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1LOL at his reading of Genesis... very toxic to fundamentalists
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4lol... he's just getting started. You're in for a treat for the next few hours. 😉
5Get ready to meet God's god xD
6lol
7Theogony for the win!!!
8he is full of discussion of trinities in other religions also
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11but that is only ok if you recognise a female principle, co existing with the male, though perhaps undifferentiated from it
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14the number three is interesting
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17yes
18recommend reading some peirce if you're interested in the subject
19https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trikonic
20there's a lengthy philosophical tradition of relating things in threes, aside from the religious background
21see also the thesis, antithesis, synthesis relation, attributed to hegel though he did not actually make use of it.  kant, fichte, and schelling did though.
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24https://youtu.be/RiNYrSoSiDU
25There are three fundamental principles to logic
26I'd have to go dig back up what the specifics of that were
27people like the number three.  triangles are stable structures.
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30https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oHBhLmSjrpwggCH8MVxPtCanJrE9xDOXFsbaFFnk0fY/edit?usp=drivesdk
31There we go
32"If A then B or C"
33I think I must've pasted twice in there. whoops!
34alright, should be fixed
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36Got to 10 hours last night... maybe will go for 15+ today then I can be half done 😛
37I would hold off and give yourself time to mull it over and play with the ideas thus expressed. This work took him more than a decade and a half and innumerable  edits and rewrites. I would give it some time to digest as you mull it over. Chew it like cud, y'know?
38It was around the ten hour mark when I sat on it for about a week.
39But having said that, let's discuss. What has jumped out at you? Has this yielded any deep insights? Is it what you expected? And of course, with what, if anything, do you take exception? Any objections, caveats, or disagreements with Peterson's theories as articulated therein?
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41No disagreements. I like the idea of the Hero/savior creating his own parents by separating them
42YES!!! The god of God! Theogony FT freakin' W!!!
43He is actually more interesting to me when he is not discussing actual science
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46Lol, so Pikachu is an electric squirrel? lmao
47on monsters:
48https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interobject
49https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liminal_being
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51came through for me
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53oic.  don't use voice messages so don't know possible solutions
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57"Poetry is the mother-tongue of the human race; even as the garden is older than the ploughed field, painting than script; as song is more ancient than declamation; parables older than reasoning; barter than trade."
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60j. g. hamann, aesthetica in nuce
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62I see myth and dreams as telling something interesting also
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65i linked blechner earlier.  his notions of 'interobjects' are used in explaining the 'disjunctive cognitions' of dreams and of schizophrenics.  eleanor rosch also has a theory of categorization called 'prototype theory' which reasons similarly
66on the acquisition of concepts
67anyway, here's a bit of semi-relevant info:
68here are my notions that i use to understand these concepts
69the distinction between subjective and objective isn't as informative as the distinction between the commensurable and the incommensurable.  in order to elaborate on that, i have to make note of my bergsonian influences.  the fundamental theme of all of bergson's writings is that we've misunderstood something important about the nature of time, and that our modern constructs of clocks and calendars are spatial representations of time, and not time itself
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73in order to better understand time, it's useful to discuss the nature of space.  this ties into bergson's view of mathematics.  bergson says that space is, phenomenologically speaking, that which is enumerable.  the fact of there being five sheep in a field is the fact of their juxtaposition in a common space.  the 'fiveness' is something we abstract from the matter.  we give them a unit, make them a unity, and this gives them their number.  the definition of a number since ancient greece has always been "a multiplicity of unity."  that's the best we can come up with.  multiples of 1, unity, which is the foundation of number.
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76so space inclines to unity, and bergson says that the intellect is what we know unity with.  it's the part of the mind with which we know unity.  it's unity itself, phenomenologically.
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79time, on the other hand, is in a sense disunity.  time is complexity, time is change.  time is in a way reality, because reality is our sense that all is not within our minds, our sense that we can be wrong.  the incompleteness of systems, because any system of thought is a unity, or the subordination of all aspects of something to one particular aspect, in light of which all others are explained.
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82unity is also commensurability, or the ability to compare something to something else.  time is incommensurable in that two moments cannot be compared.  there is no neutral perspective within which two moments can be juxtaposed, because once one moment has arrived, the other has disappeared.  this is the nature of time.
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85consciousness being the unity of the senses, what we are conscious of is the unities that we have established, as a system of being.  we are not conscious of time, we can only know it by intuition, which bergson contrasts with the intellect or spatial sense.
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88consciousness is the intellect and unity, and unconsciousness is the intuition and disunity, or complexity.
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91https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yA4gF5KrboK2m2Xu7/how-an-algorithm-feels-from-inside
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94see the two networks in this article.  the one on the left cannot be simply defined.  one aspect of the system cannot subordinate all the others into a simple unity.  it is complex, because each definition is defined in relation to, and also defines, all others.  nothing can be simply specified.  this is similar to bergson's notion of time, and the modern notion of complexity.  trying to define it introduces another element and thus changes it.  no unity can be established.
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97this is in contrast to the network on the right, which has had this holism abstracted away, and elements can be strictly and simply defined.
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100those examples are just illustrative, though.  what i'm getting at is that mostly we've got it backwards.  it's consciousness that's objective, as the waking world, where we can make comparisons between experiences, both our own and between ours and others'.  to the degree that we can do so, there is unity, or commensurability, or consciousness.
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103and in the unconscious, to the degree that it is unconscious, as not-conscious, we find these half-formed concepts, which progressively grow more disorderly the less conscious we are of them.  so it's within the 'timelike' unconscious that we find pre-conscious understandings of things, which are represented in poetry, mythology, ritual, etc.
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106btw
107The waking have one world in common; sleepers have each a private world of his own.
