Watch your step… sapiens!
Rethinking discomfort:
When you learn to walk, you are learning balance. If you trip and fall, you better hope that it doesn’t happen near the edge of cliff. I fear that sapiens are nearing that cliff edge.
Balance- noun. a state of equilibrium or equipoise; equal distribution of weight, amount, etc. something used to produce equilibrium; counterpoise. mental steadiness or emotional stability; habit of calm behavior, judgment, etc. a state of bodily equilibrium: He lost his balance and fell down the stairs.
Balance is necessary in every aspect of life. Work/life balance. Balancing accounts. Balance is how we learn everything and evolve. We test natural law by pushing against it until it communicates back to us and pushes us towards equilibrium. Learning to walk is testing the natural law of gravity until we learn to balance our muscle control.
Every time that we push against a natural law, we feel discomfort. This is a form of natural feedback that forces us to adapt and evolve. When you go to the gym, you push against gravity until you feel pain. This pain is equivalent to the amount of growth that you will experience from your body’s natural reaction of repairing torn muscles. This happens in every aspect of our lives.
When you have a disagreement with someone, you push against their learned beliefs until the energy that is pushing against the perception of natural laws, return enough feedback in the form of truth. All natural law is elastic so when it experiences forces, it stretches until it overpowers the force and then provides feedback.
This happens in small cycles (like learning to walk), or in large cycles (like peace and war). Humans are always searching for balance. This creates feelings. The feelings of discomfort and comfort. A spectrum or yin and yang.
People often forget that discomfort is necessary for learning and applying knowledge. If we forget to do this for too long, the world will remind us with things like diseases, wars, violence, or some other sort of “karma”. These days it’s ever more important, as humans have forgotten and pushed too far against natural law.
Polarizing beliefs are a symptom of ignoring balance. Using excuses to stay comfortable has now become normal. There is a difference between offense and assault. Offense can be thought of as putting up “a fence” against learning something new. Offending someone is now considered a crime, as it violates someones comfort. This becomes ever dangerous as these excuses will push against natural law, causing people to only surround themselves with others that agree with them (tribalism). This creates confirmation bias and echo chambers. Even social media is designed to provide dopamine and too much comfort through these methods. This causes people to also block others that don’t see things the way that they do. The software evolves to enable this as well. If we always saw things that we didn’t like online, we would stop using apps and also stop providing attention to advertisement companies.
The problems arise when this takes place for too long because of our need for daily comforts. Comfort is an addictive drug and we must not abuse it. Covid 19 is a form of feedback signaling that we have not maintained our health. Polarization is communicating that we have been censoring healthy and free speech for too long, causing a tipping point. If people misinterpret these signals for too long, historic violence will repeat itself.
If you dive deeper into interpreting these signals in a larger way (over millions of years), you can learn much more. The fact that there are patterns of violence throughout history, show that we have not perfected our human systems of cooperation that are necessary for proactively avoiding these patterns. If there is a system for humans to accomplish peaceful cooperation, I believe that it would be imperative for us to seriously consider it. Even though it’s very complex for many people, I truly believe that full adoption of bitcoin would form this system of cooperation. It removes the temptation of corruption from humans, that ultimately creates the patterns of historical violence. It creates a positive sum game environment for humans. I urge anyone with any interest in human cooperation, to consider the potential effects that it could have for future peace. Luckily it was designed in a anti fragile way that will most likely create a situation where bitcoin doesn’t need you- you need it.
If you do not care enough about that, please at least consider to remain open minded so you can experience more discomfort every day, in a healthy and not violent way. This would reduce the pressure that we are experiencing from pushing against natural law too hard and for too long. Express how you truly feel more often in a reasonable way to anyone receptive enough to hear it. Surround yourself with more people that are different from yourself. Avoid social media and echo chambers that create deep seated and polarizing beliefs. Choose to diversify where you receive your daily diet of information. Avoid repetitive news and look for other perspectives. Try to understand the underlying messages of actions from people with opposing beliefs to your own, instead of allowing anger to seduce you. Look for common ground to allow discussions for more polarized subjects. Stop making excuses for comfort all the time and avoid censoring yourself, just because someone, somewhere might get offended. Aim for balance in all aspects of your life. Keep improving your expressions of natural law (Top Picture). Say what you believe to be true and remain humble enough to question it if new information is experienced. Think to yourself- “If I feel offended in any way, just remember… hurt feelings are at our basic human level, a form of evolution. Change never happens when you’re comfortable.”
