Experiential Dualism

As per usual, I am offering you a little piece of music which assisted me in writing this article. If it enhanced my experience I can only hope it will enhance yours too. I seemingly came across these thoughts only while this music was playing, perhaps it's a portal into the realm where this thought resides. Or maybe I'm just weird.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dq0h20jGiFk

This realm of physicality that we inhabit harbors lessons, most commonly in the form of dualism. You only appreciate the warm sunlight of summer because you endure the cold, bitter and dark period of winter, if you live in a dualistic climate. Perhaps closer to the equator they’ve become desensitized to how benevolent the sun is, it’s always there and always provides warmth. Regardless, each element of life is one which has two sides. 

In my previous article, I wrote about knowledge for the sake of knowledge versus practical knowledge, as if the two are somehow mutually exclusive. This was erroneous and I believe I inadequately conveyed the message I wished to convey, but you first must become wet before you can become dry, so that mistake was ultimately beneficial. Instead of trying to compare the two as though they are distinct qualities, I really wanted to discuss the harmony between the two. I rushed that one, and here I am correcting it while also exploring the duality of other things, and the lessons we can extract from those things, although, I am limited by experience. I can't claim to know things I haven't experienced.

On the topic of knowledge and the two realms of knowledge, I do believe that acquiring knowledge in the pursuit of satiating curiosity is beneficial to humans, it doesn’t necessarily only need to be practical. However, I do believe that acquiring a fundamental basis in practical knowledge is vital, perhaps even imperative, before journeying into the deeper realms of knowledge. As an analogy, the shovel with which you dig is critical to the quality of the dig. If you haven’t cemented a fundamental basis in practical knowledge, you’re going to be journeying forward with an inadequate lens, or machine. 

Let’s say you are inquiring into the nature of ancient civilizations and in order to do so you must traverse miles through the jungle to reach your area of investigation. Well if you’re fighting an upset stomach and a headache the entire way there, you’re going to be unfit to perform a detailed and deep analysis of the area, ultimately damaging the results of your inquest. Or let’s say you’re concerned with philosophical matters and you begin to delve into the nature of morality but you’ve been engaged in deleterious activities over the past few weeks; you’ve been drinking, you recently ate a highly-preserved bagel with loads of cream cheese on it, or any other activity that is pursued for indulgence. Your results will not be what you could achieve if you had nourished yourself properly and rested properly.

This begins to get into ritual and habit, both very substantial components of human nature. Before I do any writing, I must journal for a minimum of ten minutes. I do this every single time I sit down to write and without this preparatory ritual, my writing is always worse. The journaling is now fundamental to my writing because it signals my brain to channel my energy into writing, and less energy into other things, allowing me to more concisely convey my thought. Just as the dark of the night signals your brain to produce certain hormones and so does the daylight signal your brain to produce certain hormones, creating a concrete and predictable ritual around tasks increases efficiency. 

Back to the original point of dualism though, I’d like to explore dualism in the form of suffering and pleasure in the next part of this article. The most inexpensive and humbling form of suffering is endurance running. Endurance running will take you through a multitude of different emotions but the overlying theme will be suffering. The other day on one of my runs I was going through a particularly technical part of trail while my favorite song was playing quite loudly in my headphones. Needless to say, I was in the zone. Despite being wholly exhausted from the previous mileage, I was in a state of absolute ecstasy, I know this because I cried once I reached the top of the trail and it was beyond my control. Through running over the past year, I’ve cultivated a large character around the activity. I’ll delve deeper into the characteristics attained through running in another article. What caused me to cry once I reached the top of the trail were images of my past-self, stretching all the way back to infancy. It was as if I watched myself grow and develop into this six-foot endurance-ape from an infant. From this diminutive, frail child who absolutely required the support of a parent to this young man who can run through kilometers of technical trail without a hiccup. I could probably hunt on my own now, not to get too self-congratulatory. The state of ecstasy was only reached through an entire year of continuous and consistent suffering. The pain of my first endurance excursion is a pleasant warm-up now. I was only able to experience such an overwhelming sensation of ecstasy because I have consistently, through cycling and running, subject myself to suffering over the past year. 

Suffering and ecstasy are mutual. You can separate them and you can induce the more favorable one through chemical manipulation, which is ultimately detrimental. I’ve experimented with chemical manipulation and none have even come close to the ecstasy I felt when I began to cry on that trail. The tremendous level of suffering that I have endured, purely by my own command, has increased the level of ecstasy or general contentment I feel on a day-to-day basis. It’s not something which requires escalation either. I wasn’t running a trail that even closely rivals some of my larger excursions, yet it still induced that extreme level of ecstasy, which is an indicator of a healthy activity. When you don’t need to up the dosage, no matter how long you’ve engaged in the activity, you can be sure it’s healthy. Unless you engineer stronger drugs, which will still build a tolerance rapidly in comparison to endurance.

