Death Is Bad

For most of the human race’s existence, we’ve been playing a game called Survival. The rules are mind-bogglingly complex, change all the damn time, and are not fair. But humans managed to hold on long enough try many different ways to win, and had the previously unheard-of ability to record their attempts and pass on what they learned to the next generation. Eventually humans discovered a system for figuring out what the rules are – The Scientific Method. Knowing enough rules meant you could game the system, and humans became the first Reality Munchkins. Combined with new methods of coordinating action (capitalism) they actually managed an unprecedented feat – they Beat The Game.

In the developed world, Survival is a solved problem. Starvation has been neutralized. Untreatable fatal diseases are rare. Violent death is rare. Most people can expect to live with minimal discomfort into their 70s or 80s without existential risk.

People don’t take enough time to acknowledge that we’ve Beat The Game. We should do so more often.

Of course, you don’t stop playing just because the game has been won. That’s why there is an Expansion. Unfortunately, we seem to be awful at the Expansion.

It’s disheartening how many of my friends have linked Depression Part Two with “YES! THIS!!” I was there myself for a time. Almost everyone I know (including myself) treated the symptoms of this with an unholy desperation, mainly consisting of drugs and distraction. Now that we’ve solved Survival, what else is there to do? We used to do things to survive. Now why do anything at all? Will it make any difference to our survival?

Not that any of us thought of it that way. But over and over, what I hear and what I remember is a despair at the purposeless and meaninglessness of life. “I don’t know why I bother.”

This changed for me once I had a goal. Something to strive for. It wasn’t even a very lofty goal, it was simply something I wanted, and was willing to work toward. My life changed completely, and very rapidly. It seems that this is what the Expansion to life consists of – Find A Goal. Not even achieving it… simply finding one. And unless my sampling is extremely skewed, it seems that the vast majority of middle America really sucks at this new game. We were taught all our lives how to win at Surviving, and that’s the game we expected to play. Being thrown into the middle of this new challenge without a compass, a map, or even eyes to see the terrain with is more than scary – it is dangerous. Most people I know have been suicidal at some point. Many still get occasional pangs. Some have made attempts. We solved Survival just to be shut down at the next level.

We need to figure out the rules to the Expansion. I’ll try to narrow the search a bit over the next few posts, but I don’t know of any methodology of doing so systematically yet.

I mentioned in my podcast’s production notes that I was raised with a moral code meant for gods, which breaks mere men. I see my younger brother now struggling with the same problem and I want to help him. I was at a loss when trying to figure out how to do this though. I had to spend a lot of time searching through my past before I came to what I think was the major turning point that finally put me on the road to recovery – reading Atlas Shrugged.

Let me assure you that I’m no longer a Randian (that lasted less than a year) and I will not be extolling the virtues of Objectivism! I’m not even Libertarian. But there was a time when I was suicidal, and when I would have likely pressed a “Destroy The World” button if it was given to me – and believed it was the best thing to do. With the right (ie: wrong) mental wiring and moral teachings, not being able to be God can lead you to such places. It can make you sympathize with people who want to watch the world burn.

Being a Randian Objectivist is also bad, but it’s very much less bad. Objectivists may be complete assholes who view human worth as a function of an individual’s economic output, but at least they consider the human species worthy of continuing. They can generally function in society. They may espouse a cartoonishly villainous Virtue of Selfishness, but they’ll hold down a job and live by the laws of the land. They can still harm many people by passing bad laws and ignoring suffering wholesale, and should be held in check by saner and more compassionate forces. But it’s better than slowly going insane.

As I mentioned yesterday, I am easily taken in by certain types of claims. And Atlas Shrugged is famous for its ability to sucker in a certain type of young male reader. It’s almost a joke that every college freshman becomes an Objectivist for several months after first being introduced to Rand. So a charismatic, passionate, and seemingly iron-clad reason-based argument for how You Can Save The World By Being Selfish, and everyone who ever said that you are responsible for righting every wrong you encounter was (either through ignorance or evil) trying to Loot Society And Destroy Civilization… is a startling revelation. But not just that – it is a HUGE RELIEF. An indescribably welcome one. Suddenly, I am finally not responsible for all the evil in the world. I can finally stop trying to be God, and just be a man. It’s nearly impossible to describe the sense of relief and the thankfulness that comes with that, with finally being unburdened from this crushing, soul-tearing responsibility. It’s like being able to breathe again after years of suffocation.

