writing space

7 Cups has been my primary passion

For the past 6 months, my identity has been very closely connected to 7 Cups. Practically joined at the hip. When things are going well on 7 Cups, I feel as though my life as a whole is going well. Energy has been poured into things on 7 Cups and correspondingly withdrawn from other things outside of 7 Cups.

This isn't problematic in itself. If you zoom out and forget any inherent bias of "Well, online things are lower and less meaningful; you should have a preference for real-life things," the process for becoming invested in an online/virtual activity is the same as any other passion or interest. I know I'm probably preaching to the choir, but it's worth saying that any distinction between things on the basis of technological method saying that "these things are worth caring about while these things are not" is suspect. If we take this to its logical conclusions, we'd have to say that Zoom calls between family members are absolutely worthless. It's one thing to say that the quality of the connections that are possible through virtual means are limited in some ways, but that's a more sophisticated/nuanced and different argument than attempting to say, "Well, it's just an online platform so it doesn't matter at all and you should be spending your time in the real world with real things." 7 Cups and the experiences, motivations, and meanings that arise from it are quite real.

Anyhow, my point is that there is an investment of energy and there is something received in return for that. When that investment does not feel as though it is returning the same value, or where something in that energetic exchange comes under threat, there is a feeling of disturbance... which may manifest in any number of ways (e.g. anxiety, anger, depression, physical symptoms, etc.).

So, that is just a simple/basic/unquestionable fact for me that over the past 6 months, my dominant or most important passion. The main thing happening in my life that I have considered to be innovative or cutting-edge has been all of my activities. That is one of the main things that I can/would point to when I reach my birthday, I'm a year older, and I'm trying to persuade myself the fact that I have not wasted my past year on this earth and that I have some growth, results, enhancements, or changes to show for all of my efforts.

That passion has come into question

Something about this relationship feels like it has been altered.

To be clear, my experiences with "7 Cups" are not a homogenous thing. There are numerous ways in which I am engaging with 7 Cups. At any given time, there have always been some that are favored over others. Some of the activities that I do are either less enjoyable, less oriented toward my strengths, or have been primarily undertaken as a prerequisite for other things that I value more. Sometimes these attachments/preferences and the relative effort I've put into different activities have changed over time.

Privacy and site rules make this writing challenging

The first and most important obstacle to using this member account freely (i.e. to write about my primary concern right now which is my changing relationship to 7 Cups and the implications for my identity and sense of purpose/meaning) is that if what I wish to write about anything related to my listener account, I am obligated to safeguard my listener identity. If there is anything I share here that would give away my listener identity, then I am not allowed to write it.

Complicating this is the fact that I believe I have a fairly distinctive writing and thinking style. I don't believe there are many people on this site who write the way that I do. Even leaving aside semantic elements (e.g. ideas/values/personality), there are probably certain quirks in the way that I format my posts or write my sentences that are pretty idiosyncratic and readily recognizable.

One saving grace for me is that this thread and this member account are fairly inactive and have low readership. If this member account were something notorious or highly visible, then I really wouldn't be able to use it. I don't feel I'm able to blend in very well.

The challenge then (when it comes to using this member account effectively to process issues that I want to explore--while being able to do so in a public space to feel as though someone is hearing/understanding) is that most of my thinking when it comes to these situations is pretty concrete and tactical. Perhaps the solutions themselves are sometimes more intuitive, abstract, or symbolic and less conscious or willful. But, the process of reaching those solutions is generally a very meticulous, specific process. I sometimes start from the particulars of the situation, and through those particulars my feelings are able to gradually come to light, and then through those feelings I arrive at certain results. Or even if i don't arrive at any result/solution (which isn't necessarily something I always need), still that process of engaging with feelings causes certain unconscious or accidental shifts where gradually I may wake up one day and find that my values, thoughts, and strategies have shifted in a way that is conducive to my happiness/well-being, without me making any deliberate effort to change them.

I acknowledge that I've been really unhappy as of late, and that it's creeping into areas of my life where I am generally very responsible and "on top of things". I'm willing to consider that it might be something very easy/simple that can be resolved through minor shifts, but I am adopting a Pyrrhonian stance of not pre-committing to any particular position or assumptions. I don't want to commit even to the idea that understanding the causes of my current feelings is something necessary. What feels necessary right now is simply to explore in an open-ended manner without imposing or restricting.

Enumerating roles

I would say that in terms of my attachments to this site, 80-90% of them are through my listener account. These can be organized according to the roles that I perform on my listener account--which for the reasons described in the previous section, I am unable to discuss in detail since otherwise my listener identity would likely be compromised.

I will attempt to group these functions, roles, or sub-identities of my listener persona into sub-categories that are specific enough to be personally meaningful but general enough that I am not compromising my listener identity.

1) Helping members
2) Helping listeners
3) Helping site

Evaluating my satisfaction with each role: helping members

I don't particularly care about this on an individual level.

It is satisfying to know that I am able to do this, and certainly some of my most meaningful moments in the past few months since I have come back to the site have involved being able to have relationships with specific members. There are a multitude of reasons why this is meaningful, and some reasons are quite egocentric/self-centered. So, it isn't something to be completely dismissed.

But, nevertheless, I'd say that helping members on a personal basis through 1-on-1 chats isn't honestly what I'm most passionate about for the current version of my listener self that is existing/functioning on this site. I care more about the fact that for every week I might potentially spend as an individual listener helping a handful of members, there are hundreds of listeners dedicating thousands of hours to harming members.

To give an analogy, I feel like if I were working in a hospital as a surgeon, it wouldn't comfort me to successfully complete a surgery if I were to know that for every one surgery I do well, my colleagues are recklessly endangering dozens of people through botched surgeries. I'd almost prefer that the hospital as a whole be so amazing that nobody really notices or pays any care to what I'm doing. Or at the very least, if there are special things that maybe I bring to the table that are unique/inimitable, at least have everybody else be at a minimal level of skill/ability. I'm totally happy being an A student surrounded by B students, but being an A student surrounded by D students with a few other A and B students mixed in is a different story. I want this to be a site where most people are at least a B or better.

Anyhow, I don't consider directly helping members to be my primary strength, the reason why I wanted to rejoin this site recently, or what would keep me on this site. However, if I give up on all of my other interests for being on the site, it might actually end up being the thing that keeps me on this site if I'm wary of abandoning people. In my mind, I can completely justify abandoning my other roles if they end up feeling hopeless/futile/meaningless for whatever reason. But abandoning members who have grown attached to me on an individual level feels to me like a sinful thing to do. I am able to do sinful things that feel necessary, but it is difficult and I would feel like I was sacrificing some of my own goodness.

It is much the same as how I felt when I left in December of last year. By leaving, I sacrificed some people that I had befriended on this member account who I knew were likely going to miss me or feel like their existence on this site was slightly emptier. Although I was leaving, I still very much valued those people and cared about them, and I recognized that my absence was possibly hurting them. It was just something where I grit my teeth and would tell myself (with a bit of dark comedy), "Well, screw them I guess. I feel like I need to get out of here for my own sake, and if they suffer as a result then I can't be blamed for that. It was their fault for thinking I was going to stay, and I tried to be careful not to say anything like 'I'll always love you' or 'I promise I will always be there for you'. I try not to make promises that I'm unable to keep. If other people suffer because of me abandoning them, certainly it's my fault for abandoning them, but it's also their fault for getting attached to someone as unreliable as me. I can't fault them though for thinking or at least hoping that maybe I would be there for them if it feels like absolutely everybody is abandoning them and I'm just another selfish asshole doing the same thing. But so be it then. I'm okay with being seen as a selfish jerk if it protects me and gives me what I need. I've done the opposite and I know how that turns out, with all of the feelings of resentment/manipulation/anger that arise when I sacrifice myself for a good cause."

So yes, I felt some guilt when I left last year, knowing that people I care about might also care about me and miss me. (The analogy that comes to mind for me is the Band of the Hawk from the anime Berserk where once the MC leaves, everything very swiftly turns to trash. The MC had this thought of, "Oh, they are strong/stable enough that I can leave without any regrets," and that ended up being inaccurate. In fact, as soon as he left absolutely everything crumbled and when he came back everybody was like, "It's all your fault. If you had stayed, [other important MC] wouldn't have ended up like this.")

There are some situations where I feel as though maybe I am playing a critical part in someone else's life. But there is a certain cynical, resentful, or Darwinian feeling along the lines of, "If this thing is unable to survive without me, then it does not deserve to. Something that is so heavily dependent on me is flimsy and unreliable, and I can't allow myself to be burdened with the task of trying to sustain something that is completely impossible and unrealistic." So rude/callous to put it like that, but I find that the only way I'm able to justify actions where I *know* that I am likely hurting people is to embrace that type of cutthroat/semi-violent thinking. "If they suffer horribly, then good. That'll teach them to be more careful next time before trying to depend on me." There are more mature/grown-up-sounding ways of asserting this, but anything along the lines of, "I'm allowed to have boundaries" basically has this type of feeling/thinking at its core. It's not so high and mighty or adult-like as it seems to be. It's something far more reptilian--"This situation is going to hurt me. I don't want that to happen, so I'm going to defend myself." Fair enough! I've had enough bad experiences that I feel like I'm allowed to want to protect myself.

I understand that some parts of this fly in the face of virtually all values that listeners are expected to uphold, i.e. respecting and valuing the fact that many people come to this site in a state of fragility, they fear being abandoned, and having that abandonment actually take place has potentially severe/life-altering consequences. But, after a certain point, I feel like "Well, it can't be helped. I didn't agree to save you. I only agreed to talk to you on these days for this long, and with the understanding that this is a mutually voluntary arrangement where either party is allowed to sever ties at any time for any reason. I take you seriously, but I care about myself too."

I guess I'd complain if someone ever said that being strong is superior to being fragile/dependent. But in terms of my own practical lifestyle and how my values express themselves behaviorally, I prize my own independence to a very high degree. I feel uncomfortable being relied upon as it threatens my own mobility or freedom to shape-shift my identity and hobbies/interests. But, at the same time, I recognize that there is a certain meaning/gratification to committing to caring for people and in being a steady/stable/safe support.

It's ironic. Being told that I'm a "safe" person to talk to is probably the highest compliment that I could ever possibly receive. At the same time, it is one of the most scary things that I could be told, because it implies that I have been put into a tier of human beings where if I slip up, I am risking completely ruining another person's life... because that sense of safety I've created has probably caused them to become very open and vulnerable and start to depend on me.

Borderline phenomena (I mean "borderline" in the psychoanalytic sense of the term rather than the DSM sense) are the actual worst, lol. I always complain about being on the end of hoping/wishing for someone to understand/accept me. But the other side of feeling afraid of hurting people is pretty bad too. It sucks that I have a wounded infant self inside, and that I suspect most other people do too. (But then it sucks when people don't have that and they're a bit callous.)

Overall, I care very much about the handful of members that I am most connected with. On my member account, I'm really happy with and adore the members I've met and feel close to them. I just seldom interact with them out of a fear of creating some unbreakable connection that will have dependent dynamics along the lines of the above where I am unable to flee at will without seriously injuring somebody--so it feels safer to not increase/expand those connections. (I feel like if I did decide to talk to them, my soul would become entwined with theirs and it would be pretty hard to "Houdini" my way out of that, lol.) I'm happy that these people seem like they're able to survive in my absence. Or that whatever mental health struggles they are going through are largely independent of how actively I am intervening. Which is a bit of a cold thing to say, that it doesn't matter whether I engage or not, and one which leads to certain double-binds in the responses it potentially provokes. (E.g. if someone tries to say that I do help them a lot, then they are at risk of hurting me by binding me to the site. If they say on the other hand that I do not help them a lot, then they are at risk of hurting me by asserting that my presence on this site is meaningless or that I do not matter to them. So either way, whatever they say, there's a chance that they may feel guilty, even though in both scenarios they are considering my feelings. It's a funny dilemma. I feel very comfortable expressing unsolvable dilemmas like this while knowing that other people have nearly identical or even more severe inner conflicts when it comes to determining the degree of closeness/independence to have with other people. It's almost like a sort of in-joke, just how horribly rotten and difficult all of this nonsense is, lol.)

Evaluating my satisfaction with each role: helping listeners

My losses in this sphere if I were to leave the site (or seriously curtail my usage of the site) would be less significant. Most of the listeners that I feel closest to are either very self-sufficient and independent from me.

I believe the point at which I started seriously considering leaving the site was once I had completed certain pieces of unfinished business that I have on this site concerning listening philosophy and sharing parts of my own experiences with listening. The fact that I have now systematically expressed my own views on listening and have been able to establish exactly in what ways they conform to and differ from (or in some cases go beyond) the existing training model is a major accomplishment. The fact that these expressions have been received well by those I have shared them with is also a monumental accomplishment, albeit something less within my control.

I think my ideals for helping on this site differ significantly from those of other listeners. To some degree, I wish to make my own role completely obsolete. I wish to make contributions to written resources and automated processes that can replace much of the human labor. I wish to make my own self less significant or necessary.

I think one of the general goals of an artist is to produce works in which they have left behind so much of themselves that other people are able to interact with those works and receive the spirit of the original person even in the absence of that person. (Outside of that, there is of course also simply the hedonic/purgative/cleansing/self-healing function of the artistic process, similar to the process of a member venting--as a transient psychological process that operates on whatever is currently happening and finds creative/relevant ways to work through it and make meaning of it.)

My ideal in my role helping listeners is to make such a mark that my presence will not be missed.

I think my general philosophy as a listener (and as a human being) is that there are certain ways of processing feelings/thoughts which when applied internally are able to make a positive dent in most problems... and when applied externally, are able to make a positive dent in most other people's problems. And these mechanisms can be flexible enough that it doesn't matter what the topic or feelings are, though of course some are more difficult than others or take a longer time or are less familiar.

The one human thing that cannot be replaced is that of people being heard and understood. (Though I guess maybe I believe that there are certain intuitive gifts that can only be transmitted through direct encounters/experiences that are sensitive to specific/changing conditions and responsive to the actual living person in front of you.) Apart from that, I'd like to believe that most things concerning listening technique, listening philosophy, site rules, etc. can be manualized and organized in such a way that a listener would be able to find whatever information they need without ever needing to speak to another listener. That has always been my ideal for the way that listener training would work on this site. Instead of aiming to increase the number of volunteers, aim to create a system that operates so flawlessly and impersonally/soullessly that people are able to receive help even if there is a shortage of volunteers. Work smarter, not harder. Strategize, prioritize, optimize, and implement. Treat listening on this site as an economic problem and approach it through cold/ruthless calculations.

(Maybe a counterexample to this though would be the fact that as a listener, I felt pretty alone and self-doubtful until I actually finally had interactions with more experienced listeners who validated/affirmed that I wasn't completely worthless as a listener. No matter how many members gave me positive reviews, it took the affirmation of other listeners in positions of authority before I was able to feel like I had a sense of belongingness.)

The shadow side of the entire way of thinking involving automation is the fact that I see myself as a listener/member/human being who generally tends to fall through the cracks of any system. Most of my anxieties/insecurities on this site as a listener have been along the lines of noticing gaps/holes, noticing all of the ways in which I do not conform, noticing that most trainings/resources/people do not even acknowledge or understand my questions, let alone creating space for my solutions.

