#does anyone actually read my commentary or am I just rambling to the void

[dhm-rising]

Firebird Serpent

Female Auraboa - Fire Unusual

Auburn/Coal/Carrot

Mochlus/Riopa/Stinger

[bcbdrums]

Mistake

I am depressed, so you get angst fic.  Credit for an outstanding line near the end goes to Gothicthundra.

FFn    AO3

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Mistake

Six year old Drew Lipsky sat in the school cafeteria squished between two children he didn't know. He knew their names of course, as his first grade classmates. But he didn't know them. His classmates had all gone to kindergarten together. But he was the new kid.

He nibbled on his sandwich as he watched his classmates and listened to their avid conversations, not really catching any of it but simply studying their mannerisms and how they interacted. That is, until one of the other kids addressed him.

"What's that?" a girl said, her face twisted in disgust. He thought her name was Sarah.

Drew followed her gaze to his peanut butter sandwich and then back to her confused face.

"My lunch," he replied softly.

Drew had barely been spoken to by any of his classmates in the few days he had officially been in the school. And as he had never been to kindergarten, or preschool, or daycare...he didn't really know how to talk to them either. He was an only child, after all.

"Why does it look so funny?" Sarah asked, wrinkling her nose further. Drew noticed her friend next to her, Amanda, doing the same. And some of the boys around them, who had been talking about some TV show Drew had never heard of but was apparently the favorite show of his entire class, stopped their conversation to stare at his sandwich and at him and the girls.

Drew processed all of this while looking between them and his sandwich. A feeling he couldn't quite describe started to come over him; a feeling of being confined, and like ants were crawling over his skin.

"It's peanut butter and jam."

One of the boys—Matthew—leaned in closer. "What's jam? Why does the peanut butter look funny?"

The feeling of being closed in got worse. And a new feeling—one that he'd somehow made a mistake—began to take over. He wanted to undo the mistake, but...he wasn't even sure what he'd done wrong. And now all of his classmates at the table were looking at him and making faces at his sandwich. He struggled to think of something to say, but before he could...

"This is a sandwich," Sarah said, holding out a food item young Drew had ever seen.

It was...a peanut butter sandwich. At least, as far as he understood the concept. But the 'bread' was white and didn't look like bread. And between the two slices that squished very appealingly under Sarah's fingers, were a brown substance and dark purple substance that must have been peanut butter and jam. But they didn't look like the peanut butter and jam on his sandwich.

"This is peanut butter and jelly," Sarah continued with an air of superiority. Drew suddenly noticed that almost all of his classmates had sandwiches like Sarah's. He had missed it due to staring at James's prepackaged Lunchable—another food item he had never seen before.

Of course, he had also spent some of the time staring at James himself. His classmate with the rich brown hair and the name that was just...cool, was sitting directly across from him, eating the colorful and fascinating prepackaged lunch and drinking...chocolate milk. It was in a little paper box with a tiny plastic straw—yet another thing Drew had never seen.

What was chocolate milk?

He wanted to think about this. And he also wanted to keep turning over James's cool name in his head, and the way the letter E didn't make a sound and yet was crucial to the name being what it was. But he couldn't, for the way everyone was staring at him and his lunch.

"What's wrong with your bread?"

It was Amanda who had spoken this time, and Drew looked down at the bread his mother had baked. It had smelled so wonderful coming out of the oven the night before and was still soft when he bit into it.

"Nothing," Drew finally said, wishing all of the eyes would leave him.

"Where did you buy it?" Sarah asked.

"My mommy made it," Drew explained. The feeling of somehow having made a mistake grew stronger.

Matthew started laughing. "It looks like poop. Poop bread!"

Drew looked down and quickly took another bite of his sandwich. It was delicious.

"He's eating the poop sandwich!" Matthew shouted, pointing as he began cackling. This brought the attention of others, even at the surrounding tables. And across from him, drinking his chocolate milk, the cool-looking James with the cool name smirked and began laughing. Drew hunched down as he chewed the delicious food his mother had made him, ignoring the laughter of his peers.

-------------------------------

"Did you get those glasses on purpose?"

