Book and Journal of Mattanaw

# Relationships

Book and Journal of Mattanaw
Volume I, Book IV, §xv, Draft
Publisher: PlaynText, Tempe, Arizona

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## Author

The Author and Editor-in-Chief, by his enterprise client’s headquarters in San Diego, California

Artist/Author: The Honorable Dr.9 Mattanaw, Christopher Matthew Cavanaugh, Retired

Interdisciplinarian with Immeasurable Intelligence. Lifetime Member of the High Intelligence Community.6

- Masters Business & Economics, Harvard University (In Progress)
- Attorney, Pro Se, Litigation, Trial, Depositions, Contracts (E.g. State of Alaska v. Pugh, et. al., Alaska Superior and Supreme Courts)4
- B.S. Psychology, University of Maryland, 4.0, Summa Cum Laude1
- B.S. Computer & Information Science, University of Maryland, 3.91, Magna Cum Laude2
- B.A. Philosophy, University of Maryland.3
- G.E.D., State of Maryland, Montgomery County, 1999.
- Lifetime Member of the High Intelligence Community, Mensa Lifetime Member

Former Chief Architect, Adobe Systems

Current President/Advisor, Social Architects and Economists International.

CEO PlaynText | CEO PlainText

Contact:

- cmcavanaugh@g.harvard.edu
- christopher.matthew.cavanaugh@member.mensa.org
- mattanaw@mattanaw.org

Resumé

- Professional Resumé

## Edit History

- Monday, June 27th, 2022, at 1:52 PM Alaska Time

## Contents

- Introduction
- Subtraction of Relationships
- Attention and Relationships
- Strangers and Randoms
- No Legacy
- Filtration and Imagination, or Higher Order Attention

## Introduction

Relationships is a somewhat more humorous part of my personal form and system of life-categories. My main interest when I first included this on my form was to remind myself of people who should have some importance in my world for various reasons, and to make sure to think about them and reflect on how I could maintain positive communication with them. When I was young, calling someone on the phone to stay in touch was not natural. It was very uncomfortable. I’d have to build up some courage and be ready prepared with things to talk about, and not simply pick up the phone and call someone impromptu. Today, I’m much more adept with phone calls and conference calls became a routine part of my life. But sometimes, even today, I do feel a strong reluctance to call. Anyway, earlier in life this was more debilitating. It was something I really needed to overcome to ensure I was able to progress on anything that had a social component. I think the cause was not using the phone often while growing up, and being somewhat isolated from adults, and needs that would require this type of communication. I was born in 1980 and during that time rarely needed a phone for anything at all, and even in the 90s cell phones were absent. I did not get my first cell phone until perhaps 1999 or 2000. It was a plain nokia cell phone, somewhat small compared to modern smart phones, but was an old-fashioned compact cell phone. Before that I had my own phone line for my bedroom for a period, but before that relied entirely on the same phone line as my family. Usually for needs my parents would make calls, and I would not. The purpose of a phone call was primarily at that time to let my parents know where I was at dinner time, if I was not at home. Then I would inform them I was at a friends house, and would promptly come home for the evening. In this type of world phone calls were not the norm. There was no special need to reach out to anyone to keep a relationship going. Most people I knew and spent time with were in my neighborhood. I had very few business relationships and no need to call businesses. The phone, at that time, for me, was really a somewhat fearful thing to use. If I called someone who I did not know, what would I say…? It would produce anxiety, and later this became really important to overcome.

Similarly I had some issues simply talking to people I did not know. Walking up to a stranger in certain environments was very awkward, and I had a strong aversion to getting a job that would involve customer service, and long periods of work talking to people I was not sure I could satisfy.

These issues were overcome but there were deliberate efforts to ensure that I would get past them. I don’t think these are very unusual though, as kids certainly grow up with comfort in their own family, but with discomfort about strangers who at first, are people to be avoided. Oddly, strangers turn out to be more helpful than family later in life, but that is something that is learned later. I think most will have stages of development related to gaining comfort communicating and being exposed to other people, on the phone or in person, or otherwise.

The main purpose of the relationship categories in my twenties, around 2003 to 2008, was to give mental attention to friends and family and ensure contact. I would force myself to call friends who lived elsewhere during this time and became quite good at maintaining relationships. In retrospect, while I was uncomfortable talking on the phone, whereas they did not seem uncomfortable, I was the only one who had the discipline in use of the form to call at all. So it turned out that I was the primary cause of the maintenance of the relationships during those periods of time of greater separation. Most others would simply gravitate towards other people in their more immediate occupations and let relationships fade away. I did not experience a fade in my relationships as a result, in the same way that others experienced it. My same friends remained my friends until I was about forty, quite recently, when I decided I no longer wanted to put in the efforts that others themselves would not put in. And fascinatingly, those relationships terminated as one might expect. This is not only about phone calls however. I would include travel as a means to ensure continued relations. So if I moved away, or a friend moved away, I would make sure to pay visits. However they did not provide visits, so once I stopped talking on the phone, and travelling to see them, there was nothing to maintain the relationships further.

