writing

Gurus Are A Symptom of Our Fragmented World

Gideon YutzyLeave a comment

Not to sound all Robert Putnam-esque, but it’s less likely now that we belong to a bowling league, or any other league or club, than it was before Steve Jobs made his famous ‘dent in the universe’ by strongarming through the invention of the smartphone.

Since then, a plethora of idiocies and banalities have competed to fill the vacuum created in the wake of that dent in our universe. Among these is the rise of online gurus, some of whom have reeled in millions of followers. It reminds me of the dynamic between the current U.S. president and his more ardent followers: no matter what their guru says, it is divine decree.

With gurus, even if they blatantly contradict themselves, it can still somehow be spun as pure brilliance, if we as their followers hold the crystal ball under the light in just the right (wrong) angle.

One explanation I’ve heard for the rise of gurus is that we crave certainty. Amid the exponential fragmentation of our world, we like to return to solid ground sometimes. It doesn’t help that we’ve become cyborgs. Literally everyone has grown an appendage on their hand overnight. We can now access billions of brains instantly rather than just our own boring (but still usually trusty) brain. We might remove our bionic limb for a few slots of our day, but only fitfully it seems, and seldom as a clean, surgical break.

The danger is that we are vulnerable to some charismatic guru hacking us. Something about our primordial biology tends to believe information for its own sake, no matter how irrational or ill-founded it might be. If something is said confidently enough, we tend to believe it unless we willfully reverse the inertia of trustingly taking everything in as fact, particularly if it is said in a sleek studio with an army of sound producers and cinematographers working behind the scenes.

And all of which causes one to muse: what, practically, can one do to mitigate the effects of con-men. I remember Kipling’s line in If: “if all people count with you, but none too much.” If some media figure has us eating out of their hand and we tune in to almost all their new content, it just might be a good idea to wrench ourselves away from their orbit occasionally. It has surprised me more than once how a fresh, new take can reframe a situation. We owe it to ourselves to find that new perspective. As Richard Feynman said, “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.” Well, Mr. Feynman, what with the entire body of past and present knowledge at our fingertips, we have less of an excuse now than ever.

I have a proclivity to swallow whole what some charismatic online gurus say. Despite that embarrassing reality, my smug brain wants to whisper that my gurus are more sophisticated and less rabid than other people’s gurus. But that thought is in itself an indictment on how much guru Kool-Aid I’ve drunk. One remedy is to talk back to people on podcasts, literally talk, out loud, as I listen to them on headphones while I cut the grass or jog. It’s surprising how often they suddenly start sounding a lot more foolish, or at least less wise, when I do respond to them. I also like to float what they say to flesh-and-blood humans (novel idea, I know), and notice how they respond, as someone who didn’t get caught in the spell of the technologically advanced media production. I find that people around me who are less invested can be pretty objective, and even ruthless critics, especially my daughters.

That, and also the idea of a True North. A late afternoon plunge in the Irish Sea always has a way of stripping away the BS my mind might have accumulated throughout the day. Beyond blue pills, and beyond red pills, there is our true mother, the sea. I will meet you there. Additionally, the communion service Esther and I have started attending on Wednesday morning anchors us. The priest holds out the wine, uttering the quasi-cannabalist incantation, The blood of Christ, keep you in eternal life, and in every pore of our being, we seek to agree. It’s a bizarre little ritual, but I can tell you it’s been around longer than podcasts, and it is also perhaps the most impregnable defense against overweening gurus that I currently know of.

The Seller of Secrets – You Should Buy This Book

Gideon YutzyLeave a comment

It’s happened – we have a published author in our family. Sheri, the wife of my next younger brother, Daniel, has done the hard work needed to accomplish that feat. So this is me promoting The Seller of Secrets to my (tens of) readers. If you are based in the US, you can buy it here, and if you live in Europe, try this link. In the following post, you can read Sheri’s response to a few questions I put to her. Again, fair play to her on the publication of her debut novel, and may there be more to come.

Wow, what a tale. Your finished story can seem like it dropped out of the sky, but I’m sure a lot of work went on behind the scenes. How much did you plot everything out before you began writing, and how much did characters take on a life of their own?