Eleven year old Drew looked up from cleaning his glasses in the school bathroom to where Matthew, Zach, and Shaun were standing several feet behind him. Always distant, in case they might catch whatever made him...him. But always nearby, ready to taunt and mock.

"Yes," he answered plainly, confused. Why wouldn't he have gotten the glasses on purpose? He couldn't see the teacher's handwriting on the chalkboard from his seat in the back of the classroom, and he and his mom had only recently realized that he'd actually been in need of vision assistance for years.

After putting the blessed new glasses back on, he looked through the mirror to where James stood a few feet to the left, closer to the bathroom stalls, creating a triangle between him and the group of bullies. His sometimes-friend looked equally perplexed at the question, but forgot it instantly as the group beckoned the popular boy to join them. He did so with his usual cool and confident smirk, and the gang headed out of the smelly bathroom.

Drew was prepared to ignore the familiar 'mistake' feeling as they all left, but when James tossed Drew one last look before leaving, the dim light from above glinted off of James's own glasses and understanding suddenly hit Drew. His new glasses were almost identical to James's. It was coincidence... But his classmates spent a lot of time trying to destroy the thready friendship he had with the one and only person who didn't mock him. And the similarity of the glasses would just be used against him.

He wondered, as he had for as long as he could remember, why his classmates seemed determined that he not have any friends. And the feeling of somehow having made a mistake was starting to take root in his mind.

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Toward the end of sixth grade, when James had fully immersed himself in the clique of the other boys, he had taken it in silence as Matthew told him to his face that he wasn't wanted, and to go annoy someone else. He had tried following them on the playground for days to get James's attention back, but gave up after that declaration. He spent the rest of his recesses of sixth grade alone.

In eighth grade on a class trip to a museum, the boys had acted suspiciously friendly, drawing his attention to a display on the history of robots. As he had gazed at the display and begun talking excitedly of what he already knew, he realized he was surrounded by silence. He looked around to discover the boys had ditched him, their drawing him to the display a purposeful distraction tactic.

By his junior year of high school he had given up, relishing instead in talking to his chemistry professor after school. The older man would always smile, nod, and hum his acquiescences to young Drew's ramblings. Drew knew in his heart the teacher wasn't a 'friend' and didn't really 'care.' But he tolerated him... It was the most Drew had ever gotten from anyone, so he indulged every day after class for the entire semester.

He forgot about trying to be friends with James for years, burying himself instead in his studies and reading Captain Constellation fanfiction instead as he tried to fill the void. He let the fictional characters and his joy of learning put a temporary bandage on the wound that had been in his heart for as long as he could remember. From the prank calls in elementary school, to the way other kids would flat-out ignore him in middle school and high school... And in college, as always, it seemed everyone already had friends and he was still the outsider.

But after the two quick years of powering through all of his general education requirements, he could finally devote his attention to science. And that was when he remembered James.

James had a new posse now, as he called them. Bobby Chen and Anand Ramesh weren't just cool kids he tagged along with in the social chaos that was childhood, but genuine friends. And Drew wondered if finally, with their shared love of science, he could truly and finally be James's friend. And maybe even have more than one.

---------------------------------

Time slowly crushed Drew's hopes. Whether he was lab partners with James or Anand or Bobby, the three genius men always laughed with one another, and Drew was simply...there. When the group went to get lunch or dinner together, Drew was never invited. He tagged along anyway, and none of them told him no, so...it was okay, right? It was implied that all were invited when someone said, "Let's get some lunch," and they all migrated together toward the University Union. And during the meals he laughed at the jokes, tried to insert commentary and new topics...but he was always ignored.

He saw a glimmer of hope one day in the lab when Anand and James teased Bobby about his glasses, both of whom had ditched their frames for contacts years before. But Bobby simply responded that he didn't need contact lenses to get the ladies. Drew had never had a witty comeback in his life. And it didn't matter anyway, as the posse weren't teasing him about his glasses... For once, he was grateful. But he started to wonder if it was his conversation that was the problem.

After that he tried to be more assertive, having studied the endless back and forth banter of the group he called friends, though he didn't know if they applied the appellation to him. He determined that clever and quick commentary were necessary in friendship, and so boldly practiced at every chance he got.

