Navigating the Fog 🌁

LIFE ON URTH - Episode 084

Garden and Fog

One of my deepest convictions can be put very simply: my world consists only of consciousness.

Everything I experience—colors, sounds, doubts, chairs—appears there. There is no other place where perception could occur. Even the idea of an “external world” appears only as content of consciousness.

Reality is far too complex for a finite being to fully comprehend it. And yet we face the task of navigating it—for that, we have to represent it.

The problem of representing the infinite complexity of the world is solved cleverly within our consciousness. There are two fundamental categories of the psychological landscape: the known and the unknown.

The known lies within the beam of our attention. It is named, described, categorized, and feels predictable. It is the mythological garden, surrounded by a wall that protects us from the forces of nature beyond it.

The unknown resembles the fog of war in video games: not empty, but indeterminate. Until we explore it, the unknown remains in a peculiar suspension between reward and threat—a superposition.

Attention Is Moral

Our perception is not a window onto the world, but a tool for navigation. It did not evolve to depict the truth, but to give us an advantage in the game of evolution. It does so by enabling us, as finite beings, to develop strategies for interacting with an infinitely complex world.

We can never perceive everything at once. Our consciousness must choose the tiny slice of the world it focuses on—and exclude everything else. Every act of attention is therefore a moral decision.

Attention is selection.
Selection is exclusion.
Exclusion is valuation.

The automation of these decisions in everyday life does not relieve us of responsibility; it only shifts it into the past. Then it is our learning history, our culture, and our evolution that decide for us—in the form of automatic thoughts, feelings, and actions. When the unknown appears, there are three basic automatic intuitions: flight, freeze, and exploration.

Attention and Identity

I can still feel the inner tension that came with the lack of a central identity in my recent past: the impulse to flee back into familiar territory. A stable and communicable identity is necessary for (social) survival; its loss initially causes unpleasant feelings. I had been a pupil, then a student, then a doctor—but what was I supposed to be now?

Last week, I answered this question in the newsletter: This year, I will become a philosopher.

Because today constantly turns into yesterday, new decisions and experiences allow us to change our future. I am now working toward looking back at the end of the year on a renewed past—one that stabilizes me in the identity of a philosopher.

True identity is not a label we give ourselves. It is a condensation of what we direct our attention to over long periods of time, and whatnot.

In this sense, identity is not a possession, but a process. It emerges from repetition. From what we repeatedly do in the face of the unknown.

The Inner Map

Consciousness works like stories and maps: it enables finite systems to act within infinite complexity. It condenses information about the world and about our role within it.

Through this condensation, the world presents itself to us as an abstraction, as a narrative we must navigate on the basis of an eternally incomplete map.

Attention decides which story is told on which map. Identity is the long-term form of attention.

Which of your identities would you like to strengthen in 2026?
What does that mean for your attention? 🌁

✒️ Quote of the Week: “To live at all means to be in danger.” -Friedrich Nietzsche

🎧 Song of the Week: After not DJing at all last year, I'm back at it now with this Ethnic Deep House Mix!

I want to expand the format of this newsletter by responding to comments or questions from readers.
Of course, I’ll need some comments and questions first 😂 So I’d love to hear from you!

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Was there an idea you found particularly intriguing?
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All the best,

Adrian / Urth

Can’t wait until next week’s edition? Check out my essays.