The relationships section though was very useful in cultivating a better social life, that could develop. I used a similar approach in my career, about forcing myself to keep contact and ties and maintain relationships and initiate new ones. Later, after discontinuing use of the form, I would do interviews with different companies all while I was employed, without any intention to leave my job. This made it so I stayed current on being able to converse over the phone in expected ways, and kept me up to date on the market. I would know what recruiters and interviewers were looking for. I anticipated bad interviews, but because I did not require any occupation, being already employed, did not care. It was to keep up relationships and ability to relate, and open possibilities in my career. While the interviewing did not have the intention of leaving the current job, and I would continue interviewing even while happily employed, this approach was the cause of getting new jobs, because suddenly opportunities would arise that were the ones that would cause me to leave, even if I did not have that intention. For example, I was doing interviews while I was somewhat happily employed as an architect in Nashua, New Hampshire, at Fidelity Investments. After a number of interviews, I was suddenly called by Adobe Systems to take a job as a solution consultant, which is a technical sales person far along in career (it is the same title as that had by Edward Snowden). Fidelity was happy with my performance and had already prepared to extend my contract another year, when I informed them that I was going to transition to Adobe. This opportunity and my ability to get the role, was directly related to my willingness to continue to do interviews, and this all traces back to my interest in having and maintaining relationships, by making sure I continued to do phone calls with people I cared about.

I’ve told people many times, and have it recorded into my Facebook profile, that I have dual relationship interests. I like living in an urban environment and a country environment. I like solitude and nature but I also enjoy being around people. I envisioned being a hermit later in life, while at the same time being someone accomplished in work and exposed to stimulation of urban life. My locations of residences reflectd this as I wanted good outdoors and places I could enjoy being alone, but also had plenty of restaurants and night life, and cultural places to spend time around others. While I’ve been intensely interested in having positive relationships with friends, family, and colleagues over the year, I have shifted to wanting to be more a hermit and less sociable, recently. I still want to be around others and to have access to a good market, and spend quite a lot of time out at coffee houses, restaurants, and the gym, but I do so in a way that is solitary. My personal form today will not have the same emphasis it had before. I’ve already achieved what I wanted in relationships and now what I’m wanting to do is find a way to beincreasingly comfortable and confident being totally alone. I was divorced 4 years ago from a 19 year relationship, and in Anchorage Alaska, the Southwest, and Hawaii, I’m very far from old friends and family who reside on the east coast of the United States. I’m not wanting to travel there, or be around people I know, or even people I’ve seen somewhat often, like neighbors or people who visit the same places in town over and over. I want to be around strangers, and be alone most of the time. Confessedly, I’m not sure quite yet what needs to be maintained in this category on my personal form. I will include developments here but my instinct is to think I need to include strategies on how to omit people, and cope with people who try to force themselves into my life, and not at all include a section on people who I need to remember to stay in touch with. I can feel probably there are strategies I’m not aware of that I can make use of, and so perhaps there is a real area to develop in my life using this life-category, that had a totally different interest and mission earlier.

## The many errors of the populace regarding morality.

Many of who we would like to think are intelligent in the populations of the earth have made some incredible mistakes regarding their moralities, and much concerning these errors is accounted for in choice of relationship, and mistakes concerning the value of relationships and their impact on beliefs and views about what is honest.

It appears even supposedly intelligent people worldwide have been unable to stay honest as to certain things plainly false that are obviously and easily logically falsified, which can be found partially on my lists page.

Instead of being able to clearly think through aspects of life to arrive at real answers even intelligent people have altered their own points of view to correspond to the most foolish and stupid perspectives of populace. This is plainly a mistake guided by poor moral ideas concerning the value of relationships. Relationships are simultaneously considered as important enough to guide people towards truthfulness and honesty, to create mutual veracity to increase the supposed meaningfulness of life. However, instead of having this result, people have allowed dishonest people in their environment to steer their thinking to unclarity and dishonesty, even on the most basic of topics, where an advanced primate that really is honest can understand immediately.

Personally I will never, for anyone adopt superstitions of any kind. To me that is akin to becoming as foolish as one can possibly become. This is one of my many reasons for wanting to remain somewhat isolated from others. Since even those who think themselves intelligent with some justification fall into superstitions, there is hardly anyone on Earth who will not try to press me and others into what must be considerd the antithesis of a quality worldview.

People allow their many relations to tell them other foolish things as well, and somehow they come to repeat the same, for example that:

- Their lives are hard.
- That they need to be saved.
- That their only options for life-guidance are ancient views.
- That superstitions are true.
- That relationships are more valuable than honesty (what of honesty in relationships?).
- That Israel or the Vatican, or some certain cities hold special value.
- That there are aliens, and the like…

These foolish views are so pervasive it is hard to believe that we are not primitives. The things which confuse us into thinking people are not primitives appear to be artifacts that we assume to indicate advancement. I look outside this coffee house, away from the numerous fools which fill it, to my vehicle, and the parking lot and roadway with lines of other vehicles. By these I’m to suppose that we’ve completed moral philosophy, when the reality is that nobody has started yet?

“Thank you for the afterlife” is something I commonly think to myself these days. Do you not know that you are an imbecile, thinking you’re the gatekeeper of the afterlife? You control the portal to the netherworld? You have a friend who is a Jew who does have a portal to the afterlife?

Being a moral philosopher who has come to an understanding of what a good philosophy is, and a good system for personal guidance consists of, cares about the well being of animals including primates. But primates who have adopted a religion or a nationality get no special attention from me as having any authority, and actually I assume nowadays that they can only detract me from my much better mentality. I do not want any relationships that are selling me fools superstitions, of people who claim they have hard lives, and that they simultaneously are expert on miracles and stewards of the childish afterlife.

Knowing you would help me how?

## Subtraction of Relations

Another current effort underway is subtraction of relationships. I noticed that a major issue in antiquated religious morality and cultural advice is that it hasn’t tackled unlearning and removal of unwanted parts of mental life.

