I find myself thinking a lot about being a rōnin. I would have been a good rōnin. A masterless samurai.
Walking through the woods, alone, nothing but the sound of the birds, the rustle of the sasa. A movement. A person. Wait, son. Don’t move. They’re gone. A second longer. Ok, on to town.
I’ll provide for you. I’ll get you a blade. I’ll teach you to sharpen it. There will be a chicken, maybe. Mostly tofu and rice. Irori, calm, smoke, the smell of tatami and wood.
The smell of the fire and the fish salted and steaming and crackling and then you slide open the door and the rain is coming down and out you go and it’s rivulets off your hat and you hold your hand on your pommel just for the security of it like the meteorite a blade made of meteoric steel and it’s yours and your soul and your life.
The blade was made in a tatara that was sung and chanted and prayed to for 3 days before being cracked open and then selected and folded and forged and folded and jacketed and quenched and polished and sharpened and it’s been mine for 23 years and I love this blade it is my life.
Into town we need something.
I can see myself quite easily functioning in this kind of world, at least externally. There is no need to plan much beyond the day. You deal with the situation in front of you, you look after your small family unit, you live in your place and keep yourself to yourself.
But you’re fully aware that any moment you could be walking through the woods. You could see the dancing man in the woods. You do not want to see the dancing man in the woods. The dancing man in the woods is death.
This is where the hypervigilance is useful and good. We evolved to spot slight differences in the movement of the leaves of a bush so we can protect ourselves from predators. This is the single most fundamental drive we have. And now it’s candy crush and financial crashes.
As a species we did not evolve for this. And asd + adhd are the ‘human’ sides of our humanosity dialled up to 11. One is our logic, one our emotion. A simplification which works for me.
So if normal people are suffering in this modern world, to the point where youtube is ramming junk ‘dopamine detox’ ads down your throat all day (irony yadda yadda)… well anyone with things cranked up to 11 is likely to feel a bit shit and want to kinda duck out.
That used to be an option. And with AI, I was hoping it would become an option again. But the world and their fucking dopamine addiction. Fucking dopamine addiction you idiots… we can’t think or move without dopamine. Is a car addicted to oil?
Anyway gone off topic here but my point is that there’s a reason I have my phone set to black and white. It’s because I could not control the tiger. The tiger is too hungry and powerful. All I can control is my environment.
And modern society takes even that control away from you.
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