I’ve changed the design of the blog, so that it is more simplistic. Just words. Posts organised by date. You can just scroll back through the timeline, pick a topic and explore some of the ideas that I was working through at the time.

The re-design has made me think about digital spaces.

We are already living in a metaverse. The only difference is that the medium of exchange of information is through a black rectangle, rather than through the different senses available.

We know that physical spaces greatly influence our psychology. Increasingly, its becoming clear that the same is true for online experiences - not only ‘what we consume’, but the form it comes in.

For example : paywalled articles written by journalists ladened with ads vs sub stack blog

Substack has a much nicer experience, irregardless of the quality of the content.

Crafting user experiences is a whole industry, and I’m no expert. But here are a few heuristics I’ve found that work :

1. Simple is better
2. Intuitive is better
3. Less is more

Imagine you were able to lucid dream. You could live any reality you wanted. The first instances might start off with vagrant hedonism. Satisfying all your desires.

This would soon lose its charm. The hedonic treadmill. The first bite of a donut is always better than the second, and better than the 99th donut. At some point, hedonism devolves into gluttony.

So at this point in time, you may decide that hedonism is not the way. That you need some goal. A worthy struggle. A self chosen project that you strive towards. Meaningful pain (the meaning part takes away suffering). You seek for mastery in a domain.

What if this is the life we are living now?

There is a crisis of meaning in modern society. Partly because we live in an age where all our desires are satisfied. We have the everything store, black rectangles in our pocket that perform magic and complete control over our environment. On the flip side, deep primal needs for connection and intimacy are becoming harder to find for most.

I think most people don’t have a meaningful struggle. A boulder that you choose to happily push up the mountain.

What struggles can you choose?

Suggestions for hard projects

• Learn something new
• Go to school/university
• Start a family/relationship/ have children
• Create ‘good art’
• Physical struggle- train - lift/run/stretch
• Voluntarily seek some level of asceticism - abstain from whatever modern day addiction you struggle with