I sate my hunger for food and information with the mindset of a buffet enthusiast. I pile my plate with books that have interesting covers, with books that friends want to share, and in order to help me to complete projects or improve processes. I sprinkle on a topping of New York Times bestsellers and other mainstream lists (Nobel, Hugo, and other awards or curated collections), and often of curated lists that spark resonance or dissonance. Sometimes it feels like snatching a fly mid-flight with a pair of ohashi, flowing and interacting with my stream of consciousness. I fluctuate between consuming media at a relaxed pace, but sometimes engage fully in wanton binging of material. There’s just too much to take in sometimes, and I am restless to have more.
I enjoy reading like I enjoy eating Dim Sum with a happy group – I scan, sniff, bite, chew, and taste stories and ideas laid down on page and savor the experience. After supping, and hopefully with some strong oolong or jasmine tea, my conscious and subconscious break down the constituents, metabolizing and mobilizing molecules, microbes and particulates in a peristaltic ebb and flow, talking amongst themselves before providing me with periodic updates. Information flows in and is up taken by mind and body as information flows out. Immersion in the rich, primal nutrient broth of information and feelings allow for a regular, tidal exchange of anabolic and catabolic activity amongst the interwoven interstitia and parenchyma. They are the building blocks that contribute to the growth, maintenance, and ability of body and mind to adapt to the ever-shifting needs of the present. If all systems function as desired, outdated or lower quality information exits as feces, urine, sweat, tears, exhaled breath, and other effluents. Nothing goes to waste.
Through continued intention and repetition, I cultivate a garden that provides quality ingredients processed using open source methods and sources that ground speculation with skepticism (and sources, triangulation, and disclosure) when possible. Let’s be clear, I am still in a dysfunctional relationship with junk food, but our relationship is consensual, informed, and desired to a degree. Ultimately, as long as I move enough fiber and water down my alimentary and cognitive canals, minimize toxic accumulations, and perform maintenance on a regular schedule, I’m OK with running my fuel a bit on the rich side. If the engine knocks too much, I may choose to do things differently next time.
I can truly say that I’m a better version of myself after that first bite of a fresh In-N-Out cheeseburger with a whole grilled onion and a big sip of Neapolitan shake – accept no substitutes! This particular beloved slippery slope allows for a slow, sticky, finger-lickin’ good slide into the Sarlacc ball pit of inflammation, just up the street from metabolic and autoimmune disease. It’s a good thing that I spend most of my time powered by antioxidants, fiber, probiotics, and movement, and that there are no In-N-Outs close by. On occasion, I do find myself being partially digested by the beast. But sometimes, that’s just what I need.
Inflammation of the gut and/or amygdala lurks behind ubiquitous, weaponized marketing. Marketers cast out their bait, superbly informed by the surveillance capitalism techniques that measure, sort and sell batched schools of consumers to the highest bidder. Look at any T-bag Carlson or Shill O’Reilly book’s title (and many others on the opposite side of our narrow political spectrum as well), and you’ll see a delicious worm on a high tech hook set to dazzle and entice those who swim in the effluent Mythos of trickle-down manifest Idiocracy. They scratch their operantly conditioned, primed, pruritic triggers with histamines and demand a steady supply. It’s a shitty magic trick to watch these fellow animals act on behaviors that have been permanently grafted to their cranium by ill-intentioned, or perhaps well-meaning shills, hucksters, frauds, oligarchs, zealots, CEOs, pariahs and other intermediaries who worship the maximization of profits while blissfully ignoring any costs aside from monetary. The marks reliably part from their money, freely giving and even gladly volunteering their data to their masters, greedily slurping up their impersonally curated Soylent Meat Slurry that has been engineered to engage diverse segmentation clusters of individuals while maximizing extraction. In most cases, all it takes is the premise that there must always be winners and losers, and that winners should keep losers in their place. It’s like they read a different version of the Punisher, the one where Frank Castle shifts his focus from fighting large scale corruption and evil to slapping the avocado toast from the mouths of the most vulnerable members of society.
I don’t find it funny at all that Jello Biafra’s “Give me convenience or give me death” has become the rallying cry for many. It is sad when convenience becomes the only acceptable choice. Putting in active effort, thought, and intention keeps the blood and lymph pumping, builds muscle and flexibility, facilitates nutrient and waste exchange, and slows the degenerative disease and aging processes. It is disconcerting to see the extent and proliferation of plug and play ideologies peddled to the masses and marketed as benevolent, optimized and personalized products and services that you can’t live without. A peek behind the curtain often exposes lies and creative liberties taken, an amalgamation of subsidized monoculture products wrapped up with a luxury finish, and containingen fillers, stabilizers, emulsifiers, surfactants, pesticides, terminator genes, palatability enhancers, sawdust, marketing chooch, and other poisons swirling around cheerfully like a jolted snow globe. Accumulations of snow compresses and, given enough time and precipitation, glaciates and shears the very substrate of civilization. Legions of pushermen and pusherwomen coordinate the drive to itch our festering rashes, our engineered pain points. Willful ignorance, gatekeeping, tribalism theater, kleptocratic culture, institutional inertia, and neo-robber barons demand fealty and rule us as a divided people.
So how do we get these fuckers off of our backs, and get the fuck out of this dystopia?
Here’s a working list of stuff I’m investing more intention:
- Observation, processing and discussion of both the empirical and esoteric information
- Triangulate information from diverse sources
- Update information regularly and frequently – do regular “sniff tests”, and improve olfactory capabilities and focus
- Assimilation of beneficial and effective systems, methods or behaviors
- Test driving, assessment, and selective uptake of practices
- Identification and mitigation of outdated relics borne of institutional inertia, othodoxy, and ingrained habits
- Exposure to new ideas
- Meeting new people, participating in conversations across times, places, demographics, etc.