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109All the things we see when awake are death, even as all we see in slumber are sleep.
110from the heraclitus fragments
111best pre-socratic
112So intuition would be akin to pattern recognition extrapolated incompletely but sufficient for making meaningful predictions using the structures that are intended for categorization where there is no "real" unity to categorize, but merely a sharing of related qualities...? Am I understanding properly or am I missing something?
113I find these ideas highly interesting. A very different perspective on cognition from that with which I am familiar.
114intuition/time as a 'category' isn't necessarily pattern recognition.  you can call it that, but that's like making a time line and calling that time.  it is, but it isn't.
115Right.
116any specific definition you give it is what it looks like to the intellect/consciousness/space.
117you have to know it in the way you know poetry, and poetry is ruined if explained.
118That's a tough pill to swallow, but I think that you are correct.
119that's why i didn't 'define,' time.  the best i could do was contrast it with space, which is the realm of definitions.
120Right, contrast being more useful because we can see what a thing is not, but our lack of common frame of reference precludes defining what it "is."
121yes.  consider the stock market.  imagine if you found a pattern that defines how the stock market works.  say prices are low on tuesday and high on wednesday.  you try to exploit that pattern, but so are others, and that fact closes the gap, so the stock market is no longer defined by low tuesday and high wednesday.  it resists explanation by the fact that you are embedded within it, so your explanation perturbs it.
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124imagine every element of a system being like that, and you have a feeling of raw time, of constant change, nothing stands still.
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127it's very difficult to know something approximate to raw time, except in very intense drug-induced states of consciousness.
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130we also do not know raw space.
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133Like a philosophical expression of the uncertainty principle.
134our experience is always in the present, which is both space and time, both stasis and change.  every moment is now, but every moment is new.
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137not the uncertainty principle, it's the observer effect.  uncertainty principle is different, a property of wave mechanics.  common misunderstanding.
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140All of these things are abstractions from the objective "real," if such a thing exists, and I am not convinced that it does in fact exist.
141well, i tend to prefer 'real' to refer to the timelike elements in our experience, and 'truth' to the spacelike ones
142Unpack that.
143because we know reality by exceptions in our systems, revealing their incompleteness.  we know truth by their consistencies. all truth is defined via consistency to other terms/facts.
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146so time is the aspect of what we can call 'being' (it relates to reality and truth as the present relates to time and space) which is reality, and space to truth.
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149note that i've done something clever here.  i've redacted everything i've said so as to not make it out to be a system of complete understanding
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152Did you see that first interview that Harris did with Peterson on his podcast Waking Up? They spent the whole time arguing over the definition of "truth," and it was very frustrating for the both of them. Well, suffice it to say, I think that you just busted it wide open with that simple and elegant distinction between "real" and "truth,' Harris being into your definition of truth, Peterson calling "truth" what you call "real."
153because i include liminal objects, which are exceptions to definitions.  'being,' the present.  the body is a liminal object between the categories of subjective and objective, because it is both simultaneously, in between the two.  i've injected reality into the categories, so they assume their incompleteness.
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156//i've redacted everything i've said so as to not make it out to be a system of complete understanding//
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158Right, and this is where I have been leaning for the past couple of years, not due in small part to our conversation those years ago on the Wondering Pilgrims. As you can see, it has taken me some time to even BEGIN to catch up, and I am far from there presently, but you're making a lot more sense to me now than before. 🙂
159as for the definitions of truth and reality, i'm a wittgensteinian.  'meaning is use.'  the way we use words reveals the underlying metaphors which construct them.  compare "you know who your REAL friends are" which suggests an exception to current belief, to the mathematical or logical definition of truth, which is more formal, as consistency
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162so reality is exceptions, and truth is rules.  hence philosophers who are 'reality'-oriented are often incomprehensible and system-destroying, whereas those who incline to 'truth' are largely coherent and intellectual
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165continental v. analytic divide
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168it's from derrida that i learned my habit of using liminal objects.  he'd make a statement then scratch it out.  'method of erasure.'  redact the statement but let both the statement and its redaction stand.
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171the use of liminal objects is of a similar form
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174One idea of "life" is the interaction between order and chaos, life being that experience of being on the threshold of each where chaos is transformed into order, begetting meaning and the experience of being in the process. Another way to say it is that being is that which  mediates the boundary conditions between order and chaos. Time would seem to be that very tangible experience itself as it progresses from prior states into the present.
175derrida's question was:  how do you critique language, from within language?
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177mine is:  how do you critique systems, from within systems?
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180yes, time is chaos and space is order.  these intuitions go by many names.
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183peterson and i are both thoroughgoing jungians
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186it's no coincidence we think similarly
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189“You open the gates of the soul to let the dark flood of chaos flow into your order and meaning. If you marry the ordered to the chaos you produce the divine child, the supreme meaning beyond meaning and meaninglessness.”
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192quote is jung from the red book (a bible if any book deserves the name)
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195btw, there's some neuro stuff you can relate to all this.
196psychedelic drugs affect two main systems, and really it's mainly one system because the one affects the other downstream.  they're the serotonergic (specifically 5-ht2a) and dopaminergic systems
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199Downloading the Red Book presently.
200and the purpose of this coupling is essentially a stress response to partially randomize neuronal configuration.  that's what 5-ht2a does.  what 5-ht1a does is actually the opposite.  those two work antagonistically to each other as part of a stress response
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203Those two systems have been of great interest to me.
204Not that I claim to understand.
2055-ht1a is basically stoicism.  keep a stuff upper lip.  be resilient in the face of stress.  5-ht2a is 'things aren't going right, better randomize things to search for a more optimal strategy'
206that's why psychedelics cause hallucinations in addition to the breakdown of narrative (spacelike) structures.  other systems can cause hallucinations without the breakdown of narrative, but 5-ht2a does this particular thing
207and i think the best exposition of its effects is a concept that jung termed 'metanoia,' in his explanation of the function of psychotic experience
208"the mind melts itself down to be recast as what it needs to become."
