The Curtains of Comfort

I recently met a fascinating individual, and we talked about knowledge, information, and wisdom. Inspired by his podcasts, I'm writing on a similar topic while borrowing the name from his podcasts. I've been walking the path of intellectualism for a while now, not that I've become one. Nowadays, I spend most of my time learning about new ideas and concepts. I rarely watch movies and series and rarely go out and party; instead, I watch lectures from all walks of life, but why? Why did a person like me, a complete extrovert till a few years ago, start shying away from his past habits? It is partly due to my shift to Belgium and rest due to the new and exciting world of ideas.

Unfortunately, the path of intellectualism doesn't necessarily lead to happiness, and often you find yourself troubled for no apparent reason. I don't even remember how often I've lost my sleep because of an idea. And the biggest problem is that no one can help me get these answers; I must walk alone. For instance, I've sometimes lost sleep at what it means to be enlightened and what it takes to turn someone into Hitler or Stalin. I'm not saying this rhetorically; after listening to Socrates and other Greek philosophers for months, I couldn't sleep for weeks. But why do I walk on this path? What do I get out of all this unnecessary complexity? Why not just take a chill pill, relax like everyone, and engage in activities like most around me?

Short answer, I look for novel experiences. I have a theory or a philosophy, whatever you might wanna call it; we as humans are limited beings in every sense; the only seemingly limitless thing is our mind; it can discover mysteries of the unknown, the idea that a finite being is trying to understand and grasp the bits and pieces of infinity, the infinity of time and space. Once you start walking this path, you will start seeing things and patterns that most people can't even comprehend; for them, these concepts and ideas are just words, having no personal meaning or experiences in their lives. But as someone said, nothing in this world comes for free; the more you read and understand, the more you start appreciating both small and big things, but at the same time, you often find yourself alone, with no one to share your experience with, people around you just don't get it. This is the price you pay to experience reality at a finer level. The novelty of experiences comes with being alone; when you are constantly interacting with a group, your ideas are the shared ideas of the group, not only at the time you are engaging with the group but even when you are not. It's so easy to clutter the human mind with nonsense stuff; all the important stuff comes with much pain and misery. But what are these experiences I'm talking about, you must be wondering? It might seem insignificant to most, but they are not; imagine an experience that made you say wow, or express gratitude towards yourself or the god for being alive at that moment to experience something so pure that you know won't come back that easily. These experiences not only feel good but leave an impression on our minds and soul for life. Experiences that change the way we approach life. These are the kind of experiences one encounters while walking the path of intellectualism. Why are we humans, not just animals, if not for our incredible capacity to share and discover phenomena happening all across the timeline and universe? We can feel good just by thinking about something that's yet to happen or sad by thinking about the things that have already happened and have no bearing on the present. Humans have this incredible capacity to simultaneously live in the past, present, and future. 

Let me tell you about a few such experiences: One day I was sitting in my office working on some data annotations and listening to Jordan Peterson. He talked about divine injunction in our lives, divinity, and heaven. During his talk, he started talking about stars and divinity; at that moment, the idea of divinity started making sense. All the mythological stories started coming back to me. Suddenly, I found myself standing before a star; the star was coming to life for the first time, and seeing something this incredible, which is usually beyond my imagination, I broke into tears of joy. I know it was just in my head, but aren't all things just in our heads. You love your partner, being happy or sad or whatever. Eventually, everything's in our head only, right? Let me tell you about other such experiences, often when I'm running, a point comes when I feel like giving up; I've already run 10kms, my heart is pounding, and my feet are hurting, but suddenly I hear a voice from within, get the fuck up, it's not yet over, and I keep running. In short, I stop feeling tired; I feel victorious over my mind, and that feeling of beating my expectations is priceless. In those moments when I think it's over, that voice of warrior within me roars and gives me ineffable pleasure. In these seemingly ordinary moments, I sometimes feel like a god or find myself completely humbled by the beauty and grandeur of the vastness of the universe. I'm not saying this just as mere words; at times, I've felt like a god in terms of completeness (not in terms of being better than everyone), feeling that I'm the microcosm, a representation of the same divine reality. By the way, this running experience is also called runner's high.

