144 - Are we there yet? 🗺️
Hey there, !
This metaphor has been knocking around my head after I read The Scout Mindset a few weeks ago and I wanted somewhere to write about it.
Luckily for me, just over half of you all actually open and read what I write so - WOO.
It’s all about maps.
1. The Map is not the Territory
A while ago, I remember trying to learn about mental models (tip: it sounds like a good idea but if you never use them they’re useless). There was a blog I found called Farnum Street which put out a big list of them, and I was like ‘great, I just have to read all of these and I’ll be smart’.
I clicked the first one - ‘The Map is not the Territory’ - and promptly lost interest in getting through all of them. I think I realised that I’m never going to have the memory capacity for all of these - and so I moved on to something else.
Interestingly though, due to primacy effect - I remember the concept really clearly. The map is not the territory - because it’s a map, it reduces detail to be able to give you an overarching picture of the world, but it’s not actually useful on a ‘look exactly at what is around you’ kind of way. It doesn’t track the details of the trees, or the damp foliage underfoot, or the ferns that have overgrown the area in the last spring. The only way you could do that would be if the map was the exact territory it was mapping - at a 1:1 scale.
Which is stupid, because that would be overcorrecting for the details themselves.
The concept, essentially, was that any advice, or mental models (lol) could really only be guidelines to the world, rather than give you the exact recipe of How To Live A Good Life. A really great lesson in a very pithy statement.
So I filed it away for later.
2. I was a Cub Scout once
After reading The Scout Mindset, I thought more deeply about exploratory metaphors to explain things.
I wanted a way to explain a core principle I’ve been thinking on for life - the exploration and experimentation with life paths that help you identify what you like and don’t like, and create a clearer path for where you’re going.
I landed on maps because, well, it seemed to fit.
For me, the maps explained the principle well, and could be analogised to more things - as in:
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Your journey through life is like a map, and you slowly fill it in trying to learn everything that you can about the world around you
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You can either learn from other’s maps, or you can learn from your own exploration of the world (a.k.a. lifepaths)
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The translation of the maps between people would impact the clarity of coastlines, of paths, of landmarks - based on how well worn their experiences are, and how confident you are in their map
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There are some areas of the map that are uncharted waters; no-one can tell you what to do or help you find your way - it’s something you have to bush bash through yourself
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The different paths ahead (literally The Path) are how other people have forged their path through the world - either through a well-worn track, or the path less traveled
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The sheer ‘life-space’ (all the potential paths your life could go down) is too large for any one map to hold at once - each person’s map will be different and have varying clarity about different areas of the world
3. The only ship worth sailing on is a relation-ship
Thinking about the network and web of relationships around you, the life paths that you map out are often filled in with how you experience the world with others.
When you’re young, your parents are your biggest influence on your map. They seed you with foundational beliefs, thoughts and feelings about the world around you. Yes, you might spy a mountain in the distance, but your parents can help you shade in the contours and show you - hey, it’s not that high, it’s not that hard - just eat some tuna it’s good for you. blegh.
As you grow older, and you enter school, and university, and interact with more things in the world, you grow your own experience of what the trees and the lakes and the fields around you look like. You get to know that there are areas of the world that are dangerous, or that your parents told you were bad, but are actually really fun to hang out in.
Most of these are transcribed at the same time as your friends. They go along the same life paths, and are on similar parts of the journey that you are; what they see as your peers usually will align with how you’re going to fill your own map. Their paths may be different, may diverge, may completely veer off in a weird direction, but when you find companions on the road who are alike, you’ve got similar map-drawing systems, which will likely lead you along the same roads. True, they may explore weird (to you) territory, but that means that you get more information about niches of the world you wouldn’t have explored yourself.
When you meet friends later on in life and find out that they’ve followed similar paths to yours, or have uncovered new places that you probably would love to go visit - isn’t that just the greatest feeling?
The partners that you encounter in life, the intimacy of sharing your worlds, your maps, how you interpret the musky shapes and diffuse territory - it is the way that you try to make your maps mesh together. For some people, it’s overlaying a whole new world over their existing map, encountering someone who comes from a previously non-existent part of the map - or maybe it’s off the map itself! With others, the maps are drawn so similarly that it’s a wonder you didn’t find each other on your paths until now.
When you then go out into uncharted territory together, how do you react? Is it an exhilarating experience where you come out together stronger? Or is it a storm that might break you apart, enhancing the mountains and valleys between you?
4. We truly do live in a society
On a wider scale, society in it’s many aspects give us the broad brush map, and landmarks, of where we should be going - usually based on previous wisdom. The systems that we’ve put in place help to guide our path, and provide lighthouses on our path forward.
