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You Are the NPC
Life is like a video game. You’re the main character and experience the entire game from a first-person perspective (let’s leave aside psychedelics for the moment :p). Imagine a screen recording of your character’s experience, your entire life in time lapse. Throughout the playback, other characters would pop in and out. Some are familiar faces of family and friends, appearing more or less frequently, depending on when and where you are in life.
But the vast majority of encounters would be short and rarely repeat. No names or stories attached to them. These are the NPCs of your life: Cashiers, doctors, clerks, and of course all the random people you meet on the street every day.
NPC stands for non-player character. It refers to the humanoid figures that populate video games. Except for characters important to the storyline, interactions with NPCs are usually quite limited. Some let you buy or sell things. Most are equipped with a few voice lines and then move on with their mindless lives, walking up and down the town square. Sounds a lot like real life?
We are well equipped to infer states of consciousness in others from the data we receive. Video games leverage that to make their worlds feel alive. However, most communication isn’t language but the sum of tiny clues we pick up from others—a raised eyebrow, elevated shoulders, or a change in tone. That’s why, in most games, the illusion readily breaks when investigated.
So we can quickly form an intuition about how other people feel and their experience of the world. But there is no way to look into someone else’s mind and know for sure. Maybe there will be, but we are left with assumptions for now.
With most people we only see a tiny slice of their life, a momentary wave in their ocean of being. Have you ever wondered if they possess consciousness, like you? Do these people share your vivid experience of the world, including all the love and heartache? They can cause it for sure. Even minor encounters can move us deeply.
Last week I wanted to buy curtains with my wife. After work, we went to a furniture store. We didn’t know it closes an hour early during the summer months, and the way the staff threw us out wasn’t very pleasant. So we didn’t get what we wanted, and the NPC encounters on the way were annoying. That affected our mood. We continued to a different store that was open a bit longer. The lady there was super friendly and helpful, even though it were her last minutes of work as well. We got the goods, but more importantly, the interaction was pleasant. I even learned a thing or two about curtains.
Those were two brief but moving encounters in similar settings with people I didn’t know before and will likely not meet again, NPCs, so to speak. It’s helpful to realize that to most people, we are the NPCs. They didn’t know we existed for all their lives. Then we suddenly appear on their screen, say a few lines, and take off, never to be seen again.
Recognizing this can be like a superpower—at least if you consider affecting someone’s mood powerful. A small interaction can have an asymmetrical effect on someone’s day. Every encounter allows us to throw small consciousness bombs, positive or negative ones.
I recently spent three weeks at my wife’s home in Sri Lanka. We visited her seamstress to get some dresses made. While all that was discussed and planned, I sat on the balcony, marveling at this beautiful creature sunbathing and picking up some ants on the side. But the beauty of the island isn’t the point of this text. When we left the house, the seamstress’s mother sat in the living room. I smiled and looked at her. She had long, beautiful, and well-kept hair. So I stopped for a moment and said: “You have really nice hair.”
Sunbathing Lizard That’s all. It felt good at the moment, but soon, I had to return to Germany, and the situation was forgotten. My wife stayed longer and eventually went to pick up the dresses. It turns out that my five-word comment had caused quite some waves. The mother had told the whole family about the lovely white guy who showed up at her house and complimented her hair! It made her so happy.
Usually, we don’t get much feedback on our actions as NPCs. This was a rare exception that showed our impact on strangers’ lives. We mainly focus on being better protagonists in our own games and forget that, meanwhile, we are the NPCs in the video games of everyone around us. Of course, becoming a better protagonist is a good thing, but it’s also hard. Improving as an NPC, in comparison, is easy!
👋 If you find content like this interesting, consider subscribing to my blog for free. You’ll get an email when I publish a new post, which is mostly once per week.
✒️ Quote of the week: “He thought logically, and then acted on the conclusions of logical thought. Whereas most of us, I suspect, do the opposite: we make an instinctive decision, then build up an infrastructure of reasoning to justify it. And call the result common sense.”
From The Sense of an Ending, by Julian Barnes.📃 Article of the week: “How can smart, ambitious people stay working in an area where they have no long-term ambitions?” Are you Climbing the wrong hill?
🍿 Video of the week: About everything that’s going on in robotics and AI, and where it might lead us: Sympathy for the Machine
🎧 Song of the week: Lithe – Situation 🔥🔥🔥
This essay was in large parts inspired by You are always the other Person – an article I have shouted out in From Reaction to Reflection.
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Tales of Wind – Del 1: The Harvest
The familiar buzzing of the chisel ended as Del finished etching the rune. He liked the subtle smell of burned oil and metal filling the air in his father’s workshop. But he had spent the whole day inside and longed to see the sky. The sound of farmers’ footsteps and voices echoed outside. Their day’s work was done, and Del hoped to follow them soon. He recognized some familiar voices among the muffled conversation and relieved laughter. It was a painful reminder of earlier harvests when he used to join their parade home, running around and about with the other kids. They would try to steal biscuits from the women’s baskets and pretend to cast spells on each other. This was just a few years back, but much has changed.
His father’s weary sigh cut through the room, a tangible reminder of the endless cycle of repairs that defined harvest season. Del couldn’t suppress a twinge of annoyance at the thought of yet another job awaiting them.
“They just dumped a field trimmer outside,” Lif announced, and he, too, sounded tired. Del’s frustration must have been written plainly on his face, for his father’s following words were tinged with understanding.
“You can go when we’re finished with that harvester. I’ll take care of the trimmer,” Lif offered, his gaze softening with sympathy and an understanding smile.That was what Del needed to hear. He smiled back and grabbed the chisel once more. Together, they removed the protective covers on the rear of the machine and exposed the golden rune plates. The farmers complained about drifting to the right with this harvester, and the reason for that wasn’t hard to find. A sizeable crack in one of the plates ran through the runes that conveyed energy to the left wheels. Less power on the left wheels meant the machine would automatically steer right.
“Get that plate out. I’ll heat the oven,” Lif said and grabbed some firewood. Del loosened the screws around the damaged plate and disconnected it from the main frame. The runes were etched into the metal with a special chisel, giving them a dark blue shimmer. But the crack was black and burned around the edges. It emerged from one of the central runes on the plate, Sav, which was used to focus and convey the energy. Minor runes around it specified the destination for the flow.
The crack almost ran through the entire plate, so they had no choice but to redo it. Since it was a plate that all the harvesters used, they had a stencil template for it. That made the process much easier and faster. Half an hour later, Lif got off the harvester after trying the steering with the fresh plate installed.
“That’ll do. Go on, hurry home, and help your mother with dinner. Tell her I won’t be too long,” Lif said. “And take the basket in the front. It has some of the harvest biscuits you love.”Del grabbed the basket and stepped outside. He was greeted by a small breeze, carrying the smell of cut grass and crops on a warm day. It was quiet now; the workers had already made their way back to the village. But collections of tools, baskets, and small trailers on the side of the road hinted at the activities of the day.
As Del approached the village he noticed a group of boys standing under an old tree. Most of them were older than him, and he didn’t know them well. But he also saw Kris and Jan among them, whom he used to be close with. They always picked him up from the workshop and they would run through the fields or play ball with the other kids of their age. Now they would barely talk to him, and Del wasn’t really sure why.
“Look, it’s the rune smith,” one of the boys announced, exaggerating the title sarcastically. His name was Lars, and Del’s parents always called him a rascal.
“Are those harvest biscuits?” another asked, and the group moved closer to investigate.
“Yes, someone was nice enough to leave them at the shop,” Del answered, feeling uneasy. The group was blocking his path so that he couldn’t avoid them.
“You don’t even help on the fields. You don’t deserve these biscuits,” Lars lamented, and the others nodded grimly.
That unfair assessment made Del angry, and he responded: “Without the repairs, my father and I do all day, you wouldn’t even…” Before Del could even mount a defense, the boy snatched the basket from his hands.
“What were you saying about relaxing in the shade all day?” Lars asked him spitefully before handing the basket to a guy behind him.Tears shot up and were about to fill his eyes, but Del managed to fight them down. He wanted to answer the injustice and tell everyone about the hard work he had been doing with his father during the past weeks. But somehow, he could not speak a single word, and if he pushed any harder, he would start crying.
“I asked you something, oily kid!” Lars snarled at him and made a quick step towards Del. Suddenly, a hot flame seemed to turn his stomach into a pulsating mass, pain radiating through his whole body. Lars had punched him in the abdomen, and the age difference showed. Del couldn’t suppress the tears this time and fell to the ground, crying. From there, he had to watch Lars walk back to the group and receive a fist bump from one guy. They laughed and divided the biscuits among themselves. Kris and Jan didn’t look in Del’s direction, and the rest of the group soon turned and walked away, leaving behind the empty basket.
👋 If you find content like this interesting, consider subscribing to my blog for free. You’ll get an email when I publish a new post, which is mostly once per week.
✒️ Quote of the week: “Dopamine from information gathering is a dangerous drug. Get your dopamine from action.” – Sahil Bloom, came up in his Newsletter this week. It’s very relevant to me. I would add “setting up systems and making them pretty (instead of actually using them)” as being a dangerous drug that I too often indulge in.
📃 Article of the week: How to Write Usefully by Paul Graham. The title says it all. As an aspiring Blogger, I found this to be very helpful.
🍿 Video of the week: Something Strange Happens When You Follow Einstein’s Math is my favorite video about black holes so far (and I’ve watched a lot xD). Veritasium provokes my curiosity while never failing to entertain me.
🎧 Song of the week: Not Vahn & Marsh – Come Together – an absolute classic that I stumbled upon in my liked songs this week. Instantly, it positively affected my mood, and Alan Watts cut through my distracted mind like a lightsabre.
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Listen to Bad Music
This text was supposed to be called “Listen to Music You Don’t Like”, but that wasn’t catchy enough. Of course, nobody wants to hear bad music. Now think of a genre or artist that you would never choose to listen to, but that you know other people like. I suggest listening to exactly that. Why?
Not because I want to promote suffering. Something valuable can be rekindled with this exercise: Curiosity. What could others like about this music? What exactly is nice about it? Conducting an honest search for the answers promotes openness, acceptance and courage – all aspects of curiosity.
Applying this to other areas of life bears the real fruits. Tune your curiosity to other people, their opinions and reactions—not to learn about them but to learn about yourself. It’s easy to look down and much harder to realise that we all are creatures of context. Every encounter is an opportunity to realise how we move through the world. Most of our actions occur unexamined, unchecked, even unnoticed. Luckily, paying attention can be practiced.
Paradoxically, observing the forces that guide us, not fighting them, gives us freedom. Cultivating curiosity means being a freedom fighter.
