I like to stick my brain in things, if you pardon the pun. Have you ever heard people say something like “I’m trying to wrap my brain around this”. I never liked that expression. It conjures up images of icky sticky gray matter all over the place like in a low grade sci-fi movie. But I don't mind it now.
Anyway, I noticed that when I’m interested in things, I think about them… obviously. But I do that in my usual “perfectionist to my own detriment” manner. Usually that means I try to fully compute how that works. And whenever I do that, I always end-up designing a system that alters the human processes portion and introduces extensive automation… all in my head. When, really, I was just casually interested in the subject.
Merleau-Ponty is my favorite philosopher these days. I’m reading an introduction to his book “Phenomenology of Perception”. I’ll be very sad when that’s over. Anyway, he says that intelligence is embodiment and thinking is a form of embodied action. This helped me realize that I was simply engaging in an interest using my “coping skills” the very skills for which I’m currently employed.
This awareness coupled with my recent practice of “living from flow” as opposed to any kind of order, imposition, obligation, requirement, or design I made up or agreed to without realizing… helped me choose to stop especially when I felt overwhelmed. Goodness knows I would not normally let something like that stop me.
As I brought back my mental selves from all their “possibilities”, I confirmed that I was only interested in these ghosts; they were not real. I noticed that they were all centered around making computers conform to my will, to extend my “mental self” using computers with minimal “heavy duty” involvement with the computers themselves. Somehow I also realized that I can live outside of all these imaginings and extensions including the core interest. I felt free, but frightened, and not wanting to give up at least that center.
I am now settling on that I could do both. I could walk towards peace and truly live from flow with no imposition from my mind in anyway… and simultaneously explore making computers the limited repositories of intelligence and active machinery that they are, or how I see them in my head and how they should be in my environment.
Really, that’s what I like... in philosophy, computing and spirituality. Thankfully, in a "post-PC" era, where people left behind the desktop, even the web, in favor of "mobile computing" and all the patents involved, I’m happy sticking with “low tech” desktop computing… where the IDE lives. It is also fun to see myself as just another guy, living his life because he is alive. Not trying this in order for that.
Yes. Isn’t that nice.