Thoreau Thursday 12: Before, Behind, and Within
Balancing Consumption with Production for the "Miracle" of Human Creation
Despite the moderate temptation to rant about Tax Day here in the U.S. a few days ago, or to make a frivolous 4/20 joke post, both of those themes now belong primarily to my past… and not at all to my present.
As I emphasized two posts ago, the primary purpose of this “Thoreau Thursdays” blog is for applying timeless wisdom deliberately to maximize conscious fulfillment and Practical Liberty in my own life.
Political awareness can literally be a matter of life and death. Occasional weed consumption can — particularly in moderation, used deliberately — be life-enhancing, similar to alcohol at social events.
Over-consumption of anything, however, leads to diminishing marginal returns… at best.
“Garbage in, garbage out” is one of the most important sayings in Data Science.
No matter how clever and sophisticated the statistical analysis might be, the output will be useless or worse if the data input was bad.
A crass analogy could be made along those lines with food and the digestive system. Without dwelling on the “output” there, though, it actually does raise an interesting point about how the intermediary process is mutually intertwined with conscious action distinct from the “pipeline” flow.
Protein without working out becomes waste. Exercise without protein is unsustainable. Separately, each is futile. When combined, however, the conscious action transforms all of the input’s useful nutrients into meaningful growth, and simply flushes away the remainder.
I could ramble on here about the consequences of careless content consumption causing constipation… also the distinction between beneficial seal blubber and obesity. But I’ll respect your intelligence and our time enough to let you extrapolate those tangential points yourself, if intrigued.
It’s okay to “shoot the shit” sometimes. In fact, it’s essential to have an outlet for fun and frivolous nonsense occasionally!
But frequently complaining about politics on Twitter is generally little better than squandering the potential benefits of marijuana use on mindless entertainment… unless you’re the next Thomas Paine or Jimi Hendrix.
Even if you do have significant levels of talent along those lines — in fact, especially if you have such profound potential — it’s worth it to channel everything more deliberately. It’s worth it to consciously cultivate an optimal balance of content consumption, creative production, and deliberate action to maximize the input value while discarding the rest.
P.S.
Now that Elon has taken small steps toward censoring Substack links on Twitter… you may want to download the app yourself, to cut out the middleman corporate social network, and connect more directly with myself and many other quality content producers!
Optional “gRiFtInG” via voluntary “Value-for-Value”
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