It proved to be a mistake, as the other three did in fact start to notice him more, and the teasing and mocking he remembered from all of his formative years returned. He couldn't tell which remarks about his nerdy looks, his lack of intelligence—that one always cut deep—and obvious virginity were part of the posse's cultural banter, and which were actual insults. He played all of them off as humor, however, laughing along with the other men no matter how deeply the words hurt.

But still he stuck with them, walking behind the trio on the sidewalk when it grew too narrow for four, left sitting on the metal folding chair at video game nights and Captain Constellation marathon parties because James's apartment's sofa wasn't large enough for three.

They were, after all, his only friends.

But like every other attempt at social interaction in his life, it wasn't to be. The robot dates he built as the ultimate attempt to win them over proved to be his greatest mistake of all.

------------------------------------

Drakken watched Shego pass through the door of the lab, not even giving him a glance or a hello before she flopped into her chair far from his workstation, grimacing as she tried to find a comfortable position, and then flipped her magazine open to the dog-eared page.

She was so beautiful... But those were thoughts that could never be entertained. He locked them away again, until such time he knew they would unwittingly break out. No, that wasn't in his cards. But perhaps...

He swallowed hard on the word that froze in his mind and brought a lump to his throat.

...Friendship?

She mocked him and insulted him more harshly than the school boys or his college posse ever had. The only real attention she ever gave him was to understand the plan before heading out on a caper. But...she was still there.

After three years of nothing but failed plans, jail stints, and injury to body and ego, she was still there. Yes, he paid her well. But plenty of other villains paid well too.

"So what's the plan today, dingus?" was her eventual greeting that day. He blushed and whirled around to face his desk, worried she'd caught him staring. But then he realized she'd never looked up from her magazine. She was just...talking.

She was talking to him. And she didn't have to. She didn't technically need to be in the lab, either.

"Robots of destruction," he answered after a moment, despite his desperate desire to keep the new plan secret.

"Ugh, not again..." she groaned.

Drakken smirked and left it at that. He couldn't tell her everything... Because if this one worked, he would be ruling the world when it was over. And he would get a small revenge on James in the course of it, using his technology to make his robots function. But that wasn't the real reason for his secrecy. He was sure this one would work, and maybe...if he took over the world... Maybe Shego would be nicer to him. Maybe...she would come to bowling night without complaining, and come to karaoke without it being written into her contract. Maybe...if he was successful...

He turned to look at her again, still staring down at her magazine. She didn't have to come to the lab. She didn't have to sit on the edge of his desk and make cracks at him while he worked. She didn't have to have dinner with him, or join him for movie nights on the sofa he'd brought to the lair to make it feel more homey...

Despite every warning in his head, he stood up and took a few steps toward her chair. She didn't look up.

"Um...Shego?" he asked.

His heart was pounding. It was a mistake, it was a mistake, it was a mistake... 'Don't do it!'

"Hn?" she asked, narrowing her eyes in annoyance as she looked up from the magazine. Even twenty feet apart, he backed away from her immediate ire.

"Are...are we friends?"

Shego's brow rose. She blinked in surprise, and then without fully meeting his eyes she rolled her own and looked back at the magazine.

"I'm not watching movies with you anymore, if this is what that's going to lead to."

Drakken swallowed again as he hung his head and turned back to his desk. The familiar feeling of ants crawling over his body got worse as did the feeling of having made a mistake as he replayed her rejection. It all coalesced to a clenching pain in his chest, and hot tears in his eyes that he struggled to hold back.

He doodled with his pencil in the corner of a blueprint he'd been working on for the new lair complex his latest plan would need. Why couldn't he have left it alone? Pretending to have a friend was better than the truth. And the result was he had lost his movie night companion.

His bitter thoughts continued deeper, back over his past desperate attempts at friendship that had always ended in disaster, no matter what he did.

He nearly let the pencil fall as reality suddenly slapped him cold. It...didn't matter what he did. From the very beginning, from the first time he had met other children...he was destined to be a laughing-stock. He had always been different, even when by all rights he should have fit in seamlessly. But he never had, and he never would. He was the wrong puzzle piece thrown into the box. And so it didn't matter how much he tried to fit... He wasn't made to.

