Frankology

Our need to belong exceeds our need to be moral.

Morality: principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behavior.

Belonging: an affinity for a place, person, group or situation.

Put in an easy to digest way: people want acceptance so badly they will abandon their stance as quickly as they do their sensibility. They will do most anything for someone – even a degenerate waste of creation – just to say, “I’m in! Those are my friends over there.”

Pitiful. https://frankology.net

“Have an amazing day.”

Some time ago I received an email from the representative of a service provider we’ve done business with for the past ten years. This person is new to our account, and we met to introduce ourselves, to discuss how we do things, and how we can do things better moving forward.

As a follow-up, she mailed me the talking points, ending her mail with, “have an amazing day.”

I'll tell you this, my real-world persona is a damned good salesman. So much so it's the centre of every venture thus far. I enjoy watching others try to sell, especially when they use all the “tricks of the trade.” These do not work on me. That ending though – “have an amazing day.” Leaves an impression.

On purpose or just the way she speaks, either way, all you need is an impression, to be memorable. You don’t need them to remember what you sell; you need to be memorable. Impactful.

Have an amazing day! https://frankology.net/

One time, my gardener nearly broke the door off my shed. The door was mounted so it opens to the outside as opposed to inward. Unorthodox but necessary due to space constraints. Point is, this man was wholly unable to reason this and so tried to force the door off its hinges.

Another time, my company which manufactures glass partitioning, received via our website-contact-form a request from a woman about her mobile phone contracts. Apparently, she wanted to cancel one of them, and “continue only with the other one.” I can only assume our logo and that of the phone company are similar…

I read somewhere this morning the internet now has 3.6 billion users. The likes of Google processes 40 000 searches every second. That is a lot of users and a lot of user names. We should take two-thirds of them back.

How is it a good idea to allow anyone with the cognitive ability of a potato to use the internet; potatoes have eyes right, this must qualify them? Do you think these people are allowed to drive? Can they feed themselves? They are allowed to vote, this we know. Now we have given them user names and passwords, the means to spread their fucking idiotic brain-farts.

If you think the earth is flat, then I wish I did too, for just a moment, a moment long enough to take you to the edge of it and boot your thick fucking head over it. You are a waste of space and clutter an otherwise beautiful thing. https://frankology.net

If given the choice for unconditional happiness, right now, would you say no? I'm talking about flipping a switch which turns your world instantly into a funfair of pure unadulterated happiness. Yes, please!

Except, happiness is temporary. Even when it is pure and unconditional, there is a condition which is it cannot last forever. Fulfilment, on the other hand, is a state of well-being which breeds and nurtures happiness and content.

The key then is to strive for fulfilment over happiness. Forgo the instant gratification -happiness- and chase after fulfilling deeds, activities, practices and thoughts. In this way, you will generate more sustainable happiness.

People are meaning-making machines. We search for meaning in almost anything we do, even when we don’t know we are doing it. Similarly, we attach meaning to almost everything we encounter, even where there is none. One might say this has served us well when you consider the speed of our advancement comparative to other species, but that would be wrong, at least to some degree.

Considering the word “advance,” we can agree there is nothing else we know of like it. The sheer speed of advancement is mind-boggling but, comparing this to other species is plainly incorrect. Advancement and evolution are not the same things. As far as scientists can tell, we have evolved little in our current embodiment. There are a few small changes one could point out, such as the ability to digest milk, which should not be trivialised. Being able to digest milk would have changed the world accumulatively for many nations. In the same breath, there are still small groups of people who cannot digest milk and so the importance of this might be null.

Comparing our evolution is the only real marker we can use. That said, might we not look back millennia from now and view our advancement as a type of evolution? After all, there will come a time where we will achieve true cyborg status, we are already growing organs, and it is likely that in time we could transplant our consciousness, effectively achieving immortality. What could this be other than evolution?

There is just one problem with this idea and it is our doggedness in trying to attach meaning to everything. A hot topic at the moment is who and what AI will eventually be. Will we be able to control it or will it control us, ultimately even eradicate us? Assigning meaning to everything is not logical and so the machines (AI) are unlikely to do this. Meaning, they are likely to “evolve” faster than we can as they do not suffer the constraints we do.

What or where exactly we as a species will end up is impossible to say. What we know, meaning makes us human. For better or for worse, without it, we are just star-dust. For some, this might be ok but for the rest of us, we need more. This too, is ok.

The human being is strange. Most anything in nature will not take part in activities known to be bad for the system. Lions don’t smoke and beetles don’t drink.

Sometimes the natural world does, in fact, drink – sort of – and even get drunk. The animals of the Southern African regions, at a certain time of the year, partake in the eating of Marula fruit. After spending just the right time fermenting in the African sun, the fruit is devoured greedily by all in the region, including monkeys, elephants, and even giraffes. If you’ve never seen videos of drunken monkeys, elephants, and giraffes, you need to prioritize this now; it is an absolute treat. There is, however, a distinction which is they do not understand it is bad for their system. All they understand is it is the most entertaining part of the year and the heaviest hitting–the next morning.

