Levels of Awareness

There is an important concept to remember when considering who governs us: their Level.

Level 4 – Unconsciously Competent
Level 3 – Consciously Competent
Level 2 – Consciously Incompetent
Level 1 – Unconsciously Incompetent

95%+ of our world exists at Level 1 (reference Socrates story about The Cave of Ananke). They do not know that they do not know they are imbeciles. That makes them dangerous, egotistical fucks — children whose “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” remarked Lord Acton.

If we are lucky enough to have been kicked in the head by Fate’s agonizingly distressful randomness, then we MIGHT have awakened to witness our foolishness. That we have existed in our own familiar misery, living for the comfortable but unfulfilling…. what Thoreau poignantly described as “… lives of quiet desperation.”  Level 2.

If we use our agony to stay frosty, we may climb towards less foolish reactions and more purposed responses. Level 3.

When we become excellent at the latter, we might have reached the haven of Level 4.

If we ever allow ourselves to believe our taskmasters are anything above Level 1, we know that we exist at that same level with them — wallowing in our own excrement and blathering about our own brilliance while we step into oncoming traffic because we were texting an important message about the irrelevant.

Autotelic

I’m conflicted… and confused. Saddened to the point of near madness. It’s turkey day in prison and the food service cop stood at mainline apologizing for what he had to feed us. I could not have cared less. It was no different than any other day in my last 5,340+.

My sadness arises from what I imagine a 32 year old Julius Caesar felt as he stood before a statute of his hero. At the same age, Alexander the Great had conquered the world; he’d only subdued Gaul. The analog is that I’m 6 months away from conquering what was intended to be a life sentence for refusing to cooperate with Big Brother. Another man has conquered more hell, enduring greater agony — not out of love of family or honor but for something more transcendent.

A man is defined by his hero. Though Alexander is not without his faults, history records that he rose above and beyond the call of duty to engage opponents no sane battlefield commander would dare. Deeper study reveals his driving force was fueled by the Greek words philotema and dynamis, “the love of honor” and “the will to fight,” respectively. He is without equal in my book because he led the vanguard of every assault atop his black charger Bucephalus.

After fighting for thousands of days to realize Justice is just another illusion, I was focused on preparing to return to what Ayn Rand described in Atlas Shrugged as the “looters and moochers” – society in general. Though he’d invented a free-energy fusion engine, her hero John Galt abandoned society permanently. No doubt Socrates’ story of The Ring of Gyges influenced them. In it Socrates proved that men are not inherently moral but act in proportion to the consequences they risk suffering.

With my last 15 years in retrospect, this perspective about humanity seemed more that apropos. I became insouciant — a Stoic Spartan goading Fate to do her worst. Not from insanity but because only through adversity can we arrest the secret that lies dormant within. I’d already climbed my Everest, a feat few can imagine much less endure, respecting only those few who have been baptized by a similar fire. Yet contrary to Galt’s Socratic pragmatism, I have spent my last year scribbling my secrets of survival into a system that I call Rubicon — a name birthed from Caesar’s legendary crossing of the Rubicon River: the point of no return.

Within this life navigational system, a bearing towards one’s personal destiny must be charted — preferably something so audacious that it scares you to LIFE!! I was now within feet of mine, a summit I thought I’d never rest atop. I needed a new “mission impossible” — something even more audacious as Rubicon’s PATHFINDER-0001. I had set a goal to raise millions for Dr. Mohamed Yunus’ Grameen Bank project that won him the 2006 Nobel prize as a proven method to halt poverty by handing out microloans to turn the homeless into micro-entrepreneurs. But never a day passes that Galt’s perspective does not echo in my ears. As I witness the likes of “the 99 percenters” — a society of self-entitled “looters and moochers” who fear adversity and cower in Fate’s presence, I question my mission. Why should I share what has cost me so dearly?

In this quandary I stumbled upon an unusual character that does just this — doubling down on SpaceX and Tesla with his entire $200 million fortune at risk. This caused me pause. Why? Because Rubicon’s prime directive is “to emulate the best or die average like the rest.” I had to know what possessed him to rise above what I had discovered to be the pinnacle underpinning beneath an ultimate life purpose. The Greeks called it “autotelic,” engaging an objective purely for the experience of the challenge itself. Yet Musk drives himself and his cult-like teams for something greater. He exploits inefficiencies, disrupts convention, and revolutionizes our world — for the sole destiny of bettering mankind, the “looters and moochers” that I disdain.

After my Sisyphean quest has revealed the worst of humanity, it is here that my confusion causes sadness:
1. What does Elon perceive in these “looters and moochers” that is worthy of such an Alexandrian philotema and dynamis?
2. How could he disagree with Socrates’ indictment and Rand’s conviction of the despicably mediocre?

Maybe answers to these questions will introduce me to a humanity I have never met.

