Mike Judge is the Bill

Belichick of Hollywood

Gets the most from all

I don’t pretend to know a lot about history, but it seems to be for most of human history, people have been pretty okay with a lot of mystery.

The way the world works and reality is structured has always been discussed, theories always put forward, practices developed. But older cultures seemed to leave large swaths of reality unexplained, or partially explained, or explained only in general, symbolic ways.

Sometime in the last 500 years or so, that changed. Mystery and the unexplained began to make people uncomfortable, as confidence in our ability to understand and explain things grew. I don’t lament this change. I’m more inclined to like it, but it does come with some weird side effects.

The weirdest is our propensity to lie to ourselves and be willfully incorrect.

I’m not talking about the times when our explanations for how reality works are wrong but we don’t realize it. This is pretty much always the case for everything, but if we don’t know that we’re wrong, of course we’ll continue being wrong.

I’m talking about the times when we know that we don’t know, but we choose to pretend we know even though we know we don’t.

Every moderately learned person knows about the “replication crisis”. The vast majority of all “scientific studies” cannot be replicated, which means that, by their own rules of what counts as valid, they are utterly and completely invalid. Everyone knows this. Yet everyone continues to use studies to back up their claims, and acts skeptical if an argument doesn’t have a study.

We are all susceptible to this. In business, I know and believe that most marketing efforts cannot be attributed accurately enough to have high confidence, and that efforts to attribute actually lead to the wrong conclusions more often than not. I see it, I talk about it with marketers, they all agree. Yet what do we do when presented with a choice about strategies? We ask to see the very numbers we know are lying to us.

The numbers feel safer. More comfortable. Why?

Maybe it helps us outsource blame? If I go with my gut and get it wrong, it’s on me. If I go with the numbers and get it wrong, it’s on the numbers. Of course this is also a lie, because numbers can’t act. Only humans can. The choice is mine, whether supported by my gut, the numbers, logic, or Chicken entrails.

Why does invoking numbers or studies make me feel less vulnerable, even though I know full well it’s a facade? Why do I have this instinctive capacity to be comforted by lies?

I’ve always loved this Latin phrase, which means “Action follows belief”.

It aligns with the Misesian understanding of human action, my own experience of life, and what seems logical.

But there are things that seem to throw a wrench in it. There are many beliefs that only seem possible after action. The belief that you can ride a bike, or get in shape, or be transformed through religious practice; these beliefs are almost impossible to have before you take the action, but instead result from it.

I don’t think this poses a problem for the logic of our phrase. Purposeful action does follow belief – must follow belief – but not necessarily the belief most directly connected to it. A child may hop on the bike one more time disbelieving it will result in learning to ride. But they hop on the bike because they believe doing so is preferable to not doing so, even if only to avoid parental chiding.

You take communion without understanding and fully believing in its spiritual power, but you do believe something sufficient to motivate you to action. Maybe it’s just that, all else equal, it seems better to try than not.

The beautiful thing about belief is that it doesn’t have to be grand, or based on a full understanding to motivate action, and the action itself has a way of forming stronger, deeper beliefs.

So yes, action follows belief. But you don’t need to get the beliefs perfect before you act. Act on the tiniest, flimsiest belief, and let the action do the rest of the work.

Lots of people are offended by the ideas of Ayn Rand. I don’t pretend to know or defend them in detail, but one of the main thrusts of her work is that no one should be guilted into doing or becoming what others want instead of what you want.

There’s a way to take this that seems bad. The idea of self-sacrifice is core to Christianity, and because Christianity has transformed the whole world, to nearly all cultures and values. To never act to aid another at personal cost would be to forgo the beauty and power of sacrifice.

But that’s not the lesson I take from Rand. I think pity and altruism are used as weapons of evil more often than they motivate good. Unlike other passions like greed or anger, they rarely come under scrutiny or suffer blame. This makes them dangerous.

Feeling bad for someone can cause you to stop doing good or start doing bad. It can cause you to make the world uglier for fear that beauty might offend them. It’s even worse when you feel bad for a Theoretical Person, or some group or aggregate, because they can never be satisfied.

“Maybe we should curb this goodness/beauty/excellence/truth/joy because I can imagine people who might feel bad in its presence.” This is a terrible and corrosive sentiment, slowly turning the world to darkness.

Taking action to help another person out of care for them is wonderful. Ceasing to do good out of guilt for the potential offense it might cause another person is not.

