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The Body is the Hardware, The Mind is the Software

The analogy was interesting when I heard it first, and it remains interesting now because it resonates with me on at least a couple of different levels.

Our bodies, the physical parts of us, are basically analogous to the hardware of a computer, running along with different parts here and there – upgradable, we can improve them by increasing the quality of the resources that go into them; improvable through good maintenance, we can exercise, sleep well, and do all sorts of other things to improve the hygiene on that front.

Our minds, on the other hand, are the software – the programming that decides how we interact, think, solve problems in specific situations; the algorithms and little decisions that decide how we react to different scenarios and confronting different situations, whether it comes to talking to girls, investing, selling, marketing, or doing business with others.

It is nice to think that the mind is upgradeable, and that somehow you can improve yourself through an act of willpower by learning certain things. Through sitting down and unlocking the secrets of the universe one after another, through a mixture of magic and also destiny. But who’s to say exactly how that should happen?

Sorry, that’s a silly question. The answer is that it’s you.

A Small Change of Perception

I began this morning with the headline “How Kamala Harris Burned Through $1.5 Billion in 15 Weeks”, on NYT.

It was an interesting head to a week of what was for me listening to, understanding, and better reckoning the world after Donald Trump was elected 47th President of the United States, and the first of many headlines I’d seen about this on New York Times.

Some might view this as evidence that the media is cleaving towards the Trump administration as the chickens fall in line and loyalty becomes a Sine Qua Non in the era of an evil empire – but I think a little differently, because I feel like it’s teaching me something about reality.

Look in the comments, and you will see how people have responded – people saying that the presidency is “deeply unserious”, highlighting any number of things that they disagree with even as they say that NYT’s “focus” is wrong, that Kamala “tried to save democracy”, and everything in between.

If I really think about it, all of these seem about as valid as saying that Trump is secretly a genetically modified orange with a toupee made of cheese. 

The entire idea of NYT is that it’s one of the most respected voices in journalism, that alongside publications like the Washington Post, it defines the Overton Window – the space of ideas that are acceptable to the public at any given point of time. 

To the extent therefore that NYT’s function is valid for this purpose, I’m more likely to say that these critics are the ones who don’t make sense – That the calls against that validity are the true measure of what doesn’t make sense.

I’ve often heard this idea that in fact a Trump presidency might be a situation where the inmates are running the asylum, but upon further inspection, I’m no longer so sure; it would have been easier perhaps a year, two years, three years ago to look at what’s happening in America and say that truly, the Democratic party was the asylum keeper and that all that was logical and rational should have been filtered through a Kamala, an Obama, or otherwise… But looking into the article, the discourses, and the revelations about the practices of the Democratic Party have made me start to think otherwise.

Now, there’s definitely a possibility that I’m the wrongheaded one here – a victim of a polarized world view facilitated by mammoth social media algorithms designed to manipulate me, bringing me into a world of right-leaning politics, podcasts, and ideas that I should have regarded as anathema before I had even moved forward – but the things in my mind and heart tell me that I actually went a little bit closer towards the truth in the course of my search.

In understanding this election, the events surrounding it, and how to view the world, I looked for many different things, saw many different things, and came to understand the world much better than I think I otherwise would have…

And what I understand now is that there is reason to fear the leadership of a woman who can spend $1.5 billion with impunity, to look suspiciously upon a woke mob that regards legitimate media as illegitimate the moment its lenses are applied upon them, and to not surrender my perception of what the authority is and ultimately should be to a particular party simply because they’ve seemed more reasonable to me.

Perfectionism to eliminate

…And another has come.

We are progressively moving towards the end of the year with each new beginning.

This is I believe the 46th week of the year out of 52, and it’s leading towards the end of the year; Donald Trump is now president, filling up his cabinet with appointee after appointee as people contemplate things; you might believe that we’re at the start of something HUGE, as Donald might call it, world-shaking, incredible.

But I think while that’s good, it’s good to look at something that I’ve wanted to get rid of for quite a while:

Perfectionism.

I am a victim of it, and I can’t deny that it follows me everywhere, making me question myself and whether what I’m putting out into the internet is either good or worth it – I second guess myself frequently, taking down blog posts that I think aren’t great or that aren’t well worded, thinking that perhaps I should rewrite or otherwise.

I think that this is a very negative behavior, because frankly I don’t really care too much about what people think and secondly, it doesn’t really matter what they think – at least in relation to how I think about myself.

So I would like to eliminate, therefore, the perfectionism that makes me rewrite things, redraft things, take wayyy too much time to release things.

This is the next thing to change, and it’s a good thing to shift it in this year of 2024 – even if it is the only lesson that I will have learned by the end of this year, I think that it will have been a worthwhile one.

Here’s to the next!