He glanced at Shego reading her magazine, part of him clinging to hope despite the truth he knew he needed to simply accept. Wouldn't he be happier if he just accepted it? He looked down at his notes about the Hephaestus project. He glanced at Shego again. Despite the endless failures that were the hallmark of his life...she kept coming back. He closed his eyes tightly, angry with himself for the hope that wouldn't die.

He had tried for years to change himself to fit in, to adapt to everyone and everything around him. But it simply wasn't possible. It wasn't that he was making mistakes... Drew Lipsky was the mistake.

Dr. Drakken...was his last chance.

[iol247]

Hyakujos Fox

Once when Hyakujo delivered some Zen lectures an old man attended them, unseen by the monks. At the end of each talk when the monks left so did he. But one day he remained after they had gone, and Hyakujo asked him: `Who are you?’

The old man replied: `I am not a human being, but I was a human being when the Kashapa Buddha preached in this world. I was a Zen master and lived on this mountain. At that time one of my students asked me whether the enlightened man is subject to the law of causation. I answered him: “The enlightened man is not subject to the law of causation.” For this answer evidencing a clinging to absoluteness I became a fox for five hundred rebirths, and I am still a fox. Will you save me from this condition with your Zen words and let me get out of a fox’s body? Now may I ask you: Is the enlightened man subject to the law of causation?’

Hyakujo said: `The enlightened man is one with the law of causation.’

At the words of Hyakujo the old man was enlightened. `I am emancipated,’ he said, paying homage with a deep bow. `I am no more a fox, but I have to leave my body in my dwelling place behind this mountain. Please perform my funeral as a monk.’ Then he disappeared.

– Excerpt from the koan Hyakujo’s Fox

In Zen, a koan is a story or dialogue designed to trigger and test understanding. It’s a fascinating literary form. Incredibly dense. Often, koans convey multiple layers of meaning in less than a hundred words. Sometimes just a few sentences.

The koan Hyakujo’s Fox, sometimes called the Wild Fox Koan, is of particular interest to me because it touches on many of the themes near and dear to us here at Epsilon Theory. Here a monk transforms himself into a fox by “clinging to absoluteness.” While this is absurd on its face, it’s really just a fancy way of arguing that perception is reality.

You are what you eat, the saying goes. More importantly: you are what you think.

Recently, a friend and I were texting about the meaning of life. (what? you and your friends don’t text regularly about the meaning of life?) My friend wrote that in the end, all you can really do is carry your cross to the finish line. I quite like this. It cuts right to the heart of the issue. There are no Answers. There is only Process. I did suggest adding an inscrutable Zen twist, however. My version:

In the end, all you can really do is carry your cross to the finish line. Except there is no finish line, there is no cross, and there is no you.  

People sometimes ask me, if all the world is narrative and meme, then how can we tell what’s real?

As far as social reality is concerned, it’s about as real as any game or theatre production. There’s the White Collar Corporate Power Game, for example. There’s Partisan Political Theatre. There’s the Social Status Game. If you prefer more high-brow forms of entertainment, you can indulge in Religious Theatre and Intellectual Theatre (I have a soft spot for the latter). But let’s not kid ourselves. It’s theatre and games, all the way down.

This shouldn’t come as news to anyone. Heck, it’s been right there in the Bible for over a thousand years. That bit about the camel passing through the eye of the needle easier than the rich man making it to the Kingdom of Heaven? That’s Jesus teaching that wealth and status are not inherently meaningful or worthwhile. Accumulating wealth and power are just games we play.

A while back, I wrote a note about this manufactured nature of social realities. I wrote then that it was a clear eyes note. Well. This is the full hearts sequel. 

You see, I’m pretty confident asserting that social reality–what we think of as “how the world works”–is the output of the following chaotic process.

nature (basically physics & biology) + nurture (operant conditioning) + randomness (error term)

I say this is a chaotic process because social reality is a three-body problem. There’s no closed-form solution. And the process is extremely sensitive to starting conditions. Everything else, as they say, is commentary.

