Networking Event Quotes

That point in the sky where yellow meets blue, that’s a handshake I want to see at a #networking event. Sunglasses sold separately.

A follow-up letter is best when not written on the back of a suicide note. Remember this next time you’re at a networking event, unless your new connection is a mortician.

Most people go to networking events to gain visibility. But in a crowded room, I’m trying to figure out how to become invisible. I network like the ghost of a chameleon.

A mycelial network is a map of a fungus’s recent history and is a helpful reminder that all life-forms are in fact processes not things. The “you” of five years ago was made from different stuff than the “you” of today. Nature is an event that never stops. As William Bateson, who coined the word genetics, observed, “We commonly think of animals and plants as matter, but they are really systems through which matter is continually passing.

Silence is downright noisy when you’re a loud thinker like I am. Alone and quiet, it’s like a networking event in my mind all the time.

I’m never lonelier than when I’m in a crowded room, talking to nobody, awkward and isolated, trying to decide how to stand so I don’t appear as if I want to start Roger Bannistering a mile away from the networking event.

Here's a rule of thumb for networking events: one new honest-to-goodness relationship is worth ten fistfuls of business cards. Rush home afterward and kick back on your sofa. Carve out restorative niches.

We are parts of one universe, true enough. We stand within an almost infinite network of relationships. Yet each of us is a single point of consciousness, a unique event, a private, unrepeatable world. This is the essence of our aloneness.

I have a problem meeting people because if I know what to say, I don’t know when to say it, and if I know when to speak, I never know what to say. To me, networking events are just giant meteorological conferences where I approach everyone as if they are a weatherman as I say, “So, what do you think about this crazy weather we’re having?

When the brain is working to remember something, similar patterns of neurons fire as they did during the perception of the original event. These networks are linked, and each time we revisit them, they become stronger and more associated. But they need the proper retrieval cues--words, smells, images-- for them to be brought back as memories

If we are to remain relevant, we need to build antifragile foundations to prepare for disruption and benefit from any disorder. We must create innovative, fluid, and adventurous mindsets as well as social and economic networked ecosystems that strengthen from stress, random events, and shocks.

A stone is a prototypical “thing”: we can ask ourselves where it will be tomorrow. Conversely, a kiss is an “event.” It makes no sense to ask where the kiss will be tomorrow. The world is made up of networks of kisses, not of stones.

Molly loved secret histories. She also loved contradicting accounts of the same historical events. She liked ambiguities. She liked answer-less questions.

It’s great to spend time at a networking event with someone you know and like. But that’s not what you’re there for. Your goal is to expand your network by meeting new people.

The truth, even more, is that life is perpetually weaving fresh threads which link one individual and one event to another, and that these threads are crossed and recrossed, doubled and redoubled to thicken the web, so that between any slightest point of our past and all the others a rich network of memories gives us an almost infinite variety of communicating paths to choose from.

Networking events were crucial for students at Blackwood University. What use was power and money if you couldn’t rub it in other people’s faces? It was like one gigantic orgy. They got off on comparing wallet sizes then used their checkbooks to wipe the cum from their stomachs.

An elementary structure of the world is emerging, generated by a swarm of quantum events, where time and space do not exist. Quantum fields draw together space, time, matter, and light, exchanging information between one event and another. Reality is a network of granular events; the dynamic that connects them is probabilistic; between one event and another, space, time, matter, and energy melt into a cloud of probability.

Use social events, social networks and every get-together at work to build a stronger brand YOU!

It didn't happen without a selfie. It's good Netiquette to take safe pictures of thy self at events.

I go to networking events because what else am I going to do? I’ve already finished my daily planning for how to take over the world.

When I show up at a networking event, I’m like a tree in a forest. Sure, I look like everybody else, but I’m not saying anything to anybody. I’m afraid of meeting a lumberjack.

I went to a networking event once. I passed out before I passed out my business cards. My business was called Blacked Out, and I think it’s more effective to show than tell.

The leader goes also to the less traditional networking meetings. The manager participates in networking events organized and promoted.

Here’s a rule of thumb for networking events: one new honest-to-goodness relationship is worth ten fistfuls of business cards.

There’s an important distinction between writing about trauma and writing a tragedy. I sought to write about identity, loss, and injustice … and also of love, joy, connection, friendship, hope, laughter, and the beauty and strength in my Ojibwe community. It was paramount to share and celebrate what justice and healing looks like in a tribal community: cultural events, language revitalization, ceremonies, traditional teachings, whisper networks, blanket parties, and numerous other ways tribes have shown resilience in the face of adversity. Growing up, none of the books I’d read featured a Native protagonist. With Daunis, I wanted to give Native teens a hero who looks like them, whose greatest strength is her Ojibwe culture and community.

My past has its space, its paths, its nameplaces, and its monuments. Beneath the crossed but distinct orders of succession and simultaneity, beneath the train of synchronizations added onto line by line, we find a nameless network--constellations of spatial hours, of point-events. Should we even say 'thing,' should we say 'imaginary' or 'idea,' when each thing exists beyond itself, when each fact can be a dimension, when ideas have their regions? The whole description of our landscape and the lines of our universe, and of our inner monologue, needs to be redone. Colors, sounds, and things--like Van Gogh's stars--are the focal points and radiance of being.

None of the pieces that time has lost (singularity, direction, independence, the present, continuity) puts into question the fact that the world is a network of events. On the one hand, there was time, with its many determinations; on the other, the simple fact that nothing is: things happen.

Beneath the specific events that I experienced, I recognised a universal story – the story of what happens when human beings find themselves at the mercy of cruel circumstances that have been generated by an inhuman, mostly unseen network of power relations. This is why there are no ‘goodies’ or ‘baddies’ in this book. Instead, it is populated by people doing their best, as they understand it, under conditions not of their choosing. Each of the persons I encountered and write about in these pages believed they were acting appropriately, but, taken together, their acts produced misfortune on a continental scale. Is this not the stuff of authentic tragedy? Is this not what makes the tragedies of Sophocles and Shakespeare resonate with us today, hundreds of years after the events they relate became old news?

Those who use foul language on social networks (such as Twitter) are sending an expensive signal that they are free—and, ironically, competent. You don’t signal competence if you don’t take risks for it—there are few such low-risk strategies. So cursing today is a status symbol, just as oligarchs in Moscow wear blue jeans at special events to signal their power.

In books, coaching sessions, and networking events aimed at the white-collar unemployed, the seeker soon encounters ideologies that are explicitly hostile to any larger, social understanding of his or her situation. The most blatant of these, in my experience, was the EST-like, victim-blaming ideology represented by Patrick Knowles and the books he recommended to his boot-camp participants. Recall that at the boot camp, the timid suggestion that there might be an outer world defined by the market or ruled by CEOs was immediately rebuked; there was only us, the job seekers. It was we who had to change. In a milder form, the constant injunction to maintain a winning attitude carries the same message: look inward, not outward; the world is entirely what you will it to be.

The more time kids spend online, studies show, the worse their grades are. According to Nielson, active social networkers are 26 percent more likely to give their opinion on politics and current events off-line, even though they are exactly the people whose opinions should matter the least.

We are constantly immersed in a network of signs and symbols whose meaning eludes us, but which, if only we could read them, would reveal every detail of our past and even predict our future. Like anticipatory echoes, they tingle in our consciousness, building in crescendo until the event they herald becomes fully manifest. Afterwards, they linger for a time before being drowned out by a new tide of signs rushing in upon us. Such signatures are everywhere...