209Hmm... Very interesting. I know of none of this.
210that's also why psychedelics can be so positive and transformative in addition to inducing what's literally psychosis.
211That would seem to offer an explanation as to why psychedelics are so effective in treating addiction and other neuroses.
212because that's the function of psychosis, or metanoia.  your systems of thought aren't working and nothing within them can show you where to go.
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215yes, most neuroses are based in patterns/habits of thought.  systems of thought.  5-ht2a dissolves those, for better and for worse.
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218and all this is ofc a HUGE oversimplification, as any explanation of "this neurotransmitter/receptor does this specific function" but it's a really good gist imo
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221What would you say is the most effective and/or safest psychedelic?
222they're all pretty safe, provided you won't be driving
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225the ill effects of most drugs are overstated.  except for benzos.  stay away from those.
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228What if you are prone to panic attacks, would shroomz be a good way to attempt to sort that out?
229can be.  remember leary's injunction, set and setting.  psychedelics can amplify your emotions, positive or negative.
230but even negative experiences can cause positive effects
231"what is to give light must endure burning."
232Yeah, I have really experienced that a lot with psilocybin.
233viktor frankl quote
234that's a good narrative to get through suffering.  it's what he learned as a holocaust survivor.
235or as nietzsche put it, from the opposite perspective, he who has a why can bear any how (paraphrased)
236the lesson is the same in both.  suffering is life's greatest teacher.
237embrace it as such and you can endure it
238I've been talking a lot about the necessity of intentional suffering by virtue of what I have read of G. I. Gurdjieff.
239Intentional suffering=expansion of being.
240I wish they made all drugs legal; as long as you don't hurt anybody else experiment with your own neurochemistry as you will
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243you should also read ernst junger.  you liked what i shared with you so far.
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246Absolutely.
247Storm of Steel?
248things don't have to be legal for you to do them, you know. 😉
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251Just don't get caught 😉
252storm of steel is a war diary, basically.  it was his first novel.
253i loved eumeswil and the glass bees, which are his later and middle stuff, more or less
254Yes but I dont want a fascist ass breaking down my door and putting me in cuffs
255everything in life involves risk somehow.
256yes but I would prefer the risk be self imposed not state imposed
257(taleb's views also align with mine.  his exposition in the inherent risk/uncertainty in life is also analogous to my view of the irreducibility of time to space.)
258taleb actually has some bergsonian influence, i think?  i don't know about directly,  but he was influenced by ilya prigogine, "the poet of thermodynamics."
259Found it 
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261http://cnqzu.com/library/Fiction/81296969-Ernst-Junger-Eumeswil.pdf
262prigogine studied non-equilibrium thermodynamics, and his notion of dissipative systems is applicable to life.  dissipative systems maintain a balance between order and disorder.
263and he cites bergson specifically, though i'm not sure taleb does, though he cites prigogine
264so taleb is also within the bergsonian pedigree
265the convergence of all of these notions is useful for getting a feel for what they mean, like looking at an object from multiple perspectives
266i should also mention that junger probably had some bergson in him too.  remember 'human perfection strives to the incalculable.'
267Human perfection and technical perfection are incompatible. If we strive for one, we must sacrifice the other: there is, in any case, a parting of the ways. Whoever realises this will do cleaner work one way or the other.
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269Technical perfection strives towards the calculable, human perfection towards the incalculable. Perfect mechanisms - around which, therefore, stands an uncanny but fascinating halo of brilliance - evoke both fear and Titanic pride which will be humbled not by insight but only by catastrophe.
270for those in chat unaware of the quote.  from the glass bees.
271again, if not direct exposure, i'm sure he got some bergson from nietzsche.  i'm not sure if nietzsche ever acknowledged bergson as an influence, but they were contemporaries, and i'm sure they were aware of each other's ideas.
272they're too similar to not have been.
273also, since uinseann is here, what i've said here elaborates on my criticism of utilitarianism via the lewis quote
274how can a moral calculus (as they call it) be established?  what neutral vantage point can compare two instances of suffering?
275again, for others in chat
276"There is no such thing as a sum of suffering; for no one suffers it. When we have reached the maximum that a single person can suffer, we have, no doubt, reached something very horrible, but we have reached all the suffering there ever can be in the universe. The addition of a million fellow-sufferers adds no more pain."
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279from 'the problem of pain'
280maybe multiple instances of suffering can only be understood with regards to another abstraction "society" .. brb.. feeding a kid
281"philosophy is the critic of abstractions."
282a. n. whitehead quote.  useful to keep handy.
283you should be skeptical of abstractions, skeptical even knowing that anything, any 'thing' is an abstraction.  the individual is an abstraction the same as society is.
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286metaphysics criticises abstractions? 😉
287the quote was literal.   here are two more quotes of whitehead's to better explain his empiricism:
288"the abstract does not explain, but must itself be explained."
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290"the aim is not to recover the universal or eternal, but to find the conditions under which something new may be produced."
291and on the process of abstraction, "the many become one and are increased by one."
292regarding the first, whitehead treats abstractions the same as i do.  things and thinks are the same, ideas and objects.  different words for the same.  remember my equivalence of consciousness/waking world with 'objectivity'
293so, treating them as a natural part of phenomenology, they do not necessarily explain things in a fundamental sense.  richard feynman gave a famous talk on the nature of energy, and the question of what makes something move.  saying "energy makes it move" is equivalent to saying "god makes it move."  and not because god is energy or anything like that, but because the statement in isolation explains nothing.  it must be reduced to experience.  whitehead called this reduction of abstraction to experience 'the method of extensive abstraction.'
