"Being Good" is weirdly difficult

Angel and Devil on Shoulder by Hamera

Generally, I think, we're all trying to do the best we can and navigate complex social webs to try to do the most reasonable, decent thing at any point in time. That can get tough sometimes and it's something that requires constant thought and care and even after all of that there are times when I screw up and end up doing or saying something dumb or hurtful. That's just life, and I'm not complaining, but in contrast to the complexities of daily life I sometimes feel a little talked-down-to by the tone of religions that are like "Be Good!" and that's the end of it.

So here's my problem, and here's what I'm trying to figure out...

Being Good is mostly described as a set of virtuous actions

Take the 'The Sermon on the Mount' (Matthew Chapter 5, specifically) for example. It's actually one of the better examples I've found of real deep, meaningful commentary that you can really get into. It's full of actual, tangible directives that you can then sit and meaningfully discuss and weigh out and bounce ideas against to see what sticks.

There's a bunch of directives toward the end about 'If someone hits you, turn the other cheek', and 'Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you...' that I'm having specific trouble with, in that they paint a certain image of "Goodness" that revolves around certain actions. But the actions themselves are meaningless on their own because depending on your intention they could have vastly different impacts; they could even be weaponized into some passive-aggressive tactic in skilled-enough hands. For example if someone hits you and then you turn the other cheek but with enough of a glare in your eye the attacker might very well realize that you've now marked him for a lifelong grudge... it might've been kinder (to both of you) to just hit him back in that moment and be done with the whole thing instead of it turning into a blood feud.

Obviously that previous bit is a contrived example but what I mean is that the injunction to "Be Good" is troublesome in the way that "Be Modest" or "Be Humble" is troublesome. In the sense that as soon as you say "I'm a humble person." out loud, you are by definition not humble. Similarly, trying to be good is already self-defeating in the sense that it's a sort of a pretense... and this becomes troublesome because (to bring it back to a religious context) you're told to actually be good or it's pointless, God isn't particularly of the "Fake it till you make it" self-help mentality.

So it might seem that "Being Good" is an impossible task but there's plenty of benefits to being a good person, which mainly revolve around the fact that...

People generally like Nice people.

Clearly you'd be a fool to not be a good person if you could. Good people are generally more loved and respected, and being nice to a person who's being an asshole to you might actually be a disarming move that gets them to leave you alone. Or at the very least it might draw allies to your side against this other person who's specifically casting himself as the villain. At a larger level, companies as well are now finding that doing the right thing is more profitable.

But again, the contradiction stares you right back in the face: people who do nice things because it's beneficial are called psychopaths and shunned and that's seen as the worst possible kind of manipulation. Similarly if companies do something nice but that seems like a PR stunt it can backfire terribly. It seems we recognize that there's a high value in genuineness and put a high premium on it but we have no idea how to be genuinely good. In other words...

We need to try to be good, but not try too much... I guess? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

So think about walking for a moment... infact, think about how much you don't need to think about walking. When you need to go somewhere, you just move your legs and walk there; that's how amazing we are at it. And hence it'd be ridiculous to think overmuch about proper walking technique, it's one of the few things we're really physically built for as humans. (Unless you have a physical issue that needs treatment or surgery, but I mean generally speaking). 

I want to be as good at Being Good as I am at walking, basically... that would be a sort of "Natural Goodness" and that would be genuine and nice and I wouldn't have to worry that maybe my motivations were possibly suspect and that I was possibly deluding even myself.

But in the meantime all I can do is try... to... not try to be good? Lol lemme know if you figure this one out. (-.-)'

Thoughts on 'The Stanley Parable'

I played the demo, I was super excited about the game... I've heard loads about it and I've even played the other game that the creator put out ('A Beginner's Guide') so I was super pumped to purchase and play this.

On a purely experiential level it's beautifully disorienting. Everything you think you know about gaming, about being a gamer, about participation and agency and "Destiny" and everything is just upended and thrown at you and the only choice you really have is whether to dodge or stand in the way and allow yourself to be hit by it.

