I'm Matt Diamond

Local maxima.

It often seems to me that the struggle for meaning and direction in life can be best described as a series of metaphorical local maxima. By this I mean that once one has climbed the pyramid of needs to the point where self-sustainability has been achieved - when one finds oneself able to “coast along” - one realizes that any further gains would come at a serious cost (usually time and effort, but sometimes money as well). You have scaled a peak (often more like a plateau) and the only way higher up is to first travel back down. In other words, your life has reached a local maxima: not the greatest possible happiness, but enough such that any increase would require you to sacrifice happiness first. You’re on top of a hill, but it might not be the highest hill.

Now, with this metaphor in mind, the real question becomes: “is it worth the effort to climb a different hill?” One can’t even be certain that the other hill exists, or that it’s even reachable. In fact, one might be perfectly happy where one is. We live in a culture that stresses achievement, doing big things, making your mark on the world. What if your life goes by and then the world forgets you? Is this a priori a bad thing?

One might conclude that Hedonism is a perfectly valid philosophy of life, that simply enjoying your experience of the world is enough, and one need not excel or become famous or any of that. Of course, “becoming famous” is itself a very complex goal, desired for a multitude of reasons (some more noble than others), but that’s outside the scope of this blog post.

There aren’t any clear answers here. The choices you make with regard to your own local maxima are often as much a product of your own desires (“I want to be Somebody”) as they are a reaction to the judgement of others (“I don’t want other people to view me as unambitious”). But it’s important to question the underlying assumptions: is ambition a necessity for a happy life? I’m still trying to figure that out.

tumblrbot asked: WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE INANIMATE OBJECT?

I dig tachyons right now. But who knows what I’ll like last week?

Notes from the field: J. Stankel

The first thing that needs to be said about J. Stankel is that he wasn’t born. More accurately, he arrived. Most history books these days tend to split the time-line into two halves: Pre-Stankel (which nobody really studies anymore) and Post-Stankel. It’s a generally accepted fact that history before Stankel was pretty boring. Some people were born and died, some buildings were built, some widows wept. The whole thing was unnecessarily melodramatic. But we don’t worry about that now, not after Stankel arrived.

His parents were Ray and Rosemary Stankel, a rather unextraordinary couple from New England who met while studying Philosophy at Dartmouth. Their first date, which consisted of an hour-long argument over type vs. token physicalism, would set the tone for their entire relationship: the Stankels were constantly fighting. This may explain how the young J was able to learn to speak while still in the womb, picking up words and phrases shouted loud enough for a fetus to hear (his first word, upon entering the world, was reported to have been “Seriously?”).

There once was a man from Nantucket.

Today some things happened. They were okay. I’m Matt Diamond.