Examples of this are with religion, or laws, or tradition. These are the maps that have been handed down over centuries with little difference, because they are the fundamental contours of the world…
…until someone comes along and says ‘hey is there a little smudge here what’s this?’ and then the whole thing unravels like a loose thread pulled upon in a tapestry. The upheaval of these systems can radically change the view of our maps - maybe we had copied something down because everyone else had done it, but the brave few who actually went into those areas (insert any class warfare of the last 1000 years) and refined that picture helped the rest of us work out if it fit better in our map or not (for example, it doesn’t fit some people’s maps, because the existing traditions favour their position - there’s no incentive to see the truth or explore it).
You can, of course, decide not to join the rat race and walk the direction the rest of the world is going. You can choose a different path, with the consequences that might bring. - because there are some places that people should never go, and most maps do say Danger, beware.
5. Day by day, row by row, life is good if you go with the flow
The map is not the territory, but if you spend a lot of time in the territory, you’re gonna be able to map it out preeeeetty accurately.
The more routine you do things, the more detail you can shade into your map. Every day you do your chores, or talk to the same people, or go to the same places, or follow the same habits, it gives you a more detailed picture of the niche itself.
I don’t know a lot about knives, but there are some people in places like r/chefknives who can tell you the minute differences between different handle types, tang shapes, the type of steel that’s used, the nuances in the heft and cut of a blade. You might not know as much about boardgames, but I can tell you the different mechanics I enjoy, why I enjoy them, which designers I prefer, what genres would be most popular for different types of people - the mapping is just so much more detailed, and can be appreciated much more by those in the know.
More of these niches have cropped up in recent years due to the fact that the Internet gives us all weird and wonderful boltholes in the land to chill in. Places undiscovered, or unexplored for a long time - there could be lush, beautiful wilderness, or a forest teeming with terrors.
Sometimes it’s just easier to stay in the places you know best :)
6. A ship in the harbour is safe, but that is not what ships are built for
I wrote this piece because it’s been on my mind, but I think it’s also because I’ve been feeling like I’ve been in a rut for a few years, trying to work out what I want to do with my life.
Is this something everyone does, all the time?
I spent all my time kind of…glancing at different places in the landscape, never committing or going deep, staying and filling in the details of the comfortable middle-class life I live. It wasn’t bad, but it always feels like there could be more? That’s the problem with potential - it’s overwhelming but greedy, convincing you that ‘hey there could be a great opportunity just around the corner’. So I kept waiting…
Nowadays though, I’m exploring, and it’s great. Little by little, moving out of the detailed part of the map I’ve resided in, and searching for new shores, different coastlines - finding new companions along the way. This newsletter, every week, pushes me to be trying new things, all the time, trying to find things worth recommending to you, , and hoping that you take a look when you have the time.
I’m not trying to advocate for one way or the other - there’s no judgement if you go detailed in your map, or broad in your travels - the main thing is to be happy with which one you’ve decided on. And if you can’t decide, then maybe you should ask others where they’ve been, how they’ve drawn their maps, and see what interests you. Investigate the new - there’s so much treasure to be found.
It’s not a particularly insightful metaphor, but maybe it could turn into a sci-fi concept of some sort? Who knows.
I’ll have to map it out.
Chat soon :)
Let me know if you have any feedback for the newsletter!
✔️Real Life Recommendations
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Top Gun - the original movie. Yeah, yeah, it’s taken me a while to get around to it - I wanted to watch it so I could go watch Top Gun Maverick while it’s still in cinemas. WHOO-EY I feel like every time I watch an old classic movie I realise why everyone is obsessed with a certain actor. Clint Eastwood, for example, in The Good, The Bad and the Ugly, or Al Pacino in The Godfather…this one showed me why Tom Cruise is adored even though he’s fully a Scientologist. Every one of his smiles and his attitude was just so charismatic and charming. The movie has, IMO, very little plot, but hte planes and the battles have enough tension and interesting fights to make you care a bit less about it. A great mateship movie - go see it if you haven’t!
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Marche Board Game Cafe - just like it says on the tin, a board game cafe. It’s not too bad - the selection is pretty good, and it’s $20 for like >3 hours plus a free drink. Obviously I’d rather just play at home with the many games I have myself, but sometimes it’s nice to be out and about with friends :)
🚌 Adventures on the Information Super-Highway
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I would like to be paid like a plumber - a letter from sound engineer Steve Albini to Nirvana - the absolute clarity of thought that goes into this letter is amazing. Knowing exactly who you are, and what you want to be, is very much King energy, explained in the masculinity post from a while back, making principled decisions and knowing exactly why you are the way you are.
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The Trouble with Optionality - a post that summarises my life strategy from a young age - both what I thought, why it’s not wholly correct, and where we at now. The key thing is that, though options have a much lower cost, it’s still a cost if you let them expire.
The comfort of a high-paying job at a prestigious firm surrounded by smart people is simply too much to give up. When that happens, the dreams that those options were meant to enable slowly recede into the background.
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The watch that came in from the cold - a longread if you’re keen - a story of a spy lost and killed in China, and the joint investigation to find their bodies (and subsequently, finding his watch). Great read - really interesting!