When I think about the world, I often think about differences in people, trying to find analogs to the things that I know. Well, it so happens that there’s a concept I rather enjoy from reading Wuxia novels: the idea of cultivation.

Cultivation means applying yourself to develop your innate strengths and capabilities – hence to cultivate or grow, as one might grow a plant or a tree.

In many ways, my life right now feels like a process of cultivation: practicing and leveling up in a hundred different ways of applying my mind so that I can become a better version of myself with each second, minute, and hour leading up to whatever we might call a next stage (whether in speech, music-making, money-making, appearance, social skills, and so many other things along the way).

In developing these things, my mind works almost like clockwork, dedicating itself to each one relentlessly, with only a few distractions throughout the day, or at least so I like to think – so I hold such a vision as my ideal.

I find cultivation fascinating for many reasons. Of course, one is that martial arts novels are cool, but there are also lots of other small, intricate things – I particularly enjoy the idea that, in trying to go from one realm to another, you are making step changes and transforming who you are.

In the course of this year, a little part of me that yearns for evolution seems to have sprouted and is growing magnificently.

Why this is so is hard to say, but suffice it to say that I am grateful for it. I look forward to going in the direction that spirit has chosen to take me, for better or for worse.

One of the things I’m deeply interested in is reality; how people really think, how people really behave.

And why would I not be? It is the natural endpoint of theory – the ideas that we weave in our minds about how things work on the cosmic to the microscopic, extending from scopious and grand laws into the tiny yet no less consequential.

For a long time, I studied theories – and in many ways and on many different occasions, I made the mistake of confusing theories with reality, never having sufficiently thought things through to really use my mind; wait.

That’s kind of a silly take – I still do study theories, and also make them – theories about how things move, how people migrated, how and why things behave; I just less frequently make the mistake of imagining that the world will fit these theories anymore…

Because actual behavior always supersedes theories, across a very wide possibility space – and I can give you a simple example.

Once upon a time, I used to hold the following mental model: Nutrients = healthy. Protein and carbohydrates are nutrients. McDonald’s burgers have protein and carbohydrates – therefore, McDonald’s is healthy. The more healthy you are, the better – thus, eat it three times a week.

Well, I guess you know what happened to my waistline.

…What’s that? You were expecting a theory about behavior?

Well… That’s a little more complex, isn’t it?

I suppose it’s also a little more fun, since this then lets us wonder about the tantalizing question of what makes people like us, buy from us, love us, wish for our happiness, support us, speak well of us to others, refrain from gossiping…?

It would be a mistake to get caught up in theories about why things are, but it would be equally wrong to throw all caution to the wind and to cast yourself as rocks on the shore in the hope that the passing tides will bring you to paradise.

I often reflect on how Deng Xiaoping had once said, it doesn’t matter whether the cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice.

The test of all our theories is reality in all its fullness, cascading qualic moment by qualic moment through the filtration of our senses, our physical bodies, our experiences of time passing through the transient in-between that lies in the interstices of the ashes from which we were born and the ashes we shall become, in the highest resolution that this world shall allow.

It’s 11:43 and I have like 17 minutes to write this, but it’s World Mental Health day, I had an amazing walk today with a bunch of bomb-ass lovely people (including one member of royalty pls don’t arrest me for lese majeste LOL) but I digress.

If there’s one single thought I want to communicate and one thing I want you to remember before I end the night, it’s this:

Social media is not real. 

Look, maybe you’re looking at this from Instagram, a Facebook story, or something else. Chances are, it’s like the stories you’ve seen cascading one after another onto your feed every time you tap a little to the left or a little to the right, but if there’s one thing I hope, it’s this:

I hope you’re not imagining that you think the world is transparent just because you have social media and you can see how people curate their lives, the moments, the thoughts that they put out. 

Sure, certain things happen, and the fact that certain pictures exist is proof – This person took a picture with that person. These two people appeared in an Instagram story. A photo opportunity happened here… Or something like that.

But the moment it gets into interpretation, that’s where people go haywire – Were these people in love? Were they not in love? Have they been friends for a long time, or a short time? Perhaps they are colleagues. 

The possibilities are endless and really, you just don’t know, even on this small scale…

So why should you be able to tell about what “society” is like from looking at large scale behaviors?

More on this soon.