The Benefits of a Quiet Ego

Be in control of it.

You can do that bit by bit. Everyday, do one thing that you really don't want to do. Everyday, refrain from doing something that you want to do and can do.

If you want to go hardcore, expand this circle of do's and don'ts over the course of a month. By the end of the month, you'll be living as an ascetic, and that is when you'll know you have mastery over yourself.

Then every year repeat this asceticism for about 1-2 weeks. Withdraw from the world, read and write, eat one meal a day. That way your control over yourself keeps strong.

To the universe you are nothing. To history you are probably nothing.

But to a small number of people you can be everything.

I don't want to lose any anxiety about death. I'm hoping that organizations such as sens and calico can solve aging within my lifetime, and that I'll be able to afford the treatments. This goal definitely requires a strong ego. It takes pride to say that I deserve to live longer, instead of donating that money to save other people's lives. I've come to the conclusion that I would like to extend my life indefinitely, and I'll have plenty of time to help the poor after that.

Of course, I'm probably going to die pretty soon (relatively speaking), and I've come to terms with that, but you should question the inevitability of death.

Our senses does not try to perceive "regular ol' reality" precisely most of the time. As you say: our mind and senses have evolved to perceive as best they can via natural selection, but what that selects for is not precise determination of "regular ol' reality" but a narrative that is severely biased because it is economical and safer than trying to be precise.

Here are some thoughts for you:

- Have you ever walked through an area and looked at everything with fresh eyes, only to walk through it again later and have it look and feel entirely different? On second observation, you are relying severely on patterns and actually precisely observing what your eyes see as opposed to what you expect becomes harder with each repetition. You will walk the path, and afterwards insist that you did see x,y, and z, even though you may not even have looked in their direction. If you try to pay close attention, you will often notice the shortcuts: Things look different again. Unfamiliar. Details appear that you never noticed.

- Have you ever tried to draw an object from memory, and then put the same object in front of you and study each line and draw it again? Often you will see people totally change drawing style from various degree of stylized, abstracted shapes that can very well represent a quite accurate outcome, but idealized, with lines way too straight and clean compared to real life, to chaotic lines and patterns that give a far more accurate impression despite less precision. But the first view is often closer to how we see the world when we don't purposefully pay close attention to the details.

(one of my favourite examples of how poorly people pay attention, is to get a group of people to draw a sunset over the sea, and see whether the let the reflected rays of the sun start wide near the horizon and narrow, stay the same width, or start narrow and widen; "everyone" has seen sunsets with reflected light yet people so often get it wrong if they have not paid close attention to it before drawing it)

- Most of us have falsely recognised motion; believed we saw someone. Our perception is highly targeted at pattern recognition: It is safer to see a predator too much than a predator too little. So we see predators that are not there.

- How often do you notice your blind spot? We rarely do, because it gets "filled in", or "closed" in a way that means it takes close attention to notice that our apparent unobstructed field of view has a big empty spot.

- What do you physically sense right now? How long is your "now"? The shorter "gap" you try to sense, the more you will notice your sensations flitting back and forth, flickering, as you scan your "inputs" or not, rather than present some unified, lasting view. The longer the gap, the more your sensations blur into eachother. Suddenly we "feel cold" rather than observe that our toes are cold and there's a cold wind hitting our face, but our torso actually feels warm, for example.

This is what seeing reality is about: Paying attention and at least occasionally seeing past the distortions our mind adds when we're not really paying attention. We abstract, interpret, reinterpret, extrapolate, and outright invent stuff all the time that we carelessly accept as "reality" most of the day.

Some take it further and believe they can beyond our ordinary physical reality; I don't believe in that. But the inaccuracy of our perception is pretty much undeniable, and the sensations and experiences achievable just by spending time actually trying to glimpse our actual physical reality, and poking at the boundaries of our ordinary perception, are profound.

We are minute, yet here we are - the Universe observing itself.

"Why do anything?". Presented with these options, which would you prefer:

A. Live a normal life and be promised that after your death people will fabricate a story of your adventure, heroism and glory?

B. Live a life of adventure, heroism and glory with the promise that when you die nobody will remember you?

The point being, why derive meaning from the notion of being remembered by people you will never know, when the meaning may be found in the experiences our actions produce now?

The heights of human happiness (yeah, misery too) are ours for the taking. Derive meaning from trying to squeeze as much of the former from life as we possibly can.