I am used to living with "consensus reality" as my default world model - the world is made out of atoms, I'm an evolved monkey, science explains most things pretty well, when you die you're dead, and so on.
Currently, this model and my best judgement about the world predict a bleak future, where my life is too short to satisfy my values, and I'm too limited to change the world in ways that matter to me. I am struggling to break out of my limits.
I've met an interesting person who talks about us having way more freedom than most people imagine, having the power to do anything, saying that we are like gods traveling through this world. It all sounds crazy, and normally I would've dismissed it, but I can tell that she means it, and I'm getting a strong impression that she understands some things that I really want to learn.
I want to understand this worldview, because the freedom and power to do anything is what it would take to fix everything and save everyone. Or, at least, to live a maximally interesting and fun life in the time I have left.
I don't yet know whether this worldview is true, or how much of it is meant literally. But I want to understand it, so I can hold it in my head side-by-side with mine, and use whichever one works better. She recommends this book as a good place to start.
So I'll just take it all at face value, learn with an open mind, and see where that goes. What the hell do I know, maybe it'll unlock some new moves available to me that I'm not seeing.
Jonathan Livingston Seagull is a metaphor for reaching enlightenment. Or, at least, it has a lot of overlap with what I'm learning about the Buddhist worldview and enlightenment-related ideas.
Jonathan Seagull pursues the path to mastery at flying. That pursuit makes him different enough from his society that he is made an outcast. The joy of reaching excellence at doing his thing is more than enough to be well-worth it. Makes sense.
When he dies, he transcends into a different world where he is surrounded by other seagulls like him, most of whom have reached this level after reincarnating for thousands of lifetimes. He finds out that learning is how you "progress" through the worlds, and avoid reliving the same life over and over again. I am taking that as a literal statement about how our universe is actually organized - us traveling across different worlds in cycles of reincarnation.
This is very different from the beliefs that I currently have. To actually believe that, I need a better reason than another person's claim, but I'm here to keep an open mind.
I don't want to rely on the comforting idea that I have infinite lives and an unlimited amount of time to figure things out. Because if this short life is all I've got, then I have to make this one count, I can't hope that I'll get it right the next time. But I'm here to learn, so I take this at face value and hold it in my head side-by-side with the model of the world I'm used to.
The universe MAY be much weirder than I think.
Or maybe all this reincarnation stuff is totally metaphorical and I missed the point. If it IS metaphorical, then it's something about us going through the same recurring patterns in our lives, remaking the same mistakes. And when you learn, and do things differently, you get to level up to a better life and more interesting problems, and hang out with the cool people who get it.
Jonathan learns from the enlightened seagulls, and then chooses to bring this knowledge back to the world he came from. Makes sense, that's what I would do - how could I enjoy heaven when everyone I knew and loved are still in deep shit back on Earth?
His old society ostracizes him and his apprentices, then, after seeing the results of his teachings, becomes curious, and eventually worships them. That checks out.
His teachings then get wrapped into layers of impenetrable religious dogma and ritual, transformed past recognition and usefulness, made to appear holy and unattainable. That's pretty straightforward, that's what religion does, no argument there.
Young seagulls, bright-eyed and curious, correctly reject the dogma, and, with that, dismiss the idea of the teachings themselves having any value. They resort to the scientific understanding of the world, as a no-bullshit path to seeking the truth. The argument here is that there ARE valuable things to learn from the teachings, and that I shouldn't dismiss them just because religions obscured them behind the layers of nonsense. I'm on board with that.
But their scientific worldview robs them of the sense of meaning and purpose, making life seem bleak and mechanical. That part I disagree with - there's plenty of meaning to find in the materialist worldview:
There is no justice in the laws of nature, no term for fairness in the equations of motion. The universe is neither evil, nor good, it simply does not care. The stars don’t care, or the Sun, or the sky. But they don’t have to! WE care! There IS light in the world, and it is us!
At the end, Jonathan appears to a young seagull to show that there still is, and always be, an unadulterated path he can follow. Well here I am, looking for one.
I'm still not fully sure what flying is a metaphor for.
For each of them, the most important thing in living was to reach out and touch perfection in that which they most loved to do, and that was to fly.
Is it pursuing the path to mastery at any skill you care about? Learning in general, seeking the truth, trying to understand the world? Learning to live this life well? Doing that one thing that gives your life meaning? Neither of those fit perfectly, but those are my best guesses.
How much more there is now to living! Instead of our drab slogging forth and back to the fishing boats, there’s a reason to life! We can lift ourselves out of ignorance, we can find ourselves as creatures of excellence and intelligence and skill. We can be free! We can learn to fly!
To me that means pursuing your purpose. You choose your own reason to live, the thing you want to do in this life, and follow the path to mastery at it. You set goals to achieve, and develop the skills it takes to get there. So, life is about learning and pursuit of excellence.
(This doesn't map perfectly, because, in the book, mastering flight is the universal reason to live for all birds. But we, as humans, all choose different purposes.)