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296but have you experienced walking on the Moon, and if not do you doubt that men did it?
297the second concerns the irreducibility of time.  if truth is not ultimately attainable, then what we're doing in abstracting (thinking/thinging) is not the recovery of something 'out there in the world' which we merely reproduce in our thoughts.  we are actively creating things.  there is novelty inherent in every thought.  this is further elaborated upon by the third quote, "the many become one and are increased by one."
298i have no reason to doubt that men have walked on the moon, but i can imagine myself doing so.  that's not a problem.  the reduction of abstraction to experience is called phenomenology, or embodied cognition.  it goes by many names.
299Our exposition is nothing else than the expansion of the insight that power is the basis of our notions of substance … Our experience starts with a sense of power, and proceeds to the discrimination of individualities and their qualities … actuality is in its essence composition. Power is the compulsion of composition … The essence of power is the drive towards aesthetic worth for its own sake. All power is a derivative from this fact of composition attaining worth for itself. There is no other fact. Power and importance are aspects of this fact. It constitutes the drive of the universe. It is efficient cause, maintaining its power of survival. It is final cause, maintaining in the creature its appetition for creation.
300lengthier whitehead quote, again elaborating on the quote that the many become one and are increased by one
301again, composition is unity.  substance is unity.
302recall schopenhauer and nietzsche and that the 'will' is fundamental reality
303did they mean the same thing by "will"?
304'aesthetic worth for its own sake'
305we do it because we like it.  life is playful.  lila, the divine play.
306I have long intuited that, that will is the core of being itself.
307roughly, yes.  schopenhauer is the originator of this conception of will, and it came from kant's distinction between noumenal and phenomenal reality (you can substitute time and space here respectively.  you'll see why momentarily)
308kant's argument was that we cannot know noumenal reality.  schopenhauer says we can, insofar as we are noumenal reality, and the energies flow through it also flow through us.  schopenhauer establishes a liminal object, as the will/body (for schopenhauer it was the will, for merleau-ponty it was the body.  same idea)
309the will is both noumenal and phenomenal reality, like the body is both subject and object.  so by knowing our own will, we can know reality.
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312that's the gist of it anyway
313surely Nietzsche ment something like the will of the "overman" while Schopenhauer meant something closer to the Tao?
314they both meant something close to the tao, but schopenhauer saw the will as something capricious to be escaped from, primarily in music which he saw as the disinterested contemplation of form and beauty.  like the image of a pratyekabuddha (private or 'stone' buddha) who wants to escape from the cycle of rebirth/life
315nietzsche, after he broke with schopenhauer, formed his 'yes-saying' philosophy, to not deny the essences of life, and hide from reality, as he saw schopenhauer as doing, which is a reasonable interpretation really.
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318one of nietzsche's main concepts is the amor fati, the love of fate.  complete acceptance of one's life, however it may be, and even love of it, because if nothing else it's yours.  your circumstances and your being cannot be separated.
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322both schopenhauer and nietzsche encountered the problem of nihilism, but schopenhauer let it defeat him, whereas nietzsche accepted and transcended it. that's the idea of the superman (ubermensch)
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325the man who has incorporated nihilism into his being and so been immunized to it.
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329jershtunn^^^
330whereas schopenhauer was sick, nietzsche grew stronger.  or that's the idea.  "what doesn't kill me makes me stronger" is originally a nietzsche quote.
331so basically construct your own lifes meaning?
332in essence, yes.  there's more nuance to that, and i take some exception to it myself, but peterson actually has a few lectures on nietzsche and his interpretation is that he was basically rushed
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335nietzsche was very physically ill throughout most of his life.  he died young, and he could only write a few paragraphs at a time.  that's why his writing is so packed with significance.  it's dense stuff.
336he was working on the problem of nihilism, and the solution he came up with, the nietzschean 'active nihilism' and superman, that's what he had when he finally died.
337i don't think you can create meaning ex nihilo.  i think meaning is in a certain sense objective, and i think it's obvious that that's the case.
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340http://134.184.131.111/Books/Wiener-teleology.pdf
341if objective... where is it is origin?
342here's a little essay by norbert wiener, etc. on the cybernetics of purposive behavior
343the gist of it is that 'purpose' is shaped by negative feedback.  the environment constrains what you can do, and this is the basis of goal-oriented, purposive, teleological behavior, according to the model offered by cybernetics anyway, which i think is the most revealing of any models on the subject
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346again most things we call subjective are in part molded by environment
347so think of it evolutionarily.  people often think that people are innately selfish because their genes are 'trying' to maximize their fitness and so any altruistic behavior is disingenuous, mere deception.  i think things are different, and again i think it's obvious that they're different.  to put it simply, almost axiomatically, things are how they are.  people do things for no other reason than that they do things.  "the purpose of a system is what it does."  just like in evolution, things happen of their own accord, and then environmental factors constrain and give selective pressure/structure to them.
348Furniture light and solid, rooted in its present, a table, a bed, a closet with a mirror-and me. the true nature of the present revealed itself: it was what exists, and all that was not present did not exist. The past did not exist. Not at all. Not in things, not even in my thoughts. It is true that I had realized a long time ago that mine had escaped me. But until then I had believed that it had simply gone out of my range. For me the past was only a pensioning off: it was another way of existing, a state of vacation and inaction; each event, when it had played its part, put itself politely into a box and became an honorary event: we have so much difficulty imagining nothingness. Now I knew: things are entirely what they appear to be-and behind them... there is nothing.
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351this is sartre, from his book nausea.  i share it because i think it gives you a good feel for what i'm trying to say.  "things are entirely what they appear to be, and behind them there is nothing."
