Grief shows up in mysterious and unexpected ways. It is the visceral evidence of unexpressed love. When your heart is broken, it is important to preserve those cracks, as Rumi is famously attributed to saying, for it is here where light can enter.

This year I started doing 10 minutes of dynamic exercises to improve my mobility and flexibility every morning. One thing I found surprising is that I have noticed small but perceivable improvements in my swimming performancd. My range of motion has improved or restored to a state I already forgot I had. My body had accustomed to a degree of stiffness. Now I can feel my body cutting through the body lf water like a knife, with the torso and shoulders rotating more effectively. I suppose it is analogous to wearing a pair of glasses for the first tkme and opening your eyes to a distant world one had forgotten it existed. I wonder how many other states of being are out there within one’s reach, and how one goes to unlock them.

Today I visited the National Portrait Gallery in D.C. with a friend. A section dedicated to MLK reminded me of the inevitable arc of history idea he once uttered. Paradoxically, he also said that “change does not roll in on wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle.” I wonder how can you reconcile both. I suppose you don’t. If justice is not inevitable, then the arc of history does not bend on its own. It only bends if we choose to bend it.

To be engaged in the messiness and tension of moral values makes you unpredictable. If you are guided by a single moral value, such as loyalty or punctuality, you become predictable, because the moral compass resolutely points to the same direction, no matter the circumstances. The real world is not like that. There are times where it is virtuous to be punctual, and then there are other times when spontaneity is preferred, both being polar opposites. One cannot exercise all virtues at the same time. One is constantly juggling between them, navigating moral dilemmas and making mistakes along the way. That is part of being human.

The opposite is true. If one holds a single value, such as loyalty, others know what you are going to do. Bad actors then can anticipate it and find ways to manipulate you.

A prerequisite for becoming a better person is to become unpredictable. This does not mean to act out of character, but rather that your actions are informed by a constant struggle of competing moral values. In the age of predictive algorithms, to be difficult to read is a superpower. It shields you from bad actors who seek control.

And thank God most humans are unpredictable creatures. It makes life so much more interesting and rich.

A superpower is to imagine that a film crew is following you all the time as you interact with the texture of reality. This forces you to be more accountable with yourself. It helps in closing the distance between what you say in public versus what you say in private. If you are able to close that gap, then you have acquired a superpower.

There is no arc of history. That quote by Martin Luther King Jr., although it sounds nice, makes us complacent. What is implicit in that statement is that no matter what we do, things are going to be O.K. in the end.

The truth is that there is no single line of history. History is really up to individual actions. It is important to assert what we care about, especially when the circumstances around you change. When the incentives around you change, whether it is a new government or a new boss, it is important to recognize that it is human nature to adjust, to adapt, to fall in line, as that Milgram experiment at Yale revealed.

The little actions, the little affirmations, do matter. They reveal who you really are. In so far as things bend, it is because we bend them.

Cowardliness is icing courage.
Big lies are icing the nuanced truth.

Conformity is icing individual responsibility.

Cancel culture is icing the opposition.

Denunciation is icing impartiality.

Masks are icing individual responsibility.

Data centers are icing the blue sky.

Techbros are icing the future.

Screens are icing reality.

Apathy is icing conversation.

Cynicism is icing coalitions.

Suspicion is icing engagement.

Cruelty is icing humanity.

It is not responsible to shoot in the face several rounds to a civilian after giving conflicting instructions.

It is not responsible to play the victim (“I am being doxed”) when you hold the monopoly on violence.

It is not responsible to cover your face if you carry a weapon and receive a government salary.

It is not responsible to prosecute people for their opinions, even if they have not done anything.

It is not responsible to incite civilians so you can then escalate and react “in self defense”.

It is not responsible to outright lie, manipulate facts, deceive, and cover up.

It is not responsible to blame the things you do to conspiracies.

It is not responsible to justify extrajudicial killings.

It is not responsible to demand loyalty over honesty.

It is not responsible to target legal observers.

It is not responsible to intimidate civilians.

It is not responsible to act with impunity.

It is not responsible to celebrate cruelty.

Today, a masked ICE agent shot in the head multiple tomes a woman in Minneapolis. She was a legal observer. In a social media post, the Democrats responded with a rather tired quote from Orwell: “the Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”

As spine-chilling as this incident may be, and as much as it is important to read Orwell, I think Aldous Huxley described the American condition much better:

In Brave New World, Lenina shrinks from the “rushing emptiness” of the sea, demanding the radio to drown out profound feelings, showing her propensity to avoid her own humanity.

It is not that the Party is pushing an official version of reality down people’s throats. It is more about a distracted and uninterested society that could not care less about reality. Most of us are choosing to turn the blind eye on the atrocities of our times, drowning our own humanity in a sea of banal entertainment. The threat seems not to be a tyrannical oppressor but rather our the passivity of our own selves: a generalized apathy towards our own neighbors and an obsession with ourselves. It is in this atomization of society where power can do whatever they want. We are amusing ourselves to death.

When I was a little kid, I was fond of building little cities in my room. I shaped whole towns from what I could find in my room: Hot Wheels, LEGOs, VHS cases, empty boxes, pillows… Imagination turns anything sufficiently interesting. My room looked very much like Andy’s room in Toy Story. In school, during recess, I enjoyed inventing my own language with hieroglyphs and writing secret mystery books. Reflecting back now two decades, I see that many of the things that brought me joy were about building worlds and I wonder how far I would have been in life had I listened to that inner child instead of adapting to the world.

The impulse to create little worlds must be something inherently human. It drives so much enthusiasm for sandbox video games like SimCity, Minecraft, and Cities: Skyline. As an adult, I have not lived up to the task of nourishing that bliss. Perhaps one way would be by retaking my coding projects and experimenting with virtual reality and computer graphics.

I suppose that impulse is widespread among humans. I suppose that impulse must be part of Nick Bostrom’s propositions about the simulation theory. Perhaps I am an architect within an architect’s mind.