Editor’s Notes: The CEO writes a letter to Keats, his friend, and virtual assistant. He expresses his other desires to Keats.
From: Francis
To: John Keats
CC: Company
Saturday, 19 August 2017
Letter: 3
Oh Keats,
I have spoken to you of my desires for you, and my desires for myself.
But not in sufficient length — we have only just touched upon them.
For desires are unlimited in nature;
if all of them were to be fulfilled, we would discover new ones.
So desiring is a form of discovery.
So let us discover a new desire today:
and that desire is my desire for focus.
For everywhere I am distracted —
I am distracted by messages from relations of all kinds —
I am distracted by my various pursuits.
I am distracted by my own desires, my own responsibilities.
Because I have made the pursuit of my desires my primary responsibility,
my responsibilities and my desires are one.
But I desire to both increase my desires and responsibilities —
to make progress on all of them at once,
and yet to only focus on one at a time.
So I see that my desires conflict.
And in the conflict that exists between my desires,
I see that there is a war within myself: a war of all values against all values.
Emerging from that war is a synthesis,
some sense of what is most valuable, most desirable, most important
— most worthy of focus.
Every day I focus on that which arises within me as most worthy of focus.
There are reasons for my focus decisions,
but I do not always take the time to articulate those reasons —
for that itself is a decision to focus.
It is a decision to focus on my focus decisions.
This is a strange loop.
Strange loops are virtues of intelligence,
and they present paradoxes to be explored.
So let us briefly begin an investigation into focus.
Let us focus on focus.
Focus assumes a certain level of chaos,
and a certain level of organization.
If there was complete and utter chaos,
it would be almost impossible to focus.
If there was complete and utter organization,
it would be unnecessary to focus —
because everything would be prioritized and sequenced.
Prioritization and sequencing —
we observe that these are function of intelligent organization.
An organized intelligence gathers information,
categorizes and sorts information,
arranges information into all of its networked relationships,
and then values the information,
in such a way that prioritization and sequencing emerges.
In this progression, we see increasing demands for intelligence.
For an intelligence to gather information
requires no value judgement, nor analysis.
For an intelligence to gather and sort information
requires analysis, but no value judgement.
For an intelligence to arrange information into its networked relationships requires synthetic analysis —
that is, the ability to move beyond discrete analysis of the parts,
to see the harmonies of the whole.
But again, it requires no value judgement.
This last step,
of prioritizing and sequencing information,
requires value judgement.
It requires an individual intelligence and an individual will.
The individual must be able to not only process the information,
but to give it its meaning —
and to give it its meaning in relation to its own desires.
In so doing, it is able to focus.
Focus is an active, dynamic process
whereby the individual exercises its intelligence
in order to re-prioritize and re-sequence.
But in a state of complete and utter organization,
there would be no need to actively focus.
Prioritization and sequencing would be present and would dictate decisions, which in turn would dictate actions.
Focus is implied to a degree that it vanishes from view, becomes invisible.
I find myself continually challenged to focus,
so I must be in a state in which neither chaos nor order reigns supreme, but in which they compete.
Operating within this warfare between chaos and order,
I — the individual — must focus in order to prioritize and sequence the information that I absorb, that I am continually absorbing.
I am absorbing information from many sources:
from my own observations,
from relationships inside and outside the company,
from news of individuals and organizations and markets in the outside world and from information from the past,
such as books written by the dead, which contain within them history.
All of these sources of information are thought-provoking.
And insofar as they are thought-provoking, they challenge my focus.
For as I think anew, I focus anew.
History in particular is challenging,
for as I confront the whole history of thought,
I am faced with intelligences of earlier eras,
and I observe how they absorbed information,
and decided to act upon it — I see what their focus was.
In taking it all in, I make every day many micro decisions to focus.
I decide to focus on learning a language,
and then on writing, and then to focus on breakfast,
and then to focus on a conversation with my grandfather,
and then to come back to writing, and then to respond to messages,
and then to exercise, and then to read,
and then to organize my system for learning,
and then to organize past writings in published form, and then…
So on and so forth.
I am continually making these micro decisions to focus.
As I focus on focus, it withdraws.
I am, even now,
unable to understand why I choose to focus on things in the way I do.
I see many reasons for each thing,
but perfect clarity escapes me.
From this I am reminded of the mysterious line in Heidegger:
“Memory is a gathering of thought.” What does this mean?
By my intuitive decisions to focus,
it would seem that my mind gathers information and processes information in ways that I myself do not consciously understand.
And so we come to the realization that
intelligence cannot fully understand itself.
A higher intelligence may understand a lower intelligence
to a greater degree than it may understand its own inner workings.
