The One Life Lessons List to Rule Them All and in the Darkness Bind Them

I mentor some pretty spectacular high school students in the arts of Synthetic Biology, but one day they asked for life lessons in lieu of cellular biology. I’ve always imagined that if I ever become a professor, I’d love to be considered much less a lecturer and more of a mentor; therefore, it was exciting to be given this opportunity. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any life lessons ready to bestow. So I prepared, and this is what I came up with.

When I began this task, I ran into a problem. The problem was that, like any twentysomething year old with a Facebook account, I had recently been bombarded with all sorts of New Year’s“Resolution Lists” loaded with superficial platitudes that I didn’t want to influence my advice. After thinking about what I disliked about them, I came to understand that the most alarmingly terrible thing about most of these lists was that they told you too much and too literally what to do and not do:

“Stop resenting yourself for drunk texting your ex.”
“No more eating when you’re down.”
“Be a little selfish”
“If you hate your job, quit your job.”
“Stop being so shallow”
Rid yourself of enemies, rid yourself of frenemies, stop this, stop that. etcetera etcetera, barf, barf.

Okay, I even found another one that is literally just 30 things to stop doing. Happiness isn’t about stopping things. It’s about becoming so involved in the things you love that you barely even notice you’ve stopped having time for the things you never liked anyway.

The real problem with focusing on things you shouldn’t be doing, or things you should stop doing, is that it attacks your guilt complex and attempts to drive change through guilt. I think we all know when we do something stupid, so of course we will laud people for calling us out on our shit and think, “Oh, wow, you are so wise, these are all the things I’m insecure about. Thanks for compiling them into a convenient list!”

The problem is that guilt is a terrible and ineffective motivator. And what is fundamentally wrong with these life lesson and resolution lists is that they give you the answer instead of telling how to arrive at it yourself. Nothing bothers me more than when so-called “teachers” simply give their students the answer instead of letting their students arrive at the solution with guidance. I think people underestimate the importance of the proverb:

“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” — Maimonides

To this I say: Give a man the solution to all his problems and he’ll be happy for a day; teach a man to solve his own problems and he’ll lead a lifetime of happiness.

Another quote I heard the other day drove this home even further:

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.”
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Contextualized: If you want to inspire people, don’t drum up virtues to collect and don’t assign them rules and restrictions, but rather teach them to long for the boundless happiness of self-actualization. All the “solutions” they list are results naturally achieved through “self-actualization” or by being wholly comfortable with yourself and at peace with our entropy-ruled chaotic universe that is yet so magnificently intertwined.

The harm of these lists is that they make solving all your problems sound so easy, so tangible. Like going to the grocery store and checking off each item. It’s not that easy. The journey to that sort of enlightenment is much harder and takes much longer than many would have you believe. It’s the result of discovery, introspection, heartbreak, failure, perseverance, and conviction, but knowing the answer doesn’t help you arrive at the solution.

So instead of giving you all the answers (not that I have them all anyway) – I think it’s better to help you locate the path on which the solutions exist. Nevertheless, few are going to want to learn to fish if they’ve never tasted perfectly flaky sea bass, and so I will also highlight the results – or what may lie at the end of these “paths”. I should note that there were two advice lists that I did generally appreciate, but they were still – in my opinion – a little too specific, so I boiled them down and came up with 9 core principles.

I’ve arranged the principles in the order they manifested in my life – building on top of eachother like a pyramid. They may arrive in really any order for you, but the truth is they all depend on each other, it’s not a pyramid, it’s more like pillars. Alas, I present – not to be confused with the 5 Pillars of Islam – the intentionally humorously-grandiose “Spencer’s 9 Pillars of Self-Actualization.” I would’ve much rather it been 7 pillars. Because it’s my favorite number and, you know, Horcruxes. But 9 is how it turned out and I’ll just have to live with that.

Pillar #1: Read. Learn. Consume.

This is essentially about exposure. Reading books (and even articles and blogs) is the easiest way to expose yourself to new ideas and to spark your curiosity. I like to think that learning is a positive feedback mechanism, the more you learn, the more questions you will have. Be curious, and you will be constantly fascinated.