This game should be some kind of required playing for any kind of game designer or experience designer in general, to get them to think about these some of these questions for themselves before crafting experiences for others. It would make them more humane designers I think...

I haven't even finished all the endings yet, and maybe I will someday but I just finished playing the ending that makes all the other ones kinda meaningless. The 'Final' ending, if you will. I'm kinda shaking right now as I'm writing this... 'ON' and 'OFF' both want to be free but yet they don't see that they need each other. What would one even be without the other; is something really alive if there is not also the possibility of it's opposite? I'm rambling now...

I think this game should be required playing for people of any kind generally. It would make them more humane I think.

P.S. If you do play it, and reach the ending as I did (and are distressed at all, for any reason), check this out: Clicking on this link is a bit of a spoiler for the game, yea?

Dick Bolles: "How to decide what you'll do in five years" | Summary

How do we figure out what we'll do five years from now?

This is probably the question I hate most during job interviews, and of late it's a question I'm asking myself a lot as well.

I found a Google talk by a guy Dick Bolles who's apparently written one of the most famous guides for job-seekers - 'What colour (color?) is your parachute.' - and here he's talking about how to think about five years into your future. I watched it and then re-watched it just now because I wanted to take notes and I'm putting them up in the hopes that it helps someone else out as well.



Generally people have one of three strategies for thinking about 5 years into their future:

1. They ignore it
• They rely on their Luck.
• "I'll see where I'm at in five years and see what's happening."
• Effectively, they hope to see the next big wave and then jump on it as it happens.
2. "I'll know it when I see it"
• They rely on their Intuition and on being watchful.
• This is about pattern matching and noticing what's happening.
3. They decide to try some forethought.
• That's fine if you're "designing" but "planning" doesn't work.
• You cannot plan for five years from now.
• War, natural disasters or new technologies could completely upset your calculations.
• You can design for the future though; Like planning for a camping trip, you take things you "might" need.
• Design is gathering together whatever you might need to deal with the future scenarios.

Each strategy has certain conditions that need to be fulfilled if it's going to work. There's no right or wrong or "best" strategy, it's about how you operate.

Luck

1. Whether this strategy works depends on Intersections; the more people you run into, the more likely you'll have "luck"
2. Maximize your intersections.
3. Pay attention to meetings, getting on social media, and meetups with people in real life.
4. For job seekers, get on Linkedin.com, jobswithfriends.com (check for companies where friends of yours work).
5. Note: Basically it becomes a kind of numbers game.

Intuition

1. Intuition depends on what you notice and generally you notice things in relation to some kind of benchmark.
2. Then it becomes important to properly set your benchmark so that you're then more sensitive to deviations.
3. Think of what kinda jobs you like best:
• data
• people
• things (computers and whatever)
4. So once you decide that, you can spend the next 5 years focusing on jobs related to that specific field.
5. That way when something truly cool turns up, it'll be a significant deviation from the norm and you'll notice it.
6. This is just one way to prime the brain to notice things, check out the video below.

Lifestyle Design

1. Do an inventory of yourself.
2. You're constantly put in boxes by situations and other people: "I'm a coder", "I'm in HR", etc and then you live in that box.
• If you want to learn, you must first unlearn. And the biggest thing to unlearn is the limiting picture we have of ourselves.
3. The inventory should not be "I'm this" or "I'm that".
• Instead it can be "I am a person..." and then "I am a person who..."
4. Again, you're gathering a set of things you think might be useful in five years... 
• When you go camping, the most important thing is a tent.
• For job seeking, or fulfilment, the most important thing to do is rethink who you are.
• What you do flows from who you are!
5. (Detailed inventory thing is in his book... some "crass commercialism" here. :p)
6. The inventory should be a set of stories about yourself. Those stories should then boil down into a set of skills.
• Focus on skills because the more atomic you get in your understanding of yourself, the more flexibility you have.
• If you're good at teaching, researching and writing then you could be any number of things like a speaker, a scientist, anything.
7. Think about how you like to use your brain, and what skills you have.
8. Nevermind what the marketplace wants initially, you can persuade someone to pay you for your skills later. 
• It's enthusiasm that's the real secret ingredient.