Let’s get you started. Here is a list of gems from my library, including various niche genres. I love every single one of these songs. If there are some you don’t know, I’m jealous. You get to discover their beauty for the first time. Remember the question: What could Adrian like about this music? What exactly is nice about it?
🤘 Bring Me The Horizon – Kool-Aid
📡 Black Sabbath – Planet Caravan
🪼 Carbon Based Lifeforms – Interloper
I have written about this idea and how I use playlists in my daily life in more detail here: Beyond Aesthetics: Transformation through Art
If you find content like this useful, consider subscribing to my blog. You’ll get an email when I publish a new post, which is mostly once per week.
Summary:
- Curiosity is not lost, it can be cultivated.
- Openness, acceptance and courage are aspects of curiosity.
- Find out what others enjoy about music you usually don’t listen to.
- Observing the forces that guide us, not fighting them, gives us freedom.
✒️ Quote of the week: Something to ponder: “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persist in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” From Timothy Ferris.
📃 Article of the week: Made me tear up, in a good way: Stay in the Game written by Drew Dickson.
🍿 Video of the week: Is a new “digital species” the best metaphor for what’s coming? What Is an AI Anyway? | Mustafa Suleyman | TED
🎧 Song of the week: I finally got to perform as a DJ again this week, after 5 years! Yes, I was really nervous. This is one of my favourite songs from my set (melodic techno with some nice vocals): Kalmer – Remember Me
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Share Your Work
As I’m entering the final phase of my residency, I only now understand the greatest benefit of this time as an assistant doctor. The psychosomatic hospital I work at is huge, and that has many perks, like getting in touch with and learning about a wide range of disorders. But what I am referring to is different from my actual practice; it’s talking about it.
It’s about sharing my work.
The easier route would be to hide behind satisfied patients. I get along well with most of them; our relationships are stable and constructive. That alone is of great value for the therapeutic process.
However, patient satisfaction shouldn’t be the highest goal in medicine. While it is a welcomed side effect of successful treatment, it should not rank at the top of the hierarchy. Instead, the patient’s long-term wellbeing should serve as the guiding principle. This often requires risking short-term discomfort. In the treatment of anxiety disorders, for example, discomfort is necessary for successful confrontations.
Of course, pursuing long-term wellbeing has to be embedded in an ethical structure. Beneficence, non-maleficence, autonomy, and justice are commonly referred to as the four pillars of that structure.1 Conflict between these pillars can arise quickly, and they must be constantly weighed against each other.
According to non-maleficence, no suffering or pain should be inflicted on the patient. According to beneficence, the treatment should promote the patient’s welfare. What does that mean for exposure therapy, a key component in CBT’s approach to treating anxiety? Even though it can be very unpleasant and demanding for the patients, it remains the recommendation in the guidelines for panic disorder and agoraphobia.2 According to the data, the long-term profit outweighs the temporary discomfort.
Applying the recommendations of guidelines can be a challenging endeavour. Timing, dosage, and implementation are only some aspects that must be considered in each intervention. Working within a clinic’s established structure helps to build routine and intuition for these processes. Part of this structure are various forms of supervision and regular team meetings. I found that sharing my work in those as detailed as I can is the key to treating my patients effectively, without working only towards their momentary satisfaction.
Talking about my work makes me think about it, which often results in connecting new dots or sparking new ideas. The feedback from my team and supervisor is invaluable, but even if no one commented, sharing the details about my processes would be worthwhile. Committing to this makes me sharper outside of the team sessions as well because I know I will report later on what I’m doing now.
I have to admit, that’s not always easy for me. Making my work public and risking criticism is frightening, not just in my professional life. I had the same difficulties with my art. Initially, publishing songs online and exposing myself to the world’s reviews was very difficult. Only after making close to 100 beats did I dare to post one publicly. I have been doing it for many years now, and most of the fear has been replaced by excitement.
The same will be true for the fear of criticism of my work as a doctor. This has also decreased significantly since I started my residency in 2019. I continue to practice diligently and report as detailed as possible to my team and supervisor. I research or ask questions and make my inner conflicts transparent for discussion, even though it often makes me uncomfortable. Then I try to remember that I should treat myself the same way I treat my patients: With long-term wellbeing as the highest goal – Investing not just in the being, but in the becoming.
👋 If you find content like this useful, consider subscribing to my blog for free. You’ll get an email when I publish a new post, which is mostly once per week.
Summary
- Long-term wellbeing is more important than momentary satisfaction, not just in medicine 😛
- Talking about something makes you think about it – which is often enough to connect the dots or spark new ideas.
- Sharing your work might be frightening, but it won’t stay like that if you keep at it.
- Invest not just in who you are, but who you’re becoming.
✒️ Quote of the week: “Consciousness is already free of the problem you’re trying to solve in this moment”, by Sam Harris. Quite relevant for the essay’s topic. It means to observe the fear of judgement and criticism as a temporary appearance in consciousness. That’s perhaps the most effective way of reducing the grip of it and moving freely.
📃 Article of the week: Dive deeper into the topic of ethics and subjectivity with this article from Nautil.us – Animals Feel What’s Right and Wrong, Too.
