Map making

(via)

In “The Case Against Cosmic Justice” I’d brought up how (IMO) randomness was the key driver of the universe, and that pretty much every other concept (God, karma etc) was a narrative fallacy. I think that requires a little editing. To use a phrase from “Sapiens”, these other concepts aren’t really fallacies, they are inter-subjective realities. That means it they are belief systems that a lot of people share and agree to. e.g. money, nations. This is different from subjective reality – my personal reality as I experience it or choose to see it e.g. Salman Khan should be in jail for killing people, and objective reality – one which exists irrespective of anyone’s belief systems e.g. gravity.

As a member of civilisation as we know it, my our only option to maintain sanity is to match subjective realities/delusions as best as possible with inter-subjective (popular) realities/delusions. The challenge, when one throws many inter-subjective realities -God and Karma (as it is popularly defined) into the dustbin and accepts the dominance of randomness, is to find a system that appeals to the self and is also an inter-subjective reality. It becomes even more complicated because this system also has to be viable in the context of the most dominant religion of the time – capitalism, or more specifically, money!

The system one adopts tends to drive decisions across the facets of life – work/profession, relationships, the way one spends time and money, and so on. So, given my subjective reality is that randomness being the prime driver, there are two ways I could temper its effects on me. I could plan, and hedge my bets to limit the damage that randomness can cause. Or I could (try to) adopt a mindset which is confident enough to be agile as per the circumstances. Thanks to the “buggy code in my head”, (read) I must admit to a scarcity mindset, so that mindset is my first challenge.

The first path seems a stoic mindset at first glance, the way it is described these days (indifferent to pain). The second seems to be a kind of abundance mindset, as described here. I’m usually a fan of the middle path, but these two seemed to be exact opposites. But if one looks at stoicism in its original form, it is about reflecting on things using logic and rationale and transforming emotions into a sense of calm, and thereby clear judgment. That, when applied to an abundance mindset, seems like a perfect plan. Except, when one does adopt an abundance mindset, there is unfortunately attachment inherent in it. That is the second challenge I need to work on.