So, it's deeply ironic and hypocritical that I would wish to create a system that makes systematization and Kierkegaardian "leveling" even more prolific. However, my sense is that this site has generally veered toward the approach of trying to simplify things down as much as possible in order to appeal to the broadest number of people--and then that simplified or very vague/bland/bare-bones version of things is what has been taken as the standard/normative thing to be universalized.

I have also observed a general lack of flexibility that cannot be readily justified. Mistakes/gaps have been identified, concrete/specific solutions have been proposed, those gaps and resolutions have been mentioned periodically over a span of months/years, but no corresponding action has taken place.

Evaluating my satisfaction with each role: helping site

Based on the prior writing, what I've realized is that my core reason for being on this site (at least in this iteration of myself) is that I feel dissatisfied with this site and wish to change it in dramatic ways.

So many listeners join this site because they felt like they didn't have anybody to listen to them at some point. Or maybe they received some support somewhere, and they realized how meaningful/significant/vitally necessary that was... so they felt like they wanted to be able to give that same experience to other people like themselves who they care about and don't want to suffer in a similar way.

My version of that would be that I've seen the ugly side of this site, both as a member and as a listener, both through firsthand experience and through hearing other people's horror stories, and I find it disgusting/repulsive that things like that are allowed to exist. I want to eliminate them. Nobody should ever have to come here seeking support and experience certain things. I should never have had to experience some of the things that I've experienced as a member on this site. The thought that possibly hundreds of people on this site are experiencing the same thing daily, and that this has been going on for years is horrifying and makes me downright angry. It's like trying to calculate the human cost of COVID-19... each individual experience is overwhelmingly significant when you look at the details.

That gives rise to a certain motivation of, "I have to be the one to fix this. I have the skills/talent/resources. I'm able to diagnose the problem and strategize the appropriate remedies. I have a responsibility to offer myself to help solve this." There's a sort of urgency in feeling sickened by what's happening, and feeling moved to action by that.

***Aside: Applications of Buddhist concepts to listening***

Something I've been thinking off and on at certain points is that whatever happens, I'll probably come away from this experience with a better understanding of bodhicitta. All of this feels suspiciously similar to certain Tibetan arguments along the lines of, "All of your mothers from countless past lives are suffering. If you care about them, you have a responsibility to save them. And the only way to save them is to develop your own capacities and become a fully functioning person who has the wisdom/compassion to be able to rescue others while remaining unscathed yourself."

And then I guess maybe the sunyata side of the picture is to not be too flustered by all of this based on recognizing all of those processes by which things tend to change, the fact that identities are not fixed. And most significantly, not applying remedies that don't work or help reinforce stuckness in transient identities. And I guess something that feels really understandable to me is the way that certain empty-identity conceptions naturally give rise to unconditional positive regard. If everybody is becoming everything and most identities are prone to collapse, then a single-sided acceptance of one part of a person doesn't actually help them... because then they'll just hate/judge themselves as soon as that identity disintegrates. The love that people receive has to be universal/unconditional enough that 6 months in the future, when they've become the complete opposite of whatever you're currently listening to, they won't look back at your words and feel like they're being held back by judgments that you made while you were trying to help them through a particular limited situation.

I'm also reminded of the prasangika method that starts from a person's assumptions and follows them to their natural conclusions. In Buddhist argumentation, it's used to try to disintegrate "falsehoods". But I guess a different application is just to know/trust that whatever someone is saying is provisional or not necessarily permanent, but to still meet them fully in the moment and trust in the present significance/value of what they're saying. I'm allowed to care about my current feelings/thoughts/ideas/plans even if I know that I might abandon them in the future--and there's no conflict between the two. People do what feels best to them based on where they are. What people need changes over time. People can't predict what they're going to become or what they'll need in the future. People can't fully know or control themselves when everything about themselves is connected to change and things outside of their control.

I feel like I've sort of accidentally stumbled upon something analogous to the Buddhist trope of realization of emptiness giving rise to bodhicitta. (Of course, it's extremely taboo to claim to understand emptiness, and a part of me recoils at even pretending to identiy with that type of thing at all and is filled with a desire to delete all of this.) But nevertheless, I feel like there are certain ideas regarding change/identity where if people are sort of moving around and being controlled by fate, almost as if by a divine presence that exceeds/surpasses them... and if you've repeatedly had the personal experience of identifying with one thing only to find yourself becoming something else contradictory within minutes/hours/days/week... then it makes sense to try to be as accepting as possible of all different kinds of states that might occur, and to try not to have a strong preference for some states over the others.

***End aside***

Proposing significant changes to this site requires providing justification that: 1) certain problems exist, 2) those problems are impactful enough that they are worth solving despite the possible effort/instability involved, 3) those problems have possible solutions, 4) those solutions effectively solve the problems, 5) those solutions can be concretely implemented. It is a very detailed, information-based effort.

There are emotional and logical approaches to problems. Emotional approaches start from values, intuitions, and feelings and make instinctive judgments about whether a given situation, experience, or imagination is right or wrong. Logical approaches are based on assembling lists of facts and trying to connect them into chains to create inferences. The two approaches are not necessarily contradictory. I may have an emotional reaction to a specific situation (e.g. listeners on this site treating me terribly as a member) which then motivates me to try to gather evidence to prove that my anecdotal reaction has an objective basis (e.g. here is data proving that listeners are as bad as I believe them to be and that this isn't just an idiosyncratic reaction where I'm trying to impose my own minority/fringe experiences onto the majority).

The thing that I find troubling is that this site is so far away from reaching even the lowest of my own ideals with respect to listening, which is basic technical proficiency. Listening is something so unbelievably complex, rich, deep, and unfathomable. But to give a Maslow's hierarchy analogy, there is no room to talk about spirituality or enlightenment if everybody is starving for food and security. I can't begin to talk about or share my own deepest experiences and intuitions as a listener if there is no understanding of the general theoretical process of listening. And I can't begin to try to get the site to teach people the general theoretical process of listening if listeners aren't practicing the bare minimum that is taught in training concerning verbal techniques and behavioral/attitudinal prohibitions (i.e. don't judge people, don't tell people what to do). Though it is my belief that the two problems are intimately connected.

Going back to the Buddhist thing, a common belief in Buddhist soteriology is that once certain realizations occur about the nature of reality and become ingrained, certain types of suffering naturally stop occurring. I think it's much the same thing for listening. Once someone understands at a deep level what the values/processes of listening are supposed to be at a high level, they will naturally and spontaneously stop saying things that are invalidating, they'll stop giving advice, and they'll naturally lean toward certain verbal techniques. And because they have the high-level vision, they'll be able to generalize/universalize this and apply it to virtually any topic and even to completely novel situations that they haven't been trained to be able to handle. So basically, they achieve listener nirvana.

Then I feel like the level beyond that is when all of these understandings become second-nature and are something that sort of lives in your bones and works on the level of instinct/intuition/habit/emotions without necessarily being accompanied by a consciously articulated theory of listening or a hard-and-fast set of rules and principles... and all of your technique just becomes an embodied/inchoate/indescribable series of spontaneous/miraculous reactions that have been gifted to you, can't be explained or justified, but are almost unfailingly helpful.

So, I feel like there are sort of three levels of approaches to listening:
1) Rote technique
2) Philosophical understanding
3) Experiential intuition

I feel like I want to add a 4th level where it's sort of like, even calling something intuition or saying "I just have to follow my intuition" feels like it's underselling the completely uncontrolled nature of the process. Like, it's not something that I'm able to do. It just happens. And trying to make it happen, trying to think about it, or even valuing the idea of "intuition" or making that a central/core idea can backfire in stupendous ways. So the only flexible approach is to abandon the idea of trying to be "intuitive", abandon the idea of abandoning, etc. But I really am getting into idiosyncratic territory here.

I'd be perfectly happy if most 7 Cups listeners were fully functioning at the 1st and 2nd levels. Currently most listeners are trained and evaluated on the 1st level. But I think most of the problems that occur on the 1st levels are manifestations arising from a lack of understanding on the 2nd level. But I also feel that there are certain things where if you engrain them on the 1st level and teach people the sorts of rules or behaviors of, "It's generally a good idea to say/do this," they can see immediate results and they might make a conceptual leap and come to understand the more abstract process by which those specific behaviors bring about the result that they do.

Of course, the entire 2nd level can be summarized as basically "don't judge people", but it's so much more complicated than that. You really need to have a certain type of perspective on the way that human beings evolve, change, and grow in order to trust that non-judgment, non-directivity, etc. and all of these 1st level behaviors that listeners are taught to do (e.g. don't give advice, etc.) are actually completely sound from the vantage point of altruism. (I think most listeners very rightly feel that listening should be something that helps people. The major disconnect, and this is a 2nd-level misunderstanding, is that it's impossible to help people without giving advice.)

The 3rd level I'd say involves realizing that all concepts/theories are made-up approximations of reality and stop working at a certain point, so you kind of have to follow gut feelings and trust them rather than trying to perfectly adhere to rules/concepts. Otherwise, you'll miss truths that are right in front of you and screaming at you from within your being. So then your functional center becomes your own feelings and inner truths rather than an external set of ideas--while of course allowing interaction/connection between these.

The 4th level involves realizing that there's a certain tendency to identify with the idea of "I'm someone who follows intuitions and feelings", and yet having that identification is different than the experience of actually surrendering. And that surrendering isn't something that one is able to directly control or bring about through one's own effort, will, or intelligence. Actually, the concept of surrendering is a hindrance as there is a natural tendency to try to identify with that concept and become it, which is impossible in a paradoxical sort of way because trying to bring it about is the opposite of the experience of surrendering.

Bear attacking a city

Something I was thinking about yesterday as a frustrating but humorous metaphor for certain things was the idea of a city that is being ravaged by a bear. Every day, hundreds of people get mauled by this bear. But instead of dealing with the bear, the city invests all of its efforts into improving the hospital care for bear-related injuries. At a certain point, if you're a nurse working at a hospital in this kind of city, rather than being told how amazing you are for treating so many bear mauling victims... you'd rather have someone to do something about the bear. Because 1) you feel like you're wasting your time treating bear injuries that didn't have to happen, and 2) it's horrifying from a humanitarian/ethical standpoint.

It's adding insult to injury if you imagine in this scenario that the city doesn't seem to care enough about the bear problem to release data about how many bear-related injuries there are, and the scant data it does release on bear-related injuries is clearly inaccurate (in a way that makes the problem look less serious than it actually is) and contradicted by the data coming out of the hospitals.

Preventative/systematic solutions that eliminate a problem at its source are superior to reactive solutions that rely on a steady flow of human labor to mitigate the impact of the problem.

freedom is indefinite
identities are constraining
relationships create identities
yet relationships also create meaning

identity is centered in relationship;
i exist through connections to the outside world
whether those connections be affiliative
or in some cases antagonistic and rebellious

the source and pain of relationships is dependence;
i wish to be connected to you
so that i can have an identity through you
and thereby obtain a sense of self and meaning

various mature perspectives
many of which i value and would outwardly subscribe to
praise independence
and maintaining self-concept apart from relationships

but it seems to me
that this independence
is largely illusory
and something not altogether possible

most of what is labeled as independence
is merely not putting all eggs in a single basket
but rather distributing them among several baskets
so that if one basket tips over, not all eggs are lost

it is not that one lacks a basket
or is no longer dependent on anything
but that the investments are spread so wide
that any individual loss is insignificant

there are degrees of independence
and degrees of subtlety of intent
and there are also relationships of a nominal nature
where the connection is shallow or tenuous

what is called independence
consists of divesting oneself from external relationships
so that when the basket is lost
no eggs are lost since none were placed there to begin with

dependence and schizoidality
are the two poles of this dichotomy:
on the one hand, to be subsumed into others
and on the other, to be indifferent to others

some identities can be formed in indifference
for example the listener persona:
"i shall help and assist you from a distance
without sharing anything of my real self

"these connections i form are technical and productive;
i do this because it is meaningful and helpful
my connection is service-based or altruistic
and i have no dependence or need other than to serve

"i have care and connection
by absorbing others' feelings
but my own feelings and needs
shall remain hidden behind a mask

"moreover, this type of attitude
is something helpful or mandatory
considering that listeners are meant to be selfless
and centeredness in the others' experience is paramount

"the listener persona seeks to help others
and no gratification is to be sought in the relationship
other than the spaciousness and meaning
of receiving and tending to the others' feelings

"for the independence seeker
this persona is ideal;
no self-investment is required
and lacking this investment is actually helpful

"the listener who seeks their own well-being
by creating relationships dependent on others
is considered to have confounded or errantly comingled
the member and listener roles

"the member is the one who seeks
the listener is the one who is sought
the listener cannot be dependent upon the member
and the listener's needs are to be met separate from this connection

"it is true that to the extent that the listener's needs
involve this independent persona
and a sense of meaning
there is some dependence--

"but this dependence is to the listener identity
and to the sense of meaning
and not an emotional dependence
in which the listener's experiences are shared

"if the listener's experiences are shared
it is purely instrumental
and no grief is to be felt
if the member does not receive them

"the listener shares not to be received
or to be understood and cared for
but as a means to assisting
the member whose needs are the only priority

"the listener is the one who receives
and the member pours into them like liquid;
the listener does not offer their own self
except insofar as it is therapeutic

"the listener's identity
is a means to the members' ends
the listener's own experiences and perspectives
are valued insofar as they help the member"

none of this is to be disparaged;
this listener identity role
is profoundly helpful
and potentially rare

but what i give
while in this listener persona
i would be loathe to receive
or to ever ask for

were i to taste this connection as a member
and be the one pouring into another
and be received wholly and lovingly
i would never wish to be without it

this is not to say that others
have not provided care or love
but only that i have distanced myself from it
and have refused those relationships at every possible chance

if there is a person
who seems to be compatible
and someone i am deeply attracted to
then that is someone i am afraid of and wish to avoid

if i allow another to embrace me
and become accustomed to that warmth
how much more inflamed shall my loneliness become
during the inevitable moments where that embrace is absent?

how do i resolve this paradox,
that i would be willing to accept
being a listener for others
yet refuse to have a listener myself?

how can i justify being a listener myself
if my general conception of relationships
is that they are merely fuel poured onto an interminable fire
that cannot ever be quenched in this lifetime?

shall i through listening
be like a strumpet
who teases, titillates, and torments
without ever providing full satisfaction or relief?

shall i invite others to be dependent upon me
while knowing that i cannot satisfy them
and while dreading the demandingness of any person
who believes i can provide that satisfaction?

there are differing relationships
and roles that many listeners take on
some involving a lack of personal investment (as mine is)
and others involving a mutually dependent friendship

why do people seek to become listeners?
on the one hand, some seek meaning through altruism
on the other hand, some seek companionship through mutual dependence;
those seem to be the two possibilities

how can listeners help
without encouraging or evoking dependence?
how can members relate to a perfect, wonderful listener
without feeling a desire to possess that person?

if there is nobody who receives me
and i stumble across a person who is able to do this,
how could i possibly release that person
or fail to have some desperate attachment to them?

how can i share myself with another
while knowing that i will become attached,
and knowing that this attachment
imposes unfair and unjust identity commitments?