Knowledge for the Sake of Knowledge

Knowledge for Knowledge’s Sake

Very commonly I notice that on social media websites people enjoy posting horribly atrocious things that are currently occurring or have occurred in the world, in order to manufacture this guise that makes them appear concerned with world-issues. This can be good, but it can also be bad. Knowing things just for the sake of knowing things is asinine, there is no point to knowing it besides the fact that you can quietly and personally ruminate on the idea. Knowledge, in my perhaps warped view, should be pragmatic and enable action. Learning about the function of the human body, for example, allows me to learn what I must nourish myself with for optimal performance in every aspect and how I should exert myself to maintain a healthy structure. Learning about the functions of the mind, as another example, allows me to fix odd behaviors that only become noticeably odd once you have learned the function of the mind, and how it can trick us into desiring things we don’t actually need to desire, like high fat foods which once served us because our next meal was never guaranteed before the advent of stable agriculture. Knowledge for knowledge’s sake is a peculiar aspect of the ego. Our mind seems to like to amass knowledge, once it has been given the ability through instant access via the internet, for no particular purpose. I notice this in myself as well, but it took me being there to comprehend the futility of it. I used to love learning things for the purpose of telling it to people so that they’d believe I was incredibly learned. I used to really enjoy criticizing society but doing absolutely nothing to fix it, like most teenagers. Self-reflection and ego-deconstruction has allowed me to become aware of this characteristic in myself and has helped me slowly excise it. If you truly want to incite change or reform in society you unfortunately need to climb the political ladder and mould your beliefs around the constituency you need to garner the acceptance and appraisal of, something I have no interest in. I'd much rather seek the havens which offer that which I am seeking, such as a smaller community with stronger social bonds between citizens because they already exist, there's no point in attempting to reform this particular form of society when the one which offers what you need already exists.

I believe the ego plays a large role in this particular phenomenon. Everyone wants to appear intellectually competent and wants to appear informed. Even if that intellect and information don’t serve you in your day-to-day life and you still find yourself getting sick frequently due to a poorly-kept immune system, your stomach always bothers you because you aren’t feeding it properly, you need medication because you aren’t getting enough sleep and you drink soda pops too often, or any other one of a multitude of maladies that afflict the poorly-nourished human. Practical knowledge trumps knowledge for the sake of knowledge.

Optimization and Humanity

Before reading this article, I would just like to offer some music that will enhance your viewing pleasure.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dq0h20jGiFk

Optimizing The Human

First becoming aware of how you and your own body, because the body is an entity of its own in many regards, you’re not consciously digesting your food or circulating red blood cells, should be a primary focus. It’s not necessarily a life-long pursuit or a permanently primary concern; you don’t need to dedicate all your years to it. Once you cultivate healthy patterns of behavior in terms of feeding yourself and exercising yourself, it shifts to an automatic process. Once you’ve learned what you require to function optimally, you can then dedicate to your intellectual interests with more clarity and cleverness than you could if you were functioning with a sub-optimal machine. 

First and foremost, carbohydrates are not your enemy, they are your best friend. Not all carbohydrates are the same. Highly processed and artificially-manufactured foods with a myriad of additives will cause harm to your body, regardless of the carbohydrate contents. Nearly every single biological organism on Earth runs on glucose.A sugar-fuel which the body uses carbohydrates to acquire. You require good carbohydrates for mental energy as well as physical energy. With a sufficient amount of carbohydrates in conjunction with adequate sleep, you will never feel lethargic and you will always want to be actively engaged in something. The best source of carbohydrates is Oatmeal, particularly steel cut oats, which offers a plethora of benefits besides energy, whole grain anything, not "Made With Whole Grain," but 100% Whole Grain food. Simple sugars provide the immediate boost of energy, carbohydrates then sustain that energy by slowly digesting, so you do want a decent amount of sugar in your diet if you're mentally or physically active. 

Obviously, as well, movement and hydration play a key role in maintaining a healthy system. The most beneficial activity that you can engage in which comes naturally to every human with functioning limbs is walking. Walking is incredible at managing weight, provoking thought, and stimulating an optimal amount of energy if you are well-rested. Hydration varies by the person, I like to have about three liters a day when I'm not exerting myself strenuously, I've discovered that that allows me to adequately flush my system and balance my mood and energy.

