Mountain Qualia

NaNoWriMo Day 18

Word of a demystifying meditation class had been going around in a wide area around the remote hostel. It attracted more and more travelers from all over the world, from China to Puerto Rico. One day a group of twelve entered the hostel, and they asked in particular about the meditation classes. The hostel had become used to receiving extra guests with a disposition to following the sessions, but they had not come in droves of twelve like that.

Joakim would always bring the extraneous context into the sessions. That day, when twelve pupils showed up, he opted for a clock formation. Instead of all lining up against the walls in a large rectangular circle, he positioned the zazen pillows and cushions in a circle, or rather, a dodecagon. He put his pillow at the center. This felt wrong, so he did it anyway.

"Today," he said to the audience of twelve. "I want to talk about ease and institutions." He walked around the circle he had created. "Some say man is flawed, or that we are all sinners, that delectable ideas trick us. That we act and think by biases and not by rational thought. That objectivity does not exist when we try not to be subjective. This is all true, like everything is true. But there is more to say about it. Since the ancient age, we have come along way in building layers around us that are better than us. Democracies are not to achieve what people want but to add a layer between what people want and what they need. Wile ala wile."

"The judicial system is not there to satisfy our bloodlust, but to manage it. Schools don't teach what children want to know but what they need to know."

"Actually," Enni, a Finnish woman interrupted at 3 o'clock. "Many modern schools do exactly that, they allow the student to decide what they want to learn. It works well when you use their intrinsic motivation. They stimulate their creativity and curiosity."

"The clock strikes thrice," Joakim said. "Yes, of course, intrinsic motivation gets things moving even though what is experienced as intrinsic is just a complex proxy of a whole range of external motivations. But why do you think that their creativity and curiosity needs to be stimulated?"

"Because the old school system is too restrictive."

"There is a thing called suppression which is almost synonymous with evil itself. If restriction becomes suppression, you are correct. But someone needs to say no for the other to say yes. The stimulation is in going against someone's nature and not flowing with it. Not always at least."

"Look at everything around you. It has become so convenient. Same-day deliveries. Streamlined computer software, interfaces disappear. You don't have to search, you are being recommended. Do you still think you are being stimulated? That you are more creative or curious now than you were before. You constantly get what you think you want, because it is easy, and it's enjoyable."

"We built institutions to protect us from ourselves and others. There are laws, there is social security, healthcare systems, schools. They are flawed systems because people adjust them, design them and operate them, but by building in extra layers of distance and checks and balances we hope to restrict the damage by erosion of detrimental individuals."

"Detrimental individuals are all of us at some point and in our own way. It is our aim for simplicity, the lowest energy state that is the basis of misery. We don't understand bureaucracy so we want to cut the government, we don't like complex explanations so we appeal to so-called common sense, which is often not sensible at all. When people call out that people need to think for themselves, they mean they should believe what they believe because it is so obvious. But most things are not obvious at all."

"Right now flurries of user experience designers and engineers come up with new products that solve problems we only realized we could define once they solved it. Once the straightforward route presents itself the regular trail becomes a hard path. And yes not everything needs to be hard and progress is essential, because we are all beginners and beginners become better beginners as time crawls on. However, these products advertise themselves as taking away pesky tasks and thoughts that keep you away from being productive, or that prevent you from doing what you want. But when everything falls away, what remains that we want to do, what are we to be productive about? It is the toil that brings the satisfaction and joy, not the completion without effort."