if by relating to another
i feel my whole being enlarge
and become intertwined with theirs
how can i avoid wishing for them to belong to me?

how can i respect
the rights and self-determination of others
if every person who offers some kindness
feels like a fleeting light that i cannot bear to lose?

listening relationships are of two types:
dependent and process-oriented.
dependence seeks emotional intimacy.
processing uses listening as a temporary means of untangling.

the process-oriented listener/member
sees interpersonal listening as something unnecessary and superfluous;
all of the cognitive/emotional processing
is possible to do in solitude

it is merely a difference of efficiency
or a comfort of feeling minimally seen and known
but the other's presence can be very slight
and no special involvement is needed

whatever is done
in a process-oriented relationship
could be fully accomplished
without ever speaking to another person

the person who has self-sufficient resources
of being able to write, think, feel, and process
would be able to resolve their own difficulties
or so this perspective would seem to claim

the role of the process-oriented listener
is to create space for processing
but listening does not have a monopoly on processing
and other people are not considered mandatory for healing

dependent relationships of companionship
are something different altogether
and impossible in solitude
as their essence is interpersonal affection

while listening
i approach it as process
but while a member
i know i seek a deeper, dependent relationship.

loneliness is alien to the process orientation
but it is the entire raison d'être of the dependent relationship.
in dependence, i do not seek eventual self-sufficiency
but rather to obtain a self by and through my caregiver.

in dependence, i am whole
only through giving myself
being received lovingly
and feeling love and warmth.

my feelings toward this relationship
are the harshest repugnance and disgust:
who could possibly invest themselves
into something so fleeting as another person?

if i so deeply hate
being depended upon
and being entrusted with others' needs
how can i make a similar imposition on someone else?

if i have been previously ruined for years
by others' expectations and demands
seeing me simply as emotional food for them to devour,
how can i harm others by hungering for them as well?

if others in their loneliness
cause injury to me through dependence,
how dare i cause similar injury to another
through my own dependence?

if i have such coarseness and callousness
and indifference and detachment
from those who depend on me,
how can i possibly depend on another?

if i shall eventually abandon and disregard
the emotional needs of every person
who approaches me in need or want
and i shall be cold and heartless...

if i shall prioritize my own needs
and my own freedom and independence
and my own liberty of being
and consider these to be inherent rights...

then how dare i demand or want anything
from any other person
that i myself would be unwilling to provide
and would consider to be an unjust imposition?

how dare i make another person
feel afraid of my dependence
of being sucked dry
by my infinite hunger?

if i claim to be non-violent
and to wish to exist in a harmless way
then how dare i depend upon others
and take from them what does not belong to me?

if others claim to desire to give,
i imagine however that if they are anything like me
i know that they do not actually mean this
and what they give is provisional and temporary

and if they do not hold this belief
and sincerely wish for dependence
then this part of myself would consider them naive
as having not yet been sufficiently injured by this arrangement

according to this view or part,
anyone who earnestly trusts in dependence
has simply not lived long enough
to see this dependence betrayed

and dependent relationships
are thought to be inherently unstable;
those who form long-term relationships
either merge unhealthily or have merely nominal connections

nominal connections are transactional and reciprocal:
"i shall remain here
only for as long as it is of benefit
for my own selfish needs and purposes

"i shall give of myself in this relationship
only whatever is practically workable
and leave any other desires unexpressed
to be satisfied somewhere else

"selfishness is not to be decried
but rather it is the core of all things;
altruism certainly exists in behaviors and emotions
but this other-centeredness is still self-centered

"i do things because they provide pleasure
and only if they do not generate abundant suffering--
and i measure the worth of altruistic activities
by the meaning that they provide in feeling helpful

"as soon as something ceases to provide that meaning
the activity itself shall cease
and any who have become dependent upon me
shall be abandoned

"the first time one abandons another person
the feeling of guilt is absurdly powerful
as though one were sacrificing the vulnerable
and staining all that is holy in its sensitivity

"with time these sacrifices are seen as necessary evils
and it is considered impossible to assuage or heal
in any essential or fundamental way
the deep, absolute wounds of the needy

"i can only help others to a limited degree
and only so long as i am not excessively harmed thereby;
i cannot sacrifice myself
and i cannot commit to pure altruism

"therefore, all helping activities
are reducible to utilitarian calculation
of an intuitive or instinctive nature:
does helping this person make me happy?

"my own happiness becomes the benchmark
even if this is tied to objective measures
i allow my gut to be my conscience
and am willing to abandon others if my cost is too great

"this is fully acceptable and justifiable
as an exercise of boundaries or self-care--
or alternatively in political or philosophical terms
as an exercise of individual liberty and negative rights

"i have full self-ownership
none can take from me against my will
that which i feel fully and completely belongs to me
which is my desire to choose what brings me happiness

"if i wish to live selfishly
and abandon others
then that should be my privilege and right
and i shall simply bear whatever contempt or guilt results therefrom

"but none can compel me to give against my will
even if their needs and suffering be overwhelming
and my own sacrifice or suffering be lesser in comparison--
as otherwise everything could be taken from me by a slippery slope"

how is this situation to be understood--
that in which members like me have infinite needs
if their identity coverings are ever disrupted
such that the loneliness rises to the surface?

is it the case
that all identities
are merely temporary distractions
while loneliness remains inherent and untouched?

buddhism appraises enlightenment
as being like when clouds
covering a boundless sky
are removed and leave behind only clarity and spaciousness

enlightenment is a permanent phenomenon
insofar as the mechanisms that create clouds
and the despair of "losing" the boundless sky
are eliminated by trust that the sky is always there

even if the sky is not perfectly present
at all transient moments
knowing that the sky always exists and clouds are transient
dispels some fear or concern about the clouds

(or so is my imagination of enlightenment
as i have not felt this state myself
and i am only attempting to infer or imagine
from minimal things i have read or heard

an alternative possibility
might be to understand sky
as the empty space holding the clouds
and to be able to locate this space even in cloud experiences)

to the extent that buddhism
allows the notion of inherent or absolute being
it is usually via these metaphors
of voidness as something blissful and sanctified

but how shall i accept this notion
if it seems to me that on the contrary,
to the extent that "obscurations are adventitious",
what remains leftover in their absence is merely loneliness?

if the eightfold path of buddhism
and also the mortification of the senses in christianity
entails eliminating all sense distractions
what of the sensitivity resulting from this?

how shall this quest of self-awareness
be reconciled with aspirations of productive social existence
which are also encouraged by such religions
if the two are apparently in conflict?

if all facades and postures are eliminated
and what is leftover is pure and honest longing
then how shall that be considered bliss
and what is the purpose of minimizing addictions and distractions?

kierkegaard's crop rotation
is to circulate and oscillate
between various distractions
each more useless and unnecessary than the last

yet these are like hermit crab shells
which are not expected to last
and therefore they are temporary abodes
while one's long-term identity is nomadic and non-committal

"i shall do this thing
with the understanding that it will stop working
at which point i will drop it
and move on to the next impermanent thing"

i wonder whether perhaps loneliness
is also temporary and exhaustible
and not merely something that must be either occluded by distraction
or satiated by temporary dependence on another

is loneliness just another layer of clouds
that seems exceedingly dark and difficult
merely because i have not experienced fully or consolidated
the penetration into it and resulting transcendence of it?

(or perhaps i should see other people
as renewable--or exhaustible--resources
to be used just like objects
for as long or as often as they aid in assuaging loneliness)

the question is whether
mental ailments are permanent distortions
that can only be covered up or lost by forgetfulness
or if there is some inner descent that resolves them

vulnerable writing is something i avoid
because it increases contact with lonely self-parts
for which there are only two outcomes:
insatiable dependence or unquenchable absence

to write without sharing is pain
as there is something left behind,
something significant or important about me
that is unknown to the world

the more i know of myself
the more intolerable my masks become
and the less comfortable i am
pretending to be without powerful feelings

the more i reveal of myself
unless tempered by caution and morality
which disrupts my own satisfaction or purpose in expressing
the more craving i experience for others

to the extent that i express partially
while holding back my own feelings
and not permitting myself to feel longing or consolation
the appearance is mere performance

intimacy as i have imagined it
is a gradual transition
from performative expression
to truly longing and vulnerable expression

"if this person is able to accept these outward parts
which i consider to be less sincere
or less connected to my deep core
then i shall gradually entrust them with secrets

"i shall gradually unfold unto them
all of the vulnerable and soft things
all of the painful and joyful things
all that can destabilize or ruin me

"i will let myself be like a computer
controlled by an end user
who has access to the core functioning
and who is messing around in the root

"if you type a single incorrect command
the whole system will shut down,
things that were working will stop working
i am existing at your mercy

"vulnerability is the state of
needing things to be a particular way
in order to avoid negative experiences
that feel disastrously difficult in their intensity

"to express honestly
is to exist in dependence on your kindness,
to hope and pray that you will not do things
that cause absurdly strong instability

"these things are hidden
because the one who perceives them
and understands their power
has the ability to torture me

"if they wished
they could completely break me
they could completely ruin my happiness
therefore these things are hidden

"if i do not wish to give others power
if i do not trust others to be kind
or if what i seek is impossible for any person
then these dangerous things shall be concealed

"if there are certain things which once spoken
produce certain irregularities or complexities
and dynamics that produce intolerable chaos
then it is best not to speak them

"if i do not wish to feel
the strain of deceiving others
by presenting a false self
then it is best to not be aware of a real self

"the easiest way to keep a secret
is to forget it yourself;
it is less strenuous to live in bad faith
if one severs all personal connection to good faith

"if i am able to distract myself
and absorb myself in surface things
then i need not have any conception of sensitivity
and therefore i need not hide what i do not myself experience

"it is easiest to conceal feelings
if i do not actually feel them;
it is easiest to protect myself
if i am unaware of anything needing protection

"furthermore, if others pry
roaming around for my secrets
and trying to grasp them by force
it shall be easiest if my memory is wiped

"the most convincing liar
is one who believes they are telling the truth
where the liar is able to lie to themselves
and they find their own performance convincing

"repression is an ugly word
as it sounds like something unhealthy
or something sinful
but it is entirely utilitarian and practical

"everything is driven by happiness
and avoidance of suffering
and everything is understandable in this light;
i am happier when my consciousness is reduced

"if all feelings
are merely an irresolvable dark pit
and a great inconvenience to others as well as myself
then it feels better to distance from them

"furthermore, there is no need
to even call it repression
when other framings exist
in which this is merely 'reality principle' or 'maturity'

"non-repressive existence could be considered
simply an impossible spiritual pipe dream
and a detour or wrong path
where realizing its futility is indicative of growth

"baudelaire's 'anywhere out of this world'
the world-weariness of ecclesiastes and schopenhauer
the truth of dukkha in buddha's four noble truths
all would acknowledge the impossibility

"perhaps the desire for full honesty
is merely a form of sickness
or so this line of thinking would assert
in light of all of its countless pitfalls"

know that when i say things
i do not mean them absolutely
as i may disparage honesty in one breath
but later feel connected to it

often identifying with one thing
becomes the precondition for abandoning it
or criticizing a particular thing
becomes the precondition for accepting it

but this should also not be taken
to mean that i aspire for honesty
or that i wish for things to go in any particular direction
or to resolve in any particular way

my method is simply to explore
and yet i cannot even say that this is true
since at many times i do not wish to explore
or i do not wish to have any method

i go to great lengths to say
that i do not have a method
so that i shall not say something is my method
and then find it ruined and have to disown my words

change is too difficult to explain;
people latch onto words
and assume what is true in one moment
shall be true in another moment

is this perhaps another form of distancing,
to assert that things that are meaningful
or have deep emotional resonance
do not actually matter?

if i am able to cloak the things that matter
behind a veil of apathy or indifference
then when they are received coldly or unsatisfactorily
i can excuse it by saying that i did not care

"this thing was not very important to me
or it was only important for a little while
so i can forgive the fact
that you did not respond as i had hoped"

(the residual aching in my stomach
upon hearing myself say these words
as if bemoaning their omnipresence
gives some weight to their veracity

if i pretend i do not care or need or want
then i shall find it easier
to travel through the world
when i am perpetually disappointed)

yet there is also some non-deceptive truth of change
that if given complete freedom
i may feel something very deeply
and yet it will vanish

at the same time
some things do not vanish
and remain in a holding pattern
as something more stable

again i do not wish to claim
that this stasis or pattern formation
is something healthy or unhealthy
or say with what frequency it occurs or not

the claim of health
would be to say
that it reflects psychological reality
and the formation of a mature ego or identity

the claim of illness
would be to say
that it reflects fixation or emotional baggage
and that it is immature to not be fluid

i would reply angrily to the last statement
the fluidity is not something to be enjoined;
it is something i do because i wish
and fixation is something i do because i wish

all mental health and illness conceptions
i reject absolutely
if they imply any necessity
that i am compelled to bend myself in a particular way

i do things because i want to do them
not because they are healthy
or not because i wish to avoid unhealthy things
and i despise anyone who imposes these conceptions

science and medicine join hands
as weapons of authoritarian imposition:
"these things are healthy and beneficial,
therefore any deviance in thought or behavior is ignoble"

i shall be less in the eyes of others
if i do what is unhealthy or immature
or if i am unable to justify
how all of my actions are healthy and mature

others shall be disappointed
if i do what they dislike
and if i cannot find some justification
or way of explaining away my behavior

when i am dishonest and less vulnerable
criticism and praise ripples off of me
because i am alienated from the part of me
that wishes to be received with approval and acceptance

if i reject others preemptively
or assert that full and permanent acceptance is impossible
and i withdraw all emotional energy and dependence
then rejection is completely tolerable

what people praise as "thick skin"
is simply this phenomenon
of forming a partial and detached identity
while alienated from any self-parts that might hurt

i reject any that would say
that i should identify with child parts
and i reject any that would say
that i should not identify with child parts

i shall do whatever i will
whether it be vulnerable or opaque
and my rebellion that i wish for
is the freedom to deviate in either direction

the care that i aspire to provide
as a listener
that is exceedingly rare among listeners
is non-preference for any particular outcome

whatever others wish to be
i wish that they may accomplish it
so long as it does not harm others
or impose excessively upon my own happiness and well-being

if those wishes are shifting
i accept that they are unstable
and if people change their mind
i trust their evolving understanding

people sometimes are asked to change
when what they wish for
is simply to rest in acceptance
and drink freely from the experience

people sometimes are asked to accept
when what they wish for
is to disrupt and upend things in drastic transformation
through their sharpened, impassioned motivation

general conceptions of proper action
tend to be grossly misguided
as people do not follow fixed rules
and what is helpful depends on situational conditions

i do not see people as fixed entities
but i also acknowledge patterns;
everything i could say about people is wrong
and all self statements are questionable and provisional

i distrust everything that people say
knowing that it may cease to be true
but for the time that a person says something
it is what is true and relevant right now

what is here is important
and it may continue to be important for a long time
or there may be some point at which
it ceases to have significance

and it is not for me to judge or assume
when or how long things will last
or to assert any ideal time
or any ideal trajectory for this movement

if someone is meant to be depressed
for decades at a time
then i shall not deny them
the right to exist according to their destiny

yet there is the conflict
latent within non-directive listening;
that there sometimes exist alternative approaches
which are happier and yet not already known

people do not always possess
completely within themselves
all knowledge or insight or wisdom
that they may eventually come to possess

but even the notion of wisdom
is authoritarian and judgmental to some degree
insofar as it asserts that some perspectives
are healthier and therefore represent an endpoint

it is my choice, privilege, and happiness
if i wish to regress
and become something filthy or disgusting
in the eyes of others

i appreciate transgressive art
and all dirty and loathsome things
for their expression of this freedom
and their willingness to be what they are

i appreciate all things
that are willing to exist in ways
that are considered unnatural from a societal perspective
yet feel entirely natural in one's interior experience

the flow of nature
is chaos in relation to fixed concepts
and yet perfect harmony
flowing in its spastic, irregular motion

things oscillate between soft and hard
dark and light
harsh and gentle
cruel and compassionate

this existence is joyful
when it is allowed to spit on everything
and consider everything to be transitional
and to ignore and destroy all boundaries

if in this rebellion
i wish to experience and express violence
then so long as i do not harm or restrict another
i relish and cherish that freedom of being

if people are all allowed to be themselves
they may self-segregate into communities
based on common interests and perspectives
and form mutually beneficial, voluntary relationships

when one member of a relational group
evolves or changes in a way that no longer fits
they simply leave the group
and find a different group that fits better

everything is moving around
everybody seeks what is convenient
people find what is helpful for them at the right time
and abandon it when it ceases to be helpful

this conception of relationship
would involve reckless and complete absorption
in things that attract one's present interest
followed by swift, equally passionate rejection of them

the difficulty with relationships
is that two people's interests are seldom aligned;
if both people were completely honest
there will always be friction

relationships are therefore partial compromises
in which i express some things
and enter into informal contracts
where i agree to interact by and through specific selves

"i am in this relationship for this reason
seeking this activity or experience
that seems to be mutually interesting and helpful
and desire you for as long as that arrangement is relevant"

rejection of other people
is not any deficiency or evil in them or me
but simply a transitory incompatibility of interests
where our honest desires are divergent

Playing around with LilyPond (programming language for creating musical scores). Nothing serious so far but have a proof of concept.