To give an example. Supposed you are raped or harmed. Suppose you have a vocabulary which includes ways of thinking you’d like to avoid. Racial slurs come to mind. Nobody has covered what it takes to really remove these from you and the culture, such that they are not reintroduced into you, and so that you can finally thinking as much as possible about what you want to think about, and not what others force on you.

Sometimes what has been forced on you are other people.

You cannot choose your family when you are raised, the people who are in the vicinity, your neighbors, and people you were stuck with at school. Going further into the deterministic aspect of life, you really don’t control any interaction totally, and anyone who did appear in your life appeared there due to physical rules in nature, including physical rules in your own mind which lead you to decide where to go and where to be. However, people who ended up in your world were there not because of your decision making but because of physical predetermination.

In my life, I want to continue to improve myself. I want to develop further with new interactions, experiences, people and new stimulation in arts, in locations, in travel, in reading and what have you. In order to do this more effectively I want to spend less time reminiscing. I’m not really the nostalgic type. Periodically I will enjoy my own photographs, and reflections on my life, but I’m not clinging to anything in my history, and I’m not clinging to any people either. There are some people I’m especially not clinging to: those who prestented a risk to me because they put me in danger, were threatening, or were of bad quality. Instead of clinging to these, obviously, I would prefer not to continue including them in my mind thinknig about them further. These people I prefer to remove, or obstruct, or disfigure in my consciousness, until they do not appear or seem unrecognizable.

It’s not only about relationships to people who I’ve met, but people on television too. I don’t know Seinfeld. I prefer to never think of Seinfeld again, or characters from the 90s, or earlier, or later and not very recent. I prefer to meet strangers, see new things, find new art, entertainment, etc… Yesterday I saw the Mona Lisa again on social media. While I want that to exist and remain protected, I have no need really to see or hear it ever again, or at least not until I really want to.

I’ve created a page called Subtraction. The purpose of this page is to work on methods of subtraction, distortion and erasure. It shows in images what I’m also doing mentally on a day to day basis. If I see someone in my mind that I do not want to think about, I really do blur their face, bend it, contort it, blot it out, fog it, or perform some other mental trick to make it clear to my mind that it needs to go.

Anyone who wants to “move on” would understand that such an approach might be the only way easily available for getting rid of unwanted thoughts and thinking. The culture, again, has not provided a toolkit for eliminating unwanted parts of life from recollection. It’s not necessarily about totally eliminating unwanted thinking, but of reducing recollectivity. Frequencies of thoughts, ruminations, and even obsessions some might have. I’m not the obsessive type, but I do want to remove certain recollections, particularly when they start to intrude on contexts in which they are inapplicable or unrelated. Suppose you relocate to a new country, or to a new region, and what you keep thinking about is someone you knew elsewhere who harmed you seriously. Is it not better to find a way to forget them, particularly if the objective of relocation may have been to find something new, and to begin reflecting on what is in the new environment, replacing the old. Not thinking, still, on what is old and, kinda dead in the world?

Another thought I had when I was young was that entertainment and media seems to be lifeless. Consider if you are watching any older television show you like, or are listening to some older music at a period of your life in which you were within the culture. Now you reexperience it much later. It feels like everyone in that recording has moved on, is having a different life, and yet, you are listening to sounds and are seeing sights generated by technology from inert materials. Likewise, simply remembering something has a similar characteristic. You have recorded within you something that might not be remembered by anyone else. They moved on, you did too, but what is happening is a regeneration from living material. But notice the quality is low. So in a sense it is even worse than recollecting from the inert material, and this is a reason why people want the inert recordings so badly, because their ability to make use feel we recognize it completely and can reexperience it, requires something with really good fidelity. You cling to pictures because, perhaps, you have recollections of fragments of images, or blurred images, or foggy imperfect images. But what if you don’t even want those, so that you have any kind of yearning for seeing the real thing, or seeing copies? A method for removing them further might be to blur them or blot them out. Consider that is what your mind is doing and that is what sometimes you revolt against when you want to rely on a recording. You want to preserve the memory, but your mind seems built for, or has as a side effect, gradual, slow deterioration of memories. Some you want to keep and of course for that you have photographs and videos, or you rehearse your memories. But for those you don’t want to remember, you can perhaps work with your systems functions by forcing deterioration, or by helping it fail to recollect. In this way people perhaps can move on and continue to develop.

Once not to long ago I was telling a friend that “open mindedness” must include closed-mindedness. Suppose you want to remain open to new experiences and learn more. Some things have to be closed off from reconsideration to have time available to think through new things. Likewise, being stuck in time does not permit openness to new experiences. This is why I said to continue developing I want to focus on new things and remove what is unwanted. In this way removal of old people and old experiences opens resources for new experiences.

Thought about this way it seems sad if someone had a limited life with limited experiences and that person also opts to cling to early experiences, shutting out new possibilities.

Another observation I had when I was travelling quite a lot was that life seems longer if you travel. The observation is this: if I went on a road trip, or a trip that had a lot of new places to see, things to do, and perhaps new culture, I could remember each detail of the trip even far into the future without trying. A week might feel like a month or two. However, if I’m going to attempt to recall some mundane repetitive period in my life, and I choose a particular week, I might hardly remember much of it at all. It will not resemble the same level of memory in relation to time as any vacation I had. So closing off history and remaining open to new experiences, and creating new enviornments, seeing new people, and learning new things, really does have a relationship with being open to new experiences and being open minded, and having that depends on being closed too.

