When I said “angoraphobia” that is precisely what I meant. Climate change arrived in an undeniable fashion in 2022 and the same will be said about artificial intelligence with regard to 2023. Rivers all over Europe ran dry in 2022, and this year the lower Mississippi and the Panama Canal are each operating at two thirds of their historic capacity. Trains are 15x the cost of moving freight by barge and it’s a LOOONNNNGGGG way around Tierra del Fuego – adds three weeks to total transit time from Asia to ports in the Atlantic. Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Hamas invaded Israel in 2023, and both invaders have come to regret their decision, but neither are defeated just yet.
I’m not any sort of ideological accelerationist, I’m just over here trying to be a rational observer.
And everything has become VERY fuzzy. Most of us don’t do well with boundless ambiguity. Having mostly worked for myself this century, I have an entrepreneur’s tolerance for it, and have spent two thirds of that time chronically ill I am used to facing troubles a healthy person would never encounter. Even so, this is all a bit much for me. Paranoia: Pathological or Professional? Was all about dealing with the combination of fearfulness and surveillance, but plain ol’ uncertainty is a different sort of problem.
Attention Conservation Notice:
This piece is about analytical tradecraft in the context of influence operations, mindfulness practice, and the work of Richards J. Heuer and Randolph Pherson. If you’re nonplussed by the news, feel free to meander off and find something else to do with your time.
Premise:
We’ll treat this a bit like the OSI layered network model, starting at the bottom and working our way up.
Physical:
Get. Some. Exercise. I got my brain out of hock in June, along with a bunch of other long term health troubles being resolved … and then a month later sprained my knee in what’s turned into a really nagging problem. I had a 35,000 step day and was guardedly thinking about maybe some Sierra adventures … now I’d be happy if I can build up to shopping on my own again rather than having to DoorDash everything. Swimming was my other exercise of choice, but I haven’t set foot in a gym since the pandemic started.
I’ve got a Fitbit and I suggest you get something similar. You can NOT spend all day jabbing your fight/flight response while sitting in your office chair. You MUST get out and move.
If you are stressed there are a variety of things that will take the edge off without slowing you down. Magnesium, except for the cheap but poorly available oxide form, is Mother Natures tranquilizer. If something really gets on my nerves there are kava kava capsules in a drawer – works a bit like a benzodiazepine, but not habit forming. There are other herbal solutions, that one has always worked for me so I’ve never explored the others.
And I would think I don’t need to say this in 2023, but if you equate alcohol with relaxation that’s a slippery slope. Marijuana is less harmful, and much less illegal than it once was, but it’s not so good for your math skills.
Emotional & Mental:
People have a varying degree of tolerance for hearing about or seeing others in distress. You can shrug it off in the moment but, unless you’re a well modulated psychopath, chronic exposure to proxy trauma WILL get under your skin. If you don’t need to look, don’t rubberneck. If you do need to look, take off the head phones, turn down the volume, and view video in a small format. You can always rewind and expand if there is something you MUST study in detail.
There is an underserved market for “wingmen” in online conflict. People who are involved in a personal fashion really do need someone else looking out for them. There’s no glory in backing someone else who’s walking point, but there IS a lot of satisfaction to it. Given the U.S. national mood I expect this business to boom in the coming years. I have stuff in my queue now that’s from this area and it’s things I would never have imagined even a year ago.
I can not say enough good about mindfulness meditation. And if I’m not such a good source, maybe a publication from National Intelligence University would work for you? Or just put this search into Google:
“meditation site:cia.gov”
Like the need for physical exercise, meditation is a mind and body exercise, it’s not a certificate you can get and then done, it’s a commitment to practice. It’s made a huge difference for me in all sorts of ways, but you do you.
Analytical:
If you’re wading through the writing here you’re likely doing one of these:
Collecting information that will be processed into intelligence.
Reviewing collected information before handing it off for analysis.
Participating in analytical exercises using information from many sources.
What I know in this area started with Richards J. Heuer’s Psychology of Intelligence Analysis. That book and a variety of other material are in the Hacker Cultural Attache Training folder. Since I only know about a third of the now 70+ subscribers to this Substack, I can engage in some informed speculation. I think a third of you are in the business of making sense of things, mostly in conjunction with making changes, so you’re more likely to be using the word done by those who’ve mastered what is covered here than doing it yourself. Another third of you are already in some way involved, or you are seeking to become involved. And the rest? I dunno … send me email and introduce yourselves maybe??
The best thing I can offer here is … to thine own self be true. Those macro issues I outlined mean that things may change, but I doubt they’ll settle down. You will NOT be able to keep up, so find an area where you can feel like you’re on top of it, then set your boundaries so you aren’t overcommitted.
Conclusion:
Writing Paranoia: Pathological or Professional? was triggered by real world events. This article is the same – I have a couple different sorts of work queues:
Technology – the nuts and bolts of keeping all the things running.
OSINT – the collection and analysis of all the things.
Human interactions – advising, business development, knowledge transfer.
And right now I could pretty much put 100% of a sixty hour week into each of them. Having ChatGPT 3.5 has taken some of the load off in the technology realm. There are no fewer than five OSINT pots bubbling that are all revenue oriented(!) And if I had time to get back to everybody I owe a response this would all triple.
I need to flip one of these things from the becoming state into just plain being. I need a magic wand that will dispel long COVID, because a couple people I count on are limping along in a bank of brain fog, like I did for so many years. Usually the holidays slow down, but I get the feeling this year it’s gonna be flat out trying to get ahead of the curve.
So if it all seems a bit fuzzier than you’d like … you’re not alone, and I hope that at least gives a little comfort.
I can relate. WTF. What now. Gotta keep moving. Breath. Love.