Audio: https://www.sndup.net/6jxk - can play within browser by clicking "Download audio" (some buzzing due to MIDI cable)

Came up with a somewhat reasonable process for transcribing improvisations. I connect my keyboard to my computer and record both audio and MIDI. I listen back to the audio mostly and use the MIDI to figure out what I played for situations where I'm not able to hear it clearly.

I'm currently entertaining an uncomfortable idea that I'm calling the "bodhicitta hypothesis" or "altruism hypothesis", which I'll state as the following:

At least for me personally, it's generally impossible for me to feel a stable sense of meaning/purpose and as though I'm living my life properly unless if I am actively dedicating myself to a project that has a realistic possibility of helping someone.

The current phase of apathy/low-grade depression that I'm going through feels like it's at some deeper level than the periodic slumps I sometimes go through. Until recently, I've always either had an active altruism project or I've had hope/optimism and been able to imagine a future/hypothetical project that is worth working towards. Right now, I don't really have anything that I'm excited about that involves helping people.

These are just a few examples of activities that become empowered or more meaningful (on top of any existing intrinsic value they might possess) when they're connected to an altruistic project:

• Solitary/hedonistic leisure activities can be made meaningful if their improvement/optimization/engagement is framed as self-care. (E.g. "if I'm able to efficiently recover/relax/enjoy myself, then that makes it easier for me to engage in helpful actions".)
• Physical wellness/health can be made meaningful because its improvement increases the total energy/personal resources that one has available to dedicate to altruistic activities.
• Personal chores/responsibilities can be made meaningful if completing them clears up free time or physical/mental space in which one has the ability to concentrate/immerse oneself in helpful activities.

There's a sort of chicken-egg thing that happens with depression: 1) if you feel like garbage, you stop doing things; 2) if you don't do things (e.g. sleep/diet/exercise), that by itself can independently make you feel like garbage. That seems to be the logic behind behavioral activation.

When attached to a meaningful project, everyday activities like the ones listed above not only become more enjoyable/enriching, but you also have a reason to want to do them and become more skilled/optimal at them. The way I see it, Mahayana Buddhism basically involves hacking human growth by 1) increasing people's altruistic motivations, 2) causally associating growth-oriented activities (as previously systematized in Theravada Buddhism) with that altruism.

***

Here are some of the criteria that I feel like an altruism project needs to satisfy in order for it to be experienced as sustainable/meaningful for me:

• 1) Enjoyable - Immersive/flow-oriented, neither too boring nor too challenging
• 2) Skillful - Either utilizing existing skills/strengths (i.e. reinforcing a sense of self-esteem via what one is already good at) or actively developing new strengths in a way where it feels realistically possible to gradually obtain competency/mastery (i.e. reinforcing a sense of self-esteem via a sense of growth/personal improvement)
• 3) Bounded - Having some boundaries/limits where one has control over the quantity of work one takes on and one does not feel compelled to give/offer beyond one's means/desires
• 4) Efficacious - Those activities need to be actually helpful as opposed to just apparently helpful (i.e. not just feeling a sense of goodness/self-satisfaction in something that seems beneficial/charitable but is actually relatively useless)
• 5) Optimized - Those activities should be done in a way that is not only helpful, but also maximally/optimally helpful
• 6) Morally unambiguous - Ideally, those activities won't involve any ethical paradoxes where there is any murkiness/uncertainty about whether one's actions are truly helpful, whether there are any negative side effects, etc.

Here's how I'd rate my job on these criteria:

1) Enjoyable = Medium
2) Skillful = Very High
3) Bounded = High
4) Efficacious = Medium
5) Optimized = High
6) Morally unambiguous = High
Average = High

And here's how I'd currently rate 7 Cups listening:

1) Enjoyable = Medium
2) Skillful = High
3) Bounded = Medium
4) Efficacious = Medium
5) Optimized = Medium
6) Morally unambiguous = Low
Average = Medium

Had a dream, thought about it, and ended up with the following model for analyzing personal activities.

1) Voluntary vs. involuntary

• Voluntary = things I have the option of either doing or not doing (e.g. leisure activities, hobbies)
• Involuntary = things I have to do (e.g. work, chores)

2) Present vs. productive

• Present = activity is pursued primarily for enjoyment in the present moment
• Productive = activity is pursued primarily for the sake of some kind of accumulation or meaning that extends beyond the present moment

Sub-dimensions of "productive"

a) Past vs. future

• Past = meaning comes from looking to past and engaging in retrospective evaluation (e.g. I'm better at X than I was a year ago)
• Future = meaning comes from looking to future (i.e. hope/optimism that there is something positive to look forward to)

b) Helping vs. self

• Helping = meaning comes from impact on other people
  • Intent = activity is pursued in terms of general/abstract aspiration, emotion, desire to make a difference
  • Results = activity is pursued through planning/organization in order to generate/maximize concrete, measurable outcomes
• Self = meaning comes from impact on oneself

c) Short-term vs. long-term

• Short-term = meaning/outcomes associated with activity are transitory/temporary and need to be enjoyed or used within a limited time window while they last (i.e. analogous to initiative in chess)
• Long-term = meaning/outcomes associated with activity are more permanent transformations that either never go away or take a much longer time to deteriorate (i.e. analogous to permanent positional/structural factors in chess)

d) Types

• Physical/energetic
• Intellectual
• Self/identity
• Social/relational

3) Sensitive vs. detached

• Sensitive = emotionally involved, vulnerable/risky
• Detached = relatively unemotional, non-risky

4) Dependent vs. independent

• Dependent = there are a couple ways of thinking about this:
  • Is it dependent? = whether it requires certain things from other people in order to succeed
  • How dependent is it? = the degree to which "things will go wrong" if other people fail to provide what one needs
• Independent = the opposite of dependence

***

Areas for further investigation:

• What are the different types of social relationships, and how would their functions/aims be categorized in the model above?
• What connections exist between the following concepts?
  • Sensitivity/vulnerability
  • Identity/self
  • Safety/self-protection
  • Self-expression
  • Social relationships
  • Spirituality
• What exactly are the defining elements of sensitivity/vulnerability? Possible concepts brainstormed:
  • Non-control (i.e. reduced ability to regulate/manipulate feelings)
  • Volatility (i.e. susceptibility to significant swings/changes)
  • Intensity (i.e. increased overall magnitude/strength of feelings)
  • Subtlety (i.e. experiences with finer detail where perception itself becomes more nuanced/vivid)
  • Permanence (i.e. connection to enduring/long-term emotions or themes that tend to lie dormant rather than disappearing)
  • Identity (i.e. conceptualized as pertaining to a core self that is more sincere or more real than surface manifestations)
  • Riskiness (i.e. if something goes wrong, having the potential to create either highly unpleasant emotional experiences, significant damage to self-concept/identity, or destruction of some external factor that indirectly influences emotions/self-concept)

A friend of mine asked me to share a recording of myself playing piano. The most recent one I could find was this:
https://www.mboxdrive.com/8-4-2018.mp3

I was really skeptical at first. My typical mindset is, "Anything I've created in the past is limited to that moment and not reflective of what would come from future moments." But actually as I listen through this, I'm really happy with how it sounds... and it feels like basically a perfect representation of everything that the best version of me musically is aiming for or able to do. Trying to identify elements of this that I like that feel like they reflect aesthetic preferences I have, at least for piano stuff, or at least for improvisations.

1) Touch sensitivity/dynamic subtlety - I have really fine control over how loud I'm playing. I'm able to play softly, and then there are degrees of softness.

2) Hypnotic/repetitive/drone motifs - I'll play the same notes or passage multiple times with the idea of sort of sinking into it.

3) Varying/absent time signatures - Sometimes I'm completely inattentive to time signature and I'll just move around when I feel like it. It gives it a sort of organic feeling.

4) Tonal eccentricities - A chord is never just a normal chord. Everything is made weird or different in some way. If there's a major chord, I'll add 2nds/4ths/6ths/7ths/9ths, I'll invert things. I'm always cognizant of what "normal" sounds like and I'm trying to stray just a little bit away from that, but do so in a way that still sounds beautiful if just a little bit more complex.

5) Rhythmic dynamism/range - Sometimes I'm playing very sparsely, other times I'm playing lots of notes in quick succession. Sometimes the rhythms fit neatly into a pattern while other times it's more loose/open. I use arpeggiation/grace notes in a way that I don't think a lot of other people do. And I had the finger dexterity/technique to be able to play these rhythms precisely without sacrificing touch sensitivity.

6) Melodic innovation - I'll come up with a melody, play it for a little while, and then start a new melody, then another one, then another one.

7) Long-term dynamic/aura/energetic shifts - The typical pattern of an improvisation is like a meditation where you start off in one state and end up in a different one. There are micro shifts where if you're listening to a short segment of music, it'll naturally move around and fluctuate, but there are also macro versions of this shift where if you skip to a later spot in the track, it'll feel like it's different energetically. And yet the process by which it got there was pretty organic/fluid.

8) Alternation between complexity and simplicity - This applies to tonality, rhythm, dynamics, etc. It's like the whole range of possibilities is within my vocabulary.

Quote from Rollo May's The Meaning of Anxiety (1950), p. 12-13.

The fact that anxiety has emerged as a central problem in contemporaneous philosophy and religion is not only a general but also a specific indication of the prevalence of anxiety in our culture. It is a specific indication in the sense that anxiety has become most prominent in the thought of those theologians, like R. Niebuhr, who are most intimately concerned with the economic and political issues of our day; and in those philosophers, like Tillich and M. Heidegger, who have experienced in their own lives the cultural crises and upheavals of Western society in the past three decades.

Tillich describes anxiety as man's reaction to the threat of nonbeing. Man is the creature who has self-conscious awareness of his being, but he is also aware that at any moment he might cease to exist. Thus in philosophical terms anxiety arises as the individual is aware of being as over against the ever present possibility of nonbeing. "Nonbeing" does not mean simply the threat of physical death--though probably death is the most common form and symbol of this anxiety. The threat of nonbeing lies in the psychological and spiritual realms as well, namely the threat of meaninglessness in one's existence. Generally the threat of meaninglessness is experienced negatively as a threat to the existence of the self (the experience of the "dissolution of the self" in Goldstein's term). But when this form of anxiety is confronted affirmatively--when the individual both realizes the threat of meaninglessness and takes a stand against the threat--the result is a strengthening of the individual's feeling of being a self, a strengthening of his perception of himself as distinct from the world of nonbeing, of objects.

Niebuhr makes anxiety the central concept of his theological doctrine of man. To Niebuhr every act of man, creative of destructive, involves some element of anxiety. Anxiety has its source in the fact that man is on one hand finite, involved like the animals in the contingencies and necessities of nature; but on the other hand man has freedom. Unlike "the animals he sees this situation [of contingency] and anticipates its perils," and to this extent man transcends his finiteness. "In short, man being both bound and free, both limited and limitless, is anxious. Anxiety is the inevitable concomitant of the paradox of freedom and finiteness in which man is involved." [Reinhold Niebuhr, The nature and destiny of man (New York, 1941), p. 182] Much will be said later in the present study about anxiety as the precondition of neurosis; it is significant that Niebuhr, in parallel theological terms, makes anxiety "the internal precondition of sin.... Anxiety is the internal description of the state of temptation." [Ibid]

Self-chat

Member: Hello

Listener: Hi, how are you doing?

M: I'm fine. How about you?

L: I'm doing good. What would you like to talk about?

M: I've been kind of confused lately.

L: What are you feeling confused about?

M: I guess usually I feel like I have some idea what I'm doing. And at the moment I'm not sure what I'm meant to be doing. I guess there are some ideas floating around, but I feel like all of them can be rejected. And there have just been a lot of things in which I previously felt centered that have disintegrated. Though I suppose no more so than usual... change does happen. So, it's not like this is a crisis or anything unexpected. But it's still unpleasant and in the present moment, I'm still confused.

L: Let me just see if I'm following.

M: Sure

L: So right now you feel like you're not quite sure what you're doing, and that's a bit unusual. It does happen every so often for you that things disintegrate, but it's still unpleasant when it does occur, and that's what's happening now.

M: Yeah.

L: What sort of things did you previously feel centered in that no longer feel like they work?

M: I guess the most recent thing that I was sort of putting all of my energy into was chess.

M: But I feel like I've reached a point with that where I've kind of exhausted all of the "low-hanging fruit" in terms of improvement.

M: I'm not sure how much you know or care about chess.

L: Since we're the same person [wink], I'm a pretty big fan of chess. So I'm not daunted by any details or anything if you want to describe what's happening there.

M: So, in terms of chess, one way of organizing progress/skill would be to sub-divide chess into different categories. And then those are each different dimensions in which you're able to grow. The four categories are: 1) openings, 2) tactics, 3) strategy, 4) endgames.

M: There are also some different styles or ways of approaching chess. The main sub-division is sharp/tactical vs. solid/positional. I fall very strongly on the positional side.

M: You know all of this, but basically sharp players enjoy creating really complicated/messy/chaotic situations on the chess board where it's very easy for both players to make a mistake, and any mistake is completely fatal. Like, if you miss a tactical pattern, you're just completely screwed. Some examples of sharp/aggressive players would be Tal, Fischer, Kasparov, Shirov, and Nakamura.