🍿 Video of the week: Kurzgesagt is one of my favourite channels on YouTube. This is their latest video about why we can’t see all the alien civilisations that should be out there – There Are Thousands of Alien Empires in The Milky Way
🎧 Song of the week: acidbrain, 1ony – In My Lane has been my hymn this last week. Just good vibes for sunny days, or to bring some of that into a rainy day when needed 🙂
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From Reaction to Reflection
Most of our behaviour is automated routine. We don’t think much about walking to the kitchen and making tea. This works as long as our predictions of the world match with what actually happens. Finding the kitchen underwater due to a broken pipe will make for a very different and less automated approach than just moments ago.
Our brain is built to quickly identify mismatches between prediction and actuality since that could always signify a threat to our current plan (the most basic plan being survival). It will pull our attention to the mismatch and produce strong emotions like anger or fear to ensure we react to it.
These acute emotions are the primary force behind our reactions to the world when it really matters. However, they are ancient, and often, their guidance isn’t useful for modern life, where we are no longer facing the predators and other dangers that they have evolved to protect us from.
Emotions and the impulses connected to them can be very useful. If fear keeps you from swimming in a river with strong currents, that’s good. Grief is necessary to process loss and adjust the mind to a new environment. Without the right dosage of anger, it will be difficult to defend your boundaries and say no to your boss when necessary.
Of course we all have to learn not to act out every impulse unchecked. It is a necessary part of childhood and adolescence to put cultural norms over our own momentary needs and to become socialised by caretakers and peers.
So, we are all equipped with strategies to deal with arising emotions and the impulses attached to them. But the adult environment only becomes more complicated over time: Colleagues, partners, children, neighbours, the list goes on. Often, our childhood strategies don’t suffice to navigate the increasingly complicated terrain we’re facing, at least not with the desired outcome in the long run.
One of the basic models of CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) is the triangle of thoughts, feelings, and behaviour. The idea is that those three are interconnected, and each influences the other two.
Let me clarify this with an example. I notice that my wife is upset, because it seems she doesn’t want to talk to me. My automatic response would be something like this:
- Thoughts – “Oh no, what happened?”, “I did something wrong”.
- Feelings – Guilt, fear, tension.
- Behaviour – Asking her what’s wrong, trying to facilitate a conversation.
It doesn’t seem too harmful at first, but there are some problems. First, she might not be upset about something I did, but my thoughts and emotions could quickly accelerate and confirm each other to convince me otherwise. That would build the urge to follow the behavioural impulse (Asking her what’s wrong, trying to facilitate a conversation). Then, if I push a conversation while she is signalling that she needs a moment for herself, it might just cause the conflict I was afraid of – firing up my thoughts and feelings even more.
It’s important to know that in the CBT triangle, not all three corners can be influenced in the same manner. We have close to no control over our emotions; we just kind of feel the way we feel in each moment. We can also not stop thoughts from arising, but we can at least actively add thoughts to the mix. In this model, only behaviour is fully under our control (except, of course, the kinds of motor reflexes that activate when we are falling).
That’s why it’s called Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. The focus is on changes in thoughts and behaviour that will then influence the emotions.
The first step in this endeavour is paying attention. The goal is not to rewrite the established script but to become a curious observer of yourself. It helps to analyse situations in hindsight and write out the reactions in thoughts, feelings, and behaviour in the way I showed. Try to make this a regular practice, either whenever an unpleasant situation arises or as part of your journaling routine.
We all have a set of these automated systems that are responsible for most of the suffering in our lives. Recognising them won’t ease the pain; it might even worsen initially. What is it good for then?
The endgame here is to take back control of our behaviour. The point of observing the thoughts and feelings in a given situation is not to change them but also to recognise the behavioural impulses attached to them. Once the impulse to act is known before the act, we are suddenly free not to follow it.
That doesn’t even mean that a great alternative must be found immediately. Often, just stalling is already much better than acting out the impulse. Of course, that makes it necessary to endure the emotions and thoughts, which can feel quite impossible. Every moment of that endurance is a success because if you feel it, you have already endured it.
Sharing the observations might also be worth a try. I would tell my wife, for example, “I can feel that you’re upset and want to be alone, but I don’t know why. Of course, I assume I did something wrong, making it hard for me not to bother you. I’ll try my best, though, and will be right here when you’re ready to talk.”
All of this is essentially probing for alternative behavioural paths. Some will give you better results than the automatic systems; others won’t. Take note of both. The main goal, however, is not to switch the established behavioural system for a better one but to cultivate the form of attention that allows for deviation from the automatic response, no matter what it is.
👋 If you find content like this interesting, consider subscribing to my blog for free. You’ll get an email when I publish a new post, which is mostly once per week.
Summary
- Without a framework of observation and categorisation, we are puppets of our emotions.
- Our automatic response to unpleasant thoughts and feelings can produce exactly what we want to avoid.
- Continuously updating our operating system with more sophisticated strategies to deal with acute emotions and their impulses is the foundation for meaningful and productive relationships.
- Cultivate the form of attention that allows for deviation from the automatic response, no matter what it is.
✒️ Quote of the week: “The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change“. By Carl Rogers, sent to me by Waking Up, the App I use for meditation practice. It has a function of providing a daily quote as a push notification, which is one of the few notifications I allow on my phone. It never fails to puncture my day with a moment of clarity or reflection – not sponsored, just a fan. A regular mindfulness practice also helps to build the kind of attention I was discussing in this essay.
📃 Article of the week: You Are Always the Other Person is a quick but profound read, suggesting a useful switch of perspective. It is also very relevant to the topic of this essay, as it describes another approach to adjust our attention in social situations.