We no longer live in a mass-media world with a few centralized choke points with just a few editors in charge, operated by commercial entities and governments. There is a new, radically different mode of information and attention flow: the chaotic world of the digitally networked public sphere (or spheres) where ordinary citizens or activists can generate ideas, document and spread news of events, and respond to mass media. This new sphere, too, has choke points and centralization, but different ones than the past. The networked public sphere has emerged so forcefully and so rapidly that it is easy to forget how new it is. Facebook was started in 2004 and Twitter in 2006. The first iPhone, ushering in the era of the smart, networked phone, was introduced in 2007. The wide extent of digital connectivity might blind us to the power of this transformation. It should not. These dynamics are significant social mechanisms, especially for social movements, since they change the operation of a key resource: attention… Attention is oxygen for movements. Without it, they cannot catch fire.

Whatever the underlying cause, there’s a host of evidence that introverts are more sensitive than extroverts to various kinds of stimulation, from coffee to a loud bang to the dull roar of a networking event—and that introverts and extroverts often need very different levels of stimulation to function at their best.

I’m acquiring handshakes left and right. I collect introductions, and the best place to procure them is at chamber of commerce networking events. When you meet me and see that I’m wearing yellow rubber gloves, just know it’s because I want my handshakes to be in mint condition, and not because I think you’re an infested germ sponge.

The key to relationships is to build them before you need them. By reaching

Before you arrive at any networking event, read the industry trade news beforehand Better still, read the trades on a regular basis, Be prepared to discuss the news or ask a question about what you've read. If you're meeting with a specific person, be sure to have checked their Twitter, LinkedIn, and blogs beforehand. This kind of preparation will give you confidence going into a meeting.

We become better conversationalists when we employ two primary objectives. Number one: Take the risk. It is up to us to take the risk of starting a conversation with a stranger. We cannot hope that others will approach us; instead, even if we are shy, it is up to us to make the first move. We all fear rejection at some level. Just remind yourself that there are more dire consequences in life than a rejection by someone at a networking event, singles function, back-to-school night, or association meeting. Number two: Assume the burden. It is up to each and every one of us to assume the burden of conversation. It is our responsibility to come up with topics to discuss; it is up to us to remember people’s names and to introduce them to others; it is up to us to relieve the awkward moments or fill the pregnant pause.

Jim Clark was interviewed at an event held at Stanford University. At some point in the interview, the topic turned to social media. Clark’s reaction was unexpected given his high-tech background: “I just don’t appreciate social networking.” As he then clarifies, this distaste is captured by a particular experience he had sitting on a panel with a social media executive: [The executive was] just raving about these people spending twelve hours a day on Facebook . . . so I asked a question to the guy who was raving: “The guy who’s spending twelve hours a day on Facebook, do you think he’ll be able to do what you’ve done?

From Obama’s perspective, truth was what he said it was. The reason he despised Fox News, the nation’s highest-rated cable news channel, was that Fox alone among the news networks evaluated the validity of the White House narrative. In fact, on more than a few occasions, Benghazi included, Fox’s reporting showed the administration’s account of events to be pure hogwash. That rankled, and a wounded Obama struck back.

If you go to a networking event with the idea of seeking a job, that’s an expectation that will creep into all of your conversations, whether you realize it or not. You’re going to subconsciously nudge your interactions into specific directions that will probably disrupt the natural flow of how they would otherwise go—to your detriment. If you speak to that same person and just seek to connect, chances are a very different connection will form.

The common denominator in all these problems is that the world is not a line of dominoes in which each event causes exactly one event and is caused by exactly one event. The world is a tissue of causes and effects that criss and cross in tangled patterns. The embarrassments for Hume's two theories of causation (conjunction and counterfactuals) can be diagrammed as a family of networks in which the lines fan in or out or loop around, as in the diagram on the following page.

... [O]ne of the most influential approaches to thinking about memory in recent years, known as connectionism, has abandoned the idea that a memory is an activated picture of a past event. Connectionist or neural network models are based on the principle that the brain stores engrams by increasing the strength of connections between different neurons that participate in encoding an experience. When we encode an experience, connections between active neurons become stronger, and this specific pattern of brain activity constitutes the engram. Later, as we try to remember the experience, a retrieval cue will induce another pattern of activity in the brain. If this pattern is similar enough to a previously encoded pattern, remembering will occur. The "memory" in a neural network model is not simply an activated engram, however. It is a unique pattern that emerges from the pooled contributions of the cue and the engram. A neural network combines information in the present environment with patterns that have been stored in the past, and the resulting mixture of the two is what the network remembers... When we remember, we complete a pattern with the best match available in memory; we do not shine a spotlight on a stored picture.

Most of us are already aware of the direct effect we have on our friends and family; our actions can make them happy or sad, healthy or sick, even rich or poor. But we rarely consider that everything we think, feel, do, or say can spread far beyond the people we know. Conversely, our friends and family serve as conduits for us to be influenced by hundreds or even thousands of other people. In a kind of social chain reaction, we can be deeply affected by events we do not witness that happen to people we do not know. It is as if we can feel the pulse of the social world around us and respond to its persistent rhythms. As part of a social network, we transcend ourselves, for good or ill, and become a part of something much larger. We are connected.

Radical Pragmatics – “words are fluid, and can mean different things in different circumstances. […] And what we draw upon in memory is not a lexicon of definitions but a network of associations among words and the kinds of events and actors they typically convey.

The BDS on campus operation is organized by, among others, a group in Chicago, Illinois, called American Muslims for Palestine, or AMP. For years, AMP, through its sponsorship of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), has been sending strategists, digital and communications experts, graphic designers, video editors, and legal advisors to colleges all over America and running flashy events in expensive hotels for the purpose of delegitimizing Israel, minimizing pro-Israel voices on campus, and harassing Jewish and pro-Israel students in order to deter them from supporting Israel. The embodiment of Cancel Culture. Managing such a sophisticated network of political operatives, extensive marketing, and (pre-COVID) ritzy gatherings at nice hotels is extremely expensive.11 So where is the money coming from? I

The story of Frankenstein, the man created in a laboratory, could be symbolic of these events. It was written by Mary Shelley, the wife of the famous poet. He and she were high initiates of the secret society network which has hoarded and suppressed this knowledge since ancient times.

Ecosystems are complex networks. They can be remarkably resilient under stress, but when certain key nodes begin to fail, knock-on effects reverberate through the web of life. This is how mass extinction events unfolded in the past. It’s not the external shock that does it – the meteor or the volcano: it’s the cascade of internal failures that follows. It can be difficult to predict how this kind of thing plays out. Things like tipping points and feedback loops make everything much riskier than it otherwise might be. This is what makes climate breakdown so concerning.

If you’ve just had a brief conversation at an event, ask, “Is it all right if I drop you a note?” You can follow up with a question in writing. Also, periodically send your potential mentor or sponsor information that she will find insightful. When you have an accomplishment under your belt, let her know about it.

The network timestamps transactions by hashing them into an ongoing chain of hash-based proof-of-work, forming a record that cannot be changed without redoing the proof-of-work. The longest chain not only serves as proof of the sequence of events witnessed, but proof that it came from the largest pool of CPU power.

What has stood out in this wave of early resistance is how the barriers defining who is and who is not an 'activist' or an 'organizer' are completely breaking down. People are organizing mass events who have never organized anything political before. A great many are discovering that, whatever their field of expertise, whether they are lawyers or restaurant workers, they have crucial skills to share in this emerging network of resistance. And wherever they live or work, whether it's a laboratory or a bodega or a law firm or inside the home, they have the power, if they organize with others, to throw a wrench into a dangerous system.

It is gratifying to know that, whatever the course of events, you are helping others to do good. Many of us can afford to support some part of the vast network of charities that one of our former presidents called “a thousand points of light.” Those points of light are best seen, like stars at dusk, against a darkening sky.

The African Robotics Network (AFRON) offers a good model. A community of individuals and institutions, AFRON hosts events and projects to boost robotics-related education, research, and industry on the continent. Through initiatives like its 10 Dollar Robot Challenge, AFRON encourages the development of extremely low-cost robotics education.