M: The other side of the coin is people who like to play quiet/positional games in which the main way to win is to get a very small edge and then simplify to a winning endgame where you're able to convert that small edge. So there's a lot of prophylactic play (i.e. preventing/eliminating any opposing threats) and just trying to completely minimize risk. Some examples of positional/solid players would be Capablanca, Petrosian, Smyslov, Karpov, and Kramnik.

L: Gotcha, so in terms of development of skill, there are those four dimensions (openings, tactics, strategy, endgame). And then there are also some more general stylistic differences in this split between tactical vs. positional players. And you've said that you fall more toward the positional side.

M: Right.

L: You mentioned that you feel like you've exhausted the low-hanging fruit for what you can work on?

M: Yeah. Basically for a while, I was just pretty weak at all of those categories.
1) For openings, I got better by figuring out what openings I want to play for both colors, including finding things that fit my playstyle, learning the first 5-10 moves for about 10 different variations, and then playing/practicing those openings.
2) For tactics, I started from the ground up and did some grinding of very easy tactics puzzles until the patterns started popping out automatically, and then I was gradually progressing to more difficult problems that involved adding some additional twist or complication to the existing pattern, and starting to be able to see those, being able to visualize/calculate further ahead, etc.
3) For strategy, I was working through a book and watching some videos and learning some general themes (e.g. situations where one minor piece is stronger than another, how to play positions based on pawn structure, the idea that pawn breaks drive everything, understanding how pawn moves around the king can be exploited by an attacking player)
4) Endgame is the area in which I made the most progress. I got several endgame books, one of which was literally designed to structure things by order of importance, like "If your rating is in this range, these are the things you absolutely must know", and so on for different rating ranges. It was really amazing, because I saw some of those positions show up in my own games, and I felt very confident and comfortable. I also noticed my advancements here trickling into the other categories... endgames are simple but for that reason they are very concrete/logical, so it indirectly helped my calculation/visualization. I found myself getting better at tactics even though I wasn't practicing tactics. I started to understand the way that pieces and pawns work a bit better. Like, by practicing queen vs. knight over and over, I got a deeper understanding of how knights work and how to mitigate their threats. From learning how to win pawn endgames through breakthroughs where one side has an extra pawn or two, I'm able to apply that strategically in some middlegame situations, or know how to set myself up for certain future endgames that are advantageous. I have a greater confidence in my usual game plan of playing clear/simple/positional chess based on feeling like if I end up with a small advantage, I have the ability to convert it. I'd say I'm better at endgames than the average player at my rating, or that's the area in which I'm strongest relatively speaking.

L: So, you've done a lot of work on each of those different categories. And you feel like endgames is where you're strongest and you've made the most progress. And it's exciting to be able to see that trickle into the other categories.

M: Yeah, I'd say so.

M: I feel like I've hit a bit of a wall right now with my improvement.

M: Something that I understand from having gotten into competitive Scrabble in the past is that... most of the progress/growth doesn't come from playing actual games. It comes from doing all kinds of study/practice outside of games. And then the games are just kind of like a fun thing that you can do to test whether your practice is paying off. The pattern is that you reach a certain point where you level out, and then at that point the only way to grow is to step away from playing games, focus on expanding the depth/breadth of your practice, and only after you've mastered something new or added some new tools to your arsenal, then you can go back to playing and see whether things have improved at all.

M: For Scrabble, it was word study. And it was extremely objective and measurable. I could literally say, "Before I only knew these sets of words, but I've now learned these additional 500-1000 words." And if you're playing a game, you'll start seeing new anagrams that you wouldn't have seen before. And sometimes those words will be substantially better than the next possible play, so you end up getting extra points (or better tile turnover or better defensive play without sacrificing points) and end up winning games that you might have otherwise lost.

L: With Scrabble and Chess, your experience has been that improvement only comes from specific practice aiming to expand skills. And then the games are just a way of sort of reaping the fruits or enjoying seeing whether that practice has had an effect.

M: Right. So basically if I've hit a plateau right now in chess where I feel like my rating has leveled off, the question is basically, "Okay, what do I need to add to my arsenal if I want to improve/grow further?" And the answer to that will revolve around those areas mentioned above.

M: The area in which I feel like I'm weakest is knowing what my game plan is for different openings, and understanding the strategy that flows out of different openings. But I started trying to learn/work on that and got completely lost.

M: I created a database of games, made a list of the variations I need to check, and started analyzing master games... and, it's just the same feeling that I had initially when I started trying to approach chess. It is so sprawling and there are basically no common patterns or themes that I can totally rely on.

M: Like, there aren't any universal plans that always work. It's just that you have a certain set of moves that you're able to memorize to get to a position where you aren't losing, and then from there it feels like just pure improvisation.

M: And I really don't like that. I like things that are rock-solid, completely fool-proof, and guaranteed to work. I like to have a clear plan for what I'm meant to be doing, where I can feel confident in it. I don't like situations, whether in chess or outside of chess, where I have to rely on luck or on factors outside of my control.

M: And the thing is, there are *so* many different variations to look at. So it's like, let's say I have... hm, I don't know how many variations I currently know. Let me see.

M: From the White side, I play e4 and the openings I need to prepare are Ruy Lopez (for e5), Sicilian, French, Caro-Kann, and Scandinavian. I could also work on Petroff, Philidor, and Pirc, but I don't really see a whole lot of those and I seem to end up in advantageous positions just by playing normally/naturally, so they aren't huge priorities. Within Ruy Lopez, I need to learn the Berlin, Closed, Open, and Classical variations. Within Sicilian, I play Rossolimo/Moscow and need to know what to do for Nc6, d6, e6, and g6. Within Caro-Kann, I play the Advance and need to know what to do for Bf5 and c5. Within French, I play the Tarrasch but basically don't know any theory past move 3. Within Scandinavian, I need to know how to respond to Qd8, Qd6, Qa5, and Nf6.

M: So just from the White side alone, there are roughly 10-15 different lines that I'd want to be prepared for.

M: For Black, there are slightly fewer things, but it's important that I know them well since they occur more frequently. I play Caro-Kann against e4 and need to be prepared for the Classical, Advance, Exchange/Short, Exchange/Panov, Two Knights, and Fantasy. I play Queen's Gambit Declined against d4 and basically need to be prepared for Exchange lines and I still need to figure out which variation I want to play (e.g. Orthodox, Tartakower) and understand the plans. I also need to know how to play against the London, Colle, and King's Indian. At some point I'll need a response to the English and Catalan, but at my level nobody really plays those. So that's another 10-15 lines I'd ideally be able to play as Black.

M: So overall, we're basically talking about 20-30 different starting positions for which I'd memorize the moves up to a certain point and then I'd ideally know what the usual plan and pawn/piece placements are after that.

M: That's where I'm really confused. I've been watching videos, analyzing games, reading books/articles, reviewing database statistics, reviewing engine lines, etc. but I still feel like I'm never really grasping what's happening. I started by just taking a single line (Black Caro-Kann Classical Main Line) and I'm looking at everything and it just isn't making sense. I know the main moves from memory (1. e4 c6 2. d4 d5 3. Nc3 dxe4 4. Nxe4 Bf5 5. Ng3 Bg6 6. Nf3 Nd7 7. h4 h6 8. h5 Bh7 9. Bd3 Bxd3 10. Qxd3... followed by Black playing Nf6, e6, Be7/Bd6, 0-0, Qc7/Qb6, Rc8, c5). But I have no idea what I'm meant to be learning or how I'm supposed to concretely expand my knowledge base.

M: What I like about endgames is that the knowledge is very specific. There are very well-defined theoretical positions where there is an exact answer and moves are 100% right or 100% wrong. And once you know it, you completely know it, and you'd be able to play it correctly against absolutely anybody, whether they're a grandmaster or a scrub. I've won games that were drawn and drawn games that were lost because I knew how to play endgames and my opponent didn't, they made a mistake, and I was able to recognize that it was a mistake and capitalize on it.

M: I never get that same feeling from any other area of chess. With tactics, it's extremely hit-or-miss whether I'll actually be able to get something advantageous and it's dependent on my opponent doing something stupid. With openings/strategy, I have clue what the heck I'm doing.

M: The bottom line is, I feel like I'm not sure how to improve in 3 out of the 4 areas. And for the 4th area where I know how to improve (endgames), the next step would probably be to start trying to study either rook endgames or minor piece endgames in more depth. But I'd have to sink such a huge amount of time into it in order to actually master anything new. And I feel like it just isn't worth it.

M: I feel like chess in general maybe just isn't worth it.

M: I'm not sure.

L: What I'm hearing is that you feel like the area in which you'd need to improve is openings/strategy, but you feel like it's very difficult to improve there because the learning there isn't as concrete/airtight/foolproof as endgames where there is an exact/correct answer to every question that you might have and there are very precise/trustworthy goals you can plan around.

M: And I guess I'm not sure if it's really worth the trouble. I spent forever trying to set up a database on my computer so that I would be able to analyze games and look for patterns. But I'm kind of crestfallen because I got everything I needed (e.g. I have a SCID database with 250,000+ Caro-Kann games from Lichess in February 2021 of all different skill levels, including 100,000+ games from players who are above my skill level and thousands of master games). But even now that I have that, it isn't a magic bullet at all. The whole thing is so f--ing complicated that no matter how many games you have to look at, it doesn't matter at all if you aren't able to understand what you're looking at. And the books I've looked at haven't felt like they've been much help. Every book is just going into all of these stupid side lines that may or may not ever occur and showing all kinds of tricks and traps. And I just don't care. I want a clear, solid, straightforward plan or system of, "Here's where you put everything, these are the possible ways they can respond, and here's what you do for each possible response, the way in which that gives you an advantage, and how to convert that advantage into a win."

M: I'm really frustrated with it all.

M: It's just really dumb the amount of time I'd have to sink into this to get any good at all.

M: Realistically, to learn just a single line, like that Caro-Kann Classical variation I was looking at, I'd probably need to review and take notes on at least 50 games. Each game would take probably 20-30 minutes to review if I'm not just rushing through it and I'm actually learning from it. So we're talking about 15-20 hours to learn a single line well enough that I feel comfortable with it. And then multiply that by 20-30 lines for both sides. If we take the middle value for both the hours and # of lines, we're talking 17.5 hrs x 25 lines = ~450 hours of chess study.

M: And if I do all of that, that'll allow me to competently play just one specific set of openings, and if I step into absolutely any other line or opening, I'll still be completely confused/bewildered and have no idea what to do.

M: For strategy, I'd have to read through a few good books on positional themes, and that would probably take me about 100 hours total if I'm doing the work in good faith and actually playing through and analyzing the different games/positions rather than just skimming through the prose explanation.

M: For tactics, we're talking 30-45 minutes per day for forever in order to make serious improvements. So, over the course of 6 months, that would also be about 100 hours.

M: For endgames, working through rook endings, minor piece endings, or a deeper understanding of pawn endings... each one of those is probably at least 50-100 hours apiece. So we're talking around 250 hours total to make significant/noticeable improvements.

M: If I did all of those things, I think probably I could get my rating to increase by another 200-300 points, and I'd end up being around an expert-level player. But the total time estimated commitment over a 6-month period is 450 hours (openings) + 100 hours (strategy) + 100 hours (tactics) + 250 hours (endgames) = 900 hours. That comes out to 5 hours per day.

M: Even if you expand the time range and say you want to improve by that degree over the span of a year, it would be about 2.5 hours per day.

M: And I think all of that would only get me from maybe ~1600 rating to around ~1900 rating. Or that's my general impression. I'd still be nowhere close to even the level of a Candidate Master.

M: With Scrabble, the word study process was extremely linear and predictable. I knew exactly what sets of words to learn, how to learn them, how to retain that learning, and what to learn next. I could learn 50 new words in about 30 minutes, and then let's just add in another 30 minutes for the practice involved in retaining those words. Based on that, learning 10,000 words was only roughly 200 hours of effort. But 10,000 words is a huge improvement. And the word study can be completely optimized so that you're always learning the most useful/helpful words at any given time that are going to give you the biggest edge.

M: There's never any doubt about what you're meant to do in order to improve in Scrabble. I think for chess, openings/strategy are by far the least reliable/certain area for improvement. Tactics is a memory/pattern recognition thing where there are also ways of systematizing it by having finite sets of puzzles that you do repeatedly until they pop out. Endgames mostly involves learning a finite set of theoretical positions and then using general intuition to know how to steer practical games toward those theoretical positions.

L: So, you've put a lot of effort already into trying to understand exactly what is required for getting better at chess, especially for openings. And the time commitment feels pretty steep (e.g. 900 hours in 6 months) in order to get the type of improvement that you're seeking that would make you feel comfortable/confident.

L: And that's in contrast with something like Scrabble where you can make comparable or greater improvements with 1/4 of the effort.

M: Yes. So I mean, that's just one aspect of the whole thing is, "How difficult is it to improve?" Up until now, I was making steady improvements in chess in each of those areas without feeling like I had to sacrifice too much or give a huge amount. But to get to the next level, it seems like a huge amount to give.

M: The other aspect of this is the question of, "Okay, let's say that this is possible and I devote all of this time and do end up improving. What am I really gaining from that?" It's sort of a deeper critique or questioning of the value of chess, Scrabble, and other similar games in general.

M: There are certain video games that I've found really interesting where I've been able to work out strategies like, "If I'm willing to do XYZ, then I'll achieve this result in the game." But then if I broaden my perspective or the scope of my concern, the question is, "But why does that matter? So what if I'm able to get good at this game? Is that really worth pursuing?"

L: You feel like for chess, Scrabble, and other games, the problem is, "Even if I'm able to get good at it, what's the point?"

M: Yeah, like what am I actually getting out of this. Am I just wasting my time?

L: What do you feel makes it a waste of time?

M: That's a tough question. I feel like that probably boils down to something like, "How do you decide what is worth doing in life in general?" Or something like, "How do you know whether what you're doing feels meaningful?" Or "What types of things do you need in your life in order to feel like you're living well?"

L: Those do sound like really hard questions.

M: In the past, I've put forth some effort toward trying to brainstorm certain classes of activities or certain factors in my life.

M: But I'm somewhat doubtful of whether those factors are really all-important or whether they actually work.

M: I feel like the whole scheme or structure is kind of messed up, and there have been some deeper changes in the way that I view things that aren't reflected in the way that I do planning.

L: In the past, you've tried to identify things that you feel might be helpful for you or help you to feel like you're living happily and meaningfully. But it feels like maybe now, something has changed where possibly those things aren't relevant.

M: Or I guess I just don't have a desire to do them.

M: Like for example, maybe one factor for well-being is just being in reasonable physical shape. And the actions I'd implement for that are 1) sleeping a certain amount per night (which can be operationalized by setting a specific bedtime for myself and having some supporting activities/schedules that are tailored to me being able to be calm and fall asleep by a certain time), 2) having a balanced/steady diet that is nutritionally sound, tasty, and avoids issues with hunger or unstable energy/blood sugar levels, 3) walking and doing yoga/calisthenics in order to build both cardiovascular fitness and muscle endurance/strength, and again just increase my overall energy levels and physiological resilience to stress. The 4th item I'd add to that is some kind of regulation of sexual energy, but that seems to be hit or miss... it matters a lot, but really there isn't any magic bullet for controlling it other than having something you really care about enough that it eats up your energy.