Alexander

As you may have figured out by reading my essays on my blog tsuyomatte.wordpress.com, I despise most and revere few. Among these few, my favorite heroes include Alexander the Great and the samurai Yagyu Munenori.  I have studied much about them both, seeing value in their best qualities despite their few failings.  Just yesterday I discovered a book called The Virtues of War: a novel of Alexander the Great by Steven Pressfield.

Pressfield’s skill at delivering the physical and spiritual dimensions of the battle at Chaeronea is pure mastery. This was Alexander’s first great victory, noted because he defeated the renowned Theban Sacred Band of 300.  What was most bewitching was the details of the great valor expended on both sides.  Fate gave the day to young Alexander (age 18) as he led the left wing of his father’s battleline.  His Companion Cavalry routed this undefeated heavy infantry phalanx, but they refused to surrender as even the most elite eventually acquiesce.  They were surrounded.  And, in order to keep them from committing ritual suicide (in similar fashion to samurai seppuku), they’d been disarmed.  The last 40 huddled together, bleeding and broken, begging for death due to the dishonor of defeat.  They refused to bind their wounds… bleeding the ground wet.  “Cease!” was Alexander’s command, holding back the bloodlust of his warriors who had lost friends, brothers, and fathers in the othismos exchange just minutes ago.  Still sitting astried his black charger Bucephalus, he looked on them–past the rush of a glorious poet’s lines of his utter annihilation of his foe–and ordered their weapons returned and for them to be released without harm.

As his father Phillip II rode up and was told of this counterintuitive action, he nodded at those who wished to finish them off with his overriding command.  “Follow the orders of your commander” were his words.  Alexander had acted with reverence– without respect for whose standard under which it was displayed–to that rarest of actions that make the gods themselves envy the rarest of us.  Valor!

KIBA GA DERO

The highest reward for a person’s toil is not what they get for it, but what they become because of it. ~John Ruskin, critic

Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising every time we fail.  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson, author

It’s not how hard you can hit, but how hard you can get hit and still keep moving forward.  ~Rocky Balboa, fictional boxer

In a world of two classes of people — heroes and zeroes — this attitude makes the difference.  To lead from the van, to be the tip of the spear, to be the leader that reaches the enemy first, you must be willing to taste the metal in the back of your mouth from being knocked down.  But, GET UP!  Come back for more, again and again.  Earn your rank by the scars you bear!  Be the poster child for: GET AMONGST IT!

The Japanese samurai had a battle cry – KIBA GA DERO!  “FANGS OUT!!”

AUT TACE AUT LOQUERE MELIORA SILENCIO

2013 was my best year yet for learning and overcoming; I hope yours was equally positive!

In this year I look forward to completing my studies in behavioral finance.  And equally important, I wish to increase my meditation practice.  Here are a couple of Zen concepts to contemplate:

To foster life everything must be killed; once all is destroyed, you can dwell as ease.  If you understand this meaning, an iron boat will float across the water.  ~Layman P’ang

Something must act as no-thing, no-thing must act as something; shatter both ends and drop off the middle.  ~Rinzui

Bliss belongs to one who knows that things are empty, and that man too is no-thing.  ~Bukko Kokushi

Cut off dualism and keep a single sword against the cold sky.  ~Gokushun

Lovely snowflakes falling one by one nowhere else.  ~Tesshu

If Zen does not interest you, cool.  Work on simply remembering to think about your breath as many times during the day as you can.  Just remember to stop and think about breathing.  Return to this moment as often as you can.

Do just this for one year.  And if you get bored, try out one of my favorite Latin translations, worthy of all our attention:
“only when the words outperform silence.”

FORTES FORTUNA ADIUVAT

Far better is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, then to take rank with the poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight of mediocrity that knows neither victory nor defeat.  ~Theodore Roosevelt

“The coward never begins and the weak die along the way,” goes the Navy SEAL motto.  The Latin above represents the other category: “fortune favors the bold.”  Louis Pasteur said it this way: “Chance favors the prepared mind.”

Coward, Weak, or Bold.  How do rank?

MUTO

October 2013 by Steven Moreland

The movie Tears of the Sun portrays a rescue-turned-vendetta mission of a U.S. Navy SEAL team responding to evil in a war-torn African country.  With precision, poise, and audacity, the special operators delivered extreme prejudice.  Up close.  Personal.  The quiet blade’s measured force…  Piercing.  Lifting.  Judging.

Man’s history has seen every configuration of bladed steel acting as judge, jury, and executioner.  And among the many reigns the Japanese katana sword wielded by the storied samurai.  Yagyu Munenori (1571-1645), renowned for his swordsmanship and bravery during combat, practiced the most unique of methods: he carried no sword!  The technique of the Shinkage’ Ryu was known as muto (“moo-to”) or “no sword.”  These practitioners robbed the evil challengers of their swords… and killed them with their own blades, if necessary.