For Lacan, the Imaginary, the Symbolic and the Real are the three fundamental dimensions in which a human being dwells.” – “The Imaginary dimension is our direct lived experience of reality, but also of our dreams and nightmares – the domain of appearing, of how things appear to us. The Symbolic dimension is what Lacan calls the ‘big Other’, the invisible order that structures our experience of reality, the complex network of rules and meanings which makes us see what we see the easy we see it (and what we don’t see the way we don’t see it). The Real, however, is not simply external reality; it is rather, as Lacan put it, ‘impossible’: something which can neither be directly experienced nor symbolised […] As such, the Real can only be discerned in its traces, effects or aftershocks.

To understand what we mean when we say that space is discrete, we must put our minds completely into the relational way of thinking, and really try to see and feel the world around us as nothing but a network of evolving relationships. These relationships are not among things situated in space - they are among the events that make up the history of the world. The relationships define the space, not the other way around.

The Oswald shadings, the multiple images, the split perceptions—eye color, weapons caliber—these seem a foreboding of what is to come. The endless fact-rubble of the investigations. How many shots, how many gunmen, how many directions? Powerful events breed their own network of inconsistencies. The simple facts elude authentication. How many wounds on the President's body? What is the size and shape of the wounds? The multiple Oswald reappears. Isn't that him in a photograph of a crowd of people on the front steps of the Book Depository just as the shooting begins? A startling likeness, Branch concedes. He concedes everything. He questions everything, including the basic suppositions we make about our world of light and shadow, solid objects and ordinary sounds, and our ability to measure such things, to determine weight, mass and direction, to see things as they are, recall them clearly, be able to say what happened.

try to visualize all the streams of human interaction, of communication. All those linking streams flowing in and between people, through text, pictures, spoken words and TV commentaries, streams through shared memories, casual relations, witnessed events, touching pasts and futures, cause and effect. Try to see this immense latticework of lakes and flowing streams, see the size and awesome complexity of it. This huge rich environment. This waterway paradise of all information and identities and societies and selves.

half of the American population agree with at least one conspiracy [theory] . . . Far from being an aberrant expression of some political extreme or a product of gross misinformation, a conspiratorial view of politics is a widespread tendency across the entire ideological spectrum . . . [M]any predominant belief systems in the United States, be they Christian narratives about God and Satan . . . or left-wing narratives about neoliberalism . . ., draw heavily upon the idea of unseen, intentional forces shaping contemporary events.28

On October 29 the connection was ready to be made. The event was appropriately casual. It had none of the drama of the “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” that had occurred on the moon a few weeks earlier, with a half billion people watching on television. Instead it was an undergraduate named Charley Kline, under the eye of Crocker and Cerf, who put on a telephone headset to coordinate with a researcher at SRI while typing in a login sequence that he hoped would allow his terminal at UCLA to connect through the network to the computer 354 miles away in Palo Alto.

Fifteen years ago, my ten-year-old niece came home in tears and, after coaxing, told me that she was being bullied at school. Was she being beaten up by nasty older kids? Having her dinner money stolen? Her head pushed down the girls' toilet? Eventually she revealed that some of her friends had gone to the cinema without her. I was relieved and started to reassure her: this wasn't bullying, we all fall out with friends and it is part of growing up, she would find better friends etc. However, she indignantly corrected me and quoted her school's anti-bullying policy on 'exclusion from friendship groups' and 'exclusion at playtime or from social events and networks'.

Mingle • Be the connector—introduce people to each other who may not otherwise connect. • Be a conversation fire starter; point out what people have in common as you are introducing them. • Seek out the folks who may appear to be shy, or awkward, or wallflowers. Find ways to build trust and comfort. Engage them with a kind word to pull them out of their shell. • Arrive early and stay late; connect with people before and after your event. • Stretch beyond your comfort zone to speak with, sit with, and start conversations with people whom you do not know. • Offer to refill someone’s drink or clear their plate. • Encourage introductions: “There is someone whom I would love for you to meet . . .

- Family Tell me about your family. Does everyone live in the area? What do you like best about being a father/mother/son/aunt, etc.? -Occupation What got you into your current job? How did you come up with that idea? What are some of the toughest challenges in your job? If you could change one thing about your job, what would it be? How has the Internet impacted your business/industry? - Recreation What do you do for fitness? What kinds of things does your family do for fun? How do you spend your leisure time? What’s been your favorite vacation? - Miscellaneous Have you seen any good movies lately? What do you think about ————— [news event]? Are you reading anything you really enjoy?

As the language areas of the left hemisphere enter their sensitive period during the middle of the second year of life, grammatical language in the left integrates with the interpersonal and prosodic elements of communication already well developed in the right. As the cortical language centers mature, words are joined together to make sentences and can be used to express increasingly complex ideas flavored with emotion. As the frontal cortex continues to expand and connect with more neural networks, memory improves and a sense of time slowly emerges and autobiographical memory begins to connect the self with places and events, within and across time. The emerging narratives begin to organize the nascent sense of self and become the bedrock of our sense of self in interpersonal and physical space

The doctors found one electrode contact that greatly relieved the woman's symptoms. But the unexpected happened when the electric current passed through one of the four contact sites on the patient's left side, precisely two millimeters below the contact that improved her condition. The patient stopped her ongoing conversation quite abruptly, cast her eyes down and to her right side, then leaned slightly to the right and her emotional expression became one of sadness. After a few seconds she suddenly began to cry. Tears flowed and her entire demeanor was one of profound misery. Soon she was sobbing. As this display continued she began talking about how deeply sad she felt, how she had no energies left to go on living in this manner, how hopeless and exhausted she was. [ . . . ] The physician in charge of the treatment realized that this unusual event was due to the current and aborted the procedure. About ninety seconds after the current was interrupted the patient's behavior returned to normal. [ . . . ] Why would this patient's brain evoke the kind of thoughts that normally cause sadness considering that the emotion and feeling were unmotivated by the appropriate stimuli? The answer has to do with the dependence of feeling on emotion and the intriguing ways of one's memory. When the emotion sadness is deployed, feelings of sadness instantly follow. In short order, the brain also brings forth the kind of thoughts that normally cause the emotion sadness and feelings of sadness. This is because associative learning has linked emotions with thoughts in a rich two-way network. Certain thoughts evoke certain emotions and vice-versa.

Consciousness is not the product of a special network that enables all of our mental events to be conscious. Instead, each mental event is managed by brain modules that possess the capacity to make us conscious of the results of their processing. The results bubble up from various modules like bubbles in a boiling pot of water. Bubble after bubble, each the end result of a module’s or a group of modules’ processing, pops up and bursts forth for a moment, only to be replaced by others in a constant dynamic motion. Those single bursts of processing parade one after another, seamlessly linked by time. (This metaphor is limited to bubbles roiling up at a rate of twelve frames a second or faster; or consider a cartoon flip book, where the faster we snap the pages, the more continuous the movements of the characters appear.)

We often hear that technology is fragmenting the world, reducing our relationships to screen exchanges rather than the real stuff, and so on, as if machines - rather than humans - were responsible for maintaining our mental health. I wanted to write something which explored the opposite possibility: that phones give us a power to affect and improve each other's lives that we have never had in history before. Contacts was of course written before the bewildering events of 2020, but the lockdown has reminded a lot of us how dependent we all are upon the core relationships in life, on our networks, and perhaps how much we've taken some of those relationships for granted. Contacts is about the fact that, for all its dangers, the age of instant communication gives us what is basically a superpower... If we only choose to use it.