An important point to mention is that diet is purely experiential. I'd get a journal, experiment for a few weeks or months with the ratios of nutrients you are ingesting and record how you are feeling each day as well as what you're eating. The correlation between dietary intake and overall mood and energy is undeniable. There are a few staples that have been discovered by humans which will always serve you well though.. My favorite breakfast that I've been eating every single morning for a year is a single cup of steel cut oats with a banana chopped into it while it's boiling. This provides me with about 500 calories, 100g of carbohydrates, 5g of fat, 24g of protein and 18g of fiber. Very optimal food with an optimal ratio of nutrients.

Humanity

The currently-preferred view of humanity states that we’ve been anatomically modern for roughly two-hundred thousand years and intellectually competent for roughly fifty-thousand years.  My dates may be off but they are very close. Now, current anthropology states that we’ve only had a firm understanding of agriculture for roughly ten-thousand years; the advent of agriculture is what separates the Paleolithic era from the Neolithic era. Remember that we’ve been intellectually competent for fifty-thousand years, however. Just as we have very advanced societies today and rather rudimentary ones, wouldn’t it be fair to assert that it’s always been this away amongst separated cultures? Certain humans are born with the ability to grok certain idea’s that other human’s can’t even fathom, such as theoretical physics. The latest ice-age covered most of the inland areas, leaving coastlines as the most favorable locations to set-up an encampment or perhaps construct a civilization, the great flood DID happen, and it happened when all that ice from the ice age melted and returned to the oceans, sinking many civilizations that were on the coastline. 

I didn’t just pull that out of my ass, Graham Hancock, an anthropologist and journalist who dissents from mainstream anthropology, has done hundreds of dives on the coast of Japan, uncovering very many advanced structures that could only be constructed by human beings. These now lie dormant underwater, hidden from the untrained diver, which, by the way, requires years of training. Most anthropologists haven’t even seen these ancient relics of civilization because they’re inadequately trained in diving and attempting to dive severely risks their life. If you’re interested in learning about this a little more, search up Graham Hancock, specifically, his book entitled "Fingerprints of the Gods," and "Magicians of the Gods" which is releasing soon.

Learning about the past of humanity is very pragmatic. Some would postulate that learning about our past is useless, providing little to no benefit to our future. Well, if we examine how ancient civilizations, or even more recent ones, caused or met their demise, wouldn’t that help prevent our own? Unfortunately we seem to have learned scant about our past mistakes regarding environmental shifts and water droughts. Entire civilizations have had to uproot and abandon their city because they simply ran out of water. If you run out of water, you either migrate or die. You could say that with our global economy this is no longer a worry, that if one area runs out of water they can simply purchase water from a neighboring town, which will only temporarily ameliorate the problem, or they could invade a neighboring country with an abundant supply, creating more war. But, if we examined our past and learned what happened to societies which exceeded their ability to supply the ever-increasing population with water and food, we could easily prevent that all from happening through limited and smart breeding. It’s not very complicated to supply a population if you remain within logical parameters.

Humanity thrived on smaller communities of nearly 160 people for a long time. When you live within a village or town of that size, you can sustain a relationship with every individual and be aware when someone isn’t contributing to the well-being of the tribe. Human’s ARE tribal animals, we are engineered to live in smaller communities that force everyone to contribute actively and allow you to sustain a relationship with the people around you, because you depend on them for survival, and they depend on you. Once you exceed that and start gathering millions of humans into a city, you start breeding super-germs, you get an increased rate of mentally-unstable citizens, you increase the rate of depression, basically, you endanger the human. I believe the key to persisting as a species is smaller communities with a focus on relationships and dependency. This becomes an unfavorable alternative when you have other savage apes that can start their own community of the same or larger size which can overthrow your own, however.

Learning about these types of topics serves a very real benefit to you. Learning what the human requires in terms of nourishment and environmental circumstances allows you to optimize yourself and proactively pursue a healthier, more stress-free life. This society will unfortunately persist until it can no longer do so, whether that be through a cataclysmic event or the gradual decline of resources, doesn't matter. But out there still exists small communities with a strong focus on relationships and real food. If you're reading this from a city, you aren't permanently trapped here, it's only a single domain for the human. 

Aristic Expression, Endurance, and Habits

How I Express Myself Artistically

Firstly, allow me to clarify what art means to me, considering that it is subjective. Art is the free expression of an abstract idea, concept, or movement. Art can be anything you can engage in or escape into that provides you with solace from stressful, externally-induced negativity, whether or not that inspires, excites or pleases someone else is entirely irrelevant.

