Third Eye Observations

Narrative is the act of looking at an event, phenomenon, development and subsequently crafting a coherent compelling story around it, picking any variable deemed as supporting narrators point of view. But if sloppy not accounting for all important variables. Which is most of them. Like teaching English using only 13 of the alphabets. Most op-ed columns today are Narratives masquerading as Insight. Most LinkedIn posts are horrendously worded Narratives. As is the daily “news” on TV. CNN, Fox News. So Charlie Munger and Peter Drucker gush Insight, Tom Peters and Jim Collins sell slick narratives. Germ Theory Is Insight, Homeopathy is narrative fraud peddling as cure. Evolution Theory is Insight, Creationism is narrative bs aimed at low IQ victims. As Calvin below surmises rightly, most history books are faulty narratives. Anything overtly aspiring to be in the left circle below (Insight).

Took me embarrassingly long to arrive at this fundamental understanding : Most of what we read in books, blogs, newspapers and watch on TV is ‘Narrative‘ and not ‘Insight‘. Sneakily most Narratives are sold as the Insights while not being real insights. 

Narratives are vapid hot takes and faulty syllogisms that observe basic storytelling tenets and we humans are biologically wired to seek them out since we went upright. Some are so good even the author is thinking he is dispensing Insight. Insight is more profound, hard earned and life changing. Something that comes from Second Order Thinking. And that takes deep time. Most informational buskers peddling narratives (think most columnists) are absolutely balls to bone convinced they are selling profound never-before-imagined Insight. It takes some experience to see the difference (it took me 3 decades to even know there was a difference). Low-Signal High-Noise environment is our current reality. Fake News but not in the way the tangerine idiot means it. More subtle. Narratives tend to be a damp tumid bedsheet clumsy writers want to lazily drape over a series of unrelated events (think most history books you suffered through in school) into what writers and talkers hope sounds and reads like a coherent narrative. Procrustean beds disguised as editorials and bestsellers. (“The Market today fell by X because of Y and Z”). Narrative is comforting to us homo sapiens. but it is insight that makes us so. 

Made a resolution to read lots of longform articles a few years ago. Currently the 2018 goal is to reach 500. They need to be across all publications, on multiple topics and posses multiple points of view. No echo chamber bias if it can be helped.  It slowly dawned on me that a lot of what I was and had been consuming was Crappy Narrative disguised as Insight.  

Example – Event X was precipitated by P, helped by Q and made worse by J and now K is likely and there is a 40% chance S is now going to happen. The underlying reality could be totally divergent, unconnected and not even within spitting distance of the stated variables and odds. As long as there is coherency and style and readability. So think ‘In Search Of Excellence‘,’Good to Great‘, a typical magazine article or a  NYT column. Phil Rosenzwieg and John Stewart made enviable reputations on puncturing a lot of these apophenias.

A minority of the narratives are superb and really help us understand the world we live in. Exceptional narratives since Illiad does exist, carrying 24 carat insights. The Godfather movies are narratives with great insights on business, family, decision making and relationships.  Sadly, the volume of faux insights and weak narratives Niagara today dwarfs the trickling insight spring. Odds are this above essay is likely a weak Narrative on ‘Information Consumption‘ I am vainly hoping is strong Insight.

The maxim “Good Judgement comes from Experience; Experience comes from Bad Judgement” applies here.  The ability to smell the distinction can be honed only by marinating long and hard in both forms early, to make sure later you are inoculated against crappy narratives and can sense them instinctively. When reading suspect material make it a reflex to ask these 5 questions of the info-peddler :

Time spend reading and thinking to get a insight is vastly more useful in life than time spent reading some simplistic narratives just because it is comforting and demands little of you.

Back in 2014 I managed to cram in a decent 76 movies into my year.
I told myself at the end of that year I would see MORE in 2015.

I did. I saw 77. 1 more.
Thats right. ONE MORE than 2014.
This is what impartial observers would lament is a case study in “winning in letter but not in spirit”

Still…fair is fair. more is more.

Now as a Project Manager in the Consulting Space, taking a ‘situation’ and analyzing the shit out of it is a skill that comes second only to breathing both in ease and frequency from Monday through Friday. (weekends are for movies)
So that what I am going to do below.
Caveat Emptor : I am doing this for one veteran client : Me. But I am uploading this here so you can see it to get one useful thing from the infograph :

A list of the very best 6 movies from this pool. Of which 61 were extremely watchable.