🍿 Video of the week: We Fed Our Microbes Blood So You Don’t Have To by the wonderful Journey to the Microcosmos. Their videos always invoke a sense of wonder and curiosity in me.
🎧 Song of the week: Cinderella from the new Future and Metro Boomin Album, featuring Travis Scott. Banger, love it.
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Evolution of Ideas
Paying attention to the diversity of shapes, colours and functions in nature is a reliable source of awe for me. Evolutionary biology frames the beauty of the natural world with the idea, that every appearance is the peak expression of millennia of natural selection, and that the pinnacles of creation are all around us.
But evolutionary processes take place not only in the material world by shaping our organic bodies to increase fitness. They also govern the space of ideas.
Let’s imagine a hypothetical tribe of hunters and gatherers and their belief system (religion if you will). They uphold a tradition of worshipping gods that praise and reward bravery in battle with other tribes. That results in well-trained soldiers and fierce, often aggressive behaviour when encountering foreigners. In direct competition with other single tribes, they would probably have the upper hand.
Now let’s imagine a second tribe with a different belief system guiding their behaviour. Their traditions and gods suggest that making peace with foreigners and exchanging valuables is the appropriate thing to do in encounters. This community alone might be defeated by the first tribe. But they probably have no shortage of friends to fall back on and aid them in battle.
The second belief system might prove more successful in long-term competition with the first one, in what is essentially an evolutionary game. Ideas that shape behaviour are as relevant for this as biology and genetics, and they adapt over long periods of time in the same manner that our bodies do.
Belief systems compete with one another in an eternal war of ideas, that has been raging for thousands of years. Every one of us is a soldier in this war. We embody an idea with every move we make in the world, whether we are conscious of it or not. We are agents of faith because some form of belief is always informing our behaviour.
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Maps of Meaning
I recently finished reading Maps of Meaning (Jordan B. Peterson, 1999). It took me three attempts and over four years, but it is the most profound and useful book I ever read. The “Maps of Meaning”-page in my Roam has 85 linked references, and I thought it would be a nice exercise to share and discuss some of them here. This one is a quote from a later part of the book:
“The Map is not the Territory, the Representation is not the Phenomenon”
Jordan B. Peterson: Maps of Meaning, p. 412Reality (the territory) is infinitely complex, and we can never have a complete and accurate map of it. The same is true for every phenomenon occurring in it – limited by our finite existence, we can only model and represent them.
The maps we use to navigate the world have a narrative structure. They govern the emotional framing of experience, which in turn influences our behaviour – mostly in an automatic manner, that we don’t even notice. If we want to act consciously in the world, we need to be aware of our maps and representations, ready to deviate from their suggested path.
It is important to understand that many of our most fundamental maps are not designed to take our long-term goals into consideration. They develop early in life before we have such stable identities and goals. The concepts and methods they use are simply aimed to get out of the valley, as fast as possible.
While that is an appropriate approach for children, as maturing adults, we must learn to appreciate and explore the valleys of life. The biggest treasures are to be found in the darkest depths of the underworld, guarded by fierce beasts.
Paying close attention to the variety of maps and representations we automatically deploy in our day-to-day life is the first step to profound change. Honest curiosity is the fuel for this journey.
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Beyond Aesthetics: Transformation through Art
There is too much data for us to simply calculate our experience of the world, so instead, we produce and maintain models of it to predict and navigate our environment efficiently. Our sense of self is part of these abstractions, that naturally take on a narrative form. Like all good stories, they aim to describe the unbearable present, the desired future and the path leading there. Being creatures of habit, we mostly stick to the stories we are familiar with, written by our biology and shaped by our life and learning experiences. They act as frameworks through which we perceive the world and our place in it, and they guide our behaviour by infusing our experience with emotion and meaning. For deep alterations, our models first need to be disintegrated and we tend to avoid that because it goes along with the threatening reemergence of the unknown. This process of renewal however is essential for adaptation to the ever-changing world we inhabit. If we don’t engage in it voluntarily, it will be forced upon us unexpectedly. A surprise journey to the underworld is the situation we actually want to avoid, a well-prepared visit at a chosen time in comparison is always preferable.
Good art tells profound stories. Allowing ourselves to see the world through a story like that (instead of our default one) will give us a shift in perspective. Being able to punch a hole into the canvas (veil) of presumptions that obscures and limits our view, even for just a moment, can result in big changes and healing. Art can remind us that there is more to the world than we usually see, that there is beauty and adventure hidden behind all the things we rendered “ignorable” (or worse: “unbearable”) during past exploration. With that shift in perspective, guided by the story of the song for example, we can allow the unknown to reemerge and face it courageously. We can then return to our normal world and integrate what we found on the journey. It is this heroic process by which we can update our beliefs and enhance their utility.
In other words, art can help us to get in touch with parts of ourselves, that we usually repress or avoid. This is true even for “external” stimuli: Say someone avoids a situation or object, one that isn’t a real threat but still produces anxiety for that person. In that case, what is really being avoided is the internal representation of that situation or object, that has unpleasant emotions attached to it. Such an internal representation is a part of us, of our consciousness, and not of the “external” world. This means that strict avoidance of any experience, internally or externally grounded, goes along with repression of parts of ourselves while deeming them “unbearable”. When we do that to a large enough amount of our inner world, the resulting intra-psychic conflict can lead to crippling pathologies. The same principle applies on a societal level, which is why freedom of speech and honest conversations are essential mechanisms to maintain a healthy community.
