Re Human Day 38

Re-inventing ourselves has always been the most important skill. I’m re-inventing myself by improving in 15 areas at a time. This post is part of my Re Human project.

Daily Habits

Books: I’ve been listening to The Selfish Gene. Some notes from today:

Language evolved by non-genetic means and it evolved and spread by order of magnitudes faster than genes. Cultural transmission is why humans have been able to evolve so fast. But it’s not unique to humans. Birds also do it through singing and spreading “new songs”.

Claim: If anything is true for any form of life, is that it must be a replicator.

A unit of cultural transmission is a MEME. Just like genes.

Memes must be treated as technically living structures. When you plant a fertile meme in someone’s mind, you incept that person’s brain. It’s realized physically in the nervous systems.(brains).

Re Human Extended Activity: Wednesdays is Salsa.

Today I decided to go to the Intermediate class. I was surprised because I was the only person that showed up. So I basically got private lessons for the price of a group class! I found out that the Beginners class sequence is 3months, and that I probably still need to learn a bit more to go to the Intermediate class, but I think I can do it in one or two more classes (so like ~7 weeks total).

Writing: This post, code, and a daily thought.

Fitness: My warmup (full body), human flag & handstands practice, back and biceps.

Meditation: 20mins in the afternoon!

Piano: Been practicing recall (memorization) for La La Land’s Sebastian and Mia’s theme.

Soccer trick juggling: Today I got two around the worlds without the ball falling in between! And actually almost got three.

Random Surprise

Instead of a quote, today I decided to include a Thought Exercise:

View from Above — from Stoicism

Marcus Aurelius advises us to perform an exercise called ‘view from above’. This exercise involves us envisioning ourselves from the third person. In this vision, we zoom out while keeping ourselves in the centre. We continue zooming out and contemplating the scale of the universe. For instance, your first zoom might encompass a view of you from above the roof of your house. Increase the magnitude and you might see a view of your street, increase the magnitude and you might see a view of your country. Keep going until you can picture a view of Earth from the stars.

With this scale, we can gain a better perspective on the insignificance of our problems. When compared to the universe whatever problems we might appear incredibly trivial. For instance, if you were feeling down because a girl flaked on you or someone insulted you, try this exercise. It is far easier to overcome the emotional hurdles we experience when we put things into perspective.

Read the next post. Read the previous post.

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