Part of my life in relationships is to find ways to close off what is old and move on to new, extending perhaps this idea concerning travel, what people already say about meeting new people, and also mental tactics on preventing unwanted recurring thoughts, which may not be desirable even if they are not obsessive. If obsessive I can imagine one might really want tools to remove and prevent, and maybe some of these tools would work for the obsessive too. Again, the page I’m working on that is a visual representation of what I’m already doing in my mind primarily is Subtraction.

### Attention and Relationships

A few years ago I wrote a booklet on achieving a better level of attention for goods and excellences in one’s life. A takeaway is that a wise person would strictly control environments to ensure they are suitable to one’s purposes of achieving various goals and personal virtues. This relates to relationships because not only does one want to be in spaces that are safe which implies certain people are not nearby, but also one chooses spaces so that one can make certain relationships possible. Consider if you get into college you want the presence of high quality people inside and outside of the school, you want good teachers, and you want friends who will want to mutually develop with you, and not simply obstruct, hinder, or only have fun in your presence. There is much more to this idea about finding ways to improve attention to have a better life, but it is well known in the normal vertical mobility path, in that people who gain funds will use those funds to have artful, pleasant, and luxurious surroundings, and any other surroundings that seem wise to have, if the person who is vertically mobile has any inkling about the need to manage attention. They don’t typically go back to living in a less high quality environment, unless they have specific objectives related to that type of choice.

Imagination and Filtration (Higher Order Attention)

This work will be more fully edited and developed as I come to completion of my system of ethics that I’ve been producing over two decades. This section on life categories as I’ve said before is related to tactical decisions in life, which relates to behavior and what might be called practical ethics. Higher Order Attention relates to what might be historically called theoretical ethics, or higher level strategy on practical ethics. I don’t see a huge distinction between the two, but traditionally there is a division, and while I eschew much that has already been written on moral philosophy, I think more needs to be stated on this point. For now I’ll merely mention that Higher Order Attention seems more strategic and psychological than a division of life along life categories for training on key areas, which includes this topic of relationships.

### Strangers and Randoms

Saturday, June 30th, 2022, at 8:26 PM Alaska Time

Also of recent interest is the perception of relationships of other people who appear in my environment, or those I end up nearby to in public spaces; also, my relationships to others who might think they know something about me, or have read something I’ve written, or who’ve heard something from others that make them believe they have some relationship.

Before I procured property in Alaska where I ended up having many unwanted neighbors, and people living nearby believing they had some interest in my life, or some relationship to me, there were few times I really had any interest in the way relationships could arise with strangers. People who existed nearby, or appeared suddenly, or those who I put myself near to in public spaces, had very little interest to me as far as legal risks were concerned. The few times I can remember having any concern were when I encountered people who appeared to be dangerous in some way—people who had characteristics that seemed to indicate they were too aggressive, seemingly interested, or threatening. These people I would quickly disassociate from, or create space from. There was no difficulty achieving the necessary separation quickly with most people who presented some kind of risk. There were a few colleagues, I was forced to work with who seemed to have poor character traits, and I was not able to easily extricate myself from having to be near them, but still, the risks were not so great to be really concerned about long term legal interests, or threats to ongoing well-being.

Now, however, there are many new risks from people who appear in my environment or claim to have some relationship to me. I have more than one neighbor who perpetually makes unwanted contact, or contact that is greatly unpreferred. I also have people who have some understanding through hearsay, through knowledge about my social media presence, or my writing, who pretend in public to have some relationship with me.

Another example is when someone repeatedly uses a space that is shared. People who appear at the same business, or near to you at other locations in town, or in a city. These people, having seen me more than once, get interested in establishing a more durable contact. However, given my experience that is typically totally unwanted.

I think many of these concerns must be similar to the concerns of people who have been historically targeted: minorities at risk, foreigners, and famous individuals. People who prompt attention, not due to their own cause but the cause of the beliefs of others, in which they later pretend they have some relationship to you.

This portion of my interest in relationships is closely related to risk management. In this case, risk management relating to people who are not known, in a cultural context that includes legal and physical risks.

The position I’ve taken with neighbors has been that nobody is a friend. I will tell people openly or in writing, that I do not consider them to be friends, but rather, that they are people with a mutual interest which is specific, and in relation to that specific interest, I’m wiling to engage in certain required activities. The purpose is to make clear to the other person that any interaction would be minimal, and would not exceed what is considered civil, as it relates to certain necessary transactions.

I recognized that any belief in the other that there is something more durable, of being a “friend” or a “neighbor” can be confusing and can created legal risks and ramifications. Firstly, it allows them some claim to special knowledge or information, which in our culture can cause mental depictions to arise that are not at all minimal. Instead, they can bring thoughts of other friendships, and other neighborly relations, and perspectives about these relations, that can be incorrectly transferred to my situation. I do not want any thoughts about someone else’s more developed and less minimal relationships of friendship, and their ideals and expectations around friendships and neighborly relationships to relate to what I state myself about my relationships, and the nature of my relationships. To give one example, I am not religious. A very big error would be for someone to perceive or think they have a special relationship to me that is defined in their religion, simply because of the concepts they use. In Christianity, there are thoughts about what friendship and neighborly relations might be, and might entail, or require. However, I’m not Christian and I don’t at all share any agreement as to these concepts, their meaning, and their obligations, or that there are any obligations.

#### Space and Mind and Strangers

Today I was thinking through how one might explain my perspective at a basic level, regarding risk mitigation and avoidance.

