Entry #12: Systems and Habits

Everything we do, everything we are, everything we experience, and all that we will experience — all are comprised of systems.

When I adjust the keyboard on my desk, I am driving and being driven by many systems — the rotation of my arm, hand and fingers, my sense of proprioception in relation to the physical object, my eyes in coordinating and scanning the arm and keyboard rotation over my desk.

Body, economy, work, patterns of speaking, thinking, the mountains and the cities we abide in — all, are systems.

Your spouse is a system. You are a system.

Every thought you have is part of a thought system, or overlapping systems.

Sexual systems have the most intense built-in rewards, prioritizing as they do, spawning additional systems.

Pain is a system warning of a danger to itself.

The "controller" that appears to manipulate and favor one system over another, shift or change systems, or analyze systems, is itself a system. There is only motion, and it is ever-present, even in apparent stillness.

Systems always serve functions and carry through-put.

There is no identity. There are only systems we slip in and out of.

What you want, and who you think you are, are relatively static and thought-based attempts to avoid unwanted systems.

All systems want to do 2 things: to fulfill their mission, and repeat themselves.

Much of thought is an attempt to avoid or deflect various systems.

Thought systems both cause the most suffering, and create the greatest powers, for human beings.

Systems overlap and can collide with other systems, breaking apart or spawning other systems.

All the urges we experience are systems attempting to fulfill their purposes.

Dead end systems will eventually fail to perpetuate.

We are in an age of profoundly disrupted systems, broken or obsolete systems of thought attacking emergent visions, simultaneous systems layering over one another.

The fear of losing one's self-identified systems is unconscious and deep. We are wed to systems that we identify with.

Art, having a function until recently, when art systems were delivering through-put of amazingly new art, exciting the senses and mind, suggested transcendence, sparking the economy for artists, etc. The future of fading systems like art is uncertain.

When it loses its will or drive due to lack or purpose, it will expire. Staring at a blank wall of useless or ill-spent effort, a system is defunct or has failed. That system will disappear.

Systems have different brands. Ignore the branding. That is the system's attempt to stay static and on task. Observe the movements, the details, of the system.

Where there is a system fail, inevitably other systems, for better or worse, will fill its space.

Systems can either work for or against us. Systems that we approve of, that are in our control, can be encouraged to re-appear or re-animate — in other words, strengthen — if repeated. This is called cultivating a habit.