> Humanity, correctly seen in the context of the last five hundred years, is an extruder of technological material. We take in matter that has a low degree of organization; we put it through mental filters, and we extrude jewelry, gospels, space shuttles. This is what we do. –
[Terence McKenna](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/604657-but-technology-is-the-real-skin-of-our-species-humanity)

Why We Forget Most of the Books We Read

[Great overview](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/01/what-was-this-article-about-again/551603/) of the “[forgetting curve](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forgetting_curve)”, the way that we immediately forget almost all the information we take in:

> For many, the experience of consuming culture is like filling up a bathtub, soaking in it, and then watching the water run down the drain. It might leave a film in the tub, but the rest is gone.

That describes many of my reading experiences quite well; sometimes I feel like [the characters in this Portlandia skit](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JLWQEuz2gA). The key to avoiding this is recalling and re-encountering the information again:

> If you want to remember the things you watch and read, space them out…Memories get reinforced the more you recall them, Horvath says. If you read a book all in one stretch—on an airplane, say—you’re just holding the story in your working memory that whole time. “You’re never actually reaccessing it,” he says.

The most well-known technique for recalling information systematically is [spaced repetition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaced_repetition):

> Spaced repetition is a learning technique that incorporates increasing intervals of time between subsequent review of previously learned material in order to exploit the psychological spacing effect.

This website has always served as my [outboard brain](http://archive.oreilly.com/pub/a/javascript/2002/01/01/cory.html), but I don’t re-encounter my own thoughts on a regular basis. I’ve tried a few times to set up a system to send me random past posts; worth getting that going.

Notes from Learning to Die in the Anthropocene

A few years back I was talking with a friend about how much more frequent and easier air travel had gotten even since I was a kid. I mentioned that our kids would probably travel constantly and never settle down, and he responded “or maybe we’ll run out of resources and they won’t be able to travel at all.”

That was the first time I really considered that our way of life might not continue growing forever, and may end or transform completely. Roy Scranton’s _[Learning to Die in the Anthropocene](https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B0140EEM8W/)_ is a short, poetic exploration of how we might come to terms with our mortality as a civilization, and if we must die out, learn how to die well. It’s a dark book, but offers an unexpected olive branch in the form of the humanities as a way to avoid the worst of what might come.

### The Big Idea

> Humanity’s survival through the collapse of carbon-fueled capitalism and into the new world of the Anthropocene will hinge on our ability to let our old way of life die while protecting, sustaining, and reworking our collective stores of cultural technology. (23)

Scranton highlights that the foundations of our civilization are the stories we tell ourselves. If we tell stories about endless technological progress and individual fulfillment, we are likely to fall into chaos once our resources run out. But if we tell stories about what’s best–and most basic–about human culture, we build knowledge and a support system for harder times.

Rather than technology, this emphasizes the humanities as the most important area to develop in ourselves and our children. Scranton argues that reading, writing, singing and drawing new stories about “the good life” is the best way to protect against the dangers of climate change, resource depletion, and societal collapse.

The first step, though, is to personally and as a society realize our mortality and shift to a mindset of collective responsibility.

### 5 favorite quotes
> * Politics, whether for bees or for humans, is the energetic distribution of bodies in systems. This is where the ideas of the vote, the town hall meeting, and the public debate get their power: humans come together to resonate on one frequency or another. (55-56)
> * Accepting this emptiness, letting go of my self, was only the first step in coming to understand my responsibility to and participation in a larger collective self, a kind of human existence transcending any particular place or time, going back to our first moments in Africa 200,000 years ago, and living on in the dim, fraught future of the Anthropocene.(93-94)
> * “All the wisdom and reasoning in this world boils down finally to this point: to teach us not to be afraid to die.” – Michel de Montaigne (91)
> * The only inherent trait of the human ape that differentiates us from other animals is our knack for collective symbolic manipulation. (94)
> * The study of the humanities is nothing less than the patient nurturing of the roots and heirloom varietals of human symbolic life…The fate of the humanities, as we confront the end of modern civilization, is the fate of humanity itself. (99; 110)

### Next steps

I’ve long wanted to write simple children’s books about the future, and illustrating possible good lifestyles in a challenging environment seems like a good way to do that. Will make that a priority this year.

*Update* – Just found out I posted this on the day [Ursula Le Guin died](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/23/obituaries/ursula-k-le-guin-acclaimed-for-her-fantasy-fiction-is-dead-at-88.html). Sad news. [A quote of hers](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/nov/20/ursula-k-le-guin-national-book-awards-speech) that applies quite nicely here:

> “We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable – but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art.”

Investment and love

[Dan Ariely on why we love our kids so much](http://www.bakadesuyo.com/2013/03/interview-nyt-bestselling-author-dan-ariely-talks/) (and more than others):

> Kids really come with no instructions. Very tough to deal with, difficult, complex, but incredibly involving and time consuming and I think the love that comes out of it is an example of the effect of a tremendous investment.

[Gratitude increases patience and self-control](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/29/opinion/sunday/the-only-way-to-keep-your-resolutions.html) – as the author asserts, a good way to keep those New Year’s resolutions!

Experience as interpretation

> Our own nature, in fact, is defined by the tiny fraction of possible interpretations [of the world] we can make, and the astronomical number we can’t.-
[Hans Moravec](http://www.frc.ri.cmu.edu/~hpm/project.archive/general.articles/1998/SimConEx.98.html)

Consciousness as story

> Our consciousness may be primarily the continuous story we tell ourselves, from moment to moment, about what we did and why we did it. It is a thin, often inaccurate veneer rationalizing a mountain of unconscious processing…

> On the one hand, our consciousness may be an evolutionary fluke, telling an unreliable story in a far-fetched interpretation of a pattern of tiny salty squirts. On the other, our consciousness is the only reason for thinking we exist (or for thinking we think). Without it there are no beliefs, no sensations, no experience of being, no universe. – [Hans Moravec](http://www.frc.ri.cmu.edu/~hpm/project.archive/general.articles/1998/SimConEx.98.html)

A list of human universals

Things that everybody does, in every culture worldwide: [Human Universals](https://condor.depaul.edu/mfiddler/hyphen/humunivers.htm)

For example:

> * Dance
* Jokes
* Language
* Laws
* Planning for future
* “Snakes, wariness around”
* Tickling
* “Weather control (attempts to)”

[via Alan Kay](https://www.fastcompany.com/40435064/what-alan-kay-thinks-about-the-iphone-and-technology-now), who says “Suppose you want to make a lot of money. Well, just take the top 20 human universals and build a technological amplifier for them.”

Why Elon Musk is working on brain interfaces

Because any other way of evolving humans isn’t fast enough:

> Genetics is just too slow, that’s the problem. For a human to become an adult takes twenty years. We just don’t have that amount of time. –
[Neuralink and the Brain’s Magical Future – Wait But Why](http://waitbutwhy.com/2017/04/neuralink.html)

You are where your attention is

This line has stuck with me since first reading [Andrew Sullivan’s excellent article on distraction](http://nymag.com/selectall/2016/09/andrew-sullivan-technology-almost-killed-me.html) last week:

> *You are where your attention is.* If you’re watching a football game with your son while also texting a friend, you’re not fully with your child — and he knows it. Truly being with another person means being experientially with them, picking up countless tiny signals from the eyes and voice and body language and context, and reacting, often unconsciously, to every nuance. These are our deepest social skills, which have been honed through the aeons. They are what make us distinctively human.