Result:

Reading literary fiction (50 Shades of Grey and The Hunger Games probably don’t count) has been proven to increase your compassion by exposing you to different viewpoints and challenging your stereotypes. This will hopefully snowball into willingness to try new things and get out of your comfort zone, all great things for personal development. Eventually, you may come to understand that if you want to develop your mind – and continue developing it – you will need to maintain the rigor of its fleshy home.

“Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers.” ― Charles William Eliot

“A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading.” ― William Styron

Pillar #2. Physical Health

Exercise. Drink lots of water. Get enough but not too much sun. Eat healthy. I’ll leave it up to you to research the right exercises and the right diet for you. Just remember, a healthy “diet” is not temporary, it’s a lifestyle.

Result:

You’ll get sick less, you’ll be happier, you’ll have more energy, and you’ll need less sleep. Basically, being physically healthy pretty much improves everything. At this point, I’m being a hypocrite because exercising is usually much easier said than done. The problem is that not exercising is a negative feedback – the less you exercise, the more resistant you will become to the idea of exercising. The hardest part will be breaking a habit of stagnation. If that is you, focus on the other “pillars” and hopefully this one will come later of its own accord.

“Physical fitness is not only one of the most important keys to a healthy body, it is the basis of dynamic and creative intellectual activity.” — John F. Kennedy

“Leave all the afternoon for exercise and recreation, which are as necessary as reading. I will rather say more necessary because health is worth more than learning.”
— Thomas Jefferson

“It is health that is real wealth and not pieces of gold and silver.” — Mahatma Gandhi

“When health is absent, wisdom cannot reveal itself, art cannot manifest, strength cannot fight, wealth becomes useless, and intelligence cannot be applied.”
— Herophilus

(See! Presidents, Gandhi, & Ancient Greeks Agree!)

Pillar #3: “Travel”

Like Pillar #1, this is also all about exposure to new experiences. But this time, instead of traveling in your mind via literature, experience the richness of the world with all your senses. Flying across the world is nice, but usually not feasible. What’s important is encountering new ideas and new cultures, whether that’s taking a trip to Brazil or signing up for Samba class down the street.

Result:

You will have a much greater understanding of yourself – or maybe you will have more questions about your identity. Discomfort is essentially desirable at this point. Unfortunately, traveling is not a panacea. There’s a Buddhist concept: “Wherever you go, there you are” which is more about being “present” but to me it says: you can’t get away from your problems by changing your location. If you forget to leave all your baggage behind you’ll be blind to the lessons traveling has to teach.

“The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.”
— Augustine of Hippo

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.” — Mark Twain

“Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us, or we find it not.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson

Pillar #4: Meditate

This word comes loaded with preconceptions (and takes many forms) but all I mean by meditation is self-reflection, which I believe to be of the utmost importance. Take maybe 5-10 minutes to think about what you want and why. Do this regularly – research different methods: sit still, lay down, or go on long walks by yourself. Meditation is about exploring and accepting your faults, while addressing and praising your strengths. It is about understanding yourself and your goals.

Result:

Introspection and self-discovery will help you define a direction, a purpose. It will give you more confidence, more certainty, and more desire. It will reduce your anxiety and increase your gratitude. I don’t have any scientific backings for this one, other than my own personal experience, so take it how you will. But, it has been my observation that the most successful and inspiring people I know are whole; they are solid and sure. But wholesomeness is rarely born, it is built in the workshop of self-reflection.

“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.” ― Aristotle

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” ― C.G. Jung

“But if these years have taught me anything it is this: you can never run away. Not ever. The only way out is in.” ― Junot Díaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Pillar #5: Honesty

The truth will set you free. If you’re uncomfortable with the truth, then you are uncomfortable with who you are. That is why Honesty comes after Meditation. This will be difficult. You will still lie. But try to reduce the times you lie and the reasons you lie. When the truth affects only you – be honest. When the truth may affect others – you decide. The moral choice may be, not to lie, but to withhold information.

Result:

Confidence. Purity. Self-respect. Individuality.

“Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.” — Thomas Jefferson

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” — Oscar Wilde

“I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to
succeed, but I am bound to live up to what light I have.” — Abraham Lincoln

“Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed. If people all over the world…would do this, it would change the earth.” — William Faulkner

Pillar #6: Mindfulness

This pillar is about recognizing and caring about other people. They are just as much a human as you are. Even though I sort of promised not to use platitudes, I have no choice… there is a reason this is called the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Result:

Notice! this is not about catering to others before yourself, this is not about charity, this is simply about metaphysical balance. The world will always seem tilted and warped until you recognize the plight in others inherent to the human condition. The world will always seem barren and dreary until you recognize the gratitude you owe countless souls for deeds both direct and invisible. Besides, being a grateful person — which means to perceive gratitude as a permanent trait rather than a temporary state of mind — has proven health benefits. And being compassionate or practicing compassion meditation has various health benefits, the most prominent being significant reduction in stress response. There’s even evidence suggesting mindfulness can improve thesuccess of your business. Imagine that – actually caring about your customers could help you? Crazy.

“Cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you, and to give thanks continuously. And because all things have contributed to your advancement, you should include all things in your gratitude.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow.” — Melody Beattie

“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were: any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.” — John Donne

Pillar #7: Zen

Take a holistic view on things. Someone once said this to me: “You are not stuck in traffic. You aretraffic.” It just clicked; I was dumbstruck. How had I never thought of it like that before? What a liberating thought. How telling of my character. (Bonus Points: Watch the “This is Water” speech by David Foster Wallace to further understand what I mean by Zen).

Result:

Instead of feeling frustrated and angry in traffic you will feel peaceful if not apologetic. You will understand that this is a metaphor to be applied to everything. You will learn to live in the present more; you will smile more. You will learn to laugh at your mistakes because they are no longer such large mistakes. When you become a part of the larger world your problems become smaller. Of course you might argue that your successes do too… but you could always establish a duality that allows for problems to be small and successes large. You can also simply find comfort and joy and happiness in the magnanimity and beauty of the world at large.

I’ll never forget the day I was pacing outside the walls of the Greek Theatre in Berkeley trying to eavesdrop on the Dalai Lama’s speech commencing inside. A woman approached me to ask where the front gate was, she was very late. I imparted directions with an earnest, jealous smile; she took several hurried steps before turning around to offer me an extra ticket meant for her husband who couldn’t make it. Hearing the Dalai Lama’s speech changed my life. This is what resonated with me the most:

“People who use the words “I”, “my” and “mine” have a greater risk of a heart attack. My conclusion is a more self-centered attitude makes our minds become more narrow and then even a small, tiny problem becomes unbearable. There are thousands, millions of people facing similar problems. Don’t take oneself as the center of the world. Think of others, then your health will become better. That’s my medicine.” -Dalai Lama (Greek Theatre, Berkeley. 2009)

It just made perfect sense. Today, I remain a self-proclaimed, self-centered person, but let me explain:

“Everyone is self-centered it’s just the radius that differs” – Anonymous

So, yes, I am self-centered but in a constructive way – in a “How can I make myself a better human?” way – not a destructive, anxious way. My radius is such that I care not just about other people but the health of the entire globe. That is why, as a Bioengineer, my grander research goals align with global ecology: the health of Earth.

“A human being is a part of the whole, called by us “Universe”, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”
— Albert Einstein

“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

Pillar #8: ENJOY

Whew! That was some heavy stuff. Way to make it through – you go, Glenn Coco! This is a good time to remind you not to panic – but to relax and enjoy. It’s important to remember that this is a journey. It won’t come all at once. So make sure you are having fun along the way, even if that means you have to slip from these “paths”. You will screw up along the way – you will go weeks without exercising, you will lie, you will sit on the couch and watch an entire series of House of Cards in a day, you will drink a little bit too much and feel like death all Sunday. Good. Persevere. Do not regularly delay happiness to secure the possibility of future happiness. Dammit – I’m telling you what not to do. Sorry! I’m a hypocrite. Do what you want!

