Looking Inward

Toolbelt of Knowledge: Practices
Skepticism
Listening
Deconstruction
Rationality
Mindfulness
Steel Manning
Common Sense

There are times when something happens to make us upset. Something goes wrong, or someone says something, or we read something online, and we are suddenly angry. We stew in that negativity, giving the air around us a piece of our mind, or imagining the angry things we would say. Twenty minutes later, we are still mad. But we notice something odd. Sometime during that time, the target of our anger has shifted to something completely different. In fact, if we look back at what we have been thinking about, we might realize that we have been mad at a whole bunch of things that have little or nothing to do with each other.

Why is this? What does it mean? Well, whatever state of mind we are in at any given moment, that is the lens through which we view the world. We might believe that the reason we are angry so much is because there is so much wrong with the world. However, the truth is that the things our minds focus on are influenced by the way we are feeling. When we are angry, our thoughts filter out the positive things, and focus on the negative. This keeps us angry, and the process repeats.

But what if we want to be happy? What if we want to see the world how it really is, not just the broken parts or the successful parts? The answer is mindfulness. Looking inward and observing how we are feeling, what we are perceiving, and what we are thinking.

Like rationality, mindfulness does not come naturally to us. We are almost always caught up in what we are doing, and we hardly even realize we are thinking or feeling anything at all. We act and react, believing that we are being completely rational, and that there is nothing to look inside for. However, when we take the time to actually look, we see that there are worlds of complexity hidden within us.

How do we practice mindfulness? The easiest way to start out is through meditation. Sit or lie down in a quiet, comfortable place, and just pay attention to yourself. What does your body feel? What are the different sounds that you hear?

After you have some practice with that, there are other things you can observe about your inner self. What are you feeling emotionally? Do you find that there is something you are wanting to feel? What efforts are you unconsciously making to feel or learn something?

Trying not to think can also be intriguing and revealing. If you try to clear your mind, you will find that thoughts appear on their own. You don’t choose to think them. You don’t intend to think them. They just bubble up on their own from your subconscious.

With practice, you will come to see a truth about beauty and ugliness, meaning and meaninglessness, joy and suffering. These things, and others like them, do not exist out in the world. Rather, they exist in the interaction between the world and you. Depending on the lens your mind is looking through, you can see the same thing as ugly or beautiful, meaningless or meaningful. And you will come to recognize the difference between the kinds of things that are subjective like this, and the kinds of things that really are facts in themselves.

You can also learn to pay attention to these things when you are not meditating, when you are in conversation, or traveling, or doing work, or whenever. These are the times when it can be most helpful, because you will be able to refocus yourself so that you can be more productive or better enjoy your existence. There are reasons to be upset, and there are reasons to be happy, and with mindfulness, you can learn to guide your mind toward what is important to you.

Economics: Production and Distribution

Building an Economics View:
The Purpose of the Economy
Problem-Solving Mindset
Production and Distribution
Motivations and Incentives
Inequality

At the beginning of this series, we stated the purpose behind economics: to provide as many people as possible with their basic needs so that they are free to pursue lives that are meaningful to them. In Economics, there are two major processes, production and distribution. It is very common in economics arguments for people to fixate on just one of these, and ignore the other. However, both are essential for a successful economy.

Without production, there is no economy at all. Everyone starves, and everyone sleeps in the rain. Production is often measured by a country’s gross domestic product, or GDP, which is roughly the amount of money spent within a country during the span of a year, adjusted for inflation, as well as some other factors. More useful is the GDP per capita, which divides the GDP by the number of people living in the country. Of course, production and money are not the same thing, but in general, people spend more when production is high, causing the GDP to go up.

However, if we only focus on production and ignore distribution, we get large inequality, with most of the wealth that is created piling up in the hands of a powerful few. Of course, some level of inequality is inevitable, because some people are lucky, and some people make wiser choices. But when inequality gets so great that it prevents people’s needs from being met, or it prevents people from being able to pursue meaningful lives, the economy is not doing its job. So while it may be tempting to say that a high GDP per capita means more prosperity for all, that is not necessarily true.

On the other hand, it can also be tempting to look at the inequality in the world or the country, at the fact that there are both millionaires and poverty, and conclude that we have already produced enough, and distribution is all that matters now. But focusing only on distribution and neglecting production is unsustainable. The reason people get rich is very often because they contribute a lot to production. If we take money and goods from those who contribute a lot to production, people will feel less incentive to produce. If we don’t produce, we will run out, and have nothing left to distribute.

For an economy to work in accordance with our values, we need to take into consideration both production and distribution. So how do we do this? What are our options for the means of production and means of distribution? Here are four that I thought of off the top of my head:

1. The means of production are owned by individuals and corporations, and the means of distribution is the market.

2. A central authority, such as the government, coordinates production and/or distribution.

3. People produce and distribute voluntarily.

4. The means of production and distribution are automatic and run by artificial intelligence.

While reading this list, it’s possible that one of the options jumped out at you as the obvious right answer. It is also possible that I missed something. However, what looks true at first glance is not always the real truth. Remember what we talked about last time in the series; we are looking at this from a rational point of view, not an ideological one. Each of these options has things they do well, things they do poorly, and things they ruin. The real question is what balance of these four things, and any others I may not know about, an economy should have. Gaining knowledge to answer this question more wisely will be our focus in the future installments of this series.