Buster McLeod

the personal zeitgeist

A friend of mine talks about the zeitgeist... things that you hear or come across several different times in unconnected contexts as if the plot of your life was trying to foreshadow something. It's fun to keep track of the personal zeitgeist. There's always something. And our brains give the random constellations of objects meaning.

Right now a few things are in my zeitgeist. Foxes are in the zeitgeist. Moby Dick is in my zeitgeist. Eggs are currently falling off the zeitgeist. Happiness is in the zeitgeist. I should keep track of this better. What's on your zeitgeist?

trying really hard

What are you trying really hard to do? I think I'm trying really hard to do two things: build an interesting and sustainable company, build an interesting and sustainable personal life. I guess it comes down to trying really hard to build an interesting and sustainable life. By interesting I mean one that is capable of surprising me, challenging me, and changing me for the better. By sustainable I mean one that runs on less than it consumes, one that gives more than it takes, and one that can last a while even as it and I change along the way. In practice, in my own life this means having a company that includes some of my best friends and lets me work on stuff that I would work on for free if I had to. It means trying new things like office hours and online dating and taking pictures of all my friends and buying art from friends and drinks for friends and thinking about whales and foxes and happiness.

But I don't think I'm trying hard enough. This is what the hunger challenge has taught me... for the most part, I'm fairly wimpy when it comes to trying really hard because many things come easy. Why try hard to build an interesting and sustainable life when that's what I already have? At the same time though, there is no ceiling to how interesting life can be... I'm certainly nowhere near the ceiling at least. So I need to keep trying. What form does that take? That is the rub since most people equate working more and sacrificing more as symptoms of trying. So they work more and sacrifice more. But as symptoms, they are not the thing itself. The thing itself I think involves the right side of the brain and the feeling of trying to solve difficult problems.

This goes back to my theory that most of life as it is given to us is about hiding or fixing weaknesses. But life becomes most interesting when you build strengths. Take what comes naturally and then try really hard to improve it. I'm thinking about going to therapy in order to improve my happiness. Not to solve depression, but to become even happier. I also want to get glasses in order to see even better than 20/20.

the footprint versus the trail

I've noticed that a lot of internet ideas are about footprints: cataloging your books, finding your friends, listing everywhere you've been. This is my footprint on the world of whatever. Then there are ideas about trails: the trail of photos I take, the trail of thoughts I have, the trail of places I've been, etc. This is the difference between weblogs and homepages. I like trail ideas.

nuclear weapons for everyone

This might be one of my crazier ideas. It came to me as I was going to sleep after a weird day. There was a death in my family. Cars are driving themselves off of parking garages. People are getting stabbed in front of my favorite bars. I'm reading a really bad book on the really good topic of happiness. This idea has nothing to do with these things.

We should give every country nuclear weapons. Every company. Every citizen. The right to bear arms taken to its logical conclusion. Guns used to be enough for a revolution. Now you need nuclear weapons and biological weapons. This is what our country is all about. We should give our enemies and friends the map to building killer viruses, and blueprints to all of our secret buildings. Everyone should have a gun to each others' heads at all times. It should be a complete game change. Nobody should have any privacy. Everyone would be in power. What then?

First, we would be able to trust each other. With privacy, there's always a lack of trust. You can't trust someone you don't completely know unless you have more power than they do, and you control them. Well, actually, you can trust them but they can't trust you. Only with equal power can you have complete trust, and only with complete publicity and public responsibility for everything you do can there be equal power. The ultimate table for negotiation is when you both have each others' lives in each others' hands. Pass me the briefcase. Deal. Trust. It's double blind falling into each others' arms. Trust has to be two-way. Sure, it's nice that babies trust their parents, but we don't live in an ideal world until parents trust their babies.

Second, we would quickly find out who the crazy and evil people were. Interesting from a sociological perspective, and also in our own trek to know ourselves. We might find out, of course, by being killed by them all. Or, we might find out by being the crazy and evil people and killing everyone else. Without equal power, you can't tell non-crazy people from people who are forced to be crazy and evil in order to gain power, and you can't tell them from the people who don't seem crazy and evil because they don't yet have the power, or have the power on certain terms. You can't tell if you're crazy because you can't change your situation, or if you're crazy because you have too much power, or if you're actually not crazy at all but just weird.

