Welcome, you entering an ecosystem of ideas. ![[images-3.jpeg]] This is an index of **Living Questions**, the current outline for my life's work. I'm hoping to ask good questions, and answer them to the best of my abilities, to tell truthful stories that can capture imagination and inform action. More concretely, in the short-term, I wish to 1) sketch out a **vision and ethos of calm computing** that can help direct Daylight's software and product roadmap. 2) develop **a map of cultural currents**, the zeitgeist, the narrative context in which Daylight's brand might flourish, a conceptual framework to inform our brand strategy and GTM 3) on that basis, articulate my perspective on **the importance of human attention**; how we might work towards more attentional freedom, cognitive sovereignty, and self-determination; and why these are worthy aims in the first place; and why Daylight has the potential to be symbol for the religion that emerges from it. 4) longer term, sketch out how these observations might usefully inform **the work to be done**; a theory and ethos of how metamodern public benefit companies can drive meaningful change in the world and advance human development. 5) in the process, we'll probably articulate a [[philosophy of the good life]] *In short, this collection of notes and essays seeks to answer why cultivating high-quality attention is such a meaningful project, and why Daylight is so important to that undertaking.* ### Where to begin? A somewhat significant effort needs to be put into articulating the ways our attention gets hijacked, the ways in which limbic capitalism systematically undermines real agency. However, we should not indulge in this more than necessary for noticing and illustrating the principles, mechanisms, conditions for a more flourishing way of being. Finding new language around attention, and what it means to live well. Illustrate why it's so deeply meaningful, and paint the picture of a world where living deeply human, meaningful lives is just a little bit easier, a little bit more natural. - Can we become more articulate about the attentional realities we're experiencing? - --- Attentional freedom is a requisite for a future worth having. Given our intimate co-evolution with technology, human-friendly computers are essential to a future compatible with human dignity and freedom. Limbic capitalism and the exploitability of human vulnerabilities are currently putting us on a fast track towards a future somewhere between Ready Player One and Wall-E. ![[ready player one (1).jpg]] ![[walle humans (1).jpg]] ![[think different humans (1).jpg]] ![[horizons manifesto solar punk third timeline (1).png]] 1. Computers are essential to our human sovereignty — if by sovereignty we mean our capacity for self-determination. Being able to choose our future requires us to be free from the ubiquitous, systematic, engineered, algorithmic exploitation of vulnerabilities in our biology. 2. The evolutionary mismatch between our biology and the attentional landscape provided by our technological environment in 2024, driven by platform competition and profit imperatives of limbic capitalism threatens to ==subvert human freedom== at a scale and depth so significant that it ==*bends the arc of human evolution*== towards degeneration, hyper-consumption, mindless entertainment, intensifying nervous stimulation - void of meaning, alienated from all virtue and wisdom. 3. We all know what it feels like to have our attention corrupted. The habitualized indulgence in overstimulation renders us infantile, incapacitated in our ability to direct ourselves, our attention, and our life force energy. This lack of basic self-control is causing what we might call ==neurological nihilism==, an inability to value anything at all, let alone properly. 4. These same conditions undermine our personhood, to evaluate our desires and preferences, to form and maintain second-order desires, to choose worthier ones. If we're unable to conceive and maintain coherent aspirations and goals to orient our lives around, unable to act according to settled plans; we are not only flitting about, we’re also vulnerable to ==the omni-present purveyors of marshmallows==, pre-conditioned to submit ourselves to whatever stimuli are aimed at us. 5. This is what's at stake, this is why our technology often feels like such a pervasive source of inner conflict and existential struggle; the extractability of our attention is not compatible with an emancipated self. The ability to VALUE, to experience any significance and meaningfulness at all, the aliveness and success of our character, projects and relationships — all depends on the integrity of our attention. 6. Sovereignty of mind and heart, attention and will — those are our most intimate and existential levels of freedom. 7. This attentional freedom is at the heart of what it takes to live a good life, a life worth choosing, a life that honors the possibilities of our human potential. 8. The capacities that enable attentional freedom, are enabled by it in return. 