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The [story <-> connotation <-> life] nexus
How fictional narratives can translate into meaningful real-life actions.
- Joseph Campbell's perspective on mythology:
- Myths provide "a vocabulary in the form not of words, but of acts and adventures"
- Stories connote "something transcendent of the action here"
- They allow us to "see life as poem and to see yourself participating in a poem"
- The connecting mechanism between fiction and reality is connotation:
- Connotations are ideas that words evoke beyond their literal meaning
- They create equivalence between grand heroic actions and everyday experiences
- This equivalence allows us to translate fictional inspiration into real-world actions
- I propose a simple "alchemy" for this translation:
- Resonant story → Action in Story → Connotations → Real-Life Translation
- This process helps us understand why certain stories resonate with us
- It reveals how we can experience that same "aliveness" in our ordinary lives
- I provide nine examples of this translation process.
By identifying the connotative meaning behind fictional narratives that move us, we can translate even fantastical story elements into meaningful actions in our everyday lives. We can experience a similar emotional resonance.
- Joseph Campbell's perspective on mythology:
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The virtuous cycle of craft, attention and values
How structured craft activities create beneficial "attention ecologies.", helping us make better choices about what deserves our attention while cultivating a craft.
- Matt Crawford's concept of attention ecologies in craft activities:
- Crafts provide clearly defined processes, tools, and outcomes
- These frameworks "specify what matters, what doesn't, and why"
- They counteract the cognitive fatigue of our digital world's endless options
- Craft activities create a unique self-improving cognitive environment.
- Structured attention creates mental space for clearer thinking about other matters
- Small bursts of satisfaction fuel motivation that can transfer to other tasks
- The craft provides "solid support for whatever new point of attention that we would wish to add to it"
- In contrast, modern attention challenges create a vicious cycle. We become vulnerable to "the powerful tide of the bittersweetly satisfying, passive fulfilment"
- Craft transforms this into a virtuous cycle:
- The craft framework answers "what deserves attention" for part of our mind
- This allows us to direct remaining attention to value exploration
- Over time, we develop better judgment about meaningful activities
- Matt Crawford's concept of attention ecologies in craft activities:
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The creative urge as grief for not knowing how to grasp the ephemeral in life
I explore the relationship between creativity and our desire to preserve fleeting moments.
- Creativity stems from a "deep desire to hold on to what moves us in life"
- We feel a sense of "impotence" when witnessing beautiful ephemeral moments
- Simply observing these moments isn't enough:
- "We want to keep them, share them and talk about them"
- We have an urge to "crystallise them in some way"
- This preservation allows us to "play with them in our imagination"
- The act of writing helps "crystallise that very feeling"
- This crystallization helps them "notice it better the next time"
By transforming these experiences into something tangible - whether through writing, art, or other creative forms - we find a way to preserve what would otherwise be lost, satisfying a fundamental human need to hold onto what moves us.
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The many layers of misunderstood communication
I explore some complexities and limitations of human communication.
- Language itself is full of limitations. Our typical focus on verbal content captures only a fraction of meaning
- Communication involves multiple simultaneous channels beyond words
- Non-verbal cues (tone, gestures, expressions) carry crucial information
- Digital/mediated communication "squeezes out" these additional cues
- I imagine a fictional culture with sophisticated non-verbal coding:
- Hand positions that signal emotional states contradicting positive words
- Gesture systems conveying complex feelings that are awkward to verbalise
- Different languages chosen based on emotional register rather than nationality
- This system would offer curious benefits
- Enable simultaneous communication on multiple levels
- Allow expression of what is "difficult to put into words efficiently"
- Provide a more "forgiving" channel than verbal communication
- However, ambiguity in non-verbal communication may serve a purpose, such as vagueness may reflect our incomplete understanding of our internal states.
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Digital assistants for dead note-taking systems
I consider AI-driven possibilities for academic knowledge management
- The common experience of academic information management:
- Grad students repeatedly experiment with different note-taking systems
- Early systems are abandoned as better methods are discovered
- The most effective system often emerges only in the final stages
- The specific problem:
- Notes from abandoned systems contain valuable insights from seminars and lectures
- These remain scattered across multiple documents, both digital and physical
- There's no time to sift through and reprocess everything into the current system
- The proposed AI solution:
- Software that could understand your current information management blueprint
- Ability to process disorganised notes from previous systems
- Automatically rearrange and adapt content to fit your current methodology
- The common experience of academic information management: