Before You Remake the Pies

Rhettie thinks she found a friend she can trust with her emerging idea. You can’t always know when you know though, which she knows.

“Before you remake the pies, look at the case with different eyes.” -Bug Stu 2019

In Episode 2 here, I talked about how Stu thinks we humies need to hear some different stories, and how he imagines that many of them should be like musicals, or at least they should be musical. Stu and Allie discussed this at The Black Sparrow and they got into how Star Eyes, Allie’s surrogate-soul creation, that’s what Stu calls them, are kind of like baby ideas.

Like, at first Star Eyes don’t know anything except that they vaguely care about something. But caring about something doesn’t really do much by itself. More has to be learned—then done, which results in more learning.

In the human world, caring usually leads to learning more, but sometimes the learning is focused on embryonic understandings. That would look like care—>prognosis—>learn—>do. That’s probably partly because we forget that our much-mentioned autonomy isn’t at all automatic or independent, even though it sounds like it would be. We usually pick up an old script without even realizing it. This is a real bugaboo for Bug Stu, and Allie, and not surprisingly, many many others—just not enough others.

That is, too many people, according to Stu, assume they’re thinking with autonomy when they’re not. Besides that, a lot of what they’re thinking with is their first impression, which can be a fiction to varying degrees. Stu, being a sci-fi guy, unlike me, thought it was convenient that the initials for first impression are f-i, or fi, as in sci-fi. With that, the f-i from first impression turns into fiction, which is often fitting, and we know this. Interesting.

BUT, being a music guy, Stu also thought of hi-fi, where fi means fidelity, as it does in semper fi from the Marines motto among others, shortened from semper fidelis, meaning always faithful, always loyal. But to what? Very interesting, especially if you’re a sentient beetle, A coleoptera without a cause—but not without a reason (Stu’s quixotically half-serious tagline).

And here’s the reason…that it’s so interesting.

Ambiguity lurks. You might remember that’s one of Stu’s most common expressions, observations, and fascinations. And you yourself might be feeling the subtlest anxiety in our even bringing it up, lurking ambiguities. There’s a common ick factor in ambiguity for us. It has notes of fault in our communications, or a lack of conclusive information/interpretation, and deeper down, nibblings of uncertainty around our foundational and identity-driving assumptions. Ambiguity lurks more than we often admit, and it’s counter to our natures, which brings us to an emergent implication.

For all we supposedly “are” or “want” or “need” or whatever higher order longings we might remember from Maslow’s pernicious Pyramid, we have to start with information either from a conscious level or non-conscious level. That is, we are first information seekers and deciders, which means we have appetites for taking information in and deciding something correctly with it. Ambiguity in information is like blueberries with tiny worms in them, right? It’s upsetting at both emotional and cognitive levels. But you might decide to go ahead and eat them if the worms aren’t too obvious, like I have before, if you really want the blueberries. And sometimes that’s fine.

At the metacognitive level we can see how we, how our brains, often handle the ambiguity problem. Forget about wormy fruit now. We tend to decide anyway, ambiguities and all, whether to eat or not to eat the information, based on factors unrelated to the information—a workaround for the ambiguous nature of so many things. Sort of. It’s only a workaround if it works out in the end, otherwise it was a mistake, and it was from willful delusion as we know. That’s when we feel foolish, or worse. Then we try to find a way to fix that. More importantly…well, here’s how my conversation went with Bug Stu went.

Stu: Yeah, first impressions are often fiction. I guess that would be see-fi instead of sci-fi, right? Could we call it that? And really, you guys know enough about perceptions now that you realize see-fi is a real thing. Hey, that’s funny—see-fi is real, but it’s real only in that it’s not real. The fictitious nature of it is real. No. No, I don’t think this idea can be expressed without ambiguity around the meaning.

Me: Maybe we just need more words.

Stu: I was joking. I know. I just thought it was funny how it wasn’t working. Hey, but there’s also hi-fi. That’s a different fi, and that’s kind of fun. And there’s semper fi, the motto, like from the Marines and other things. Hi-fi is high fidelity. Semper fi is semper fidelis. Always loyal. Always faithful. To what though? Ultimately…to what?

Me: Okay wait.

Stu: “You can’t handle the truth!” “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and…”

Me: Wait. And those are two different movies. Same actor, that’s all.

Stu: I know. I’m jumping ahead a little, but if you...

Me: Wait though. Wait. If we combine all of that, skipping the dull boy thing for now, there’s something really interesting going on. Hi-fi. Semper fi. To what though? Like you said.

