Compounding Integrity

Jonathan Livingston Seagull (JLS) is a book about Compounding Integrity.

I would recommend this book 5/5 times for those who like thinking about curiosity as a guide, independent thinking and/or those who believe that waking up in the morning with excitement for day ahead is attainable.

JLS is a seagull, but he is "no ordinary bird" because he loves to fly. He is not like the other birds because all the other birds live to find and eat food. They live a life embodied by the phrase, "a means to an end." They fly only to find food in the ocean and fly back to shore. They do not experience joy in flying itself; they do not love flying for the sake of flying.

It becomes clear early on that JLS has a hunger to learn. Because he feels great joy in flying, he likes to experiment with flight to learn new things about flying, and he does just that, typically without any fear of failure.

His growth in the art of flight wasn't just a straight line up-and-to-the right, however. After one particularly bad crash, negative self-talk enters JLS's mind. He realizes he is a normal seagull, "limited by my nature. If I were meant to learn so much about flying, I'd have charts for brains. If I were meant to fly at speed, I'd have a falcon's short wings..." He decides to rejoin the Flock.

He feels better to be part of the ordinary Flock. Life is easier. No challenge and no failure.

Then one night, flying relaxingly but mindlessly in the dark (gulls don't fly in the dark) he hears a warning voice telling him to stop flying in the dark. The voice says he is not meant to be flying in the dark, because he doesn't have things like a falcon's short wings. There, he has a revelation related to his last big failure: a falcon's short wings. "That's the answer! What a fool I've been! All I need is a tiny little wing, all I need is to fold most of my wings and fly on just the tips alone! Short wings!"

JLS then goes on to quickly learn to increase his flight speed, resulting in the Breakthrough, which is a seagull speed record. He thinks the Flock will be thrilled to hear about the Breakthrough, but instead JLS is met with scorn and a casting of guilt. Realizing the Flock "might as well have been stone," and facing rejection from the Flock, he goes his separate way. JLS "was not sorry for the price that he had paid" and "discovered that boredom and fear and anger are the reasons that a gull's life is so short, and with these gone from his thought, he lived a long fine life indeed."

Shortly thereafter, JLS makes his way to to his next world beyond Earth, where he will "level up" again.

I'll leave the summarizing there, which happens to be the summary of Part 1 of 4 Parts.

Takeaways, ideas, quotes and questions (TIQQ) from the rest of the book:

• There's no reason to accept the ordinary just because it is simply observed as ordinary; you don't have to be part of the Flock just because that's what most gulls do and think they "should" do. The Flock kills freedom
• Living with vitality and creativity and joy is attainable, and everything you need to know about getting there starts from within you
• If you're doing what you love to do, you're not astray. "We can be free! We can learn to fly!"
• Self-limiting beliefs, especially those with the message that you don't have the born-with tools to succeed at what you want to do, are unnecessary obstructions to freedom. Instead, study those who are best at doing what you want to learn, find another way, but keep trying and practicing
• Learning happens through small experiments, and they can be fun and whimsical
• If you have joy in an activity, you'll have an inner desire to constantly learn without fear of failure, and you'll care about the long-term direction you're going
• There are different stages, or worlds, of learning. Each stage has a sense of "leveling up" where you're able to see more, feel more, than the earlier stages. "We choose our next world through what we learn in this one."
• Regarding approaching the next level: "You will begin to touch heaven, Jonathan, in the moment that you touch perfect speed. And that isn't flying a thousand miles an hour, or a million, or flying at the speed of light. Because any number is a limit, and perfection doesn't have limits. Perfect speed, my son, is being there." [bold added]
• Is the author saying that Perfection is a feeling or state of being that is above consciousness? That it's out of body? Don't let your mind limit itself to the boundaries of your body?
• All you need to know is already within you. "True nature lived...[is] everywhere at once across space and time." "To fly as fast as thought, to anywhere that is, you must begin by knowing that you have already arrived."
• Kindness and love is the highest level of being and living? The "most powerful and fun" thing to do is to "...fly up and know the meaning of kindness and love." A sage (Chiang), before disappearing, "exhorting them to never stop their learning and their practicing and their striving to understand more of the perfect invisible principle of all life...'keep working on love.'" And the way JLS demonstrates his love is to teach other gulls who may also benefit from recognizing that a life of freedom is out there for the taking
  • What are other ways to "work on love" other than teaching? How else to give?
• This is the essence of Integrity? "Each of us is in truth an idea of the Great Gull, an unlimited idea of freedom, and precision flying is a step toward expressing our real nature."
  • What is the Great Gull? Spirituality? Connected consciousness?
• Pushing yourself to the limits of your current ability is where the growth happens
• "The only true law is that which leads to freedom. There is no other." There are no laws of the Flock.
• When the Flock talks about JLS, they say that if he is not the Son of the Great Gull Himself, then he is a thousand years ahead of his time. JLS says "...this kind of flying has always been here to be learned by anybody who wanted to discover it; that's got nothing to do with time." Freedom can be discovered by anyone; it is not other worldly.
• We struggle to remove the limitations from ourselves, in our minds. "Why is it that the hardest thing in the world is to convince a bird that he is free, and that he can prove it for himself if he'd just spend a little time practicing? Why should that be so hard?"
• JLS as an instructor, talking to Fletcher Seagull: "You need to keep finding yourself, a little more each day, that real, unlimited Fletcher Seagull. He's your instructor. You need to understand him and practice him." [bold added] Everything you need is within you
  • He's talking about Compounding Integrity?
• Things in nature are cyclical, like the short-lived golden age of more recognition from the Flock that maybe there actually is something to flying and freedom, but then the ensuing fall as they became distracted by mimicking and worshiping the ways of JLS rather than practicing for themselves
  • They became fixated on little details about JLS and how he flew, leading to lots of talking and no flying. But this misses the point. The point is JLS showed them they could fly...that they should just start flying and discover flight for themselves
  • As I was reading, a parallel I couldn't help but think of is the infatuation with Warren Buffett by like-minded aspiring investors. What does he use as the discount rate? What is the appropriate price to pay in terms of discount to intrinsic value? What's the highest multiple he would pay for this or that? What gross margin is acceptable for this?
  • Admiration can be a self-limiting distraction
• How did the cycle turn again, back to more flying? Curiosity. "Because they were curious, they began experimenting with flight, though they never used that word. It's not flight...it's just a way of finding what's true."
• Not believing until seeing is another self-limiting belief that prevents practice and simply starting on the path to flying (freedom). Anthony Seagull couldn't believe the Breakthrough, he thought it was a fairy tale. It defied logic. Flying (freedom) like that isn't possible
• In a subsequent suicide attempt (?), he nosedives from two thousand feet, only to find a comrade in high-speed flight leading to amazement there was actually another seagull flying at that speed
• Anthony Seagull "was awake and alive for the first time in his life, inspired."