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March
March 31 Are you telling me it's a coincidence that the resurrection of Jesus happened at the very beginning of Spring? How ultimately fitting — seems kind of pagan to me.
March 30 The lyrics to Hozier's "Sedated" are a perfect summary of how substances aid the cycle of self-delusion and serve as refuge for the self-important, fragile ego.
Just a little rush, babe / To feel dizzy, to derail the mind of me / Just a little hush, babe / Our veins are busy, but my heart's in atrophy.
Any way to distract and sedate / Adding shadows to the walls of the cave.
You and I, nursing on / A poison that never stung / Our teeth and lungs are lined / With the scum of it.
Somewhere for this, death and guns / We are deaf. We are numb. / Free and young, and we can feel none of it.
Trying to control your future is like playing sudoku with a pen. You're making life unnecessarily harder on yourself. Give yourself an eraser; allow yourself to pivot.
I agree (etymologically) that we are sinful, insofar as we "miss the mark," but I disagree that it's a problem. Sin is a gift. If we always hit the mark, we would stop striving, and without striving, life would be sapped of all meaning. We would not long or love or wish or dream. We would be stagnant creatures devoid of life, even if we were immortal. Adam and Eve were not human until they became sinful. And I say, thank God for that.
Somehow the smell of celery is more intense than its taste.
Life is rich. Work is work.
March 28 Tree skiing is a metaphor for life.
March 27 On a personality test, I'm a 95th-percentile extrovert, but I spend hours of my weekends alone to write or read or play video games. No extreme is the right way. Find harmony among both extremes.
[[Live in the Third]]
March 26 For most people, the night provides cover and makes it easier to hide from yourself. It's the ego's respite, its native arena. But if you have a spiritual dream practice, the night becomes a time to face yourself, and you deny the ego of any refuge from the clear mind of your formless self. Persistent lucidity — throughout all modes of consciousness — leads to the most possible self-knowledge and the least possible attachment to the self.
March 23 This lyric from the White Stripes frames Kansas as a refuge from the materialistic, urban mindset: "I'm go'n to Wichita // Far from this opera of forever more." I never noticed that, and it's pretty profound. Over the past year or two, I have become swept up in "the opera of forever more." It's simply not healthy. I miss seeing sunsets over flat plains, rather than trying to catch a glimpse of them between skyscrapers.
Masculine energy is in the world. Feminine energy is of the world.
We remain in samsara because we are afraid of the dark. We run away from it, toward artificial lights, and away from ourselves. We cling to ignorance of what's within for an unconscious fear of what we might learn if we looked.
Lucidity is the ability to see in the dark, because you kindle the spark of awareness within you. And why would you ever be afraid of what you can see? Without ignorance, there is no fear. Without fear, there is no mindless avoidance of the dark. To practice lucidity, practice sitting in darkness and paying attention to what you see.
The reason you can feel so lonely in New York with surrounded by so many people is because none of the people acknowledge each other. To their credit, if they did, it would be all they do all day, every day — nodding at passer-bys. You can feel lonely in the midst of the crowd if you feel like the crowd would be the exact same size and spirit without you.
March 22 Witnessing the Aurora Borealis is like shining a blue-light to reveal the Sun's airborne thermonuclear ejaculate.
March 21 In the West, we err on the side of rationality and fail by forgetting to feel. In the East, feeling leads at the expense of clear answers and systems.
The greatest danger of Western thought is in thinking that you know the answer, that you have discovered the truth, whether through science or careful, analytic philosophy.
The greatest danger of Eastern thought is in thinking that you must deny yourself worldly achievement to live spiritually.
The best way is the middle, where you search for answers, knowing you will never fully know, and where you achieve in the world without forgetting what truly matters.
One thing we definitely need to overcome in the West is our tendency to see things as just one or two. Our thinking lacks nuance, which leads us further from the nature of reality. We search for the "one true" God/answer, and situate ourselves on one side of a dichotomy in opposition to the other extreme. In reality, everything is a duality: Yin and Yang, One and Two — Three.
[[Live in the Third]]
The One is female, the Two male, for order can only come after chaos. Three arrises from the movement between One and Two, from their harmony. And from Three comes the ten thousand things.
(The One is the inhale, Two the exhale. And Three is the breath. The breath powers life.)
This is a different view than the Chinese Yin/Yang separation, though. Sometimes the Yang is chaotic. The Yang is anything that is strong, bright, that comes from the Sun. The Yin is dark and mysterious, like the Moon. According to Taoism, a forest fire would be yang and a blizzard yin, but Yin is the female. I would call the forest fire female (Yin) and the blizzard male (Yang), because the first is chaotic and the second ordered, structured.
The blizzard is predictable and doesn't come from the unknown. It limits possibility, slows change. The fire engenders possibility through destruction, which is often required for new life. Any sort of rebirth is the female, the Yin.
