Martina

Between reality and metaphysics

The term “meta” is en vogue now. Meta means beyond. Metaphysics means philosophy today, but at the time it was just a term to describe what Aristotle did beyond physics. We now use it for anything self-referential: a met-analysis is an study of studies and a meta sandwich would be a sandwich made of sandwiches. Maybe I should change the name of this blog to Metathinking.

Metaphysics is really the science of that which isn’t immediately tangible. It isn’t knowable. David Hume destroyed it. He basically said that if it cannot be experienced, it doesn’t exist. For example, causality cannot be experienced – or verified. Hence, philosophy is largely left with nothing to say as it is not empirical. Arthur Schopenhauer believed metaphysics was there, but said it wasn’t knowable. Immanuel Kant restored it. Kant analysed epistemology. He argued that it is impossible to know, or experience, anything without certain made up a priori concepts – that he called synthetic (as distinct from analytical concepts, but just like empirical). These synthetic concepts are more abstract and general rather than purely random and logical like empiric observations. For example, he argued that time and space aren’t part of our experience, but a condition that makes our experience possible. Concepts like quality and quantity are in this same category. However, this still mean that metaphysics couldn’t hold – as it is entirely outside of experience. As such, his problem with concepts like god was that they are full of non-falsifiable statements. If it cannot be verified, it doesn’t make sense.

Kant came up with his own metaphysics. To him, the mental apparatus required to experience things were metaphysical: time, space, necessity and being vs not being. So he came up with something else instead – that which wasn’t metaphysical, which isn’t empirical, but necessarily precedes the empirical. His categorical imperative was that one has to act in a way that one would wish the rest of the world acted. This is how he said it:

“Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law”.

Sounds a lot like,

“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”

However, unlike Jesus (and others to whom this was attributed in different religious texts), Kant didn’t tell people what to do, he just opened that up for discussion. There isn’t a moral charge in this. Another interesting thing is that Kant’s imperative inherently presumes that we should assume that others are motivated by the exact same things we are motivated by, being rational beings. Big assumption.

Kant’s philosophy is attractive because it provides a context for real events rather than going off into the ridiculously theoretical. At the same time, because it lies in that grey are between the empirical and the theoretical, to me it still feels like metaphysics.

Exercise and thinking

I recently chanced upon a study showing that aerobic exercise can be beneficial in mild cognitive impairment. It literally increases the size of the brain. The fact that we can now image brains in a way that detects this is exciting. Nobody is really quite sure what it means, but the fact that it is so tangible and obvious is really gratifying – and hard to argue with. Interestingly, mindfulness also changes brain structure on imaging.

There have been plenty of studies of this sort – including on healthy people. They show that exercise benefits one’s mood and working memory, enhanced cognitive strategies, hippocampal neuroplasticity – in short, exercise helps your brain do its thing. I wish this message was easier to spread. Exercise for a functional brain.

In my own subjective n=1 experience, exercise makes a huge difference to how I feel emotionally. It’s like a shield that keeps irrelevant noise out – and it was quite hard to believe how well it works until I tried it. At this point, I’ve been non-stop at it for over 3 years. My main motivator to stay going with exercise is how it makes me feel. Not immediately, not right after a gym session, but on average. Having said that, isn’t our motivation nearly always how it makes us feel? How I got into it was the classic monkey-see-monkey-do dynamic. Some like to call it having a role model. During my masters, I was surrounded by a bunch of health-freaks: they were all from continental Europe, wore fancy running shoes, drank a lot of coffee and read the Economist. The enthusiasm with which they discussed running routes for their new city, whether or not a Fitbit is worth the investment – and so on, rubbed off on me. I had to try this, ze fitness. I never stopped.

I’ve experimented with running, spinning, HIIT, swimming, weights – pretty much anything that is solitary and non-competitive is good. During a particularly busy stint at the hospital, I injured a joint – meaning I couldn’t properly weight bear. I could barely get around the seemingly endless corridors of a large Dublin hospital with nobody to cover for me on call. Exercise was not on the menu. About a week into this state of affairs, I noticed that I was starting to get sad for no reason at all. It took some introspection to figure out that it was likely down to the fact that I wasn’t exercising. The biochemistry shifted, the chemicals released during exercise wore off – and now I was feeling down. I took corrective action: so I cannot weight bear. Time for abs of steel! As if. In any case, the change in my mood from a week of significantly diminished physical activity was stark.

