Learning to see better by learning to unsee | #15
sometimes we throw out the baby with the bathwater in our fight against entropy
In this 15th issue of The Pole:
learning to not get irritated when I stub my toe (Monday, November 14, 2022)
learning the same lesson that Obi-Wan was trying to teach Luke Skywalker (Monday, March 27, 2023)
getting kicked out of enlightenment (Saturday, April 7, 2018)
learning to draw from memory (Tuesday, March 7, 2023)
walking around in the grass with my eyes closed (Wednesday, March 29, 2023)
I’m experimenting with a new format. Let me know what you think!
Monday, November 14, 2022
The eye doctor sent me home with some ointment to put in my eyes overnight.
I was in the bathroom, lining my eyelids with it. Once I finished, I closed my eyes with no intention of opening them until the next day.
Unfortunately, I still had to get to my bed.
I navigated carefully, keeping my fingertips against the drywall.
I started getting comfortable navigating by touch.
Bam. I stubbed my pinky toe on the bottom of my desk. Startled and trying to regain my balance, I swatted something plastic off my desk.
I’m irritated, but it’s not worth worrying about right now. I take a deep breath and crawl into bed.
Monday, March 27, 2023
I'm drained from editing a video for 3 hours straight.
I go for a walk. I come across a wide open field of grass.
As I walk through it, I'm thinking about movie tropes. Specifically, the hero learns to fight without seeing trope.
Some examples:
Samurai Jack blindfolds himself to fight the Three Blind Archers
Robin from Teen Titans learns patience in order to fight the Serpent in the dark
Obi-Wan has Luke putting a helmet on with the blast-shield down to teach him to see with the Force
I think about how much of a badass I would be if I did something similar.
I decided to humor myself. I closed my eyes and started walking.
Immediately I remembered that Monday night I put the ointment in my eyes. The frustration of stubbing my toe came flooding back.
It wasn’t the pain that was the worst part. The worst part was the feeling of knowing that the angrier I got or the harder I fought, the more pain I'd cause myself.
I wanted to open my eyes, but it occurred to me: isn't this the point of the trope?
There's gotta be a lesson here, right?
So I kept my eyes closed and kept walking.
Saturday, April 7, 2018
Today, something remarkable happened.
It was day 33 of meditating every day.
At first, it was 5 minutes a day. Then 10. Eventually, I worked my way up to 30 minutes straight.
Up until today, the experience was mundane.
I would sit there, watching my thoughts pass by. Sometimes I'd get caught up in a train of thought. When I noticed I got caught up, I’d redirect my attention back to being present. Rinse and repeat until my iPhone timer went off.
But today, around 26 minutes in, I stopped existing.
At some point, a switch flipped, and I was empty. There were no thoughts. No sensory input.
It felt like I was asleep, but it wasn't me that was asleep. Instead, I put the universe to sleep.
I noticed myself grinning. This is awesome!!
So many thoughts were exploding in my head. Is this what enlightenment feels like? Am I a guru now?
And just like that, I took myself out of the moment. I was back to sitting on the brown carpet in my room.
Tuesday, March 7, 2023
I'm making an animation using Adobe After Effects. I want to increase the size of my composition to fit my entire screen.
There's a shortcut to do it, but I can't remember what it is. So I Google it.
After finding that it's Shift + /, I realize I've Googled this before. A few times, actually.
I get distracted and start wondering:
Why some things stick and others don't?
I redirect my attention back to After Effects.
A few minutes later, I realize I need to draw a pigeon for a scene to make sense. I pull up Adobe Illustrator.
Right before I start drawing, I realize I don't know what a pigeon looks like. I start Googling pigeons.
Meanwhile, I'm wondering why I don't know what a pigeon looks like. I've seen plenty of pigeons, why is this so hard?
I'm distracted again by the same question:
Why do some things stick and not others?
The rabbit hole is too hard to resist.
5 minutes later, I'm on the cognitive load Wikipedia page.
8 minutes later, I'm on the working memory Wikpedia page.
16 minutes later, I'm on the r/Aphantasia subreddit.
29 minutes later, I'm on Gumroad ordering a book that teaches you how to draw from memory.
1 hour and 15 minutes later, I've read the first 44 pages.
The book is fascinating. I'm seeing a ton of overlap with other fields I've dabbled in.
The key takeaway for me was the two ways of perceiving the world: top-down and bottom-up.
