December 10th, 2022
- boom very powerful tweet for being on the same side & being on truth's side
- original context:
- mage > doesnt it strike anyone else as odd that we have such little *practical* *relational* *emotional* wisdom built up in our culture
- orson > I’m not sure. Is that really the case? Surely I’ve been exposed to hugely more examples of human interactions over my lifetime than anybody who was born pre-cinema. And all the more so since YouTube!
- #2tweet since the beginning of the universe, not a single mistake has ever occurred
also, sometimes we fuck up- since the beginning of the universe, not a single mistake has ever occurred
also, sometimes we fuck up
- scraps from today's writing
- For a more precise articulation of how I’m using the word “coercion”, see coercion in terms of scarcity & perceptual control.
- > It started with considering the simple question: what is within my power to choose? This is something that we have to learn as infants and toddlers and kids—oh, I can choose to clench my fist... but I can't choose to clench yours. I can choose to look at something, but I can't choose to make you look at something. I can choose to point at the thing, and maybe you'll look, but I can't directly steer your gaze. In some sense, this is precisely where the boundary of self and other is located! And it's also connected to how when we're wielding a tool that works for us and it fades into the background, it becomes part of ourselves.
- this somehow plugs in with trust as an unquestioning attitude—not the phrase itself but the paper, which talks about trusting tools as being like trusting people
- it feels like a betrayal if/when part of oneself suddenly rebels
- ????? The top-down lens on this is that choice occurs via some big "me" asserting its will down into the me, overriding one control system in favor of another. ????? And sometimes this works fine—I like to think of pomodoros as a time when a particular urge or inclination is free to veto all others. But to some extent, as far as I can tell, all parts do actually have veto power all the time, as they engage in their subtle negotiations & trust-dances, and so in order for one part to have veto power over all of the others for 25 minutes, all of the others are actually allowing that one part to run the show for that duration.
- more juicy scraps
- @ 13:44 - trying to figure out what I'm doing with my writing
- I would like to publish an updated reflection on the nature of choice & mindset choice
- let's just think out loud here for a bit, leaving my drafts aside for now
- so it's becoming more clear to me that choice...
- a few different kinds of
- present will: using will in this moment to make something happen in this moment, without trying to constrain the future in any way
- my main this-is-good-actually example is lifting heavy weights
- this requires learning the difference between these two kinds of resistance
- "it's too harrrrd"
- "this is gonna fuck me up if I keep going"
- and also maybe requires dialoguing with the "it's too hard" voices in a moment other than when under load
- and maybe the good cutting-through insight moves are also kind of like that in a different way
- it's like "I'm gonna make one cut that I think will be clean and lead to tons more untangling and repair"
- but there's no further forcing
- like it's a single stroke that
- if it meets resistance releases
- and even if it penetrates, it doesn't press further
- contracts/commitments: something where given sufficient/full alignment under current circumstances, one decides to lock in a certain kind of relationship
- eg
- a marriage
- devotion to a guru or spiritual path
- but those are quite rare—the sort of thing one does a few times in life
- and even in either of these cases... if that commitment does come to be occluding something, then there's a need (for sanity) to be able to look, while honoring the commitment
- in some sense having a kid is sort of a similar thing but it doesn't happen via the same mechanism for several reasons
- and it's still only a handful of times
- idea: remove or deemphasize some of the choice stuff inside the expanding awareness post, and focus on expanding awareness ↔ coercion
- hmm... choosing to do, vs choosing to allow
- relates to "nothing to do" meditation
- allowing the other's view/perspective/experience/desires, on its own, doesn't do that much
- though within allowing, various skills or techniques can create more space of allowing/welcoming within the other
- so eg Jean had some moves available for her to be allowing the other
- but then not other moves (that I have)
- (eg she (afaict) didn't know how to safely perspective-take a judgmental perspective)
- and probably some of the moves she has, I don't have
- ahhhh there might be something around defensiveness = protectiveness / guardedness here!
- insofar as there might BE a difference between these two, it might be something to do with my new model of judgment and perspective-taking
- (which I have a recording of an articulation of today - relevant section ends ~1h)
- developmental path re "choice", going through multiple stages
- re metaprotocol
- introductory stage where people need some anchoring
- of something different
- they need an anchoring to have a tension against
- where that other end is holding claims about how good collaboration works
- and anchoring the initial possibility of mindset choice
- [maybe MA is the one to watch the latest vid of me & MS]
- yeah he's into it
- judgment - anthropological perspective
- specific hyperobject that is the whole ecology of thinking that justified the hierarchical power structure
- I don't believe in lazy
- childhood patterns can lead to "it's not safe to be with this aggression"
- okay, just had this amazing call, feeling like I got a bunch more clarity about how choice plugs into mindset
- via choice of allowing
- which is kinda like expanding awareness
- nearly synonymous just from a diff angle
- but this doesn't directly achieve any particular result whatsoever
- (it can't lol it's allowing)
- idk if "allow" is quite the right word here as it sort of evokes permission
- although it is ultimately symmetrical
- maybe it's fine to actually publish the post as-is plus these updates
- I think the thing to do is shift the framing near the top, to indicate less "aha! I found where choice goes" and more to
- AH! yeah and the key is like "what has the power to choose?" and it does seem like each part in some sense has some choosy power
- and forcing a part to let go from the outside is coercion, not choice
- ah, and that's in some sense what choice is! is the opposite of coercion!
- mmm I'm feeling some Free to Dance vibes and already always dancing vibes and I find myself wondering what it looks like for the writing/publishing process itself to be a dance