The real world isn’t a closed system. It isn’t a finite, zero-sum game. It’s dynamic, creative, innovative, infinite, and cooperative.

If you want to earn a living, you have to create value. But there is no correct answer to the question, “How do I create value?”

It requires experimentation, trial, error, gain, loss, feedback, and adjustment. And it’s a moving target. A constant dance.

If the point of education is preparation for success in the world, it should also be open. But most mass, modern approaches to education are closed.

There are correct answers to everything. They come down from a single authority. Things are rigid, with lagging feedback loops, only changing when authorities dictate.

Closed education is not good preparation for an open world. It ends up resembling a training ground for closed societies – no one gets in or out, ownership and entrepreneurship are nonexistent, the authorities hold all the answers and control individuals like lumps of dough.

Few educators want this, but the inertia of the system seems too much to overcome for reformers. In a way, they are correct. Reform from within is limited.

Thankfully, external forces come into play.

As the world shifts and evolves, more people are seeing and feeling the pains of closed education. They are seeking to open it up.

The lines are blurring. Homeschool, unschool, microschool, co-ops, pods, alt-schools, tutors, teachers, coaches, guides, part-time, full-time, private, public, remote, in-person, synchronous, asynchronous – more terms keep getting added and each term becomes less clear-cut. They are no longer rigid categories you must choose between, but a grab-bag of tools you can pick up and use as needed, swapping freely. This is a good thing.

Ironically, when the world closed in 2020, it revealed the problems with closed education more than ever. Parents saw and felt the contradictions. It opened their minds to the need to open their kids education.

Traditional school enrollment has been plummeting. Funding that follows students instead of schools has exploded. Teachers have begun to become education entrepreneurs. Parents now realize they have no choice but to take charge of their kids education – simply deferring to the system is not sufficient.

The age of open education is upon us.

You may be pessimistic about this year or the next. I don’t fault you. But I can’t look at the opening of education and the rapid growth of this movement and not see a brighter future. We’re in the thick of the struggle now, as we wrestle with what all these changes mean.

How can we embrace technology and the openness it offers while not becoming addicted to screens and isolated from the real world?

How can we harness the benefits of asynchronous and location-independent learning while still forming bonds and connections?

How can we take charge of our kids education while not feeling under-equipped and overwhelmed?

These are the questions we’re dealing with, and they are good questions. The right questions.

All of them are being answered in a million ways a million times a day across the world. We are trying, testing, experimenting, sharing, cooperating, and figuring out how to solve them. This is how an open world works, and how an open education should be created.

The answer is not to run from change and technology or pine for past eras. Nor is it to let change and technology and inertia be in the drivers’ seat while you’re merely along for the ride.

The answer it to take the reins and stay open. Explore and learn and share. Go your own way but don’t go it alone.

The world is ready and waiting for kids to engage with it, rather than be kept hidden away from it.

Let’s open education together.

Leaving a bad taste in someone’s mouth is a lot more costly than you might think.

The world is smaller than you think, and how you exit a situation matters a lot. Whenever ending a transaction, interaction, contract, arrangement, either side of employment, membership, etc. I have never once regretted erring on the side of generosity and goodwill – even if the other party didn’t reciprocate. I have regretted a few times I’ve been stingy or done only what’s minimally required.

These things have a way of coming around.

Trust and knowledge were restricted by geography. Travel advancements, then telegraphs, telephones, and finally the internet expanded the range of trust and knowledge to nearly every corner of the globe.

But the low barrier to information led to an overwhelming volume, and increasingly clever tricks and tech allowed people and governments to game trust-enhancing systems.

Now the internet is becoming a weaker source of knowledge and trust. People are reverting back to smaller communities.

The digital “globe” you experience in your news feed is curated to match your tastes, leading you to believe the world looks a lot more like you than it likely does. When you experience the shock of reality, trust erodes further.

The shrinking of the reach of knowledge and trust is neither inherently good or bad. It is sad, but in the same way that anything that results from human weakness and sin is sad. It is not uniquely sad, except for those who grew up watching the web of knowledge and trust expand in a seemingly endless and inevitable way, and now are seeing it shrink back to what feel like barbarous times.

Maybe the world gets smaller and stays smaller for a long time. Or maybe this is just a bump in the road and new trust enhancing mechanisms and signals will emerge to continue the expansion. But for now, the expansion has halted and a contraction has begun.

