All Memories Are False

A good rule to live by is to never trust anyone's memory - not even your own. I'm not even kidding. Even if you think you have a memory perfectly recorded in your brain, you have no idea just how much of that memory is flat out fabricated. And the chances are that most of it probably is. That’s simultaneously the coolest and the most frustrating thing about memory. We think that, because we’re capable of perfectly memorizing structured information like song lyrics or speeches, we can also recall, without error, the experiences we go through. It simply isn’t true.

We’re used to thinking about memories like video recordings that are stored somewhere within our grey matter. But what if I told you that our memories are less like files on a hard drive and more like a stack of note cards on which only words describing your feelings are written? How could that be, right? When you recall something from your memory, it is as if it is playing back a video; clear and crisp. But that’s not what’s happening. You’re actually reconstructing the scene, piece by piece, based on the general feelings that you felt. In fact, if we were to actually record the scene in question to video, then ask you to recall it a year later only from memory, we could compare just how far your recollection has drifted from reality.

A professor actually did that with his students. In 1986, the day after the Challenger explosion, Ulric Neisser asked his students to write down what happened to them when they first heard the news. Three years later, he tracked down the 44 students who remained on campus and asked them to recall, once more, the scene of them learning of the disaster. Upon comparing the stories, each of the same stark, dramatic, traumatizing experience, told by the same person only three years apart, the differences were astounding. Few of the newer stories even resembled the ones written on the day after.

The most fascinating part of the study was that the students claimed that their newer story was more accurate. We instill so much unwarranted confidence in our recollection and interpretation of events. Ladies and gentlemen, this is the brain you live in. If you can’t be counted on to accurately remember the most important moments of your life, what can you be counted on for?

Here are a few quick bullet points about our memories that you might find interesting:

• No matter how hard we focus on the details at the time, we still only memorize the gist of what happened.
• We interpret events according to our emotional state, which adds further distortion to our recollection.
• Memories change every time we recall them. When we tell the story, we factor in the experience of recalling it.
• We have the same confidence in a false memory as we do in a real one because they are impossible for us to tell apart.

Read the second bullet again. It’s a big deal because our feelings can warp our reality as we experience it. And then we’re tasked with explaining our own actions to ourselves. We tell people why we made certain decisions or performed certain actions because of how we felt at the time. But there’s also a huge gap in our understanding of what motivates us. A lot of times, we make decisions based on what we believe is logic, but, in reality, the decision was made far before we even thought about our preference.

One experiment to demonstrate this was done on some amateur chefs. They were given one of two different recipes. Actually, the recipes were exactly the same, except one was a bit easier to read than the other one. They were then asked to rate the difficulty of the recipe and if they were likely to prepare it. As you might suppose, those given the harder-to-read recipe rated it as more difficult and were less likely to want to prepare it. What is most peculiar is that nobody cited the readability of the recipe as to why it was so difficult, yet it was clearly the only difference. This demonstrates not only the importance of readable content, but also the ways in which we’re blind to our own decision-making mechanics.

From a philosophical standpoint, this brings up some interesting questions. What are we, if not our memories? Our identities are the memories of who we were just the moment before. If we are not reliable custodians of our own identities, are we then just transient minds, always in between one state and the next? What is there to trust in this world? We can’t be too foolish if we’ve gotten this far by trusting ourselves, so why should be stop?

It’s no surprise that, since the time man was first able to record his history, things have been developing faster and faster. We may not be able to trust ourselves, but we can trust our recordings. We can trust objectivity that goes beyond hearsay and eyewitness. Most importantly, we can just stop listening to people who favor subjective, experiential explanations over solid evidence.

Living with ADHD

I was diagnosed with ADHD in kindergarten, but I've always been wary of admitting it because, at the time, there seemed to be a movement around the denial that such a condition even existed. In the eyes of these people, even if it did exist, it was being overdiagnosed and children were being unnecessarily drugged. As a result, I always questioned if I was one of those "trend" cases. I'm 30 years old now, and I'm very confident that I was correctly diagnosed. I have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, predominantly inattentive (ADHD-PI). Here are the symptoms:

• Careless mistakes
• Lack of sustained focus
• Trouble keeping a job
• Difficulty concentrating on conversations
• Trouble finishing projects
• Trouble organizing for the completion of tasks
• Avoiding or delaying thought-intensive tasks
• Misplacing things
• Disorganized personal items
• Easily distracted
• Problems remembering obligations
• Frequently changing plans

Ladies and gentlemen, this is me. It's always been me. And it's a curse. The other night, I did some research to see how other people with ADHD are living. I found three general categories of people who "identify" as ADHD:

1) Undiagnosed, but seeking an explanation for their problems.
2) Diagnosed, but viewing their condition as a different way to view the world.
3) Diagnosed, but viewing their condition as a disorder that negatively affects their life.