  What you're doing 5 years from now will depend on who you are right now.

Further reading 

This was a super useful talk, I'm sure it'll come in handy soon. Meanwhile here's some other thoughts about work if you're interested:

1. Your lifestyle has already been designed | Raptitude.com
2. 3 ways your office building hates you | Cracked.com
3. How to be creative | GapingVoid.com
4. Job Advice | StillDrinking.com 
5. Makers schedule vs Manager's Schedule | Paul Graham
6. Screw finding your passion | Mark Manson

Owning and re-writing our mental software | Summary

I personally struggle with chronic procrastination a lot (like a lot a lot) and in reading about (beating) it you come across the words "Motivation" and "Productivity" quite often. Those two words alone are multi-million dollar industries each that sell people books and seminars and individual coaching a la people like Tony Robbins, David Allen (of 'Getting Things Done' fame) and others. Not to say that these products and services aren't helpful but there's always felt like they didn't contain the complete picture...

What I've come to realize is that these myriad books and things presume that you have a good reason to want to be more productive. In other words, "Purpose" is assumed and then from there the books help you get other road-blocks out of the way. Of course it's a lot harder to talk about purpose, and harder still to find it for oneself. But in ignoring Purpose itself, the blind pursuit of increased productivity can leave you feeling drained and fatigued. From there you then think you need to start reading the Motivation books because you're so tired all the time and you just want to curl up and binge-watch Scrubs.

To break out of this cycle the thing to do is to sit and really be honest about what you really want. And none of that beauty pageant bullshit about "World Peace" if that's not true, this isn't the time for that. Write out your desires and also your aspirations for accomplishments or experiences in the future. Mostly you might find that this list will have things that you've sort of worked on in the past but for whatever reason it then fizzled out mid-way. Most likely you then blamed yourself for being "too lazy" or "not smart enough" or "not motivated enough" or whatever.

I've been in a similar state recently and in that context I came across the latest article from 'Wait, But Why?' about Elon Musk titled "The Cook and the Chef". There have been a handful of movies and books and things that've dramatically altered the course of my life thus far and this article has that feeling already, of being something momentous.

I highly recommend reading the original article but it's a bit of a mammoth read so here's my tl;dr summary to get you started:

• Elon Musk isn't so productive because he's especially unique, he only seems that way in comparison to everyone else; with some analysis we could all be dramatically more effective.
• Everybody has some version of mental software running in their brains that informs how they interact with the world.
• Your mental model is a collection of "Wants", tempered by a set of "Beliefs" about what is possible in reality. In the overlap of those two are your "Goals".
• Be aware that your software can be inherited from your parents, from culture and from society; You could be running out-of-date software and not realize it.
• Think like a scientist, reason each component of your mental model from "first principles" and constantly re-adjust as you learn new information.

I'm really trying not to have this post be completely just fanboy-ish but I really think it's vitally important to be aware of one's own biases and mental models and see if they're really taking you where you want to go. Maybe first write out your current wants and beliefs and goals and just look at them and see if they're really yours or if you've accepted someone else's priorities for what your life should be about.

Speaking of helpful mental models, there's also this excellent video about the purpose of doing things : Use This Chart To Achieve Happiness. If you find yourself unhappy at a job, or feeling stuck in a role or whatever, maybe take a step back and see what's gone wrong and why you started doing it in the first place... The chart might help with that. Here's the link again, I'm not in the mood to embed videos right now : Use This Chart To Achieve Happiness

If you see me somewhere, I'd love to talk about how you decide to do things; how do you think about purpose for yourself and how do you choose goals from among a bunch of things that might all really cool things to work on. Or whatever, leave me a comment or send me an email or something and we'll chat. :)

Edit: 
25/11/2015 : It's David Allen who wrote 'Getting things done'. Confused him with Tim Allen from 'Home Improvement'. :p

Hopefully space-faring humans will be nicer

It's truly an exciting time to be alive nowadays. That's true in lots of ways but specifically, the attitude toward space exploration seems to have shifted quite a bit recently. It reminds me of stories told of the period when America and the Soviets were racing to put the first man on the moon. The circumstances might've been war-like but the mood at the time (in American media atleast) was soaring on dreams of how the space-age was going to usher in unthinkably idyllic lifestyles. Nowadays we might giggle at the naivety of flying cars and hoverboards by 2015 but at the same time it points to a touching optimism about where our species was heading.

