The Idea System

Nerd stuff from yours truly, a new way of thinking about the idea system.

“The combination of technological progress and human decisions and reactions to it does not change the fundamental nature of humanity, something C.S. Lewis was fond of calling “Chronological Snobbery”, aka the mindset that somehow modern humans are superior in intelligence to our ancestors by virtue of society’s advancements, often thought of as the “appeal to novelty fallacy” [2]. Technological advances themselves tend to provide humanity with various cognitive illusions. In this article, I’m specifically addressing the illusion of ideation and information control.”

I haven’t been slacking (well not an abnormal amount anyway), but I have been working on a think piece about think pieces for Lethal Minds. Check it out and subscribe to them as well.

Click to read my latest article in the Lethal Minds Journal

I woke up this morning to the news that Jimmy Buffet passed. He was the Mark Twain of my family since my dad first took us sailing and diving around Okinawa in the 90s. In honor of the Jolly Mon, I’ll finish with some wisdom from the man himself:

From his album A White Sport Coat And A Pink Crustacean, Buffett wrote the third-person narrative “He Went To Paris” about a Spanish Civil War veteran and one-armed pianist he’d met named Eddie Balchowsky.

He went to Paris
Looking for answers
To questions that bothered him so

He was impressive
Young and aggressive
Saving the world on his own
Warm summer breezes
And French wines and cheeses
Put his ambitions at bay

Summers and winters
Scattered like splinters
And four or five years slipped away

He went to England
Played the piano
And married an actress named Kim
They had a fine life
She was a good wife
And bore him a young son named Jim

And all of the answers
To all of the questions
Locked in his attic one day
He liked the quiet
Clean country living
And twenty more years slipped away

Well, the war took his baby
Bombs killed his lady
And left him with only one eye
His body was battered
His whole world was shattered
And all he could do was just cry

While the tears were a' fallin'
He was recallin'
The answers he never found
So he hopped on a freighter
Skidded the ocean
And left England without a sound

Now he lives in the islands
Fishes the pylons
And drinks his green label each day
He's writing his memoirs
And losing his hearing
But he don't care what most people say

"Through eighty six years
Of perpetual motion,"
If he likes you, he'll smile and he'll say
"Jim, some of it's magic
And some of it's tragic
But I had a good life all the way"