Fog vs Peak View - Clarity Above the Chaos
The first thing I noticed outside my window one morning in San Francisco was this thick, ominous fog.
I was lucky enough to catch this shot from the hill
Sure enough as I got on my bike and started pedaling, I could barely see 15 feet in front of me as I crossed the Golden Gate Bridge. Then something startling happened. The fog dissipated as soon as I reached the other side. Behind me was a dramatic scene: the entire city was bathed in thick, shifting clouds. Only the tips of the tallest buildings could be seen above the blanket of white.
Three thoughts connected simultaneously in this moment:
👓 Macro View: With crises like Ukraine and Afghanistan, we are often caught off guard when they happen and then when they do, we’re transfixed on them through a few narrow lens thanks to the bombardment of news and recency bias. This is the equivalent of moving myopically through the fog. In reality there are many parallel stories and perspectives going on as well as historical context for how we got here. This is why taking a step back to study history and less real time resources let’s us evaluate news with clearer lens.
🧘 Meditation: I meditate every morning to clear my head and ground myself before taking on the tasks of the day. Without it, I feel more agitated and distracted. After all, the human mind loves anticipating the future or reliving past memories. The thing it hates is being in the present. And if the present is all we have (and is indeed where life itself exists), then we don’t actually know how to live.
🌬️ Impermanence: During my meditation retreat, we had the concept of Anitya (the Pali word for “impermanence”) drilled into us. After cycling this same route across the bridge for nearly 2 weeks, I grew hyper aware of how much the landscape could change not only between days, but in mere minutes. This was most apparent this particular morning in how the mist rolled across the bridge, constantly appearing and drifting away. This was yet another reminder that everything changes - that we don’t always have to react to things, especially negative emotions, but simply develop the awareness and equanimity to observe them and allow the feelings to pass by themselves.
Nature once again proved to be my greatest teacher.
Fog vs Peak Framework
This also gave me a new framework to work with: Fog View vs Peak View. When analyzing information or talking to people about fast moving current events, I now ask myself if we’re having a Fog-level (immediate past, present, or future, first degree cause and effect, and emotional in nature, equivalent to 15-foot visibility) or Peak-level discussion (macro in scale and time, 2nd order thinking, and intellectual in nature, equivalent to being above the clouds).
Both are important and have their uses depending on the situation. For example, in my Ukraine Russia analysis, peak-level information from books, documentaries and informed macro thinkers give me more objective lens to view fog-level news. However, if I only focus on peak-level information, then I run the risk of being calcified from the real time human suffering that gives my work its purpose and meaning in the first place. Not only that, I might miss important signals that can only be found from 1st party accounts.
