Dimensions
Entropy, chaos and understanding dimensions of experience
Hi.
It’s me. That guy you may remember subscribing to years ago who likes to ponder big topics.
You might have noticed that I haven’t written since last August. I went to Nepal in September to become a mountain guide.
That was fun.
This year, I’ve been out of sorts whilst wrestling with becoming a full-time podcaster, closing a business, having a hernia surgery and finding a place to live.
Well Q1 is over and I’m back.
How much should we observe of our own behaviour?
It’s good to avoid the trap of over-observing ourselves and how much observing of ourselves we can observe ourselves…
Ancient Zen wisdom has one story for us here:
A grasshopper stared in astonishment at a centipede and asked, "How do you know which leg to put forward first?"
The centipede fell in a heap and was never able to walk properly again.
Simply put, we shouldn’t observe too much.
Hold onto this thought because things are going to get weird.
Transcendent vs Experiential Thinking
There are modes of thinking. You’ll know fast and slow thinking.
There is also existential transcendent thinking vs experiential thinking.
The overwhelmingly expansive feeling of contemplating concepts like the indescribable vastness of the entire universe or how face-meltingly fast the speed of light is. This is more transcendent.
A fact I still haven’t wrapped my head around is that physicists reckon the observable universe is probably about 40% of the total galaxies in existence.
Due to the expansion of the universe and the speed that everything is getting further away from us.
If we had technology that allowed us to travel at almost light speed we would still only be able to visit about 1% of the actual universe.
Sonsidering this will never happen, that means in reality even if technological progress goes perfectly and we don't wipe ourselves out and manage to reach other stars. Humans will only ever reach 0.001% of the universe if we’re lucky.
An interesting fact for anyone contemplating if we’ll ever meet aliens who might have a similar problem with travel distances.
Anyway.
This non-self-thinking style is different to considering decisions like what should I have for lunch or is $8 too much for a coffee?
We easily lose ourselves in conflicting desires such as; “I want to go for a run today but I actually don’t want to go for a run right now, but I also really won’t want to go for a run later, do I like running?”
These are all about decisions for ourselves rather than understanding something grander.
The expansive thoughts have something fleetingly beautiful about them.
They get us away from the incessant nature of our mundane experiential existence.
It feels like for just a moment you discover a deeper reality. Like peering behind a mirror and seeing a whole new world.
The problem is we can’t stay in that mode of thinking during our normal existence.
The knowledge of the fact we are an arbitrary tiny spec in the space-time continuum doesn’t leave us forever humbled. We snap back to assuming that what we are doing day-to-day is important.
Maybe even something or someone cares and notices all these small inconsequential challenges and thoughts we deal with.
The concept that all our little thoughts and actions are never noticed or remembered and instead become lost in time forever is not very agreeable to us.
This is possibly one reason why God is such a pervasive concept. It intuitively makes sense to our ego that something out there cares.
It’s also a reason why we like companionship. To have someone with us as we toil away through the years of our life.
Parents will know how often toddlers need an audience to watch them do something completely mundane like eating or going to the toilet. Turns out that feeling never really leaves us.
A lot of companionship is simply being a witness.How many Dimensions do you exist in? Like really though…
Something that grabs me when I travel on a plane is during take-off and landing.
The rare occasion where you can look down on the earth and human civilisation. Our lives are lived glued to the surface of the planet.
A singular 2-dimensional film that is the plane of our existence.
Sure we have buildings that go up a few metres or even hundreds of metres. Yes, we can explore mountains and so our height above sea level can change, but you will never peel yourself off the surface of the floor or container you’re on…
Try right now to spend more than one second not connected to the floor - you can’t…
Compared to a bird, we are basically slugs.
Considering how important it is to us that we are 3-dimensional creatures, it’s confusing to accept we live a mostly 2-dimensional existence.
(Notably an existence on a single small planet tucked into an arbitrary section of a fairly generic galaxy.)
I mostly forget this feeling of being a tiny human with a minute potential of exploration until I nestle into an aeroplane seat, peer out the window and start my existential journey into the clouds again.
It also represents another overlooked concept.
How many dimensions do you think in?
If we go back to the space-time continuum again.
We’ve just learnt the space we live in is a more 2-dimensional existence than we are ever aware of 99.9% of the time.
You might have never thought about this until I told you. (In fact, I’ve never heard someone mention this but I’m sure it’s not a completely original idea)
What if the same thing happens with time and how we use it?
We go through our minutes, days, weeks, and years in more autopilot mode than we think.
The infinite possibilities of my next 5 minutes are not scrutinised:
I could run away with my girlfriend’s cat and board the first yacht I find going to the Caribbean…
I could also help her make lunch,
I could attempt to unpeel myself off the planet for 2 seconds by jumping off the balcony,
I could ring my mum and talk about it (or any of the 2000 contacts in my phone),
I could delete my podcast and the 8 years of work put into it,
I could ask GPT for a list of 100,000 less morbid examples to use for this section…
However, despite the diverse options available, generally speaking, my brain just thinks about the writing I’m trying to do or very conventional ways to not do my work.
Like pretending I have something else worth doing such as checking my email or eating something in the fridge.
In space, we could move in any of the 3-dimensional directions.
