EP006: The Beginnings of a Red Pill — Meditation as a Tool to Break Systemic Indoctrination

A basic realization that comes from any somewhat serious meditation practice is that your mind is naturally multifaceted, wonderful, flawed, and idiosyncratic. Another insight quickly follows that all other humans have equally non-binary, wonderful, flawed, and idiosyncratic minds.

 

Meditation has the natural side-effect of enabling the possibility of peaceful opposing beliefs, and shrinking the divide between ‘us’ and ‘them.’

 

Last episode, we discussed the competitive, one-sided, optimized-for-profit nature of the tech industry and the tools it produced to perpetuate its own wealth.

 

Knowing that meditation has garnered a substantial following in tech, today’s discussion dives into the possibility that this practice of mindfulness will lead to direct moral and ethical conflict with current tech tools and systemic objectives.

 

Steve Mescon joins the show as our first repeat guest and shares his own mind-hacking practices and the results he’s had trying to bypass a lifetime of meditation through the use of tools, wearables, devices, training mechanisms and ‘supplements.’

 

Key Takeaways

 

[:09] Tony welcomes listeners and opens up the conversation with a simple question: what is the use of your left hemisphere (the one that interprets and analyses information) if you have no conscious access to the right side of your brain, i.e. the part that perceives reality directly.

 

Gaining control [5:26] Over the past five years and with the help of Tony’s coaching, Ron has gotten better at controlling his own mind. And although he still loses control over his emotions, he used to spend sleepless nights spinning around in his own mind.

 

Basic Zen practices are like mind hacks, without seeking enlightenment you can still learn to identify your thoughts and gain control.

 

How not to spin at night [8:01] Ron shares his own practices for getting to sleep, from a basic recognition of what his mind is doing to what he calls zen hacks for when the issue is more prickly. It doesn’t always work though and a high-stress environment like startups and personal issues can mess up the process.

 

Steve’s hacks [11:37] Being heavily ADHD, meditation is very hard for Steve; even paying attention to the breath is hard for him! So he chose to use tools, wearables, devices, training mechanisms, and supplements. What Steve does is to optimize the whole spectrum from health to emotional well-being to fulfillment.

 

Creating a reference point [14:50] Steve has been working on building a reference point for many things, but being in the right brain is one of them, just so that he can pinpoint and identify when it happens and foster those moments. He also touches on how surrounding yourself with people whom you can learn from either behaviorally or conceptually can lead to improvements.

 

[17:15] Tony explains that a lot of stress reduction and self-soothing happens on the right side of the brain, which people in tech — who tend to be very analytical — are just not used to. On top of that, technology is generating its wealth from the artificial heightening of our emotions, and it’s increasing the problem.

 

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