Allegory warning.

I avoid maps. I avoid digital maps in particular, but I try to steer clear of physical ones as well. This is more a preference than a principle — if I’m lost at night, or need to be at a place by a time, I’ll do what I must. But the google maps interface seems so lossy, so utilitarian — it optimizes for reaching the destination, and little else. Which, to be clear, isn’t strictly wrong. But it sneaks an assumption into our lives that I find worth challenging.

Cities have texture. Some more than others — European cities, at least the parts I’ve seen (France, Spain, Denmark), tend to feel this way. San Francisco too. “Exploring a city” usually entails researching online, deciding on a few destinations, and maybe even taking public transit there (wow, taking public transit! You really get a feel of the day to day life of the residents!). No. Get on a bus. Which bus? Doesn’t matter. Most bus lines are designed to go through major city centers. Wait until you get somewhere with a vibe you like, get off, and walk around. If you find a nice park, read for an hour. If you find a cute pumpkin stand, stop and admire the pumpkins. If you chance upon a wedding, sneak in and congratulate them (and sneak out before people ask questions). If you walk past a really tall building, and you’re in the mood, see how high up you can get before people ask questions! (Or don’t! What matters much more is the intentionality of looking around, experiencing your options, and actively choosing to pursue them or not). Caveat: don’t severely trespass, don’t do anything illegal, don’t bother anyone — well intentioned tomfoolery only.

As far as I can tell, this is by far the best way to experience a city. My recent summary of SF: “The sun is soft and the city is smooth...” This statement is opaque, to say the least, but it’s clear I was in the right headspace to appreciate the beauty of life, which I claim, is really the end genuine engagement with a city acts as a means towards. (A major indicator of this headspace is if attempts to approximate current experience with language produce something vaguely poetry-adjacent).

It’s easy to say this just falls into the bucket of “be agentic,” and “have whimsy (and a lot of free time).” This is true! But I mostly attribute this to that bucket being extremely wide. The point I’m trying to make is slightly external to this framing: there’s a common pursuit (in my circles) of a more genuine engagement with the world. This almost anti-stoic idea emerged somewhere in late 19th century philosophy (or so I claim — I have yet to see it much before then, but I haven’t really checked), and has since been put on a pedestal as something to strive for. This is fine! Allowing oneself the embrace of life is a very worthwhile endeavor. But, possibly because of its philosophical origins, often most of this takes place as a true anti-stoicism — it’s an endeavor purely of the mind, seeking to recontextualize the same received information. Understand the segmentation of the world caused by language (Wittgenstein…ish? Adjacent, at least). Reject and re-form cultural value judgements (Nietzsche, mostly Thus Spoke Zarathustra). Connect with others, not from the lens of the self, but as they are (Simone de Beauvoir, also maybe Camus, Byung Chul-Han, and Heidegger?). Great. Do all of this. It’s all worth doing, but it’s also notably very hard. I find there’s a lot of easy progress to be made by improving the inputs to your mental processes. If you want to live a very careerist life, and all the while, be cognisant of the cultural norms shaping your path, and thus interface with the world as it is, be my guest. I’d be curious to hear about what belief structure suggests that, but you do you. That does sound pretty miserable, though. Instead, consider… just actually interacting with the world as it is, feeling it rather than doing it. This doesn’t remove the need for post-processing in the pursuit of genuinely interfacing with the world, but it does help. Start by getting on that bus over there. Be at the climbing gym in four hours. Figure out what to do between now and then. Bring a book.

I want to list a few things this is not. This is not an argument for primitivism, or a rejection of society. The structure that gives us things like vaccines is, in a broad sense, pretty good. Also, I like being able to buy food. That said, there are two main reasons I don’t live in the woods: 1) I would die, 2) I don’t really want to. But for some people neither of these are the case. Primitivism isn’t great from a political philosophy standpoint, and I do not espouse it here. As an individual, however, if you want to live in the woods, great. This is also not a condemnation of “going to the place and doing the thing.” I’m not trying to say my approach to public transit (and life in general) is correct, I’m just presenting it as an option. Even if in some sense it’s a very obvious thing to do, it’s easy to forget that it’s worthwhile. My goal is not to change lifestyles, but rather, to introduce a mode of experience to be used when applicable (which just happens to be most of the time for me). Or play silksong without a walkthrough, and without achievements. This, too, in some sense achieves the same goals. Instead of trying to look through your self-imposed structures, just step around them. It makes things easier.

I mentioned this was an allegory at the outset. I thought it would be interesting to read up to this point with that context in mind. I do want to clarify, though, that this is in no way solely an allegory. In fact, it was initially meant to be standalone, until I realized it generalized nicely. If we treat everything thus far as a map-territory distinction, where we’re trying to interface with the territory as genuinely as possible (the territory being the world as is, and the map, our codified experience of it), my advice approximates to “the map doesn’t have uniform thickness, try to avoid the solidified parts and instead venture to where it’s thin.” Replace the territory with truth-space, and the map with map-space (i.e. ontology space). Much of the same advice applies. There will be places where truth is inaccessible (not far, just hard to directly reach) — the canonical example is religion. There will be thinner places (like those containing the ideas I put forward here, or so I claim). Treat ontology-space like a city. Get on random buses, and see where you end up. Walk in random directions that seem interesting. Get lost. Find a little area you like, and read there for a while. Whimsically pursue interesting happenings you come across in your exploration. Learn something about the nature of the city itself through your brief brushes with it. And, please, don’t use a map.

A note for my sanity: I recognize that this allegory is flawed. Things don’t transfer perfectly, and I haven’t really acknowledged this. In fact, there’s a decent claim that for the bus statement to work, map-space should actually be map$^2$-space. And even worse, I used the similarities between our two spaces to infer the nature of the second from properties of the first, without ever justifying that this was a reasonable thing to do. So take the allegory with a grain of salt. It’s less a rigorous conclusion, and more something mostly true, and at the very least, interesting.

Disagree with me at [email protected] or lawliet5968 on discord!