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354When Arnold von Winkelried exclaimed: "Trüwen, lieben Eidgenossen, wullt's minem Wip und Kinde gedenken,"[1] and then clasped in his arms as many hostile spears as he could grasp; can any one believe that he had some selfish purpose? I cannot.
355this is schopenhauer, from 'on the basis of morality,' arguing against the notion that everything is selfish fundamentally
356so you can think of actions as being evolutionarily.  you do things because you do them, and for no other reason.  causality is in the present, not in the past.  alan watts made the metaphor of the past being like the wake of a ship. it does not drive it, only shows where it's been.
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359isnt there a ghostly spectre of the chair existing as a concept which fits the archetype of "chair" while at the same time it exists as a collection of atom? Doesnt chair exist as a functional idea or thing?
360and, as you act, your behavior is shaped by your environment.
361this is another way of saying that goals are things that are outside of your situation.  they act on you from without.
362and it's as plain and simple to me as what i said earlier that what is conscious or unitative is also what we call objective.
363goals, purposes, etc. are factors outside of you which act on your behavior, so you can't just create them ex nihilo.  this is the meaning of the notion that suffering imparts meaning.
364those things can be said as to the chair, but we need, through words, to induce a tunnel vision of sorts.  all of these things, past and future, they are aspects of the present.
365this tunnel vision is called eternity.
366This grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never dried all at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls.
367quote is john muir, giving poetic imagery to the notion
368again, the present is both space and time, and is that from which space and time are abstracted.  those two notions are not fundamentally real, which is why i felt the need to negate them in my explanation of them.  there is no space without time, or time without space, just as there is no subject without object and vice versa.
369and this present, which is both time and space, change and stasis, here and there, now and then, is what's called eternity.
370things are exactly as they are.  if we say otherwise, if we even think about them and so subject them to a system of thought, we've created something new.  "the many become one and are increased by one."
371but insofar as the new and the old are thought of, juxtaposed in this thought, still within this present moment, they are not new.  it is both new and old.  time and space, etc.
372whitehead says that in a certain respect sense experience is infallible, because it's only by comparison to other things (that we think we can touch a rainbow for example) that things can be false
373things are exactly as they are, and people do what they do for no other reason than what they do it
374this is the 'spontaneity' that taoism and zen speak of.
375wu wei/mushin. (action without action, and no-mind)
376it's also what's called 'faith' in christianity, in the most respectable use of the term
377https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/06/27/alan-watts-belief-vs-faith/
378faith is not trying to climb on top of the water while you're swimming, but to relax and follow its rhythms.  grace is the fact that this is how you swim.
379👍
3802
381Sooo.... When is Jack going to write a book? I will buy it and every one that comes thereafter!
382👍
3831
384Hell, this chat alone could be made into a book if we keep going like this. This is not a bad thing. 😉
385👍
3861
387don't have enough to make a book out of it.  books are 99% fluff.
388👍
3891
390He should write a book, first of all a book on how to find these quotes so fast 😉
391😆
3922
393to paraphrase nietzsche, i could say in a sentence what it takes others a book to say. 😉
394👍
3952
396i either have them memorized, remember a page where they're stated, or i archive them on my fb wall for later pondering
397“It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in a whole book.”
398👍
3991
400actual nietzsche quote
401and he did a damn good job of it
402as do you in many ways
403like i said, nietzsche is dense stuff.
404I have a poor memory, but if something strikes me as a good idea it becomes part of the leaf litter so to speak which make up my opinions.
405👍
4061
407memory and abstraction are inversely correlated
408interesting...
409solomon shereshevsky, kim peek, etc. could remember entire books verbatim but couldn't tell you what the point of them was
410😮
4111
412to think is to forget irrelevant details
413😍
4141
415so a poor memory is a sign of intelligence
416👍
4171
418I have excellent intelligence in a very narrow area, the rest of it is shit
419my other failing is caring too much... cant become a proper cynic if I still care too much lol
420😆
4212
422you're too afraid of handcuffs to masturbate in the streets, as any proper cynic would
423😆
424👍
4252
426my type of mind would work wonders with psychedelics if I dared take them
427just do it.  it's not a big deal, and police usually aren't looking for drug users.  they're after dealers
428I should move to Portugal
429maybe I can persuade my wife to move back to Europe, I would feel more at home there. I felt like the US was home for a while, but I don't think so now. I am too ideologically different to fit in
430listening to music instead of Peterson for a while, maybe I will listen again later
431https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJgNjW0vyaU
432what is 
433@Jack
434 's opinion on God? A useful concept? A fantasy? An actual reality? Something beyond reality? 😉
435derrida once said that, even if we believe that god was a neurosis, the existence of such a neurosis attests to something which causes it, and this something, whatever it is, is god.
436😍
437👍
4382
439(massively paraphrased)
440everything is real inasmuch as it is.  remember, experience is in a certain sense infallible.
441👍
4421
443and we can recombine and relate our experiences in myriad ways
444so the word, the experiences we aggregate into the word 'god' has meaning, many meanings in fact
445and, with that in mind, i should mention something i really like that i heard from peterson
446Peterson gave me the beginning of an answer to that issue when I needed it most.
447the only experience I have of God is the numinous, the rest of it is an intellectual exercise.
448he says that mother nature is almost always a goddess because women are in a certain sense nature.  because nature is what selects, and women are the actors of what we abstractly call sexual selection.