Trying to get good at any skill/goal/pursuit puts you in contact with reality. You practice, try different things, make mistakes, get feedback from the world, update your model, try again, eventually you figure it out. That's the learning-loop (or scientific method), and that is what Jonathan did when learning to fly. I really like that, this is one of the main things I want my life to be about.
"But you, Jon," he said, "learned so much at one time that you didn’t have to go through a thousand lives to reach this one."
Jonathan transcends into a better world by getting really good at what he does, not through meditation or practicing any sort of spirituality or enlightenment-related skills. He did not level up by focusing on the journey and being super present (he learned that part later, when he was already in heaven), he leveled up at the end of living his normal materialistic life very well, thinking for himself, and learning a lot. That is surprising, different from what I would expect from enlightenment teachings. Different in a way that I really like - life can't be about spending years meditating in a cave, life is about living.
"Fletcher Lynd Seagull, do you want to fly?"
"YES, I WANT TO FLY!"
He is already flying. He's a bird. What he means is that he wants to fly WELL.
I am already living. I'm a human. What I want is to live WELL.
Does that mean choosing and achieving my purpose?
What I want from a book like this one is practical instructions. To enlightenment, to winning at life, to breaking out of my limits, the "freedom to do anything" I want so fucking much.
If you were meant to fly in the dark, you’d have the eyes of an owl! You’d have charts for brains! You’d have a falcon’s short wings! [...] Short wings. A falcon’s short wings! That’s the answer!
He can't fly like a falcon, he's not a falcon. He is frustrated about his limitations. He breaks out of his limits by going through the trial-and-error learning loop. He tries hard to get better, thinks, experiments, fails, learns, and changes his approach to be more similar to what faster birds do.
"You’re wasting your time with me, Jonathan! I’m too dumb! I’m too stupid! I try and try, but I’ll never get it!" Jonathan Seagull looked down at him and nodded. "You’ll never get it for sure as long as you make that pullup so hard."
Fletcher, Jonathan's pupil, has limiting beliefs about what he can and can't do. Jonathan calmly instructs him to focus on the process, and practice. Get good by doing. If it's not working, you're doing it wrong - try something else, do it differently.
But what do you do when that's not enough?
What do you do with the limitations you can't bypass by "folding your wings, so they're short, like falcon's" (learning, trying, doing things differently)?
You will begin to touch heaven, Jonathan, in the moment that you touch perfect speed. And that isn’t flying a thousand miles an hour, or a million, or flying at the speed of light. Because any number is a limit, and perfection doesn’t have limits. Perfect speed, my son, is being there.
The book' answer is that there will always be a smarter/better/faster/stronger way to be. I keep trying to make myself better, but there's always something better than this. And living well is not about that. It's about being there, for all of it. Ups and downs, joys and sufferings, failing and recovering. Enjoying doing the thing at the level you're at.
But that is a lot easier to accept when you believe that you have infinite lifetimes to learn from. When you aren't certain, you have to assume that this one short life is all you will ever get, and you must find a path to victory while you're alive. Under that assumption, it's a lot more frustrating to have a lot of desires that I can't reach during this life at my current speed limit.
"Look at Fletcher! Lowell! Charles-Roland! Judy Lee! Are they also special and gifted and divine? No more than you are, no more than I am. The only difference, the very only one, is that they have begun to understand what they really are and have begun to practice it."
Can I do things that far more talented/intelligent people do, despite my constraints?
"What one man can do, another man can do" is a useful mindset to adopt. By default, it's better to assume that I can do something, than assuming that I can not. But I also care about being rational and realistic, seeing the world for what it is, not what I wish it was.
Practice helps, yes, but the people I look up to, people who are the best in the world at the skills that I want, also have far more natural ability at those that I do. Believing that you can be as good as Michael Jordan isn't gonna make you any taller. I can see with my eyes the difference between what I can do, and what Brennan Lee Mulligan can do, and I don't see how to close this gap in the time I have left.
And achieving some of the things I want, within the time that I have, would require literally superhuman abilities. Currently, nobody in the world is smart enough to solve AI-alignment. To do that before it's too late would require me to start mostly from scratch, and, within 1-3 years, solve a problem that thousands of much smarter people (with decades of experience and unlimited funding) have failed to solve for decades.
(Which is also, frankly, a problem that I have no aptitude for, or desire to work on - I just need it solved so that me and my loved ones don't die.)
What if it would take literal magic for me to become as fast as I need to get?
The book does describe overcoming your limits with what I would call "literal magic".
"I want to fly more than anything else in the world [...] You don’t understand. My wing. I can’t move my wing."
"Maynard Gull, you have the freedom to be yourself, your true self, here and now, and nothing can stand in your way. It is the Law of the Great Gull, the Law that Is."
"Are you saying I can fly?"
"I say you are free."