M: I could realistically do all of that. I could create concrete plans for every single one of those factors, and I can reliably know that the end result would be me having a certain kind of body within about 2-3 weeks. With maybe only 1-2 hours of effort per day.

M: There are sort of bottom-up approaches like this (hatha yoga) where the goal is to increase physical energy and just try to build a strong base that can be leveraged toward whatever you want/need it for. And then there are top-down approaches (karma yoga, bhakti yoga) where you have something that you already really care about, and because of caring about it, your habits naturally shift in such a way as to support that.

M: It's kind of like if I know I'm going to be around people where I feel anxious about my appearance or about not being "on-point" and I want that badly enough, then I'll start sleeping well, eating well, exercising, practicing brahmacharya, etc. That would be an example of the top-down approach. Whereas maybe the bottom-up approach would be that I just decide to do all of those things as a fundamental habit, without having any idea what I'm devoting/dedicating it towards, and I hope that something comes along where I've accumulated or stored up a bunch of energy/stamina/potential that ends up being relevant.

L: So if I'm following, you've identified some different factors in the past that you feel are helpful for your own happiness. One example is physical well-being, where there are then different things that you can regulate (e.g. diet, sleep, exercise, sexuality) and have certain results. But there's a bit of a difference between doing those things a bit aimlessly (e.g. "bottom up") in the hopes of it having some future benefit... versus having something you already care about and spontaneously regulating your habits to support what you're passionate about (e.g. "top down").

M: Yeah, that's what I'm struggling with, and what I feel has changed significantly in the past 3-4 months.

M: Previously, I always had something I could point to as a long-term "top down" goal, which was to establish a sort of presence or state of mind from which I was able to provide emotional support to people.

M: And pre-pandemic, I was around other people a lot, so there was also a dimension of trying to create a presence of calm/peace on the basis of being able to affect others infectiously through mere presence/energy/vibe, avoid harming others, and have the resources I need to feel confident/sturdy/enthusiastic in social interactions.

M: With the pandemic, social/work demands involving in-person contact just don't exist anymore. And there is no real expectation (or need) for having a strong physical presence if I'm not really connected with people in a way where those changes make a big impact. It doesn't come through as much in video/voice chat or e-mail. And all of the people that I'm seeing in-person are either people where I don't really care what they think about me, or I feel relatively secure/safe in the knowledge that they won't deeply judge or question what I'm doing even if I look/feel/act like I'm completely exhausted/depleted/tired/empty on a physical/energetic level.

M: Social attractiveness, helpfulness, and non-harm are all usually pretty strong factors that drive all of my physical, psychological, and spiritual efforts.

L: But now those "top-down" goals that would motivate all of these physical habit changes and provide a sort of compass feel like they aren't present as much.

M: Right.

M: It's a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem with happiness. I'm not completely sure if happiness comes from having something you love, or if it comes from the habits that tend to accompany being in love/passion with something.

M: It's almost like if you initiate the physical habits, they either end up collapsing or you end up being forced to find something to channel the extra energy into. And if you have something you love, you end up being forced to initiate the habits in order to maintain the energy to support it.

M: Maybe the difference with things like chess and video games as personal interests is that they don't require much in terms of physical energy in order to maintain them.

M: It's not like social interactions where if you're tired or low in energy, it's just impossible for certain things to happen. I'm sure I'm a better chess player when I'm awake/rested/alert, but...

M: Well, actually it does make a big difference for chess. I guess the problem at the moment is... chess is not a big enough motivator for me. And chess is so time-consuming that it's almost like I wouldn't even have time to do the physical stuff if I were to approach chess at the level/depth that I'd want to.

L: You think that physical habits and passion might reinforce one another, but chess doesn't feel like it currently qualifies as a passion that you're willing to give the time to.

M: Now that I reflect, I feel like maybe passion and physical habits are both driven by something else, which is a sort of global intuition.

M: Kind of like, things move around where they need to go... and sometimes it ends up in a state where I have passions or physical habits, and sometimes things aren't like that.

M: But the periods in which there's a drought tend to create the necessary agitation/anxiety/stress to feel motivated/required to implement or pursue something.

L: You benefit from having passion projects and physical habits, but you feel like maybe there's something else that influences both of those.

M: In past systems, I've had writing as a component. Basically, doing introspection every now and then as needed in order to resolve problems and sort of connect not only with conscious problem-solving, but also just opening the door to all kinds of unconscious or spontaneous things that come to light.

M: I'm getting a bit tired

L: Okay

M: My takeaways at this point are that there are some global elements that seem like trustworthy and interdependent factors for happiness (e.g. physical energy, passion projects, self-awareness); the requirements for a passion project seem to be both a sort of intrinsic meaning accompanied by the potential to concretely plan/organize/actualize one's desired outcomes; I'm questioning whether chess checks the box for intrinsic meaning, and also doubtful that it meets the criteria for having concrete plans to actualize.

M: I said I was tired but there are things I still want to talk about

L: Sure, what would you still like to talk about?

M: Historically, I've had a few outlets that are usually my go-to points for passion projects. Those have been psychological support (e.g. 7 Cups listening), work, music, and spiritual reading/practice.

M: I feel like right now all of those have some problems.

M: Something that's popping into my head right now is... all of my spiritual/psychological aesthetics having to do with sensitivity, quietness, and this sort of dialectic between thinking/doing and not-thinking/not-doing.

M: The thing is, if I'm not doing listening on 7 Cups, and if I'm not around people who are hurting me or in pain themselves and needing some kindness, then there is really no environment or space in which cultivating sensitivity is helpful for me.

M: The fact is that it is significantly easier to live as an insensitive person, and it tends to be equal or better in terms of productivity and shallow social relationships.

M: It's easier to live sensitively if you have the physical supports and if you also implement certain quiet-oriented practices that help calm one's mind, in addition to the general physical supports (i.e. sleep, exercise, diet, sexual regulation).

L: So in addition to the factors you've described (i.e. energy/physical well-being, passion projects, self-awareness), you feel like there's another factor of sensitivity that affects things. But it's not clear if developing this is something helpful since some of the social situations where sensitivity is relevant are no longer present.

M: I mean, if I wanted to, I could start becoming active on 7 Cups again as a listener.

M: The thing that's a bit funny is that even on 7 Cups, sensitivity is definitely not as relevant or helpful as I thought it was.

M: It's just that listening feels more natural and genuine for me personally if I'm relaxed, which is only possible if you're applying some kind of sensitivity/quietude thing.

M: I've thought about possibly returning to some spiritual traditions, either Buddhism or Christianity. But it feels like something where I'm worse off the more that I talk about it.

M: Maybe it is sleepiness kicking in.

M: Thanks for your time.

[Self-chat]

Member: Hello

Listener: Hello

L: What would you like to talk about?

M: I've been thinking about what we were discussing yesterday and I was just reading through some of my writing.

M: I think there are several things that are sort of jumping out at me as general themes.

L: Sure, what sort of things are jumping out?

M: One thing is that I really really like engaging in activities where I have full control over the outcome.

M: I'm pretty disgusted with anything where the outcome isn't certain.

M: My ideal activity is one where maybe it's difficult, but it's absolutely certain that if I do XYZ, there will be some eventual improvement or growth that leads to me capping out my results/outcomes and having things go very well.

M: That was something I found attractive about Scrabble.

M: Chess interested me insofar as it *didn't* have that, and I was curious if it might be possible to approach chess in such a way that it becomes like Scrabble.

M: What I'm finding is that there are some areas of chess where it's possible to completely control/manipulate things. But outside of that, there is just too much chaos.

M: The other thing I'm realizing is that even with some of the games I play outside of chess/Scrabble, I'm kind of disgusted by something else, which is the competitive aspect of it.

M: Not in the usual way that I'd expect where it's like "I don't want to have my success be dependent on another person's failure"

M: But just more like... I feel like I get more frustrated when I lose if it's someone else beating me. And I'm far more likely to lose if I'm playing against a human being rather than playing against myself or some set of logical/natural rules, because people are very smart and very unpredictable.

M: I'm not saying that I necessarily enjoy cooperative games more than competitive ones. But just that that's what I'm observing. Some of the games I play with the intent of it being sort of a calming/relaxing leisure activity end up getting me stressed because I keep losing, but the losses feel like they're outside of my control because of all of the chaos/randomness involved in the game. Or to the extent that there is skill involved, it isn't something where I feel like it's possible to really develop or improve.

M: Some games are just like a very complicated rock-paper-scissors matches where there might be 20 possible things and they all counter each other in certain ways.

M: And then if you're in a free-for-all game mode, it's random luck whether you come across someone that happens to hard-counter you, whether there happen to be multiple players nearby that are all ganging up on you, etc.

M: And the particular games that I'm playing don't have permanence to them. If you lose, you have to start over. So, all of the accumulation/growth has to be abandoned.

M: But I guess even in games that do have continuous accumulation sort of like RPG's or MMORPG's, the general problem discussed yesterday of, "Do I really gain anything or care even if I win or do well? Is it worth anything?" arises

M: So in summary, I like activities where I have control, I like activities where I don't have to compete against other people's wits, I like activities that don't have a lot of randomness or variance, and I like activities where the end result is actually something useful.

L: So control, non-competitiveness, non-randomness, and usefulness

L: Are there any activities that satisfy those factors?

M: Within the realm of games, MMORPG and RPG games basically satisfy 3 out of the 4 conditions. There's control in that there's usually some very static logic that determines everything in the game. Even when things are random, they are usually probabilistic, so you're able to make long-term calculations based on knowing what the expected outcome is when the law of large numbers wins out. And usually most games like that have a wiki, documentation, or set of community-created strategy guides where people will outline all of the different processes/mechanisms/rules of the game and suggest different builds or strategies.

M: That makes me think that maybe there's a 5th factor though, which is the ability to inject some of my own creativity, intelligence, or individuality into the activity. Like, being able to approach it in a way that is specifically mine or belonging to me.

M: My experience with some games like Path of Exile has been that the processes and strategies are so unbelievably complicated that I'm really not able to make much progress without following someone else's guide. And then at that point, it's like the person providing the guide is the one who's being creative and productive. And I'm just following their orders and not really doing anything original.

M: The other issue I run into is games where the baseline strategies are so easy or there are so few possibilities for successful play that the creativity/intellectual contributions are also limited there. For example, I think of something like Runescape that I used to play a while ago where at least in certain game modes, there are only a very limited number of ways to reach a specific goal, and if you work out the math, usually there's only one best way, and typically lots of people are aware of that best way. And it's not something that really changes. You just figure out the optimal strategy, and then it's a matter of grinding/repeating that strategy indefinitely until you get as far as you want to get.

M: I'm a bit confused by all of this. It sounds like I want things both ways. I want games that aren't so simple that there isn't any strategy or the strategies are incredibly straightforward. But I also want games that aren't so complicated that it's impossible to find a strategy at all.

M: It's very weird. With chess and Path of Exile, the thing I'm complaining about is *not being able* to find the strategy because the game is so complicated. With Runescape, the thing I'm complaining about is *being able* to find the strategy and having the game become boring or too easy/simple after you figure out what you're supposed to do.

M: That's probably where the factor of usefulness comes in. If I consider listening as an activity that can be analyzed in the same way as gaming, there are some situations where I have a fairly good idea of what the correct strategy is. But, it's not like Runescape where I get bored once I've figured out the optimal strategy. Maybe because it's like there's a continuous stream of new situations where the strategy can change slightly?

M: I bet chess would become something similar to that if I went deep enough down the rabbit hole into it. But I've already decided that chess doesn't satisfy the criterion of usefulness or meaningfulness.

M: The bottom line is that chess is complicated enough that the only way I can get good at it is by sinking a lot of time into it. And it's not something I value enough (because of the lack of usefulness) that I'm willing to sink that time in. It feels like I'm throwing away my life if I were to spend 6-12 months devoting myself to nothing but chess. It's the sort of thing where if I engage in prospective and retrospective evaluation... I can't imagine myself being happy looking back and thinking, "I spent the past year focusing on nothing but chess and got good at it" and I can't imagine myself being happy looking forward and imagining myself engaging in something like that.

M: I have a need for activities that are just time-fillers, some that are relatively passive (e.g. something I can do or think about while I'm eating) and some that are relatively active (e.g. something I can do as a hobby or activity where I'm focusing my full attention on that and applying effort).

M: I've thrown a lot out there, so I'll give you some time to digest.

L: At this point, you've identified 5 factors for an activity feeling like it's worth doing. And you've been applying this mostly to games, but also to some other activities like 7 Cups listening.

1) Control = feeling like you're able to reach a specific desired outcome with complete certainty
2) Non-competitiveness = not having to fight against other people who are smarter or more chaotic than you (also connects to control in that you'd be having to rely on other people being worse than you or making mistakes)
3) Non-randomness = this feels like the same thing as control?
4) Usefulness = doing something where you feel proud or satisfied or like there is meaning in prospective/retrospective evaluation
5) Creativity = having something where you can inject your own unique ideas or contributions and create something individualized

M: That last one is really striking a chord with me right now. One of the beautiful things about RPG games in particular is the amount of customization.

M: One of the thing that excited me most initially about 7 Cups was being able to sort of craft a kind of identity, construct my profile in a certain way. It felt almost like a video game where I was creating a "build" and designing the way that it would look.

M: That isn't to say that there are no honest elements. Of course, the type of build that I choose is dependent on my base personality, what I feel like I'm skilled at and comfortable with, and my ability to execute that build depends on those kinds of innate factors.

M: So maybe I'd add a 6th factor of "Personalized", basically being that there is a good match between who I am/what I'm like and what my gameplay experience or character ends up being like.

M: Chess appealed to me because it seemed to have that kind of factor with styles of play. But I feel like it's a bit of an illusion because of how little control you have over the type of game/position that you end up playing.

L: Updated list of factors:

1) Control = feeling like you're able to reach a specific desired outcome with complete certainty
2) Non-competitiveness = not having to fight against other people who are smarter or more chaotic than you (also connects to control in that you'd be having to rely on other people being worse than you or making mistakes)
3) Non-randomness = this feels like the same thing as control?
4) Usefulness = doing something where you feel proud or satisfied or like there is meaning in prospective/retrospective evaluation
5) Creativity = having something where you can inject your own unique ideas or contributions and create something individualized
6) Personalized = having a strong match or compatibility between the activity and your own innate preferences/strengths

M: The "Personalized" thing is why systems like MBTI, Enneagram, RIASEC, etc. are so appealing. It's this idea of, "I just have to figure out what kind of person I am. And once I know that, certain decisions will naturally flow out of that and I can feel confident that I'm doing whatever is best suited to the kind of person I am." The test functions as a kind of description of, "This is what you are, and these are the things you'll probably enjoy doing or benefit from based on the kind of person you are."

M: I remember watching this anime called Psycho-Pass that was sort of a dystopian future in which there was some highly advanced technology that was able to analyze each person and determine what careers they would be best at. (That wasn't the central plot device. The plot mostly centered around the technology being able to detect potential/current criminals based on brainwave patterns, and then there being a sort of police force that went around apprehending criminals... basically a really nicely executed and enjoyable copycat of the movie Minority Report with a few other things thrown in.)