449👍
4502
451so the imagery of the goddess mother nature is the mythologization of this fact
452now, god the father is the opposite.  there's a song that's usually considered sexist, but it's true to what a man feels when he's in love
453https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCdc1YW001Q
454I like that song
455it's a man's world, but it wouldn't be nothing without a woman or a girl
456remembering that woman selects, man, as god the father, is archetypally portrayed as the logos, the source of 'form'
457👍
4581
459One of the reasons why the doctrine of Theotokos is so powerful in RC and EO traditions, methinks. The mother of God is something that Peterson talks about at great length drawing heavily from the Enuma Elis
460the lyrics in that song give expression to why.  man builds up all these things in the world, and why does he do it?  ultimately, for woman, who receives it
461😍
462👍
4632
464that's the narrative of god the father and mother nature.  heaven is space, remember.  consciousness.  form.
465women are more often associated with the unconscious and intuitive
466👍
4671
468heaven and earth, man and woman
469the active and the passive principles (remember that the seasons, the cycles of life, were tracked by the stars)
470the heavens were the place of unchanging form, which was imparted on the material and earthly world
471👍
4721
473again, mother, matter.  same word.
474father sky, mother earth. heaven encompasses all, the earth is home and hearth. the masculine is more projecting outward, the feminine projecting inward.
475👍
4761
477yes
478👍
4791
480Mary is a stand in for the missing Goddess in Christianity
481👍
4822
483yes, that was jung's view
484that's why catholicism is more mystical than protestantism
485👍
4862
487I am of the opinion that if God is masculine that there is a Goddess also, but for various reasons this has been ignored by the major monothestic religions
488not why causally, but why catholic mysticism correlates with the divinity of mary
489Tiamat.
490Choas.
491Darkness.
492Yin.
493yes Erik but try telling that to a fundie lol
494😆
4951
496yes, that's one narrative.  tiamat was female, the dragon of chaos, whose corpse became the world
497👍
4981
499I wouldn't have heard it with the same ears a few years ago.xD
500👍
5011
502I've always considered the Holy Spirit to be more feminine.
503👍
5041
505so the dead tiamat is mother earth.  that's the narrative of a patriarchal society
506👍
5071
508First in my privqte experience, only to be surprised it was a subtradition of sorts
509👍
5101
511private*
512i interpret the holy spirit to be the same thing as what we refer to metaphorically as 'inspiration'
513👍
5142
515the holy spirit must be femine ... otherwise the hero/savior status of Jesus makes no sense
516👍
5171
518they're the same words, really
519👍
5201
521inspiration being a passive and intuitive force, it does have a feminine characteristic
522👍
5231
524I gotta take a break-- my brain is overheating. xD
525😆
5261
527lol
528the Holy Spirit is feminine, and takes on the identity of those she is associated with, just like women would in ancient societies and still do to some extent today (Mr. and Mrs. George Smith, for instance)
529But I will be back. 😀
530eat some "brownies" 😉
531😆
5321
533the holy spirit is the most mysterious part of the trinity
534👍
5351
536it also only shows itself in images, like a dove
537👍
5381
539So, the Spirit seems more amorphous and background, and yet gives nourishing life, is the relationship between Father and Son, and represents both. Takes on our form when we live in the Spirit, and become children of God.
540the symbol of peace
541👍
5421
543also as tongues of fire?
544Absolutely indispensable and the energy of life itself
545The 'nature' of God 😉
546the feminine principle can also be frightening.
547👍
5481
549kali is a good example, the black mother
550True!
551she's a demon slayer essentially.  she's scary because she has to be.  but she's also the freer of man from his ego
552😍
5531
554from his 'demons'
555😍
5561
557Maiden, Mother and Crone 😉
558...and Daenerys?
559kali is probably my favorite deity, honestly
560lol
561peterson would jump at the opportunity to point out that her dragons symbolize chaos. 😉
562😍
563👍
5642
565the thing that has to die in man is ego... nothing else stands between him and  the divinity
566👍
5671
568yes, for that was the original sin.
569the original sin is consciousness
570👍
5711
572maybe 
573@Justin Fowler
574oi
575self-awareness
576👍
5771
578the tree of knowledge
579self-awareness, yeah, but that's different, innit?
580today's devotional for me was about that
581similar concepts
582'tree of knowledge of good and evil' is what's called a merism.  hebrew and other ancient languages liked to do that
583https://utmost.org/self-awareness/
584'good and evil' means 'everything,' like 'he searched high and low' means 'he searched everywhere'
585😮
586👍
5872
588self awareness says "I am" Ego says "I am that everything should serve me"
589👎
5901
591so adam and eve wanted to know everything, and so be like god, like the forces of nature
592👍
5931
594and so they lost their innocence
595which literally means 'without pain'
596eve's curse was the pain of childbirth, and adam's was the pain of his toil
597For not having read the book, your statements sound like they are straight from it! Re: Maps of Meaning.
598👍
5991
600why is innocence so dear to God?
601we're both jungians
602👍
6032
604similar intuitions
605well, it's a narrative.  it's the same story as cain and abel
606and what is the difference between innocence and ignorance?
607cain and his descendents were the founders of institutions.  they built the first cities, discovered animal husbandry, blacksmithing, musical instruments, etc.
608👍
6092
610and the mark of cain is a sigil of protection.  he will not die an untimely death.
611👍
6121
613Consciousness doesn't mean insisting on knowing everything, though
614You can just be content.
615cain's story is of the hubris of civilization, which confers benefits on its inhabitants, but at the cost of something sacred
616👍
6172
618Content to grow steadily, that is
619something is lost, same as with adam and eve
620note that noah is also a descendant of cain, whose artifice saved him
621society needs to rediscover the sacred.. and not a type of sacredness which flies in the face of human knowledge
622👍
6231
624noah was the tipping point.  civilization was now how things were.  no more hunter-gatherer living in innocence and eternity
625👍
6261
627Well, I think both Cain and Seth were his ancestors
628read the 'do not worry' sermon in matthew for a good description of the sacred innocence, uinseann
629👍
6302
631probably, but iirc his lineage (patrilineal) is mentioned as being cain's
632👍
6331
634connecting him to cain, as the founder of civilization
635👍
6361
637ah
638couldn't recall that
639it's civilization/conscious thought that saved noah
640👍
6411
642civilization is also technology.  it's the application of abstract thought in technology, specialization of labor, desire and all that go with it (this is the part girard talks about), etc.