As (mature) individuals, it is our responsibility to continuously update the beliefs guiding our behaviour and to explore and mine the unknown for new information. Art can aid in this process and guide the creative spirit to and through unexplored domains.
With this in mind, music can be consciously used to alter the narrative frames of our experience. It can also be used to practice paying attention. Today’s technology gives us superpowers in many regards, one of my favourites is to selectively add music to our experience to alter and enhance it. Music is great at transporting moods and vibes, and even something playing in the background can color and push our experience in different directions. Want to get ready to go out but feel tired? Some bouncy party songs will make it easier to find the energy. Want to have a cozy evening? Some soft piano music would aid that. In the same way of course the wrong song at the wrong time can also distract, annoy or otherwise be unpleasant.
Fully immersing myself in a piece of music is one of the great pleasures in life for me. The freedom that comes from surrendering to a song and the emotions transported by the sound – truly listening to anything is meditative and music adds a narrative for experience on top. The kind of awareness that is necessary to immerse yourself in any form of art plays a big role in the redemptive mechanisms of the mind. It requires letting go of experience and becoming a careful observer of it, instead of trying to hold onto pleasant parts, while pushing unpleasant ones away. It requires being honest, moving closer to reality, lifting the veil of presumptions and encountering the world with all the suffering it produces.
Obviously music often just plays in the background to add some flavour to the mood, and that’s fine. But I find great value in reserving some time in my life dedicated fully to art and the kind of attention, that is necessary to immerse myself in it. Creating space for that is not always easy, and today’s media landscape of immediate gratification on one side and the constant notion of maximising “productivity” on the other does not help either. But when used consciously, the same apps holding our attention hostage can also be amazing tools. The endless music libraries of streaming services can be overwhelming, but they also offer us possibilities that earlier humans could only dream of.
From a technical perspective of course there are many ways to consume music. Speakers come in all shapes and sizes, and so do headphones. I think it is worth spending some time and energy to find your fit. For me, affordable mobile Bluetooth speakers with good sound were a game-changer. They allowed me to take my music anywhere, but more importantly to easily take it into any social setting and share it with people. That in turn was a big motivation to have my playlists in order and ready to be deployed. People started to ask me to put on music, so I felt like my way to narrate with sound was appreciated. Music has always been a great way to connect with people, and modern technology allows us to use it in all kinds of new ways.
As with every art form, music also tells a historical and cultural story, which might be worth exploring. Every artist and their art are also a product of their spatial, temporal and cultural context. Songs transport all of this information and much more, and we can discover some of them if we pay attention. In modern streaming apps, the artist pages usually have a small bio with some background information. That alone often enhances my understanding of the music and adds an extra layer to the experience. The more contextual information I have about an artist or a particular song, the easier it becomes to appreciate it on a deeper level than “just” the aesthetics. A deeper understanding of songs is not always necessary for increased attention, but it can facilitate it and also contribute to longer-lasting effects.
Another useful strategy I found is to attach certain music to certain routines. In that way, I can habituate myself and make hard things a bit easier. I have a playlist for example with soft and dreamy sounds, that I often use to think and write. I do not always use music for these things and depending on my mood I might use very different music, but when I get stuck or find myself having a hard time settling or calming down, this playlist usually helps me to get my mind into the right space. In the same way, I use music to help me with exercise, cooking or just hanging out with friends. To keep these playlists interesting I have to keep editing them, and the need to find new songs or throw old ones out helps create clearer attention as well.
But the most important strategy I use when trying to listen to music “properly” is making my playlists public and actively sharing them. Opening myself up to the judgement of others is a sure way to increase focus and to listen with fresh ears. Just try to imagine you were the person to whom you show the music, hearing a song for the first time – How would it sound? How would it make you feel? Would you like it? That we all can share and enjoy music together today would sound magical and fantastic to 94% of humans who ever lived. And of the 6% of humanity, that are alive today, most don’t consciously use the features of their apps to improve their experience.
Playlists are a digital way to save and organise songs, outside their “natural” structures and attributes like artist, album, release date and so on. They are the modern analogue to custom mixtapes on cassettes and the Bravo Hits Vol. 17 CD, that you still have sitting on some dusty shelf. A playlist allows you to group any type and number of songs, and of course most importantly to then listen to the selected songs, either in the order you added them, or randomly with the shuffle function. The name and cover of a playlist can be customized to express exactly what you want, and I strongly encourage everyone to use this function!
For me, playlists are the easiest way to create more attention when listening to music. Narrating playlists gives me a lot of motivation to find new songs for them, to check out and sample music from artists I’ve never heard of, and to actively seek out new music and listen with curiosity. Every song becomes an opportunity to add to the narrative of an existing playlist or to start a new one. Finding a new piece of music that fits well and enhances the listening experience of one of my favourite playlists gives me great joy.
And playlists make it so much easier to find new music as well. You can either listen to other people’s playlists and find new songs there, that fit the mood or genre you are looking for. Or you can check what songs the app recommends for your own playlists – in Spotify by scrolling all the way down and looking at the recommended songs section, or by starting a radio on a playlist or song. These are features I constantly use to expose myself to new music.
