A clever kind of stupid

On being clever enough to know how stupid we are....

Remember symmetry? My cunning both hands approach as an easy road to happiness, that turned out to be the last workshop of my little business?

Once you start noticing symmetry, reading up on it, sitting with it, fooling around with it until way past bedtime, it becomes a German terrorist. You see it pop up in the strangest of places. Yes, cognitive bias and blah, and all the effort to make whatever you can see virtually useless and to be replaced by scientifically approved implantations. Which is way up there with the ‘clever’ conclusions of the day; your senses deceive you, better shut them down and place your trust in ….. (place name of human institute here).

Senseless.

The word says it all.

In the art lessons I concocted, I tried to make a simpletons' effort to explain the golden rule. How Nothing creates something. Repeats that and discovers two things. The next something may look a lot like the former one, but it isn’t the same. The other bit of sparkle in that first successful attempt at magic is seeing one and one makes a pair. And the paired entity has created a two. And that two is a brand new third. Holy Trinity!

Two and one can be paired again to make a proper three. Yes, pairing is fun. Now we can roll around in the haystack of possibilities. Three and two beget five. And before long you beget pineapples and panarchy.

I was clumsily describing the creative force driving this place. How it shapes, curves, forms. And —this is even more important— how the creative force is efficient as hell. How it makes something new by not making it entirely from scratch. As we tend to think, you know, creative equals new. Doing the undone. Making the unmade. The never seen before brand new that attacks you from behind kind.

I suddenly saw this is not the case at all. This universe does not repeat as a go-to known action until it stumbles on a little gold nugget of totally new and special. It doesn’t seek the best solution for the existing known old problem to survive by doing away with the existing.

It creates by default, yes, it can do no other. But to not run out of options halfway next month, it does so very cunningly. Slight changes. As slight as it can get away with without making a mess. Or to not make a mess more likely. Without annoying everyone here already. It saves energy. It saves a humongous amount of energy to not re-invent from the ground up. It is therefore the exact optimum between being dead stuck and being fully alive. It us the only possible route to allow for a countrywide snowstorm while never making the same flake fall twice. Ever. It gives Beethoven the chance to play for seven minutes with a five note motif, and no one for eternity will be able to repeat it. Not because Beethoven was uniquely special, which he certainly was, but simply because it is always the case. This is why the place is filled to the brim with symmetry. Way beyond tadadadaa.

And with a crazy twist, I think it is connected to both my history and the bigger picture. If you can’t remember that bit, it is because it didn’t yet make it into a publication. I’m scared. Not because it might be debunked and returned as scrap metal. No, it is precious. Not golem type of precious, but vulnerable precious like a newborn child. And it is pretty abstract. Difficult to put good, simple, unclever words to.

What I found in symmetry is that nothing comes alone. Everything you can name has a counterpart. Like a true ‘you-effing-complete-me’, embedded in the universe. An attached opposite. The unasked for complement. Proper soulmatery. A better half is in the all-inclusive package.

The first time I came across a similar thought, confirming my madness, was in the book on the brain hemispheres. A neuroscientist on a big tour past the symmetrical wonders of our brain.

When he says, nothing is ever repeated, my heart sings yes. My intuitive logic cries out in tearful agreement. Nothing is repeated! Ever! Material reductionists object, I can hear them whining in the distance, filing for lawsuits over lunch. I don’t care.

We are back with my art lesson on composition; the golden rule for scribblers.

While looking for a way to explain this astounding natural ratio, I stumbled upon the weird connection to symmetry, the non-existing repetition and the creative essence of this place.

In repetition, there is no gain, no life. No use having two days exactly the same, to repeat last year's Thrilling Thursday and trust no one remembers it anyway. It’s a dead loop. It just poofs and is gone. It has no impact. Why bother? The one and the other must be different. Basic rule. Agreed? Identical particles only exist in an abstract theoretical place severed from time and relationships. Ergo, not at all.

This symmetric unfolding teaches the most beautiful lesson ever about perfection.

Perfection, remember that bastard? The flawless deflater. That analysing retentive ferpectionist?

It does not exist. Not the way you have learned and accepted as truth. The perfect you learned, is about the ideal. It says there, somewhere out there, is an original, and you are —everything is— a bad little failed copy. Bullshit.

Everything is flawed. On purpose. Imperfect by design. Or accidentally. Or just because it simply cannot be different. Point being, everything is perfect as it is. Or, more accurately stated, every single thing is perfectly imperfect. The best version always is this version. That goes for you as a piano player, (no matter you had one lesson in which the teacher not even bothered to open the lid, or a lifetime of successful gigs with good reviews), and it goes for your asymmetrical nipples, your drooping eyelids. Your daft brother. And crazy Joe Turtle. There is no better version somewhere else. This is it. And you'll never have that recipe again....oh nooo.

Fock. That’s a downer.

Or is it? Because it also means you blink and uncle Joe no longer is. Not the one from just a second ago. It's a whole new mr. Turtle every single second. It may look and sound and smell the same, but it isn't. Being a new man is the easiest thing in the world. Creating something old is the actual impossible. Holding on is the futile bit.

Despite the effort to make an all-new concoction. Despite the wars fought to prevent progress, to kill the new, or kill the old. They are silly endeavours. We might just as well stop trying.

And no, we’re not done yet.

Not even close.

It seems just about generally accepted we are done for, right? We tried and are about to fail spectacularly.

Now here is a proper Baader Meinhof bias, a brain-bug the size of a football¹. Failure and succeeding. Who gets to say this morning's version of Joe Turtle's Ragtime on the out of tune pianola is better or worse than last night's?