It's a bit weird to think about, but right now we're already in the future we dreamed about! We're like a child being asked about what we want to be when we're "all grown up" except we suddenly realize we've been adulting for a while now and we're still not sure if we're ready for what's coming next. There's not a doubt in my mind that as we start to become multi-planetary as a species, it's going to open up a whole new bunch of situations that will demand that we evolve to a new paradigm. If you need proof of that just think about how much the world changed after the moon landing. Think about how much our very conception of ourselves was shaken by the first few images of our planet taken from space...

 

It's hard to really think about today but everything we think of as the "Environmental Movement" kinda started out of this picture. It showed us, really for the first time, how isolated and fragile the Earth really is.  Having said that, we're living in an age when it's no longer science fiction to talk about colonizing other planets; another wave of change is coming and if the Moon was such a big deal, can you even imagine what an actual colony on Mars (or a floating city in the clouds of Venus) might spark? These innovations are knocking on our door right now, and new possibilities are closer than we think.

In any case, we don't need to worry that these realities are "too far" into the future to waste time on today. By anticipating some of the changes that could happen, we can try and answer them ahead of time and hopefully get some insight into the state of our current lives as well while we wait.

Most definitely one of the big issues will be around our collective identity. The further away you get from Earth, the less it might matter where exactly on the blue pixel you came from but what would that mean for life back on Earth? Most media shows future societies are being largely homogeneous or if there's an encounter with a group of Extraterrestrials the aliens all look kinda the same. There's probably some racist/xenophobic dynamic at play there but the point is that we think that nationalities and ethnicities will end up dissolving when a civilization becomes capable of travel between star-systems.

Yes it's definitely easier to govern a population if there's a homogeneity of religion, culture and ethnicity but just because it's easier doesn't mean we should want to homogenize our entire species. At a very high level we're all basically equal but that doesn't mean we're the same... different cultures evolve in different parts of the world in response to the state of their local environment. Architectures are different to incorporate different climate, building materials and labour and food incorporates local ingredients and needs. Different philosophies then grow out of those collection of people over time; to smooth out all that richness is to lose almost everything that got us to this point as a species. So hopefully what space travel does for us is help stop things like racism or religious conflict, but while also helping us recognize the wealth of diversity we have available to us.

This is the sort of paradox that makes dealing with these questions difficult. At one level when regular people say "Hey, we're all one people; we should treat each other the same" that usually means that you allow other people space to be themselves within their own cultural and social identity. And then you go over to their societies and learn about what makes them special. This is (mostly) what travelling is all about; going to different spaces and seeing what the people who grow there are like. So what you have is a belief in inherent commonality producing a reality of inherent diversity.

But then at another level a corporation (or institution of some kind) might say something like "We cherish all our customers and believe in the value of every single unique individual" which might lead you to think that their mission is to cater their products to the people they serve. What ends up happening though is that the products get produced en-masse up front and then demand is shaped via marketing and education. (*cough* iPhone *cough*) So what you get is a stated "belief" in uniqueness that ends up producing these societal-scale waves of group-think. It gets difficult to push back because the stated belief is a seemingly good idea; who doesn't value individual-agency! But then the reality that these companies create are light-years removed from that promise and we're all left unsure of how to respond.

Essentially there's already a version of this homogenization going on right now. In an ideal Capitalist (with a capital 'C') society, the best thing is for Globalization to go across the world and basically smoothen out all the rough edges so that any company can do business anywhere! Ideally everyone speaks the same language, everyone dresses the same way, everyone walks talks and eats the same way and eventually worships the same gods and has identical architecture and art and psychology as well. At this point you'd then be able to sell the same shitty fast-food burger to anyone, anywhere because everyone's values have already been adjusted to roughly the same (highly controlled) range of preferences.

