State Control and the Human Experience

During my career I’ve had many discussions with lots of different people from all over the globe, coming up with ideas for products, features, and patents — and also many discussions about how things could play out. It’s part of my job. A few years back, a team I was a part of had a brainstorm session over vehicle operating systems — the computer inside the car that could one day make it drive on its own.

One discussion that was particularly interesting is what would happen if a vehicle gets into a crash or breaks down — what would happen to the data and the system?

We discussed something called ‘state control’, where the system will save the current state of data from the vehicle at the time of shutting down — this is how black boxes work in aircraft.

This took me down a rabbit hole of thought about our human mental state. Whether you believe in life after death or not, let’s ponder this. Let’s just act as if there is life after death. What if at the time of death, our mental state is saved somewhere. Then after death, there is a space where our state is held until we are somehow activated again for the state to change. What and where is a matter of your belief system at this point; but never-the-less, there is some sort of process that takes place that is not completely understood.

With this thought in mind, I went on a journey. Although all data is good data, quality data is even better. So a few years back, I made the conscious decision to believe that there is something after this life. I also made a decision to attempt to live my experience of this life at my most optimal mental state, and to treat others so as to raise their mental state, or at least not make it worse.

It turns out both of these are extremely difficult-especially in this culture where we are constantly trying to find, invent, and tweak new processes, ways of working, tools, and attitudes in an ever-changing environment. I’m probably not the best at living at the most optimal state at all times. But I’ll continue to practice. If for nothing else but to know myself, what makes me tick, and using that knowledge towards understanding others.

All I can say is, each individual should know themselves in such a way that we want the best for ourselves —loving the good things about us, accepting our quirks, and being aware of our weaknesses.

By knowing and loving who we are, only then, will humanity will ever have the ability to know and understand what other people have to go through to do the same.