Happimess

...and other paradogs

The correctional facility underlines my mistakes. It tries to make me use correct language. The artificial editor has stepped up these last months in a totally annoying way. You started the last three sentences with the same word, it says, normal people don't like that, don't do that, don't go against what is generally considered good.

Soon your roadmap will not only tell you what is the best route to get to the destination, but it will help you choose a better path, take breaks, nudge you to go for a coffee, switch to assisted driving to prevent you from mistakes that endanger the service agreement. One evening, somewhere soon, the damn vehicle will tell you no, you are not fit to drive.

Being unclean is an offence. Not yet officially, but we're well on our way to making it punishable.

The manufacturing of digital products, and especially their core part, the chip, requires an extremely clean environment. A dead space. When you place that ultimate form of minute control at one end of the scale, my place lies at the other end. Einsteins deserted desk in a messy thrift store.

Our intentional messy attic

But that's just looks. If both me and the freshly emerged Artificial General Intelligence would run for president. The pack would go for the artificial general, and that worries me. I would be far better as a leader. Relatively. Because I suck at presidency. Still, everyone would be better off. Much better.

My mess is honest, it fits right in with the rest of the shit that surrounds my little spot. It is a happymess. A good home for all paradogs.

Chaos cannot exist in order. But order is very welcome in my attic. It can go freely in and out. Have a sleepover, sit on a shelf. Nestle on a couch. After moving some stuff. No digital identity card needed, no hazmat or hairnet required, not even deodorant.

All people stink. They can't help it. Despite layers of denial. Of blaming others for the smell. And the ultimate 'insanity' is how we use one of the core blessings of modern life. Most of you reading this have access to very clean drinking water. Congratulations. Enjoy it while it lasts. But here's today's catch. We use it to shit in. Or more precise, we take a dunk and then use a ten-day ration to flush the reeking filth down a system of pipes to a remote swimming pool of sludge. Out of sight and smelling range.

And then we make soup from that, no literally, we put the same up-cycled fluid in our herbal tea and never even lend it a second thought.

I must admit, I still participate. Sporadically. Ordinarily, when in France, I do my secret, my secretion, on a black bucket. Sorry, for not warning you, before I handed you the image. Yes, it is a bit nasty. But then I scoop sawdust on top and close the lid. It isn't transported anywhere until I lift the bucket, put it in a wheelbarrow and empty it on a separate compost heap at the far end of the fruit-patch. It oozes for about half an hour and then the magic begins.

Because my shit is not shitty at all to numerous other creatures.

Humanure, after the full process is no longer dangerous, or smelly. Great compost for trees, bushes, general soil improvement. We avoid using this for the salad beds. There we choose well aged horse-shit.

Our squeaky clean-order is not a clean-order at all to countless other creatures.

And while I aim for great tolerance, for messy slackness, that naturally includes tightness and narrow margins. The Order, is busy installing a zero tolerance regime, to even be able to ‘make’ progress.

For a long time, I have assumed that creativity was progressive. You know, creating new and all. Clearly the opposite of conservative, right?

Well.... if only it were that simple. I must confuse you. It is not. It is relative. It depends.

In preparing for the interview last week, one of the questions by Kim Warner was this one:

9. I think many people who don’t “fit in” or feel like misfits end up in the arts, including the literary arts. We get to create the worlds that we want, even though when we put down the pen or brush, we still have to rejoin the other world. If you could undo one thing in our society to help us feel more at home, what would it be?

I don't know about you, but a choose-one-thing question triggers a chain reaction in me that takes me deeper and deeper. One of the first thoughts was to remove schooling from the planet. Like swipe, gone. Just to see what happens next. I shan't tire you with all the considerations, and just present one of the remaining candidates still standing.

This is my proposal:

Start teaching relativity to five-year-olds, and make it a returning theme, widening as they grow in understanding and experience. This would very likely reduce suffering by a crazy factor.

We now pretend relativity is only to be understood by a tiny club of symbol scribblers. This lack of understanding one of the basic principles ruling our cosmic compost heap, lies at the root of our collective mess. What should be obvious to the average six year old (in a world with large, risky, weedy, playgrounds surrounding our teaching facilities (leave muddy boots at the door), that teaches a playful imagination capable of knowing that bigness, dirtiness, heaviness, ugliness and so on, of some thing or other, wholly depends on whatever it is connected to, surrounded by) is now some alien concept causing fearful confusion in the citizens. Then our good would turn out to be also relatively bad. And the bad suddenly shows a few treats for consideration. We’d know that all our judgement is relative judgement. We’d easily understand that giving freedom and giving responsibility are as linked as taking freedom and eradicating responsive behaviour. We would see the relations first, and then the things.

I know, you object to sitting on a bucket. That's why I made a box. With an opening jigsawed in the top. The Oval Office is nicely decorated and stained red. Very modest compared to a fellow alternative s(h)itter, who upgraded the humble seat into a royal throne suitable for king, queen, prince, and princess.

The Oval Office saves up to 50.000 liters of drinking water a year. Pretty impressive for something this low-tech.

Our dry toilet is part of the happymess we try to create. And creatives we are. As are you. We cannot help being creative because the whole place is. Creation sustains life. Renewal is necessary to hold on. Change is our core certainty.

Cleanliness, like language, is a container. A bucket. It needs to reside in an unclean place. Humans are supposed to live in an unclean place. Relatively unclean. A concept everyone would understand if we didn't teach absolute answers in school. But we do not like relativity. We like things to be clear and dead-sure, risk-free, straightforward, pure.

There is no such thing as pure in a living world. Because this world is relative, nothing is separate. And you and I are relatives of the first degree.

Even if we do not invite the rest of the family, they will come and visit anyway.

The Green Man statue I helped build with the same guy who made the king’s toilet. The oak we’d collected in the surrounding forest. This guardian is an old symbol for interconnectedness and renewal.

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The video of the conversation I had with Kimberley Warner is now online. The response so far has been overwhelming. I am proud to invite you to go see it.

Bertus’ beautiful brain