Here are my latest answers to the big questions I bump into all the time. Recorded for posterity and future reflection. I plan to come back and answer similar questions on a semi-regular basis.
What is the purpose of life, the universe, and everything?
Although I’m not convinced by the framing of this question and the implicit assumptions that (a) there has to be a purpose and (b) we can articulate that purpose using English, I’ll give it a go.
Life is the exploration of experience space. There is no end goal per se, but a constant expression of an underlying truth that is always becoming. This muse giving rise to form as a way to explore. A tree explores different to a vole. A mountain quite differently to a Summer-time breeze.
This underlying truth is the reason for the rhyming we encounter in life all the time – in nature and in experience.
What are my fundamental drivers?
I’m fascinated by solving problems, by learning new ideas, and about new ways to frame and approach them.
If I was left alone to decide what to do, with the only constraint being limited time, today I’d tell you that I want to maximise:
- Finding and reading interesting ideas and explanations for
- why things are the way they are
- how things got to be the way they are
- Synthesising ideas about the above and describing my experiences
- Learning new skills in all domains
- Building and launching new things as a way to explore solutions to problems
- Making people laugh
Areas of interest right now
The bounds of knowledge
…and the tools we use to ascertain, meld, and retain it. Language bounds knowledge by acting as the primary medium of communication of said ideas. Of course I can make you a sandwich which perfectly captures the nostalgia of your youth, but that’s harder to make memetic. How much of the implicit can we make explicit and when should we refrain from doing so?
Ego destruction
How much of the generally accepted Western programming of a self-directed, individualistic nature accurately represents the true nature of experience? If we adopt Eastern ideas of ego destruction, how much do we enhance our experience of life?
AI
I believe we’re living through a truly tectonic shift which upends many economics of the last 100 years. As a builder this is a fascinating time to be alive.
Communication
How best to distil and convey ideas and learnings in an authentic package (exhibit A being this blog.)
The most interesting ideas right now
- Everything is flow – there is no such thing as a thing in the static sense. Inspired heavily by Iain McGilchrist’s work and writing in The Matter with Things – this is about viewing every noun as a verb – the universe is peopling and this thing over here is chairing. On the geological timescale things are quite different to how they appear to us.
- Attention making the world – how much of experience is dictated by both what and how you pay attention to things (also from McGilchrist)
- Capital primacy being a wrong turn – has our prizing of capital acquisition and allocation been a wrong turn?
- The tension between habitat and inhabitant – or how we separate environmental factors from behaviours observed within the creatures that live there (and whether or not there’s a difference)
- The universe is in every blade of grass – every experience can unlock within you the full universal truth of reality if only you take a look
- The more we grasp the harder it is to attain
- Literally nobody knows what is going on nor can they predict the future in any meaningful way