The System

    This post will attempt to cover the basic premises and understanding of what I call the System. Let's start with what I define as the System. By System I do not mean society or the world at large, but far from it. The System is you. Your individuality and who you are is a system. I use this term specifically to frame a more accurate understanding of free will. Many people either follow one of two beliefs on free will. Traditionally in the West, we have regarded the individual as autonomous; capable of coming to our own conclusions and enacting our own will regardless of our environment. In more recent times people have begun to suspect that our free will is not as free as we may like to presume, but instead our thoughts and actions are governed by our genetics and upbringing. We are simply a result of the environment we grew up in. Both of these understandings are false, and our tendency in the West to whole-heartedly follow such polarized beliefs is a culture I think we all would do well to move away from. Instead, we are creatures of free will, but our will is bound to the world around us. If you are hungry, you are more likely to eat food. If you are cold, you are more likely to put on a jacket or turn up the thermostat. This is why I use the term system. 

    A system implies that the whole is comprised of smaller and simpler parts, but the trends and characteristics of the whole are a result of the interactions of those parts together in complex ways. Some of these parts you have control of, but some you don't. Fully understanding the implications of this framework are important for better understanding the nature of free will, how to maximize enacting your will in your life, and how to better positively impact the world around you in a meaningful way. Without this understanding you are more than likely to struggle with yourself on accomplishing your goals, and will largely underestimate the power and impact of your will on you, your environment, and the people around you.

    Chess is a wonderful game, as well as a beautiful example of a complex system. There are only six unique pieces and relatively few rules, but somehow out of that emerges complex interactions between all the pieces and the players themselves. Despite them not being defined in the rulebook, pins, forks, and gambits are littered throughout chess games. These are examples of what I mean by trends and characteristics that result from complex interactions between the smaller parts. This means that for anyone who wishes to play chess and be good at it, they not only have to learn all the rules, but must also learn to understand these more complex trends and how to deal with them. In some instances you will make a move to prevent later catastrophes. In others, you will allow seemingly terrible situations to come your way only to either deal with them, or gain an advantage elsewhere. However, let us call attention to an important detail. If you set a chess grandmaster in front of any layman, you would do well to bet that the grandmaster would win. This means that a thorough understanding of a complex system allows you to control what you can in such a way that greater trends seemingly outside of your control begin to come to fruition as a result of your free will. This is the core understanding that I would like to present in this post.

    Working with our system can be very similar to playing a chess game. As stated previously, there are some things you can control and some things you cannot. There are also some things you have partial control over. For example, you can stop and start your breathing, but most of the time it operates on its own. This means that, much like chess, in order to utilize your system well, and therefore expand your free will beyond simply what you have control over in the moment, which often is actually quite a small list, you must understand the the interworkings of the elements you do and do not have control over. This will then allow you to more accurately break down problems in your life into the parts of your system that cause them and make decisions that enact your will on what you have control over in order to achieve the greater trends over your system which rectify the problem you are trying to fix.

    This means your will has as large of an impact as you wish for it to have. One can argue that, because elements of a system are out of their control, they do not have control over the larger trends of that system. Their free will therefore is limited only to the elements of the system that are fully under their control at a given time. While there is some truth to this, it would be foolish to assume that the impact of the decisions you make only effects the things you have control over. While you do not have control over the feeling of being hungry, you do have control over eating food, and therefore have partial control over feeling hungry. As you begin to understand the broader impact of the decisions you make, you are equipping yourself to better understand which decisions are good for the long run, as well as how to get yourself to make those decisions. You are therefore understanding the true limitations of your immediate free will while also maximizing your understanding of the far reaching effects of the enactment of that will.

    One important amendment I would like to make on my earlier statement is when I said that the System is you. While in a simple sense this might be true, I would like to introduce a more complex yet more robust understanding of the System. The System I am referring to isn't simply you, but is centered around you. This means that the System is not only you as a person, but also the environment you are in. This includes the entertainment you take in, the place you live in, where you work, and perhaps more importantly the people in your life. If we take our current understanding of the interworkings of the System and apply it to this new definition, it means that all of these ought to be taken into account when trying to understand aspects of your life. This also implies that while you have no control over the people around you, you do have control over how you impact their lives. The words you say and the actions you take will impact their systems in some way, and if you fully understand this it equips you to not only bring your life to a greater state of being, but also potentially impact the lives of the people around you for the better such that they can have a greater understanding and control over their Systems. This makes that short list of what you do have control over in any give moment, as well as a deep understanding of your system crucial to your ability to effect the larger trends and characteristics of that system such that you accomplish your goals and bring yourself out of being tossed to and fro by the other elements in your life.

