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August
August 30
How could you long for blissful ignorance after having divine self-awareness. How could you long for Heaven after being on Earth?
Apparently this quote is attributed to John Muir but is likely adapted or paraphrased from his thoughts on Nature and writing. Regardless, it articulates the importance of revision, as well as the circular nature and the eternal flux of the writing process (which is true for any craft, really):
"Writing is like the life of a glacier: one eternal grind."
There's an increasing number of misquotations of John Muir, likely because he didn't publish much at all. He was too busy touching the heart of the Earth and writing to himself about it. See this veritable list of John Muir quotes from The Sierra Club.
A quote that will literally move you, from John Muir:
“In every walk with Nature one receives far more than he seeks.”
You need to mark the trail for your reader, like setting cairns along a hiking trail. Your reader doesn't know where they're going to end up or everything they'll see along the way. They just need to see where they're headed next — like walking to a cairn on the horizon.
Is it immoral of me to be more grateful to Eve than I am to God?
A reverse outline is an accounting of what's in your current draft. A revision plan is what you will change about that outline for the next draft, which can be rendered as a revised outline or as a bulleted lists of changes to make.
If Eden isn't Hell, it is at least un-American.
Healthcare is not at all human right, because it requires so many complex systems to be operating for healthcare the service to even exist. As a heuristic, human rights can only include rights requiring omission, not rights requiring action — e.g., the right to be treated with dignity and to be granted autonomy. To uphold that right, you simply must not denigrate or oppress others — to not act immorally (omission); you don't have to save a person's life (action) to uphold their basic human rights.
Your inner world is paramount.
August 29 At the highest level, you can separate editing into two parts: structural edits and style-edits. At the level of structure, you edit for cohesion, to make sure there's something worth reading. Then, at the level of style, you improve the language to make it more clear and concise, to improve the reading experience. But without it being cohesive and valuable, no amount of language prowess will make reading it worthwhile.
The fruition of introspection is self-detachment. (You must first know yourself deeply so that you know what it is that you must let go.)
In February of 2024, I had a personal reckoning. I realized I had unconsciously slipped away from myself and had started shirking responsibility for my level of fulfillment and had started avoiding what ailed me. A series of things helped me realize this, and the most notable was the fact that I successfully negotiated a raise and a promotion to six figures. I was making six figures as an editor — doing what I love! And that salary bump didn't change a thing at all about my satisfaction with the rest of my life. I started resenting work, and the work-centric environment of New York City for it making me feel disconnected from myself and from Nature. Then, there was this great ordeal on the way to Chipotle. It began as a pissed-off rant about how I'm not supposed to be here and how this place is no good for me. It ended with me taking responsibility for how I feel and to stop blaming it on my job and on my environment. That ordeal helped me make a hard and painful pivot away from my distracted, disconnected, responsibility-shirking habits, to start becoming more myself again.
August 28 Iceland is crazy and incredible. I had no idea this lighthouse existed until seeing this video from KALEO: "KALEO - Break My Baby (LIVE from Þrídrangar, Iceland)".
August 27 Philosophically, there are three moves you can make to resolve dualism. You could say that it is: (1) both, (2) neither, or (3) either.
Both is the approach of changing dichotomies into dualities, where seeming opposites become interdependent and mix within a shared whole.
Neither is where you negate the entire dichotomy and claim that truth lies outside of dualistic world that's presented to us. This would be closer to the doctrine of Emptiness in Buddhism — emptiness and no-thingness as opposed to the dualistic world of self and other.
Either is the (conscious or unconscious) decision to adhere to one of the two extremes, where you define yourself in opposition to something and deny that it has any part in you.
Examples Both: Taoism, Transcendental Idealism, Absolute Idealism, Existentialism Neither: Buddhism, Absurdism, Nihilism Either: political parties, monotheistic religions, any dogmatic philosophy, nationalism, fascism, strict materialism or mysticism
The parent duality is Feminine & Masculine, Yin & Yang. All other dichotomies and dualities can be mapped onto that frame. Any side of a true duality (mutually exclusive yet interdependent qualities) can be described as either masculine or feminine.
All dichotomies are merely concepts; nothing that exists can be attributed to only one extreme. Every thing in reality is some unequal mix of two extremes, at a certain point within the gradient of a duality. And everything in sum composes the entire gradients of all dualities, filling the space between all extremes.
[All dichotomies are illusory; everything that exists is some mix of both sides of a dichotomy, within the gradient of a duality.]
It's encouraging to see ChatGPT's interpretation of "live in the third" without any context besides the paragraph above:
In the context of the revised metaphysical claim, "living in the third" can be understood as an invitation to engage with the complexity and nuance of reality, embracing the gradients between extremes and adopting a holistic perspective. It encourages moving beyond rigid dichotomies to appreciate and navigate the interconnected and multifaceted nature of existence.
