Possessions vs Purpose

Possessions only, only, only, only get in the way of finding your purpose. Every teen I know (and most honest adults I know) want to find their purpose. It is worth knowing and noting that accumulating and thinking about possessions get in the way of that.

(originally posted in May of this year)

I don’t care if it’s cheaper or free.

There are too many ads on the internet.

We’ve had sold so much we have sold everything.

Go to www.nba.com and you don’t get basketball. You get a little basketball and a violent assault of ads.

Go to www.nytimes.com and you don’t get The Times. You get The Times hidden in the midst of a barrage of ads.

Been to Facebook lately? The. Whole. Thing. Is. Ads.

Much has already been written about Google and ads. (Hint: YOU are the product, the advertisers are Google’s customer.)

Amazon’s Kindle is now ad-supplemented.

Selling ads is not as profitable as selling a product. But it certainly scales. Just sell more ads. And then more.

It’s not going to stop. And it’s already too much. What happened? What have we sold?

What I’ve read the past seven years

Here’s what I’ve read the past seven years. An asterisk means I was blown away.

2012
The DaVinci Code
Angels and Demons

2011
* The War of Art
The Snowman (Jo Nesbø and Don Bartlett)
* The Power of Now
* The Contrarian’s Guide to Leadership
* Logicomix
* Hyperion
Having Everything Right
Going After Cacciato
Long Way Gone
The Hot Zone
Alive

2010
Into the Wild
Go Ask Alice
* The Great Divorce
* The Screwtape Letters
* Breaking the Rules
* This is Water
Trout Fishing in America
The Rape of Nanking
The Great Gatsby

2009
* The Enlightened Mind
* The Enlightened Heart
The Ten Principle Upanishads
* The Art of Dramatic Writing
* Outliers
The Doors of Perception

2008
* The Perennial Philosophy
* The Road
The Way of the Bow
* The Four Agreements
Rage
* Macbeth
* Siddartha

2007
Freakonomics
Slaughterhouse Five
* Cat’s Cradle
In the Lake of the Woods
War Trash

2006
Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates
* Skinny Legs and All
Discipline Without Stress, Punishments, or Rewards
* Hamlet
A Prayer for Owen Meany
The Chosen
The Laramie Project
Oleanna

2005
‘Tis
* Angela’s Ashes
* All Over But the Shoutin’
The Freedom Writer’s Diary
There are No Shortcuts
* The Sparrow
* Fermet’s Enigma

2004
* Ender’s Game
Lord of the Flies
* 1984
Understanding Comics
Setting Up Your Shots
The Greatest Salesman in the World

In defense of Mitt Romney and the Republican candidates. Wait. What?

If there is someone who does not accept Evolution, it is not because they have not been taught it. Evolution has been taught for over one hundred years. There must be other reasons that a person struggles to accept Evolution. The obvious, and common, explanation is religion. But could there be other reasons?

There do exist some rationale obstacles. All of which are removed by science, but that is another obstacle, as we will see.

One obstacle is that we do not observe cross-species evolution taking place. We do witness biological evolution when it is forced. We humans intentionally make new breeds of dogs or new types of flowers. But even in our best labs, we never see cross-species evolution.

In all living things we see natural adaptation and hybridization, but for as long as we’ve kept records, and for as much technology as we’ve acquired, we have never witnessed one species becoming another species. (Simply because our life-span is not long enough and for evolutionary reasons cannot be long enough. An organism can only be a small part of complex change.)

Which is the second obstacle: time. If we were to be honest, billions of years sounds like science-fiction no matter how much hard science is behind it. The complexity of organisms and the complexity within each part of each organism is a problem for Evolution, no matter how many past years one gives it.

The world, and universe, is entirely self-propagating. That much is obvious and true. We do get to witness that. Obstacles arise with the two time-related questions: “How did it all start?” and “How did we get to this point?” And those are the two questions people ask. The first is typically asked out of closed defensiveness. The second is typically asked out of healthy curiosity.

Which brings us (back) to the obstacle of science.