The more I get to accept, it is not me who is the creative, but this whole damn place I try to figure out, that is the actual creative entity (and that of course includes me too), the more I doubt cleverness. My own, and especially the cunning intelligence in the climatized debate rooms of the human institute.

Of course, we are an exponent of the clever, too. We are such stuff as dreams are made on. It includes the iPhone and the artificial nightmare crushing virtually all the means. Cleverness has a high production rate. It aggressively shapes and reshapes. Builds and bombs. But making the world a better place? Governing the entire bloody planet from some council of clever heads? Make a regulating bundle of switches on the quantum scale to decide when, with what, with whom, and how to put the light out? It sounds more and more like pure insanity to me.

I have started to distrust that kind of cleverness, no matter how subtle, or what shade of green is on their corporate identity. No matter the length of the talk and the number of people praising their wisdom. The cleverness that produces the endless stream of words (mine included). The voice that preferably uses complex ways and jargon to get to a proper understanding. The gatherings of the most smart to find solutions for the predicament. Narrowing down on the truth (also called zooming) and the number of people capable of understanding.

We're still trying to build the pointy pinnacle.

It is a fairytale. An unreadable one. One that drifts off into a bubble of separateness, and while at it, puts everyone to sleep.

I am not pleading to let simpletons lead the way. Our governments are very busy proving that not to be the solution.

The common assumption and question seems to be: how to teach the average stupid to behave more clever in order to make a better world.

There are several strategies in fashion to accomplish that. A lot of effort is put in.

Some of the more intelligent secretly think it is useless. Most of the crowd are utter idiots. Maybe firing a good bunch will solve the shit-show?

Some are hopeful. Machine teachers will educate the kids to program a new level of cleverness. Grinding them into shape. Plugged in to the big calculator, we will create a paradise that has obliterated, risk, disease, pain, loss, death, and all enemies. A shining clarity awaits. Later, of course. Much later. Not now. Never now. Now is bad. It stinks.

There are also the esoteric ones that love a dress up ceremony. Chanting, ‘they know nothing, and they will be happy’ in many different keys. Enforced harmony. Holding stakes, to be driven into the heart of the matter. The own-able matter. The patentable. Guillotine gates placed at the entrance of the opera. And the school. And the hospital. And the mall. They are malling the place. Until, at one hundred and seventeen, they give up and die anyway. Leaving it to other people's kids to clean up their incontinence.

Wisdom is quite simple. A six-year-old could get it. And it says the actual clever is not ours. The actual complex is best grasped in concepts that are shareable with the least smart. Because if we can’t get that into our behaviour, raising the average iq won’t do shit. If anything, it would only increase the time spent in Zoom calls, and talking spaces. While outside that centrally heated room, life is swallowed up to keep us connected. Mining mankind with the dragnet of things.

Then, right brain creatives as we think ourselves to be, we go the opposite direction. As a non-talking meeting place, the church wasn’t so bad after all. Maybe a resurrected God could unite us? A clever design, backed with a ton of historical data and quotations. A permaculture God. In the right zone. That would be clever, wouldn’t it? Let’s make that happen. Preach that to the city dwelling primitives. We’d have a cleverly designed mythology. A reciprocally developed language. Potatoes and tomatoes pronounced as they and them demand all year round. And spandex jackets for everyone. What a beautiful world it would be.

But it won’t.

It already is. But if it is not the clever, nor the simpleton, nor the cancelled populist that will lead us to victory, then who will? God? If he or she hasn’t done that yet, why would that dead dick wait even another minute to set things right? Now don’t be insulted, I believe in God. However, not that one. Not the idol one. Not the all seeing, all mighty one above and outside. The perfect one, making all else look bad. That God is not mine.

Can we know anything then?

I can make a distinction between different kinds of knowing. Try to pull cleverness back to where it belongs. To tell it to sit down, stop being so stupidly clever and listen.

Listen to what? To me? No, stupid. Listen. Open your senses, be still and listen. Stop shooting, arguing, thinking clever thoughts, making plans for improvements and relax. Retreat from the exiled attention and come home to whom, and what and where you are.

Here’s my solution for the unsolvable problem. Stop doing and trying and preaching. Do without doing. Not as a goal. Not all the time. For a moment.

Has the world changed because of that instant?

You answer that one.

I think you will notice things changing. Your perspective falls into place. It realigns with where and who you are. And you start recognising the energy of not doing in other things, in places, in people. The peace of not doing is everywhere. Once you start listening. It is addictive. It is maybe why we are wired for addiction. Is this the dependency we seek?

Inner knowing is the symmetric bigger half of outer knowing. The knowledge of the world does not teach the inner wisdom. The inner knowing embraces the outer experience. The inner not doing shows the how to act. It reveals brand-new words. It is here.

We have reversed that. Forgotten, ignored, gotten it beaten out of us by the bullies that need our life force to keep young. The story of the clever devil offering us the world in return for a sliver of our soul is the attempt to sell us back our own image. To love the reflection in the pond better than the conscious entity able to sit at the water's edge. That devil offers a virtual reality, an artificial intelligence, for the highest price, while it is a mere copy of what you already had from day one, but have become careless about.

It may be stupidly clever to resign for a bit. For an eternal instant. To decline the offer, you cannot refuse for the time being. To leave the board-meeting, and sit in the park and do nothing.

Stop and care. Listen for that care radiating out. Filling the core with light once again. Feel the upgrade taking place, the reboot, the actual great reset. Take back the power that is you and own it.

Now you are you again. Stupidly wise, imperfect you. You have found your way to the starting point. Now get up and shine, you clever one.

1. A football may not be by coincidence the same size as a head. Joyfully kicking that severed brain-ball around and landing the bloody thing in your enemy’s receptacle is a sticky metaphor. The game will nevermore look the same. And it provides a good source of income to the more physically inclined.