This experience is echoed in the story of a patient I once saw in a psychiatric hospital. He was a young guy who exercised a lot: 20 miles on a bike every day, marathons, the works. For about a year and a half he attended a cardiologist about a chest pain. He had virtually every conceivable test done – none of these tests detected any abnormalities. By the time he saw me, he had had a few attacks of this chest pain in the space of a few days – and a very low mood. The week before two things happened: he twisted his ankle and his girlfriend had just broken up with him. Long story short, the man’s chest pain was psychosomatic. He had a perfectly healthy heart. The stress of his girlfriend breaking up with him, superimposed on not being able to exercise due to a twisted ankle, led to the mood collapse as well as the chest pains.

Clearly, exercise is addictive. This is part of the reason why people keep exercising despite pain. Before I discovered the absolute must that is a foam-roller, I caused a repetitive strain injury in my calf from running too much. I couldn’t really stop: I was so into it, I just gobbled down two Nurofen and off I went. If, six months previously, someone told me that I would be like this, I would never have believed them. My buzz was all about cuddling up with a book and drinking hot chocolate – not hopping around with a painful calf in the permeating Dublin rain.

Once a psychiatry professor came to talk to us during lunch. His opening question was: “What is the single most effective intervention for both physical and mental health?” Some annoying know-it-all raised their hand and said: “Exercise.” (Okay, okay, it was me). I would still say it though.

I think it is the perfect example of the 80/20 rule, or even a 99/1 version of it. Exercise takes up very little time – if you’re clever about it – and delivers unbelievable results. In short, exercise is definitely on the to-do list of anyone who is interested in having a clear head. It’s surprisingly easy to get carried away into fitness-junkie territory, however, it is definitely worth the risk. In any confusing situation, it’s mindfulness and exercise.

Philosophers: practicing what you preach

Children are a spectacular audience in that they have a great BS filter. It is quite common in paediatrics for kids to be very skeptical of advice. I recall an overweight doctor working in paediatric endocrinology giving dietary advice to a diabetic child. Let’s just say, the poor doctor was informed of the value of giving advice that they themselves don’t follow.

Through the years, I’ve met many smoking surgeons, neurotic psychiatrists and overweight dieticians (but never a less than glowing dermatologist). It’s not necessary to practice what you preach to give good advice. However, going directly against what you preach, what you are meant to be good at – does raise authenticity and competence concerns, not always fairly, but we would be worse off without this filter.

Whatever about overworked doctors, my real question is about philosophers. Schopenhauer is widely regarded as having been an intolerable hedonistic psychopath and a chauvinist. It is well known that he nearly pushed a woman down the stairs – for being annoying. He bailed on a woman who was pregnant with his child. Hegel did something not entirely dissimilar. Nietzsche didn’t have much of a social life, except for in brothels (not unlike Schopenhauer, actually). Kant didn’t have one at all. Gazillionaire Seneca denounced worldly possessions. He was clearly preoccupied with a fear of poverty. At times, in his letters to Lucillius, he sounds like he’s trying to calm himself down more than anything else. I strongly believe he has what modern day psychiatrists would call a passive death wish. Marcus Aurelius was born into being arguably the most powerful man in the world – and so his advice sounds good, but it’s not clear of how much use it was to him. Seneca’s and Marcus Aurelius’ explanations often reference two separate entities: luck an the gods, without really examining the nature of these. Machiavelli, regarded by many as the ultimate weasel and plamaser, didn’t exactly fare so well at court. Freud came up with a theory that is to philosophy as Newtonian physics is to physics. Nonetheless, there is some outrageous stuff in there too. And if you say enough – some of it is going to be right, a bit like a broken clock is right twice a day.

Two quotes come to mind. Both from Seneca. The first I will use as a disclaimer:

“I shall never be ashamed of citing a bad author if the line is good”.

The second, the one I am actually interested in is:

“Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.”

What if replace the word religion with the word philosophy? Let’s be honest, philosophy is nearly more powerful than religion – because it spreads more insidiously. There’s no discrete baptism, no conversion, no point of no return – just silent incremental exposure. And so, I wonder, we treat philosophy with such reverence, but should we?