The percentage of people reading, studying, or keeping up with the hard science is quite small. A person has likely been taught Evolution, but how much and how long ago? And without knowing the hard (and often newest) science, Evolution requires almost as much faith as religious, mythical explanations.

The greatest things ever spoken.

Here they are.

The three greatest things ever spoken (and subsequently written). I identified these three after searching for them for most of my 42 years, particularly the last seven. I am comfortable saying these are the greatest. This is the order I put them in:

1. “Follow your bliss.” Joseph Campbell (1940)
2. Accept the “isness” of things. Lao Tzu (~550 BC)
3. Be fully present. Buddha (~500 BC)

What will Apple announce in Oct., some history, and the Apple automobile.

There has been some speculation recently that Apple is at work on a new type of computer, and that they will introduce it later this year.

What follows is pure speculation:

What if Apple makes a desktop/pocket iOS device? An iPhone without the screen? You and I can do almost everything we need to do in iOS. What if our “desktop” computer ran iOS?

I picture something the same cubic volume as an iPhone (it can fit in a pocket so is smaller than Apple TV, but its dimensions need not account for a screen) that either connects to a monitor (via Mini DisplayPort) and/or has a built-in pico-project (which, to date, have too poor of quality for Apple’s standards). You would simply need a monitor, keyboard… and a Magic Trackpad. Boom. $299 computer (not counting peripherals). Check and mate.

The problem, of course, would be the visual feedback as you would no longer be physically touching your screen (except to point at things on your friend’s monitors and leave smudges). I envision a circle (that is only visible during trackpad use), like we see in various touch-system demos, but I don’t know how effective that would be.

Prologue:
I have been thinking about, writing about, and using Macintoshes since 1993. I lived through part of Apple’s Dark Ages, which really were dark and difficult and not just for those Rabid, Delusional Mac Users™. Even by that point, Apple had pioneered and/or popularized everything in personal computing. Everything. The personal computer, the GUI, the API, postscript printing, desktop publishing, the consumer digital camera, the handheld computer, networking, wireless networking, and a million things that only the history books remember. Just like today.

Back then, Windows was still Death By a Thousand Stings™, but Windows users crowed “Market Share” (incessantly!), and they had a good point. If the Mac was so “magical”, how come no one (percentage-wise) was buying them?

So you can see how everything is just the same today. Except for the Mac sales. Those are a bit different.

But I was connecting to history. (Not fanning pointless, polarizing arguments.)

Back in those Dark Ages, Mac rumors and speculation were more feverish and frenzied than even today. Mac users desperately hoped that each Apple press event would reveal that all of Apple’s inexplicable decisions during those years were part of a brilliant, complex, Bobby Fisher-esque plan. Aha! The company that had brought us so much was not, as it appeared, failing. They were more brilliant than ever! Our love and loyalty were not in vain.

Such an announcement never happened.

But something better (for everyone) happened. This is the history we (all) are living now.

I have one more historical point: back then, one persistent, whispered rumor was that Apple was working on a car. An automobile. The thought of it made us dizzy.

So, I would like to say now: Steve, have you noticed how ugly most cars are? Have you noticed the awkward details? Have you noticed how many buttons they put on dashboards? Do you still have that secret Apple automobile in you?

Here’s the thing about Apple’s “recent” success.

It isn’t recent.

The only thing that has changed are some numbers. Some big numbers: largest company in the world, second most profitable company in the world, most profitable retail stores in the world, best-selling smart phone, second best-selling smart phone, best-selling tablet computer, etc.

Other numbers have not changed: customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, consumer ratings, etc.

So now we have some new numbers which make it easy to say “Apple is better.” But Apple has not changed. Apple is operating from the same principles, discipline, vision, and methods that they have always (with Steve and team) been operating from. What people who understand have been saying is no more true now than it was ten years ago: Apple is better. Not in trivial, transient ways. Not in the “My beliefs are right, yours are wrong” sense. Apple is doing, and has been doing, things much differently than any company—in any industry—for at least the past ten years. Apple’s products and operations are vastly superior. Many people have recognized this all along. Some people will never recognize it.

It’s just that now all the numbers confirm it.

Stumble It!