- Willingness to risk displacing familiarity and comfort as part of the cost of the process of improvement
- Linking change and adaptation to excitement, growth and maintenance
- Improving breath control in the face of conflict, and respond with empathy and self-discipline
- Quieting the angry amygdala, cultivating a cool and steady state of mind
- Creating and joining cooperative efforts to address basic human needs in providing for the common good
- A fed, clothed and sheltered population is one that can participate in efforts focused on achievement of higher purposes
- Viewing humanity as a story of continuity, with the crisis of being cancelled as a species being the the kindling that singes us off of our collective ass to prevent anthropogenic human extinction
- Believe in the belief that “On a long enough time scale, WE win.”
- Recognizing, encouraging and instigating efforts that build human capital, including education, connection, flow, creativity, and fun
- More fun, movement and growth
I’ve been taking more control of my inputs and outputs, and focusing on the exchange between my brain and gut. A diverse ecosystem of ideas, thoughts and stories, especially those that literally make me laugh, smile, or rush to share with someone, has rooted and taken hold as part of the Mycelial Network. I often find unexpected linkages that pop up like fruiting bodies in books and other media that span genre, delivery systems, audiences, and intentions. I harvest these thoughts and remix them into musing like this mundane one that sparked a conversation with my nephew and a few strangers in pre-COVID Costco.
Sauerkraut is German kimchi.
Occidental-Oriental translation that sparked a spontaneous, fun discussion with a kid and adult in the food court
I try to make a habit of taking the time to slowly examine ideas and stories, especially those that I disagree with, and being more intentional about what goes in and what comes out. When I have time and interest, I also dig around a bit, to try to triangulate and validate sources and tidbits for arguments that I don’t agree with, which although time and attention consuming, adds richness and capacity to question my beliefs.
I’d like to transmogrify the DK’s prescient dark mirror quote to meet the needs of our present zeitgeist, into a retrovirus that will hopefully shift a fundamental American perspective:
Give me cognitive dissonance, or give me death.
Cybernetic Patrick Henry
Critical thought is more precious than King Content, Queen SEO, petroleum, rare-earth magnets, blockchain-based commerce, gold-backed currency, the Superbowl, Disney+, Space X, Chicken McNuggets, Rand-McNally, Dogma (our Precioussssss….), and even Big Pharma. If I ever start primarily pushing NFTs, Herbalife, POGs, tulips, merchant services, opiates, or any of that shit, please push a large bolus via IV with a dangerously large dose of dissonance and a B-12 booster, give me my In-N-Out, and hope for the best. Should I be assimilated by the Borg, then it’s too late for me. In that case, you can have my cheeseburger.
Reading List / 1 year
Here’s an incomplete patch of books my brain has been grazing on for the past year:
- The Wim Hof Method by Wim Hof
- The Outsider by Stephen King
- Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari
- The Body by Bill Bryson
- Beowulf translated by Seamus Heaney
- Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
- Mr. Mercedes by Stephen King
- High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
- Finders Keepers by Stephen King
- A Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi
- End of Watch by Stephen King,
- The Bomber Mafia by Malcolm Gladwell
- Breath by James Nestor
- A Very Punchable Face by Colin Jost
- Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke
- The Secret Wisdom of Nature by Peter Wohllenben
- The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
- The Mind-Gut Connection by Emeran Mayer, MD
- This Is Your Mind on Plants by Michael Pollan
- Chomp by Carl Hiassen and James Van Der Beek
- Later by Stephen King
- Business Doing Good by Shannon Deer and Cheryl Miller
- Finding Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
- Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl by Carrie Brownstein
- Devolution by Max Brooks
- Yearbook by Seth Rogan
- The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
- Talking to Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell
- Breathe by Rickson Gracie and Peter Maguire
- How to Decide by Annie Duke
- Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline
- Little Weirds by Jenny Slate
- Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkman
- Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
- Pacific Northwest Foraging by Douglas Deur
- Rabbits by Terry Miles
- Billy Summers by Stephen King
- Best. State. Ever. by Dave Barry
- Think Again by Adam Grant
- Backyard Foraging by Ellen Zachos
- The Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
- The Storyteller by Dave Grohl
- Mythos by Stephen Fry
- On the Plain of Snakes by Paul Theroux
- SPQR by Mary Beard
- Bourdain by Laurie Woolever
- Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
- Immune by Phillip Dettmer
- Mycelium Running by Paul Stamets
- Tales from the Cafe by Toshikazu Kawaguchi
- Drive by Daniel H. Pink
- The Confidence Men by Margalit Fox
- Citizen Cash by Michael Stewart Foley
- The Secret History of Food by Matt Siegel
- World Travel by Anthony Bourdain and Laurie Woolover
- Forget the Alamo by Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson, and Jason Stanford
- Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake
- Profit First by Mike Michalowitz
- Artful Dodging by Jeanne Martinet
- As Long As Grass Grows by Dina Gilio-Whitaker
- Breathing by Andrew Weil
- Growing Up, Growing Old and Going Fishing at the End of the Road by Tom Bodett
- Money by Jacob Goldstein
- I Contain Multitudes by Ed Yong
- The Power of Fun by Catherine Price
I intend to talk about specific books on future posts, as I have time to rest, digest, categorize, and discuss stories and ideas. Stay tuned, and let me know what you’re reading!