When I create a new playlist on Spotify right now, it is by default called “My Playlist #248”. I didn’t count, but I assume that means I already have 247 playlists in my library. Since playlists tend to just accumulate there, I created a folder called “Archive” and keep dragging all the playlists in there, that I am not actively using or working on, but that I want to keep in my library. Of course, Spotify has a search function, that instantly lets me find any playlist or song. But having a nested structure with folders makes it much easier to find things quickly, especially when I don’t know the exact name of the playlist or song I am looking for. So in addition to the “Archive,” I have a few more folders to sort the playlists I use or work on, like a “Story” folder for playlists containing epic orchestral music of different moods. You can create folders in Spotify on your PC or Laptop by going to File > New Playlist Folder.
While creating and organizing hundreds of playlists I found that two main types kept emerging: Playlists for particular genres and playlists for particular moods. Of course they can overlap, for example, an exclusive heavy metal playlist can also be a workout playlist. But for the most part, I noticed myself sorting for either the type of music or the type of situation. While genre playlists are better for sorting and finding music, I mostly enjoy and apply mood playlists more in my everyday life. They also seem to be more popular among my friends, if I compare how many of my playlists are being liked by and listened to by others.
Modern streaming Apps have great functions to make it very easy to get into the playlist game and I encourage anyone to make use of them. Just create a playlist now and add a song or two that you like. Give it a fun name – maybe not just “Summer 23” but something that resonates with you and captures the kind of vibe you’re looking for. Also, add a distinct cover picture! Find free photographs on pages like Unsplash or create your own cover with AI, for example on NightCafe. Make this playlist your own and incentivise yourself to find new music for it. And then, maybe most importantly, make it public and share it with your friends! Don’t wait until it’s perfect, and it doesn’t need a lot of songs to be worth sharing either. The purpose is not to gather a huge following, but to enhance your relationship with music.
Engaging with playlists helps me to create space for art in my life. This way of doing it might not be for everyone, but I think the kind of attention it creates is not optional for an examined and meaningful existence. We all need things to admire, stories to guide us and alternative visions of the world to consider. A regular dose of art, in whatever way suitable, should therefor be part of our self-care and maturation regime.
So in the spirit of sharing – I wrote about two of my favourite playlists in more detail here:
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The Gulag Archipelago
Being born and brought up in Germany I was trained rigorously to oppose right-wing ideology. It seemed that given our history, any pride in our nationality or culture must be suppressed, so as not to risk becoming a Nazi state again. Growing up, I found one of the few exception in sports, in particular soccer. When Germany was hosting the World Championship in 2006 the country completely transformed for a couple of weeks. Black-Red-Golden flags everywhere and people chanting the national anthem in unison – things unimaginable in ordinary German life. It felt great being able to express and share this common ground with strangers on the street, at the same time it made me realize how careful we usually are with notions at all related to right-wing ideology. This wariness of course is reasonable given the events of the 20th century, hence today we have a strong intuition about how far right is too far. But I sense that we are lacking intuition when it comes to the left spectrum of ideas! Even though there is plenty of evidence in that same last century for the kind of hellscape that emerges from those kinds of ideas.
To fill in some of these gaps in my knowledge and intuition I read “The Gulag Archipelago” as my first book this year. The author, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, was a Russian writer, historian, and political dissident born on December 11, 1918, in Kislovodsk, Russia. Solzhenitsyn served as an artillery officer during World War II but was arrested in 1945 for criticizing Joseph Stalin in a private letter. He spent eight years in prisons and labor camps and after his release, Solzhenitsyn was sent into internal exile in Kazakhstan and continued to write secretly. The Gulag Archipelago was smuggled out of the Soviet Union and published in the West in 1973, leading to Solzhenitsyn’s exile from the Soviet Union in 1974. In 1990, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Solzhenitsyn returned to Russia and was welcomed back as a hero. Solzhenitsyn was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970 and died on August 3, 2008, at the age of 89 in Moscow, Russia. He is remembered as one of the most important voices of the 20th century, whose writing exposed the horrors of Soviet totalitarianism and championed individual freedom and human dignity.
The book covers the course of events from a prisoner’s perspective, starting with the arrest, interrogation, and transport, all the different aspects of life inside the camps, and finally the release (into exile). There is no shortage of horrific individual stories to underpin the abstract claims and descriptions of the Soviet system. Solzhenitsyn draws on his own experiences as a former inmate, as well as interviews with other survivors and archival materials, to provide a detailed description of the brutal conditions and inhumane treatment that prisoners endured. He also examines the role of the Soviet state and its institutions in creating and perpetuating the Gulag system.
One of the last pages of the book gives us this warning: All you freedom-loving “left-wing” thinkers in the West! You left laborites! You progressive American, German, and French students! As far as you are concerned, none of this amounts to much. As far as you are concerned, this whole book of mine is a waste of effort. You may suddenly understand it all someday – but only when you yourselves hear “hands behind your backs there!” and step ashore on our Archipelago.
I feel like this warning is now more relevant than ever. While we are condemning any form of right-wing ideology (and again: rightfully so!), we are at the same time toying with ideas of group identity that are essentially Marxist. Some refer to this as the “culture war” and this might not be an exaggeration.
One story from the book that struck me in particular, was about a conference with a tribute to Stalin at the end. People were enthusiastically applauding their leader in public and no one dared to be the first to stop. This went on for many minutes, people even fainting until the director of a local factory was the first to seize the applause. He got arrested that same night and got 10 years in camp.
(Full story here)There are some areas today where it feels like we are heading in this direction. Things that are celebrated these days and people getting “cancelled” for failing to comply or daring to oppose the new ideals. This is a dangerous game.
