Consider the trees.

A mini collection of thoughts written years ago

My mind gets so consumed,
With this concept, game of Life, win or lose,
Your life can be what you want what you choose.

Can’t wait for y’all to call me cliche,
Every time same response “well you know what they say.”

Feel like there’s always music on what happened to silence,
Always commotion let’s take it one at a time, I wish.
Compulsion thats bread and butter our time,
n’ pills will not help swear they were lyin,
They decide the issues say who’s fine,
3 quarters a commercial side effects, are we that blind?
Promise we must just move from the screens,
From netflix n fort into the sun beams.
Give kids less homework,
Let them go to school later,
Let them think differently,
Accept who they are don’t listen to a hater.

The curvature of my jaw flipped upside down… This is what uncle Ben was talking about with the whole “great power great responsibility” thing.

EA Meeting room

How do we give people the instantly most enjoyable thing that they aren’t going to hate us for?

Remaster the Battlefronts, sir?

No we can’t do that yet.

Uh no sir we have to do that.

Damn it get out.

From my phone I type this. From my phone I inspire and create and I make and I say. I use the power of the pen, the power greater than the sword so it’s said, without the use of a pen. A pen is not needed. You are able to read what I have to say and internalize its meaning merely by the staring of your eyes into a screen. Into a black mirror you gaze and reflected back at you is the whole of the cosmos. But also words are beamed at you. Words, they say, or rather the word, was in the beginning. The beginning of what though? It couldn’t be said. Of course it wasn’t the beginning the beginning because naturally words come from man, and man was not in the beginning. Man comes from something older and more subtle and more transient. So then does the word reside without the man, without the speaker? Is the word really from the beginning? It’s certainly from the beginning of whatever it is that eventually led to me tapping on a blue light filter covering an iPhone screen so that to some degree I can convey an idea or something like an idea to you whoever you are “reading” it. It’s nonsense really but here we are. The DOW’s up.

What do we mean when we talk about growth? 

I’ve always love the film Birdman. One truly 21st century masterpiece. It’s a movie about the making of a play. Very Meta. The play is an adaptation of a short story of the same name, What We Mean When We Talk About Love. And for quite a while now I’ve held a certain line in this play in a film very close to my heart, and the quote goes, “What do we mean when we talk about love?” It turns out, after looking at quotes on IMDb and skipping around the movie… that’s not even a line. Somehow I extrapolated from the name of the short-story-turned-play-in-a-movie this question when the name of said short-story-turned-etc. is declarative, not inquisitive. 

it is via this origin story that I find myself faced with this, at first thought derivative but now seemly quite original, question. What do we mean when we talk about growth? Yes, this question may have a similar “meta” quality to its (not) source material, but it is at least one of two magnitudes less meta.

When I pose this question I do not ponder on what we mean by personal growth, the type of growth we consider to entail taking up jogging or working towards that promotion or going out to a singles night. Such growth is of course wondrous as well as paradoxical, much like what we might mean when we talk of that thing love. 

“Self improvement is masturbation,” says the infamous Tyler Durden in the film “Fight Club,” another fairly meta ordeal. It may have came out in 1999, but I’m going to count it as a 21st century masterpiece. That line, incidentally, like the line I imagined was delivered by the character Riggan in Birdman, was spoken to the actor Edward Norton’s on screen persona. Is that meta enough?

All Is all one in love, or so it’s said, and the same logic loosely follows in Fight Club *wink* *wink*. 

Growth is quite weird. Wherever you see growth you see too, in time, a perhaps simultaneously, decay. That whole equation of self improvement to masturbation I’m not sure about it, but then again its obviously a poetic gesture. It’s fun to not understand things fully. 

Tyler’s, if I may, absurd notion does point us in the direction I hope to take us. This idea of betterment as impotence, as hamster wheeling, as beating meat, brings us to sadly to a far too meta field of concern. Let’s try to keep our feet on the ground as best we can. 

Economics; it’s considered a science. Supplies and demands at equilibrium, seed investments blossoming into full grown corporations with numerous branches, and the tilling of prospect sheets for the sake of reaping a harvest abundant in new clientele. There does seem to be a balancing of religiosity at play here in the paradigm of economics. There’s the mystery of the silent hand, the answered or otherwise prayers for angel donors, and the assumed omnipotence of the market. 

It is the koan of economic growth that I here hope to present. Is growth defined as a third car, or is it simply a matter of GDP corrected for inflation? It seems when deeply codified it’s easy to say what’s growth and what’s not growth. It’s easy to assume based on an entrenched western metric how well a western country is performing economically, especially when things are generally good. And look, maybe it’s alright to use these metrics for some general sense of establishing where we’ve been and where we’re going.

It’s one those “if aliens came down” things where an extraterrestrial, when presented with the language of Davos people as they speak about growth in the past decade and the the future of the ai driven growth that they would I wager ponder, what is it they’re growing? Are they constantly adding stories to buildings? Are they tracking the number of trees being planted? (No.) Are these humans getting taller with each generation? Are they setting a metric to their happiness?

What’s funny is that the most reasonable question an alien would be likely to ask about “growth” is, “is it a metric of material wellbeing?”, and even that is not what it is. 

What is it? I could not tell you but it is bad bad bad language. It’s infuriating language. It’s borderline propaganda designed to pacify. It’s a bunch of baloney. 

What is it trying to get at, though? It’s trying to get at the sense of, I believe, improvement, innovation, a reason to get up in the morning, something to “give em things to do,” as is expressed in the Eagles song “The Last Resort.” 