In my perspective, if someone appears in my environment, it does not mean I have any relationship to them. That two people would come to be able to see each other when nearby happenstance in a public location is not unexpected. There are few ways that people would ever see each other as strangers or randoms without this occurrence. It is also known, that simply because people come into the same space, such that they can see each other, does not entail any relationship, along relationship classifications. For example, if I see someone I don’t know at a coffee business, it does not mean that I have any durable relationship. I have not been introduced, and I am not acquainted. Even if there was an introduction, it does not mean that I desire any additional contact, or any durable category of transaction. To give an example of what I mean by that, if I see a neighbor in public who I seldom if ever see near my home, it does not mean I want to speak to that person, or carry on any neighborly transactions in public. I prefer not even to think of them as a neighbor. That is a stranger who has a possession somewhat near to a possession I have. Seeing that person in public, it does not mean that I have any obligations, or that I have any special legal requirements on me. This person to me is still a stranger, or random. If I know less then they are more a stranger and a random. We all understand what strangers are, and we all know that there are strangers who we would not want more than is required by combining people haphazardly in a public setting. If a stranger appears in your environment, or my environment, it does not mean there are special obligations.

However, I have found that despite this, people still pose a risk. There are those who appear in public spaces who think that by being present and near me, I have some obligations to them which do not exist. Of looking a certain way, of behaving a certain way, and of placating them socially somehow by appearing to be socially inviting. Typically, for me, however, I am not socially inviting. Instead, I want no relationship and prefer to repel people to an extent to keep myself from developing unwanted relations. For others who are expecting to be invited socially, to concede some social time and some kind attention and behavior, their rejection is a risk. I will reject them and repel them. Doing so, they may come to think they can take certain adverse actions against me, not recognizing there are no obligations to be inviting.

There are also those who are really a bit like fans, or people who claim to have some knowledge which permits them to create obligations. Hearsay information, or gossip-knowledge, does not for me create introductions. It does not create any acquaintanceship either. Often, the pathway of the information is not known. The way they came to think they know me at all might be from someone quite adverse. It could also be through someone who is more friendly. It is acknowledged, however, that even among those who are friendly, are poor information holders and poor communicators, and people who might not have good judge of character. In any case, people who have come to some tidbits of information about me have not been vetted by me. I have not been the judge of their characters, and I have not used the information to arrive at any desire for additional relationship development. While it is possible that that could be something I would want, if I did not want it, and a person simply has pieces of information second-hand, it means to me they really are still strangers, and that I have no obligation of any kind to them. I don’t need to be socially solicitous of their conversation, or especially inviting. I don’t have to appear in any way for them either, in clothing, or in kindness. In other words, I don’t have to smile, or put on an act for them.

In locations that are extremely urban, like in New York City, or in London, this would be very well understood. There are so many people in such living areas, that most social contacts in public would be visual, and even visual relations may be quite transitory. Since there are many strangers, attention would shift rapidly, and it wold be very obvious that walking in crowds would diminish the perception that there are anything but random stranger relations, and that there could certainly be no social obligations generated, by unexpected proximities. In smaller towns, or in towns where there are people who think they control the influx of people, this perception about the obligations that exist changes. However, it does not legally change. I think it creates additional risk that the law would be utilized to control, and lies and adverse socialization would arise, to impose obligations on people who do not actually have any obligations. An excellent example of this would relate to minorities who want to spend more time in white environments, but don’t want to be socially inviting or solicitous. Any rejection of niceties can pose a risk, particularly I think, of lies and complaints of controlling women.

There is a strange view in the United States in certain locations that “watches” and “anonymous reports” of “suspicious behavior” is reasonable. However, such views about reporting have no relationship to the law, and anyone in the public who thinks they can make anonymous reports, and complaints, or non-anonymous reports and complaints, without any expertise (or even with expertise), is a threat to people who simply exist in proximity to where they happen to go. An implication of this is that minorities and people who are not especially inviting socially, can be targeted as unwanted people, and without legal justification. Without expertise, and legal justification, people are prone to exaggeration and bolstering of claims. A claim, once falsely made, is something that may be defended for many years, without justification. Someone who simply claims that someone is behaving in a way that is suspicious or unwanted can be expected to defend that claim zealously. In this way, social obligations about basic appearances and behaviors can be imposed on people who are behaving entirely reasonably.

My behavior and appearance is typically well within the expectations of people who are in culturally dominating groups, because I am dominant within the culture myself; but also, more importantly, I was raised as a white child in an environment that was well-off, and formal. However, not wanting to permanently behave formally and in a solicitous and inviting way to others, particularly since now I’m more well known and want to preserve my own solitary use of time even in public spaces, I have departed from being as humble, and eager to please, and have become more interested in appearing to want to be left alone.

Since I spend a considerable amount of time in public spaces, where people definitely appear regularly, and am well-known, but want to be left alone, I am definitely targeted by others who think they have knowledge or proximity that justifies the imposition of social obligations. Since my perspective is that I have no such social obligations, and will certainly not act as though I do, there is a clash in social interests, that are not legal in nature. There is a risk however, that someone will try to make them legal. In fact they have.

“Acknowledge me” appears to be a basic area in which risk is generated. If a person is not acknowledged, they do appear to believe they are justified in creating hostilities.