Third, our society would be forced to evolve so rapidly to the change proposed that we'd probably have to reinvent ourselves. Things would certainly be a little unstable for a while... but if you're an optimist you might say that in the end, we'd have a better world. Right now, we're stuck in a compromised position of being under control of the most powerful entity: the people that control the money of the world. They're a very small group of people, and even though "cooperation" and "working together" is the best game-theory for getting to the top and staying at the top, you also have to take a very special interest in staying there, even when your more cooperative, considerate, and good successor comes along. Also, there are different strategies for public and private conduct. Nobody wants to be replaced. What is a good thing for the person at the top (weapons of mass destruction) can be the worst crime for everyone else. Our system is biased to protect whoever has the most power.

I wonder what would happen. Probably anarchy and the end of the world, but maybe our society would break the bone and it would set better. Crazy late night idea. I think I'm going to have good dreams.

experiments with hunger

A couple weeks ago I had the grand idea of experimenting with my hunger tolerance. It's a theme throughout history: dieting, fasting, gorging... how do we change when we tempt the muses of our appetite? Also, I wanted to lose a few pounds. Also, I read that one of the things that "old students" of Vipassana meditation do is refrain from eating after mid-day. Also, I was having nightmares about oysters due to my late night romp through the oyster beds of Hood Canal, and was feeling consumer guilt. It's one of those zeitgeist moments when you find a way to tidily fell several personal issues with one stone. The only stipulation of course being that I didn't want to draw attention to this fact, as people might think I'm anorexic or just weird... so I decided that this experiment could only take place when I was alone (perhaps making me sound even crazier). If I was out with friends I would behave as per usual and pig out.

The plan was to not eat after mid-day, and to see how hungry I got. What I quickly learned is that I often indulge my sense of hunger. I humor it by focusing on it and magnifying it to grand proportions and saying things like "I'M STARVING!" when really there's only an echo of a whisper of a hunger statement. In any case, by talking to my hunger, asking it things like "How hungry are you?", "Is this really very important?", and "What if I drank a glass of water, would that help?" I found it to be a very wimpy force indeed. Not even a challenge.

Another thing I immediately learned, by effectively only having one meal a day, is that the one meal became much more enjoyable. Delicious and satisfying. I never reached lunch (this is the one meal that is almost always kept with my coworkers) ravenous... and the strange thing is that I suddenly began craving healthier foods. I was much more aware of the fact that this food was going to be used by my body to keep it going for the next 24 hours or so. Perhaps the cravings for junk food, or greasy fatty foods, or even meats is a result of your body having reached some plateau of what it really needs, and it doesn't really care what else you give it as long as it tastes good. When it actually needs certain kinds of sustenance, then it tells you "eat vegetables!", "drink water!", "we need some carbohydrates badly!" etc. For years I've experienced the same kind of thing after exercising... my body wants certain kinds of energy to replenish itself.

It's fun to get back to the basics and experience the problem of nourishing the body on a more literal level. It's something I'm sure some people are more conscious of than others... being someone that has never really had to worry about weight issues probably lands me in the more ignorant camp.

Finally, I ended up losing 6 pounds in the last week. That's a little worrisome... I will have to not waste away, and figure out a way of keeping my weight and health while still experimenting a bit more. I think that by combining this with healthier eating and some exercise that my body will re-equilibrilize to its new environment, if I choose to continue this for longer.

increasing noise levels in bars as the night wears on

It would be interesting to chart the noise levels at a bar where there's background music playing all night long, versus a bar where there's no music playing. Some places are just so much louder than others, even though there's really no reason why they would be. Maybe the people are drunker? Maybe the space is more echoey? I wonder if the background noise is always rising... people talking louder to be heard over the noise, increasing the noise, forcing the next round to speak louder still. I also wonder whether a positive noise feedback loop gets triggered at a certain noise level, below which the noise stays relatively level but above causing things to get louder and louder over time. Or if one particularly loud song is enough to raise the ambient noise to a point that's self-sustaining even after the song ends or is turned off. I wish there were some way to answer this question easily, as my curiosity is about strong enough to try a couple Google searches but not strong enough to do a study like this.

savor the details and see the big picture

Isn't it weird how we can't focus on a cup on the table and a picture on the back wall at the same time? You need to refocus your eyes. Clear your cookies. Have another drink.

It's 1:33. It's 1:33. It's 1:34.

I would like to start a movement for eye enhancement surgeries. We enhance other things, why not things that actually matter: sight, hearing, taste, touch. With many of these senses, there are surgeries and devices that enable you to recover or repair damaged senses. Glasses, contacts, hearing aids, at least. But what about us that have average to slightly-above-average sight or hearing? What kind of glasses can we wear? Shouldn't there be glasses to help us see even better? Eye surgery that gives us eagle eye sight? What can we do to get better sense of taste? Or, a more acute sense of touch? Technology, where are you when we really need you.