My process changes and clarifies with each book I write. The Seller of Secrets shifted quite a bit over the years as I worked on it, hired an editor, and then edited with my agent. I didn’t outline very well to begin with, especially regarding character interaction and growth, and the magic system. I paid for that later when my (very sharp-eyed) agent was picking through it. Thankfully, she saw the potential and had the skills to help me fix inconsistencies and relational issues, and create a finished product that caught the eye of a publisher!

With my next novels I’m plotting more ahead of time, and during the plotting is when I hold my characters loosely and let them change if they need to. 

You’ve written The Seller of Secrets at a time when reading books is on the decline. How much did you take that into consideration? Did your imaginary reader have a smart phone nearby?

Not at all, haha. I know people say that, but I and most of my writing friends are reading more than ever. It may be affecting how many books get super popular with teenagers, but it’s not making us slow down as writers at all. It does make me grateful my publisher is launching all formats (e-book, paperback, and hardcover) at once so the reader who needs those options can choose. An audiobook is in the plans, but I’m not sure when that will happen. 

I’m in a writing class at the moment and the teacher says to approach all writing in a spirit of play. Does that resonate with you?

Hmm, I wouldn’t say it quite like that, but perhaps. I think I want to approach my writing in a spirit of joy, as in, remembering why I love stories. Perhaps play fits into that, but to me, joy fits better with everything I’m writing. Sad or painful scenes don’t feel like play, ever. 

For me, listening to good music (Gregory Alan Isakov, right now) is helpful to get me in a creative mood. It’s always something I’ve listened to over and over though, so it’s not distracting. Although, with lyrics like his, sometimes a phrase catches my attention anew and I stop and sit with it. I sense joy in his music as well, and it feeds mine while writing. 

Some of your characters are very vivid, especially Bell’s dialogue and thought processes. To what degree are they composites of people from real life?

The main characters are probably always going to be a little bit of me. The Seller of Secrets was my way of thinking through what it means to have power and accept the responsibilty to use it well, so some of Bell’s thought processes there are similar to mine. But I craft the finished character from various elements that I know the whole cast needs. As the side characters grow and develop in my mind, the main character might shift a bit to meet them to the best effect. 

Your description of potions and scents is believable. How much time and energy did you have to spend researching it?

I’m glad to hear that! It’s hard to calculate how much I spent on those descriptions. I usually start out with spare descriptions, then add a little more with each pass through. My agent and then all the different editors that get the book read often asked for clarification of one detail or another. It’s such an arduous process that I’m not even sure when some of the details were added. 

The book will be a success/failure if…

A tough question. I like to dream big, but my main dream is to reach readers that need this story. It’s hard to know where a debut novel is going to go, but I will view it as a success if I can build a loyal reader base for my next novels. 

I think I’m beyond failure being possible, by those standards. 🙂 I’m really proud of the story and the work I and others put into it, and I’ve already heard enough good things from readers to feel like it was a success. 

Thus Saith the Lord, Slow Thyself Down

Gideon Yutzy3 Comments

I committed two highly avoidable (and highly costly, for a working family) blunders in the last six months.

However, my frustration did not reach its fever pitch until yesterday. I arrived late for my morning class because: a. I encountered snarls of traffic after dropping the girls off at school and b. I then still took the time to pick up some miscellaneous hardware at the local Screwfix. In my frenzy, I wretchedly parked on a double yellow line, a fact I was not fully cognizant of until I got out of class three hours later, whereupon I found a menacing yellow clamp on my front driver’s side tyre.

After paying the 60-euro fine, I had to wait nearly two hours for ‘yer man’ to come de-clamp me, by which time I was twenty minutes late for my afternoon class on another campus. My English language students were patiently waiting and greeted me with pleasant smiles. I gave them an impromptu lesson on the words clamp, de-clamp, and government overreach.

That was actually the final lapse of judgment in a series of three. I haven’t even told you about the first two:

  1. I hastily put some kind of inferior, off-road fuel into our brand-new lawnmower. Obviously, I was trying to save money, but I had to pay 60 euros to have the fuel lines drained. Just like the de-clamp: 60 euros. That must be my default stupid tax.
  2. Then, the other day in the final lap of the final mowing of the season, I was mowing too close to the conservatory window, which caused a stone to ricochet up and shatter a significant portion of the same.