This is why I compare Rand to Malaria. Before antibiotics were discovered, it was found that the high fever caused by Malaria would kill the Syphilis virus. It turned a 100% lethal disease that drove you insane, into a 5% chance of dying which could afterward be treated with quinine. Rand is like Malaria – really bad, and awful for any healthy person. But useful for those with a certain condition. With a little luck they’ll pull through and can be treated of Objectivism over time.

However I have only a single data point. Will this work for my brother as well? He seems to have a worse case than I do, it’s been exasperated by his recent environment. Even if it could work, how does one get someone else to read a freakin’ doorstop like Atlas Shrugged? He’s not into fiction. And I can’t just point him to this post, that may inoculate him against its curative properties.

/sigh

I’m going to get married.

I am happy. :) But I was against marriage for a long time, and I still am. I dislike marriage for two major reasons.

1. I don’t need any outside group telling me my relationship is legitimate.

I don’t need anyone’s approval to be with the person(s) I love. I don’t particularly care what anyone else thinks about my choice of mate(s), whether they approve of their race, gender, temperament, or anything else. Therefore I don’t feel any need to get a piece of paper telling me that my choice has been approved by the government. Big fucking deal, you can take that paper and shove it up your ass. It will not change the nature of my relationship, I will not love my mate any less or any more because I have it. We’ll stay together as long as we both want to be together. Which leads me to…

2. I don’t want any outside group telling me my break-up is illegitimate.

I’ve gone through a divorce before, and the amount of legal hold your partner has over you is terrifying. Basically, either person can hold their ex-partner’s life hostage for months and force tens of thousands of dollars in lawyer’s fees upon them, simply in retribution. Fortunately this didn’t happen, it was an amicable divorce. But if my ex wasn’t a civil person it easily could have, because she still wanted a relationship and I did not.

Let me clarify a few things here.

I don’t believe men should be able to take-and-dump women. I realize that some women’s life path is to marry a nice guy with a good job and spend her life making the home and raising the children. (Actually that can work for both genders, but traditionally it’s more common among women) It is arguable that a woman’s highest-potential years for achieving this are in her twenties, and thus a man who marries a woman in her twenties and then leaves her in her forties is literally robbing her of her greatest producing years. Marriage (in its current incarnation) is designed as a contract to protect the homemaker in these sorts of arrangements. If one party has given up their careers – decades of income, and decades of gathering job skills and professional contacts – with the implicit assumption that they will be economically secure in their old age due to this sacrifice, it is both Right and Just that s/he be assured that security through legal means if their partner reneges.

I’ve never had that sort of relationship. I do not want that sort of relationship. I consider it distasteful and exploitative. I like my women independent and self-fulfilled. Aside from brief periods of unemployment (on both sides) everyone I’ve ever been in a relationship with has had their own ambitions and career and made roughly the same amount I do. House work is shared. There are no children. The marriage contract does not apply to our relationship. No one is being exploited. No one needs to be legally bound to uphold their side of “the deal” which marriage represents. We don’t have or want that deal. This is what I realized during my first divorce – the social good which marriages protect does not apply to my relationship. It does no good at all, and only serves to encumber us, and give us hostage rights over each other. We should never have entered into a marriage in the first place.

Until such a time as I decide to be party to a marriage of the traditional sort (1 wage-earner, 1 home-maker) there is no good reason to enter into a marriage, and several good reasons to avoid doing so. And as someone who hopes to live for at least thousands of years, I have to accept that it is likely that both I and my partner will value-drift in ways that do not match, and in time we will no longer be ideal for each other, and at that time we should separate. I don’t want to go through the whole terrifying divorce ordeal again once that happens.

There are a few things which have persuaded me to actually get married, despite these reservations.

*The most obvious, but least important, is the various legal benefits that society grants to couples that have that piece of paper. It’s ridiculous, but there are all sorts of rights that it conveys – some of them non-trivial.

*Far more important is that my mate values being married as a terminal goal by itself. As she’s my SO, my utility function contains a term for the fulfillment of her utility function. I was worried, however, that she wasn’t including the terror I felt at being legally bound in her utility calculations. This was allayed by:

*She has agreed to divorce me after five years. After that we’ll remarry after five years, and repeat. Obviously with no change in lifestyle (unless we desire), merely in legal standing. This, more than anything, convinced me that she understands my worries, and she’s willing to share the burden of living in sub-optimal marital states for 5 year periods with me (though of course the periods we consider sub-optimal are transposed). And that… that is what true love is. :) I feel I can trust someone who’s willing to be so fair and honest with me, and I’m happy to make concessions to her, as she’s willing to make them for me.