A religion for people who, in troubled times, don’t want any trouble

Breakfast of Champions was completely different to my first encounter with Vonnegut – Slaughterhouse-five. Breakfast is vehemently anti-American – in a way that is could be anti-any nation and is disturbingly relevant today. Vonnegut has a way of stripping away the sugar coating. He speaks of the slave-trade as buying and selling agricultural machines. This comparison is brought back every time he mentions the social problems of those whose ancestors were slaves: he compares them to actual metal machines and explains that the latter are cheaper leaving the former jobless. Plain, cynical and sobering.

The book is largely centred around the concept of free will. As a medic, I recall learning about free will in physiology. Back in the 1980s, Libet et al did a clever experiment showing that the brain initiates a movement before we are aware of wanting to carry out the movement. Subjects were asked to sit in front of a clock. They were told to move at will – and note the time when they decided they were going to move . An EEG was recorded. Essentially, the EEG showed that the impulse to move occurred around a second before subjects became aware that we’re going to move. Libet and colleagues said:

“cerebral initiation of a spontaneous, freely voluntary act can begin unconsciously, that is, before there is any (at least recallable) subjective awareness that a ‘decision’ to act has already been initiated cerebrally.”

This is a good review of the subject free will in physiology. In short, awareness of volition occurs in parallel to actual agency. Whether volition is causal to movement – nobody knows. Our story-telling machine brains do like to think that it is causal of course.

As a person fascinated by mindfulness, I was curious about Vonnegut’s reference to transcendental meditation. Bunny, one of the characters, used TM. Vonnegut described the procedure in Breakfast. Vonnegut doesn’t hide his scepticism.

I appreciate that absolutely everything that involves a financial transaction can be called a scam. Some people think it is insane that the seemingly skill-less abstract art is sold for millions. Some people trust in banks, corporations, governments – and others are swayed by the evidence that these institutions cannot be trusted. Appreciating this subjectivity, my impression of transcendental meditation is that there is a big scam element to it. There are also some elements of religion in it. While I am interested in learning about the ancient tradition of this particular kind of meditation, the TM organisation and its specific take on the technique smacks of danger to me. I would certainly stay well away.

Kurt Vonnegut’s wife and daughter were practitioners of TM. He said: “Nothing pisses them off anymore. They glow like bass drums with lights inside.” So far, so good. He later said about TM:

“a very good religion for people who, in troubled times, don’t want any trouble.”

This really resonates with me.

Much like positive thinking, transcendental meditation promises the world via some very simple thing that you have to do compulsively – and preferably attend expensive seminars. It’s very important to never doubt the high priests of these respective philosophies – otherwise, it won’t work. I mean, come on.

It also makes sense that TM and positive thinking has worked for some trustworthy high-profile people. It’s because what they call TM and what they call positive thinking is different to what the seminar-selling folk mean. They take a common sense approach – not a “I will take everything literally and follow all instructions” approach that the gullible people these things attract take.

Escaping the cr*p never really works. Transcending into an imaginary ocean of perpetual calm is a form of cheap escapism that only works for seconds. On that note, I recall having a really bad stomach pain. Without any set purpose, my mind wandered and I imagined getting a shot of morphine. I immediately felt much better. However, I still had to go to hospital to make sure it was nothing serious. One simply has to acknowledge their pain and deal with it. Thinking magically won’t resolve it.

The proper, non-commercial, non-popularised practice of TM is a form of mindfulness -and I have every faith that it works well. It’s not my weapon of choice, but I recommend that people try it. Om is a always a good mantra to start with. I don’t see the value in getting mystical with “personalised” mantras. The point remains: if it walks and talks like a scam, it probably is. The other point is that Breakfast of Champions is another worthwhile book.

Here we are, trapped in the amber of this moment

“And I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep.”

Kurt Vonnegut is a genius – and it turns out he is a real connoisseur of the present moment – but he never stood a chance. I heard phenomenal quotes by him: ”We are what we pretend to be”, and rave reviews from a lot of well-read people. Reddit told me that Slaughterhouse-Five was a good place to start – and so I did. His examination of Christianity is excellent. The aspect of his book that left me feeling let down is the whole antiwar piece. He preemptively defends his attempt to write an antiwar book in Chapter 1 by acknowledging that its most likely a pointless affair – but still, his antiwar manifesto seems to lack depth.

“How nice – to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive.”

Vonnegut’s reflections on religion are certainly striking. He seems to strip down all the bells-and-whistles. He makes this interesting point: Jesus was a man like the rest of us. The fact that he is glorified makes it OK for us to not strive to be like him – because we couldn’t possibly. However, an appreciation of Jesus as a nobody would allow people to take responsibility for their actions much more. It strangely reminds me of the G.O.P. philosophy and what a well-off Republican might say about the poor in the context of the American dream – just swap the concepts of morality and money around.