Even now in my late 30s I regularly play games on my Xbox and relish it. Most dismiss it as a silly distraction. But Gamers know just how good, immersive and addictive these new age games are. But even fewer realize how educational video games can be.

Yes. EDUCATIONAL. And not in the vague weasel-politician-word sense but in the real sense the word implies.

Allow me this anecdote to elaborate.

In early 2014 gaming website, Gamespot, released the list of the best XBOX 360 Games reviewed the previous year.

Much to my delight one of the games on that list was part of a series I have thoroughly enjoyed – ASSASSINS CREED. So I promptly purchased the game :

Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag is a historical fiction action-adventure open world stealth video game. Players have praised its massive open world gameplay, numerous side-quests, beautiful graphics and very cool naval combat. The story is set in the early 18th century Caribbean during the Golden Age of Piracy, and follows notorious pirate Edward Kenway. Unlike previous games, gameplay elements focus more on ship-based exploration in the open world map, while also retaining the series’ third-person land-based exploration, melee combat, and stealth system. The game spans across the Caribbean with the three main cities of Havana, Nassau and Kingston along with numerous islands, sunken ships, and forts. For the first time in the series, naval exploration became a major part of an Assassin’s Creed game, where Edward Kenway captains the Jackdaw, a ship he captures from a Spanish fleet.

I am about 50% into the game and totally absolutely love it. Piracy is so much fun!

There is a sequence about midway into the game story when I found myself swimming to a British ship to kill a bad guy on-board and it was almost sunset in the game. The ship was HUGE and there is a moment, when the light caught the ship as I was swimming to it, capturing it’s full massive frame. For a deliciously brief second or two I understood the shock and awe the new world people must have experienced when they saw these ships off their cost in the 15th century. Like I REALLY got it. It was the most immersive experience I have ever had playing a game and I have been playing them for 15+ years.

Something else I noticed when playing was that the Spanish ships always attacked British ships and vice versa. I got used to seeing these sea battles all the time and remember these are Game A.I controlled which means someone while designing the game programmed this into the game. And I wondered Why…? .

So I looked it up. Turns out in history The Spanish and The British have a LONG history of sparring on the high seas.

Went to GoodReads.com and researched that bit. A book ‘Empire of the Deep: The Rise and Fall of the British Navy’ has some solid reviews and seemed best poised to answer my question. So I hit the buy button. 56 chapters and 720 pages of naval history awaited me. Niceee! As now I write this blog I just hit chapter 13 : The famous 1588 Battle between the Spanish Armada and British Navy. Its gripping stuff.

The only problem is visualization. The author paints a picture with words of all the ships of the era but it is a bit difficult to visualize correctly. I don’t know the difference between a Caravel, A Galley and a Brig. Makes full immersion difficult. Very luckily, while browsing a BHF charity book-store I stumbled into this Hardcover Gem : ‘Empire of the Seas: How the Navy Forged the Modern World‘ by Brian Lavery. Like a Playboy magazine, I didn’t buy it for the content but for the PICTURES. Gorgeous sketches of naval history from the Medieval ages onwards.

The xbox game also got me interested in SHIP BUILDING as an activity since you find yourself constantly using your loot in the game to buy ship upgrades and I wanted to understand that a bit more. And Discovery Channel came to the rescue. The were selling this DVD documentary on ship building : “The World’s Biggest Ship: Building the Triple-E” – The 2 Disc documentary gives you an idea of how the Danish and South Koreans built the world’s most massive ships. And as luck would have it, an hour away from my flat is the best place in Earth to fully quench my thirst for understanding this naval history : The National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, London is the leading maritime museum of the United Kingdom and may be the largest museum of its kind in the world. IN THE WORLD! Living in London is coincidentally convenient! I am going there soon, after I finish the book, the game and the documentary.

All this, everything you read above, started from one question in the middle of a game : ‘Why are those two ships in the distance sparring?’

So when someone you know starts really getting into gaming don’t just dismiss it as a silly distraction. It could be a portal to so much more.