643👍
6441
645so it's a double edged sword
646👍
6471
648the significance of the flood is that we're not all cain's descendants.  there's no going home.  we're all civilized.
649👍
6501
651we are all*
652I used to think that pantheism was the solution for a spirituality for a technological species, but I think its more complex than that. Pantheism teaches reverence, but it lacks the philosophical meat of Buddhism and the community aspect of Christianity
653👍
6541
655the idea of heaven is a return to a similar innocence.  we can't go back to eden, but we can move on from it and recreate what's been lost
656👍
6571
658Hm... there's an interesting tension going on between the lineages in Gen 4 & 5. Not sure if people were simply named the same or...
659Jack, what happens when your body dies?
660my body and all the systems which relate to it die as well.
661Ego dies... the rest returns... to whatever it is the source is
662So, just lights out?
663there's a distinction between two phrases in the bible, everlasting and eternity
664most people's conception of the afterlife is 'life everlasting,' as in your personality goes somewhere and you live forever
665i think it's more revealing to think of heaven as life 'eternal,' eternity being the presentness that i mentioned earlier
666what about Hell 
667@Jack
668 😉 ?
669there's a few lines from a chesterton poem that go like this:  and now a strange thing in the streets/seems any human nod/where march in strange democracy/the million masks of god
670on hell:
671
672A soldier named Nobushige came to Hakuin, and asked: "Is there really a paradise and a hell?"
673
674"Who are you?" inquired Hakuin.
675
676"I am a samurai," the warrior replied.
677
678"You, a soldier!" exclaimed Hakuin. "What kind of ruler would have you as his guard? Your face looks like that of a beggar."
679
680Nobushige became so angry that he began to draw his sword, but Hakuin continued: "So you have a sword! Your weapon is probably much too dull to cut off my head."
681
682As Nobushige drew his sword Hakuin remarked: "Here open the gates of hell!"
683
684At these words the samurai, perceiving the master's discipline, sheathed his sword and bowed.
685
686"Here open the gates of paradise," said Hakuin.
687a zen koan ^
688just like every moment is now, and every place is here, everybody's name is "I"
689and that i think is the true sense of immortality
690But again, just to be clear, no continuity of experiential existence, but merely a cessation of present being?
691Not to belabor the point or anything.
692i think that death has two great lessons to teach us
693the first is that death is certain, and in knowing that we know that we can't live in the future, but only in the present, because "the worldly hope men set their hearts upon turns ashes, or it prospers, and anon like snow upon the desert's dusty face, lighting a little hour or two, is gone."
694that's from the rubaiyat by omar khayyam
695so the first lesson is in the certainty of death
696"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" 😉
697the second lesson is that death is impossible because, knowing that we can only live in the present, we can never experience it.
698there's a thing from epicurean thought called the tetrapharmakos, the four cures.  it goes like this:
699do not fear god.
700don't worry about death.
701what is good is easy to get.
702what is terrible is easy to endure.
703Now THAT is a very interesting thought...
704and that's emblematic of the second revelation of death.  epicurus argued that death is nothing to us because we will never experience it
705so in death being certain, death becomes impossible
706and therein lies immortality
707I gotta be honest, this is where all my thinking has been leading me lately, and I have been deeply struggling to make sense of it.
708profound things are always obvious in retrospect. 😉
709mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers, if you're familiar with the koan
710Indeed. It more resembles remembering rather than learning.
711it is, in a sense.  remember that thought is abstracting away details.  all our systems predicated on thought are predicated on forgetting or ignoring something
712and what we're doing here is remembering what's been forgotten
713systems of thought are predicated*
714it's all right here, in the present, in the infallible eternity
715I have lots of things to teach you now, in case we ever meet, concerning the message that was transmitted to me under a pine tree in North Carolina on a cold winter moonlit night. It said that Nothing Ever Happened, so don’t worry. It’s all like a dream. Everything is ecstasy, inside. We just don’t know it because of our thinking-minds. But in our true blissful essence of mind is known that everything is alright forever and forever and forever. Close your eyes, let your hands and nerve-ends drop, stop breathing for 3 seconds, listen to the silence inside the illusion of the world, and you will remember the lesson you forgot, which was taught in immense milky way soft cloud innumerable worlds long ago and not even at all. It is all one vast awakened thing. I call it the golden eternity. It is perfect.
716jack kerouac
717"nothing ever happened."  it's all right here, right now.
718😍
7191
720death is easy, though dying as a process probably sucks
721depends on how you approach it
722I think that I'd rather spend forever dying than cease to exist. Perhaps too sentimental a mindset of which I will grow beyond. For now, I want to live forever.
723Or rather, I want to experience living forever.
724Unfortunately, such concerns are etymologically irrelevant.
725i've experienced near-death several times.  i'd induce it consciously through alcohol.  we're talking more than half a bottle of everclear, which is more than twice the point where you should either be comatose or dead.
726you might find it helpful to know that you let go, and you can't help but let go.  death is peaceful, even when you're vomiting.
727what does "cease to exist" mean? 
728@Erik Lauren Mayle
729 I think that is impossible
730👍
7311
732I corrected myself. It is the experience of existing perpetually to which I hearken.