Result:

Making mistakes will help you hone in on what is truly right. Be reckless and jubilant. Be adventurous and self-forgiving.

“Everything in moderation, including moderation.” — Oscar Wilde

“The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.” — Eleanor Roosevelt

“If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.”
— E.B. White

Pillar #9: Follow Your Passion. Create. 

We’ve come full circle. Mostly everything up until this point has been about acquiring: whether that be knowledge, experience, health, or perspective. However, something never sat well with me about consuming without giving back. I read a blog post awhile back that solidified the reason for this discomfort. Its core message was about the secret to happinesses being about creating, issuing as its mantra:

“The more you create, the more you deserve to consume.”

I take this not to really mean deserving - because that suggests some sort of external referee - but rather to say: the more you create the more comfortable you feel consuming. And what do we create? Things we are passionate about. However, most of us fear creating because we dread outsiders’ judgment of our creations. This can stifle not only physical creation, but even verbal creation: things as simple as participation in discussions. I’m not going to tell you, “Oh, why don’t you just stop caring about what other people think,” I’m going to tell you that that freedom will manifest as a result of addressing the other “pillars”. You will only be able to create if you believe you are truly and utterly free. Free from judgment – not because you won’t be judged but because you will no longer heed its power over you.

Following your passion is said so many times I almost dry heave at repeating the cliché… not because I don’t agree, but because most people say it as if it’s the easiest thing in the world. Saying, “Follow your passion!” assumes you’ve even found it in the first place – as if it’s just statically sitting out there waiting to be harpooned like a beached whale. For most, it’s not that easy. It will be fluid, even elusive. Therefore, you must expose yourself to as much as possible and constantly self-reflect before you can know what you decidedly want. But don’t forget to enjoy along the way :)

Result:

The infinite happiness of self-actualization.

“The problem, often not discovered until late in life, is that when you look for things in life like love, meaning, motivation, it implies they are sitting behind a tree or under a rock. The most successful people in life recognize, that in life they create their own love, they manufacture their own meaning, they generate their own motivation. For me, I am driven by two main philosophies, know more today about the world than I knew yesterday. And lessen the suffering of others. You’d be surprised how far that gets you. — Neil deGrasse Tyson

“Why do they always teach us that it’s easy and evil to do what we want and that we need discipline to restrain ourselves? It’s the hardest thing in the world–to do what we want. And it takes the greatest kind of courage. I mean, what we really want.” — Ayn Rand

“Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.”
— Franz Kafka

This is my Bible, dear reader. Now you must make your own.

“Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson

Because remember, I do not have your answers, and I do not pretend to. You must find your own way.

“You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche

A Restless Few

The sunlight seemed distant and unreal. A daze of vivid shapes battled the lingering memories of the night — moonlit skin shivering against each others warmth, the waves gently lapping at our bodies.

“Let’s sit here” offered Matthias.

I was exhausted, hungover and dizzy, but I hadn’t flown five thousand miles to feel well-rested. We had only met once before and yet there I was. There we were. Aimlessly walking down the beach, dressed in last night’s garb, clutching books we’d just scored from an anachronistic, secondhand book store. The store was a small sanctuary nestled behind a cafe we hounded for coffee. Coffee, our air, our daily sacrament. The bookstore was a time machine, a conversation with the previous patrons. They were here in Barça, reading Tolstoy and Clancy and Brontë and Rowling. A girl on vacation with her parents just trying to pass the time. A literature professor re-reading his favorite classic, intentionally leaving the book behind, an act of hope.

Matthias rested his bike against the patio railing and we sank into our chairs smiling in content. We set our books on the table—Feynman for me, Diamond for him. We had front row seats. The beach, mangled with tourists and vendors, unfolded before us. The tourists’ latest gadgets and the vendors’ cheap trinkets glinted in the daylight. We slid on our sunglasses.

The cafe was empty. It was that slow, quiet period between breakfast and lunch, the time of day the waitress smokes her first cigarette and the cook makes himself an omelette.

The waitress reluctantly put out her cigarette and ambled over to us.

“Buenos dias! What would you like?”