[[Live in the Third]]
On the origin of Yin/Yang and its relationship to the Tao (Britanica):
"The Daoist treatise Huainanzi (book of “Master Huainan”) describes how the one “Primordial Breath” (yuanqi) split into the light ethereal yang breath, which formed heaven; and the heavier, cruder yin breath, which formed earth. The diversifications and interactions of yin and yang produced the Ten Thousand Things."
The warm breath of yang accumulated to produce fire, the essence of which formed the sun. The cold breath of yin accumulated to produce water, the essence of which became the moon.
The Tao is Yin and Yang moving in harmony.
Also, this TED-Ed video is great.
March 20 We dread the feeling of being caught in the middle, suspended in air, so we try to escape it. We fall to one side or the other so that we can stand on solid ground. But that's a fallacy. The middle comprises all that is real. Everything rests on uncertainty; everything is suspended in air. The best path through life is one in keeping with reality. The best mindset is one without the self-delusions of being on one side or the other. You are always somewhere among the abundance of what could be.
[[Live in the Third]]
Most of life — and everything that matters in life — is immaterial. It's not in the world but within yourself. If you chase numbers and possessions and surface pleasures, you will get lost. You will fall away from yourself.
I thought a key to maintaining work-life balance would be to separate my professional and personal to-do lists, but the unexpected result is that I only ever look at my tasks for work and, therefore, only ever check those off.
Volcanoes are feminine. Glaciers are masculine. Volcanos create in chaos, bringing up a river of formless material from the unknown depths of the Earth. Glaciers shape what comes into being and give it form, applying order and structure as best they can. Both volcanoes and glaciers are unstoppable forces and immovable objects. Together, they exhibit the primordial duality of Nature.
Or, maybe volcanoes and glaciers are both masculine and feminine. Maybe the part of the volcano that you can't see is feminine (the womb) and the flowing lava is masculine. Maybe the rigid, static ice on top of the glacier is masculine and the dark, flowing underbelly of the glacier is feminine.
[[Feeling Fire and Ice]]
Tell the story of why/how we lost to Houton my freshman year (a team much worse than us). Use it as a microcosm of not taking something seriously when you think you're guaranteed success. The best way to guarantee failure is to expect easy success.
Good opening group discussion prompt for a popcorn-style icebreaker: What's something you love about life?
Introspection repels self-delusion.
March 19 Three out of every 10 hatchlings never make it into the sea (study). And only one in 1000 sea turtles grows to adulthood. Predation is ruthless, and so many ancient species have lossy reproduction. They spray and pray that some survive.
The danger of loving your job is that you might make it your top priority in life.
You are always choosing among, never between. Any decision that seems to have only two options is an illusion. You may think, "No, I either choose to do a thing or I don't — two options." To that, I say, what about the myriad ways you could do or not do the thing? More than anything, you are deciding how to do the thing you know you want to do, or that you feel you ought to do. It's rare that you know exactly what to do and are only deciding whether to do it.
March 18 Oversimplification and generalization of a broad cultural dissonance in America: Our women want to achieve what men have always sought, and our men don't know what to seek other than what they have always sought: material success. We've overcorrected. In the next phase of this, there will be more harmony and opportunity — a place for the minority of women who want masculine success and a place for the minority of men who want feminine success.
March 17 Being in a relationship is the best way to improve yourself, as long as you're not using the relationship to avoid yourself.
March 16 Everyone's journey through life is turbulent and chaotic. Only in hindsight does a person's trajectory appear smooth and calculated.
You can either use your mental energy during a conversation to remember what people say or to think of the best possible response. I would rather do the latter, because it is more impactful. But it leads to poor conversation recall, where all I can remember are the emotions and outcomes of a conversation, rather than its contents.
March 15 "Coffee-shop writing session" includes both a closed phrasal adjective ("coffee-shop") and an open phrasal noun ("writing session"). That's cool.
March 14 The future is not just unwieldy; it's unwieldable.
Another phrase for living within dualities in life: Have a bifocal mindset.
Here's what "detach from outcomes" doesn't mean: having unprotected sex. It is not an attitude of giving yourself up to chance or ignoring consequences. Detaching from outcomes means taking complete ownership of everything within your control and resting in comfort that you have done all you can... and only then do you allow things to unfold without your intervention. Only then do you assume an attitude of openness, to receive reality. You start by manipulating the future, and then move into accepting what arrives. It means wearing a condom and pulling out, and then in the event of a miraculous conception, you can receive that outcome with grace, because you know you did all that was in your power to achieve the desired outcome.
Detachment (from outcomes) is not about absolving yourself of desire. Pursue what you desire — fervently — for only after giving it your best effort will you be able to rest in comfort with whatever comes. Do, do, do, then detach.
Only by detaching from outcomes and sitting in darkness can you become open to possibility.
March 13 You know what's a great title? The Devil Wears Prada. There's so much there. You know it's about fashion and that there's a "Devil" character at the center of the narrative (Meryl Streep). It's surprising and punchy, and the specificity of "Prada" makes it super memorable.