L: It's appealing to have some kind of system where you can just know with certainty, "These are the things I am/want/need, these are the methods for achieving that, and I am able to obtain everything I desire".

M: Yeah, what you've described... I wonder how many of the factors something like that satisfies. Just this basic structure of having a situation where the questions "What do I want" and "How do I get it" are completely answerable.

M: I'm inclined to say that non-competitiveness and non-randomness are just variations on the theme of "control". I don't really mind games where I'm competing against other people as long as I'm able to consistently win. (Lol.) What makes competition unpleasant is that usually other people are at least as good as I am, or they're able to do stupid/tricky things that undermine my usual strategies for trying to win. I'd say that the fact that competition makes other people sore or bitter when they lose is something that undermines the "usefulness" or "meaning" dimension of things.

M: For non-randomness, again I really don't care if a game is random as long as I'm able to respond intelligently and strategically to that randomness and know the best possible choice for each outcome. And I've argued above that there are some games where having that randomness/variation is actually a net positive since it makes things less boring or predictable and adds replayability/repeatability value. (E.g. Runescape is boring to me because even though there is a clear progression/tech tree/skill tree where you have absolute control and can 100% get what you want by following a specific strategy, and even though there is at least some thought or strategizing in figuring out the best strategy from multiple possibilities... ultimately you end up with a situation where there's a huge amount of repetition and the optimal gameplay to make the most progress in the fastest amount of time just consists of grinding simple actions over and over again.)

M: Most RPGs have a grinding element to them, but there is enough randomness, variability, or change that the process starts to feel enjoyable. I have a friend with a fully leveled Runescape account, and for him it was like Runescape was just some computer process that would run in the background where he'd have a character doing something and every few minutes he'd click somewhere to loop that process. I don't mean he was using macros. I mean that the gameplay is so boring that he literally had to find something else to do that was actually interesting and do that while he was playing Runescape, otherwise the game was too dry/dull for him to be able to play it. And the game was effortless/mindless enough that he was able to do that, which I guess is good. He probably managed to get through a lot of movies and TV shows he wanted to watch while multi-tasking Runescape.

M: Let me add a 7th and 8th factor then.

1) Control = feeling like you're able to reach a specific desired outcome with complete certainty
2) Non-competitiveness = not having to fight against other people who are smarter or more chaotic than you (also connects to control in that you'd be having to rely on other people being worse than you or making mistakes)
3) Non-randomness = this feels like the same thing as control?
4) Usefulness = doing something where you feel proud or satisfied or like there is meaning in prospective/retrospective evaluation
5) Creativity = having something where you can inject your own unique ideas or contributions and create something individualized
6) Personalized = having a strong match or compatibility between the activity and your own innate preferences/strengths
7) Enjoyable = having a process that is immersive/flow-oriented/entrancing in the moment
8) Level of effort = having the right amount of effort based on one's preferences (e.g. whether one wants a mindless/effortless game or a very involved/active game)

M: I'd say that to the extent that a game involves any effort at all, usefulness and enjoyability become important.

M: Chess is a very high-effort game. Practicing is tough and playing is tough. It's pretty hard work. So, if it's going to be like that, there has to be some reward. Either the gameplay itself has to be really enjoyable and immersive, or there has to be some feeling of "this is something really useful/meaningful".

M: For chess, the meaning I've gotten from it or have been seeking is solely the process of improving in something that is difficult. But I feel like I don't value it as much, or it's reached a point where the difficulty factor of chess outweighs the meaningfulness/value of the reward I was getting from it.

L: Are there any other factors that feel like they might be helpful to include?

M: I'd say that healthfulness is a factor for many activities. It could be a subset of usefulness.

1) Control = feeling like you're able to reach a specific desired outcome with complete certainty

* Non-competitiveness = not having to fight against other people who are smarter or more chaotic than you; not having to rely on other people being worse than you or making mistakes
* Non-randomness = not having so much variation that it's impossible to make any plans or strategies

2) Usefulness = doing something where you feel proud or satisfied or like there is meaning in prospective/retrospective evaluation

* Helpfulness = being of benefit to others
* Harmlessness = avoiding harm to others
* Healthfulness = being of benefit to myself

3) Creativity = having something where you can inject your own unique ideas or contributions and create something individualized
4) Personalized = having a strong match or compatibility between the activity and your own innate preferences/strengths
5) Enjoyable = having a process that is immersive/flow-oriented/entrancing in the moment
6) Level of effort = having the right amount of effort based on one's preferences (e.g. whether one wants a mindless/effortless game or a very involved/active game)

M: I wonder what would happen if one were to consider life as a whole as an activity or process and try to evaluate it according to these criteria. Of course, the result of that evaluation will depend on each person's individual experiences and conditions. For example, I happen to be in a situation where financial well-being is within my control and easily achievable, while I understand that that absolutely isn't the case for many other people.

M: I think maybe fairness is another factor that I'd want to add to this. The thing that makes life so miserable is that there isn't a fair/just set of rules. It's like if you were playing an RPG where as soon as people spawn into the game, some people are at Level 1 while other people are already at Level 90. And it's completely random. It totally destroys the gameplay. On one end of the spectrum, you have people who have so much that the game becomes boring. On the other end of the spectrum, you have people who have so little that the game is super-frustrating.

M: So then if we're continuing with this metaphor, politics is the activity of trying to modify the rules/structure of the game. But politics itself can also be considered as an activity and evaluated according to our criteria, and once again it's completely rigged in such a way that some people have an extraordinary amount of power to decide the rules while other people have virtually no power or say. And there is further unfairness in that this power is often distributed so that it's concentrated in a minority of people. Meaning that *most* people are dissatisfied with the rules or structures and want to change them in specific ways, but the small group of people that benefit from having the game rigged a certain way don't want those changes to happen, and they're able to completely stymie/block all progress.

M: At least in my country (USA), there is a representative democracy in which officials are elected and are supposed to act on behalf of the citizens who elected them. But there are multiple mechanisms that prevent this from working well. The first is obstacles to people being able to vote or having their vote count (e.g. disenfranchising of voters, bad voting systems, gerrymandering). The second is flagrant/pervasive misinformation that skews people's opinions in such a way that they end up voting against what would actually benefit them.

L: So you've adjusted the list of factors a little bit and added some sub-categories to "control" and "usefulness". And you're applying this sort of analysis beyond personal activities to your life in general, and to the political sphere. And basically there are lots of problems with both of those.

M: Yeah. Adding another factor.

1) Control = feeling like you're able to reach a specific desired outcome with complete certainty

* Non-competitiveness = not having to fight against other people who are smarter or more chaotic than you; not having to rely on other people being worse than you or making mistakes
* Non-randomness = not having so much variation that it's impossible to make any plans or strategies

2) Usefulness = doing something where you feel proud or satisfied or like there is meaning in prospective/retrospective evaluation

* Helpfulness = being of benefit to others
* Harmlessness = avoiding harm to others
* Healthfulness = being of benefit to myself

3) Creativity = having something where you can inject your own unique ideas or contributions and create something individualized
4) Personalized = having a strong match or compatibility between the activity and your own innate preferences/strengths
5) Enjoyable = having a process that is immersive/flow-oriented/entrancing in the moment
6) Level of effort = having the right amount of effort based on one's preferences (e.g. whether one wants a mindless/effortless game or a very involved/active game)
7) Fairness = having a consistent and just set of rules that don't heavily bias/favor outcomes toward specific players for no good reason

M: The problem I see with the fairness criterion is that people don't start from equal positions, even in games, and even if the rules are fair. It's sort of the political problem of "equality of opportunity" vs. "equality of outcomes". For example, if two people are both playing chess, even though the rules are completely fair, one person might just intrinsically have better outcomes at chess. In some games, the person who's read all of the strategy guides is the one who ends up winning or knowing the best way to play. There are different ways to gain an edge.

L: Does it matter that the games you're using as examples are competitive?

M: I don't think it does. Even for a solo game where it's just you against the game, it's frustrating to have other people getting really far while you're stuck at some early spot in the game. Or I guess it's frustrating if you care about the game.

M: With something like Pokemon where there are all of these speedrunners and I've barely been able to finish the game, I'm able to get a lot of satisfaction and enjoyment from watching them break the game even if I'm not necessarily playing it or succeeding at it myself.

L: What do you think is the activity that comes closest to satisfying all of the conditions you've specified above?

1) Control (non-competitiveness, non-randomness)
2) Usefulness (helpfulness, harmlessness, healthfulness)
3) Creativity
4) Personalized
5) Enjoyable
6) Level of effort
7) Fairness

M: When things are going well, definitely my job. If I'm looking at activities that have historically been able to satisfy those criteria, I'd say listening on this site.

L: What does listening currently look like for all of those criteria?

M: You know, I feel like I made a list like this in a post not long ago. But then I just abandoned it and moved onto something else. I wonder how close my current list is to the old one.

M: That tends to be the way that I come up with systems. I brainstorm and wander around a bunch, I organize the results of that brainstorming, and I do that repeatedly and notice that certain themes or ideas keep popping up.

M: It's been a while since I've had a new system.

M: Some of these criteria don't feel very practical. But that's how it was for my other system too. The main system that I had for a while that I used for several years was something like this I think:

1) Base needs (work, personal to-do list, physical energy, social responsibilities, non-harm to others, personal safety)
2) Immersion/flow/pleasure
3) Expression (writing, theorizing, sharing creativity)
4) Helpfulness

M: And then the main system that preceded that was this one organizing sub-personalities or experiential states:

1) Willful, logical, organized, masterful
2) Dynamic, chaotic, rebellious, expressive
3) Sensitive, vulnerable, affectionate, warm
4) Humorous, fun, energetic
5) Meditative, simple, intuitive, non-conceptual

M: Those systems are still relevant and useful and I still think in terms of them. But neither one of them is currently a dominant organizing principle or something where I feel like, "Yes, I know what I need to do based on having this".

M: In the past, when I was operating under both of those systems, it was like, "All I have to do is actualize all of these different components and I'll be set." So for the first system with 4 parts (which I'll call the "core" system), it was "As long as I'm able to satisfy all of these needs, I can feel confident that I'm doing what I need to do in order to be happy." So then when I was confused or depressed, all I really had to do was go back to my system and ask, "Okay, which things are working and which ones aren't working." And more often than not, as soon as I was able to identify the piece or part that wasn't working, I could construct a very solid, trustworthy, and concrete/actionable plan based on trying to improve that part.

M: But there have always been some factors that fall outside of any system. That sort of goes back to the 5-part personality system though. It's like, the entire process of troubleshooting and forming plans... it's very "1"-ish. It's highly concentrated in that first personality category (willful/logical/organized/masterful). And there tend to be conflicts among those different personalities where usually 2-5 will prefer a more decentralized, irrational, faith-based kind of approach to "solving" problems.

M: But yeah, all of these are past systems. What I'm working on now is possibly developing something new. Let me pull up the old post that was mentioned.

M: Here's the post where I was doing that: https://www.7cups.com/forum/GeneralSupport_28/DiaryEntries_1597/writingspace_210130/#forum-post-2585639

M: Let me just break down the parts of this post.

L: Okay

M: The post starts by saying that I think altruism is necessary for meaning. This is the "usefulness" category ("helpfulness" sub-category) in my current list.

L: Do you agree with that statement?

M: I mean, I think it's important and probably very nice to feel like an activity helps people. I wouldn't feel comfortable saying that it's impossible for an activity to have meaning without that. Though perhaps the way that many activities end up working is that they get their meaning transitively from other activitities that are meaningful. Like, you have one thing that is your core/driving purpose or motivation. And then you sort of create a structure/scaffolding around that.

M: Oh, and that's exactly what I said next in that post. The altruism project is intrinsically meaningful, and then other activities that might not have apparent/immediate altruistic value can become enriched or get a meaning boost by functioning as supportive factors for the "altruism project" that is the main source of meaning.

M: Ah, here's the list I came up with then:

1) Enjoyable - Immersive/flow-oriented, neither too boring nor too challenging
2) Skillful - Either utilizing existing skills/strengths (i.e. reinforcing a sense of self-esteem via what one is already good at) or actively developing new strengths in a way where it feels realistically possible to gradually obtain competency/mastery (i.e. reinforcing a sense of self-esteem via a sense of growth/personal improvement)
3) Bounded - Having some boundaries/limits where one has control over the quantity of work one takes on and one does not feel compelled to give/offer beyond one's means/desires
4) Efficacious - Those activities need to be actually helpful as opposed to just apparently helpful (i.e. not just feeling a sense of goodness/self-satisfaction in something that seems beneficial/charitable but is actually relatively useless)
5) Optimized - Those activities should be done in a way that is not only helpful, but also maximally/optimally helpful
6) Morally unambiguous - Ideally, those activities won't involve any ethical paradoxes where there is any murkiness/uncertainty about whether one's actions are truly helpful, whether there are any negative side effects, etc.

M: And for comparison, here's my current list:

1) Control (non-competitiveness, non-randomness)
2) Usefulness (helpfulness, harmlessness, healthfulness)
3) Creativity
4) Personalized
5) Enjoyable
6) Level of effort
7) Fairness

M: The question is how do these lists compare to one another.

M: I'm thinking maybe I can use one of my writing methods ("treaties"). The idea is to pretend that all of these individual concepts are people and they're trying to form "teams" based on what they have in common.

M: It's just a qualitative clustering.

M: Yeah, I'll try that.

***

List of all available elements:

Enjoyable
Skillful
Bounded
Efficacious
Optimized
Morally unambiguous
Control
Non-competitiveness
Non-randomness
Usefulness
Helpfulness
Harmlessness
Healthfulness
Creativity
Personalized
Enjoyable
Level of effort
Fairness

M: Consider this as a game where all of the "elements" listed above are players in the game. For each player's turn, they have the choice of either passing their turn or trying to initiate a team/alliance/treaty with another player. The other player has the option of either accepting or refusing the request. If they accept, then a new team is formed that contains both of the players.

M: I won't be rigid with enforcing turn order though. If something pops out where two concepts clearly want to form a team, I'll allow them to do it.

M: Okay, let's start then.

Pass 1

[Enjoyable #1 would like to merge with Enjoyable #2. Enjoyable #2 agrees.]
[Skillful would like to form a team with Control. Control agrees.]
[Bounded passes.]
[Efficacious would like to form a team with Helpfulness. Helpfulness agrees.]
[Optimized would like to join the team of Control. Control agrees. Skillful agrees.]
[Morally unambiguous would like to form a team with Harmlessness. Harmlessness agrees.]
[Control would like to invite Non-randomness to join their team. Non-randomness agrees.
[Non-competitiveness would like to join the team of Non-randomness. Non-randomness refuses.]
[Non-randomness passes]
[Usefulness would like to join the team of Helpfulness. Helpfulness agrees. Efficacious agrees.]
[Helpfulness passes]
[Harmlessness passes]
[Healthfulness passes]
[Creativity would like to form a team with Personalized. Personalized refuses.]
[Personalized passes]
[Level of effort would like to form a team with Bounded. Bounded agrees.]
[Fairness would like to form a team with Non-competitiveness. Non-competitiveness refuses.]