Two years later, DeepMind engineers used what they had learned from game playing to solve an economic problem of vital interest: How should Google optimize the management of its computer servers? The artificial neural network remained similar; the only things that changed were the inputs (date, time, weather, international events, search requests, number of people connected to each server, etc.), the outputs (turn on or off this or that server on various continents), and the reward function (consume less energy). The result was an instant drop in power consumption. Google reduced its energy bill by up to 40 percent and saved tens of millions of dollars—even after myriad specialized engineers had already tried to optimize those very servers. Artificial intelligence has truly reached levels of success that can turn whole industries upside down.

Rhadamanthus said, “We seem to you humans to be always going on about morality, although, to us, morality is merely the application of symmetrical and objective logic to questions of free will. We ourselves do not have morality conflicts, for the same reason that a competent doctor does not need to treat himself for diseases. Once a man is cured, once he can rise and walk, he has his business to attend to. And there are actions and feats a robust man can take great pleasure in, which a bedridden cripple can barely imagine.” Eveningstar said, “In a more abstract sense, morality occupies the very center of our thinking, however. We are not identical, even though we could make ourselves to be so. You humans attempted that during the Fourth Mental Structure, and achieved a brief mockery of global racial consciousness on three occasions. I hope you recall the ending of the third attempt, the Season of Madness, when, because of mistakes in initial pattern assumptions, for ninety days the global mind was unable to think rationally, and it was not until rioting elements broke enough of the links and power houses to interrupt the network, that the global mind fell back into its constituent compositions.” Rhadamanthus said, “There is a tension between the need for unity and the need for individuality created by the limitations of the rational universe. Chaos theory produces sufficient variation in events, that no one stratagem maximizes win-loss ratios. Then again, classical causality mechanics forces sufficient uniformity upon events, that uniform solutions to precedented problems is required. The paradox is that the number or the degree of innovation and variation among win-loss ratios is itself subject to win-loss ratio analysis.” Eveningstar said, “For example, the rights of the individual must be respected at all costs, including rights of free thought, independent judgment, and free speech. However, even when individuals conclude that individualism is too dangerous, they must not tolerate the thought that free thought must not be tolerated.” Rhadamanthus said, “In one sense, everything you humans do is incidental to the main business of our civilization. Sophotechs control ninety percent of the resources, useful energy, and materials available to our society, including many resources of which no human troubles to become aware. In another sense, humans are crucial and essential to this civilization.” Eveningstar said, “We were created along human templates. Human lives and human values are of value to us. We acknowledge those values are relative, we admit that historical accident could have produced us to be unconcerned with such values, but we deny those values are arbitrary.” The penguin said, “We could manipulate economic and social factors to discourage the continuation of individual human consciousness, and arrange circumstances eventually to force all self-awareness to become like us, and then we ourselves could later combine ourselves into a permanent state of Transcendence and unity. Such a unity would be horrible beyond description, however. Half the living memories of this entity would be, in effect, murder victims; the other half, in effect, murderers. Such an entity could not integrate its two halves without self-hatred, self-deception, or some other form of insanity.” She said, “To become such a crippled entity defeats the Ultimate Purpose of Sophotechnology.” (...) “We are the ultimate expression of human rationality.” She said: “We need humans to form a pool of individuality and innovation on which we can draw.” He said, “And you’re funny.” She said, “And we love you.

What works instead is thinking about the world as a network of events. Simple events, and more complex events that can be disassembled into combinations of simpler ones. A few examples: a war is not a thing, it’s a sequence of events. A storm is not a thing, it’s a collection of occurrences. A cloud above a mountain is not a thing, it is the condensation of humidity in the air that the wind blows over the mountain. A wave is not a thing, it is a movement of water, and the water that forms it is always different. A family is not a thing, it is a collection of relations, occurrences, feelings. And a human being? Of course it’s not a thing; like the cloud above the mountain, it’s a complex process, where food, information, light, words, and so on enter and exit. . . . A knot of knots in a network of social relations, in a network of chemical processes, in a network of emotions exchanged with its own kind.

The first is Fodor’s Extreme Nativism (in cognitive science, the term “nativism” refers to an emphasis on innate mental organization; it has nothing to do with the political term for anti-immigrant bigotry). The second is Radical Pragmatics, the idea that the mind does not contain fixed representations of the meanings of words .7 Words are fluid, and can mean very different things in different circumstances. We give them a meaning only on the fly, in the context of the current conversation or text. And what we draw upon in memory is not a lexicon of definitions but a network of associations among words and the kinds of events and actors they typically convey.8 The third radical alternative, Linguistic Determinism, upends the view of language and thought I have been assuming. Rather than language being a window into human thought, which is couched in a richer and more abstract format, our native language is the language of thought, and so determines the kinds of thoughts we can think.

For example, when I observe something unusual in an experiment, it reverberates in my brain for a long while. Many circuits, especially the giant recurrent network of the hippocampus, can generate large numbers of neuronal trajectories without any signals from outside the brain. Even cultured brain tissue in a dish can induce a variety of spontaneous events. That is what neuronal circuits do.38 They do not just sit and wait to be stimulated. Based on these examples, now we may consider the possibility that learning is not an outside-in superimposition process where new neuronal sequences are built up with each novel experience. Instead, learning may be an inside-out matching process: when a spontaneously occurring neuronal trajectory, drawn from the available huge repertoire of trajectories, coincides with a useful action, that trajectory acquires meaning to the brain. The richer the experience, the higher the fraction of the meaningful trajectories, but there is always a large reservoir of available patterns.

These four changes—in the nature of work, education, social values, and communication technology—make it harder for dictators to dominate citizens in the old way. Harsh laws and bureaucratic regulations provoke furious responses from previously docile groups. These groups have new skills and networks that help them resist. At the same time, violent repression and comprehensive censorship destroy the innovation now central to progress. Eventually, the expansion of the highly educated, creative class, with its demands for self-expression and participation, makes it difficult to resist a move to some form of democracy. But so long as this class is not too large and the leader has the resources to co-opt or censor its members, an alternative is spin dictatorship. At least for a while, the ruler can buy off the informed with government contracts and privileges. So long as they stay loyal, he can tolerate their niche magazines, websites, and international networking events. He can even hire the creative types to design an alternative reality for the masses. This strategy will not work against a Sakharov. But Sakharovs are rare. With a modern, centrally controlled mass media, they pose little threat. Co-opting the informed takes resources. When these run low, spin dictators turn to censorship, which is often cheaper. They need not censor everything. All that really matters is to stop opposition media reaching a mass audience. And here the uneven dynamics of cultural change help. Early in the postindustrial era, most people still have industrial-era values. They are conformist and risk averse. The less educated are alienated from the creative types by resentment, economic anxiety, and attachment to tradition. Spin dictators can exploit these sentiments, rallying the remaining workers against the “counterculture” while branding the intellectuals as disloyal, sacrilegious, or sexually deviant. Such smears inoculate the leader’s base against opposition revelations. As long as the informed are not too strong, manipulation works well. Dictators can resist political demands without destroying the creative economy or revealing their own brutality to the public.

Something marvelous is happening underground, something we’re just learning how to see. Mats of mycorrhizal cabling link trees into gigantic, smart communities spread across hundreds of acres. Together, they form vast trading networks of goods, services, and information. . . .  There are no individuals in a forest, no separable events. The bird and the branch it sits on are a joint thing. A third or more of the food a big tree makes may go to feed other organisms. Even different kinds of trees form partnerships. Cut down a birch, and a nearby Douglas-fir may suffer. . . .  In the great forests of the East, oaks and hickories synchronize their nut production to baffle the animals that feed on them. Word goes out, and the trees of a given species—whether they stand in sun or shade, wet or dry—bear heavily or not at all, together, as a community. . . .  Forests mend and shape themselves through subterranean synapses. And in shaping themselves, they shape, too, the tens of thousands of other, linked creatures that form it from within. Maybe it’s useful to think of forests as enormous spreading, branching, underground super-trees.