For no good reason I resented the fact she knew we were Americans.

“Good Morning! Ummmm, can I get the pineapple, orange smoothie… but with rum in it??” Matthias only pretended to ask, he could charm anyone into anything.

The waitresses smiled, “Of course!”

Genius. I ordered the same.

She left, and we giggled in excitement as we looked into each others smiling eyes. I was overjoyed, yet something inside me sank. I wanted to love him. I wanted to fling my heart across the globe and recklessly anchor it to a moving target: Matthias the wayward traveler. I wanted the impossibility of romance. I wanted poetry and love letters. Instead I was just fucking everything up on the pretense of living out the plot of some contrived love story.

Never one to small talk, Matthias ventured “Where do you see yourself in five years?”

We dove head first into our dreams, our insecurities, our pasts, our pride and guilt. That’s how it was with him. There was never a wasted moment or a triviality. I cherished every moment of it. I hadn’t flown there for nothing.

Our conversation sailed, the drinks arrived and the buzz kicked in.

“Now imagine you’re this local tribe in New Guinea. You’ve never seen anything like an airplane before and all of a sudden drones of them appear during World War II. You follow their path in the sky and find the newly made runways. What would you do?”

I chuckled, “I don’t know…”

“To these people, the airplanes and their cargo were gods descending from the sky. They saw the wealth of cargo and became desirous of airplanes. So the tribesmen went back to their village and started clearing large swathes of jungle. They thought that by creating runways, airplanes would spontaneously start landing to bring them abundance. They lit torches and acted out all the movements of the ground control crew. They couldn’t even begin to comprehend what those airplanes were and what they were doing. By mimicking the soldiers’ runway rituals, they believed the gods would come. I wonder how long they tried for.”

“Wow.” I was heartbroken and fascinated.

It took me months to realize that at that moment in time, I was those tribesmen. I thought that by writing love letters and flying across the globe on a whim and a kiss I could fabricate love. If I played the part, it would be real. I had even fooled myself with the charade. I gulped my rum smoothie and let myself be intoxicated in the moment.

We talked about how beautiful and ludicrous religion can be. How terrible and lovely humans are. While we were dissecting and recounting our favorite parts of East of Eden, my mind took a leap.

“Sometimes I think about how The Matrix really got it wrong.”

He laughed at the discontinuity “About what?”

“They thought the robots would enslave us. They didn’t suspect we might choose that fate for ourselves. If you think about it, our reality is very limited. We can’t fly, we only have so many appendages. And what’s it all for? For pleasure? For sex and love and the acquisition of rare goods? Most of it points back to love with sex being the main vehicle. Did you ever think that humans might one day choose to leave all that behind…

“You think too much,” my ex girlfriend’s voice echoed from the recesses of my mind. I ignored it and pushed on. Matthias was different. He never stifled my thoughts; he furthered them.

“…when virtual reality and biotech advance to a degree that the brain can be directly manipulated to feel the oxytocin explosion that accompanies new love, the savory taste of a juicy burger, or both at the same time, might we begin to prefer the fantasy?”

“But don’t you think the reality of it all makes it exciting? The danger? The thrill? The ephemerality?”

“We can assume the engineers will fix that in time. They’ll learn to stimulate the adrenal glands during a flying session that in reality poses no danger, but we’ll be made to feel the exhilaration. Of course there is no need to eat in the virtual world. But we’ll do it just to stimulate the feeling. Or maybe we’ll encode it so touching will become taste while smell becomes sight. All of it is possible. It’s just a matter of time, effort and demand. Whole worlds and universes could live in that sort of machine, while our real bodies sat in a nutrition-regulating vat.

“And sex! Sex would be even crazier. We won’t need to eat or give birth so mouths, butts, vaginas, penises won’t be necessary anymore, none of the anatomy will be. Sex could become any number of things. You could be a sugar cube dissolving into your mate who is a steaming cup of coffee. You could be the wind and sex is bristling through a vast pine forest. This act will stimulate all the responses of sex in your brain and even more without you having to have anatomical sex. Sexuality, gender, race—all gone. Besides, all the other people don’t have to be real. There might be a commodity for real people. But there might also be a commodity for AI posing as real people. The point is, each individual will have exactly what they want.”

