I was sipping my cup of cacao this morning, scrolling through my daily oracle reading on TrueSight, when the hexagrams hit me with a quiet intensity. "After Completion" (63) speaks of success in small matters but warns of disorder at the end if perseverance falters. Then there’s "Approach" (19), promising supreme success if you keep pushing forward. It’s a strange duality—beginnings full of promise, endings teetering on chaos. As I mulled over this, my mind drifted to a broader observation about human behavior, one that’s been nagging at me lately: on the aggregate, we’re predictable as a species, but zoom in to the individual level, and it’s a wild, unpredictable mess.
This tension—between the big picture and the personal—reminded me of a recent chat with my friend Fadi. We were riffing on the idea of life reviews, those moments of reflection most people save for New Year’s. Fadi threw out a gem: “Hear hear! I think we need more NY holidays, ppl shouldn’t wait 1 whole year to review their lives.” I chuckled and shot back, “Why not have an AI handle the daily review of life? It could just run in the background, like another Black Mirror episode.” His response cut deeper than I expected: “My suspicion is this is a cultural (more specifically human) problem, not a tech problem. Black Mirror assumes sometimes the human will listen to good advice and take it.”
That got me thinking—and we went back and forth. I pointed out that everyone’s on their own hero’s journey, and Fadi countered that while you can’t force change, you can help people be more informed, directly or indirectly. I suggested presenting an “empty frame”—a structure or perspective they can fill with their own meaning. But Fadi pushed further: “Do you think people’s mindset can change given an event (or series of events)? If yes, then perhaps it’s more than just giving them a frame.” That hit a nerve. I fired back with a question of my own: “What gives you the right to interfere with their beliefs and way of life?”
That question lingered. It’s not just personal—it’s historical. The dynamic of one party assuming they know better and should impose their will on others is the root of so many conflicts. Look at recent news: explosions in Venezuela, or the assassination of Qasem Soleimani by the U.S. These are modern echoes of “might makes right,” a framework I remember wrestling with in a political science course back in college. It’s a blunt tool—power dictating truth. Then there’s the subtler variant: treating human cognition as something to be nudged or shaped, using principles of persuasion to elicit change, like what I’ve read about in Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini. It’s sneaky, effective, but how far down that road do you go before it clashes with your own values?
I keep coming back to Bodhidharma’s story for contrast. After arriving in China, he realized the emperor didn’t grasp his philosophy. Instead of forcing the issue, he sat facing a wall for nine years—authentically embodying his truth, letting resonance draw others to him. That’s the opposite of interference. It’s a quiet power: live your path, and those who vibe with it will find you. Others? They’re on their own journey. I’ve met so many people whose mental models and worldviews are so alien to mine, it takes real effort to even scratch the surface of their context. And even then, it’s just that—surface.
Collaboration, Boundaries, and the Game of Trust
This ties into some of the work I’ve been doing with TrueSight DAO and my reflections on collaboration. Key observation: collaboration has a lifespan. That lifespan depends on value alignment and the mission at hand. When values align, collaborators can stick together across multiple missions for years. When they don’t, fissures surface mid-mission, often leading to failure. Sometimes, even with aligned values, life pulls people in different directions—new circumstances, separate paths, but still rooted in the same core beliefs.
What’s worked for me to extend collaboration lifespans is defining clear boundaries. I’ve had to check my own impulses to overstep—whether it’s pushing too hard or getting overly entangled. Lately, I’ve noticed the most effective way to handle others crossing boundaries is to state mine upfront. If they cross anyway, I don’t react—I just stick to protocols I’ve designed to keep positive control over my own scope of work. That’s critical, especially in low-resource environments like mine. Waiting on a collaborator who doesn’t deliver burns cycles I can’t afford. Early on, I got stuck in those situations a lot, especially in decentralized, highly collaborative spaces with no central coordination. It was frustrating, and worse, wasteful.
Now, my default is self-sufficiency. If a collaborator doesn’t come through, I’ve got a backup ready. I also avoid taking on scopes where I don’t control most of the resources—sure, the impact might be smaller, but the execution blueprint is tighter, less fragile to external chaos.
Assessing Collaborators in a Decentralized World
Another piece of this puzzle is assessing collaborators. In a decentralized setup with no central authority, it’s smart to use spare cycles to gather data on how people handle specific scenarios. I picked this up watching early waves of Chinese businessmen in Singapore. Their ecosystem is tight-knit, often guarded. They’re cautious with new players—sometimes maintaining a polite silence and a smile when you touch on areas they’re not ready to reveal. Trust takes time, and even then, they only open up to a degree.
This is a stark contrast to my engineering background. In tech, especially in curated startup environments, collaboration is often transparent. We lay everything on the table—problems, constraints, ideas—and solve together. But in a decentralized space, it’s more like a game of Avalon or a prisoner’s dilemma. You don’t know a collaborator’s true intentions until they’re revealed. Game theory kicks in, and trust becomes a calculated risk.
Reflections for the Day: Frames or Interference?
So, circling back to that oracle reading—success in small matters, perseverance, disorder at the end if you lose focus. I see it in human behavior, in collaboration, in the tension between imposing a frame and letting people fill their own. I’m leaning toward Bodhidharma’s way: embody your truth, set your boundaries, and let resonance do the rest. But I can’t help wondering—how do you balance informing others with respecting their path? Where’s the line between offering a frame and interfering? And for you, reader, what’s your take—do events truly change mindsets, or are we all just locked into our own hero’s journeys, colliding or aligning by chance?
I’d love to hear your thoughts. Drop a comment or cast your own oracle reading at TrueSight and see what insights emerge. For me, I’m just sipping my cacao, sketching out the next mission, and keeping my boundaries sharp.
- Oracle Insights
- Human Behavior
- Collaboration
- Decentralized Systems
- Personal Reflections