
Hobo Monks, Essentialist Humans, and Pleasure - zackattack
http://www.zacharyburt.com/2010/07/hobo-monks-essentialist-humans-and-pleasure/
======
futuremint
I find it fascinating that Zen/Tao "teachings" for thousands of years have
focused on what seems to be one of the most difficult areas of human
existence: "man vs. himself".

Modern cognitive therapy seems to be an institutionalized version of the whole
Zen thing which I find amusing. Personally I've never been happier once I
realized that the world _is_ literally _what you make of it_ , that is, it is
all up to your internal interpretation.

Once you realize that your mind is constantly interpreting everything, you can
learn - through practice and meditation - to just be however you want to be
and be in complete control of yourself.

Because in the end... you're just being... unless you're not and then it
doesn't matter.

~~~
sigzero
I don't believe anybody can be "in complete control" of ones self. That just
is not in our nature.

~~~
Oxryly
If you're not in control of yourself, who is?

~~~
zackattack
This could get weird if we don't define our terms. If your "self" is your
mind/attention, then sigzero is right by saying complete control is
impossible; the human mind is too whimsical to ever be fully reined in. But we
can consciously course-correct...

~~~
Oxryly
Self could be your mind/attention, but there's no reason you can't expand your
idea of self to include your ego, mind, entire body. I suppose the question
is: will you take responsibility for what goes on within your skin?

------
edanm
Interesting read. Loved the ending!

I do wonder whether it is better to be more rational. One way or the other
though, I'm sure it's better to _realize_ you're an irrational being, instead
of clinging to the false belief that most of us have that they are, indeed,
rational.

------
powrtoch
"Why is this? Is it because people are not rational actors? No."

Yes, it is. This article is just one example after another of human
irrationality being derailed by evolutionary hacks.

~~~
Gormo
Or you could say that it is because people _are_ rational actors, but that
_rationality is often itself irrational_.

Reason is a useful and important skill, but reason is the manipulation of
symbols that exist within our own minds, not autonomously in the external
world. If we take reason for granted, apply it without recognizing its
subjective nature, and consider its product to be objective knowledge of the
world, then we are acting rationally, but it is irrational to do so.

------
joe_the_user
While this post deals with interesting ideas and issues, the writing wanders
and leaves out enough detail to make the final product unsatisfying.

The author claims people believe items have essences for cognitive and
evolutionary reasons. Fair enough claim but I see no real evidence _even after
following the links_. The Zen story is nice but somewhat tangential to the
original claim.

Indeed scanning the links, I gradually get the impression the entire blog
involves a stream of appealing ideas lacking details and coherence. The whole
exercise seems "not even wrong" but like a wandering between interesting,
related but "mushy" ideas, something of a poster-boy for the bad kind of web-
generated fuzzy thinking.

One example of a paragraph that in a link that bothered me in it's level of
non-communication: _"I learned this lesson when I was an intern at a software
company in Silicon Valley. I was debating with my boss about what kind of copy
should go on our new site, MaviShare.com. This was in the days before data-
driven decision making became universally embedded in start-up culture (the
correct answer to the debate is really “who cares? Try it and see, and let the
results speak for themselves”). Anyway, he asked his MBA girlfriend (now
wife), and she said, “People like steps.” It’s a lesson I took to heart."_
(What "copy" - "ad copy"? The "copy utility". Anyway, the reader simply never
discovers where the "steps" come in, in either meaning of "copy", and I found
this incompletely expressed idea psychically bothersome enough to complain
here. What's the lesson? What?? It's not in the earlier or later paragraphs
either). See [http://www.zacharyburt.com/2010/06/why-games-are-fun-the-
psy...](http://www.zacharyburt.com/2010/06/why-games-are-fun-the-psychology-
explanation/)

~~~
zackattack
I hear you about the confusion there. It's really just shoddy writing. One of
my weaknesses as a writer, one that I just recently became explicitly aware
of, is that when I write, I do it after stacking lots of "schemas": I
understand A because of B, and understand B because of C, but many of my
audience might only understand C, and I talk about A without first meeting
them at C, graduating to B, and then stacking A. (In case you're interested,
I'm planning on writing a cohesive post about this phenomenon soon).

Many of my claims are scientifically backed but I simply do not care enough to
go through and cite them; I would like to but it's not a good use of my time
at this point. If you are curious about a specific claim I am always happy to
point you in the right direction of the research. Other claims are admittedly
speculation and I almost always denote them as such. There is a storied
history of philosophers engaging in thought experiments so dismissing my
actions as part of some NEW pseudoscience born through the web is erroneous.
Likely many of the things I discussed (such as the precise nature of memory
encoding, storage, and recall) will not be unraveled in our time. But you may
be pleased to know though that I have discussed several of these articles with
academics and would've hesitated to publish if I'd got strong dissent.

P.S. The lesson is "Actions to achieve our goals are explicit, and prepackaged
so we can directly execute on them." The text copy I was referring to was
steps for the user to take. Thanks for the feedback.