My particular form of art involves movement. It involves freely experimenting and exerting my biomechanical vessel which permits enormous freedom unto me. The freedom to move allows an unthinkable amount of possibilities within this physical world. The world is no longer a separate, independent landscape, but a canvas.

It has been in the midst of the forest canopy where I discovered myself, not as this character that we all selectively assemble for social interaction, but rather as an animal, as the bipedal naked ape that I am. Not to assert that our social characteristics are futile, as an animal we depend on our allies, our social tendencies allow us to thrive. The developed thought and invention that occurs between two or more apes working in conjunction is a beautiful phenomenon which has put man on the moon. Yet, I only seem to discover who I really am on a very deep and fundamental level when I am alone with myself, exerting myself to and past my limits.

Evolutionary Endurance

Our bodies are incredible and magnificent machines, engineered through millions of years of evolution. Our particular form of physical prowess is in the realm of endurance, which also happens to be the most difficult, both physically and mentally. After a couple hours of running, everything hurts for everyone, no matter how much you practice or train. That is why it is called endurance, you don’t necessarily cease feeling pain, you just learn to endure it and befriend it.

Our ancestors engaged in a method of hunting known as Persistence Hunting. It is exactly what it sounds like. You persistently pursue a prey until you exhaust it. Quadrupeds can’t sweat; therefore they have a tough time regulating their internal body temperature. The only way they can cool themselves is by panting and they’re unable to pant while they’re running.

Everything about our body, literally from head to toe, indicates that we are an endurance animal, engineered to run distance and run it efficiently. As an animal, we possess the most slow-twitch muscle fibers; most animals possess very many fast-twitch fibers. This is good, if you’re a cheetah. Cheetah’s however, can’t run more than a kilometer at full sprint, otherwise they will literally die of a heart attack. You must secure your prey within that first burst otherwise you physically must stop and let the prey escape while you’re glycogen stores replenish.

Habits 

Our character is essentially a large collection of various habits. Most are subconscious and unknown to us, some we consciously choose to engage in day after day. Habits are the brains way of simplifying tasks, reducing the amount of thought-energy that must be spent on particular tasks.

Making breakfast immediately after you wake-up should be a rather simple habit. If you’ve discovered a specific food that you enjoy eating every morning, you don’t even need to think about how to make it. Tying your shoes becomes a habit, you just do it. It’s very similar to training muscles for a particular task, at first you need to consciously be aware of every movement until it eventually becomes automatic.

Knowing that we have a set of habits that ultimately determine the course of our life allows us to change the deleterious ones and preserve the beneficial ones. Some people get consumed by deleterious habits because they reward immediate gratification, such as junk food. Becoming aware of the habit and then further, the catalyst which sets the habit in motion, allows us to excise certain habits we could live without.

The most effective form of controlling habits is routinely journaling each day. Journaling is an exceptional time to format your ideas and also identify certain things about yourself. It’s a time where you can evaluate and assess your ego and the way it behaves, allowing you to make steps in order to change it. I typically write on no particular topic for about ten minutes, to get the cogs spinning, and then I write down three habits that I don’t receive any benefits from. Next, you need to identify what causes those habits to start in the first place. When I am bored, I resort to my IPod so I can mindlessly scroll through various social media pages to occupy myself. I identified that habit and now I am consciously working towards excising it permanently. It doesn’t happen instantaneously, you need to progressively excise them. If you attempt to instantaneously stop, you risk relapsing soon thereafter or acquiring a new, but not much better, habit to replace it. After I became aware of what caused me to resort to my IPod, the boredom, I targeted that first, not the IPod. I usually write down two things that I can do to cure the habit that are productive. Not three because having too many options causes me to become overwhelmed and gives me difficulty deciding. Two things is easy because it is one or the other, if you don’t want to do one, you do the other.

A habit that has incurred a tremendous amount of benefits to me is the daily morning-walk. I typically go on walks that range from 5km to 10km on an empty stomach, besides 600ml of water and my mug of coffee I bring with me. I will usually listen to a podcast, but sometimes I just put on some instrumental music and let my mind wander. Not only does the walk keep you physically engaged while stretching off the eight to ten hours of stiffness from sleeping, it allows me to format my ideas and plan my day. I've lost four pounds through walking three times everyday for only the past week! Not that I was dealing with weight issues, but being as light as possible allows me to be as fast as possible on the bike. Besides the weight loss and idea formation, it's helped me cure the morning fog that many of us suffer from by stimulating the metabolism and causing an increased amount of circulation. The walk is the most basic, primal, human thing you can do which will benefit you in every way.

That's all for today.