I've tried to be #2, but after decades of frustration and failure, I'm definitely #3. I can no longer believe that my condition has given me insight or behavior that is somehow more optimal, in any way, than a normal attention span. One of the world's leading researchers in ADHD, Dr. Russell Barkley, is in agreement. He is very adamant about the fact that ADHD is not a gift. While there are many cases of people succeeding with their condition, it is always because they possess extraordinary qualities apart from their lack of attention. It is never because of their ADHD. While you could argue that this condition may change one's lifestyle and inadvertently open up different avenues that a person with a normal attention span would not find themselves in, I would argue that successes in this vein are far fewer than failures.

I'm a pretty smart guy. I'm dead certain that, if I could just muster the focus and drive to pursue something, I could succeed immensely. I have the utmost confidence in myself that, short of various mathematical theorems, I have the mental capacity and agility to wrap my head around almost any subject in existence. Why am I not out there changing the world? I should quit my whining and do something, right? Yep, I've been told that my entire life. I'm a perpetual underachiever.

If you were to follow me throughout my everyday life, you'd begin to understand how I function, or don't function, depending on how you want to look at it. My girlfriend takes the brunt of my quirks. We could be having a conversation when suddenly my expression goes blank and I stare off into the distance. My brain is going; I'm having an intense deep-dive into something very interesting, but my body is no longer participating and the topic of the discussion is but a wisp of smoke dissipating in the breeze. Imagine being her, waiting for me to respond to a question that she asked, but never getting it. I'm gone, man. Long gone.

Or how about all of the projects I’ve started. Sitting on my hard drive right now is the source code to about 15 separate websites that I’ve programmed in the last couple years. The problem is that they’re all either unfinished or abandoned after launch. I lose interest in things and I rarely recover it once the initial spark has faded. Similarly, my writing behavior revolves around my attention span. I get short bursts of intense motivation that spawn the long posts that you read here on this blog, but there have been only a few that I managed to spend more than one writing session composing.

You might say that if I really cared, I would go on medication. I could, but here's the story with that: I took medication from the time of my diagnosis up until my sophomore year in high school. It worked well enough, in the way you might use a grenade to remove your makeup. I was an honors student in many subjects and I had my best academic year ever as a freshman. But I wasn't happy as a person. The meds robbed me of my personality. My friends pointed out how boring I was compared to the days when I forgot to take my pills. I was a drone. So, I decided to stop taking them midway through the next year. By my senior year in high school, I was failing most of my classes and I dropped out of school. I eventually completed my diploma by blazing through the curriculum at home, at my own pace. (I ended up graduating 4 months earlier than everyone else.)

Medication may work in some cases, but as an adult, I have other priorities than meeting expectations of success. I have goals of personal development. I have a sense of humor. I have a libido that I enjoy indulging. I run the severe risk of sacrificing all of that, just to patch up some holes in my attention span. Yes, imagine what I would be capable of if I just focused. Maybe I would be able to make a bunch of money so that I could simply go off medication and never need to focus again. All it would take was a few years of sacrifice. If only...

I'm doing fine, you know. I may not be a superstar, but I'm relatively successful in my own right. I'm completely independent with a good amount of savings. I have a job that fits my flighty attention nicely. Things could always be better, but I have it good compared to most.

One thing my research taught me was that I actually have something to offer those who are struggling with their own ADHD. You don't slog through life with a disruptive mental condition without learning a few tricks for handling it. Here are four tips:

1. Train yourself to take notes

Our brains struggle to hold on to the flickering thoughts that pass through. Commit them to a more reliable memory like a notepad, or your smartphone, or a voice recorder. This is especially important for anyone in a managerial role. If you look down the list of symptoms above, you might realize that any person possessing these qualities would be absolutely incompetent as a manager. And it's totally true - I've been that guy. However, note taking solves about half of the symptoms. It should be noted that I currently work as a project manager (of sorts). Go figure.

2. Work/live off a to-do list

I couldn't function without a program called Evernote. It saves all my notes and it has a to-do list feature that is indispensable. My to-do list is my life raft when I snap back to the present from a daydream and realize that I have no idea what I'm supposed to be doing. Each task on my list can be as simple as a question I wanted to ask someone, or as complex as a research project that I need to be doing in between all of the other things. The key is to do what you can, when you can, and never lose track again.