Matthias protested, “I still think a part of the brain would know. Would know it wasn’t real. And who would fund it? Wouldn’t they have to leave the virtual world to make a living? To pay for the expenses?”

“At first, maybe. But the dimness of reality will slowly become unbearable. The heaviness of walking. The slowness of our gait. They’ll figure out a way to automate everything. To use robots controlled in the VR to fix things in the real world. They’ll never have to leave. And eventually people might want to forget they ever came from a real world.”

“Why would they?”

“Why would they not?

“Besides, there might be an entire strata of humans who want people to welcome VR as their newmodus operandi. There will be scientists and ecologists that promote constraining humans to a pod because it will optimize energy and food consumption. All our food will be created in big bioreactors. Amino acid, fatty acid, carbohydrate, mineral and vitamin mixtures tailored to your body will be delivered intravenously. It’s a Brave New World Huxley couldn’t even begin to imagine.

“With millions of humans contained, Nature could take back the earth. There would be much less waste, much less taxation of resources. The world would become sustainable again. It would become quiet and beautiful. So in a way, the people who want the Earth to return to this will gladly fund people to enter into continual, virtual bliss.

“But there would also be benefits for the users. Viruses and diseases won’t be able to spread because people aren’t moving around. And as Huxley noticed ‘man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions’ would mean this sort of future wouldn’t be forced upon anyone. This sort of future could naturally develop from a capitalistic, free society, where the consumers get exactly what they demand.

“Huxley thought Brave New World was a horror story. And it might be to the people who don’t want to be complacent, to be drugged or virtual realitied into happiness. But to many people that might be the choice they want. I’m fascinated by what the human race will do when such a choice exists. Fantasy has always been an escape, but when the escape no longer harbors flaws that betray its fiction, will we gladly replace reality? Will people seek the bliss of ignorance? And who is to deny them that right? For many, searching is misery. Uncertainty is suffering. There are so few people for whom the unknown is beauty, fascination and the fuel to carry on.

Still not convinced, Matthias argued, “what about children? Won’t people want children? To continue the human race?”

“They could order one for a fee. They’ll be able to pick and choose the DNA; theirs or anyone else’s. The baby will be born in a test tube and automatically attached to the virtual world. It might never even know the real world. Or maybe the program will lie and just create a virtual child once the Turing test is shattered, a virtual child that stimulates the parental desire to be needed. The stimuli that come from nurturing. Some zeroes and ones strung together to be helpless and to learn from the entities who ordered them.”

“Haha, you really think that’s all there is to parenthood?”

“Haha, no. I’m just being bleak. But I think you get my point. When these things can be chemically guaranteed in the future, we might finally figure out what we desire as a race. What makes us human.”

“What do we desire?” It was a question to the air.

He continued, “First, all we cared about was food, water, shelter and sex. As technology and agriculture progressed all of these became easier and easier. Except sex and love, of course, which created wars, civilizations, the waltz, Shakespeare, Dalí, shit, even Facebook. So at long last, when sex and love — albeit virtual—are guaranteed…”

“That’s what I’m saying! You want food? For enjoyment or for sustenance? Sustenance won’t be an issue. You’re on life support. Enjoyment will be easier than the click of a button. It will be a thought and what you desire will be summoned. Appear before your “eyes”. You want money? What for? You no longer need that, computation is cheap.”

Matthias jumped on board, “And sex, that will be just as easy. But not just the idea of sex. Feelings better than sex. Feelings better than love. All the pleasure pathways stimulated at once. It could be with anyone or anything you want.”

“Exactly. All these things are chemical and can therefore be manufactured. But there are things that can’t be.”

“Questions. Answers. The Unknown. Things that can’t be directly encoded. Things the coders didn’t know.”

“Well, in your VR you could encode the knowledge of a God and it would be real for the people who want it to be.”

“So then atheists would be the only ones still looking for answers? While the ones who are content with any answer they choose live out their lives in a virtual world that is for all intents and purposes a better and happier place?”