Kurt Vonnegut Slaughterhouse 5 meaning — This is what an American Nazi looks like – illustrated by John Holder

“All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist.”

Vonnegut’s descriptions of women are hilarious. He’s a Dostoevsky-level psychologist. The emotion Vonnegut creates most masterfully is that he-gets-it feeling most of us yearn for. You’d definitely go for a pint with Kurt. For me, when he said that Lot’s wife looking back “was so human” elevated Vonnegut into the “can-do-no-wrong” status. Reading about her in this context tempts me to identify her as the first ever case of PTSD – before it had a name.

“People aren’t supposed to look back. I’m certainly not going to do it anymore.”

His uncomplicated sentences and the absence of excess linguistic ornaments really add to Vonnegut’s main point – war is war. While it is tempting – and indeed seduces most, there’s no use in getting caught up in the ideology or the methodology of war at the expense of understanding the plain reality of it.

“I think you guys are going to have to come up with a lot of wonderful new lies, or people just aren’t going to want to go on living.”

At the start, the frequent remark “So it goes” is gratifying. It occurs anytime somebody or something dies. It has an interesting effect – for me it breaks the forth wall and lets me, as the reader, know that the author and I are on the same page. However, as the book progresses, it becomes compulsive, matter-of-factly and annoying. His use of symbolism is a little too overbearing in general. His overly physiological remarks and “toilet humour” took away from the work for me.

Kurt Vonnegut Slaughterhouse 5 essay — Absurd and relatable. Illustration by John Holder.

“If I am going to spend eternity visiting this moment and that, I’m grateful that so many of those moments are nice.”

The non-linear nature of the narrative emphasises the senselessness of war – but again, towards the end of the book it just seems to be happening for its own sake. There are lots of non-linear compositions that benefit from this structure. My favourite examples are the films Once Upon A Time In America and Pulp Fiction. I think Vonnegut overdid it.

“Why you? Why us for that matter? Why anything? Because this moment simply is.”

The fatalist aspect of the Tralfamadorian philosophy and the recurring quote about having the wisdom to know if you can change something, the courage to change it – and all that – seem to conflict. In a sense, Christianity is fatalist. The “So it goes” reprise has a memento mori quality to it.

“No art is possible without a dance with death, he wrote.”

Vonnegut doesn’t have a very clear philosophical message, but he seems to be convinced there is very little free will if any. The irony of the main character surviving the war despite having absolutely no survival instinct adds to this. Billy seems to have little insight into his own suffering. He escapes reality by travelling in time. Vonnegut doesn’t really offer us an opinion on whether that’s a form of madness – or real life. My impression is that Vonnegut’s outlook is that life in general appears pretty random and not worth sweating over.

“Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why.”

There is a lot of criticism in the above review, but actually I loved the book. My next stop is Breakfast of Champions.

Schopenhauer’s genius and mindful boredom

Arthur Schopenhauer said something very interesting:

“Genius is the power of leaving one’s own interests, wishes, and aims entirely out of sight… so as to remain pure knowing subject, clear vision of the world.”

He argued that talent allows people to get to where other’s cannot get, while genius allows to solve problems that other’s don’t see. By that logic, Uber and Facebook are examples of genius – with a hefty dose of being in the right place at the right time.

What strikes me about this quote by Schopenhauer is how Eastern it is. I have been thinking about the subject of dreaming of a better future vs fully engaging with reality. It seems like there is no way to set goals without trading in some of the appreciation of what’s currently going on. By setting goals, we almost certainly forego the opportunity to experience what Schopenhauer called genius.

Being grounded in reality is possibly the thing we run from the most. We call it boredom. How many apps do you open on your phone just to not be alone with yourself and your surroundings when you’re on your own? I, for one, open too many. And before there were apps, books and music – there were daydreams. Boredom is a form of pain – according to Schopenhauer. He said it was an issue of affluence: if one moves on from satisfying the most basic needs, boredom becomes the source of discomfort to deal with next.

Boredom seems to upset children too. They are generally excellent at finding solutions to it: in fact, I’ve always been encouraged “to do x, y and z – because it’s better than being bored”. This is also why children hate school: there’s no escape from boredom. Boredom is vilified from the get-go.