Maybe it’s useful when a country is on its way to industrialization, if they want it. It’s good language when talking about growth of market share perhaps, or the growth in proliferation of new environmentally conscious technologies, but as a catch all, as something needed, as something assumed as being part of what economic or societal success is, it’s useless. 

“Somebody laid the mountains low, while the town got high.” Another quote from the Eagles song. Is that what defines growth? You tear down the mountain but then your Tower of Babel is taller than the mountain ever was to begin with?

Congrats.

Here’s a conversation worth having… Differences in average IQ between certain people groups does not diminish the inherent humanity in each of us.

I often have much ado about white folks in a similar way that Aaron McGruder does about black folks. That to me says something about race. 

An aside for those pushing the IQ debate: We don’t have to just be right about stuff. We need to consider what it is worth really pushing when what seems so important may be in fact unhelpful. 

I don’t intend to say everything will suddenly change as far as the possibly seemingly real differences in IQ that are provable across definable ethnographic lines. 

I would also mention, if here is a spirit of honesty, that as we revel in our shared humanity real world results may vary. There will be advantages to certain groups as per yes intellect but also inherited culture and familial wealth, connections in the community, looking like most of the other people, etc. 

People are people so why should it be u & i would get along so awkwardly? Can’t we settle with accepting one another’s humanity? Isn’t it worth it to attempt to conceive of what’s really going on behind the high towers of Emerald City? We’re all peeps. 

And let the best of us rise up. Because that’s the way forward. I still hold dear Mr. Jocko Willink’s sentiment of when a dire situation lacks leadership, the leadership naturally must arrive in one way or another. Let us celebrate those that accept this call of destiny, wherever they come from, for the hope of a better tomorrow. 

Jocko also speaks on how the role of the leader is the most vital role on any battlefield, and of course he extends the idea to the businessfield. This truth is exemplified in a show called Band of Brothers by the leader of the first American Airborne Division, the 506th, easy company.

There are numerous leaders depicted in the show that ranged the chain of command. The clear leader is Captain Winters, though. The scenes of his depicted military brilliance prove the essential necessity for leadership; just how much quick thinking and a strong heart can change the course of battle. 

I would say in fact that a role taken later in the career of the actor that played Cap. Winters translated almost one-to-one the Jocko paradigm of battlefield solutions translating to business savvy; the Character Bobby Axelrod. The show is called Billions and is one of those shows, like House of Cards, that makes the lives of America’s elite seem exciting and intoxicating. But it’s not, as far as I know about it. 

This is all quite a tangent, so allow me to conclude. 

Lebron James is a genius as far as I’m concerned. Ye a genius. Einstein was a genius, Thomas Jefferson, a genius. Genius is good; it’s not everything, and yet.   And look since we’re saying things here being a guy, a Man, if you will, that’s good too. Don’t worry, you don’t have to tell anybody I told you so. And I mean that for the ladies too. 

We’re all people. Let’s get with that and then we can think of other things. And let’s praise those that embody the supersession of mere life, wherever they come from.

This is going to be one of those rare essays that isn’t about high falutin bs. It’s about how the Apple iOS operating system is really good. 

Simply, that. I’m listening to “You Never Give Me Your Money” right now playing on my iPhone, and the Apple Music display has this cool feature where the album art blurs towards the top of the screen and it looks so cool how the blurred out trees and blue sky background the time and your battery status. It’s like, futuristic and streamlined and not uber sterile. 

The music can get a little blown out when it’s turned way up, but the way that they have speakers at the top and bottom of the phone now is legit for watching stuff and makes the whole listening experience better. 

I’m not here trying to be like “Apple is a perfect company” ya know they’ve got that lawsuit pending for anti-competitive practices regarding the App Store and whatever the in person stores can be sterile and it’s basically a new religion. I mean, damn, the symbol is literally a bitten apple, ring a bell? (Eden.) but still c’mon now let’s take a minute to be grateful for something. 

I’m grateful to be able to read socially unacceptable books on my iPhone and not be judged for it cause nobody knows what I’m doing tehe. I’m grateful to save screenshots of interesting passages and Merriam Webster definitions so I can revisit the word later… they say it’s some three exposures to a given word before you actually know and may recite it in conversation with the juice bar girl. 

I struggle sometimes to press the right words when I’m texting but I’m typing out this very essay with only my thumbs and once I get the hang of it I’m like 30-45 words a minute and that’s not that bad. 

I like to only have a few things on the Home Screen background of my phone and I always put widgets at the top so I don’t have to reach way up there. Plus, how cool is the screen pull down feature!?

Get this, they have music videos on Apple Music, always streaming way HD. I’m grateful for that so that I don’t have to deal with ads in my face on yt just to watch the “I Know ?” Music video and cry about how Kylie totally f’ed up. Mhm, Emily…

I wish I could set the music shuffle to actually be random and not be set to an algorithm but I guess what do I know about anything anyway. 

I had an Apple Watch but I think they’re actually completely superfluous and a waste of money and stupid but it was good for runs when I still wanted to listen to music running. Now I don’t listen to anything when I run, just life. Also I’m not going to say anything about the VR, just let be there. 

The AirPods Max are exquisite. Whenever I’m in an Apple Store I’m over at the station straight blasting “yamborghini high” bobbing my head heavy. I like doing that cause church can be too serious sometimes. 

I watched the keynote for the introduction of the iPhone recently and it’s so great to watch Steve Jobs again. That guy was special. A crazy thing about watching that keynote is that so much of how the iPhone 15 works is 1-for-1 how the original iPhone was designed. There was only one camera *gasp* and no “dynamic island,” but it really is the same platform.