The little boy that could

How the desperate journey of one little boy turned out unexpectedly

There was once a curious little five-year old boy with an active mind. This boy couldn’t understand why other people would be told something — like for example: “That stove is hot! Watch out! 😱” — only to ignore what they had been told and instead do the opposite:

“YEEEEOOOUUUCCHHH! 🔥 That stove is hot! That smarts really bad! 😭”

This bothered the little boy. Day after day he wondered if people couldn’t hear, didn’t want to listen, were broken… or just stupid? Why would one not listen to what others had to say, especially when those “others” are so much wiser and experienced than oneself?

It made no sense to the little boy.

Then, one day, the little boy sat down and watched a show his family was watching. Star Trek, and all their amazing adventures in the “final frontier”. It was amazing! Plasma, lasers, computers, warp drives, FTL, deep space, futuristic technology… and then along came the crush. There was this character on the show named Spock. The little boy loved this character, because aside from being super smart, the character also struggled with human character flaws and oddities — just like him! Why would someone touch a hot burner after all? Especially when they were just told it was hot?

Spock also didn’t understand.

Watching Star Trek changed this little boy’s life. Like the sun rising over a dewy morning horizon, the little boy’s mind lit up bright, and a new life-long adventured was embarked upon: with a powerful crush and an insatiable passion for understanding as his drive, the little boy soon decided it would be best to emulate his hero, Spock.

I mean, after all, how could one not arrive at truth through intelligence, logic, and reason? So everything in his life became logical, rigid, and full of reason. Any area of life that was lacking in these qualities was deemed “sub-par”, or “faulty”, or “not good enough for his attention”. If it didn’t hold up under the surgical knife of logic and reason, then it simply didn’t hold up…

Fast forward many years in our story, and our little boy has now become a man, who sits in a dark corner, alone in the world, with a gun to his head. Because he is intelligent, he knows he must get the angle correct, so the bullet will properly pass through the correct spots. If it doesn’t, then he might end up in the ER with a battered watermelon for a head — forever to regret his choices in life.

While trying to get the angle of the gun correct in the mirror, he considers those choices. He thinks back to when he was five-years old, to that moment when he determined that he would be like Spock— his hero. This makes him smile — even while in the midst of his dark despair, for what a funny thought! He determined to make his entire life about the pursuit of intellectual integrity, intelligence, flawless logic, and sound reasoning. Yet, here he was, pitiful, holding a gun to his head, trying to ensure he got the angle of death correct…

What had gone wrong with his choices? How did he end up here, even though he spent his whole life searching for pure intelligence and reason? How could it be possible that such a determined pursuit for truth and understanding landed him in such a dark corner of the world?

That is when the epiphany hit him, like a loaded dump truck colliding head-on with a semi-truck: people considered him strange because he was intelligent; people avoided him because they thought him strange; he desired to be intelligent to begin with because he wondered why others were strange. Others seemed strange because he was intelligent. This is why he was alone, this is why he had no hope of friendship, or of escaping the rampant stupidity of our world. Intelligence was the problem, not the solution.

Only in the desperate corners of the world did he finally come to understand something he never understood before: it was because people were strange that he sought to be intelligent in the first place (to understand them). In seeking intelligence to understand why he felt alien, he instead ended up being even more alien (Vulcan). This alien behavior made other’s even more strange to him, which caused him to elevate his aspirations to intelligence (translation: alien behavior) even more. He was stuck in a pointless loop!

In idolizing intelligence, he missed his own nature, his own human life, his own human joys, and the ability to yell “YEEEEOOOUUUCCHHH!” when hot burners needed touching. While he had indeed gained much, he also missed out on huge swaths of life — swaths that he would never get back.

Instead of understanding, all he ended up with was deep regret, deep loneliness, and a deep hatred for the unfathomable depth of human stupidity.

Years later, while he was reading the amazing book “This Is It” by Alan Watts, our little boy had yet another disruption on his adventure of intellect. Mr. Watts was explaining how we are all stuck in a Desire/Aversion cycle, and that this is in-and-of-itself the cause of all suffering in the world. Mr. Watts further explained how this urgent cycle breaks our minds. It (loosely) starts like this parable:

As a primitive primates, we ate bananas, bathed occasionally, were part of a community, and lived life. The suffering death caused was intense though, and death happened all the time — as an integral part of life. But this one primitive primate decided he had enough of suffering after his wife and children all died before his eyes. In sorrow, he headed north, to be alone and think. While traveling, this primate noticed that the food was far more abundant here where other primates would not travel. The peace was also blissful.

After nearly dying the first winter, the primate began to understand why other primates avoid this “northern area”. He however — determined to avoid further suffering — would not return to his community. He was afraid that further love would only equate to further heartbreak, and so he persisted through suffering the cold of the north.

He was afraid to love again, for fear it would cause pain. He was also afraid to stay the winter again, because that also would certainly be painful. He was wise though, and with his intelligent mind, decided the pain of winter was manageable — whereas the pain of the heart was not. So, he started plotting to avoid his pain.

