though likely still hopelessly) hoping for sweeping epiphanies recognizing the necessity of more widespread efforts toward compassionate power, considerate control and the survival of all Humanity.

Still not new. Regardless, the validation from like-minded thought is comforting; which (as I think about it) is not good. It is not good because comfort is an objective of individual power, individual control, selfish survival. And individual power, individual control, selfish survival blind us to coin flips and encourage us to widen wealth and power gaps. Awareness requires discomfort. Change begins with discomfort. Yet we seek comfort; relief in affliction; a state of ease and satisfaction. To comfort is to soothe, console or reassure. It sounds to me like (the verb) comforting is necessary for (the noun) comfort. Additionally, I interpret the verb as a transient, fleeting action, which I believe leads to a further implication that because comforting is momentary, comfort is also momentary. My natural state, (with no artificial encouragement), is discomfort. To be consistently comfortable I must be constantly comforted; and that comforting is not going to come frequently or fast enough from others, (unless you're the President of the United States), therefore I must constantly soothe and reassure my self myself; in every moment. This leads me to the realization that constant comforting is more comforting if I am constantly improving or getting better; and in our capitalistic world what better way to be better than to be better off. Not only better off than others, but also (and perhaps more importantly) better off than I was a few years or months or even moments ago. And it does not matter that I am better off because (or in spite) of others being worse off. What matters is that I am comfortable because I am comforted by my wealth and/or power relative to those more deserving of less; those on the wrong side of a coin flip that I have conveniently misremembered.

Awareness requires discomfort. Change begins with discomfort. Instinctively, once I taste comfort, I seek more comfort, and the more comfort I have, the less discomfort I see (and/or care about) in those around me, much less those who are less deserving and farther flung. Today selfish survival demands comfort; survival of Humanity requires widespread discomfort.

I don't feel finished but this week I started late and I am at deadline.

“Many of the dangers we face indeed arise from science and technology---but, more fundamentally, because we have become powerful without becoming commensurately wise.” -Carl Sagan.

The quote above as a springboard to some agreement and some initial thoughts / additions:

Wisdom has not kept pace with

• Science.
• Technology.
• Power.
• Intelligence.
• Circumstance.

Wisdom is

• Mistakes.
• Careful consideration.
• Unending questions.
• Thoughtfulness.
• Reason.
• Connection, Interdependence, Compassion, Empathy.
• Acknowledgement of and consideration for the entanglement of time and place, leading to understanding the significant insignificance of personal circumstance and individual thought.

Advances in science, technology and power are obvious.

Advances in basic human intelligence, (i.e. education, knowledge and capacity for learning), may not be so obvious, especially to those who live in the moment, (i.e. one lifetime).

Circumstance includes

• Population.
• Increasing complexity / bureaucracy.
• Divisiveness.

Further thought:

Acknowledgement of and consideration for the entanglement of time and place, leading to understanding the significant insignificance of personal circumstance and individual thought will further wisdom by forcing individuals and bodies of individuals (including all of humanity today as a small part of all of past, present and future humanity) to recognize the past and future as both time and place, thus arguing that the present is also both time and place. Last week I said, “Subtract the personal circumstance and the dynamic of time and place becomes weighty, palpable, significant, real; and the border becomes thicker, impenetrable. Subtract the individual thought and the dynamic of time and place becomes wispy, swirling, obscure, fragile; and the border becomes nonexistent; and time becomes place; and place becomes time.” The present is merely a continuation and my presence (our presence) here, now cannot erase the past or discount the future, yet because I separate each moment of my time and further separate my place as any number of self-made or assigned identities, and because I consider the past as one large time and place and the future as one large time and place, my present feels weightier, more consequential and far more important; therefore I value my present far more than I do a connected past or a possible future. The reality is all time and place are entangled.

That said, today we are in a dangerous time. To simply say so and/or sound a warning bell will not be enough. To survive into a number of future generations that will come to the average lifespan of an earthbound species, requires accelerated majority wisdom, today. To spend valuable resources on anything inconsequential to the long-term survival of Humanity is ignorant, prideful, lazy, inhumane. Yet for many, long-term survival is a lifetime. And for some, long-term survival is an afterlife. And for many, consequence is some combination of personal power and comfort. And until we can agree on a definition of long-term survival and expand our consideration of consequence to encompass at least the average lifespan of an earthbound species, our wisdom will lag behind.

In the history of Humanity, if there ever was a time to be accused of overthinking, to be told you are putting way too much thought into something, that time is now. (I believe) today there is no such thing as too much thought. Today, more so than any time in our history, we have both 1) the capability to destroy our species (and possibly our planet), and 2) the potential to ensure our best chance for long-term survival. It is a unique and a dangerous time; and we should be humbled, both individually and as a species, to live here, now.

Lacking majority individual wisdom, we should seek worldwide leadership in those who at first are willing to work together to act on long-term survival as one million or more years; as a species we are barely into our adolescence. After willingness, the next immediate step is to recognize and act on the short-term (in our lifetime) goal of weakening divisive influence, advancing equitable opportunity and simplifying through transparency. And we must do this as one species. We must come together today. There is no other way.

This week in our country Congress ratified the election of a new president. The process was not without a few bumps. In the best of times, politics is about power. In this last four years this power dynamic has become more obvious; but even in the best of times, politics is ignorant, prideful, lazy, inhumane. Based on recent years, I believe it will be a generation or two before we are able to reach and maintain a consistent majority individual wisdom. So today, to weaken divisive influence, to advance equitable opportunity, to simplify through transparency, we must stop choosing politicians as our leaders. We must seek and choose wisdom and long-term vision; (I have already defined long-term). And it would be most beneficial if we were able to choose these characteristics and deeply discount or even ignore an individual's self-made and assigned identities and/or their eloquence and persuasiveness. One lifetime is so significantly insignificant that to focus on anything other than developed character built from a striving for wisdom is inconsequential.

“The human race’s prospects of survival were considerably better when we were defenceless against tigers than they are today, when we have become defenceless against ourselves.” -Arnold Toynbee

“There are no catastrophes that loom before us which cannot be avoided; there is nothing that threatens us with imminent destruction in such a fashion that we are helpless to do something about it. If we behave rationally and humanely; if we concentrate coolly on the problems that face all of humanity, rather than emotionally on such nineteenth century matters as national security and local pride; if we recognize that it is not one’s neighbors who are the enemy, but misery, ignorance, and the cold indifference of natural laws---then we can solve all the problems that face us. We can deliberately choose to have no catastrophes at all.” -Isaac Asimov

*All quotes in this post were found in “The Precipice” written by Toby Ord.