Recently, after having a period of camping with my mobile Van which is like an RV, I was in need of washing clothes. That is an activity I enjoy at laundromats despite the side-effect of having to cross paths with unwanted individuals. Shortly after walking into this laundromat, a man who seemed to be very strange said “hello” to me, wanting to create conversation. Not wanting to have any conversation, and not even wanting to be near him, I simply did not say anything. I simply resumed my behavior, gently (not that it needs to be gently), getting some coins from a dispenser that converts dollars to change. This person became fairly irate, and began cursing at me, saying “If you can’t say hell, well then, Fuck you!” I just ignored him, but this is an unwanted interaction in which a random stranger tried to impose on me an obligation of being socially inviting. This sort of situation is one that could invoke legal actions, but those legal actions would have had nothing at all to do with any legal obligations. If he became more irate he could have easily called the police, had someone else call the police, and lie about an occurrence. However, all would have been due to an unreasonable belief about social obligations and relationships which did not exist at all. Thinking about how Black Americans must have lived historically, I am certain they would have been jailed and killed simply for having people prompt authorities without justification. The motivation for creating a legal situation is unrelated to the veracity that such a legal situation existed.

Typically I do not spend time at laundromats, and these days I intend to restrict myself again to more affluent areas, except as required by transit which may take me through less desirable parts of town, and locations. Being mainly in nicer neighborhoods, and libraries, and gymnasiums athletic clubs, the people who would create some risk would be those who would be less low in social class, but riskier because of their readiness to prompt legal support to their own tastes, outside of what is called for by the law. In other words, white women and men, who think they deserve ingratiating behavior and acknowledgement. Being myself well accomplished and through my career, this is especially annoying. I find myself wanting to be more like an old man who simply doesn’t do any of those things any longer. This may require that I dress more like an old man, and perhaps act more like an old man in various ways. Either way, I still face risks related to co-use of public or social spaces, in which people know certain things about me, or think they do, and believe this then necessitates talking and smiles. I also face risks of coming in close proximity to people who again, want me to be socially inviting simply because we see each other. I am not exactly sure how I will address this strategically, but I will not be at all ingratiating and will resume my classification of these people as strangers and randoms.

Speaking of this reminded me of birds who have their handlers place tiny masks over their eyes, so that they calm, being unable to see anyone nearby any longer. Perhaps I will have to ask people to place on masks and wear earplugs in any situation in which they believe they can be socially-demanding.

[Finished with few edits, in One hour and twenty minutes. Saturday, June 30th, 2022, at 9:45 PM Alaska Time]

## No Legacy

Monday, August 1st, 2022, at 6:48 PM Alaska Time

From a very young age I was committed to the idea of not having any children at all. There were many considerations involved in this decision related to observations and expectations about life during parenting, and time commitments for children. I will discuss those considerations another time, but for now want to discuss more thoroughly one contributing set of reasons, which relate to the falseness of legacy.

I was raised somewhat disconnectedly from a rather large family, of 15 combined parents and aunts/uncles. My mother had 6 siblings, and my father had 7. Our grandparents, of course, had their own siblings, but none of them were known to me. All of my grandparents are now deceased, but while living, already there were many grandchildren and some great grand children.

My mother’s family, and my fathers family were quite disconnected and separate, as I would think very common. I spent very little time with my mother’s family, and it was very large taken in total. I spent considerably more time as a young child up to pre-teen years with my father’s side of the family, which was also quite large. Even within my father’s side of the family, there were already divides.

My observation when young basically amounts to a simple observation, which is that a family quickly grows into a large hoard of people who no longer know each other well. They become geographically separated, marry into other families, and become disintereste in each other until they have no knowledge of each other at all. After a short time, less than 100 years, one would have to research to even be aware that certain family members exist at all, and after several hundred years, it is as though there is nothing at all bringing them together under one grand-parental node or another.

Taking a group of related individuals in a family tree spanning backwards about 5 generations, one would no longer be able to credit earlier mating pairs with any thoughts of the latest generations. They may not speak the same language or have the same nationality. It is really as though a large group of separate strangers was created, with clusters of people who still think that legacy is meaningful, but have no knowledge at all of the legacy wanted by their grandparents or people 5 generations backwards. Moreover, youths very often want to separate from the views of their parents, and do something of significance for themselves, to their own merits. Confusedly, however, these people think their children will inherit their legacies, and use fantastic visions of their own posssible family futures to justify having children.

On several occasions I have spoken with my male friends about prospects of having children. Already as teens, friends were thinking about whether or not they would have children and what it would mean. I do not well recall those conversations but do know I had them myself, and enivisioned what it would be like to be a parent with a number of friends. Later, the conversations changed character. I noticed my male friends seemed to inherit a view about creating legacy, and wanted to justify some desire to have children. Each time hearing friends tell me about their want of children for legacy, it seemed very selfish. They appeared to think it was selfish themselves.

Elsewhere I’ve written that the desire to have kids, seems, in retrospect, a kind of intelligence test. A mark of foolishness. People have very little knowledge about what their children will be like, look like, want to do, and decide for themselves. It is purely imaginative what people think their lives will be like as parents. Not knowing this in advance is something quite pathetic in my view. If teenagers were asked to draw their potential families and describe what their children will be like as adults, it would be laughable later. There would be no resemblance.

Since there would be no resemblance, what is this legacy idea exactly?

Additionally, there is this confusing traditional perspective in the West that success in the world ought to be the result of merits. People who start out with inheritance or large amounts of money from parents seem later to need to make persuasive efforts at convincin others that their success really was theirs. In other words, they have to try to appear that they did not have a legacy from their parents even while they are living. Conversely, there are people who have very little while young, and probably want to escape any idea that they have a negative legacy of sorts, of being “born into a poor or bad family heritage”. On the extreme in the other direction, there is agreement again, that legacy is not wanted. Instead, coming from a poor heritage, however, people can argue more effectively that they really didn’t have much to start with, and that their success, which is a rarity coming from their upbringing, is really their own, and from their own work. That is if they are not self-satisfied with less, feeling like it was of their own effort to be only modestly successful, which is still quite pleasant. Some with inheritance cannot maintain their own position in life and have to think about the fact that they supposedly received legacy and had demerits moving them in the opposite direction.