Plus we’re crazy happy together. <3

Like many people, I’ve long had problems falling asleep. Sleep has always felt like such a terrible waste of time, a third of my life lost. Imagine what I could have done living an extra ten years of life up to this point! But curtailing sleep was an unmitigated disaster, the loss of performance and quality of life was so bad that I might as well not have bothered at all. For those extra 2-3 hours I lost an entire day. So when I did go to bed, I wanted to lay down and get on with it.

That was always a ludicrous aspiration. Simply lying down does not shut off one’s mind. Now that I didn’t have other things to distract me, my brain could start going over every little thing that happened to me that day. Analyzing it, dissecting it, suggesting alternatives (too late) and estimating how it affected other’s opinions of me. And I would start contemplating what I would do the next day, sometimes elaborate plans. Or I’d start forming opinions of things I’d watched or read or witnessed. Then I’d realize what I was doing and get annoyed at myself for not falling asleep. And on and on like this for hours. The only way to avoid this was to first get so exhausted I’d just collapse into sleep when I went to bed, which required staying up way too late and suffering the next day. During my alcoholic phase I discovered that drinking a lot would also work, but that’s hardly an ideal solution.

This had been a blight upon my life since at least my early teens. Basically as far as I can remember I’ve been tortured by my inability to sleep. And I hear this is very common.

So when I discovered an easy and extremely reliable way to fall asleep in almost no time every single night, I was in awe for weeks. It was like I had developed a freakin’ super power. In fact, I’m still sorta in awe of it, although familiarity has dulled the shine a bit – I’m sure Superman isn’t constantly amazed that he can fly either. Seriously though, this is one of the most useful abilities I’ve ever developed in my life. It is such an amazing relief.

In the interest of spreading all superpowers to as many people as possible, I present:

 How To Fall Asleep (in 2 steps)

1. Get some Melatonin and take 1-2mg just before you go to bed.

I generally don’t trust supplements, but this one came recommended by Gwern, who’s done a full write-up on it. It convinced me to try it, and it works. In short, Melatonin is a hormone your body makes to regulate your sleep cycle. Check out Gwern’s article for all sorts of details in an easy-to-read well-written format, which includes citations.

2. Lay down, close your eyes, and do some light meditation.

Meditation is also something I don’t trust, because it’s been associated with some much New-Age Woo that even hearing the word generally makes me roll my eyes. Which is too bad, because when you remove the mysticism it apparently actually helps to train you in various mental skills (such as focus and concentration). Anyway, the level of meditation required to fall asleep is absurdly light, you can almost just call it “relaxing”, but it is a focused and regimented relaxing that will GET YOU ASLEEP. Here’s the process (which I first lifted from Less Wrong)  –

* focus entirely on your breath. Not on the process of breathing, just let that come naturally. Simply observe the air flowing into your nostrils, filling your lungs, and then leaving again. Nothing else, just that.

* this will work for about 3 seconds. Then your brain will randomly generate some thought. You won’t notice at first, but eventually you’ll realize “Oh hell, I’m thinking about what I want to do tomorrow instead of my breath!” Stop thinking about that and re-focus on your breath.

This is the tricky part, so there are many tricks on how to do this. My personal favorite is label the thought under a category – give it a tag like “plans” or “memory”. If there’s a song running your head tag it “music”, if you’re listening to a dripping sound, label it “sensory input”. If these very instructions on how to do it are running through your mind, label them “process.” If you’re annoyed that you’re thinking about thinking, label it “meta”. Then picture yourself throwing the label aside. I often make a mental wrist-flick as though tossing it in the trash. Don’t get upset, just refocus on your breath.

Early on this will happen constantly, you’ll be amazed how wasteful your brain processes are. As you get better you’ll be able to refocus more quickly, and be distracted less often.

You’ll fall asleep quickly once you’ve put your mind to bed. At first this can take 20+ minutes (still better than the hour+ it often took me to fall asleep). In 3-5 days (seriously, the learning curve is that quick) you’ll be able to do it in 5 minutes, maybe 10 on bad days.

That’s it. You can still lay in bed and contemplate projects or stories or whatever, when you want to. But now you can fall asleep when you want/need to as well. Congratulations on your new power, and you’re welcome. :)