I’m pretty sure the above is true. Yet it troubles me. First and foremost, it induces many a dark night of existential dread—that thick, dark curtain of despair that tends to descend whenever we contemplate our inevitable end. It’s not really physical death that bothers us (if it were, we wouldn’t find very much consolation in religion). No. What really bothers us is ego-death. What really bothers us is the dissolution of the self.

After all, physical death is no biggie if your consciousness (soul) transcends physical death. If that’s the case, then dying isn’t much different from moving to another country. Ego-death, on the other hand, is true death. Ego-death is non-existence. The void.

So what if there is no grand meaning to it all?

What if it all really does reduce down to nature + nurture + randomness, and the entire arc of the history of our universe is just a single run in some elaborate Monte Carlo simulation?

Frankly, you can take this to some pretty dark and nihilistic places. Perhaps no one articulates it better than the Misfit, the psychopathic antagonist of Flannery O’Connor’s short story, “A Good Man Is Hard To Find.”

“Jesus was the only One that ever raised the dead,” the Misfit continued, “and He shouldn’t have done it. He thrown everything off balance. If He did what He said, then it’s nothing for you to do but throw away everything and follow Him, and if He didn’t, then it’s nothing for you to do but enjoy the few minutes you got left the best way you can—by killing somebody or burning down his house or doing some other meanness to him. No pleasure but meanness,” he said and his voice had become almost a snarl.

The Misfit is one of my favorite antagonists in literature. You can read him almost any way you want. Maybe he’s nothing more than a rambling, murderous redneck. Or maybe he’s the most coldly rational, self-aware, introspective character in the story. The Misfit spent an awful lot of time in prison, after all. He’s had plenty of time to meditate on The Meaning of Life.

“Some fun!” exclaims his accomplice, Bobby Lee, after their gang finishes killing the Grandmother and her family.

“Shut up Bobby Lee,” the Misfit said. “It’s no real pleasure in life.”

(SPOILER) That’s the last line of the story. These days I like to read the Misfit as a kind of anti-zen monk. He’s got it all twisted. But he hasn’t necessarily got it wrong. He’s Hyakujo’s Fox. For clinging to absoluteness, he has been sentenced to suffer 500 rebirths as a psychotic spree killer.

So what the hell are we supposed to do about all this, exactly? How does one cultivate a clear-eyed view of our world without embracing murderous nihilism?

For starters, we quit looking for Answers. They don’t exist. Self-actualization has no closed-form solution.

But there is a Process.

The three images above are all of ensōs. An ensō is just a circle, drawn in a single stroke. Hitsuzendō is a form of zen practice where one draws ensōs as a meditative practice. The process is simplicity itself. You just draw a circle with a calligraphy brush. Maybe you close the circle. Maybe you don’t. Maybe you’ve got a thick, continuous circle. Maybe not. It doesn’t really matter what the circle looks like. Don’t overthink it. Just draw a circle.

Here’s the trick: everything we do in life and investing is as simple as drawing an ensō. Every. Single. Thing. As Ben wrote in his Clear Eyes, Full Hearts, Can’t Lose manifesto:

“You want freedom? You want an autonomy of mind and spirit? You want that as an inalienable right? A right that is yours simply because you are a human being? Well, that comes at a price. And the Kantian price is this: everything you do, you must do for the right reasons.

It’s really as simple – and as difficult – as that.

What are the right reasons? You don’t need me to tell you. You already know what they are, in every situation you’re in. You have a moral compass. But I’ll tell you anyway. Acting for the right reasons means acting in a way that reflects who you ARE as a moral human being. It means acting for your identity as a moral human being, not as a propitiation to some god or potentate, not as an exchange for some “greater good” that someone else has talked you into pursuing. Not even for gaining a Supreme Court seat. Not even for denying a Supreme Court seat.”                                            

Note that I wrote this was simple above. I didn’t say it was going to be easy.

Question: Is morality socially constructed through a process where biological systems are socially conditioned to respond in particular ways to particular stimuli, or is morality an innate moral compass manifested in Kantian ethics?

Answer: Yes.

Now draw yours.

https://www.epsilontheory.com/hyakujos-fox/