As simply and as quickly as that, Kirk Maynard Gull spread his wings, effortlessly, and lifted into the dark night air. The Flock was roused from sleep by his cry, as loud as he could scream it, from five hundred feet up; "I can fly! Listen! I CAN FLY!"
But these are not actionable instructions that I understand how to follow. I want to understand what he means here, and how to practically get it done.
"To fly as fast as thought, to anywhere that is," he said, "you must begin by knowing that you have already arrived." The trick, according to Chiang, was for Jonathan to stop seeing himself as trapped inside a limited body that had a forty-two-inch wingspan and performance that could be plotted on a chart. The trick was to know that his true nature lived, as perfect as an unwritten number, everywhere at once across space and time.
My best guess at interpreting this is that there's one infinite god-thing, everywhere, living all the lifetimes at once. Like an infinite timeless multiverse where everything that can be already is. Every lifetime already lived, every choice already made, every goal already achieved (if not by me then by somebody else, who is also "me" because we're all this one god-thing). And recognizing that this is my "true nature" is supposed to make me at peace with going at the speed that I go.
If that is what he is saying (and not my wild misinterpretation), the problem is that even if it's true, it doesn't matter because I don't relate to the infinite-god thing, I don't see it as "me".
I am interested in doing things as my actual self, in my current life. I won't be satisfied with knowing that my goals have been achieved by some different version of myself in a different lifetime, in some other multiverse branch.
Your whole body, from wingtip to wingtip, is nothing more than your thought itself, in a form you can see.
That sounds like non-dual awareness. I think I understand that part conceptually, at least.
Break the chains of your thought, and you break the chains of your body, too….
How? All I'm looking for are step-by-step instructions to achieving immortality and superintelligence, is that too much to ask? 😅
To sum it up, you can overcome a lot of your limitations in perfectly ordinary, consensus-reality-compatible ways: believe that you can, try/think/experiment, do what works, learn from people who do it better, do what they do. This makes sense, this is practical and useful.
You also want to enjoy doing your thing at the level you're at, and stay as present to it as possible, because why wouldn't you? It is a better way to be, and it beats doing your thing while being annoyed at your limitations and needily craving to go faster.
But I still believe that achieving a lot of my goals in this life would require supernatural powers, because the constraints I'm bumping up against are not mental/conceptual, but physical - how much time/energy I have in a day, how many days I have left in this life, how fast/clever my brain is, the skills and resources I have by which to impact the world.
And I still don't see the path to saving the world. I don't see the specific actions I can take, the choices I can make differently, which would add up to me making enough difference within the time we have left.
I can only see how to live my life to the best of my ability, enjoy it as much as I can while I'm at it, and try to make the most of the time I do have. Which is what I'm already doing.
If there's a way to go past that and do things I think are impossible, I am searching for it.
Most of us came along ever so slowly. We went from one world into another that was almost exactly like it, forgetting right away where we had come from, not caring where we were headed, living for the moment. Do you have any idea how many lives we must have gone through before we even got the first idea that there is more to life than eating, or fighting, or power in the Flock? A thousand lives, Jon, ten thousand! And then another hundred lives until we began to learn that there is such a thing as perfection, and another hundred again to get the idea that our purpose for living is to find that perfection and show it forth. The same rule holds for us now, of course: we choose our next world through what we learn in this one. Learn nothing, and the next world is the same as this one, all the same limitations and lead weights to overcome.
Of course it took them ten thousand lives - this is a terrible way to teach anything to anybody! Every reincarnation you wipe their minds of everything they have learned, and make them try again WITHOUT the memories of the lessons they have gained. You create minds that think, love, care, and don't want to die, and then destroy the most important parts of them.
Without my memories, identity, personality - what's left to reincarnate? In what sense am "I" continuing to live in the next life, when everything that matters about me (according to me) is gone?
The existence of death and suffering is my main objection to the idea that me and the infinite-god-thing are one. I would not have allowed so much pointless/ugly/extreme suffering to exist in the world. There absolutely IS a way to design the universe such that it preserves all the joy and discovery of living and learning, and doesn't include all the terrible parts. If that is obvious to me, it must be obvious to the infinite-god-thing version of me. If mine and god's values are different on such a fundamental level, then how can we be the same?
Our world, while beautiful and wonderful, doesn't look like it was optimized for anything, or made by someone who's sentient and filled with love and kindness. This is not the world I would have created.
I decline to accept suffering and death as a necessary part of life that I should learn to make peace with. As far as I'm concerned, suffering and death are the enemy. They are out of place in this world, not us. If I am truly able to do anything, the first steps are to fix god's mistakes, eradicate suffering, defeat death. Make the universe an awesome place to live, for everyone. If there are those who voluntarily choose to experience suffering/death (out of curiosity, or because of some weird kink or whatever) - fine, but that must be voluntarily chosen by those who want to experience it.
If I get my hands on any of those god powers I keep hearing so much about, I'm pretty sure I can game-design a much better world, optimized for joy and learning, without looping people through a thousand confused lifetimes of suffering. It's not that fucking hard.