I'm trying to parse out my personal metaphysics. I think I believe that the universe is fundamentally made of some mind-substance (like awareness), or that it depends on something immaterial. Yet I also believe that the universe is independent from me and that it would persist if I did not exist and were not around to witness/perceive it. By that I mean that there is a reality independent from me and my mind but not one independent of Mind.
It's some fuzzy combination of Kant's transcendental idealism (phenomena and neumena) and the Buddhist doctrine of Emptiness. I believe that we can only access the appearances of things and not their essence, and I believe that the essence of all form is emptiness. On one hand, I believe that everything emerges from what is imminent in reality, dependent on perception; and on the other hand, I believe that there is a layer of reality — or even entire realms — that is inaccessible to us and exists independent of our awareness, perception, and existence.
I just read v4 of "The Arbiter" to Taylor and asked he what she thinks is the message of the story. What she said is spot-on — exactly what I intend to say — which was a big win:
"At the center of yourself, you know what is right. You just have to be open to confronting it."
August 26 Morality precedes existence, but existence precedes meaning. One of the things (if not the only thing) we can know rationally and objectively are the innate moral truths that define the essence of humanity. But the existence of a universal, idealized, absolute morality does not necessitate inherent meaning in existence. We have an a priori moral essence but are completely fluid and formless otherwise. Consider identity, for example. Existence precedes identity (you create and define it and change it throughout life), but no matter your identity, you are bound to some root human morality.
Does meaning precede morality?
The park ranger doesn't need the trail to be well-marked or kept up, but he tends to the trail anyway, because it's not for him. The same is true for the writer and their work. Your writing is not meant for you but for your reader. Tend to your draft during revision so that the reader's hike is simple, though challenging and demanding, and ultimately worthwhile.
The trail is not meant to be hiked by the ranger. Your writing must be made suitable for a reader who can't read your mind, just as the trail must be trail must be suitable for the hiker who doesn't share the ranger's skills or his knowledge of the wilderness.
9:57 pm It's now 3.5 hours later, and I've been working on that self-study idea for the whole time. I got to a final version of the three matrices, with the help of Chat GPT — my most useful and successful conversation with it yet. Here are the final three 2x2 matrices, along which you should be able to map any philosophy with some degree of nuance and precision.
Ethics: Relative vs. Absolute & Social vs. Individual
Epistemology: Empirical vs. Rational & Skeptical vs. Certain
Metaphysics: Subjective vs. Objective & Transcendental vs. Immanent
If you can chart a philosopher/philosophy along each of these dimensions, you can then plot them on spider graphs and compare them. (I've already done that with Kant, Hume, and myself.) Or, you could focus on one aspect (e.g., ethics) and plot a bunch of philosophers/philosophies on a 2-D scatter plot.
I am so happy with how this is shaping up. It could be really valuable to myself and others — a great tool for entering into philosophy as a student and starting with who you might agree with and who might refute your beliefs. I want to keep going with this and write an essay and build a "Personal Philosophy Test" quiz.
The inspiration for this project came in a rush after watching this funny (and not academic or deep) YouTube video by Mark Manson: "The Philosophy Tier List." It prompted me to think What would my version of that be?
The next step, besides continuing to map philosophers/philosophies along the dimensions, is to create a set of questions to help someone self-identify their personal philosophy.
August 25 Idea for a self-study project: map all the world's major philosophies on three 2D matrices: ethics, epistemology, and metaphysics (meaning).
The purpose would be to orient myself in take an account of my knowledge of philosophy and then improve my knowledge so that I can explain it all better to others without misrepresenting any of the propositional content.
The reason for ethics, epistemology, and metaphysics being the categories is that a "complete" philosophy has answers to all three of the main questions that attend them:
- What is it that we ought to do?
- How can we know what is true? (And What do we know to be true?)
- What is the nature of reality?
Here's a brainstorm for the v1 of the matrices:
Ethics: Relative vs. Absolute x Social vs. Individual
- Or Conditional vs. Unconditional (Consequentialism vs. Deontology)
- E.g., Kantian ethics is Individual & Absolute, and Ethics of Care would be Social & Relative.
Epistemology: Reason vs. Feeling x Certainty vs. Uncertainty
- Or Evidence vs. Faith
- Or Without vs. Within
- (Rationality vs. Phenomenology)
- Or Knowable vs. Unknowable
- E.g., Jain Logic would be Reason & Uncertainty, and Religious Fundamentalism would be Feeling & Certainty.
Metaphysics: Inherent vs. Emergent x Within vs. Without
- (Essence vs. Existence)
- E.g., Christianity would be Inherent & Without, and (Vajrayana) Buddhism would be Emergent & Within.