3. Join a small company, not a big one

If you're like me, you probably have many different skills because your penchant for distraction has led you down many different roads. Big companies usually only need you to fill a single role because, well, they're big and process-driven, which means they have a specific person assigned to each step in the process and no need for a mere hobbyist. Small companies rely more on their individual employees' diverse skill sets to cover as much ground as possible. I work in a very small company and thus get to apply myself to a wide range of activities throughout the week. It cures the monotony and let me show off my utility.

4. Invest yourself in your work

A job is fairly straight forward, right? Someone gives you money and you do shit for them. For an ADHD sufferer, that's no way to live. If we are to focus on anything, it needs to be something that we are interested in. Even if the work itself may not be very stimulating, we have to find a way to make it matter to us. You’d be surprised at how much more interesting a job can be when you apply a little game layer on top of it. Don’t just do your job, do it better than anyone expects. Set goals and gear your efforts toward achieving them. Turn your everyday tasks into milestones. Hopefully, your work will get done along the way.

The road to accepting that my condition has been rough. We always want to believe that there is some silver lining to our shitty situations, but sometimes, in order to best deal with them, we have to confront them for what they are. I’m also taking a risk by publicly announcing it. If, down the road, I am looking for a job and someone sees this, they can easily deduce that someone else, given a similar set of abilities, would be a more reliable choice for the position. I guess I’m just confident enough in myself to say that, despite my condition, I can succeed. I can negate the problems ADHD causes me with better habits. And I am more than just a set of skills to fill a job; I have a personality that I cherish more than any benefits of medication.

Recipe: The Legend of Drunken Burger

Time for a slight change of speed. Something I've never done before: a recipe! Inspired by the amazing Jackie Chan movie, The Legend of Drunken Master, this burger is fueled by an overwhelming supply of booze. Best part: it finishes off the half bottle of wine you neglected to finish the night before. You also don't need a grill - it's all done on the stove top.

Ingredients:
6-8oz ground beef (higher the quality, the better) per patty
1/2 bottle leftover red wine
chili powder
all-purpose seasoning
garlic salt
diced garlic
olive oil
Whatever burger fixin's you desire

Ideal Pan: deep skillet

Now, the truth is that I don't know how much the garlic and the season-all add to the final flavor of this burger. Nor do I really know if any of the steps herein can be skipped or even improved. All I know is that half the fun of cooking is the badass feeling of doing all this crap while showing off to your significant other that you can cook awesome shit that nobody else can. So, who cares if you can't taste everything? The end result is still delicious.

Step 1:
Hand-pack the beef patty by rubbing in a shake of season-all and garlic salt (not too much or it'll be too salty). Also do the same for the chili powder, but feel free to go overboard with this. Make sure the patty is a good inch thick by the time you're done with it.

Step 2:
Stab the patty with a knife or something, several times on each side. You want to give the wine full access to infuse every bit of beef with its juiciness. Marinate the patty in the wine for 10-15 min. Do this any way you like. I usually just plop it in a bowl and drown it.

Step 3:
When the patty is ready to cook, start heating the skillet on the stove, a notch or two below high heat. Throw on some diced garlic and olive oil. I have no idea what this does to the food, but it makes it smell nice and you look like you know what you're doing at this point. Spread the garlic around and wait for it to start getting golden. Place the patty on the skillet. Follow it up a few seconds later with all of the wine that you just marinated it in.

Step 4:
Keep scooping the wine from the skillet and pouring it over the patty. Flip the patty occasionally to keep it cooking evenly. Eventually, all of the wine will evaporate, leaving a black sludge that used to be the garlic. Remove the sludge from the skillet so it doesn't burn any more and let the outside of the patty crisp a bit in the dry pan before drowning it again in a fresh bath of wine.

Step 5:
Keep the meat drunk. Pour more wine on if it gets dry. Since you're cooking on a skillet, the potential to burn the meat and fill your house with smoke is extremely high. Pry a utensil into the patty occasionally to gauge its pinkness. When you're sure that you've cooked it to your desired color, flip it out of the skillet and on to a waiting bun. Apply desired fixin's.

Step 6:
Enjoy the full body orgasm as you devour your Legend of Drunken Burger!

