The Edge…there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.
~Hunter S. Thompson
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Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.
~Thomas H. Huxley
To war against the ever present stimuli that seek to push my conscious mind away from the task at hand is to flat out lose. The library is dead quiet, save for the flip of a page a few rows over and the hum of 1960's era lights that aren't going anywhere. A few asian gals a couple rows over titter over something, which is fine by me because they've earned it. Asian folks are not to be outstudied. It's incredible. I'm over here rattling my chair to kingdom, trying not to whistle and struggling to read maybe two words every sentence and three sentences per page, and they are hunkered down over yonder, copying every single word off every page of the textbook sprawled out on the table. I feel like I'm witnessing the passing of the torch here. Is the Western way of thought to be completely usurped in my lifetime? The future might not hold that drastic of a change in the span of my short life but politically who knows? What is true about the happenings by the atlases is that those folks are cutting down their risk of failing, page after page. I commend them. My unacademia smells from here to reference eight floors up and it implores the asian kids to grip their pencils tighter and lazer in on the task at hand, because the future is a dangerous place and the library closes in only four hours.
The risk functional estimator in statistical decision theory
Of course, I'm basing all this off of the result of taking a few simple observations too far, but seriously. There is virtue to be found in taking things too far. What better way to take a definite stance against fear of the unknown, against the sops that microanalyze their hedge funds and the college students who plan on middling for the next few years out of fear of doing something stupendous. Uncertainty is everywhere in our ever changing world and the hardest place for the mind to be is simply present, conscious only of the happenings around and flying a flag of neutrality. Neutrality doesn't mean apathy but rather conscious, seeing both the good and the bad. Of course there is a time for things to be black and white, but for the most part, either/or way of thinking wrecks havoc on the world. Look at the conflict in the Middle East or tribalism in Central Africa. It's all Us vs. Them thinking. The hardest thing to fully grasp is the fact that its just Us. But I digress.
Where does risk come into the picture in this big old word lash? Essentially, to risk is to face truth. Never to the point of hindering future opportunities of course, but how else can one know the extent of what they're truly capable of? Imagination, when free from external limitations, can be the source of both incredible pleasure and extreme suffering. If perception is indeed reality, then that has to be true for both. To risk is know a general idea what the outcome may be, the good and bad. But what often doesn't get taken into consideration is the gamble, the levying of chances and probabilities that tickle the populous's inhibitions into blooming towards outright fear. Fear paralyzes action which in turn prevents progress. I've heard it said that if you wait to do everything until you're sure its right, then you'll probably not do much of anything. That's absolutely right. Every action is naturally going to have an element of fear twinged into it. The best question to ask is Where does this fear come from? What is it trying to teach me? I watched Oliver Stone's biopic on Alexander the other night, which was honestly too gay for me to think much about but one quote stuck out to me. The fear of death drives all men. I got to thinking about maybe not death itself, but the death of something. For me, its the death of opportunity. In whatever the occasion, the line has to be toed, even kissed because thats where truth is to be found. And the only way to see the line in the first place is to cross over it and pay the consequences.
I sincerely doubt that Taoism and the Middle Way are driving the tittering asian students nearby to study their brains off. I'm jealous of their terribly intent focus but then again, there is an opportunity cost to everything. They don't leave lots to chance. I believe that lashing all this out is more important than studying my notes on the Laws of Supply, which is what I came here to do. But folks done got me distracted and one thing led to another and shabam, nary a dip into the Economics realm but a whole mess of words to show for the last twenty minutes. But I'll be fine once I get to it (I'll be goooooood) and I'm going to rage on this test coming up Friday. The only mechanism that can put one at peace in the face of fear and uncertainty is faith. Not faith rooted in our own ability, because we're all fucked up, but rather faith in the Divine Order that reveals purpose to every happening Life throws at us. Faith lets us trust the heights and depths which things are taken because what's there to fear anyways? As my wise mentor Chris West once told me, high up on an abandoned building overlooking a dark grey storm surge roll over the deep green jungle outside Uganda's capital city of Kampala, "Everything in moderation, including Moderation."