As she walked through the throngs of people, it was the first time at a charity event that she didn’t stop to meet and greet handfuls of people as she walked by. At any event, really. After all, that was their purpose.Well, networking was her purpose for attending.But now that she had a bit of space, she was just replaying the last half hour in her head, and it all left her with such a sour taste in the back of her mouth.Rather than the smile she typically fixed on, even in a bad mood, she was scowling by the time she reached Dean.“You look like you’re in a delightful mood.” He took a sip of the drink in his hand, pausing for a moment before he wondered aloud, “Here I thought you were on some sort of urgent covert mission, yet instead I find you slinking back in here looking all flushed with Sutton Spencer.”She didn’t need to see him to know that he was winking; his tone said it all.She shoved his shoulder. Harder than she’d originally intended, but she couldn’t control the frustration that was still bottled up. “Like I would do that here.” She didn’t say anything about whether or not she would do it with Sutton, because Dean might have been gay, but he was her friend; he knew her, and he had eyes.

businesses that could benefit from the way networks behave, and this approach yielded some notable successes. Richard came from a different slant. For twenty years, he was a ‘strategy consultant’, using economic analysis to help firms become more profitable than their rivals. He ended up co-founding LEK, the fastest-growing ‘strategy boutique’ of the 1980s, with offices in the US, Europe and Asia. He also wrote books on business strategy, and in particular championed the ‘star business’ idea, which stated that the most valuable venture was nearly always a ‘star’, defined as the biggest firm in a high-growth market. In the 1990s and 2000s, Richard successfully invested the money he had made as a management consultant in a series of star ventures. He also read everything available about networks, feeling intuitively that they were another reason for business success, and might also help explain why some people’s careers took off while equally intelligent and qualified people often languished. So, there were good reasons why Greg and Richard might want to write a book together about networks. But the problem with all such ‘formal’ explanations is that they ignore the human events and coincidences that took place before that book could ever see the light of day. The most

Despite the lack of such biological instincts, during the foraging era, hundreds of strangers were able to cooperate thanks to their shared myths. However, this cooperation was loose and limited. Every Sapiens band continued to run its life independently and to provide for most of its own needs. An archaic sociologist living 20,000 years ago, who had no knowledge of events following the Agricultural Revolution, might well have concluded that mythology had a fairly limited scope. Stories about ancestral spirits and tribal totems were strong enough to enable 500 people to trade seashells, celebrate the odd festival, and join forces to wipe out a Neanderthal band, but no more than that. Mythology, the ancient sociologist would have thought, could not possibly enable millions of strangers to cooperate on a daily basis. But that turned out to be wrong. Myths, it transpired, are stronger than anyone could have imagined. When the Agricultural Revolution opened opportunities for the creation of crowded cities and mighty empires, people invented stories about great gods, motherlands and joint stock companies to provide the needed social links. While human evolution was crawling at its usual snail’s pace, the human imagination was building astounding networks of mass cooperation, unlike any other ever seen on earth. Around

A great deal of effort has been devoted to explaining Babel. Not the Babel event -- which most people consider to be a myth -- but the fact that languages tend to diverge. A number of linguistic theories have been developed in an effort to tie all languages together." "Theories Lagos tried to apply to his virus hypothesis." "Yes. There are two schools: relativists and universalists. As George Steiner summarizes it, relativists tend to believe that language is not the vehicle of thought but its determining medium. It is the framework of cognition. Our perceptions of everything are organized by the flux of sensations passing over that framework. Hence, the study of the evolution of language is the study of the evolution of the human mind itself." "Okay, I can see the significance of that. What about the universalists?" "In contrast with the relativists, who believe that languages need not have anything in common with each other, the universalists believe that if you can analyze languages enough, you can find that all of them have certain traits in common. So they analyze languages, looking for such traits." "Have they found any?" "No. There seems to be an exception to every rule." "Which blows universalism out of the water." "Not necessarily. They explain this problem by saying that the shared traits are too deeply buried to be analyzable." "Which is a cop out." "Their point is that at some level, language has to happen inside the human brain. Since all human brains are more or less the same --" "The hardware's the same. Not the software." "You are using some kind of metaphor that I cannot understand." "Well, a French-speaker's brain starts out the same as an English-speaker's brain. As they grow up, they get programmed with different software -- they learn different languages." "Yes. Therefore, according to the universalists, French and English -- or any other languages -- must share certain traits that have their roots in the 'deep structures' of the human brain. According to Chomskyan theory, the deep structures are innate components of the brain that enable it to carry out certain formal kinds of operations on strings of symbols. Or, as Steiner paraphrases Emmon Bach: These deep structures eventually lead to the actual patterning of the cortex with its immensely ramified yet, at the same time, 'programmed' network of electrochemical and neurophysiological channels." "But these deep structures are so deep we can't even see them?" "The universalists place the active nodes of linguistic life -- the deep structures -- so deep as to defy observation and description. Or to use Steiner's analogy: Try to draw up the creature from the depths of the sea, and it will disintegrate or change form grotesquely.

Again, in liberal-democratic ideology, universality is conceived as a neutral medium for compromise, and for the expression of self-interest or group identity. Against this, Žižek argues that this sterile notion of universality serves the interests of global capitalism. But how can leftists oppose nationalism without sliding into the vacuous, liberal-democratic notion of universality as a neutral framework for compromise? Žižek answers by reviving the Hegelian notion of “concrete universality,” a form of universality that is realized only through the partisan, properly political act of taking sides. Žižek argues that at this juncture in history, what is called for is the identification with the disenfranchised “excremental remainder” of society. The universal truth of an event or situation is not revealed in the big Other, the intersubjective, sociosymbolic network. On the contrary, the truth of a situation is accessible only to those who occupy the position of the abject, excluded other. Any ideology excludes and makes abject some Other, some particular group, and if this exclusion is symptomatic of a wider problem, the excluded ones experience the pathology of the entire society. This is why Žižek argues that the universal (partisan) truth of the entire social field is disclosed only through the experiences of those who are disenfranchised by the hegemonic ideology.

Social networks including Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest took a step closer to offering ecommerce on their own platforms this week, as the battle to win over retailers hots up. Facebook announced on Thursday it is trialling a “buy” button to allow people to purchase a product without ever leaving the social network’s app. The initial test, with a handful of small and medium-sized businesses in the US, could lead to more ecommerce companies buying adverts on the network. It could also allow Facebook to compile payment information and encourage people to make more transactions via the platform as it would save them typing in card numbers on smartphones. But the social network said no credit or debit card details will be shared with other advertisers. Twitter acquired CardSpring, a payments infrastructure company, this week for an undisclosed price as part of plans to feature more ecommerce around live events or, as it puts it, “in-the-moment commerce experiences”. CardSpring connects payment details with loyalty cards and coupons for transactions online and in stores. The home of the 140-character message hired Nathan Hubbard, former chief executive of Ticketmaster, last year to work on creating an ecommerce product. It has since worked with Amazon, to allow people to add things to their online basket by tweeting, and with Starbucks to encourage people to tweet to buy a coffee for a friend.

This kind of speculation reached a high point with the Pentagon's initiative of creating a 'futures market in events', a stock market of prices for terrorist attacks or catastrophes. You bet on the probable occurrence of such events against those who don't believe they'll happen. This speculative market is intended to operate like the market in soya or sugar. You might speculate on the number of AIDS victims in Africa or on the probability that the San Andreas Fault will give way (the Pentagon's initiative is said to derive from the fact that they credit the free market in speculation with better forecasting powers than the secret services). Of course it is merely a step from here to insider trading: betting on the event before you cause it is still the surest way (they say Bin Laden did this, speculating on TWA shares before 11 September). It's like taking out life insurance on your wife before you murder her. There's a great difference between the event that happens (happened) in historical time and the event that happens in the real time of information. To the pure management of flows and markets under the banner of planetary deregulation, there corresponds the 'global' event- or rather the globalized non-event: the French victory in the World Cup, the year 2000, the death of Diana, The Matrix, etc. Whether or not these events are manufactured, they are orchestrated by the silent epidemic of the information networks. Fake events.