The human ape, on the other hand, understands full well the activity of drinking alcohol is bad for us, yet, we continue the practice without reservation. The same applies to how much coffee we drink, the food we eat, smoking, speeding, or whatever activity you endanger yourself with. Octopuses do not go around swimming through sharks mouths for kicks, although, if some person had invented a means yet, without doubt, some other person would have tried even that by now.

More astounding than this, despite our knowledge of the perils, it is only when something “bad” happens that we stop and consider a change. Why? Why don’t we simply review our behavior and adjust where necessary before any kind of incident?

We don’t because we don’t want to. We don’t because we enjoy doing things which are bad for us, just the same as the African animals enjoy getting drunk as lords on the Marula fruit. I’d venture to say, even if they knew how they were poisoning their systems they would do it anyway because the risk is worth the reward. I can already hear the keyboard worriers on about addiction and all the rest, and to them, I have this to say: addiction is the aftermath of the action. Every addict had to choose to partake.

Another reason we don’t consider our actions as much as we should; we don’t consider death as often as we should. Most of us think of it as something which happens to others, sickness too. Interesting thought, if you preserve yourself wonderfully, all the way to ripe-old-age, the chances you end up a bumbling halfwit without memory of yourself, your past or present is high.

Despite the way we treat ourselves we also continue to improve or lengthen our lifespans. Trouble is who will it be for? The ancient old coot across the hall or the poor soul who wipes your ass every day? I suppose it’s all down to balance–again.

When you have completed this short read, I urge you to stop and think about it for just a few seconds. Really stop and think.

No matter your current age; if you don't have children yet you likely still will. When you do, or if you have, even if they are all grown up, spare a thought for those who looked after them all day. More specifically, those who did so while they were young and transforming into who they would eventually become.

These people play an unimaginably important role in the process. Not only should we choose wisely who they are, but assuming they are doing a good job, applaud them for the work they do. Get it wrong and the scars are all but irreversible. Get it right and the result is a lifelong, captivating enchantment of which we will never grow tired. This, is a beautiful thing.

This weekend I ran a little experiment. Nothing too serious, or difficult for that matter. I wanted to see if writing with pen and paper (pencil and paper in reality) would make for better writing or at the very least better thought structure. The idea being, it is far less convenient to edit, correct or even rewrite your work when doing it “by hand.”

Having nothing, in particular, to write about made it more of a challenge but I’d say definitively, you are forced to put a lot more thought into what you put to paper. More thought still how you put it to paper.

Something I have known and tapped into for a long time is the act of writing–pen and paper–allows the brain to form new pathways far better than typing can. Just as typing helps relieve the brains circular thought patterns, writing is exponentially more effective. While there are several theories why this may be, I think it irrelevant. Striving to know the mechanisms of every tool can become counterproductive and lead to cognitive overload. Knowing it an effective means is enough for me.

To think we’ll ever return to pen and parchment is a ludicrous idea. It is plainly too unproductive but applying the same principals while using modern trappings may be a doorway to better work.

The setting is a bookstore in the era of the pilgrims. A printer and a store owner are arguing about the quality, value, and saleability of a consignment of 'the first volumes ever printed in America.'

Our protagonist is from the future. She is here to acquire – by any means necessary – a copy of the first book ever printed in America. The volume, in her time, is considered extremely valuable and the organisation she works for needs funding.

Ultimately, she succeeds in thieving her target, right under the noses of the printer and store’s owner; carrying the book out the door in plain sight. Her success she attributes, in essence, to the fact that her stealing something would be so unthinkable, it was impossible to even see.

The book is an easy and fun read titled 'The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.' The point is a little heavier hitting.

Apart from the obviously amoral, there was a time when people could rely on other people's sense of accountability and good faith. What happened?

How do we find ourselves in a world where we can pay for a service -any service- and be unashamedly ripped off under the guise of apologetic inconvenience? What happened?

How did we come to accept the piss-poor, substandard offering from banks, airlines, freight, and government agencies as the norm? Was it always the norm or did it come about slowly, like cancer; a politician on the rise? What happened?

We don't trust our neighbours because we can't. We don't trust strangers because this would be suicidal. We don't even trust our doctors because we know better. What happened?

There is little we can say about where we find ourselves other than it is our own fault. We alone are to blame. Every time we look the other way. Every time we accept the miscarriage of services. Every time we contribute to the dismal blueprint of ‘fuckery.’

Maybe it's time we spend less time worrying about what which celebrity thinks about transvestites, or the state of gender, or the legitimacy of rainbows, or the colour of blue. Maybe it’s time we spent more time worrying about the erosion of common decency. Focusing on this will likely solve most of the anthropological ‘problems,’ and possibly the colour spectrum too.

One of those weeks, and it's only Wednesday.

What to do when nothing seems to be going right and all of your self-awareness-self-control-mindfulness techniques just aren’t cutting it? Head to the pub. Have a drink, have a smoke, whatever. Fuck it.

The pursuit of perfection is just that, a pursuit. None of us are or ever will be perfect and that is perfectly ok.