Stu: That’s why I said “You can’t handle the truth.”

Me: The villain said that. Nicholson was playing the villain. He was justifying something horrible that he knew happened regularly. And he was sort of confessing…

Stu: Right, and he was wrong. But still, you all tend to have a hard time handling the truth, and so you play with it. And a lot of truth is more about probabilities, so you play with that kind even more. Play is important, but some kinds of play hurt somebody, right? Sometimes that’s called bullying.

Sometimes that bullying is a blind spot, so I don’t know if it should be called bullying, but effectively, a sort of power is being used that happens to someone else, usually in the future on some scale—seconds, minutes, hours… Sometimes it’s the next generations. That’s what was happening in the 1910’s and 1920’s in a couple of ways for you now. It’s also what gave the Stralfs’ confidence in their Hundred Year Plan.

Me: I just recently wrote about you and Allie discussing how Star Eyes and ideas are not able to happen to anyone or to the universe without atom suits being involved. Funny.

Stu: Yeah, and two things happen there, at least as far as ideas go. The theoretical idea never gets implemented the way anyone intends, because of, you know, the atom suit effects. I mean, the different atom departments, the Appetites, they kinda work their way into things like you don’t always expect. It’s not always unfortunate, but usually. Sometimes its accidentally not unfortunate, is how I’d say it. But there’s also a more positive side.

Me: Okay, tell me that, then go back to the 1910’s and 1920’s thing.

Stu: Well, until an idea goes into at least one atom suit to get expressed, you know, written or said, other atoms suits can’t think about it or try it out. An idea isn’t usually as good in real life, which is all about atom suits, as it seems by itself. It’s like when you write a poem that can’t really be said as well as you imagined. Or an idea that doesn’t word out to others. I mean, when an idea goes into the atom suit world, you learn how to actually do the idea, and hope it isn’t too distorted by Appetites that don’t have much but themselves in mind. Well, they can’t. They don’t have minds, of course.

Me: Okay. I think I know what you mean. Now go back a hundred years or so, like you said. What did you mean was happening then?

Stu: You guys tend to get ahead of yourselves when it comes to ideas versus actions among interrelated complex systems, especially those where the elements of the systems have agency, like humies. This started to happen in the Enlightenment, and by the early 1800’s there was a reaction to it, which was just as bad and blind. The French Revolution was even part of this. When the Stralf scouts here, 1819, they loved what they saw—it would make their plan work probably, and they patiently worked their plans in. The Rationalists and the Romanticists, choose your delusion…I’d better not get started on that.

Anyway, then the Chicago World’s Fair kicked off two things. One was consumerism and the idea of progress through global commercialization and control of anything you could imagine. Bigger, better, faster, more, from everywhere, for everyone, or something. The other was the Arts and Crafts movement. They hated that one. More on that later.

Now, it doesn’t actually make sense to look back on those humies as bad. There’s always a combination of greed, stupidity, lack of foresight, lack of care, error in herd instincts, and the opposites of those. Many predicted bad outcomes from all that. Many of those came true, and now you just call it the way things are.

Remember you’re wired to come through scarcity and trouble, that’s how you made it through scarcity and trouble early on. Only the flip side is that also means you’re wired for excess, more of more, and too much ease, and rationalizing so the tribe doesn’t leave you to the predators. By wired I mean your Appetites, neurotransmitters, the brain chemicals, they nudge you—if they’re not you. Of course, you’re all kind of different. It’s tricky. Stralfs get it though.

Me: Okay, yeah. And we’ve talked about that, and about how markets can multiply those effects. But specifically…1910’s and 1920’s…

Stu: The tipping point of many messes and mindsets. The Arts and Crafts movement had kinda commercialized and waned, mostly from WWI. You were caught between “Science will make life wonderful for all” and “nothing matters after all—then we die.” Too many calculations and too few. It’s like you were back to the Rationalists and the Romanticists again.

Me: So buy stuff and eat, drink, and be merry…for tomorrow we die?

Stu: Nothing’s ever everyone, everywhere, all the time, but yeah. “Buy stuff” was meant for peace. “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.” That’s a form of remote bullying—not caring enough to think it through. Generational bullying if nothing else, but also geographically remote bullying too, because others get the wrong impression of what’s gonna work for them and their kids and grandkids.

Me: What about “Eat, drink, be merry and think, for tomorrow is nigh.” Would that work?