Teams at the end of Pass 1

"Control": Skillful, control, optimized, non-randomness
"Helpfulness": Efficacious, helpfulness, usefulness
"Harmlessness": Morally unambiguous, harmlessness
"Bounded": Level of effort, bounded

Enjoyable
Non-competitiveness
Healthfulness
Creativity
Personalized
Fairness

Pass 2

Teams now operate as a single unit for the purposes of turns.

[Control passes]
[Helpfulness would like to form a new super-team with Harmlessness. Harmlessness agrees.]
[Harmlessness would like to invite Fairness to join their team. Fairness agrees.]
[Bounded passes]
[Enjoyable would like to form a new team "Self-benefit" with Healthfulness. Healthfulness refuses.]
[Non-competitiveness passes]
[Healthfulness passes]
[Creativity would like to form a team with Personalized. Personalized agrees.
[Personalized passes]
[Fairness passes]

Teams at the end of Pass 2

"Ethics": Helpfulness (efficacious, helpfulness, usefulness), harmlessness (morally unambiguous, harmlessness, fairness)
"Control": Skillful, control, optimized, non-randomness
"Bounded": Level of effort, bounded
"Personalized": Creativity, personalized

Enjoyable
Non-competitiveness
Healthfulness

Pass 3

[Ethics would like Non-competitiveness to join their team. Non-competitiveness refuses.]
[Control would like Non-competitiveness to join their team. Non-competitiveness refuses.]
[Bounded passes]
[Personalized passes]
[Enjoyable would like to form a team "Self-interest" with Healthfulness. Healthfulness agrees.]
[Non-competitiveness would like to form a super-team "Other-interest" with Ethics. Ethics agrees.
[Healthfulness passes]

Teams at the end of Pass 3

"Other-interest": Ethics [helpfulness (efficacious, helpfulness, usefulness), harmlessness (morally unambiguous, harmlessness, fairness)], non-competitiveness
"Self-interest": Enjoyable, healthfulness
"Control": Skillful, control, optimized, non-randomness
"Bounded": Level of effort, bounded
"Personalized": Creativity, personalized

Pass 4

[Other-interest passes]
[Self-interest would like to invite Bounded to join their team. Bounded agrees.]
[Control passes]
[Bounded passes]
[Personalized would like to join Self-interest. Self-interest agrees.]

Teams at the end of Pass 4

"Other-interest": Ethics [helpfulness (efficacious, helpfulness, usefulness), harmlessness (morally unambiguous, harmlessness, fairness)], non-competitiveness
"Self-interest": Enjoyable, healthfulness, bounded (level of effort, bounded), personalized (creativity, personalized)
"Control": Skillful, control, optimized, non-randomness

Pass 5

[Other-interest passes]
[Self-interest passes]
[Control passes]
[Game over]

Final categories

"Other-interest": Ethics [helpfulness (efficacious, helpfulness, usefulness), harmlessness (morally unambiguous, harmlessness, fairness)], non-competitiveness
"Self-interest": Enjoyable, healthfulness, bounded (level of effort, bounded), personalized (creativity, personalized)
"Control": Skillful, control, optimized, non-randomness

***

L: What are your thoughts on this?

M: I'm not sure if it's actually helpful. And I think some of these can probably be combined or simplified.

M: And I think the general categories are too broad to be helpful.

M: But generally, this feels like it does represent a reliable or accurate structure. The high-level needs are: 1) Get what I want that makes me happy (self-interest), 2) feel like I'm giving other people something of value (other-interest), and 3) have the means/ability to manipulate both of these outcomes (control).

L: So you feel like it works generally but maybe there are still some tweaks that could be made.

M: I feel like I need to try crosswalking this with the other two systems and see where things end up.

M: First system:

1) Base needs (work, personal to-do list, physical energy, social responsibilities, non-harm to others, personal safety)
2) Immersion/flow/pleasure
3) Expression (writing, theorizing, sharing creativity)
4) Helpfulness

M:

Work, personal to-do list, social responsibilities, non-harm to others = harmlessness
Physical energy = healthfulness & control
Personal safety = bounded & control
Immersion = enjoyable
Expression = creativity & control
Helpfulness = helpfulness

M: So as least based on that, the categories I'm using from the new system are:

Other-interest: harmlessness, helpfulness
Self-interest: enjoyable, healthfulness, bounded, creativity
Control: control

M: Looking back at the new system list to see if there's anything else I'm missing that I'd like to add

Other-interest: harmlessness, helpfulness
Self-interest: enjoyable, healthfulness, bounded, creativity, personalized

[This feels different than creativity. Creativity is having something new/original flow out of myself that feels like an accomplishment or something unique that's worth offering. Personalized is setting things up in a way where I feel like there's a harmony between my actions and my identity/self. The reason I have creativity under self-interest is because it's not always the case that things I create that i find interesting or valuable will always be useful to someone else.]

Control: control, skillful

[This feels different than control. Control is having the power to manipulate things to get the outcomes I want. Skillful is accumulating ability/talent/power such that one feels a sense of accomplishment/pride in having improved oneself. "Optimized" feels like it's redundant of "skillful". "Non-randomness" feels like it's redundant of "control".]

M: The reason I struggled so much before with finding where to categorize "non-competitiveness" is that it feels like a mixture of both harmlessness (not wanting to have to fight and hurt people) and control (not wanting to have my positive outcomes contingent upon whether I happen to come across someone who's more skilled than me or who does something I'm not expecting). So it's probably a category that just doesn't need to exist.

L: Cool, so this is what you currently have for your new system.

Other-interest: harmlessness, helpfulness
Self-interest: enjoyable, healthfulness, bounded, creativity, personalized
Control: control, skillful

M: You know, this is almost identical to my previous core/4-part system. It's just the elements are shuffled around and the emphasis is a bit different.

L: What about the 5-part personality system? How does that fit into things.

M: Right, so that system was this:

1) Willful/logical
2) Dynamic/chaotic
3) Sensitive/vulnerable
4) Humorous/fun
5) Meditative/simple

M: Here's how I think I'd group those:

1) Willful/logical = control, healthfulness
2) Dynamic/chaotic = enjoyable, creativity, personalized
3) Sensitive/vulnerable = bounded
4) Humorous/fun = enjoyable
5) Meditative/simple = enjoyable, bounded

M: It's a really crude mapping though. Kind of like it's possible to roughly map the 4-part and 5-part systems to one another, but they're so different from one another that it's borderline useless to try.

M: So I think currently these are all of my active systems:

Other-interest: harmlessness, helpfulness
Self-interest: enjoyable, healthfulness, bounded, creativity, personalized
Control: control, skillful

1) Willful/logical
2) Dynamic/chaotic
3) Sensitive/vulnerable
4) Humorous/fun
5) Meditative/simple

1) Base needs (work, personal to-do list, physical energy, social responsibilities, non-harm to others, personal safety)
2) Immersion/flow/pleasure
3) Expression (writing, theorizing, sharing creativity)
4) Helpfulness

M: In the past, I've sometimes merged together "non-harm" and "bounded" into "safety". Like, hurting others has such a profound detrimental effect on my well-being that it's on the same level as when I feel unsafe because someone is hurting me. "Bounded" is protecting myself from other people putting excessive/unreasonable demands on me, and just trying to avoid getting trapped into stupidly complicated/difficult emotional & social relationships.

M: I guess the next thing to do would be to figure out which of these things are my highest priorities. I'll use Challonge to create a Swiss-system tournament and do pairwise comparisons. Elements:

harmlessness
helpfulness
enjoyable
healthfulness
bounded
creativity
personalized
control
skillful

M: Okay, here are the results:

L: Any thoughts about this?

M: I knew healthfulness was high up on my list but didn't realize it was at the very top.

M: I think the items without winning records can basically be ignored for now.

M: So, the quickest path to happiness would be to find some setup that satisfies the top 6.

M: I have processes that I can follow to optimize healthfulness.

M: I'm going to go ahead and say that I should have made all of the categories either consistently adjectives or consistently nouns. So let's rephrase to the following:

healthfulness
helpfulness
enjoyability
harmlessness
boundedness
control

M: There's usually an inverse relationship between helpfulness and harmlessness/boundedness. The best way to avoid hurting people is to completely avoid them. And helpfulness and boundedness are definitely complete opposites, though not entirely incompatible.

M: So, that's the biggest sort of conflict.

M: I guess if I really want to keep using all of my writing strategies, the next one to try would be to have those six elements sort of sit down as a committee and dialogue amongst themselves.

***

[Health joined the chat]

[Help joined the chat]

[Enjoyment joined the chat]

[Harmless joined the chat]

[Bounded joined the chat]

[Control joined the chat]

Control: Hello. I'm going to run this meeting. I'd like to first just go down the list and have each person give a status update. Maybe say how you feel things are going on a scale of 1 to 10, something that's going well, and something that can be improved. Starting with health.

Health: I'd say I'm currently a 5. Things were like a 3 for most of last week.

Control: And one thing that's going well/can be improved. And if you could also assign a number to that for how well/poorly that specific thing is going.

Health: The good (8) is that I caught up on sleep, did some exercise, and ate some food yesterday. The bad (6) is that I don't have solid systems for these yet or any real goals that feel worth pursuing. And I didn't go grocery shopping yesterday.

Control: Next is help.

Help: I'd say things are currently a 4. The good (6) is that I've done some things for family and friends in the past couple days. And I'd say another good thing is that I'm most likely abandoning chess. The bad (5) is that I didn't do as much as I could have for work last week, and I don't have a long-term activity that I'm comfortable pursuing at this point.

Control: Next is enjoyment.

Enjoyment: I'd say things are currently a 5. The good (4) is that I have a handful of possible options to pick from. The bad (6) is that I'm likely abandoning chess and possibly another video game I've been playing whenever I don't feel like doing chess. My numbers are weird because the good thing isn't that good but the bad thing isn't that bad either.

Control: Next is harmless.

Harmless: I'd say things are currently a 7. The good (6) is that I've had some very nice chats with multiple people, both in real life and online. The bad (3) is that I'm not doing as much as I could be for work.

Control: Next is bounded.

Bounded: I'd say things are a 9 right now. The good (7) is that I'm on good terms with all of my friends/family/co-workers and there are very few situations in which I feel unsafe. The bad (6) is that this safety is contingent upon a situation in which I'm not really doing much.

Control: And last I'll go. I'd say things are a 6 right now. The good (5) is that I'm doing some writing and figuring things out. The bad (2) is that there's still some chaos.

Control: Summary:

Control: It seems like the biggest things we can do that would be helpful are:

1) implement a system for health
2) find a replacement leisure activity for chess
3) put more effort into work.

Control: Let me know what your reactions are to this. Going down the list again, starting with health.

Health: I do think health is something where as long as you're not actively harming it, it tends to stay at a reasonable level. But having the system would be helpful. It just feels excessive a lot of the time, especially if you're hardly around people. I think health is usually one of those things that is only intrinsically valuable if it's going poorly.

Control: The question then would be whether what we're currently doing is enough to keep it from going poorly.

Health: I honestly think that as long as you are getting 6-7 hours of sleep per night, you're eating, and you're limiting anything harmful, you have leisure activities that are interesting/engaging, and you're not failing miserably at work or your relationships, exercise might be overkill.

Control: Okay, next would be help.

Help: I think the three steps above are pretty solid. I really don't want to help people, at least not beyond what I'm currently doing.

Control: Why not?

Help: Do I really need a reason? If we're looking for reasons, why don't you want to go climb Mt. Everest?

Control: Fair point. Next is enjoyment.

Enjoyment: I think we're in good shape. Health stuff will have a global positive effect. Doing work will alleviate whatever residual guilt you might be having from the past week or so and will boost your self-esteem. And leisure activities aren't that hard to find.

Control: Next is harmless.

Harmless: Those steps feel really solid to me too.

Control: Next is bounded.

Bounded: I think health stuff will be good. I think if you approach all of these activities with a certain frame of mind, it could be fun and they could all intersect in interesting ways.

Help: If I can interrupt, I'm a bit worried about what will happen once our current problems are solved. The usual pattern is that once self-interest is satisfied, other-interest becomes a huge b**** and starts demanding action.

Control: We can talk about that next. Last on the list is me. I think all of the proposed activities are easily attainable and will each have positive effects.

Control: Let's go back to the concern that Help raised, which is that after we optimize things (health, enjoyment, harmlessness)... help is going to become a big problem. Will open the floor to discussion, going in order again.

Health: It's a problem. The thing is, I've never been able to successfully juggle health with help. Usually health requires creating a certain type of schedule. Help tends to ruin that schedule or require its own structure, and that's one of the things that gets on the nerves of Bounded. So I'm pretty against trying to add help.

Control: Next is help.

Help: There are sort of two models of the world that seem to create a motivation to help. One is the image of the 7 Cups general request queue, or there just being a sea of "member" people who are in a painful situation and looking for help. Another is the fact that on a global/national level, there is so much suffering/inequality related to economic and cultural systems. So if you wanted to do some good, that would be another avenue... to try to get involved in political activities in some way. Animal activism also comes to mind. But as health said, these would create huge demands on my time, especially if they involve traveling anywhere.

Control: Next is enjoyment.

Enjoyment: I think that if exercise is done in such a way that it channels the 2-ish (chaotic/rebellious) and 4-ish (playful/fun) sides of our personality, that is something you could approach with the same zeal, calculation, and thoughtfulness as you have applied to chess. But it would actually have a relevant effect or outcome. Instead of the end result being that you're just really good at chess, the end result would be that you have a healthy/attractive body and have lots of energy that serves multiple purposes (e.g. social confidence, peacefulness/groundedness in sensitive situations). I wonder if anybody has any thoughts about trying to add a religious/spiritual practice of some kind to make sure that any energy that we develop is being harnessed in a way that is ethical. In other words, primarily prioritize cleaning the micro-environment of yourself that you have control over, as opposed to trying to alter social surroundings or political/global surroundings that you don't have control over... while having to do so in a way that basically ruins your own microcosm.

Control: Interesting. Next is harmless.

Harmless: I feel that now is not the right time to try to help others. I would say to try to prioritize health/enjoyment/harmlessness, and do so in a way that is sensitive to shifting sub-personalities as enjoyment mentioned. The big problem with competitive activities like chess and some other video games is that they are so strongly 1-ish/2-ish that they only work if you're in one state. So, I'd recommend having a mixture of activities for different states.

Control: Next is bounded.

Bounded: I agree now is the wrong time to add helping activities.

Control: Last is me. I agree as well.

Control: We seem to all be opposed to trying to add back helping activities, whether it be listening on here or attempting to do political activism.

Control: Some other ideas that were raised by enjoyment were: 1) personalize activities to match mood, 2) possibly add religious/spiritual practice.

Health: I'm feeling tired. Let's stop for now.

Control: Okay, sounds good.

I'm interested in learning about Christian apologetics and looking at some books that attempt to convert atheists to Christianity. I'm just genuinely curious what types of strategies they use, what they think atheists find attractive/persuasive, and whether any of those strategies would work on me--as someone who is deeply attracted to the ethical, mystical, devotional, and communitarian aspects of Christianity but repulsed by the intellectual, scientific, and political baggage I'd have to take on in order to be accepted by a Christian community.