Maybe it’s time to be bored – and not to plug every free minute by consuming something in a directed manner. Having too much direction – too many goals – leaves us with a kind of schizophrenia-by-choice – as it is splitting us away from what’s actually going on. It’s not a comfortable thought for me. All along, I’ve been sailing towards certain coasts, catching up with milestones and deadlines – while becoming progressively wrapped up in my own bubble. At the same time, I am terrified of not sailing in a direction: the thought of waking up one day when I am x age and realising I’ve nothing to show for the last y years is scary. However, it is clearly also silly. By being more mindful of what’s going on – rather than constantly having my eyes on the prize, I will surely be mindful of what way my own life is unfolding.

A focus on the present moment doesn’t mean becoming reactive and directionless. It’s not about passively accepting everything that happens and losing all sense of agency. It’s about acknowledging what’s going on and what one can do about it – while letting go of illusions. I am talking about – most of all – the illusions propagated by modern-day influencers that we can create the future. In a sense, we can, but not through brute determination and risk taking – rather through relentless examination of what’s around us – and that means embracing boredom.

On a personal note, I have a very long night connection flight coming up soon – and I realised that I was dreading it. Why? Because I feared the impending boredom. For some reason, I can’t fully relax into a book or film while I am travelling. Then I remembered something I’d noticed year ago. Some of my most significant realisations tend to happen when I am travelling. Long connecting flights are better than any meditation retreat. One has to be alert enough to be on time, watch out for gate changes and not lose one’s boarding pass – and kind of kill time too. This state allows me to be ok with the fact that I will be bored. I am inevitably grateful with what bubbles up to the surface through this boredom.

Millennial ENTP struggles

Read all posts about being an ENTP

As a female ENTP, I am a reasonably uncommon breed. It’s not that I think that Myers-Briggs cracked some super important code – I don’t believe the “science” behind it, it’s a little horoscopy, but it is consistent – and they managed to describe certain things with impressive precision. It has been described elsewhere, but I will keep calling it ENTP for clarity.

Having millennial restlessness superimposed on ENTP-ness is tough. In a world where doing one thing really well gets rewarded exponentially well, it’s also scary. I remember being a medical student and shadowing teams in St. James’ Hospital. After a difficult thyroid surgery, I was waiting for the next case and observing the wonderful Professor T., a well-known Dublin Ear Nose and Throat (ENT) surgeon, reading the newspaper in between two surgeries. I was wondering what he was thinking.

I just imagined life as an ENT surgeon: day in and day out taking out tonsils, resecting thyroids and realigning nasal septa – by choice!

I don’t think I could do it. Thank God there are people who can. I respect it hugely and I fully understand we need it. Indeed, if he was even more specialised – and only ever did tonsils, let’s say, that would be even better for the patients. But what would it be like for him? How can one continue to find new facets to something like a standard surgery? He didn’t strike me as the type who couldn’t wait to go home. There must have been something there for him that was clearly missing for me.As you know, I have a strong dislike for self-help books. However, one of my favourite social media personalities (she’s Russian, so she may not be super interesting to the reader), reads Barbara Sher and specifically recommended a book called I Could Do Anything If I Only Knew What It Was. The name did resonate with me. I never thought that a book like this would interest Maria. Maria left her job in – I think – publishing soon after she started to found her own beauty business. She’s married to a serial entrepreneur. Together they make an impressive couple: I think they started with quite little and now they’re running a few interesting ventures – and there’re babies everywhere. It would seem that she knows exactly what she wants. Apparently not.

Once again, it reminds me of how pointless it is making inferences about other people’s lives. Anyway, I am currently reading the book.

It’s not as cringy as I had expected. I skipped a few chapters that seem to bear no connection to me. However, Chapter 6 relates directly to ENTPs, without calling them that.

Sher describes people who want to try everything, to understand how everything works, who feel that by dedicating oneself to X, you are tragically missing out on Y.

Sher argues that our biggest problem here is the belief that there is very little time to do everything, hence, we hysterically push ourselves into a niche hoping that it will fit. I completely agree that that’s true. At the same time, while Mrs. Sher may have an interesting point, I wonder how it related to the exact opposite point made by the Stoics. They argued that one of the worst things you can do is assume that there’s lots of time.