Stu: I don’t think “nigh” works, especially not for today. It sounds like some old expression. Nigh. The Knights who say nigh. You know? But there is something to it. And tomorrow could be your kids’ tomorrow—the future. But wait. That reminds me of something.

The 1910’s and 20’s had broken a lot of things. New helpful things were coming out, things that fostered flourishing, but World War I had broken so many things inside you, like things prosperity couldn’t fix. What is the meaning of a sentient species that will wage global war on itself and kill, maim, disfigure, destroy, torture, millions and millions—then develop ways to do it more effectively.

Prosperity can sometimes mask this damage, but it can’t fix it, because the now violent nature of the questions of “What is life, and what are we humies?” in the new context, aren’t answered, and haven’t been still. I’m not saying they’re answerable questions, but war like that raises the question, and it’s a violent one in that context.

Well anyway, there was an expression from back then: A rising tide lifts all boats. It was used in church work, so it was kind of vague, but you can see how it would apply to other things. Today, you’re used to hearing that it came from a speech by John F. Kennedy and it gets applied to economics. Well, do you remember me telling you about Rhettie’s grandma?

Me: It’s been a while. I do remember that she is a thinker and she’s had a lot of influence on Rhettie.

Stu: Well, I wouldn’t say she’s a big sci-fi fan, but she’s always loved Jules Verne’s stories and some of H.G. Well’s, at least. She likes things that mean something and that are trying to say something important for society, expanding your horizons of the possible, but not just for getting neurotransmitters pumping.

She’s also been pretty skeptical of aphorisms and the influential people, usually men but women too, who oversimplify life and the world. She’s never been a fan of economists because of this. She’s always been a farm girl or farm wife, but she’s read and wondered her whole life. No college, but no lack of education. Art, craft, science, religion, philosophy, history…

Me: I’m remembering now. And a lot of grace in her ways.

Stu: Yes. Well she wrote a poem about “Opportunity Cost” after a banker had mentioned it and she’d read more at the library. She’s just always been suspicious of economists’ ways of talking and figuring out life. So she mixed that all in with a mariner theme, maybe since Rhettie’s grandpa was in the Navy, I’m not sure.

Me: And you have the poem?

Stu: Yes, but there’s something else. Rhettie added something to it about The 7th Pie.

Me: Because you mentioned it in a dream?

Stu: It could be. Or maybe her grandma said something about that once. She’s made a lot of pies.

Me: Well it doesn’t matter. Let’s see it.

Stu: Okay, and listen, Rhettie shared this with Wally, the guy she thinks might be able to help make her idea become real. We’ll get back to that next time maybe.

Opportunity Cost--Lost At Sea

Opportunities are lost as economists gloss
over dismal applications of math.
Their “Opportunity Costs” so distort…and toss
our ships on the rocks with no mast.
“But a rising tide (surely) lifts all boats”
I don’t mean to chide, but I’d deny most quotes.

 Jules Verne wrote a story
I’d refer to instead,
a Civil War setting,
an escape, by a thread,
or balloon, and five men,
adrift in the wind,
and a form of kintsugi,
you could say, in the end.

The Mysterious Island,
loosely from Verne,
Nineteen Sixty-one,
the-year we would soon learn
the moon was our quest
and we’d-be its great guests
in another eight years,
at JFK’s behest.

 But back to the ship,
lest I digress,
and The Mysterious Island,
rising tides, and the rest.
 

And a mariner’s musings…

When you batter a boat,
with torpedoes…or rocks,
it’s not going to float,
for repair, at the docks.

And it struck me how we
become food for large birds,
namely vultures, but others
in the class of scavengers.

And we are like boats
and our minds are the hulls,
bad ideas are like holes,
and ads are the gulls.

The tide might come in,
but the boat cannot rise,
it teeters in the water,
but broken it lies.
Though gulls back away,
uncertain of our life,
they’re patient, and they pray
death returns…through strife.

But the Nautilus and balloon
could make a repair,
a kintsugi of the hull,
which was then filled with air.

The elegant balloon…
it didn’t mind the holes,
a resilient solution,
to lift off rocky shoals.

(then Rhettie added these last three stanzas)

So you keep your tide,
and-we’ll stay on the land,
because there-is-no Nautilus,
and many might want a hand.

Yes, it’s land, that’s the answer,
our kintsugi, the 7th Pie.
We do look at the stars,
but we don’t thrive in a sky.

So you keep your tide,
and we’ll stay on the land,
we think it will provide,
more than…
we’re taught to understand.

Thanks for reading.

Tim

This is where semper fi or fidelis comes in again.