The Tyranny of the Straight Line
These days, there are instructions for almost everything.
We have SOPs, process documentation, user guides, rulebooks, laws.
We let the computer tell us the fastest route.
We follow other people's paths to success.
We do what water does, and find the easiest path.
I'm not knocking these things. Process documentation underpins the modern world, and it's written in blood. It keeps airplanes and elevators from falling from the sky, and ships and submarines from sinking, and food appearing in the grocery store.
What we've built is amazing. And it makes sense to follow in other people's footsteps after they've broken trail.
We all want to go as far as we can as fast as we can.
And unless you get into some Star Trek shit, that means traveling in a straight line.
But blindly following the straight line has a dark side, and we'd be wise to keep it in frame.
The Map is Not the Territory
We use systems to create leverage against the physical reality of being an organism on planet earth.
Our sensor array is incredible - sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste - but does not perceive everything happening around us and inside us.
Our systems never quite map to reality.
And because we have a tendency to focus on the system, not the underlying principles of cause and effect in this kinetic universe, we often forget that the system isn't actually reality.
Our systems - from money to aviation to inheritance law to nuclear physics - it's all a collaborative human construct, built on the bones of previous collaborative constructs, imagined into being by other humans.
Sometimes it's really smart.
Sometimes it's really dumb.
And because we can't see these systems from inside of them, we frequently can't tell the difference.
Line Goes Up
Let the computer give you the fastest route.
Follow another person's path to success.
Always be closing.
Hustle culture.
Passive income.
Make money while you sleep.
It's all Line Goes Up.
Wetiko.
Our financial system (the stock market) works better when most people believe that the valuations are always going to continue to rise. Media and politicians and business leaders rarely acknowledge the possibility of sustained losses in value. To keep the machine running, we must all believe that the line goes up!
Is this reality? Or part of our collaborative construct?
Use the straight line to create clarity for repetitive tasks.
But also, why are you trying to create repetitive tasks?
Easy to Mislead
I define influence as speech or action with another person's interests at heart, and manipulation as speech or action without their interests at heart.
Our obsession with the straight line, programmed into us for more than 100 years, (with massive updates) has made us more and more wrapped up in the collaborative constructs, and less connected to the underlying principles of life on earth, making us easier to influence into pro-social actions, but also making us a lot easier to manipulate.
The Solution
Don't always listen to the solution.
If you follow the straight line too closely, you never explore the side streets and eddies and mountain paths.
You never find things you might love but won't find, because they don't lay on your 'critical path'.
And you might be misled.
The solution is simple.
Be careful about following an established route.
And spend time wandering and exploring every week. The value isn't easily measurable, but anyone who has made a practice of it knows that it changed their life.
Next Up: Live on a Bigger Map.