Esther says it only goes to show I’m not really a fully-functional adult but only posing as one. Actually, what she said was, “This means you are spinning so many plates that a few of them have to shatter.” I said, “Thank you, dear wife, that’s a very charitable reading of the situation.”

But I also think I have absorbed the lie that I am infallible and infinite. The reality is that I am profoundly limited. My plan for the next few years is to earn and learn (finishing a degree in English and Religious Studies, yay!). Moreover, I am trying to pour my attention into my daughters before they cross the Rubicon into adolescence, not that I expect all communication to be cut off at that point, just that it might become more complicated. All these endeavors require serious energy and time and I don’t have much left over.

At any rate, last evening as I did the examen*, the Lord said, slow the ____ down! John Mark Comer, citing Dallas Willard, said that the only spiritual advice we really need to follow is, “Ruthlessly eliminate hurry.” I try to take that onboard, more because Willard said it than Comer. Somehow, he comes across as superficial, but I know that’s a harsh evaluation. At any rate, I did read Comer’s book on ruthlessly eliminating hurry–albeit on 1.45 speed!.

Several specific actions I could take to train me to slow down:

  1. Set the timer for one minute and do nothing.
  2. Ride out the impulse for checking my phone. Time how long the impulse lasts. Work on building the concentration muscle.
  3. Say out loud several things that could go wrong in any given situation. It sounds stressful, but I think it might help me close the loop between what my subconscious is trying to tell me and the realm of the fully conscious.

* No, I don’t have elite spiritual practices, the examen is just something I stumbled across through an odd sequence of events, i.e., reading the above-mentioned J.M. Comer, as well as his holiness, the Bishop of Waterford, recommending it. It really does work. Surprise, surprise, right? It’s not like it hasn’t been around for 5 centuries.

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The other morning I read a news headline out loud as we ate breakfast: “There were three executions in the US in the last week.”

My 10-year-old daughter’s instinctive response: “How are the bad guys ever going to learn if the government kills them?”

My 7-year-old daughter’s equally fast rejoinder: “Yeah, and don’t cops know the murders have a bad mental illness!”

I smiled paternally but could not help agreeing. The catalogue of explanations for their responses surely includes the following:

  1. They are speaking from the God-given sense of right and wrong.
  2. Their parents indoctrinated them;
  3. They have lived in western Europe for too long.

Sorry for all the lists in this post.

Create, Don’t Just Consume

Gideon YutzyLeave a comment

In keeping with my recent resolve to create something–to create anything, even if it seems like rubbish–I’m going to exercise the discipline needed to write for half an hour this morning before I consume anything online.

Running has featured heavily for me in the past several weeks. Sometimes I run with two other guys, Rudy and Carl. They both run faster than me, but they never make an issue of it. In fact, I make more of an issue of it than they do. We’ll be running and I’ll say, “I’m sorry that I’m creating a bottleneck.” Usually they don’t seem to know what to do with comments like that. We just run in silence for about one kilometer after I say that.

Carl has been teaching me about pacing. As a relative newcomer to running, I tend to hit my stride and then speed up. But knowing when to hold back is fundamental to good running. For several years now I’ve wanted to run the half marathon in under 2 hours. The three of us have signed up to run the Viking Marathon (this Sunday!) and the other day we decided to run a half marathon in our training. Lo and behold, we did it in 1:55! At around 15k I started surging ahead, but Carl reined me back in. It was good that he did, because I’m almost certain we wouldn’t have come in under 2 hours if he hadn’t. Then I would have had to make my bottleneck comment and it would have all gotten pretty awkward again.

Running captures my imagination for several reasons, but one that I’ve been thinking about recently is that it’s distinctly human. AI can’t really touch it. I’m not against AI and Chat GPT per se; I just happen to agree with the computer scientist and artist (intriguing combination) Jaron Lanier when he says that any technology that doesn’t serve humans is a contradiction in terms, a technology that should be abolished.

