So much of our current self help & wellness tools, medical & psychological interventions, spiritual practices, dating advice, business/financial coaching etc are, in their essence, big old system hacks. They attempt to hack our programming—to tweak our systems to work a bit better, to get us a little more.
And that’s cool.
Tweaks and hacks and new angles are great. Essential, even. Hackers are brilliant—they shake things up and help us see things differently. And we need that. Perhaps we especially need that now, in this topsy turvy world.
But hacks aren’t always sustainable; they don’t necessarily garner long term gains in and of themselves. Moreover, the tweaks aren’t always in our favor—they are sometimes tricks, for another’s gain. Plus, a hack might not take you out of a corrupted system—many are the equivalent of rearranging deck furniture on a sinking ship.
So we need discernment (good God, we need so much discernment these days!).
‘The Great Hack’ and ‘The Social Dilemma’ inspired this post—they each show the dubiousness of larger, system-wide hacks, illustrating how our data is constantly mined for others’ gain. Digital information-gathering is now a trillion-dollar a year industry, surpassing Big Oil.
And ‘hackers’ built these systems.
Each film reveals the empty result of hacking if there aren’t deeper desires & values driving the tweaks. As the movies show, there is huge fallout. The hackers at Google, Instagram, Facebook, Cambridge Analytica & Twitter have created a rudderless, chaotic set up for themselves, the companies they work for, and the public. We are more divided than ever—siloed by surface-level ideas & marketed-to within those silos.
System hacks built on system hacks, by system hackers.
So many hacks. 10 minutes a day for this exercise. 3 days of that superfood. Like button for this. Dislike for that. Another cosmetic product or protein powder. New tech gadgets, books, & mini-workshops. Not to mention the information hacks—political stories & celebrity gossip, in place of in-depth exploration.
All of this can end up in chaos, versus coherence.
Hacks don’t organize into something coherent if they aren’t used to crack open a true underlying movement—a natural rhythm in your body, or in larger systems. If the tweak doesn’t reveal a natural order, it ends up either 1) In the trash bin or 2) Hurting us.
Which brings me to another movie that deeply affected me this past year, ‘Free Solo.’ Alex Honnold was the first and only person to scale El Capitan in Yellowstone with no ropes and on his own (i.e. ‘free-solo-ing’). No free solo climber in the world is at the level Alex is.
What makes Alex different than his fellow climbers is that Alex might find a ‘hack’ for a new hold, but only insofar as it is part of a larger, fluid system of movement. He doesn’t ‘squeak one out,’ as some of his brethren do, just getting through a tough climb. Sadly, many of the climbers, who perhaps relied too much on tricky moves, have died. Though Alex learned from these types of climbers, he never climbed this way.
Alex explores each climb from scratch—learning through his whole body how to move with each challenge. He studied ‘El Cap’ for many years, learning every nook and cranny, writing down each foot and thumb-hold and redoing it countless times.
In his own words, “People think i just walk up to a sheer cliff and climb it with no knowledge of anything, when in reality there’s tons and tons of information out there, and I’m already well tapped into it.” Alex isn’t looking for the hack—he doesn’t do work-arounds.
It’s closer to say he discovered the mountain’s footholds.
Alex’s face at the end of Free Solo is one of my favorite images of anyone ever. He is a fully satisfied human. But it isn’t the ‘high’ of having done something tricky. The experience is almost all internal; he is exhibiting the joy of discovering what is possible, and the inhabiting of that possibility (see my blog, For the Sake of Itself, for more on this). And this inner joy has an inspiring energy to it. Think of a baby walking for the first time—so fun to witness!
So, a hack can get us out of an old loop of conditioning & into new territory. And that is fantastic. But it can’t climb the whole mountain. That’s not what hacks are meant to do.
We have a world built on fear. So much rushing and busyness, that hacks seem valuable. A ‘trick’ in our crazy, busy schedule seems a good idea.
One example in my world of healing and therapeutic tools is transcendental meditation (“TM"), a mantra-based meditation that is a bit different than the embodiment and stillness meditations I utilize. (Try my favorite stillness meditation from Kiran Trace here). TM is great—it calms the nervous system, helps people focus on something other than their worried thoughts, and creates a moment of rest in otherwise busy lives.
It disrupts the pattern, like a good hack does. Tons of celebrities utilize TM and sing its’ praises.
But I notice that folks keep banging away at TM, never quite integrating it with the rest of their lives. Like other hacks, it opens the door, but folks don’t always walk through it, into a different way of living.
Right now, during this time of COVID-19 and quarantine, we are hacking our ways of doing things. We’ve needed to tweak how we work, gather resources, connect with friends, and so much more.
There are a ton of hacks on offer. Some are dead ends. Some are new mountaintops.
For instance, my Embodied Together meditation project is now live-streaming on YouTube, every month. This was a hack for COVID, but it was something my partner and I wanted to do before quarantine; it was a door that opened up a new path for us—a discovery of what was possible.
This has been my reflection these months at home. I’m wondering if, as a society, we will engage with options beyond the hacks & work-arounds. What if we initiate systemic changes that align with the underlying, humane ways of doing things we are meant for. Could we create more humane…everything?
Starting with just you. Just me. As ever.
I think you and I are more like Alex than the jerks at Google. Even the jerks at Google are more like Alex, underneath. I think what we want are solid footholds, and that we are tired of tricks & fast-acting solutions.
The truly Great Hacks are the ones that—turns out—aren’t the least bit hacky. They feel like discoveries, not tricks. Expansive, but not chaotic. Light, but not spacey. Solid, but not constricted. Energizing, but not a ‘high.’ They open new paths, not dead ends.
Here are some old & new ‘great hack’ favorites of mine. What are yours?
And how about in your own life? What have you discovered?
Favorite great hacks:
Velcro
Matches
Byron Katie’s ‘The Work’/Inquiry
The use of metaphor/poetry
The drum
Embodiment meditation
The bicycle
Worms to rebuild soil
The bow & arrow
Silence
Mycellium (mushrooms) to break down industrial waste
Computer chip (works work like biological cell)
Swimming flippers
Squatty potty
The fountain pen
Stretched canvases & paints
Eyeglasses
Hiking shoes
Solar, wind & water power
Levers & pulleys
Woven baskets
Post it notes
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If you are interested in a truly Great Hack for COVID, from a doctor who deeply understands the virome & microbiome (and who predicted where our next virus would come from 2 years ago—new viral info emerges from environmental stress), check out this short webinar from Zach Bush MD (P.S. the hack is not a vaccine).