AnalysisIsControl

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Since I was a little kid, I have tried to OrderChaos that surrounded my life and infused it. I have learnt many techniques to see patterns and structures in the world and describe them logically and simply. Perhaps this is because I have been programming since I was four, perhaps it goes deeper than that, but that's how I mitigate my reality.

Programming gives you a sense of empowerment unlike many other activities since it is an infinitely rich domain that should be totally under your control. If you like, you can control every bit that flips on the machine and when it does so. In fact, the most frustrating part of programming comes when you lose control over some part of the system and it no longer behaves as you trust it will. Compiler bugs inspire long, bloody oaths and operating system malfunctions launch religious wars that reshape society.

Many programmers, already GodKings of their digital domains, try to make this small kingdom their entire world. HackingAtNight, they envisage themselves as sandmen in CyberSpace, shaping a personal or shared reality--a SemanticSpace, a SocialSemanticSpace?--out of mental virtuality. This fiction is so deep, so complete for them, they see a VirtualReality where there is still only an external text.

However strong this belief system is, it is never strong enough to handle daily life. So, either one retreats from daily life (HackingAtNight), or one finds new ways to extend the belief system out into daily life. Some intense people prefer AugmentedReality, where they pull the spider veil of their myth between themselves and reality. In my case, I also "chose" a remediation by analysis. I break down my experiences and reconstruct them systemically, and I use those systems to make predictions of the world. Predictions are sometimes only knife stabs at chaos, or sometimes they are an epistemic encroachment of the boundaries order, like a city state that has pushed back the mongrel hordes just a little further.

AnalysisIsControl. It's a mediating wall between myself and chaos. Control is warmth; it keeps my vulnerable reality cohesive, coherent, and unafflicted. This is why humans rationalize space, why we choose to cut down forests rather than fear myths of the goblins who live there. We keep our naked apes together by pushing it all back.

But life is hidden out there in the chaos. The jungle teems with both wonder and danger. Reducing oneself to only about what is known and what it safe misses out on what is real and amazing. But analysis is worse than staying within the city walls. Analysis is particularly empty since it mediates between yourself and your own senses, pushing even your life away behind integrated structures of logic. How can you feel something if you are pulling apart that experience and reforming it before you have a chance to give in to the moment?

It's impossible to know what it is to live without actually living. You cannot talk about it, you cannot do it, but you have to be it. This means not trying to understand everything, not trying to break everything down; at least not all the time. At the point where the quill goes down and the coffee mug goes up, that is where life is. And the coffee may spill, and you can try to write your LifeInText so that it did not spill, but it still spilt. Analysis is only a false god, since there is no perfect control. As alluring as it is to use your eraser, maybe it's better to live in palimpsest.

vs. Meatball

Since Meatball and I are reflections of each other, Meatball is imbued with a culture that believes AnalysisIsControl. We deconstruct ourselves hoping to reconstruct ourselves. We have theories on proper community building, strict procedures to show how much we care, regulation of ways to feel. That is untenable. We are still humans, and we are still alive. We can dance to our own jig, but we do not dance to our own puppet strings.

Analysis is a tool, not a reality. Analysis is mediation, where life is embedded. Control is necessary, but not a totality. How to make this happen, I am unsure, but it's important lest we turn into CryptoNauts of a different variety.

-- SunirShah

AnalysisIsControl

vs. Meatball

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