It's 1:37. It's 1:37. It's 1:37. It's 1:37. It's 1:37. It's 1:38.

I'm doing something weird. I've stopped eating when I'm alone. It's not a diet, more like a fast. I usually eat dinners alone, but this last week I stopped unless I was with people. Just to see if I would get hungry. And if I got hungry, how hungry I got. The weird thing is that I only got a little hungry. I drank water and ate a baby carrot of something, if I felt like it. But it's great to feel hungry. Hunger is a strange thing. When you eat regularly, I think hunger is an enormously powerful emotional force in your body. You STARVE. Even though you just ate a couple hours ago. However, the power of hunger doesn't really act consistently. If you don't eat for a while, you stop being hungry. Why is that? Maybe the body just figures out that it missed the meal and will do something else until the next meal comes around.

And after you haven't eaten for a while... 12 to 15 hours... food tastes different. You can feel the sugar, and you can feel the carbohydrates... at least it feels like you can feel it. Milk is extra milky. Water is extra watery. It's a wonderful way to experience the world.

It's 1:43. It's 1:43. It's 1:43. It's 1:43. It's 1:43. It's 1:43. It's 1:43. It's 1:44.

I think I'm confused. I'm loving the change of the seasons.

It's 1:54.

survival of the most in demand

What happens when you combine "survival of the fittest" with "supply and demand"? Too much survival may create a surplus of surviving supply... lowering the value of it, and the demand for it, and maybe the ability for it to continue surviving as well. Value might shift from that kind of survival to a rarer form. What does that mean? I think it means that we might need to make synonyms of fittest and most valuable and that you can probably talk about evolution in economic terms. It creates a constantly moving target for value and fitness, which is probably a good thing since it ensures that the top doesn't stagnate, even if the environment does. Not sure why I started thinking about this, or why it matters.

the ecosystem of our brain

Energy levels: low. Feeling a bit crazy. Spazzy. Can't concentrate even on the words as I type them, sometimes the beginning of the sentence is too far away to go back and figure out in order to help complete the sentence. Here's an idea:

What if ideas are like species in our head. Thinking an idea (or using an idea) (or otherwise incarnating the idea) is like a little animal living its life in the ecosystem of your head. Sometimes the animal is killed brutally during its life, other times it goes on and may even procreate through being spoken or silently reaffirmed to yourself. These ideas of course evolve over time, and are tested with different circumstances. All the laws of natural selection should apply. The environment that you think thoughts within determines the evolutionary path of your thoughts, and therefore your opinions and your philosophies and your beliefs and your prejudices. Everything you think might just be a product of the evolution of your thoughts over time. Growing up in a stable nurturing environment will create a completely different ecosystem of ideas and animals in your head than growing up in a hostile or icy terrain. Seems valid so far, I think... or is it only because it's valid within the ecosystem of ideas that I've grown up around?

To change yourself therefore becomes more of a challenge. You can't just start thinking different thoughts simply as a result of "making yourself", because you'll upset the balance of the ecosystem of ideas in your head. Predator ideas will eat the new idea. The new idea may not be suited to handle the rough habitat that your other ideas have had the chance to adapt to for many years. What you have to do is change the environment of your thoughts as well as introduce new thoughts. If you're a big risk taker and you want to turn into a more thoughtful risk manager, perhaps you should expose yourself to an environment where risk-taking is no longer the soundest strategy. Have a kid or something. Invest your money in something. Who knows. But changing your environment may be the most direct way to change your thoughts about things. Because the ecosystem of ideas isn't something that is easily changed directly. You can't just introduce a new brand of ladybugs into your brain without expecting a bit of competition with the caterpillars. Not to mention the gardener, and the soil, and the weather patterns.

I have a new idea to perhaps consider vegetarianism. But the idea is being rejected by almost every fiber of my brain's ecosystem. I love sushi. I crave chicken. Fish is delicious. And yet I cannot stand the thought of collecting and harvesting animals in order to eat them. It's not that I think it's natural to be a vegetarian, or even a moral obligation, but it's something that I can remove from my current lifestyle and most likely benefit from: being healthier, eating less, etc. But I love meat. And I don't really like the vegetarian attitude of being picky about food... I don't like the idea of being picky about food in general... I love all food, and everything is tasty. So most likely this idea will not survive in my brain. I will continue to eat meat, and be inconsistent and self-indulgent on this one point. Unless I can find a secret way to change my environment so being a vegetarian is actually a more robust and advantageous idea than the ideas that are currently clubbing it like a baby seal upon entrance into my head.