Oddly all above are dumb, in that they still fall for the same ridiculous ideas about legacy in the planning of their own families, and thinking that, their justified merits will be carried along somehow by their children. But it was seen already above, that the most prodigious families will later be the most numerous separate families all wanting their own legacies?

Strangely, in a culture that believes in equality, and wants more equality, is willing to completely disregard legacy, and inheritance from their politics. In my opinion inheritance and legacy in wealth is really abhorrent. I myself do not believe in equality, but do want people to be well cared for, and really have their merits be recognized. It appears that merits would be more easily recognized, if all are initially cared for collectively, and can each argue that all starting points were more similar than they ever were before, in a tradition of legacy and inheritance. If inheritance were eliminated, wealth in newer generations would be totally of collective distribution. The means of distribution can be considered carefully, and I’m not recommending anything in particular here, because this conversation is about my own relationship planning. Here I will ask the reader to notice, that the benefits of our cultures and our nations do seem quite connected with shared possessions and organizations, which do not seem very well organized, but nevertheless provide very good benefits. Public libraries, museums, schools, and state colleges, and various subsidized resources, and welfaristic programs do quite a lot to benefit everyone. I think Parks have been a very massive benefit to my life, and that is a collective inheritance that has very little to do with private wealth.

In my life, I prefer not to have children for many reasons, but one of those reasons is definitely about the falsity of legacy, and the other is about the inability to really plan the characteristics of that my family would have. I’m not going to pretend that my visions would be a reality.

Additionally, not having a legacy means I am not deluded about my own productions and their value. I have a more clear idea about my contributions. My contributions are more clearly connected with a sane political view. I can really reject inheritance (and I’ve done so legally already, sending documents to my parents that I do not want any money every and no inheritance of any kind from them). By doing this, I am doing something that matches my ethical worldview. I will not, like them, be providing an inheritance (although they might to their other children). My money, if there is any remaining at my death, would be recycled into the public funds somehow. These public funds would be distributed into various programs, and probably poorly. However, people who receive them will receive them from the public, and from at least one person who does not conceive their benefits to arrive from someone who thinks they owe them something in return. Their merits really will be even closer to their own.

Additionally, there is negative legacy that is actual and not usually considered as such. Creation of children is the primary way that waste and pollution and destruction to the environment occurs. Imagine having a family of 8 children like my grandparents on my fathers side. In a few generations, they may have produced a thousand or more offspring. While their offspring would have completely forgotten their wordlview, and maybe shunned it, there are the real physical ramifications of having many homes, many vehicles, and much trash created. The measure of destructiveness of people is related to the existence of people and their numbers. Disgustingly, people will claim they have a positive legacy, and then act as though their mating practices have not decided the path of destruction ahead. If someone has no children at all, they really can do nearly anything they wish burning fuels for energy, building homes, and creating waste and pollution. They will never produce as much pollution as a family with a single child would.

In my life I spent far too much time being extremely economical and careful about waste, with the definite exception of the burning of fuels for my extensive travels (even though I was also a bicycle commuter to in part to reduce consumption that would be used with regular vehicular commutes, to and from work and other locations). Nowadays, however, I have very little concern. Not only do these families that will create large populations of people not concern themselves with waste of their children, they seem very little concerned in reality and in practice to do anything useful to make themselves more efficient. My efficient times have been a great contrast with the normal parent who thinks themselves economical at all.

I will also not be having children for these reasons provided above. It is freeing to remove responsibility from myself for destrution to the environment, while simultaneously making my life easier, by being able to be mostly unconcerned with waste and energy efficiency. I also don’t have to pretend that any measures I could take would be effective. Having taken those measures, I know them to be postures, and socially recommended ways at failingto be economical. It is becoming a part of a poorly devised plan that does not really exist in an efficient form.

By not having children, one can be

1. vastly less destructive, and
2. more honest
3. less deluded about legacy
4. more consistent in politics

Inheritance is something that is very poorly considered in politics. It is a sad oversight. Elimination of this part of legacy, people would have more resources who need them. It would make discussions about minimum wages and the like easier. Social programs would be more readily funded. Conversations about the benefits and priveleges of wealth would be much less interesting. People wouldn’t be born into riches in the same way as they are now, as funds are shifed from the private sphere to collective wealth.

Relating this conversation to my personal form, and my plans for relationships, it is clear then that I have no interest in, and have not had interest in, tracking anything related to kids. If I were to become a teacher again, I would include youths potentially in my relationship plans, however that is a risky thing to me too, for completely different reasons relating to risks of false accusations and forms of personal degeneration (Parenting is fundamentally connected to molestation and pedophilia, and being too close to kids creates risks of becoming parent-like).

The primary way that children figure into my plans is that I intend to avoid them entirely, except to see them in public on occasion, which makes one feel more close to civilization, and a normal social life. I accept them in entertainment, and on social media, to an extent, because of their liveliness and ability to create fun and excitement. It could be that I would prefer youthful television to the television of older generations, except where it would be informative or on nature.