“I suppose reality will be defined by the presence of suffering. And as something you can’t exit from.”

“Maybe we’re in that virtual reality, and somewhere down the line our ancestors forgot this life wasn’t real. Maybe the Egyptians. They totally had magic and shit.”

I knew he was joking, but it was in my nature to take everything seriously.

“I really doubt it. This world is way too boring to be virtual. There would be no point to encode so many rules into such an advanced system. I hardly doubt a civilization capable of such things lacks for computing power.

“Anyway, this may never happen. Maybe virtual reality will be recreational just like video games are today. But it’s worth thinking about. I think it brings up important questions. Because if the technology is possible—and I don’t see why it won’t be eventually—if illusion can become reality, better yet, if it can supersede reality, we might, as a race, turn away from reality once and for all. Humans will grapple with their existence. They will wonder what sex is. What desire is. What love is. If we can trick our tongues and noses into eliciting the optimal flavor reaction, activate all the correct tastebuds and olfactory neurons, will the virtual food continue to taste good? Could you get bored of perfection? If you could love everything and always, would you love nothing?”

There was silence. The waves crumbled on the shore, teenagers flirted and sipped wine and gossiped. A yacht sailed past.

“Okay well, what do you desire?”

“I used to have no idea. But after reading Cosmos and learning about the four possibilities of our future: stagnation, oscillation, extinction, or exponential growth. I have no choice but to fight for exponential growth. It will require substantial technological and social changes. Social because we need to not kill our planet. Social because we need to fund science. Social because we need morality to dictate our technology. And technological so we can do what’s moral without having to change our habits too much. It’s really hard to change human behavior, you know. It might be the hardest thing in the world. Unless it involves the promise of more sex or more power, new technology is the only way .

“You can try to convince billions of humans to conserve energy, or you can invent a sustainable (and cheaper) source of energy, fission or biofuels for instance. I’d bet you anything we’ll create fission reactors before we can convince the majority of humans — including myself—to inconvenience themselves with slightly less energy consumption.”

He gave a knowing laugh, “did I tell you I know Carl Sagan’s daughter?”

“Oh my god. Of course you do.”

“You reminded me of one of his quotes.”

He brought it up on his phone and recited in his distinctly rich voice:

“Long summers, mild winters, rich harvests, plentiful game — none of them lasts forever. It is beyond our ability to predict the future. Catastrophic events have a way of sneaking up on us, of catching us unaware. Your own life, or your band’s, or even your species’ might be owed to a restless few — drawn, by a craving they can hardly articulate or understand, to undiscovered lands and new worlds.”

“Wait, that’s me. That’s what I want to do.”

He chuckled and our knees cobbled together for an instant.

“So are you not interested in love? Because it’s chemical?” Matthias smirked.

“Of course I am! I can’t get it any other way than the real way. I’m just saying in the future a synthetic version will be available with indistinguishable authenticity, like those new synthetic diamonds that the most renowned jewelers can’t even tell are fake. I’m not saying this is good, or that it’s what I want. I’m just saying that it’s coming and that I’m trying to see what good can come out of it. When we are truly offered an alternative to life, even something that surpasses life, will we finally look up? Will we dare to dream again?”

Our trip to the Sagrada Familia was fresh in my mind, the placard recounting Gaudi’s wisdom burned in my mind: “The great book, always open and which we should make an effort to read, is that of Nature.”

I laughed to myself thinking about how we spent the day marveling at Gaudi and Gehry to end up dancing all night at Razzmatazz before skinny dipping under the full moon. “What do I desire?” I wondered. I felt a slave to my chemicals.

“What’s so funny?” He asked.

“Oh, nothing.”

Matthias paid the bill despite my protests. I suddenly remembered how exhausted I was. We shambled along the promenade in silence, rhythmically bumping into each other. A sea of iPhones twinkled in the sun like the stars we could no longer see at night. I held him close. I wasn’t in love.

~

Ideas referenced in this short story: The Experience Machine, Basic Income/Radical Abundance (1), (2), & (3), The Cargo Cult.