What we need is a cultural identity that allows us to maintain our uniqueness while also allowing us to play well with other people. To that degree what we have as international business practices and international courts are a fabulous innovation but we shouldn’t lose sight of the value in our local communities. For example think of five of the most beautiful cities in the world, and then also consider how vastly different they are from each other:

Ultimately it's not societies who shape us, it's us who shapes society. And in a lot of ways it's not the law that protects us, but also we who protect the law and choose to co-operate with each other. This is something we need to keep in mind as we walk into the future together: everything you see around you today started off as an idea.

And if you want a glimpse of what the future might (hopefully) feel like there's a photograph, 'The Pale Blue Dot', which is the most distant self-portrait we have of the Earth. It was taken from approximately 6.4 billion kilometres away by the Voyager space probe.

Keep that picture in mind (or have it open in front of you) and take a listen to the letter Carl Sagan wrote about what that picture brought to mind for him. I challenge you to not just be reduced to tears while you listen...

From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it's different. Consider again that dot. That's here, that's home, that's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there—on the mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

Games that make you think about life (and games)

This is a bit of a collection of collections... happened to see these lists  a few years ago and played through quite a number of the games and they've all had quite an impact on my life.

Almost all of them are indie titles, all lovingly crafted to speak about messages that resonate with me even now years after playing them.

thanks grandma...

Hope you enjoy some of these games... I've mentioned my favorites from each list next to each. Each game might only take an hour or so and some of them are maybe 15 minute experiences tops.

1. 20 Games that make you think about life
• Elude: A game about depression, this let's you experience what it might be like to be bipolar and to really feel the hopelessness that can come about when you're on a downswing. Don't worry, the game won't depress you... it'll just show you the sort of shape of the feeling.
• Covetous: A game about coveting, as told by a lone cancer cell... Deeply intriguing game, one that gives me chills even now thinking about it and it's been several years since I've played it.
• Air Pressure: A game that has you interact with your kinda clingy girlfriend... one possible interpretation is that she's a personification of a substance abuse problem, but there's lots of ways to read all the various stories and outcomes.
• Aether: Lovely, relaxing little game, made by the creator of Super Meat Boy, it has you explore planets and try and help the creatures on each one deal with something that's bothering them.
• UTE: Definitely NSFW, this is a game where you play as a nympho woman trying to have sex as much as possible before she's caught and made to marry the guy she was last caught with. Make of that what you will. (RockPaperShotgun did an entire column on this game and it's themes : S.EXE : Ute by Lea Schönfelder)
2. 10 Games that make you think about life
• Loved: Absolutely beautiful, beautiful game exploring the nature of authority and obedience. It plays like a standard platformer but as you play there's a voice directing you to take certain paths, play a certain way and sometimes even jump to your death on some spikes. And as you play you also need to figure out how much your own self-worth really means to you.
• The Company Of Myself: Another platformer, but you play as a solitary man who's reminiscing about his lost love as he tries to move through the world. Very trippy, deep game and very interesting twist ending of sorts. Psychology enthusiasts will really like this one.
• I Can Hold Me Breath Forever: A touching story about friendship and loss. I still have to finish this one but the little I played was really interesting.
3. 10 More Games that make you think about life:
• American Dream: Another kinda NSFW game, this has you work as an investment banker during the week so you can pimp out your house and have crazy drug fueled orgies over the weekend. The parties stop if your house doesn't have the latest stuff though so your investments had better keep giving you the monies. 
• Spent: Think you can survive for a month living at the poverty line? Get a job, keep healthy and try and keep your kids happy for only 30 days and see how things go... 
• One Chance: Oh my god, this game!! No resets, no takebacksies, you literally get only one chance to play to try and save the world when your cure for cancer ends up going awry and killing all living cells. Haven't agonized over any decision in a game as much as in this one...
4. 5 Games that make you think about life: 
• Haven't played very many from this list, but Gray was a really interesting take on the way in which ideas spread, and the nature of being an outsider. You start as the only person who's not rioting when everyone else is going nuts and you're trying to talk to people and convert them all the your way of thinking.
• I want to play Passage and The Game sometime but I've been a little scared thus far. :p
5. 15 games that make you think differently about Games:
• This is a collection of games commissioned by various government or NGO agencies to try and raise awareness or understanding of various issues.
• Elude and Spent are on this list so I'm guessing the rest will probably be pretty stellar... I plan to play and check 'em out soon.