Legacy is not something I’m working on for myself via a family. I have mentioned that I would like my views on ethics to have some influence, while recognizing, as I’ve stated elsewhere, that most writing is for the self, and a few interested readers at most. It is too rare that a large number of people would read someone’s writing, and most of my writing is inaccessible anyhow, because of a big contrast between ordinary traditional viewpoints and my own. I do prefer to have an audience to my ideas, and that some influence occurs confirming my ideas. However, even those cannot last many thousands of years in the future, or millions of years, in a way that would trace to my knowable persona. Having had influence is not really a legacy either, if nobody knows at all who it came from. I still, however, would like to benefit society even if I am not knowable, and my name is never mentioned. This appears also to be view starkly different from one supporting and believing in legacy.

An additional concluding remark comes to mind though. One mission of this work is to find a way to have lasting recordings from human beings. Some approach to making one’s thoughts and one’s autobiography, and images and media something that can be archived and continue to exist into the distant future. This means I am actualy working on something that would make legacy more realizable, but only in the sense that not everything that one has created, and not all that was written about one’s life vanishes too quickly. If I am able to create a system such that a few million people are able to archive their information for a few thousand years, then I would have contributed something to legacy. However, I still recall, even while working on such efforts, that people need to be interested enought to look at something again later, and if everyone had everything recorded, nobody would likely look at anyone in particular, unless they were really interesting. Supposing one trillion people were archived, a reading of one of those one trillion would have a probability potentially, of one in one trillion, or less. This means that information would die in a similar way gradually like human life, and become completely unusable and inaccessible, like dissolving fossils. However, it means along the way there are many uses unlocked regarding that information, and it is very pleasant to think that one can really leave after death, many artifacts indicating truths about one’s life. This may not be available for an extremely long time, or with great interest for long, but it will exist. In this way, it isn’t unlike a book placed in a library. Most books in libraries are never read or picked up. Some may have negative value, though. So there is the possibility, that the existence of a life story will be of negative value too, than positive. However, that is an unknown and relates to problems of interest to solve.

It would be very useful if we determined that a complete history of one’s life is not worth creating, or know very specifically when that would be. Becasue then, one might put no effort into that and enjoy other things instead.

[Written without edits or spell check. Finished 7:54 pm, in 1 hour and 7 minutes]

[Minor edit added at 8:17 pm]

## Filtration and Imagination, or Higher Order Attention

Earlier I wrote a small booklet by hand on an initial strategy for managing attention, for the purpose of ensuring that one’s life is more risk free, and more inclusive of what is needed to satisfy curiosities and create good quality knowledge:

Imagination and Filtration, the Dark Green Notebook

This notebook has been transcribed into type but needs editing to its more complete version.

Here it is included for the reason of attaching it to the strategy which is used for personal data collection, and reminders about various prioritized categories of life which relate to planning, and self-reminding. The work on the other small book Rational Times had the purpose of recording for myself, in better mental moments, what might be used as a guide when remembered at other times in my life. The Parsonal Form and Life Categories/Priorities, was to proide a basic technological mechanism for self-training on the basis of what was considered in more rational moments. The idea is that people have times in which they are really more rational about their own behavior. They are free of certain compulsions and desires that activate unwanted habits. Training is required to undo those habits or replace them with alternative habits. These two works put these two parts together, and for several years I actively trained and recorded data on my own behavior and life and connected those behaviors with my thoughts I had in more rational moments.

Higher Order Attention and Imagination and Filtration, is a more detailed treatment of life-design that pertains particularly well to relationships, because relationships are the sources of both risks we want to avoid and stimulation we want to receive. In my life I had contrary inclinations to live in nature, away from people, in an aesthetic context, detached from people and away from the risks they create; and to be in an environment that is sufficiently rich, and probably urban, to have access to places which provided new and interesting things to learn, and people to observe and have near. People provide stimulation in the sense that they create culture, and the best parts of culture have investments which connect with urban living. Also people provide stimulation because they are living and without them what would remain is culture without living examples. People also want to be near people. It is strange to be away from people for too long. Stimulation from people provide little things that are not well understood about what we want in our learning experiences, which include most experiences.

[More to be added soon]

Mattanaw I., formerly "Christopher Matthew Cavanaugh"

I am a retired executive, software architect, and consultant, with professional/academic experience in the fields of Moral Philosophy and Ethics, Computer Science, Psychology, Philosophy, and more recently, Economics. I am a Pandisciplinarian, and Lifetime Member of the High Intelligence Community.

Articles on this site are eclectic, and draw from content prepared between 1980 and 2024. Topics touch on all of life's categories, and blend them with logical rationality and my own particular system of ethics. The common theme connecting all articles is moral philosophy, even if that is not immediately apparent. Any of my articles that touch on "the good and virtuous life" will be published here. These articles interrelate with my incipient theory of ethics, two decades in preparation. This Book and Journal is the gradual unfolding of that ethic, and my living autobiography, in a collection of individual books that fit into groups of book collections.

This Book and Journal is already one of the largest private websites and writings ever prepared, at nearly 1 million words, greater than 50,000 images and videos, and nearly one terabyte of space utilized. The entire software architecture is of my creation. Issues of the book for sale can be found under featured. These texts are handmade by myself, and are of excellent quality, and constitute the normal issues of my journal that can also be subscribed to. The entire work is a transparent work in progress. Not all is complete, and it will remain in an incomplete state until death.

I welcome and appreciate constructive feedback and conversation with readers. You can reach me at mattanaw@mattanaw.com (site related), cmcavanaugh@g.harvard.edu (academic related), or christopher.matthew.cavanaugh@member.mensa.org (intelligence related), or via the other social media channels listed at the bottom of the site.

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