Thread by @tasshinfogleman

X: tasshin, i've been following you- you seem interesting. why did you start meditating? why'd you join a monastery?
T: best thing i can point you to is an ebook i wrote that's a biographical account of my history with meditation and monasticism
tasshin.com/heretoserve.ht…

X: ok, but i also see you tweet about things like strategy, or productivity, or emacs. how does all that relate?
T: well, for starters i'm an autodidact / jack-of-all-trades.

T: but more broadly, one of the main problems we're facing as a species is that the people who have power don't have wisdom and love. they're usually selfish and corrupt and greedy

T: people who are loving tend to shy away from having power, because it's hard and is usually punished, because we don't trust people who have power. that's a positive (growing) negative (bad) feedback loop

T: we need people with wisdom + love (monastics, meditators of all shapes and sizes) to take power, and people with power (skills, money, influence, resources) to cultivate wisdom and love.

T: meditation practice cultivates wisdom and love, and emacs, strategy, mapping and all that are forms of power.

X: well, i buy that those things are forms of power. that's pretty straightforward. but what about these wisdom and love things? that sounds pretty tenuous / hand-wavey.
T: i hear you. the good news is that we have technical definitions for these things.

T: power is the ability to hold others to your perspective, so you can get things done. follow me so far?
X: ok, sure. my boss holds me to deadlines, i hold my toddler to not eating too many holiday cookies...
T: exactly.

T: now, if power is holding to your perspective, love is the ability to see from others' perspectives.
X: ok, so what's wisdom?
T: seeing from no perspective at all. dropping perspectives, letting go of them, cutting through them, transcendence.

X: how do those three relate?
T: the trick is to set them up so that they are mutually supportive, so that the more wise and loving you are, the more powerful you are - the more powerful you become, the more wise and loving you become.

X: how do you do that?
T: this is what a monastery is for, to do this for one individual, for groups, and also for cultures overall. you need to integrate W, L, + P at all levels.

T: less integration on the individual level gets you stress, burnout, greed, hatred, and ignorance; on the global level, it gets you corruption, divisiveness and ex-risks like nuclear warfare, global warming, even unfriendly AI.

T: more integration on the individual level leads to happiness beyond conditions and success + happiness in conditions. more integration on a global level might just get us out of this mess.

X: that sounds good, but i can't join a monastery right now. how do i help?
T: that's ok! you don't need to. you can practice wisdom through meditation, love through service, and power through skills. notice when they're integrated and when they're not. iterate.

T: you can also help people who are trying to do this work. visit monasteries for a short time (a meal, a retreat). if you have a philanthropic bent, fund them - every dollar helps. befriend monastics (they're people too, with feelings, wants, needs, imperfections).