Philosophy & The Internet Protocol

One trick for dark, tough, miserable days

Mar 04, 2026

I am, in fact, better trained at the Internet Protocol (IP) than philosophy. I’ve read the basics with Plato, Camus, Voltaire, a few Greeks, and latter day Europeans. And yet, on the darkest, toughest, most miserable mother-lovin’ days, it is the humble Internet Protocol that guides me.

When sending something out via the Internet Protocol, there are several components to the message, technically message packet. The message we send gets wrapped up and packages akin to the way an old style letter did (for any Danes reading, that now requires a subsequent history lesson on how to mail a letter). The package includes: the destination address, the sender’s address, the message, and some cool stuff to verify that the message is intact/complete by doing some simple math called a checksum. If any aspect of the message changes, the checksum wouldn’t remain valid. Kinda like anti-tamper tape on a box. I’ve simplified this which is fine.

One of the fun things that can happen is that a package (a packet, in fact) can get re-packaged with a new source and destination with the original packet encrypted thus obscuring the payload. Cool, but doesn’t really advance my discussion on really horrible, poopy-ass bad days.

Back to really horrible, poopy-ass bad days, it is here that I stand remembering thirty years of brutal travel and missions for various employers. While today’s version of poopy is different that past versions of poopy days. But we all get them.

On these days, I become the packet. Me = Packet

How does a packet transit the internet? Well, it doesn’t. It has no f’n idea where it is going. It has no f’n idea of where-ness at all. A packet is a humble, near-sighted, lonely little body in the world’s most crowded corridors. A packet is like a Rumba vacuum without any intelligence or sensors. It goes down the digital corridor of ethernet wires, fiber optic cables, radio waves, or other media until it bumps into a Thing. The Thing looks at our lonely, moving packet and sees only an address. The Thing knows little more except it know what local addresses are and it know where to send non-local traffic. The Thing doesn’t give actual directions with robust complexity. The thing can’t say, “go down the trail until you see a rock that looks like a bear then turn right; turn left at the bear that looks like a rock.” The Thing says: go left now (for local address) or go straight now (for non-local). Like riding the T’s Red Line without any map. You get on at Alewife, the northern terminus. Your address is Charles Street. At each stop, you get up, walk to the door and ask aloud: is this Charles Street? At exactly one place you’ll get a yes. All other stops offer a no. Without a map, you just ask every time: Is this my stop?” On a subway, or bus, this gets annoying to all humans. On the internet, it’s just the way through.

You travel a route. At the terminus of a route, you ask the Router, “Is this my stop?” If no, you plod on (often at or near the speed of light).

How does this relate?

I used to fly and travel a lot. I prefer to start at or before dawn, before the storms, before the delays. Often, my travel involved spanning continents. Stuff goes wrong: planes fail; cars fail; systems fail. Unlike the Packet, I do know my actual destination, and I can picture it in my head, on a map. I am slightly more human than the packet.

I eventually learned, that human sense of the world was my problem. The big map was my problem. Seeing potential issues was my problem. Like the Geni-Lift technology in Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide, seeing potential and seeing the real world led me to existential frustration.

I had to learn to be a Packet. I had but one destination (at a time). There was only the next destination and I am travelling in a tube of other packets who have other destinations. Honestly, I held my next destination as the only goal. If I can get to the airport, then I am at the airport. At the airport, I ask the airport, how do I get to my plane. I get several answers as I transit the big airport Router.

“Go to B Gates,” once found…

“Go to B12,” once found…

“Go to seat 29F,” once found…

“Go to entry door,” once found… ask for the next destination.

With this vision and mission-limiting discipline, there exists only one destination and only one question: Here? The Routers answer is either “yes”, or some arrow pointing down another corridor.

This has meant sleeping on my backpacks at an empty heliport in Iraq because the Router told me to wait there. This has meant landing in Miami with the Alaskan clothes I wore and no luggage (luggage packets got routed an alternate path).

Sometimes, as I have aged, this life-as-a-packet has served to get me out of bed because my destination was toilet. Once up, I had to have a new destination: shower. Once cleaner, a new destination: clothing. Sure, the day will fall apart. They day may eventually overwhelm me, my resources, my abilities. I know that because I’ve been overwhelmed. I’ve been tapped entirely dry. And I’ve seen my own abilities fail.

But often that one goal, one destination is sufficient to trudge forward. I’ve been a medic (urban and rural), a firefighter, and a member of a U.S. Army division in Iraq. On Tuesday September 11^th, 2001, I was in a windowless room with other government windowless room types. None of us were where we needed to be or ought to be. All of us were stuck with a destination and orders to return “soonest.” That happens. As a human, frustration boils to anger. As a humble packet, you look at the first destination asking if there is a way forward. If not, you lay down your bags, make a nest and sleep (sleep when you can, poo when you see a toilet, and keep 2000 calories on your body).

A few years ago (on my birthday), I pushed the elevator button with a three on it. My destination was written in blue ink on folder with my room key. It said: 324, meaning my destination was the third floor. This packet (me)recognized that without lights and movement in the elevator, my travel to the destination will be delayed. I lay down on the elevator floor with bags under my head and a book in my hand. I had a flashlight, food, water, essential hygiene products and the ability, if needed to camp comfortably in a hotel elevator – because I am a packet.

I am not flying much these days. And happy at home, but stuff do go wrong. I can entirely overwhelm myself by being human. Because I am human.

I can, occasionally, be a better human accepting myself as a packet. Hit one destination and ask “what’s next”. Then, if needed, lay on the floor for a while until finding a corridor there.

Clearly, I am not an internet packet.

I am human. There is that bit inside of me that says: “If any one of us is in the shit, then part of me is in the shit.” Here is me today, safe at home with snow melting on a March morning knowing that some part of me is in the Middle East because some part of me is there. Thirty years ago, I made a friend. We worked together. We played together. Then I got the call where I need to be her reference for clearances. I was fading from that world as she was stepping in. I know her job (or have a very good guess). We occasionally use Signal to say: Hey. The conversation ends there because of laws that we both respect and honor. Twenty-five years of war.

I’ve had a horrible, poopy week (month, six months). I’ve had to crawl down in to my “I am a packet” routine to get dressed, get showered, get calories. Sometimes I simply stall landing on my chair watching TV. But then I get to say: I am not being bombed, hated, shot at, running towards a horrible car wreck, or leaning over another dead body.

Yet, it isn’t entirely true because a tiny part of me remains in a windowless room in a place far away from my snowy mountains.

Stacy from ME, I love you. No, she is not in Maine. That is just how she signs off.

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