The fruition of introspection is self-detachment — to know yourself well enough that you know there is nothing within you to hold onto, that your essence is ineffable and inaccessible, and that the same is true for everyone else. If you can do all this successfully and genuinely and maintain that perspective in earnest, you can live a rich life where you find fulfillment in existence alone, and you can accept the fact of death.
In this (very good) YouTube video, Mark Manson shares the most concise version of this advice that I've ever heard:
"You cannot envy the benefits of someone's life without also envying the costs."
Anecdote to illustrate the mind of an adolescent male:
Growing up, I had a trampoline in the corner of our backyard. I'd often have my high-school friend and neighbor, Chris, to come over to jump on it together, and when my little cousins would visit, we'd play on it together too. But most of my time on that thing was spent alone just jumping as high and for as long as I could.
Our next-door neighbors were a nice family of five. I was friends with their youngest, who was a boy a few years younger than me and who was a better ball-player than me. On a couple occasions, I'd met his older sisters. One was my a year older than me, the other about three years older. Both were very attractive — not just for their physical appearance but also because of how conducive the whole situation was for adolescent-male fantasies of future fornication. I remember training in the spring so that, come summer, I would be able to jump high enough to sneak stop-motion peeks over their fence to glimpse the girls lounging at their pool (this is only slightly exaggerated — the "training for it" bit).
August 24 To overcome, first go under. And if you want to go deeper, don't dig; dive.
(This was a message from the giant oceanic manta ray that visited me during an active imagination exercise, while I was envisioning myself on the black-sand beach on the Snæfellsness Peninsula.)
A Few Principles of Pedagogy
Explain the "why" before the "how." You need to give students a reason to want to learn something; don't just take their attention for granted. Before you ask anything of them, explain why it matters and how they could benefit/use it. This usually means staring with a problem/pain statement that meets them where they are and teases what's to come as the solution.
Share an example or exercise before explaining the concept. When learning something completely new, it's easier to go from the street to clouds rather than from the clouds to the streets. Then, when you do teach the concept, it will be more memorable, because the student can relate it to their experience (in an exercise) or to a specific example.
Rather than asking "Does anyone have any questions?" ask "What questions to you have?" or "What part is still confusing?" Frame asking questions as an essential part of deep understanding, rather than making students feel like they're lagging if they don't understand it fully already.
A running list of quotes from various philosophical traditions that echo the command "know thyself":
Platonism
"An unexamined life is not worth living." – Plato's Apology
Stoicism
Look within. Within is the fountain of good, and it will ever bubble up, if you wilt ever dig." – Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
Taoism
"Knowing others is intelligent. / Knowing yourself is enlightened." – Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, Ch. 33
Nietzche
"Become who you are!" – Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Existentialism
"The most common form of despair is not being who you are." – Kierkeegaard, The Sickness Unto Death
August 23 Live in the low places, where all is abundant. Do not exalt yourself; the universe will humble you.
My exchange with Ellen Fishbein on Twitter about AI and typewriters (now over a year old) is the content that I wish filled my feed.
"Park-Ranger Revision: How to see the forest and the trees"
August 22 Possibly the highest aim I can conceive for myself is to be a normative ethicist that empowers secular American's to strive for a good will — unconditionally. And possibly the greatest contribution I could make to philosophy would be to harmonize the normally dissonant ethics of Kant and Nietzsche, ideally through narrative (in the spirit of Camus).
Or, it would be to be the John Muir of Iceland.
On (Jesus's) Second Commandment
"Love thy neighbor as thyself" is either unrealistic or problematic. Either it means that you ought to provide for your neighbor as you do for yourself — food, clothing, shelter — or it means that love you could give to others is bound by your level of self-love on the day. Of course, this begs the question: How do I show love to myself? I'd argue that the primary way love ourselves is that we take care of ourselves. Is the Christian duty to take care of everyone else too? If you ask me, that dilutes your local impact, on yourself, your community, and your immediate family. It also feels communist and un-American. In the U.S., the only oughts are to take care of yourself and to not infringe on the rights of others. It is not your duty to care for or to provide for others (except those for whom you are responsible, like a parent's children or a doctor's patient, or a teacher's student).
Maybe the more important commandment would be to "Love thyself as thou art loved by the Father." This is equivalent to the commandment that Jesus gives to his disciples at the end of the Last Supper: "[As] I have loved you, that ye also love one another" (John 13:34).
August 21 New way to keep track of version history: Use whole numbers to mark the number of revisions, and distinguish that from the number of edits. There's a vision number and a version number.
v1 is the first version of the first vision. Then, you revise it to a v2. Then, you might try to edit he v2 to see if it works, doing two editing passes: v2.1 and v2.2. After v2.2, you might decide to change your thesis or restructure the thing again. That's v3.
