@roach-works // Melissa Broder, "Problem Area" // Mary Oliver, "The Return" // @annavonsyfert // Koyoharu

@roach-works // Melissa Broder, "Problem Area" // Mary Oliver, "The Return" // @annavonsyfert // Koyoharu Gotouge, Demon Slayer // Haruki Murakami, Dance Dance Dance // David Levithan, How They Met and Other Stories // Tennessee Williams, Notebooks

walking into the lab on mondays with the cortisol level of someone being hunted for sport

10.10.2023

Lots of this lately. Been recovering from a bit of a sick spell, so I've been working when I can and sleeping when I have to. Grateful for Goose's company while I work and read :)

I think that traditional knowledge (using this term loosely, to mean any experience based knowledge that might be orally shared and/or passed down) is not just Science in a different form, nor is it a simpler, earlier stage of a developmental path toward Science, nor is it an inferior form of knowledge.

When you are an apprentice of Nature, constantly seeking Nature in your surroundings and intentionally OPENING YOUR EYES to what moves around you, knowledge accumulates in a slow drip, like water dripping from a stalactite.

Individual days and moments of observation pull together strands of the web of life that entangles you. One day I see this bird eating from this bush; one day I see this butterfly land on this flower; one day I see that this leaf catches fire more readily than that; every day I see organisms interacting with one another and their environment, I see new environments and new interactions of organisms, and slowly I begin to see the RELATEDNESS OF EVERYTHING, an understanding that is constantly completing and filling in and becoming deeper.

The scientific framework allows me to pinpoint these observations and pose hypotheses to myself which I can then intentionally investigate and attempt to falsify. It makes the process of gaining understanding more methodical and directed.

But formalized science investigates questions within little enclosures. The learning that happens in a scientific experiment is not only limited by the boundaries of the question being investigated and the exclusion of extraneous variables (which are of course, fundamentally important parts of science), but by the idea of Science as a specific activity that a person is either doing right now or not doing right now, like playing baseball.

A baseball player has times when he is playing baseball and times when he isn't. It's the same with most jobs and hobbies. So someone who is a Scientist might be tempted to have times when she is doing science and times when she isn't. The knowledge within her might therefore be tempted to have times when it is being developed and times when it isn't.

But my dad was a pastor. The nature of his job was not in the act of preaching a sermon (which can be done from an outline you got online—shouldn't, but can) but in preparing sermons, going to events, being around to answer questions, visiting sick people in the hospital, spending long hours in study seeking spiritual insight, spending time with the youth at arcades and roller-skating places and the like, being present, being.

Being a farmer is a lot similar. Your life is defined by your relationship with the life-forms you care for in a way that can never be shelved or set aside.

The traditional way of attaining knowledge and understanding of Nature is a RELATIONSHIP that is developed and deepened in every interaction between you and your LIVING surroundings

This means that you also cannot learn the ways of the plants by Going To a Specific Place that you consider to be Nature—you must realize that EVERYWHERE IS NATURE, and the endless movement, change, and chaos of life can be seen in the dandelion and spotted spurge of the sidewalk. Anywhere you see change that was not changed according to an Idea of how the space should be, but that happened according to forces outside of human purpose—a weed popping up in a lawn, a tree that was not planted, a planted shrub drying up and turning brown, mushrooms emerging after a rain, a tree blown down in a storm, a hillside eroding, a leaf being blown in the wind, the community of plants along a roadside or in a ditch—that's Nature, and She Will Teach You.

Learning is not a job—it is a relationship, so even when you go to the walmart, Nature will show you something in the cracks of the pavement and the sad parking lot trees

I've been thinking about social media lately, namely which specific features make some platforms much worse for mental health than others. I know I am not alone in feeling like TikTok in particular has affected my inner life.

One thing I've noticed is that I feel so much more inhibited than before. I will barely begin to have an idea for anything--an art piece, a text post, a joke while talking to a friend--before another part of me criticizes it and ultimately talks me out of doing or saying anything. I think there are a few mechanisms found on many major platforms that promote this kind of self-policing.

First of all, comment section design. I know the comment section is a cesspool on most platforms, but it seems particularly bad on TikTok, Instagram reels, and Twitter. On TikTok and Instagram reels, you can view the comments while simultaneously viewing/ listening to the post. I would assume that the human brain is simply not wired to process feedback and criticism of a thing while simultaneously processing the thing itself for the first time. I think this really prevents the viewer from being able to authentically react to the content they're seeing, and also intimately links the content with the feedback in a way you don't get with books, movies, etc.

The sheer number of commenters versus the single poster also creates a weird dynamic that I'm sure we're all familiar with by now. I think a lot of us want social media to function more like a conversation, but instead it is a performance. This sucks if you don't want to perform, but simply to engage with people around you. Of course, this is all amplified by anonymity and algorithm-driven dissemination of content, where people engaging with your posts don't necessarily care about you and there are no consequences for aggression and negativety.

I think overall, these factors make it feel like the world is full of infinite, faceless critics. The part of your brain that evolved to keep you in good social standing with your community hates this. You truly can't make everyone happy, and maybe if you knew the people who can be so ruthless online you genuinely wouldn't care how they feel about you.

Anyway, we live in a society of control. Try to be yourself and have fun, even though it's apparently much harder than it sounds.