Living on the Curve

 Originally written: 3/14/17

Living life on the curve. What does it really mean? The basics comes down to this:

Principle 1 - The earth provides a 7-billion-person sample size which means that every person falls on a bell curve somewhere, right?

Principle 2 - There are variable curves and robust curves in life. For example, personal traits/attributes are more dynamic, as the principal size is oneself. A more robust bell curve is something such as height, income, education, etc. revolving around genetic factors and sociofactors.

Principle 3 - Changes in dynamic curve may have or have not any impact on more robust cell curves.

But how do changes in the curve happen then? Is it a matter of changing the right dynamic variables, or is it changing enough dynamic variables?

2021 additions

I remember vividly how this thought came to be. My first large professional setback happened, and I didn’t take it very well and fell into a large slump where I didn’t write for some time. This was the second thing I wrote after it was done, but this time was filled with working 16 hour shifts every day at work for 5 weeks straight. I remember being very tired and fatigued around this time too, and searching for answers as to why it seemed like I couldn’t’ break ahead. To further elaborate, here’s an excerpt from the day before:

I notice the changes from the last blow to the ego. I see it, the bags under my eyes have turned a slight red, as well, I find them to persist longer even after coffee. I don't know why. Well, I do know why, but I didn’t think it would be this bad. Other than that, the other effects are mostly behavioral. I work longer than usual without complaint, I do feel like I’m just going through the motions right now and I have lost interest in a lot of things, socially mostly.

This idea of being on a universal curve was a sort of cope as well as a grim rationalization of what I thought was going on. It’s a sort of twisted version of predestination where you have no real idea of where your standing in society really is, and that at some point, all your work and progress would be pulled out from under you as you approached where your place on the curve would be for you to be stuck there for the rest of your life as you become the statistic. These two writings, are probably my darkest ones to date. My drawings definitely reflect it. I don’t really draw figures like this anymore actually…I’m not sure why I stopped….

Otherwise, I don’t really hold on to this view anymore. It’s true that we all fall on bell curves, and that we are not that unlikely to fall into big data trends. However, your position in the curve can definitely change, but the overall shape of the bell curve will tend to be the same. It’s likely that large degrees of slanting on either direction of the bell curve is what leads to a lot of our sources of large-scale misery rather than it causing distinct misery among people who try to break out of a fixed condition in the curve.