This seems like a great way to track progress through an essay, especially how to distinguish between the processes of revision and editing.
To make this system even more granular, you can distinguish between published versions and unpublished versions by capitalizing the 'v' when it's been published. V1 is the first published version, and if you decide to revise it and republish it, that'd be V2. If you only do some line-editing before republishing, it'd be V1.1.
The equivalent of a reverse outline for the park ranger: After aimlessly wondering through the forest, he gets out a journal, a map, and a pen and asks: Where did I go? What did I see?
What if you could transmute grief into gratitude for a life?
August 20 Iceland served as my mentor and issued me The Call to Adventure. But unlike most heroes' journeys, I never refused the call. And also contra-Campbell, Iceland was not only my mentor but also my enemy and the setting for my grand ordeal. Imagine if the plot twist at the end of The Inferno were that Virgil was also Satin.
Template for Calisthenics Workouts (With sample exercises)
Warm-Up
- Wrist mobility
- Scap push-ups
- Scap pull-ups
- Dynamic stretching
- Run
- Planche Lean
(For the below: 3+ sets per exercise/superset)
Heavy Compound Exercise
- Pull-Ups
- Dips
Antagonistic Superset x2
- Rows + Pike push-ups
- Archer squats + Calf raises
- SL RDL + Tib raises
- Push-ups + BW curls
- SL squat + Diamond push-ups
- Hamstring curl + Australian pull-ups
Core/Grip Finisher
- Max dead-hangs
- Hanging knee raises
- Hollow-body hold
Idea for a calisthenics split:
Pull + Legs: Back + hamstrings Push + Curl: Chest/tris + biceps Pull + Press: Back + shoulders Push + Legs: Chest/tris + quads
- This way, every workout can have two antagonistic supersets (e.g., pull-ups + split squats and rows + leg curls on the Pull + Legs day).
- I wouldn't have to dedicate a day to legs, but I'd still work them with at least 12 sets per week — 2 exercises per muscle group, 3+ sets each, for both the quads and hamstrings.
- Every workout should have at least one set of a core exercise.
Then, if I workout more than four days in a week, the other(s) could be a lighter full-body workout, or a core- or mobility-focused workout, or just cardio (long run).
Unshaved armpits on a woman is, perhaps counterintuitively, a deep expression of femininity. It is an assertion of one's own natural beauty and has the attendant message of "Beauty does not come from conformity but from elegantly expressed individuality." And what could possibly be more feminine than that sentiment? My self-love and -acceptance are not dependent on how you perceive me. That attitude and energy makes a woman even more enviable and esteemed than any woman could ever be with physical beauty alone. She is need-less and whole. Seeing her, you might think, She's more self-accepting than I ever will be.And maybe it's that thought that makes you uncomfortable, not her unkempt armpits.
All this is even more palpable if the woman has groomed (trimmed or shaped) her armpit hair without shaving it off. (For examples, see Caroline Polachek and Aurora in certain seasons.)
There is a truly intimate yet undisclosed connection between Kant's "transcendental idealism" and the (Tibetan) Buddhist doctrine of Emptiness. Kant's phenomena are the Buddhist "forms" and "appearances," and his noumena are the Buddhist "essence": things in themselves. Where the two might diverge is at the idea of whether things share a single essence or whether things can have their own independent hearts.
They both believe that the nature of reality depends on the mind. Buddhism is an idealist philosophy but also one rooted deeply in phenomenology and sensual experience. On that last point, the two are opposite. Kant would never say that "wisdom abides in the body."
The link is probably even stronger between Hegel's absolute idealism and Buddhism.
August 19 Before I left for Iceland, I didn't have a good answer to "Why Iceland?" I just knew I was drawn there. But after trekking through the land of fire and ice for 81 days, I know exactly why. Iceland is the heart of the world. It's one of the few places on Earth where the ground hums the truths of the universe and the wind sings you stories. The island represents all the geological expressions of Nature and invites you to know Her better, all the while humbling you with Her majesty. Without words — with only the shape of its fjords, the colors of its sands, the bleating of its sheep, the warmth of its geothermal water — Iceland reveals who you are and what you value, and prompts you to pursue it. It teaches you to find harmony among the extremes of the world and that every thing exists in harmony with its opposite. At least, that's the effect it has on me. I wanted to go to Iceland because it called to me; it called me to feel fire and ice, to learn how to live in harmony.
Satisfaction, or dissatisfaction, is the difference between expectation and reality.
You can't retrieve anything from emptiness, but you can fill it. Fill it with meaning.
Take pride in being manifold.
What will I reap? is the same question as What have I sown?
What do want I reap tomorrow? is the same question as What must I sow today?
What do I want to reap? is the same question as What must I sow?