I think the resolution of this dilemma is obvious. Advice is meaningless without context. It’s like those men who teach about business always say: Never underestimate your opponent. For this advice to be useful for me, I have to multiply it by -1. Never overestimate your opponent. [Obviously there are limitations here, but it is a more useful heuristic given my world view.] The bottom line is that it’s impossible to know the beliefs and assumptions of your readers. That’s why therapy works, but self-help books don’t. It’s all in the context.

If you’re reading this and you are an ENTP kind of person, don’t think that time is completely against you. I think we are prone to be hyperaware of some realities like the merciless passage of time – but we get stupefied by lists and all of these endless techniques on how to get organised. We’re already organised. We’re not distracted. We’re aware of the dangers of endless distraction. However, banning ourselves from pursuing them is just against our nature.

With this in mind, Sher recommends to write out the 10 lives that you will you could live. My list includes that of a retail investor, a philosopher, a psychiatrist, a blogger, a painter among others. Her argument is powerful: look at the list and see what can be done in 20 minutes a day – or just occasionally. I underlined this:

“Don’t dedicate yourself to poetry. Write poems.”

This thought was also brought up in a different context in Steven Pressfield’s War of Art and the less interesting Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday. As it stands, I already feel a lot of pressure from society to be able to say “I am X.” A doctor, a management consultant, a journalist – whatever. It makes no sense to add to this pressure by imposing my own restrictions. Furthermore, most of the time, it’s just a way to romanticise what one’s doing. If I like it, I will do it. Labels just aren’t for ENTPs. Of course, it’s not just ENTPs. Richard Branson and Elon Musk don’t have to explain their meandering interests to anyone – because they’ve already won.

In a world that likes to label people, it takes courage – and yields tremendous benefit to remain unlabelled.

If you are an ENTP, or this feels like the story of your life – leave a comment – let’s be friends ❤

Relentless transparency

Small business entrepreneurship is a tough game, especially if you are being yourself and trying to create something that is genuinely of value to other people, not reselling iPhone covers or slimming pills.

One of the reasons it’s tough for me is that I don’t come from an environment where there are lot of entrepreneurs. In fact, it is kind of daunting that I am veering from the expected path. The internet is great in that it helps to find a lot of people, but it requires a lot of work to find the really great people.

One day quite a long time ago I came across a lovely lady who is super genuine. She has become somewhat of a role model. Her credo is relentless transparency. Sounds a bit like Ray Dalio’s radical transparency – and it’s as good through in an entirely different context. Her name is Jessi Kneeland.

She was then a fabulous fitness coach who showed the exact right techniques for the plank etc – I found her during my own HIIT love affair. She really stood out as she talked about fitness in the context of women’s lives. It seems that fitness is just one method for someone to work on their context – which seems to be what really interests Jessi. It seems like she’d been contemplating this risky yet perfectly brave and – in my opinion – right transition: she is going into being a coach who advises women digging way beyond the surface in issues like body image, anxiety, etc. She, in keeping with her transparency framework, is super honest about her own life. She shares her own lessons and stories rather than giving people a 7-step plan to unadulterated happiness for $99. Reading to her emails is a bit like reading a novel, only it’s real. It also lacks the sickening “think positively” aspect that many people in that space shovel. The fact that it is so uniquely female scared me at first, I steer clear of the man-hating vibe, but there’s none of that with Jessi. To anyone reading, male or female, have a look at Jessi’s Instagram or better yet join her email list to understand some of the problems women deal with but don’t usually talk about.

In a broader context, I think Jessi’s success can largely be put down to the way she uniquely combined hardcore fitness with a vulnerable but brilliantly feisty honest female vibe. I imagine it was super scary for her to open up that way to people on the internet. She’s the only person I’ve ever come across online who talks about the ugly stuff without being anonymous or distancing herself from it. Even her photos. I wonder if she’d ever thought: “What if my old English teacher finds this picture of me doing the warrior pose in a unflattering light that accentuates my cellulite?” These kind of thoughts bother me a lot – not that I am in this space, but the logic remains. The landing page of MailChimp currently says: “Being yourself makes all the difference.” It’s certainly the case with Jessi. She’s a real asset to the online world. I admire her bravery a lot and can’t recommend her enough.

There are of course ways of being an entrepreneur without making it so personal. However, the fact that being yourself is so valuable gives the rest of the community the confidence we sometimes really need.