Legislating Morality

Last year, I had my first acid trip. It was an amazing experience that I hope to write more about in detail, but for now it’ll suffice to say that I came away from it wondering why such a beautiful thing should ever be categorized as illegal. So, I looked up the reason why. Here’s the quick and dirty: psychedelic drug usage was seen merely as immoral, so they created a bunch of negative propaganda around it and hoisted up some laws to prevent anyone from ever using drugs again. As a result, I grew up hearing about how objectively bad all drugs were. LSD was referred to in the same sentence as heroin, meth and PCP, clumped in together as the crutches of the bottom-feeder.

This post isn't about drugs. It’s about morality. Its also about the line between making your own choices and having them made for you.

If I want to have another trip, I will have to deliberately break the law. I will have to risk going to jail simply to enjoy myself and experience the world a little differently for 10 hours. All because someone doesn't want me to have fun. It isn't that I am hurting anyone. I am not even putting myself or others in danger (no more than you can put yourself in using completely legal methods). It’s simply that someone has declared the act of spacing out to be morally corrupt and wants to stamp it out entirely from the world. There really is no other justifications - anything else that you can think up was probably made up after the initial motivation to declare it illegal, or simply irrelevant.

And when you think of it, that’s all no different than prostitution. Of course, one of the biggest arguments against prostitution is human trafficking. Likewise, for drugs, the prospect of funding criminals and terrorists with your money is also a negative externality. But these problems would not exist in such high potential if not for the black market created basically because these things are illegal in the first place. Cast the spotlight on areas where these “vices” are legal and institutionalized, and the black market shrinks (or is diverted to other aggressively legislated commodities).

The blanket statement I am getting at here is: let’s not create or uphold laws that enforce morality. From the top down, morality is too subjective and dynamic to act as a one-size-fits-all for any measure of time. Further, it seems to make little sense to create a legal framework for how humans should conduct themselves as individuals. The human spirit, which is a term as nebulous and ill-defined as the thing it describes, is classically portrayed as a unchainable beast, yearning to spread its wings, take up space, and change its form as it pleases. As unscientific as the notion is, it’s hard to argue that there isn't something to it.

Such sentiments are sweet and idealistic, but it would be irresponsible of me not to also mention the reality of the situation. Imagine if, at work, you were tasked with justifying why you aren't really needed by your company. Would you do it? Probably not. And that is why, especially in slow economic times, vice laws are self-perpetuating. There is an entire thriving ecosystem of egos and paychecks built on the back of moral legislation. The CIA, the FBI, the DEA, the ICE and the police all feed their families on the budgets given to them by the government for the purpose of cracking down on immoral behavior. So, despite all the reason and logic one can throw at the situation, nobody really wants to listen.

Practical Nihilism

Early on, when I was first realizing that I was a nihilist, I struggled with the practicality of such a declaration. What’s the point of saying there’s no point? What does it translate into as far as everyday behavior? It doesn’t change the world to realize there is no reason or purpose for existence, so why even say it? It’s been a while now and I think I’ve come across some real useful applications for this philosophy of nothing that I’d like to share.

1. No more existential angst
That anxiety you get when you feel like you’re not living up to what you should be; that’s existential angst. If your flawed humanity keeps causing you to slip and stumble and fall behind in some race that everyone seems to be running, nihilism is the realization that the race is purely fictional. From a nihilist perspective, there is nothing that you should be. Whatever you are, that’s you. Any motivation to change should come from the goals you set for yourself, tailored to yourself. You don’t have to live up to anyone else’s standards but your own.

2. No more moralizing your intuition
Many people feel a tremendous amount of guilt derived from feelings and desires that aren’t necessarily kosher with society. I’ve often come across confessions of people who are turned on sexually by improper or illegal things. This causes a self-hatred that eats away at their livelihood. But the truth is that there is no such thing as absolute or objective morality. There is nothing inherently wrong with wanting anything. Thus, there is no reason to beat yourself up for it.

3. There is nothing to fear, not even fear itself.
Sure, you’re always going to fear the things you should be afraid of, like oncoming traffic, startlingly loud noises, swarms of bees or bowling balls flying at your face. But then there are things that you shouldn’t be afraid of, like what will happen after you die, or what could be lurking in the dark. These worries all have the same answer: nothing. There’s nothing to be afraid of because they are themselves nothing. Having fewer fears frees you to live and do more things that you otherwise would not have done. It leads to exploration and learning.