Still got this one in

Half-hearted in Sunday din

Last line now we’re fin

There’s this idea among the church fathers that praying for mercy for yourself is in fact praying for the whole world.

The cosmos is contained in each of us, a fractal of reality. If we get our hearts right, we will help right the world.

The older I get, the more damage I see causes and movements do – to the individuals that participate and to the world – the more I believe this.

You banish the darkness by shining brighter, not by starting an anti-darkness campaign.

One thing I love about reading older fiction is encountering characters who are exactly like people I’ve met in real life.

How could something written 60, or 100, or more years ago in a totally different country and culture depict an individual who is exactly like some that I’ve met, in speech, mannerisms, actions, and ideas?

Archetypes are real. There are certain frames of mind, personality traits, and dispositions that attract people to certain vocations and milieus which further condition them into recognizable types.

None of this is groundbreaking, but I’ll never cease to be amazed at how universal these people patterns are. And it takes a great observer and describer of humans to tease these patterns out and insert them into stories.

Materialism’s heyday is past. It is common for people who once wouldn’t have dreamed of doing so to talk about symbolism and a structure of reality that goes beyond what can be seen and measured.

Forms and archetypes and egregores are entertained. Interdimensional realities, consciousness extending into other realms, and unknown beings are discussed. Tradition and religion are en vogue.

I think this is a good thing, because reality is more than what can be measured in a lab. There is a danger, though, of not going far enough.

The embrace of psychological realities found in religion and symbolism and patterns beyond our own minds is easy to abstract. We can get caught up in discussing these things as grand ontological or epistemological categories and feel very broad minded indeed. All the while skirting and evading the real question:

What does it mean for me, personally?

If symbols are more than man-made tools; if behind them is some real power, intelligence, or entity, what does that mean for me?

If the Logos is more than fiction, what is it? Who is He? What does He demand of me?

If religion isn’t hooey; if a spiritual world, or other dimensions, or extended consciousness exists, what should I do?

This part is hard for smart people. Because it bring you down out of the realm where you are demonstrating to people how all of reality works – an impressive and helpful feat – and forced to either do or deny embarrassing, old-fashioned things that this understanding demands. Prayer. Baptism. Communion.

The symbols reveal a deeper reality, yes. But that reality is not merely a map of the world beyond our senses. It is a call to participate in it. Not as an intellectual plaything. But with our flesh and blood and heart and mind and habits and words.

It is a call to not just know about the divine reality. To not just acknowledge His existence and authority. To not just speak in His name. But to know Him. To do His will.

“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’”

This is a hard pill to swallow.

It puts the simpleminded old churchgoer who does His will without a wit of understanding on the same plane as the genius professor who sees the full pattern of reality. Both are in equal danger of not really knowing Him, and both must seek Him and do His will (‘love the least of these’, ‘feed my sheep’) to avoid that danger.

I keep seeing more signs of eroding trust in society. Little things. Fast food restaurants no longer having self-serve fountain drinks. Theft and break-ins in neighborhoods that even a few years ago never thought of locking doors. Service providers that never show up, ratings that mean nothing, Uber drivers that cancel on you.

None of these in isolation are a huge deal. Normal bumps in the road. But the number of these little shifts is astonishing, and combined, create an undercurrent of inability to have confidence in anything. You have to have a second thought about things. The benefits of a high-trust society – speed, efficiency, safety, ease of business – are eroding.

This does not bode well. Low trust societies are survivable, but not enjoyable.

I’m writing this post after having cleared my inboxes and (half of) my Slack messages. Which means I’m in a terrible frame of mind for writing and I’m thinking about other things and treating this as a chore. Bad.

Every morning, I do a bunch of stuff. Workout, read, pray, write, eat, review calendar, clear messages, and get to work. In that order.

If I jumble the order, a cascade of jumble befalls me. The days is disordered, rushed, and unsettling.

I’m going to knock this post out and try to reset the order and see if I can prevent the chaos from breaking quarantine.

It doesn’t matter how fast or slow, busy or free the pace of work. To maximize productivity and happiness, what matters to me is who is in control of that pace.

When I own and set the pace, I enjoy work and do it well. (Mostly).

When the pace pulls me along, forces me to adjust to it, I struggle.

I don’t like a frantic pace – unless I set it. I don’t like a laggy pace – unless I set it.

I want pace control possibly more than I want control of where I work or what I work on.

In the morning light

Wondering if it was right

After all the fight