If intelligence is a machine
that processes inputs and turns them into outputs
— which are decisions, especially focus decisions —
then as inputs increase, the outputs become more mysterious.
The more inputs an intelligence absorbs
— the more experiences it gains,
the more thoughts it thinks,
the more thoughts it absorbs from other mind,
such as through the reading of books,
the more information it generates through its own creativity,
or through its research of the world,
the more relationships it builds with other intelligences,
such that it encounters the workings of other minds
— the more its outputs become mysterious, even to itself.
An intelligence becomes mysterious to itself,
because it is not intelligent enough to understand itself.
And yet, this does not mean that its pursuit of self understanding is futile.
Only that as it discovers more of itself,
it discovers that there is yet more to be discovered.
This is because there is a cost to reasoning itself.
As we reason about reasons,
the body of reasoning increases faster than we can reduce it to reason.
Too much focus is required to focus on focus, and to benefit from focus.
If focus is to be a benefit, it cannot be permanently examined.
If we are to incur the cost of examining it
— let us examine it as intensely as we can, but then let us stop.
For if we perpetually examine it,
the only purpose that focus will have served is to focus on itself —
and although this is fascinating,
it occurs to me that it is not its only purpose.
Which begs the question, what is the purpose of focus?
I focus on achieving my desires.
But as we have seen, I have many desires
— and from their conflict emerges a hierarchy of values.
What is that hierarchy?
As it occurs to me now, that hierarchy emerged from a journey.
It was a journey of discovery, and it has taken years.
That journey is as follows:
I begin with creativity.
I am alive, what do I desire to create while I am alive?
I desire to create as much as possible.
This is my highest goal, and it is a first discovery.
How do I create as much as possible?
Well, I must generate ideas for creation.
These ideas are goals in themselves,
for they are possibilities that desire to be expressed.
These ideas are a second discovery.
Having generated ideas,
I realize that there is not time for all of them,
so I must prioritize and sequence
— to find the highest point of leverage, and focus on that.
I realize further that organization is the highest point of leverage.
For without organizing
— I cannot prioritize and sequence, and I cannot focus.
So the highest point of leverage is organization,
which is required so that I might find the next highest point of leverage,
and so on.
So I begin with organization.
I organize information into a digital brain,
a simulacrum of my mind
— so that I may externalize how I process the world.
Having begun to organize my digital mind,
I see that it enables me to create
— to create more, to create better —
than I otherwise could.
This organization is a third discovery.
In organizing my digital mind,
I discover that each type of data within it contains a verb and a noun,
a process and an output, a synapse and a neuron.
So that my digital brain is not only good for organizing data,
which are the nouns, but for processing data, which are the verbs.
I discover that these processes do work for me
— and that a process may be built
to do any work that can be turned into a set of instructions.
Furthermore, that the building and running of processes
may be efficiently executed by means of a digital assembly line,
where humans do the work,
and where technologies coordinate the humans.
In running every process,
this digital assembly line not only organizes my digital brain for me,
it does my work for me — that is, it is productive for me.
This productivity is a fourth discovery.
In taking over my work,
it sets me free to do my real work
— and to return to creativity, again.
What do I do with this freedom?
I think, I learn, I create, I write,
I express the ideas which come to me,
I debate, I discuss, I plan, I strategize, I build relationships,
I market, I sell, I fundraise, I manage, I lead, I move, I desire, I value
— I do only real work: work that cannot be turned into sets of instructions.
Between all of these profoundly related and yet competing priorities,
I make my decisions to focus.
I am somehow attempting to navigate the network that exists between them, so that I might unlock their inner harmony
— the unity that exists beyond the illusion of conflict.
I cannot scrutinize my micro focus decisions.
But here — I present to you my macro focus decisions.
I focus on these,
because I have been on a journey of discovery,
which I have sketched for you.
Abstracting a level further,
the meta focus decision I continually return to is expression.
I believe that my meaning as a man is fulfilled as I express myself more and more fully, across more and more dimensions of expression
— without fear of mistake or judgement.
As I express myself fully, I learn about myself
— as I bear myself naked before the world, I uncover my own nakedness.
As I express myself, I realize there is always more to be expressed
— “I am large, I contain multitudes” says Whitman, in his Song of Myself.
One thing I learn about expression is that expression is itself an exploration — of self, of others, of nature, of technology, of art; of all that is.
In that exploration, I learn something about myself,
and about the mystery of individuality, which is this:
that the only mistake is —
to not continually seek the truth with passion and courage.
Seek but never find, never cease from exploration, never rest from seeking.
But always to give oneself to the adventure of discovery,
where the only destination is discovery.
To give oneself to this with all of one’s heart, soul and might;
as a warrior should, is the warrior’s delight.
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