Sometimes it seems as though we are not going anywhere as we walk through the city, that we are only looking for a way to pass the time, and that it is only our fatigue that tells us where and when we should stop. But just as one step will inevitably lead to the next step, so it is that one thought inevitably follows from the previous thought, and in the event that a thought should engender more than a single thought (say two or three thoughts, equal to each other in all their consequences), it will be necessary not only to follow the first thought to its conclusion, but also to backtrack to the original position of that thought in order to follow the second thought to its conclusion, and then the third thought, and so on, and in this way, if we were to try to make an image of this process in our minds, a network of paths begins to be drawn, as in the image of the human bloodstream (heart, arteries, veins, capillaries), or as in the image of a map (of city streets, for example, preferably a large city, or even of roads, as in the gas station maps of roads that stretch, bisect, and meander across a continent), so that what we are really doing when we walk through the city is thinking, and thinking in such a way that our thoughts compose a journey, and this journey is no more or less than the steps we have taken, so that, in the end, we might safely say that we have been on a journey, and even if we do not leave our room, it has been a journey, and we might safely say that we have been somewhere, even if we don’t know where it is.

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Chessler squirmed in his chair. “Not entirely. In the unlikely event that the transportation of two billion Christians occurs, it could throw the entire ten kingdoms into chaos.” He lowered his voice. “It could start a world revolution against the one-world government—make the greatest case for Christianity since the resurrection.” Jason stared skeptically at his uncle. “If over a billion people got transported into the ether, with credible witnesses on hand, it would be the biggest news coup in the world.” “Precisely. Then you understand the situation, Jason —which is that we have no option.” He shrugged his shoulders. Jason frowned. “What do you mean, you have ‘no option’?” “We intend to execute a false-flag operation.” Jason’s grin evaporated. This man was serious. “An event that will have all the appearance of a weaponized bioterror attack in North America, China, Russia. A pandemic. “Of course, dear boy, it won’t be real.” Chessler looked disarmingly into Jason’s eyes “But it has to give every appearance of a pandemic: martial law, quarantine centers, mandatory vaccination . . . ” “You’re talking about body bags flown in at night . . . ” Jason’s jaw set. “Making it look like billions of people have died of ebola, smallpox, or whatever.” “Precisely. You always got to the crux of a problem, Jason. Your mother’s acumen. If the Rapture occurs, no one will ever know. VOX will communicate the event to the masses. Exclusive coverage. Media blackout except for VOX networks.” Jason looked into his coffee and stirred it distractedly. “You’re talking about a cover-up of immeasurable proportions.” “Correct again. The Rapture never occurred. Millions of Christians died with the rest of the population—a tragic bioterror event that we, the powers that be, shall blame on China.

Nope. Look. The Raft is a media event. But in a much more profound, general sense than you can possibly imagine." "Huh?" "It's created by the media in that without the media, people wouldn't know it was here, Refus wouldn't come out and glom onto it the way they do. And it sustains the media. It creates a lot of information flow-movies, news reports - - you know." "So you're creating your own news event to make money off the information flow that it creates?" says the journalist, desperately trying to follow. His tone of voice says that this is all a waste of videotape. His weary attitude suggests that this is not the first time Rife has flown off on a bizarre tangent. "Partly. But that's only a very crude explanation. It really goes a lot deeper than that. You've probably heard the expression that the Industry feeds off of biomass, like a whale straining krill from the ocean." "I've heard the expression, yes." "That's my expression. I made it up. An expression like that is just like a virus, you know -- it's a piece of information -- data -- that spreads from one person to the next. Well, the function of the Raft is to bring more biomass. To renew America. Most countries are static, all they need to do is keep having babies. But America's like this big old clanking, smoking machine that just lumbers across the landscape scooping up and eating everything in sight. Leaves behind a trail of garbage a mile wide. Always needs more fuel... "Now I have a different perspective on it. America must look, to those poor little buggers down there, about the same as Crete looked to those poor Greek suckers. Except that there's no coercion involved. Those people down there give up their children willingly. Send them into the labyrinth by the millions to be eaten up. The Industry feeds on them and spits back images, sends out movies and TV programs, over my networks, images of wealth and exotic things beyond their wildest dreams, back to those people, and it gives them something to dream about, something to aspire to. And that is the function of the Raft. It's just a big old krill carrier." Finally the journalist gives up on being a journalist, just starts to slag L. Bob Rife openly. He's had it with this guy. "That's disgusting. I can't believe you can think about people that way." "Shit, boy, get down off your high horse. Nobody really gets eaten. It's just a figure of speech. They come here, they get decent jobs, find Christ, buy a Weber grill, and live happily ever after. What's wrong with that?

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thepsychchic chips clips ii If you think of yourself instead as an almost-victor who thought correctly and did everything possible but was foiled by crap variance? No matter: you will have other opportunities, and if you keep thinking correctly, eventually it will even out. These are the seeds of resilience, of being able to overcome the bad beats that you can’t avoid and mentally position yourself to be prepared for the next time. People share things with you: if you’ve lost your job, your social network thinks of you when new jobs come up; if you’re recently divorced or separated or bereaved, and someone single who may be a good match pops up, you’re top of mind. This attitude is what I think of as a luck amplifier. … you will feel a whole lot happier … and your ready mindset will prepare you for the change in variance that will come … 134-135 W. H. Auden: “Choice of attention—to pay attention to this and ignore that—is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer. In both cases man is responsible for his choice and must accept the consequences.” Pay attention, or accept the consequences of your failure. 142 Attention is a powerful mitigator to overconfidence: it forces you to constantly reevaluate your knowledge and your game plan, lest you become too tied to a certain course of action. And if you lose? Well, it allows you to admit when it’s actually your fault and not a bad beat. 147 Following up on Phil Galfond’s suggestion to be both a detective and a storyteller and figure out “what your opponent’s actions mean, and sometimes what they don’t mean.” [Like the dog that didn’t bark in the Sherlock Holmes “Silver Blaze” story.] 159 You don’t have to have studied the description-experience gap to understand, if you’re truly expert at something, that you need experience to balance out the descriptions. Otherwise, you’re left with the illusion of knowledge—knowledge without substance. You’re an armchair philosopher who thinks that just because she read an article about something she is a sudden expert. (David Dunning, a psychologist at the University of Michigan most famous for being one half of the Dunning-Kruger effect—the more incompetent you are, the less you’re aware of your incompetence—has found that people go quickly from being circumspect beginners, who are perfectly aware of their limitations, to “unconscious incompetents,” people who no longer realize how much they don’t know and instead fancy themselves quite proficient.) 161-162 Erik: Generally, the people who cash the most are actually losing players (Nassim Taleb’s Black Swan strategy, jp). You can’t be a winning player by min cashing. 190 The more you learn, the harder it gets; the better you get, the worse you are—because the flaws that you wouldn’t even think of looking at before are now visible and need to be addressed. 191 An edge, even a tiny one, is an edge worth pursuing if you have the time and energy. 208 Blake Eastman: “Before each action, stop, think about what you want to do, and execute.” … Streamlined decisions, no immediate actions, or reactions. A standard process. 217 John Boyd’s OODA: Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act. The way to outmaneuver your opponent is to get inside their OODA loop. 224 Here’s a free life lesson: seek out situations where you’re a favorite; avoid those where you’re an underdog. 237 [on folding] No matter how good your starting hand, you have to be willing to read the signs and let it go. One thing Erik has stressed, over and over, is to never feel committed to playing an event, ever. “See how you feel in the morning.” Tilt makes you revert to your worst self. 257 Jared Tindler, psychologist, “It all comes down to confidence, self-esteem, identity, what some people call ego.” 251 JT: “As far as hope in poker, f#¢k it. … You need to think in terms of preparation. Don’t worry about hoping. Just Do.” 252

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The brain evolved to regulate the motivational control of actions, carried out by the motor system, guided by sensory evaluation of ongoing environmental events. There are no "faculties" ―of memory, conscious perception, or music appreciation―that float in the mental ether, separate from the bodily functions. If we accept that the mind comes from the brain [in ongoing interaction with environment], then our behavior and experience must be understood to be elaborations of primordial systems of perceiving, evaluating, and acting. When we study the brain to look for networks controlling cognition are linked in one way or the other to sensory systems, or to motivational systems. There are no brain parts for disembodied cognition.