4. All rules are off
In my three previous points, I’ve alluded to things that hold you back that are really just illusions. I just wanted to bring it all together to drive it home. Nihilism is philosophical off-roading. There’s no reason for you to feel one way or another in any situation, so why not just feel the way you want to feel all the time? We’re human animals, thus we are driven by our brain’s desire to feel pleasure, but we often forego our own happiness out of some bizarre set of customs that we call culture. However, unlike animals, we have the ability to control our perception of things and make ourselves happy almost out of thin air. And if that fails, we always have the option of performing actions that improve our mood. And there’s no reason why we shouldn’t take advantage of that every chance we get.

5. See past the bullshit
Because there is no purpose or meaning to existence, yet we seem to be stuck here anyways, why not make it a better place to exist within? It’s a simple proposition, but what I’m really asking is: what’s it going to take to make everyone happy? When you take this mentality, you start to see how much of the world is set up to make people miserable. We’re all hooked into a system that requires us to devote large chunks of our waking hours to earning money for someone else to live comfortably. We are taught to contain ourselves and hide our personalities and sexualities from others. What am I going on for? You get the idea: the world is full of bullshit and there’s really no good reason for it to be that way. Some moralistic assholes probably insisted on it a long time ago and it stuck. In any case, there’s no reason for you to buy into it, so start dreaming up a better plan for everyone and, if it makes you happy, start putting it into action.

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Sexuality Should Be Effortless

I don’t even know where to begin with this subject, so I’m going to jump right in the middle and sort it all out from there.

Slut. The word itself doesn’t bother me. I think that’s because I’m kind of attracted to it. What is a slut, anyways? It’s someone who has a bit of experience in one of the most essential activities to our existence. My problem is when people try to use this word as a bad thing. Like having a lot of sex (or being perceived to have a lot) is something morally reprehensible. Like your sexuality is a finite resource that you shouldn’t spread too thin. Well, fuck that. Hard and often.

One might say that someone who applies themselves often in such a way has problems, but I would say that the very notion that every individual act of sex is somehow sacred and steeped in importance is the root cause of those problems. By sheltering and stigmatizing sex, we are separating ourselves from part of our being that should flow effortlessly. We’re damming up what should be a mighty river that provides life to a vast region of our psyche and instead flooding everything and drowning it in shameful obsession.

On a societal level, sex should not be a resource in low supply and high demand. It’s those conditions that foster destructive thinking. I’m talking about the fetishization of desire and self-worth. I’m talking about the idea that partners are property to be owned and fought over. And when I say “should not,” I mean that we collectively have the ability to reverse this. It's not that there simply isn’t enough to go around and I wish there was more; it’s that we guard it so jealously that so much is implicated on both sides of the deal.

When I hear a woman talk about how she makes a man wait 3 months before she will have sex with him, I'm saddened, at the very least. This rule is, at best, a stop-gap measure to filter out all but the most desperate, tenacious and equally jealous people. But this woman has been taught that her vagina is a sacred temple that only the most worthy may enter. She has also been falsely taught that only the men purest of heart will subject themselves to her teasing for that long. If your goal is to meet a good mate, this method is terribly inefficient. To wait 3 months into each relationship to start figuring out if you're sexually compatible is like flying across the world to buy clothes, then flying home before you try them on.

If you take a stroll through Times Square, New York City, one of the most heavily trafficked tourist spots in the world, you’ll notice numerous ads featuring women in bras and panties. This, you might say, is a sign that we’re starting to be comfortable with sexuality. It’s not. Sexuality is more than just a few women in lingerie. It’s a whole range of expressions; only a few of which are condoned by the public at large. A man is still supposed to only be attracted to big breasted, feminine women. A woman is still supposed to only be attracted to muscular, masculine men. The overt expressions of sex in the media are only devious in the way that they are a smokescreen for the deep and colorful menagerie of scenarios and fetishes that represent our true sexual nature.

When I read about the confessions of people who are shamed by their own sexual desires, I cringe a little. Someone, somewhere, gave them the impression that they were an abomination of nature. That's a shame. There is nothing wrong with wanting what you want, no matter what it is. Now, maybe the act of pursuing your desires may run aground of a few moral minefields, even some laws, but the simple act of desiring something is not an issue.

So I say: fucking embrace your sexuality! It should be effortless. Should be. Love yourself and your desires. Don't deny yourself. I know getting there is difficult because of everything you’ve been taught to feel about it, but your life should be a journey toward being more comfortable with yourself and others. Many people spend their energy building and maintaining their barriers. I’m here pleading for everyone to let those barriers fall. Spend your energy on enjoying the freedom and lightness of being that comes along.