Lanier also believes that AI companies should pay the individuals they harvest information from. Because if you think about it, no matter how much AI and Large Language Models bedazzle us, they never do more than synthesize what humans have worked hard to produce. So why shouldn’t the humans be compensated for their efforts? For example, Lanier suggested that if AI “creates” something and incorporates a picture of your shoes in its creation, say from a picture you posted on your Facebook account, then you should get a few pennies for even that. He calls it data dignity or data as labour. I think his instincts are right. Whenever I use Chat GPT now, I’ve started asking it to go and remunerate the source where they got their information from. Heck, it might even draw from this blog post one day. Chat GPT, I ask you: will you be man enough to pay me if you scour my blog for data?

Also, Chat GPT is an asinine name. We should all start calling it information collector.

I say with Cat Stevens, hey, baby, baby, it’s a wild world. But as long as we can create, we are still human. Chat GPT/Information Collector can never create, it can only curate and maybe synthesize. The form of creative expression we as humans pursue is secondary; that we regularly do it is what’s important. Our technology has to serve our creativity but if we cease creating, our world will implode. And that won’t only be the fault of our technology, it will also be our fault for abandoning our task to be divine image bearers and create.

You Can’t Force Creativity But You Can Show up for It

Gideon YutzyLeave a comment

Yesterday on my afternoon run I was listening to Krista Tippett interview Rick Rubin who is a musician and a self-identified creative. Imagine going around introducing yourself as a creative. So what do you do? I’m a creative. It certainly beats all the bullshit jobs you hear about these days, like: “I synthesize data analysis to foster greater engagement among key stakeholders.” Really? And that’s how you plan to spend your one wild and precious life?

Anyway, Rick Rubin likens the creative process to fishing. You can never guarantee that you are going to catch fish, no matter how often you go fishing, but it is equally true that you will never catch fish if you don’t go fishing. And you should never think of your failure to catch fish as actual failures, but rather as eliminating a dead-end. If you fail 10 times, you have eliminated 10 dead-ends, assuming of course, and this is crucial, that you fail in a different ways.

It ties in with the documentary I watched about Stockton Rush, the guy who was hellbent to plunge a carbon-fibre submarine almost 4 kilometres into the abyss–with a crew of 5–to view the moldering wreck that is the Titanic. He kept testing the submarine and I think he built several iterations of it, but he never fundamentally changed his approach. They say he was averse to any form of criticism. Unfortunately, his creation imploded several hundred metres before they reached the Titanic. The loss of life was catastrophic but at least it was instantaneous.

So the trick is, whether you’re building submarines or learning to write, to 1) to find new ways to fail and 2) keep showing up to fish. I remember that I had a pretty good run a few years of doing “morning pages,” a method Julia Cameron came up with and wrote about in her book called The Artist’s Way. I must pick that book up again, actually. I think I could re-incorporate it into my routine spiritual practices.

Recently, I have discovered great freedom and joy in playing around with my spiritual practices. For so long, I had this humourless view of spiritual practices, that they have to look a certain way. I still do feel that there should be a daily reading of one’s sacred texts (in my case the Bible, usually one of the Psalms and sometimes one other passage), and some form of prayer. But it occurred to me that we have so much freedom in how we carry that out. For instance, I find it’s better to have short prayers but to have them more frequently, perhaps 3 or 5 times a day.

The constant stimulation available in the Digital Age has been a barrier for my creative process. We now have vast, perhaps unprecedented access to creative works, and from an unprecedented number of creators, or at least creators who are sharing their work. I suppose humans have always created, it’s just that a larger number are making it public. Now there’s so much creative work to take in that I seldom stop to try to put something out.

It’s interesting to think about the creative process as the domain of the right brain. I’m working my way through Iain McGilchrist’s book on that subject called The Master and His Emissary. Most of the advances we’re seeing in AI are in the domain of the left brain, the subservient emissary. One thing AI can’t touch is humans who create, because we’re in right brain mode. No matter how stunning AI is, it’s doing mostly or entirely left-brain tasks.

Left-brain activity can impress us, but only the more creative, right-brain activity can transform us and inspire worship. Let’s not neglect it.