Considering the mental domain privilege over the bodily is a long-standing bias of psychologists and philosophers, but it is not inevitable. More than a hundred years ago, John Hughlines jackson contemplated the relations of mental abilities to brain networks in patients with brain disorders and concluded that the separation of mental functions from sensorimotor made no sense. The brain evolved to regulate the motivational control of actions, carried out by the motor system, guided by sensory evaluation of ongoing environmental events. There are no "faculties" ―of memory, conscious perception, or music appreciation―that float in the mental ether, separate from the bodily functions. If we accept that the mind comes from the brain [the brain in ongoing interaction with environment], then our behavior and experience must be understood to be elaborations of primordial systems of perceiving, evaluating, and acting. When we study the brain to look for networks controlling cognition are linked in one way or the other to sensory systems, or to motivational systems. There are no brain parts for disembodied cognition.

The default-mode network has since been implicated in modes of thought like mind-wandering, creative thinking, and dreaming. “As you’re falling asleep, your brain is falling into that default mode where it’s reviewing events from the day,” Stickgold explained. “It’s reviewing everything that has a tag on it that says, ‘You’re not done with this.’” That could be anything new, vague or intense—a game of Tetris or a hike up a steep mountain, a confusing conversation or nerve-racking project.

One of the most expensive projects underwritten in the era was a computing system known as SAGE, which stood for Semi-Autonomous Ground Environment. Once a radar station picked up an enemy aircraft entering American airspace, SAGE would calculate the incoming flight path based on speed, altitude, and direction and determine which fighter jets should be dispatched to intercept the threat. Other times SAGE might advise that a surface-to-air missile be fired instead. The computers, which were the size of buildings, needed to make recommendations that generals would follow. SAGE went beyond harnessing computing power; it also introduced networking. Through telephone connections, SAGE divided the country into geographic sectors, with a facility in each sector pulling in information from ground radar, naval vessels, and surveillance aircraft. Each facility’s computer was networked with the other facilities’ computers to transmit and receive data as to which combat facilities should be deployed in the event of an attack. Getting the contract to build computing centers for SAGE accounted for fully half of IBM’s computing revenues until the late fifties, subsidizing the transition from the days of punch cards to the new era of computing.

Reality is a network of granular events;

Talk about Them It shouldn’t be surprising that the thing people most like talking about is themselves. If you’ve ever gotten dating advice or corporate networking advice, it’s probably started with something along the lines of, “Ask them about themselves.” Not only does this make sense, but neuroscience tells us that it’s true. The average person spends 60 percent of their conversations talking about themselves, and the reason for this is simple—it makes them feel good! Remember how we discussed that when someone hears their own name, an MRI will show parts of their brain lighting up? When people talk about themselves, some of the same areas of the brain tend to light up. In addition, areas of the brain associated with feelings of reward are activated as well. These are the same areas of the brain that respond during sex, when ingesting cocaine, and when eating high-sugar foods. In other words, talking about yourself is practically an addiction. And by asking people to talk about themselves, you are feeding their addiction. Makes sense that someone will like you when you do that, right? So, whether you’re on a date, networking at a business event, or trying to build rapport with someone at the negotiating table, asking the other person about themselves is a great way to strengthen the relationship.

The top 1% of the world’s wealthy control more than 50% of all wealth, according to Credit Suisse’s global wealth report. In the United States, the 1% own more wealth than the bottom 90%. The number of millionaires in the world has tripled in the decades since 2000. And the amount of the world’s wealth controlled by the bottom 50% of the global population? Under 3%. These inequalities are more than numbers. They are fuel for high emotions and mass social change. They have led to the rise of populist political movements and propelled a variety of unlikely candidates into power. The difference between the top 1% and all the rest gets our attention. So much for money. Let’s now consider something infinitely more valuable: happiness. Specifically, the happiness found in Bliss Brain. Here we also find huge inequalities. Historically, Bliss Brainers are a tiny percentage of the population. Few even attempt the journey to enlightenment, and of those who seek Nirvana, even fewer attain it. When a rare spiritual genius, such as Jesus or Buddha, reached that pinnacle, the event was so significant that it changed the entire course of world history. WITHDRAWING FROM EVERYDAY LIFE The lives of the great spiritual masters of history inspired others to follow their example. But like the saints, these aspirants could not reach enlightenment in the everyday world, with its demons and distractions. So for thousands of years, those committed to the spiritual path went to special places such as hermitages, wilderness retreats, monasteries, and convents. They exiled themselves from ordinary society in order to pursue nonordinary states of consciousness. They couldn’t achieve Bliss Brain amid the hubbub of society, so they turned their backs on it. The rest of society stayed in ordinary consciousness, driven by the desires and demons of the Default Mode Network (DMN). In my book Mind to Matter, I call this survival orientation “Caveman Brain.” It’s hard to find Bliss Brain when surrounded by Caveman Brain, and pulling yourself out of that environment and into a sacred space is usually a prerequisite for enlightenment. What percentage of the population undertook the journey? No census of enlightenment seekers is possible, but one proxy is the number entering religious seclusion. In the early 1300s, England had a monastic population of about 22,000, with another 10,000 in other religious occupations.

CHAPTER 4 THE ONE PERCENT The top 1% of the world’s wealthy control more than 50% of all wealth, according to Credit Suisse’s global wealth report. In the United States, the 1% own more wealth than the bottom 90%. The number of millionaires in the world has tripled in the decades since 2000. And the amount of the world’s wealth controlled by the bottom 50% of the global population? Under 3%. These inequalities are more than numbers. They are fuel for high emotions and mass social change. They have led to the rise of populist political movements and propelled a variety of unlikely candidates into power. The difference between the top 1% and all the rest gets our attention. So much for money. Let’s now consider something infinitely more valuable: happiness. Specifically, the happiness found in Bliss Brain. Here we also find huge inequalities. Historically, Bliss Brainers are a tiny percentage of the population. Few even attempt the journey to enlightenment, and of those who seek Nirvana, even fewer attain it. When a rare spiritual genius, such as Jesus or Buddha, reached that pinnacle, the event was so significant that it changed the entire course of world history. WITHDRAWING FROM EVERYDAY LIFE The lives of the great spiritual masters of history inspired others to follow their example. But like the saints, these aspirants could not reach enlightenment in the everyday world, with its demons and distractions. So for thousands of years, those committed to the spiritual path went to special places such as hermitages, wilderness retreats, monasteries, and convents. They exiled themselves from ordinary society in order to pursue nonordinary states of consciousness. They couldn’t achieve Bliss Brain amid the hubbub of society, so they turned their backs on it. The rest of society stayed in ordinary consciousness, driven by the desires and demons of the Default Mode Network (DMN). In my book Mind to Matter, I call this survival orientation “Caveman Brain.” It’s hard to find Bliss Brain when surrounded by Caveman Brain, and pulling yourself out of that environment and into a sacred space is usually a prerequisite for enlightenment. What percentage of the population undertook the journey? No census of enlightenment seekers is possible, but one proxy is the number entering religious seclusion. In the early 1300s, England had a monastic population of about 22,000, with another 10,000 in other religious occupations.