9. What James Williams calls our “Daylight” attention: ![[Spotlight Starlight Daylight.jpg]] 10. Our fundamental capacities — such as reflection, metacognition, reason, and intelligence — that enable us to define our goals and values to begin with. Enables us to "want what we want to want." 11. When our Daylight is obscured, epistemic distraction results; the diminishment of underlying capacities that enable a person to define or pursue their goals: capacities such as reflection, memory, prediction, leisure, reasoning, and goal-setting. These capacities are as essential to the possibility of democracy as they are to the good life and the ==practical wisdom== that enables it. 12. In the absence of this capacity to effectively plan one's own projects and goals, our automatic, bottom-up processes take over. At its extreme, epistemic distraction produces what Harry Frankfurt refers to as =="wantonness"== — it removes reflected-upon, intentional reasons for acting, leaving only impulsive reasons in its wake. 13. [jefferson / Schmachtenberger sentiment no democracy is possible without the comprehensive education of its people. 14. This, also, is at the heart of our shared humanity, it’s the prerequisite for human freedom and for the flourishing of the human spirit. It’s that light of consciousness, instantiated through our cognitive capacities, on the substrate of our physiological systems, on which our individual and collective ability to see and recognize the true, the good, the beautiful, depend. 15. It’s that light which enables us to see things as they are, to imagine them as they could be, and to muster the resolve and will to realize and manifest them into a more beautiful future, a future worth choosing.  16. It’s this light that we all share, the spark of which is in all of us. This attention of ours is sacred, precisely because the good depends on it.  17. [musk & preserving the light of human consciousness by extending it to the stars], the dimming of it is what leads to degeneration of culture and decay of civilization. 18. This, then is what we speak off, when we speak of a computer that is far better at some key things. We ask: What’s really important, in life and computers? 19. Better attention enables everything we care about; 20. The pursuit of lives worth living. ### The Problems - Limbic Capitalism - An economic system of ubiquitous, systematic, engineered, and algorithmic exploitation of vulnerabilities in our biology; subverting our free will and corrupting our agency into addiction. - Evolutionary Mismatch - Overstimulation - Misaligned and Antagonistic Attentional Landscapes - Pervasive tech toxicity: Dopamine flooding, blue light, flickering, circadian disruption, posture, screen apnea, - Adult pacifiers - A/B testing towards addiction - Neurological Nihilism ### [[Attentional Health]] - What is attention? [a.](https://www.are.na/welf-von-horen/attention-h6mgqqssvyq) - Intentionality & Self-Determination - Cognitive Sovereignty - Cultivating High-Quality Attention ### The Practice of Attention - [a.](https://www.are.na/welf-von-horen/the-practice-of-attention) - Untrained attention - The orientation towards "Practice" - Attentional Artistry / Martial Art - A Life Well Lived, A Life Worth Living - Personal Freedom & the Practice of Attention: - Delayed gratification - Personhood & second order desires - Gardening [a.](https://www.are.na/welf-von-horen/gardening-nki30x1brec) - An ecological approach to cultivating a flourishing mind - organic language and metaphors offer a rich, wholesome, and surprisingly effective language to talk about the ecologies of attention, thought, and relationality that constitute a human life. - Emerging Ecologies of High-Quality Attention - Forest schools - Walden - Paper Computers & the possibility of a blue-light-free life - Craftsmanship - Homesteading & cottage core as escapes from the modern world - "Monastic": designing spaces that provide conditions for high-quality attention, practice and the cultivation of virtue and wisdom - Learning Gardens ### Human-Friendly Personal Computers How computers relate to human sovereignty and human evolution, and thus why computers that preserve and extend our attentional freedom are the key to a future worth choosing - [[The Principles of Calm Computing]] - History, Inspirations, Near-Future Visions - [a.](https://www.are.na/welf-von-horen/calm-computing-ikgbnsdqbti) - Computers are fundamental to our relationship with our selves, our identity. As such they have the power to be the keystone for a healthier “habit field”. ### Cultural Currents, Narratives & Phenomena Natural Living Circadian Health Slow Living Slow Productivity Deep Work Digital Minimalism Cozy Web Intensity ### Dignity & Freedom: Attention and the Fork in Human Development - Becoming a Two Marshmallow Species - Limbic Capitalism, - Hypermodern Consumerism **Noble Technologies, Renaissance of Analogue Tools - Linen and Ink - Analogue, Single-Purpose Tools ### The Work to Be Done - Transcending Moloch through human-friendly design - it's a design, product & branding challenge - omni-win % of GDP --- - Life after Lifestyle - [[Cult Design Workshop]]