Everything is an idea

I’m sitting in front of my Macbook Pro.
Which was once just an idea.

I’m here in the kitchen of my Denver home¹.
Which was once just an idea.

I’m writing a post or maybe a poem.
Writing down words that are given on loan
My goal and my purpose only partially known

All made of ideas²

Everything is an idea.

Look at anything in the world. It’s just an idea.

Or here, I’ll give you something to look at:

This is from a LinkedIn post, “The 10 Most Iconic Photographs of all Time, and the People Who Took Them.”

Let’s go through it.

Astronaut Neil Armstrong took the iconic shot known as The Moon-landing during the historic Apollo 11 mission to the moon. Though the event is frequently viewed as a solitary feat in human history, it is actually the result of innumerable efforts and years of hard work carried out across various eras of modern civilization.

The Apollo program started out as an idea. The Apollo 11 mission began as an idea.

The space suit that Buzz Aldrin is wearing started as an idea.

And Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong started out as ideas. Specifically, they started as ideas that their parents had. I don’t know if their parents put their ideas into words, like “Let’s have a child” or “Let’s fuck!” But whatever. Buzz and Neil started out as ideas.

This building was once an idea.

Here’s a building in Dublin³. It was once an idea. How it became a building went something like this…

Oh, wait. I’ve got an idea. I’ll let the building tell us in its own words.

“I was once an idea,” says the building.

“I first appeared in the mind of an Irish businessman. I have no idea what his name was. But, as I’ve heard the story told, he shared the idea with some colleagues and potential investors, who approved of it. Or me.

“Well, not me, exactly. I am different from that idea in the same way that you are different from the child you once were. And different from the zygote you once were. That original idea was something that grew, changed, evolved, transformed, was transformed into the idea that I am now.

“When two ideas combine, the result is also an idea. Ideas can be “realized” or “manifested.” To realize an abstract idea, it must be merged with less abstract ideas. For an idea to change, it must be “acted on” by other ideas.

“I was once a much simpler and fairly abstract idea: something like “a building over there.”

“As I evolved, I became more specific: “A five-story building with a glass facade and …”

“And then I merged with more ideas: the ideas of architectural design, the ideas of glass-making, the ideas of commercial real estate financing, the ideas of construction management.

“Drawings were made. Plans were established. Permits were issued. Materials appeared on site. People and machines went to work.

“All ideas.”

“And then what was once a very abstract idea became a building where people could put office furniture inside the building, work inside the building me, and pay rent to use the building.

“I had become that building.

“All of these things, of course, are ideas in their turn. Because everything is an idea."

There’s no limit to ideas.

Add an idea to an idea, and you’ve got an idea.

Take a bunch of ideas, summarize them, and guess what? An idea.

Some ideas can’t be realized. I think Godel’s work guarantees this.

Some ideas are paradoxical. I think this is a feature, not a bug. Paradoxical ideas are often very powerful.

Some ideas are too big to fit in a particular mind or other substrate for ideas. But you can always convert an idea into a lower-rez idea and make it fit.

And you can also extend your substrate. Some ideas are too big for my brain, so I’ve extended my mind into my blog.

I’ve tried to share some other ideas with other minds.

You can entertain any idea.

You can cultivate any idea.

You can imagine any idea.

You can adopt any idea.

You may not be able to conceive some ideas—but if you can say what idea you can’t conceive, then you’ve already conceived it.

Idea mode

Since I first saw that first building in Dublin as a collection of ideas, I’ve discovered “idea mode.”

It’s a viewpoint change.

I can “change mode” and see any object or part of the world as a collection of ideas.

Physical objects exist in space and time, but ideas are different.

Some are timeless, and others are time-relevant but not stuck in space and time like objects are.

Anyway, that’s idea mode.

Just another idea.

1. Technically, it’s Dana’s and Daniel’s home, but that ruins the rhyme scheme.

2. I did not start writing this as a poem or song or whatever. It was when my fingers started typing and I saw what was happening that I made it what it is—just an idea.

3. I was looking at a building in Dublin where the idea “this building is just a collection of ideas” first came to me. This is not that building.