    This post has been inspired by my continual research into philosophy, psychology, and neurology. The more I learn about how I work and operate, the more I begin to see why I used to struggle so much between what I knew was good for me and what I wanted in the moment. This post has covered the basic understanding of the System, but has not gone into detail on its interworkings or how to better yourself with this understanding. This is where I leave you, the reader, to do your own research. Now that you know the nature of your free will and how you can extend that free will to larger, more complex foci in your life, I implore you to do your own research. The internet is a powerhouse of information... literally. So go do your research a try to learn how you operate so that you may better play the game of life.

    

Synergy: Debate and Discussion

 (Note: I have not written in a while so if you are reading this, I hope you enjoy and any feedback would be appreciated. Also, I tried to maintain consistency in the way in which I use words. I would like to specifically point out the words "dialogue" and "discussion". These words can easily be interchangeable, but I wanted to keep them separate in this post simply to differentiate between the ideas of adding onto and refining an idea.)

    This post will attempt to concretely outline the lens through which good dialogue is achieved. In a dialogue, there are two or more parties that are discussing a topic or range of topics in the pursuit of expanding one's own knowledge and more clearly understanding truth. While most people would stop their definition at merely discussing a topic or range of topics, pursuing knowledge and truth must be at the core of each party. Without this, one of two scenarios is likely to follow. Firstly, the parties involved in the dialogue are in total agreement about the topic and no critical analysis is achieved. This can easily lead to a cognitive dissonance that can stunt the growth of the parties involved, especially if any party later initiates a dialogue with another party that is far more critical and in complete disagreement with the first. The second scenario that is likely to follow is that the two parties, simply trying to be right, are not willing to listen to any reasonable argument that does not coincide with their own. This leads to either a situation of total frustration with the other party, or a "agree to disagree" scenario that does not edify either party involved.

    As a quick side note, let us first determine two presuppositions I made in my original definition of dialogue. Firstly, that truth is objective. While the arguments for both the objectivity and subjectivity of truth may be explored in a later post, for the purposes of this post, we must assume some portion of truth is objective and able to be explored by both parties. You may argue that gravity does not exist, but that doesn't take away the objective truth that when you drop an object, so long as it is denser than the air around us and no other force is acting upon it, it will fall to the ground. This is objective and observable by both parties involved in any discussion on the nature of gravity and our planet. The second presupposition is that each party involved in any dialogue on any complex topic may have a perspective of truth that another party may not. This means that in any dialogue, you must assume that the other person may have something of value to say that you may not know yet. This comes about for two reasons. Firstly, no two people grow up in the same environment, and therefore each person will by definition develop a different perspective on life and many other topics than the perspectives of their peers. We can define this as static intelligence or the total accumulation of thoughts and experiences of a person. The second reason this is true is because we are highly dynamic creatures. Even if one has never heard of a complex idea or topic, once given the basic premises of that idea, they are capable of comparing that with the rest of their experiences and extrapolating from those basic premises into more complex reasoning and thought. These two premises support the definition of dialogue previously stated by understanding that there is a virtually infinite expanse of knowledge that no two people may have the same range of, and that truth is an object of which we all have a perspective on, and are therefore capable of getting a better picture of truth through sharing what information we have with each other. Understanding this, we can easily understand not just the use of dialogue, but the reason we as humans love it so much. Having more knowledge or a better/deeper understanding of topics in our lives give us a larger and more detailed map with which we can navigate complex and difficult decisions that come up in life. Dialogue, therefore, is not just fun, but a potentially crucial endeavor that can radically determine our framework with which we make decisions.