But is there more to knowledge, wisdom, and information? People often use all these terms interchangeably. I think about this through a mental map of islands, boats, and a compass. Let me explain this idea using a realization I had a few years ago. In 2016, I came across a YouTube video explaining the concept of AI; the video introduced the idea of soft classifiers vs. hard classifiers. Back then, my understanding of computers was limited to boolean logic; the idea that we could get probabilistic results was new to me. I got really fascinated by that video; thus, I wrote a small code to classify between a dog's and a cat's image.

I wrote the code by following the same example in the video; surprisingly, it worked. I was cheerful but didn't understand what I wrote or why it worked, so I wrote it again (no CTRl+C and CTRL+V). I wrote the same piece of code 7 times; the first time, I couldn't understand anything, but by the time I wrote it 7th time, I had a good understanding of what was happening. Now my question to you is that if I saw the same code 7 times, the information I had was the same, but why did it take so many trials to understand it (I had the exact same information in the 1st and 7th trials)? And this is the idea of knowledge, can you relate different pieces of information with one another. By the 7th time, I started understanding how the first line was connected with the 5th line and how the 8th line was associated with the 1st line, which we call knowledge. The connection between the different parts of a world model is called knowledge. These world models are generated by thinking and building upon an idea. But what is wisdom, then?

Furthermore, while we possess extensive knowledge about numerous world models, transitioning from one model to another poses a challenge. This is where the compass of wisdom becomes invaluable. The wisdom compass operates by posing the appropriate question, and when the right question is asked, it guides us toward the direction of the desired world model. These world models, or bodies of knowledge, can be likened to islands scattered across the vast sea, each marked with signs along the way. By asking the wisdom compass the correct question, we are given the path to reach different islands, i.e., access to other world models. Consequently, information can be seen as the intricate details comprising all these world models or islands. Finally, it is essential to note that the theory of mind is a considerably complex concept, requiring substantial effort to explain comprehensively in written form.

Now let's talk about the idea of the curtains of comfort. What is comfort? I'm not talking about physical comfort because people can still be uncomfortable with all the world's material wealth. Then what is it actually? And why should we even care about understanding it? The idea of comfort is directly linked with success and happiness. So comfort is basically an ideology, philosophy, or belief system; what is that to which you return when the shit goes south. When you are having a shitty day, things are not going according to plan; what you go to is your comfort space. The trust within yourself, a safe space where you know things are alright, is what I call comfort. But how is this related to success, then? To succeed in anything, we need to take risks, but it's dangerous because of the uncertainty involved in the process. Here comes the importance of having a solid belief system and a well-defined comfort zone. If I have a robust belief system, I can take more risks because I know I can always return to my comfort zone if things don't work out. Most people need a well-defined philosophy to guide their life, which they can entirely rely upon in case everything becomes terrible. And as we know that most people don't have a philosophy to live their lives, thus they are always afraid to take risks. Most people have other people as a comfort, but once you can look past that and realize the comfort of ideas, you are a completely new beast. Once you can look behind the curtains of the rudimentary illusion of friends, family, wealth, etc., then only you can truly realize your potential. Let me give you an example of this idea of the curtain of comfort. For instance, whenever anything wrong happens to me, I tell my closest friends about it. Sitting miles away, they can't help me, but I still tell them because that's comforting. I always have this fake feeling of support, I keep lying to myself that there are people with me, and that's how I comfort myself. I'm not doubting my friends; it's just a way to convince my mind that I'm not alone; I don't have to deal with this shit on my own; having this feeling is super important as it helps me rise above the shitty situations. But what if I tell you that you can look past this illusion of support and find the support within your own mind. When Buddha was in the process of realizing enlightenment, there was no one to help him. People like Bhagat Singh would have sacrificed their lives regardless of whether anyone supported them. Learning that you were born alone and there are specific paths that you have to walk alone is real power. The entire idea of enlightenment is about looking beyond the curtains of comfort; once you can get comfortable with the harsh reality of the world, nothing in the world can stop you from achieving what you want. 

Om. Peace