Successful people write short emails, and they fire back replies in seconds. They have stuff to do, and they keep it moving. (This applies to correspondence more than initial outreach.) I tend to think that get-it-done attitude is the egg, not the chicken.
August 18 Camus's Judge-Penitent (in The Fall) is the antithesis to the morality of Emerson's "Self-Reliance."
"Writing is rewriting." That's the proverb spoken by a whole host of successful writers. (I wouldn't be surprised if somewhere it's attributed to Plato.) But when you set out to improve at your craft, are focusing on becoming a better writer or a better editor? It's your writer-self who writes and your editor-self who rewrites. If you want to become a better writer, become a better self-editor.
"The only kind of writing is rewriting." – Earnest Hemingway
"Writing is rewriting. A writer must learn to deepen characters, trim writing, intensify scenes. To fall in love with a first draft to the point where one cannot change it is to greatly enhance the prospects of never publishing." – Richard North Patterson
"The best writing is rewriting." – E. B. White
"I have never thought of myself as a good writer. Anyone who wants reassurance of that should read one of my first drafts. But I'm one of the world's great rewriters." – James A. Michener
"Books aren't written — they're rewritten. Including your own. It is one of the hardest things to accept, especially after the seventh rewrite hasn't quite done it." – Michael Crichton
"There is no great writing, only great rewriting." – Justice Brandeis
Revise until you have the right vision. Then, edit until you have a version you'd be proud to publish.
A pretty profound aphorism from John Keating (Robin Williams) in The Dead Poets Society:
"Sucking the marrow out of life doesn't mean choking on the bone."
It calls for a "carpe diem" attitude that's contra hedonism and unconscious consumption. It's not "Get all you can while you can." It's "Savor all you have while you have it."
"The editing process" is actually two processes: revision and editing. The revision process begins with a reverse outline of the first draft and a revision plan. It ends once the draft has a clear vision, logical structure, and a cohesive message. The editing process begins with changes to the language and improvements to style, and it ends with a final pass for consistency and correctness: the proofread.
Another way to frame the revision process:
- Viz: What are you saying?
- Re-vise: What do you mean to say?
- Edit: How can you say it better?
- Proof: Are you saying it all correctly?
Revision and editing are different processes. If you're revising, you're looking at the thing anew and allowing for the vision to change (re-vise: "look again"). If you're editing it, you're looking through the draft to make sure it aligns with the established vision.
Revision happens at the level of structure and logic, editing at the level of language, voice, and style.
The park ranger revises the trail when he changes the route. He edits it when he removes fallen trees and places stones to facilitate a river-crossing. Once the route is set, his job is to make it more enjoyable to hike. As he's setting the route, his job is to make the hike worthwhile.
August 17 See the world through the eyes of a lamb, but walk through it like a wolf.
To extend the trail metaphor for an essay: The grand vista is your thesis, the main message. The trail works you toward understanding and appreciating the summit.
I am a staunchly principled person. I believe that I know what is best and what is right for me. But I will not impose my principles on you, unless your actions encroach on me.
August 16 One way to describe the difference between childhood and adult friendships is that at first, you're learning and growing in the same way at the same time. As adults, you start learning and growing independently. It's no wander you drift apart.
I'm reading The Jefferson Bible. It's my first time actually reading through (a version) of the Gospels. Here's a running list of the verses that really resonate or stand out as culturally significant or especially beautiful:
- Matthew 5:33–37
- Luke 6:35
- Matthew 6:1–6
- Matthew 6:24
- Matthew 7:3–5
- Matthew 11:28–30
- Luke 7:41–43
- Luke 12:13–15
- Luke 12:47–48
- Luke 9:57–58
- Mark 7:15
- John 7:19
- John 8:7–11
- Luke 10:33–3
- Luke 14:11
- Luke 15:25–32
- Luke 18:10–14
- Matthew 21:28–31
- Mark 12:32–33
- Matthew 23:16–22
- Matthew 23:23–2
- John 13:34
- John 18:33–3
And here are some verses of note that I disagree with:
- Matthew 13:36–43
- Mark 2:17
- Luke 10:10–12
- John 10:1–1
- Matthew 19:23–24
- Matthew 20:11–16
- Matthew 25:6–12 (Parable of the Ten Virgins — why ten instead of two, and what about "love thy neighbor as thyself?")
- Matthew 25:24–30 ("with ursury")
- Mark 14:4–8
- Luke 23:39–41 ("They know not...")
August 15 Someday, publish a collected volume of "dream-inspired prose poetry."
Read Mark Strand's The Monument (prose-poetry musings on death and morality) — recommended in David Lehman's preface to Great American's Prose Poems.
Would you rather till your plot with one ox or two oxen? Which would allow you to sow more seed, get more yield from your land? To go through life holding any extreme view is to miss the world's nuance and richness, the stuff that nourishes the soul. Find harmony among all opposites and walk the middle way; yoke two oxen and wield them in tandem to work the plot of land which was given to you to till.