Yet mostly we are glued to the floor.In time, we could choose to do any of the infinite number of possible things to do next.
Yet we only allow ourselves a shockingly small list.
Gravity pins us to the floor due to physics.
Our evolved nature wipes away as many decisions as possible.
Why?
Brain processing is an expensive use of energy. Nature optimises to be lazy and focus on necessary things whilst avoiding being stupid.
If you’re driving from A to B you might think you’re making many decisions. When to pull out, whether to overtake, what radio station or podcast to listen to.
However, you are wiping out the infinite other options you could make along that journey.
You could choose trillions of routes to drive from one point to another.
You could go round the roundabout twice, three times, four times and so on...
You could even drive around the world twice if you felt like it.
The route you choose is up to you.
You probably won’t consider more than two options.
In every single moment, you could turn the steering wheel slightly too little or give it a hard yank, you could stop using your brakes and use other cars to slow you down.
Most of the time you don’t need to consider all those possibilities.
You need to just physically and mentally stay in your lane like a good little obedient human.
Most of the time, it isn’t practical to wrestle with a thousand wild ideas to decide the next few seconds of your life.
You want to be that slug stuck to the floor with a very 2-dimensional approach to your potential thoughts.
When to visit another dimension?
Accepting the natural laws of fixed plane thinking is not a very growth mindset attitude.
It’s worth regularly using a bit more of your brain power to come up with new options for how you spend your time.
Once or twice a week, gather a few ideas to create more excitement.
Instead of turning on the TV and seeing what’s on Netflix at the end of the day, try watching one Oscar-winning film a week.
Most humans have a repertoire of 10 meals they make, month in and month out. It’s routine.
Challenge yourself to get some cookbooks and each week make at least one meal you’ve never made before.Research a list of games you want to play or activities to try.
Schedule one or two into that week.
When I spoke with Topaz Azides the author of ‘12 questions’ for Relationships he said the most important thing for a good relationship is to respect date night and to make sure you always do something different.
Don’t just sit in the same restaurant with the same food. Always add excitement and novelty to it to build new memories with your partner.
You not only discover more things about the world but also about yourself and each other.
Play with Entropy
Entropy is the measure of disorder in the universe and naturally, everything moves towards higher entropy and chaos.
Humans are anti-entropy machines.
Your house slowly becomes messier over the week. Yet you clean it up.
The phone you have is created from various chemicals extracted and organised into a functioning non-random device.
Our brains are the most complex ‘known’ structure in the Universe, designed to work things out and solve things.
Our habits and routines are the easy answers we come up with for living so that we don’t need to think about what to do.
Sometimes we should fight this and allow for random chance and surprise.
By using chance, we claw back some of our autonomy and choice in our actions.
Staying on autopilot too long takes away choice.
There is no backup life
I’ve had a few existential conversations about death lately on my podcast.
I found that the Growth mindset is something we all think we have. Yet everyone’s growth mindset would grow with a near-death experience.
If you were run over by a bus today and rushed to hospital and survived. After months of recovery and finally back to being able-bodied. You would think differently.
You might even have a new lease on life.
So ask yourself. What would you be doing differently?
Would you travel?
Would you date differently?
Would you change where you live?
What about your job?
Be honest with yourself.
I spent most of my twenties living in London working in startup land and mostly being stressed. Now I live in Portugal, working on a podcast geeking out about psychology and writing stuff that interests me.
No one made me take ownership of my happiness, I just had to go and do it.
Can you be bored?
I struggle with this.
Can you go for a walk without your phone? It’s only when you're bored that your brain has time to work on unresolved problems and come up with good ideas.
Or do you let your habit of reaching for distraction rule?
Do your emotions serve you?
We often accept emotions for no good reason. Are you easily annoyed at things or become blameful?
That limits your ability to move forward.
James Clear has a great quote:
"Holding onto anger and resentment is like scuba diving with an anchor. As long as you're clinging to it, you're bound to the seabed, limited in movement, unable to appreciate the coral reefs and the colorful fish that dart in and out of view.
Forgiveness is letting go of the anchor. It isn't about declaring what was done to you is okay, but about unburdening yourself so you can swim freely. Forgiveness is a gift you give yourself. It's the gift of letting go of the anchors you've been carrying."
This fits neatly with the concept of breaking out of the flat dimensionality of our lives.
Observance
Make those decisions that give you more freedom because you’re the only person who can give yourself that diversity.
I started with the question ‘How much should we observe our own behaviour?”
We don’t need to be the overthinking centipede.
It might be just 5 minutes a week of thought you need to add extra spice to your life.
Save yourself from reaching the end of the year or decade or life wondering what happened with all that time.
NOTE
I’m not saying you need to fill your life with an Instagram-style collection of YOLO moments.
Mundane can be beautiful too.
Remember not to be monotonous.
Try this for a wise read in the complete opposite direction - This Moment Is Your Life - Nat Eliason
Thank you for reading!
If you enjoyed this you’ll probably like my podcast Growth Mindset: Psychology of Self-improvement
I did the Annapurna trail on 2017 for my 50th - nature is nuts - so are humans and all the crap they do to try to outsmart it... I need to go back to nepal before the chinese destroy it all
Hi Sam, I hope your mountain guiding and travelling round high places has been great. I really liked this piece - keep up the good work xxx