What the internet will look like in 10 years

Only about 40% of the world’s population have an internet connection today. The largest group are the Chinese with 0.72 bn users, but only 52% penetrance (i.e. only 52% of the Chinese population have access to the internet). With that, certain services are off-limits to ordinary Chinese people. The countries with the highest penetrance include rich European countries such as Iceland and Denmark (it’s cold and dark outside – so no wonder). Interestingly, the English speaking world – US, UK, Australia and so on – hover around 80-90%. This means, in Ireland for example, 1 in 5 people aren’t online. I find that hard to believe. [Source: Internet Live Stats]

As the internet becomes cheaper and more accessible, we are likely to see large influxes of users from India and China. With a population in India of nearly 1.4 bn the penetrance is only 35%. Indonesia, Brazil and Pakistan also have huge populations with relatively low penetrance.

While it would seem obvious that there is a huge part of the internet that I have never seen, I wonder what way the online world will change as more people join. Without any judgement on whether it is good or bad, the internet that I know is dominated by white English speaking people. I am also familiar with the Russian province of the web – it is much like the English one, only in Russian. They also lack certain services, such as eBay, etc. However, they replaced it with their own homegrown analogues.

The Economist recently said that for those who spend a lot of time in both China and the West, using online services from the West in like going back in time. WeChat is something else apparently. Musically is another Chinese creation and has taken the West by storm.

I wonder what the internet will be like in 10 years. I think there will be even more video – including through VR. My cousin recently came back from holidays and instead of showing me photos – showed me a bunch of 360 video clips. Video is taking over the world. In my own experience of Facebook advertising, the cost of a video ad versus a text ad is out by at least a factor of magnitude. I think that the West will lose some of it’s domination over the internet. If the next Facebook is from somewhere like Shanghai, it’ll be very interesting. It sounds silly, but the only thing that has really taken over the West that isn’t Western is Pokemon – at least in my echo chamber. The fact that it is so popular is a net gain for all of us. It carries with it a culture and a philosophy that’s a bit different. We’re a smaller population than India and China, so our network effect isn’t as strong. Having said that, there is not only freedom of speech – but freedom of what we choose to hear on the internet. A great example of this was seeing the reaction of those who though that Brexit and Trump were impossible. While the internet does result in what Taleb called a monoculture, it still allows for resonant echo chambers. Good or bad, they are a natural way to segment the internet. Probably though, more internet will mean more globalisation.

There will come a point when the internet will be replaced by something related, a bit like home phones and TVs were replaced by smartphones and social media. I wonder what way VR will come into our lives. Perhaps, I will be sitting in a set of slick glasses walking around a virtual Prado as my driverless car is going… Actually, I wonder where it will be going if I can get anywhere through VR and drones can deliver everything else to me.

Fear kills creativity

Fear of failure comes in many different guises. For me, it is mostly the fear of being left all alone – abandoned, rejected, etc. I feel that most of my friends are conservative – not politically, but just in a first principles way – this is how we do things, and that’s it. For example, you can believe in all kinds of liberal values and still be set in your ways. True open-mindedness is incredibly rare.

It’s especially difficult to be creative when you have a lot of fear – especially fear that your work will be judged. Creativity only blossoms when we’re not in immediate danger. Fearing for one’s sense of self may as well be danger. I now understand why creatives get depressed reading comments. A thousand positive comments can be spoilt by one negative one.

I can’t even remember where I heard this, but someone has a rule: if this person – who just rejected me – isn’t going to cry at my funeral, their opinion doesn’t matter.

In a world interconnected by the internet and propagated so strongly by social validation, it is especially tough to constantly remind oneself to not care of what other’s think. I wonder if we would have ever known about people like Nietzsche and Schopenhauer if they did their work in an environment such as today’s. It is hard not to be tempted pander to the crowd when social media allows one to reach a wide audience through certain tricks with timing, the right content format (e.g. video seems to be taking over the world in 2016), etc.

I also have a fear of someone I know from ages ago googling me – and finding, well, I don’t know, this. With a name like mine, it’ll be a tough job telling them it’s some other woman, God only know who she is… And that they will think that this is nonsense. That this isn’t what I should be doing. Maybe my millennial hopping from area to area isn’t at all bad – I just feel that it is because I fear being judged. By who though?

There are two types of people: those who create and those who comment. Being yourself requires so much bravery. At the same time, what is the point of living if you’re not going to be yourself. If my friends aren’t going to like what I make, I will find a way to make friends with the people who do.