The Territory

[Guest]

This may be a little abstract and rambling but it represents a substantial piece of my philosophy. I hope you can get some value from it, or maybe better understand why I do some of the things I do, if nothing else.


Imagine a landscape. Here is where you are, and there's where you want to get to. And there is a journey involved. The journey is not easy and there are obstacles and hazards along the way.

Now imagine there is someone else at your desired destination, and they are loudly and proudly talking about how great it is to be at their (and your) desired destination. It does not make your journey any easier. But it may increase your motivation to make the journey, rather than sitting on your fat lazy ass.

Now imagine a third person, also at your desired destination, who has made a long and painful journey to get there, but from a different starting point. Let's say he constructed a detailed map along the way that carefully chronicles the path he took. This may or may not be helpful. It could be helpful if the journey ahead of you bears some degree of similarity to his. But it could be [i]harmful[/i] if his journey required the [i]opposite[/i] of what you need to do. He may have gone south to avoid the alligators, while you need to go north to not be eaten.

Now imagine a fourth person, who has collected the maps of many explorers, but has never made any journeys himself. He may be able to point you along the general path from your current position to your desired destination. But the maps are necessarily missing many features, and the map collector has no real experience to assist you when you encounter an unmapped hazard. The problem is not that it's a bad map. The problem is that, fundamentally, no map can ever contain all of the experience of the journey, or even close to it.

The best guide is a person who has started from (or at least passed through) your current location, and ultimately arrived at your desired destination. Such a person not only has the high-level map for your route, but more importantly he can draw from personal experience when you encounter one of the inevitable unmapped obstacles.


Everyone who tries to get better is an explorer. Outside the community, there are horrible, worse-than-nothing maps from Hollywood, Maxim, and probably your mother. Within the community, people share maps that have been painfully earned through experience. Each explorer's map covers only a fragment of the territory, but together, most of the territory will have at least some coverage. But maps are not the same as experience, and while explorers share their fragments, they can never gain first hand experience of others' paths. So even after extensive map exchange, each person can only have expert status relative to his own past path, and map collector status relative to everything else. The difference between "I did" and "I read about" is not a small one.

Incidentally, stitching the fragments together is not at all a simple process, because there are contradictions and inconsistencies along the seams, and even the question of knowing where you are might not be easy (more on that later). There is no GPS.

But for the sake of argument, suppose such a unified map could be constructed. Even such a "perfect" map omits the majority of the explorers' collective experience. The far greater value in the community is the availability of [i]individuals[/i] who just might have traveled near enough to your location to be helpful. It's not in a book, and it can't be in a book because the assistance of a guide who has already traveled your path (or near enough to it) is necessarily interactive -- an ongoing [i]dialogue[/i] that continues for the duration of your journey.


What if you don't know where you are, but you have a stack of maps, each of which is one person's fragment. Perhaps not knowing where you are, you make optimistic guesses. "Perhaps I'm at the starting point of this map," you say, taking the first one. You attempt to follow it and you nearly get eaten by alligators. Then, with your remaining hand, you say, "Hm, perhaps I'm at the starting point of [i]this[/i] one", taking the second map. Then you fall off a cliff. And by the way, you're not at the same starting point you were originally. You may be farther from the destination, and it's possible to wander into territory where, for all intents and purposes, none have gone before. Not only are you worse off, but you're on your own. I've seen people attempt one method after another and fail at them all, apparently without realizing that their own starting point was even relevant! It's of paramount importance! Know Thyself! And then, once you know where you are, discriminate among the available map fragments and be selective as to which other explorers you take advice from.


Now suppose you wanted to know everything there was to know about the territory, but for whatever reason you cannot actually explore certain parts of interest. Perhaps you are not 5'1" tall, and there is no way for you to experience the associated psychological struggle. Perhaps you are extremely extroverted and outgoing, and you want to become an expert on approach anxiety. I would argue that you can never gain explorer-level knowledge of those areas. You can assemble the maps of others, and study them in exquisite detail. But apart from where you have been, you can never be an expert on the territory. You can only be an expert on what has been said about the territory.

The same is true of so many other things too. Like poker, for example. You can read about poker, and even watch people play poker for days and days. Rewind and watch in slow-motion if you like. But without playing, you do not become an expert at poker. You become an expert on what people look like when they play poker.

The good news is that this can still be very useful, and librarians can still offer very constructive help, but it will never be equivalent to advice from someone who has traveled the same path.


I believe the latent human experience and face-to-face dialogue within the lair (this or any other) is unequivocally the most valuable asset. I also believe that even though online discussion within the wider international community has the potential of tapping a broader base of experience, it necessarily lacks essential attributes of a true dialogue between explorers and is much more like map-sharing.

The bottom line is that a lair is a key unit for establishing dialogue between explorers, which enables them to learn from each other in ways they can never learn from maps. And that face-to-face meetings are absolutely essential to that dialogue and consequently essential to the value.