These two oxen are brother and sister. Love and care for them both and come to know them. Name them and praise and heal them. At the same time, decide which is your favorite and have no shame about it. Support and honor both, but give more grain to whichever of the two serves you best, so that he or she may grow stronger over time and come to lead your plow.
(Inspired by Emerson's "every man's education" quote from "Self-Reliance")
The park ranger goes off into the woods, wonders aimlessly, and gets lost. That's how you find something interesting, and that's the purpose of your first draft. Wonder without a trail, then blaze a trail for others to follow.
August 14 Season 2, Episode 6 of The Bear, "Fishes," is a freaking masterpiece. It's the most conclusive flashback of the whole show — an entire hour-long episode. The writers and actors absolutely nailed human nature. The tension was crazy throughout and built to a completely unexpected end; the exposition through dialogue was masterful; and the acting was exquisite.
Well shit, the next episode — "Forks" — might have been even better. Richie's arc is incredible, and now it's clear that "Fishes" served as his backstory more than anyone else's, especially for us to become invested in his relationship with Tiff.
A new take on the Kansas State motto and my alma mater's motto: Per aspera ad libertas. Adversity ought not serve success (traditional success: a materially upward trajectory); it ought to serve liberty, freedom, autonomy. Any hardship is justifiable and endurable if it is in pursuit of freedom. The same cannot be said for the pursuit of wealth, sex, or fame.
August 13 Before I seriously consider using a dumb phone, I should augment my iPhone to make it serve my purposes and see how well that works. This Reddit post has some pretty great resources about how to do this effectively with:
- Screen time limits
- Parental Controls
- Notifications
- Privacy settings.
The Brick app + device is another good option.
Also consider the yet unreleased Unplugged phone for privacy, security, and true off-the-grid capability.
August 12 Somnio, ergo sum homo. Homo sum, ergo somnio.
Why decry aging? You can either see your next birthday is another step toward death or a renewal of this great privilege you have: living.
August 10 Yoga comes from the same root as yoke, which means "to bring together," "to unite." The yoga we all think of (tight pants, downward dog, savassana) is yoking the mind and spirit through mindful movements of the body, in rhythm with the breath. Dream yoga yokes your mind with reality, by revealing truths through mindful observation of lucid dreams.
If I'm uncomfortable meeting strangers, I'm in dissonance with something within myself.
August 9 Keep reaching, even though you know you will never reach it.
Research Thule (originally from Greek and Roman mythology), a theoretical land at the northern-most parts of Earth, the edge of the world. Consider connecting it to my idea of dying at sea (sailing toward the horizon despite knowing that you will never reach it). The myth is that Thule was this area with cold, northern islands that were otherworldly, inaccessible in this reality.
This ChatGPT conversation has a few helpful references:
Poetry/Literature
- "The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe
- "Hyperborean" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
- "Thule's Land" by Ernest L. Meyer
- "The Waste Land" by T.S. Eliot
- "Thule, Isle of Mystery" by Robert E. Howard
- "Thule" by Clark Ashton Smith
Essays
- "The Idea of Thule in American Literature" by Allen Tate
- "Thule in the American Imagination" by Harold Bloom
There is a problematic association here with the Thule Society, which co-opted the concept of this mythical place in their beliefs that it is the home the Aryan race. The Thule Society was one of the first funders for the Nazis, and they helped distribute nationalist and anti-Semitic propaganda in Germany.
I learned to become an editor by editing my own writing. Now, I'm an editor for a living and an expert (but not a master) in English grammar, mechanics, and style. I'm a self-taught SNOOT.
Here's a Markdown cheat sheet for future reference.
August 8 Superlative vs. Hyperbole
Imagine you're walking through a new city in the morning looking for a coffee. There are two cafés across the street from one another. One has a sign that says "World's Best Coffee," the other, one that says "World-Famous Coffee." Both are pretty unbelievable claims of quality. Which one do you find more believable, more interesting, more honest, more credible? Where would you choose to spend your money?
"World's Best" is a superlative, and "World-Famous" is hyperbole. Superlatives in a context like this (comparing yourself to all the coffee in the world) are unbelievable and blatantly wrong, or at least strongly opinionated. Hyperbole is more transparent and more believable; it's exaggeration for effect, not a claim of being the best. When you're writing, superlatives are almost never what you want, unless you want to come off as preachy and dogmatic and delusional. Hyperbole you can use in an argument, to emphasize a point. Superlatives are claims that will completely undermine your argument.
"Employees must wash hands before returning to work" is not expository; it's rhetorical. It's one of the most common, everyday examples of the Ethical Appeal.
August 7 The mind moves best if the body has already.