First, he would learn how to make fire — that scary thing that happened last winter by a lightning strike. Next, he would build up a large supply of wood, so that he could keep the fire burning. Third, he would build a shelter, so that he could stay out of the wet cold. Lastly, he would need food, which didn’t grow in the winter, and so he had the grand idea of gathering a whole bunch (just like the firewood), and storing it for winter.

And so man was born.

The lesson to learn here — as Allan Watts describes it — is that intelligence is nothing but the child of fear. We first had to fear the cold before we applied our intelligence to fire, food, and shelter. We first had to fear the beasts and hunger before we made weapons and tools. We first had to fear before we got smart.

We fear because of the unknown. The solution to fear then is to know, to obtain knowledge. But what is knowledge? If I say “winter is cold, therefor one must procure warmth”, that is knowledge of what is to come and what to do about it. But what is that knowledge? What is it to know something Knowledge is nothing more than our reason breaking things down into categories.

In essence, knowledge is the process of categorization.

For example, the experience of “shivering” might be placed into a “cold” bucket in our minds; one can point at an asteroid and scream, seeing that it will hit the earth; or one can point at a tree and say “that is a tree” — putting it in a “things” category.

The problem is that all these categories (relationships) exist only our minds, and not in reality. In the perspective of the universe, there is no such thing as “cold”. In the perspective of the universe, a tree isn’t a “thing”, it just… is. The tree is supported by the water that feeds it, the CO² it pulls from the atmosphere, and the fair weather it enjoys. The tree is not a thing all on its own, but rather is one thread in a large tapestry, the tapestry of the universe. The tree is not something that can be so easily singled out or categorized.

This is true of all things, as all things are interconnected. One can not say “That asteroid will hit the earth!” without implying a relationship: earth vs asteroid. I can not mention a tree without implicitly mentioning water, air, and earth. I can not mention “cold” at all without first implicitly relating it to something “hot”. I can not know the pain of shivering without first having a relationship with the cold. I can not even say “myself” without there being a relationship: a relationship to “something else”.

For what is “myself”, unless there is also that “which is not me”?

“Knowledge” is nothing more than the categories we invent: “cold” goes into the “not-hot” bucket, “tree” goes into the “things that aren’t me” bucket, and “myself” goes into the “most important” bucket… even though — in reality — none of these things exist outside of our own minds.

Fear is caused by ignorance (the unknown), the unknown is cured by knowing (removing ignorance), knowing is the process of categorizing (drawing relationships), and relationships can only exist once we separate the inseparable (ignorance).

So a new dawn of understanding finally started its dewy assent upon the troubled man in our story. The pursuit of knowledge and intelligence demand logic — a binary categorization engine built on-top the foundation of reason — an infinitely variable categorization engine, that itself is simply built on top a foundation of relationship — an infinitely ignorant game of separating things and then comparing them to each other.

According to Allan Watts, “ignorance” starts at the surface of the skin: We each believe we are a unique and individual sack of flesh, encapsulated, all of our own, outside the realm of creation (or rather inside creation, as though we are separate from it, like parasites). We discuss ourselves as “separate” from our environment, as though we are alien to it. But is that actually true? How could we be separate when — just like the tree — we need air, earth, and water to survive? How can we say “my body ends at my skin”, when actually our body must have air, water, food, warmth, and the entire tapestry of life that supports it every second of every day?

I have a “water system” as much as I have a coronary system. I have an “atmosphere system” as much as I have a “digestive system”. I have an “earth system” as much as I have a “reproductive system”. My body does not “end at my skin”. My body continues into infinity and beyond… for without this “extension” of what I believe to be “my body”, then “my body” would not be.

Would it not be more accurate to instead state “everything is my body”? Because if it is all about relationships, then the following must be true: my body can not be without air, air can not be without earth, earth can not be without sun, sun can not be without solar system, solar system can not be without galaxy, galaxy can not be without local group, and local group can’t be without the universe at large.

I can’t say “I am” as though I am a relationship pure and free of my surroundings. It isn’t possible. It would be far more “intelligent” to say “we are” (or simply “am”) when referring to “oneself”.

This is when — after thirty years of searching —the man of our story (now again a little boy), finally reached the starting line of the marathon of true intellectual pursuit. He finally understood that he was stuck in an endless cycle, the trap that snares all of humanity: ignorance causes fear, which pushes one to discover knowledge, which causes one to draw relationships, which causes one to discovery their own faulty relationship to the universe, which is the cause of ignorance in the first place.

Aspiring to being Vulcan had a necessary side effect: loneliness. For only in separating oneself from the universe can one be ignorant, and only through ignorance can one seek knowledge, and only though seeking knowledge does one fully understand relationships, and only when one fully understands relationships can one truly understand that separating things from their natural tapestry of being is, itself, ignorant. The cycle of ignorance is born inside myself, as an artifact of how I see myself, in relationship to everything else.

There is no myself, and there is no everything else, there is only everything.

Intelligence is nothing more than a side-effect, caused by misunderstanding everything at a fundamental level.

So the little boy that could finally chugged his way to the top of the hill… only to find that the hill was an illusion.