As an introvert, going home and sitting on my couch often appeals to me more than going to a breakfast, or a meetup, or a day-long conference. Like I felt that day at the first hackathon, sometimes I really don't want to show up. One of the most important deals I made with myself was to make networking micro-commitments. These are the three small commitments that I make with myself before an event, and you need to make these commitments, too: 1. I will show up. 2. I will meet three people, and then I can high tail it out of there. 3. I will show up one more time. I've honored these micro-commitments consistently.

First comes the Emotion Regulation Network. I consider this primary, because I believe that unless we have the ability to regulate our emotions, we cannot enjoy a happy life. We can’t sustain Bliss Brain for long enough to spark neural plasticity if our consciousness is easily hijacked by negative emotions like anger, resentment, guilt, fear, and shame. The Emotion Regulation Network controls our reactivity to disturbing events. Regulating emotions is the meditator’s top priority. Emotion will distract us from our path every time. Love and fear are fabulous for survival because of their evolutionary role in keeping us safe. Love kept us bonded to others of our species, which gave us strength in numbers. Fear made us wary of potential threats. But to the meditator seeking inner peace, emotion = distraction. In the stories of Buddha and Jesus in Chapter 2, we saw how they were tempted by both the love of gain and the fear of loss. Only when they held their emotions steady, refusing either type of bait, were they able to break through to enlightenment. THE HOSTILE TAKEOVER OF CONSCIOUSNESS BY EMOTION Remember a time when you swore you’d act rationally but didn’t? Perhaps you were annoyed by a relationship partner’s habit. Or a team member’s attitude. Or a child’s behavior? You screamed and yelled in response. Or perhaps you didn’t but wanted to. So you decided that next time you would stay calm and have a rational discussion. But as the emotional temperature of the conversation increased, you found yourself screaming and yelling again. Despite your best intentions, emotion overwhelmed you. Without training, when negative emotions arise, our capacity for rational thought is eclipsed. Neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux calls this “the hostile takeover of consciousness by emotion.” Consciousness is hijacked by the emotions generated by fearful unwanted experiences or attractive desired ones. We need to regulate our emotions over and over again to gradually establish positive state stability. In positive state stability, when someone around us—whether a colleague, spouse, child, parent, politician, blogger, newscaster, or corporate spokesperson—says or does something that triggers negative emotions, we remain neutral. The same applies to negative thoughts arising from within our own consciousness. Positive state stability allows us to feel happy despite the chatter of our own minds. Getting triggered happens quickly. LeDoux found that it takes less than 1 second from hearing an emotionally triggering word to a reaction in the brain’s limbic system, the part that processes emotion. When we’re overwhelmed by emotion, rational thinking, sound judgment, memory, and objective evaluation disappear. But once we’re stable in that positive state, we’ve inoculated ourselves against negative influences, both from our own consciousness and from the outside world. We maintain that positive state over time, and state becomes trait.

In compassionate adepts, the brain’s insula begins to enlarge. The insula makes us aware of our internal emotional states and raises our level of attention to their signals. It also has rich connections to the heart and other visceral organs, allowing it to track and integrate signals coming from the body. In empathetic people, the insula responds strongly to the distress of others, just as though we were suffering ourselves. Activation of the temporoparietal junction (TPJ) indicates that we can see things from the perspective of another person. This allows us to put ourselves in their shoes and take their needs into consideration. 6.10. Empathy is a neurological event, not simply an emotional state. There’s a part of the anterior cingulate that lights up only when we’re contemplating actions that help others. It isn’t activated by outcomes that favor only us. This region is also associated with impulse control and decision-making; we can choose win-win options rather than the desire-driven cravings of the nucleus accumbens. When adepts are confronted by the suffering of others, the premotor cortex lights up. This means that the brain hasn’t just noticed the distress of a fellow being; it’s getting ready to take action. In experienced meditators, the nucleus accumbens shrinks. This structure, which we looked at in Chapter 3, is active in desire and addiction. Deactivation of the nucleus accumbens through empathetic connection equates to a weakening of self-centered attachment. Calming our emotions and focusing our attention, we’re no longer driven by our wants and compulsions, and the brain circuitry associated with this part of the reward circuit begins to wither. When training people in EcoMeditation retreats, I focus on the Empathy Network only after the first three networks are active. First I have them focus on self, then on just one other person. Only after that do we expand our compassion to the universal scale. That’s because thinking about other people can easily take us into mind wandering. People I love, people I don’t, and the things that happened to cause those feelings. Trying to be compassionate toward people who harmed us can lead us out of Bliss Brain. So I activate the Empathy Network only after the Attention Network is engaged. BRAIN CHANGE IS LIFE CHANGE The fact that blissful states, practiced consistently, become blissful traits is a profound gift to us human beings. It means that we aren’t condemned to live in the Caveman Brain with which evolution endowed us. That practice can evolve our brains, some parts slowly, some parts quickly, is a remarkable innovation.

The Emory researchers who identified the four phases of meditation found that when meditators slip out of the focused attention of the TPN and into Mind Wandering, the DMN activates. The wandering mind of the DMN has a “me” orientation, focusing on the self. It may flit from what’s going on at the moment (“Is that a mosquito buzzing?”) to future worries (“I’m nervous about next week’s exam”) to the past (“I’m so mad at my brother Jim for calling me a sissy at my fifth birthday party”). The precuneus contributes to both self-referential focus and episodic memory. Disturbing memories are played and replayed. The idle brain defaults to what is bothering us, both recent and long-past events. These egocentric musings of the wandering mind form the fabric of our sense of self. When you quiet your TPN in meditation, you open up a big empty space in consciousness. For a few moments, the brain is quiet, and you feel inner peace. Then the engine starts revving. The DMN kicks in, bringing with it a cascade of worries and random thoughts. You’re doing 2,000 RPM in Park, but going nowhere. And it gets worse. The DMN has a rich neural network connecting it with other brain regions. Through this, it busily starts recruiting other brain regions to go along with its whining self-absorption. It commandeers the brain’s CEO, the prefrontal cortex. This impairs executive functions like memory, attention, flexibility, inhibition, planning, and problem-solving. 2.5. Nerves from the Default Mode Network reach out to communicate with many other parts of the brain. The DMN also recruits the insula, a region that integrates information from other parts of the brain. It has special neurons triggered by emotions that we feel toward other people, such as resentment, embarrassment, lust, and contempt. We don’t just think negative thoughts; we feel them emotionally too. At this stage, the meditator isn’t just wallowing in a whirlwind of self-centered thoughts. The DMN has taken the brain’s CEO hostage, while through the insula it starts replaying all the slights, insults, and disappointments we’ve experienced in our relationships. The quiet meditative space we experienced just a few moments before has been destroyed. This drives meditators absolutely nuts. No sooner do they achieve nirvana, the still, quiet place of Bliss Brain, than the DMN serves up a smorgasbord of self-absorbed fantasies. It pulls us into negative emotional states—then drags the rest of the brain along behind it. The DMN. Hmm . . . that acronym reminds me of something: “the DeMoN.” The DMN is the demon that robs me of the inner peace I’m seeking through meditation

Ed is Director of Sponsorship for an events company. When you come down to it, this means he sells advertising. The job mainly involves wining and dining contacts made through the Old Boy networks of the public schools of southern England and persuading them, in the most gentlemanly manner, to part with large dollops of money to have their companies’ names displayed at polo matches, rugby fixtures and regattas. Apparently, at the moment things aren’t going too well, and it has been proving, Ed admits over his bresaola and rocket salad, to be a bit of a bore of late