Death beyond the individual

When death is seen beyond the narrow lens of individuality, we notice that our entire being is a dispensable piece of information for nature to progress ahead.

Evolution has little interest in your being happy, beyond trying to make sure that you’re not so listless or miserable that you lose the will to reproduce. - Oliver Burkeman

We often think of death only in terms of the individual as if every individual is an isolated unit, complete by their-self. A heightened importance to the self in our minds also makes our death more important than that of everyone else's. Meanwhile..

Nature does not find its members very helpful after their reproductive abilities are depleted (except perhaps special situations in which animals live in groups, such as the need for grandmothers in the human and elephant domains to assist others in preparing offspring to take charge). Nature prefers to let the game continue at the informational level, the genetic code. So organisms need to die for nature to be antifragile—nature is opportunistic, ruthless, and selfish. - Nassim Taleb

In Matt Haig’s book How to Stop Time, the character of Omai, who has lived through several centuries and seen more than his share of deaths, notes:

People you love never die. They don't die. Not completely. They live in your mind, the way they always lived inside you. You keep their light alive. If you remember them well enough, they can still guide you, like the shine of long-extinguished stars could guide ships in unfamiliar waters. If you stop mourning them, and start listening to them, they still have the power to change your life. They can, in short, be salvation - Matt Haig

To look at death as a collective experience is different from mourning the individual. To look at death from this lens is to allow what existed to live on, within you. It is to keep alive the wisdom of nature in the infinite spiral of mortality.

The Gift of gifting

One grows into a version of themselves that they love by the act of gifting. Every sincere gift is a gift to the universe and in turn enriches it to be a place that is bountiful.

Once in every few days I return to reading Robin Wall Kimmerer's fascinating book Braiding Sweetgrass.

A view that particularly stayed with me was how consumption in moderation not only allows us to benefit the fruits of nature but also makes nature thrive better.

when a herd of buffalo grazes down a sward of fresh grass, it actually grows faster in response.

The botanist in Robin knows how complex natural systems like grass react on being consumed. She notes that it actually allows the grass to thrive better.

The true originator of most problems in life is being stuck in extremities, like the two ends of Hegel's pendulum. Unfortunately, far too often, the response to over-consumption is not to moderatize it but to entirely stop consumption, thus taking the other extreme.

Robin interprets the grazing as the grass's gift to the herd and in turn the act of receiving this gift, itself becomes a gift from the herd to the grass. On the tradition of responsibly harvesting Sweetgrass (wingaashk) she says:

The grass gives its fragrant self to us and we receive it with gratitude. In return, through the very act of accepting the gift, the pickers open some space, let the light come in, and with a gentle tug bestir the dormant buds that make new grass.

I wonder if it isn't the same with many things in life, if the relationships between complex systems isn't the same as relationships between humans. We sometimes take too much from people and we burn them. When we realize what we have done, we shun receiving any help and never allow ourselves to 'burden' people. Being able to help is as joyous as receiving help, being able to love is as heartening as receiving love. When we take the extremes we ruin the delicate balance of nature with our heavy handedness.

Reciprocity is a matter of keeping the gift in motion through self-perpetuating cycles of giving and receiving.

Working Less Works

I have started to allow myself maximum rest time and work intensely in small sprints. It is the sharpest and most innovative I am when working on creative endeavors. A well rested mind can find solutions and be innovative far beyond what one can achieve by blunting their minds with overwork.

“Forty hour workweeks are a relic of the Industrial Age. Knowledge workers function like athletes — train and sprint, then rest and reassess.” - Naval Ravikant

The hands and our brain are two entirely different tools. The capacities they have and the processes they take to rejuvenate are entirely different. The physical tangible industrial age (of hands) has moved far behind into the past to make way for the information age (of the brain) that we are steeped so deeply into.

As long as rest is not defined as part of meaningful input for 'work' to happen and lesser hours put into jobs are stigmatized, there is no hope for creation and innovation. A dull mind focused heavily on one area can rarely be aware to draw wisdom from other disciplines. Focus by definition means elimination, something we ought to dread when it comes to creativity.

Eventually everything connects - people, ideas, objects. The quality of the connections is the key to quality per se.” -Charles Eames

The traces of industrial age thinking continue to repress creative endeavors as minds of the past continue to confuse long hours to be better and more. As long as we gauge efficiency not by the impact of output but by quantity of time input we are creating a poisoned, regurgitated culture with micro-increments towards progress, if at all.

Scientific observations in the area of  Default Mode Network (DMN) too have now allowed us to know the importance of 'not doing anything'.

Naval's Observations can be broken down as:

Train: Read, consume healthy content, engage with knowledge

Sprint: This is Output - create (be it code, writing, designing, etc.)

Rest: Sleep, meditate, day-dream, play music, dance, garden / clean

Reassess: Look at your work and reassess, do you need training or more rest? if not jump into another sprint

Unfortunately, not all jobs require one to be creative and / or contribute thought or innovations to this world we live in. Anthropologist David Graeber notes that most jobs neatly fit into the category of 'Bullshit Jobs' and are not only highly paid but also well-respected even though their contribution to economy or the value system of humanity is non-existent. What I know for sure is working long hours and hoping to come up with the most innovative thought is paradoxical and a Bullshit Idea.