Top-down is using your existing worldview to make sense of what you see. It's the big picture. It's using a map to navigate the territory and assign meaning. For drawing, this means storing what you see as symbols you’re familiar with and then drawing those symbols.
Bottom-up is using what you see to inform how you view the world. It's the little details. It's using the territory to create a map. For drawing, this means storing what you see with no shortcuts. Not as efficient as top-down, but a lot more accurate.
The book advocates for improving both your top-down abilities and bottom-up abilities.
Wednesday, March 29, 2023
I'm walking around with my eyes closed in the same grassy field from two days ago.
I’m still determined to learn the lesson the heroes in the movies learn. I'm paying special attention to everything. All my thoughts, feelings, and observations.
After I first close my eyes, I'm still confidently walking forward because I know there's nothing in front of me.
But after about 20 seconds, I start losing faith. I was walking on borrowed awareness.
I feel doubts creeping in. It’s a wide-open field… but what if I miscalculated? What if there's a rock I didn't notice?
I start slowing down. At this point, my nervous system really wants me to open my eyes. But I keep them closed.
Another 30 seconds passes and I realize something:
I'm default-safe. If I don't move, I don't get hurt. I will get hurt in direct proportion to how quickly I move. I'm my own worst enemy.
Another 45 seconds passes and my right hand touches something hard but organic. I’m startled.
I open my eyes. It's a wooden fence.
I take a few deep breaths to slow my heart rate. I notice myself starting to think more clearly, which annoys me. Why does my body make me think less clearly in times of perceived danger?
In a way, this reminds me of that time I stopped existing while meditating. It also reminds me of that Monday night I put the ointment in my eyes
In all 3 cases, I got kicked out of the zone by my emotions.
In all 3 cases, the more I fought it, the worse off I was.
I took a few deep breaths, closed my eyes, and started walking again.
But I was peeved. I didn't want this fence to have that kind of power over me. I didn't want life to have that kind of power over me.
So I turned around and started walking towards the fence again.
I felt myself concentrating on what's in front of me. My hands instinctually raised to protect me. I looked like a mime.
I made contact with the fence again. It was underwhelming. I felt stupid. The whole ordeal felt awkward.
As I felt the grainy texture of the wood, I remembered the memory drawing book.
Top-down perception is a form of compression. And there’s no such thing as a lossless compression of reality.
Everything has nuance. Every object is unique, it just depends on how deep you have to zoom in.
No two moments, no two iPhones, no two wooden boards are the same. Even if they all look or feel the same.
But we choose to treat them that way. Compression is only possible because of an pre-existing bias. We can only discard details if we have an existing guideline about what’s important and what isn’t.
And when we re-use that same top-down perception, we see the same things. We discard the same details and see the same patterns.
In this way, top-down perception is a perpetual motion machine. It feeds on itself. It validates itself. If we’re not careful, it can become incestuous and self-fulfilling.
I was so scared of the fence because I was perceiving the world too top-down. I was compressing the world too much. I was assigning too much meaning to everything.
The fence wasn't a miscellaneous set of wooden boards. It was a threat.
The calmness and stillness I achieved while meditating wasn't a modest moment of zen. It was a celebration.
The plastic thing I knocked off my desk wasn't an innocent example of the laws of physics. It was an inconvenience. It was a symbol of my helplessness.
Top-down perception is a double-edged sword. It can lead to creativity, innovation, and efficiency. It can lead to happiness, meaning, and resolution.
But it can also trap you. It can lead to despair, contempt, and illusion.
It’s important to remember that it’s a form of leverage. It’s a bias and a bet. It makes the highs higher and the lows lower. And that’s why it clouds your judgement.
Which is why it’s as important to learn to un-see as it is to see. In fact, it’s harder to unsee something than it is to see something. We’re made to see and make meaning. Un-seeing and un-meaning-ing don’t come naturally to us.
If I remind you that you’re breathing, you take conscious control of it. But it’s hard to release control.
If I told you to act natural because you’re being recorded by a camera, you probably wouldn’t be able to.
It’s hard to voluntarily choose to navigate a territory without a map. Especially when you have a map.
But sometimes your map is wrong. In fact, your map is wrong with 100% certainty because it is a map.
Sometimes it would be helpful to update your map. To re-navigate the territory manually. But that’s often hard to do, if not impossible.
I’m still learning to unsee, but for now it’s helpful to close my eyes every once in a while.