Would you rather be a wolf or a sheep? Would you rather make your own way in the wilderness, choosing your kin, or be sheltered and sequestered and guarded in a pasture to aimlessly graze amongst strangers? Would you rather fight for your food and die trying, or be fed by the hand that shepherds you and grooms you and that will eventually slaughter you? Would you rather be a wolf of the wilderness, or a lamb of God? Would you rather your body die from starvation or your mind from stagnation?
[[Eden Is Hell Too]]
Here's a surprisingly illustrious answer from ChatGPT on the characteristics of American prose-poetry. This will be a good reference as I learn more about this form.
Characteristics of Prose-Poetry Rhythm and Sound: While prose-poetry lacks the formal structure of verse poetry, it often incorporates rhythm, alliteration, assonance, and other sound devices.Imagery and Metaphor: Like poetry, prose-poetry relies heavily on vivid imagery and metaphor to evoke emotions and create meaning. Conciseness: Prose-poetry is typically more concise than prose, with a focus on distilling language to its most essential elements. Fragmentation and Juxtaposition: It often features fragmented thoughts and images, juxtaposed in ways that might be unconventional in traditional prose. Ambiguity and Multiple Meanings: Prose-poetry often embraces ambiguity and invites multiple interpretations.
As a writer, I have a few primary mediums emerging: essays (argumentative, persuasive, and personal), short stories (including philosophical allegories), and prose-poetry (to marvel at and commune with nature). I would be happy if I mastered these forms and never wrote a novel. I would be even happier if I could master all these forms and combine those skills to produce successful non-fiction books, as well as short-fiction and essay collections.
Read some of Carolyn Froché's work to get a sense of how to write great prose-poetry.
Our Planet Doesn't Need "Saving"
The rhetoric around climate change is completely misguided — on both sides. The less obvious one, which I haven't seen criticized anywhere, is the rhetoric of the pro-environment, pro-conservation argument. Way too much of it is about how we're "killing the planet" and how we need to "save the planet." This sounds fine and dandy on the surface (complete with the familiar Christian undertones of self-depravity and atoning for sinfulness, which is odd for a largely leftist and secular movement), but it is self-cannibalizing and disingenuous. In a way, it's trying to remind us of our duty to Nature and how much greater it is than us, trying to humble us. But the very content of the message is arrogant and anthropocentric and self-aggrandizing. You think we can "kill the planet"? We puny humans? You think Nature needs us to "save" it? We could live for another million years and then go extinct, and Earth will have only blinked.
Either be truly humble and live in service to Nature, or be honest about what you're trying to do. We want to save the planet for ourselves. We want to preserve what we find beautiful and stave off global warming so that it doesn't cause infrastructural issues for our flimsy cities — cities which a moment from now will be rubble, dust, returned to the earth. And there's nothing wrong with conservation and environmentalism being selfish. The problem is the rhetoric trying to obscure that and prop up a false and more "noble" purpose. Let's start calling it what it is. We are not gods. We cannot scratch the Earth, much less kill it. We are puny humans trying not to deface the home we rent and lose our security deposit, because that withdraw would not be material but karmic, spiritual. Only the depraved deface the gift of life.
I tend to confuse these words, so here's a record of which match to which meaning (all nouns):
Epigraph: A short excerpt that appears before the body of a text, often at the top a book chapter, to offer context.
Epitaph: The inscription on one's tombstone; the words we choose to remember the life of a person who has died.
Effigy: A sculpture or model of a person or mascot, created with the intention to deface the model in protest or in opposition to the person/entity/ideology/organization/community/team it symbolizes.
Write a transcendentalist version of The Sermon on the Mount.
The ideas that have most influenced my philosophy are eclectic, but I find them to be completely compatible:
- Kantian ethics
- Christian morality
- Camus's Absurdism
- Stoicism
- The Tibetan (Vajrayana) Buddhist practice of dream yoga
- Jain logic & epistemology
- Taoism
- Nietzsche's Will to Power
- And American Transcendentalism (namely Emerson and John Muir).
Maybe the endurance of the Gospels has to do with an Enlightenment, empirical, scientific idea that we all came to value so highly: replicability. Maybe the Gospels have endured so well in Western society because they are plural, not "The Gospel." It's "The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John: An Interdisciplinary Telling of the Life, Morals, and Miracles of Jesus of Nazareth," a peer-reviewed study.
There is not a more important or valuable skill in life than the ability to hold in tension (1) a feeling of complete contentment with where you are and what you have and (2) your desire for more and better and new.
August 6 Explore David Abram's work, and consider reading his book The Spell of the Sensuous.
And definitely read Terry Tempest Williams's work, starting with The Hour of Land: A Personal Typography of America's National Parks.
I think I might be a transcendentalist.