“It is missing the point to think that the martial art is solely in cutting a man down.  It is not in cutting people down; it is in killing evil.  It is the stratagem of killing the evil of one man and giving life to ten thousand.”
~Heiho Kaden Sho (The Sword of No Sword), Yagyu Munenori’s manual

Two hundred years later, Yamaoka Tesshu (1836-1888) trained daily from age 9 in the Shinkage’ Ryu method to become a samurai.  Headmaster Seguin instructed him: “If you want to attain true victory, broaden your understanding of virtue.  No enemy can defeat a man of superior virtue.  Attempting to win through exclusive reliance on technique will lead to nowhere.”  Studying these two philosophies, does it not appear that samurai had a different agenda than measured force and judgment for their blades?

“Evil” in the Eastern perspective means “ignorance” or the lack of learning, not the malevolent force depicted by the West.  Or, from a more idealistic perspective, ignorance causes evil.  But more to the point, the metaphor of the blade or sword symbolized the mind.  How it endured crises depended upon its strength of philosophy, its art of thinking.  When challenged, a Shinkage’ Ryu samurai’s responsibility was to rob the evil thoughts from the challenger before he harmed others with his ignorance.  His practice and preparation determined his performance as a martial artist and a tatsujin (a complete human being).

In the entrance hall to his school (Muto Ryu), Tesshu defined muto (no sword) as “the one-mind that both inside and outside there is ‘Not One Thing.'”  In practice, one-mind meets his opponent with “no-enemy” in front and “no-self” behind.  Symbolically, “no-enemy” refers to having no-thought of the future (front) and “no-self” refers to no-thought of the past (back).  A samurai’s fearlessness rested here.  His secret was simply that he could lose no-thing; virtue resides within.  When no-enemy and no-self remains, Not-One-Thing matters.  (note: Not-One-Thing is often hyphenated as “no-thing”)

What a legacy.  Here, two Zen knights rescued thousands by practicing no-sword and maintaining one-mind with no-enemy and no-self… so that Not One Thing mattered.

This is Zen.

“Lovely snowflakes falling one by one nowhere else.” ~Tesshu

Ulysses

It little profits that an idle king1,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Matched with an ag#195;#168;d wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades2
Vexed the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honoured of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy3.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breathe were life. Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this grey spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

This my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and through soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought
with me
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles4,
And see the great Achilles5, whom we knew
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Alfred,Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)    1833

FOOTNOTES
1 In this poem, Ulysses (the Roman for Odysseus and the hero of Homer’s Iliad and the Odyssey), now an old man, having returned to Ithaca after twenty years absence and much adventure, has grown restless, and is now contemplating setting out with his crew again; 2 a constellation of stars associated with rain; 3 site of the Trojan wars of which Ulysses was a hero; 4 the Elysian Fields, believed by some to be the resting place of heroes after death; 5 Greek hero of the Trojan wars who suffered an early death.

LOW-INFORMATION DIET

“What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients.  Hence, a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.”

 

Herbert Simon, recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 1978 and the A.M. Turning Award (the Nobel Prize of Computer Science), warned us wisely.  Where we invest our limited commodity called attention directly determines our performance.  The choice: input or output?  Increased output necessitates decreased input.  Gain a distinctive edge by cultivating selective ignorance: redirecting your attention away from information and interruptions that are irrelevant and unimportant!

 

Here are some areas to cultivate selective ignorance:

 

NEWS, in all its forms–printed, radio, TV and internet–is nothing more than opinions, biased and therefore untrue.  “Men are disturbed not by the things that happen, but by their OPINION of things that happen.  Epictetus

 

DOGMAS: politics, history and religion are equally worthless because they are based upon mythology or biases that philosopher Ken Wilber articulates as “truth-claims backed only by authoritative fiat.”  For once, step back and listen to the blathering morons.  Do you really want to be like the fools you listen too?  “If we continue to do what we have done, which is what everybody else is doing, we will continue to get the same unsatisfactory results.” http://www.EliGoldratt.com

 

SURFING (TV or internet) absorbs 4 -5 hours of the average American’s day; hence the reason they’re “average.”  If any task does not have a defined purpose of kaizen (Japanese: continuous improvement), limit… or better yet, delete it!  “Getting to great begins by getting rid of stuff that is merely good.”  Jason Fried, http://www.37signals.com/svn

 

Upgrade your performance by simplifying.  Then channel your additional attention towards output!

 

“One does not accumulate but eliminate.  It is not daily increase but daily decrease.  The height of cultivation always runs to simplicity.”  Bruce Lee, Zen master and martial artist

 

“There are many things of which a wise man might wish to be ignorant.”  Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

“A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.”  Henry David Thoreau

 

Experiment with this idea for 6 months… then, let me know about your accelerated achievement.

 

Hold yourself to maximum performance.  Life is too short to be average!

 

Semper Fi