        This leads us to the most general tools with which we engage in good dialogue: debate and discussion. By debate, we typically mean one party defending an argument with further logic or evidence while another party attempts to meaningfully break down an argument with counter evidence or more solid logic. The argument must be broken down in a meaningful way such that the main pursuit of the dialogue is furthered. Often, a single argument will not be the entirety of a dialogue. Instead, it is a series of arguments and discussions of subtopics that lead through the mess of reality into a better understanding of a topic or the answer to a complex question. Therefore, the breaking down of an argument in debate ought to serve one of two purposes. Firstly, it must be to show the inadequacies of that argument to answering the broader question; the question that brought about the argument in the first place. Secondly, breaking down an argument can be done because of the presuppositions it brings about that might muddy later discussion or argument. Essentially you are either pointing out the flaw in the logic or clearly defining the limitations as to the application of an argument. This is critical in dialogue because the pursuit is truth. Therefore any argument, when applied in the correct scope, ought to always match up with the appropriate empirical evidence.

    Discussion functions very differently from debate. Debate is used to tear away the irrelevant or untrue ideas within the dialogue. Discussion is instead used to add in fresh ideas, pivot to new topics, or simply present a new question or idea with which to grapple. This can be in reference to an argument already presented, or, having exhausted the exploration of an idea, attempt to use the new, well refined understanding of that idea to answer another question or apply it to a new scenario. However, it must be understood that we are dynamic creatures capable of drastic change, and therefore the switch from either discussion or debate to the other may happen at any moment. Dialogue is an attempted exploration of truth, but truth is a very large thing. Therefore a conversation about complicated topics will often fall into many rabbit holes or side topics that may have little or nothing to do with the original idea, but is still a rigorous tear through new and unexplored territory, and thus the original purpose of dialogue is still achieved: expanding one's own knowledge and more clearly understanding truth.

    So, why cover all this? We conversate every day with many people but rarely are we conscious of the way in which we talk to them, and perhaps even more rarely are we delving into the kinds of discussions that bring about the depths in which this understanding is highly important. While the application and relevance of this framework perhaps deserves a post of its own, the gist of it is two fold. Firstly, it allows you to openly explore new ideas with other people. Because truth is something that exists outside of you, you are free to poke and prod at it openly without any threat coming to you. And as you more clearly see truth, your map becomes larger and more detailed, allowing you to better navigate new and perhaps more interesting territories. This also means you have the tools with which to poke and prod at truth through discussion and debate. Firstly adding new ideas, and secondly refining those ideas until they match the world around you. The second reason this framework is relevant is that without it, the prospect of changing minds is rarely possible. If everyone involved in a dialogue is seeking truth, it assumes that while they may know some stuff, there are things they don't know or are wrong about, and therefore they must change their mind on something, even if it is simply broadening a perspective. Therefore in good dialogue, all parties are consistently having some aspect of their perspective changed while also changing some aspect of the perspectives of those around them. This makes this system crucial to any meaningful talk on any topic that is relevant to real life. You cannot grow your understanding if you do not first accept that your understanding is lacking in some aspect. This means that truth, the basis of understanding, must exist at least in part somewhere outside of you and others may have some of it. 

Training Grounds

    It has been a while since I have posted anything on this blog. This is because its creation and primary use was during high school. I have since been busy with college and mostly moved from the arts and works I studied in high school to computer science and stem fields. However, having completed my gen eds and been occupied with nothing but algorithms and how to organize different types of data, the itch for critical thinking and close analysis of complex ideas and theories about life has largely been left unscratched. I would soon like to create a new blog in which I cover a wider range of topics ranging from the arts to stem and everything in between. This will be a place to see my growth as I learn more and grapple with harder and/or newer topics.

    However, I am much out of practice in both writing and the close analysis of written works; much less writing a close analysis of written works. So here I am. I will be attempting to write a few posts every now and again looking at different ideas I've read about or exploring concepts that have been on my mind lately. Hopefully through this I will be able to sharpen my writing skills and become even more critical of ideas that I look at. This blog, while once being a place to complete homework, will temporarily become a training grounds for me to get back into reading and blogging. I hope I will be able to provide even better posts than I previously have in the past, seeing as I am now blogging for my own exploration and not out of obligation to my grades.