733well, then you've already got that
734and you don't
735the myth is that god forgets himself, to make things interesting
736so you experience eternity in occasional moments, but then back into the wheel of karma you go
737I don't want to live forever but I want to impact people positively, so perhaps some of me lives on
738Like in The Nines?
739never watched it
740here's something interesting:  any of you ever experiment with fasting/sleep deprivation/both?
741Yes.
742to which?
743Both.
744This clip gives away the whole movie, so...
745
746https://youtu.be/bBjv2VKqAYc
747i do both quite often.  i wonder if you've noticed the same that you can generally do both for three days without ill effects
748Yes, and then things get a bit... strange, for lack of a better word.
749Surreal.
750Vivid, but detached.
751yeah.  with sleep, if you can get past the first hump, which is from your normal sleep time to about five hours after, then you feel mild dissociation and hypomania, and you're good until the next instance of your normal sleep cycle, after which the same five hours repeat themselves
752that might be specific to me, because i normally sleep five hours a night, but it's the same every time, for me
753anything after three days and it goes downhill fast.  i think nine days is my record.
754without any drugs, even caffeine
755i had the persistent feeling that, insofar as i was even aware of it, the space around me was warped, twisted.
756Damn. I've gone about five or so. It was very intense, and I even had a hard time actually going to sleep after.
757i slept for 48 hours after that.
758Yes, the distortions seemed meaningful, but I couldn't see how.
759everything seems meaningful, but you can't tell if it's alarming or intriguing.  the distinction itself doesn't seem meaningful
760yes.
761like during an intense acid trip
762remember 5-ht2a
763I've never done acid, only shrooms and salvia. And weed, of course.
764fasting is also interesting.  i've gone 2-3 weeks, and for a while ate one meal a week.
765it's an easy path to religious experience, which is why religions practice it, i think.  i think there are three main 'limbs' of desire, out of which everything else is abstracted.  i call them the three s's: sex, sustenance, and safety.  hence chastity, fasting, and contemplation of death.
766but after that three day point, off and on, there is the devil in the desert.  the most harrowing of desires.
767there's a line from the inferno section of the divine comedy, "then hunger did what sorrow could not do."
768the most primordial desire you can imagine
769Hm.
770it's more powerful than any sorrow you could imagine
771In another chat I'm part of a pastor is going on a 40-day water fast. I don't even know if that'd be possible for me.
772He's drinking tons of electrolytes tho
773you can fast indefinitely on electrolytes as long as you're fat enough
774👍
7751
776wow
777might need to supplement a few vitamins, and whey if you don't want muscle wasting, but people have gone years without food
778did not know that.
779dang
780literally.  people who weigh nearly a thousand pounds
781oh... haha
782I see
783the idea of it being more powerful than sorrow is interesting
784it's the same as ketosis.  as long as your electrolytes and vitamins are there, and you get some protein, your body doesn't care if calories come from fat or food
785I lost more than ten pounds staying up for over seventy hours last week.
786probably mostly water weight
787I might need to try that in moderation to lose weight.
788I wonder if Amy would, too.
789if you're looking to lose weight, try a keto diet with intermittent fasting
790how well that works for you depends on your genetics though
791yeah a friend is doing keto and says he's losing weight pretty fast
792if you get a dna test, look at your ppar genes, which are involved in fat metabolism
793ppar alpha and gamma especially
794if you're interested in genetics/diet/supplements, two good resources are selfhacked.com and examine.com
795first should be taken with a grain of salt since it's a personal blog, but still overall comprehensive info
796Drinking a pot of coffee a day has become a thing for me.
797STRONG coffee.
798i used to start my workdays with 1g caffeine, empty stomach
799McCafe coffee.
800plus a few other things
8011g? As in gallon?
802gram, of caffeine
803ah.
804sometimes 1.5
805a gallon of caffine would put you in cardiac arrest or on the Moon
806That's a thousand milligrams, correct?
807yes, so 20 cups of mild coffee
808empty stomach, all at once
809And how did that go?
810the hero needs to enter the underworld to bring back its treasures, right? 😉
811😆
8121
813I would go... go poop a lot that is
814😆
8151
816fight past the nausea and you come out the other side
817i've done a lot of experimenting with various drugs, legal or otherwise, to correlate their subjective effects with what i know about physiology
818I don't know if my heart could handle such stress.
819google something called 'respiratory sinus arrythmia'
820your heart rate adjusts during inhalation and exhalation to compensate for the flow of oxygen and co2
821so, by controlling your breathing, you can speed or slow your heart rate, and other factors of your physiology
822that's why so many yogic disciplines focus on breathing techniques.  see also wim hof
823so my heart rate was always normal, sometimes even slow, on 1-1.5 g caffeine.  turned the energy into focus.
824Hmm. I can manipulate my heart rate like that, I do all the time. But with stimulants, this is news to me.
825it takes more deliberation while on stimulants, especially large doses.  and practice.
826but wim hof could keep his heart rate low despite the massive adrenaline rush he'd induce in himself through hyperventilation
827So that's how you do it, with all the books and stuff.
828i read obsessively, but not with caffeine.
829watch yourself under the influence of a drug, and you can learn to induce some of its effects yourself
830if you know where in yourself to watch
831all drugs work by taking advantage of our own neural pathways, after all
832I think that I will create an afterlife, experiential and willful, by sheer force of will. I will simply refuse to die.
833yogis in india have been given lsd and they get a familiar look in their eyes, "ah, those are the lesser lights."
834👍
8352
836Have you read much Gurdjieff or Ouspenski?
837no, i've never really gotten into them
838was into crowley for a while though
839i like people who deconstruct systems more than those who build them up
840Must the two be mutually exclusive?
841no, but even i have limited time
842if i develop an interest in them, i'll read their works