So yea, this list is comparatively quite old and there've been a lot of really good games that've come out since then that explore various interesting themes and perspectives. Maybe I'll make a future post to collect those. 

Also, it's not that I've played all the games on these lists... these are just my favourites out of the ones I've played. Lemme know if there are any other gems buried in there. :)

Songs About Real(er) Love

So a couple of weeks ago I did a guest post for my friends Tanisha and Sudhir's lovely music blog Monday Mephobics and while researching songs I found a bunch of... "alternative" love songs.

Pop music is just waaaay to saturated with a certain kind of drippy, Disney version of love and it can get a little frustrating that most of our lived experiences of it have very little in common. This of course to say nothing of the complexities of marriage or long term relationships or (big scary voice) Child Raising.

So take a listen to these three songs and lemme know what you think. And don't worry, these aren't some misanthropic ballads; just keep an open mind. :)

'Adult female : A Song' by Hank Green

This first one just really struck me right from the opener:

This song is for a girl
No wait, I changed my mind
This song is for an adult female

And from there on just goes on to talk about a more measured, reasonable experience of what love is like. Which seems pretty cool especially in comparison to songs like 'Grenade' (Bruno Mars) which just sound stressful.

'If I Didn't Have You' by Tim Minchin

This song is probably my absolute favourite in this set. I think the notion of "Soulmates", perpetuated by countless hours of all forms of popular media is probably one of the most destructive ideas that have ever happened.

Not destructive with the spectacular visibility of a nuclear bomb perhaps but definitely in a more quiet, insidious kind of way. Think about it, if there were truly only one perfect person out there, then the stakes are unbelievably high! It would justify any sort of shitty behaviour on your part if, say, your soulmate were already in a relationship or a marriage. Even if they had children. Even if they were leaving town to go across the country for a new job. Even if they said they didn't love you back... (let that one sink in for a minute)

On top of that it probably doesn't help marriages because at the first sign of any discomfort you'd be confronted with the thought that it wasn't supposed to be this way if your partner is your soul mate. And that's ridiculous because I shouldn't be the one to tell you that any kind of commitment is arduous and tedious at times, and the idea of finding your soulmate puts such immense pressure on everyone feeling happy all the time.

So for me it was really refreshing to have someone say:

Your love is one in a million
You couldn’t buy it at any price.
But of the 9.999 hundred thousand other loves,
Statistically, some of them would be equally nice.

Take a listen, the song is the first 5 minutes or so and then he talks about his family and his wife in-case anyone gets butthurt.



Btw, check out We've All Been Raised on Evil Love Stories if you're also a recovering Disney-love-aholic. Also Soulmates by Xkcd's 'What If?' for a more mathematical break-down of why this idea doesn't work.

'I'm Not Edward Cullen' by Hank Green

This one I thought was really cute, and it's another one by Hank Green where:

"...Hank and Katherine Sing about how hard it is to live up to the example of a perfectly beautiful, perpetually-seventeen, bodily-functionless, millionaire vampire (who owns a freaking Aston Martin for crap's sake!)"

All I know is that I felt quite similarly during school when the girls would friggin' go out with dudes from the upper grades. It's like "Bro... not cool!". :p

[Bonus] 'The Science Love Song' by ASAPScience

One more song for all you lovely people. This one doesn't any point or anything, it's just cute and (super) nerdy and is more of a classic love song with a bit of a spin.



That's all from me... lemme know if you've come across any good songs in the comments.

[Update] Extended Honourable Mentions

1. She Called Me Bhaiyya : https://youtu.be/u2-cCLAvMCo
A song about a guy being rakhi-zoned (Indian friend-zoned) by a girl he likes. I don't think the song is specifically taking sides but whether you take it as a personal anthem or a wake-up call or whatever is entirely representative of your personal state IMHO.