The primary claim of transcendentalism is that you can transcend yourself by venturing into and unveiling the deepest parts of yourself, and that the main vehicle for your introspection ought to be communion with Nature. All that I believe wholeheartedly.
The author decides when it's ready to write. The editor decides when it's ready to read.
Research Barðura, and read the Icelandic saga about him, the half-human-half-troll guardian of Snæfellsjökul.
There is nothing more noble in Nature than a glacier.
An apple a day keeps salvation away.
Candidate for a daily dictum: Exercising before 8:00 (am), meditating before 10:00 (pm)
August 5 Questions of morality are questions of truth and harm. If your words knowingly violate the truth, they are, in most cases, immoral. If an action harms others it is, in most cases, immoral. We conflate moral questions with "issues" that ought to be permitted under the simple principles of personal liberty. You are free to offend, refute, opine, argue, debate, protest, defend, renounce, condemn, postulate, theorize, flirt, fornicate, ignore, bolster, profess, peach. And maybe personal liberty extends so far as to permit self-harm. Maybe self-harm is not immoral, because it does not violate truth or cause harm to others. Maybe self-harm is only tragic and misguided. If we deem self-harm immoral, then we'd have to deem excessive drinking and poor sleep and gambling as immoral. You are free to do whatever you choose with your mind, body, and mouth, as long as your speech and actions do not tyrannize truth or harm others.
All great essays have (1) a fresh & novel frame, and (2) a specific & surprising claim.
Besides writing gibberish, the most efficient way to confuse tour reader is to mix metaphors. One can only inhabit a single figurative space at once. Once you have the space (or image) established, expand on it or take it deeper, but don't change the scene altogether. It's disorienting. You'll lose your reader; they won't know how to follow you.
One of the first things that honest introspection reveals to you is that your emotions are fleeting and ephemeral and inconsequential — that they only matter to you. By understanding yourself, you learn how fickle and flimsy your idea of self is.
Sensual is a great word. It's different than physical or emotional or sexual. Somehow, it means a little bit of all three: emotional via the physical that in some contexts might be or become sexual. It's also different than sensory, which merely means "of the senses"; sensual means more like "via the senses."
What is “Your Re-Vision”? It’s when you look at the current draft for the first time through the eyes of your reader. How enjoyable and accessible and meaningful and fulfilling would it be for someone else to come along and hike this trail? How can I make it cohesive, clear, so that they don’t get lost — and concise, so that they never feel like they’re wasting their time?
Maybe there are actually four steps to Park Ranger Revision:
- Map the forest.
- Mark the trail.
- Trim the trees. // Remove the rocks.
- Clear the leaves.
It's easer to teach steps 1 and 2 as separate. One you could call the Content Edit, the other the Structural Edit. The outcome of the Content Edit is a reverse outline: a survey of what's there. The outcome of the Structural Edit is a your re-vision, or a "revision plan," as well as some cuts and re-ordering to your current draft.
Really, this depends on whether you're editing your own work or someone else's. If it's your essay, the drafting phase is when you map the forest. And by the time you go to do a reverse outline, you already know what's there, so you'll naturally move on to the revision plan, asking What should I cut, change, and rearrange to make this better? If you're editing someone else's work, you'll need to read it and get a clear sense for what's there and what it's trying to do.
You could also call these four steps the following:
- Reverse outline
- Your Re-Vision (which includes a revision plan and making big-picture cuts + big-picture reshuffling)
- Line-Edit
- Proofread
August 3 I don't want what most people want, but I have what most people want. And I don't know what to do about it.
The more you acknowledge when you do wrong and truly face it, the less wrong you will do. The only way we allow ourselves to act immorally is by ignoring reality or deluding ourselves into justifying our own depravity.
Glaciers are the most noble things in nature. They sit atop stone thrones that were once carved by their younger selves. What other monarch is also a mason? And what other earthbound creature is closer to divinity than the one composed of trillions of icy angles who have communed throughout eons to form a body that is both an immovable object and an unstoppable force?
We worry for the glaciers, that we might kill them, but that is anthropocentric and near-sighted. We are won't worried for the glaciers but, in truth, for ourselves. We wander: What is the cosmic consequence for melting a trillion angels? We fear the wrath of molecular demons that flood out of the denser ice. With any foresight we can know that no matter our fate, the glaciers will succeed us, just as they have preceded us. And if we if we do ruin ourselves, the Earth will turn for eons more, and maybe the glaciers will choose to grant some other, more virtuous beings the chance to inhabit a Her.
[What other monarch do you know whose pastime is masonry?]
The writers whose prose I admire most used typewriters. So, I bought and now use a typewriter.
August 2 "Knowledge worker" means you're a person who can work less and get paid the same — justifiably, because your time is not linearly valuable. The value you create varies by the type of work you do/complete within a day.
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