Part of their recipe for success is that pathological ideologies offer simple answers to complicated questions, usually by telling only a part of the more fundamental story. If a belief system pretends to offer a distinguishable group of victims and oppressors, chances are that it is simplifying things. Solzhenitsyn states: If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a price of his own heart?
So what are we to do? The one recurring theme in Solzhenitsyn’s descriptions of the former Soviet society is that everyone was lying, all the time. So the obvious mechanism against this kind of ideological madness would be to tell the truth. Since that is not always easy (or obvious), I like Jordan B. Peterson’s suggestion: “At least don’t lie!” – If you are confused, dare to show it. If you disagree with something, dare to show it. Free speech and open discussions are the core mechanisms to update and rejuvenate our systems.
And if all else fails, if our society once again deteriorates into a communist (or any type of) hell, if you find yourself in a dystopian nightmare, arrested for no reason, then this is Solzhenitsyn’s advice: From the moment you go to prison you must put your cozy past firmly behind you. At the very threshold, you must say to yourself: “My life is over, a little early to be sure, but there’s nothing to be done about it. I shall never return to freedom. I am condemned to die – now or a little later. But later on, in truth, it will be even harder, and so the sooner the better. I no longer have any property whatsoever. For me those I love have died, and for them I have died. From today on, my body is useless and alien to me. Only my spirit and my conscience remain precious and important to me.”
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A Great Selection of Skulls
I just listed a new collection on OpenSea – A Great Selection of Skulls.
For me this little project was mostly an exercise to put the skills acquired while producing the Pastel Mushrooms (see post here) into use to create a more streamlined approach to producing art in this style for NFTs – without losing an individual touch to each piece. Plus skulls were always one of my favourite motives to sketch and draw, so this probably won’t be the last collection featuring head bones.
This was my process to create and list the skulls for sale on OpenSea:
Finding a color scheme
First I browsed SchemeColor until I found a beautiful vintage looking color scheme called “Great Selection”, which also contributed to the name of the collection. I saved the code for each color in my project notes for quick access, because I kept needing them for different steps of the process.
Creating “Base-Art”
Then I created a 200×300 px picture for each of the color codes, so five pictures in total. I decided for this particular ratio because I might use these pictures to sell as digital prints or posters later. Any editing software will do this, but if you don’t have one I can highly recommend Photopea. It is basically a free version of Photoshop, fully functional in your browser. I also used it to create the “Base-Art” for the stable diffusion to work on. For that I simply added the sketch of a skull to each of the five coloured pictures.
Finding a prompt
This step needed a lot of trial and error. I use NightCafe’s stable diffusion algorithm for my creations (check me out here). This is what I arrived at after trying and spamming countless prompts with various settings:
- Highly intricate digital illustration of a skull on a plain background, beautiful horrific fantasy skull concept art with golden ornaments, ornate luxury, a masterpiece, 8k resolution, dark fantasy by Greg Rutkowski, dynamic lighting, hyperdetailed, trending on Artstation, deep color, Unreal Engine, volumetric lighting, Japanese tattoo art
Weight: 1,3 - Detailed matte painting of a porcelain skull with golden ornaments and colourful patterns, deep color, fantastical, intricate detail, splash screen, complementary colors, fantasy concept art, 8k resolution trending on Artstation Unreal Engine 5, vivid high contrast and saturation
Weight: 0,8 - Ugly, tiling, poorly drawn hands, poorly drawn feet, poorly drawn face, out of frame, extra limbs, disfigured, deformed, body out of frame, blurry, bad anatomy, blurred, watermark, grainy, signature, cut off, draft
Weight: -0.3 - Seed: 3329908619
- Overall Prompt Weight: 70%
- Noise: 10%
- Model Version: Stable Diffusion v1.5
- Sampling method: K_DPMPP_2S_ANCESTRAL
I used exactly the same settings for each picture, then scaled them up the maximum amount possible. Creating single pictures is actually free on NightCafe now, which is perfect for the amount of trial and error I needed, only the scaling costs credits. At this point it would be easy to create a load of pictures, just by changing the seed of the creations.
Listing on OpenSea
OpenSea is a huge marketplace for NFTs. You can add individual items, but I also really like the idea of narrated collections. To make a collection look good and engaging, it also needs:
- 350 x 350 px Logo Image
- 600 x 400 px Featured Image
- 1400 x 350 px Banner Image
These things were easy to create with Photopea based on the art I already had, since the backgrounds are simple colors I just extended them to the proper size. For collections with more complex backgrounds I would probably create pictures with the right size first and then use NightCafe to create fitting images.
Creating items, adding them to collections and listing them on OpenSea is really easy. You access the functions of the platform through a crypto wallet, which is the only “obstacle” to trading NFTs. I use the Coinbase Wallet, but there are many others that work as well. Don’t let the necessity of a new app keep you from engaging with this space! All the popular crypto-related pages and apps are super smooth and well designed.
A Great Selection of Skulls will be available for one month, so better get your wallet set up and grab a copy of your favourite skull! 💀🖤
- Highly intricate digital illustration of a skull on a plain background, beautiful horrific fantasy skull concept art with golden ornaments, ornate luxury, a masterpiece, 8k resolution, dark fantasy by Greg Rutkowski, dynamic lighting, hyperdetailed, trending on Artstation, deep color, Unreal Engine, volumetric lighting, Japanese tattoo art
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