Glaciers rule the Earth. Glaciers were here billions of years before we existed and will live long after we are gone. Their reign goes in waves, but they are sure to dominate the Earth again. They move in silence yet shape the world. And there is wisdom in them, if you can be still enough to listen.
Work is not *the* work. I should subordinate my entire career and the demands of every job I ever have to the next step of my journey inwards. I must live without needing anything from the world, and that means knowing myself before anything else.
March 12 There's a difference between danger and insecurity. It's the difference between getting mugged and getting robbed. Iceland never felt dangerous, but after getting robbed, I felt insecure.
"History is not good at capturing all that is great in art. But history is very good at discarding all that is mediocre."
My take on Atomic Habits: Everything is completely clear, but it has none of James. Every chapter follows the same template, which (1) distances me from the writer as a person and (2) makes me feel like he thinks I need to be led along like a toddler on a crosswalk. The preface is the only part you get to learn about James, with the whole baseball story. All the other stories in the book are about Olympic cyclists or — actually that's the only one I can remember because they're forgettable anecdotes. The examples are trite and repeated. Are there no habits a person would want to develop besides eating healthy and working out? James Clear has great ideas, and he's a great thinker, but by the way he writes, I don't get the sense that he knows it.
March 11 I remember being in fourth grade in the boys' locker room before gym class, and I think that was the moment I fell in love with words. I didn't act on it until later, but that might have been the moment. We'd all changed into our gym clothes, and we were sitting on the floor, lined up along the wall, waiting to walk out to class together. I wasn't talking to anyone. I was in my head repeating the opening lyric to my favorite song: "Hey there, Delilah, / What's it like in New York City? / I'm a thousand miles away / But tonight you look so pretty." Today, I would call that economic storytelling. Then, I just knew how the lyric made me feel and how it felt to sing. Words can move.
Carbon-Based Writing: Don't over-engineer prose. You must preserve the spirit of the first draft as you apply structure, clarity, and polish during revision. But your your edits risk killing the spirit; your prose can become mechanical. And metal lacks life.
As a highly analytical person, this is a struggle for me. My goal has been to have no darlings. While that's a good rule for paragraphs, sentences, and phrases, it's disastrous to kill the darling of the spirit behind your words. Edit the words while preserving the spirit.
I find we are more likely to meet expectations than we are to do wrong. So, let’s expect each other to do the right thing, and support each other so that we can all strive for that ideal: moral perfection. As soon as you start deferring to the culture or the Church or your friends to decide what you ought to do, it’s easier to make excuses and rationalize immoral behavior, as if the fault for your actions lies anywhere other than with you.
March 10 You must start with the feminine: intuition, chaos, formlessness, discomfort, uncertainty. You cannot start with structure, purpose, or a plan. This is a fact of nature: we come from the Mother. The unknown, the womb, is the source of all things real. That is the feminine; the masculine is giving form to what comes into being, to make it something intelligible and valuable and lasting.
Keep this in mind as you define what success means to you. Understand that you can't start with worldly success, and understand that success in the world is not the only kind of success. Before and after you achieve anything, success is a feeling. You can feel success within yourself (feminine success) on your way to achieving success in the world (masculine success).
You cannot measure the quality of your life by what you have accomplished — only by how you have lived.
The bardo of public transit: There is an operator who decides when the train is ready to leave. Yes, you don't know when exactly the doors will close, but you can safely assume that it won't leave until everyone has exited and until everyone who is waiting has boarded. If we were all more in tune with the transitory nature of life, we wouldn't crowd passed each other through the narrow threshold of the train doors. Those waiting to board would wait until everyone in that car who wanted to exit had done so. Only then would you transition from the platform to the train.
We crowd on to the train because we have this unconscious anxiety and insecurity that we'll be left behind or caught in transition. You can dissolve this debilitating fear and align yourself with nature by letting go of this attachment: getting what you want, when you want. Long for nothing but to experience reality as it is. Do not long for reality to bend to your wishes, because you will remain perpetually anxious and disappointed.
If we were intelligently designed, created for a purpose, it was not to do something in the world — like helping people start businesses with your podcast. It would be simpler than that and more universal. If we were made for a purpose, it would be to enjoy life and be grateful for it and love people and accept the fact of our mortality before we die.
Substack Note: I often make a "stank face" reading Yehudis, like a blues singer admiring his band-mate's guitar solo. It's an expression of disgust and admiration, an anomaly of body language. It's like walking into a room and catching whiff of a strong smell you didn't expect, and in the same moment realizing that you dig it.
March 9 I'm not sure I've ever identified with a comic-book character more than I do with Councilman Tenzin in The Legend of Korra (Aang's son). The Martian Manhunter is a close second. They're stoic leaders with strong powers who practice stillness and mediation, and they're principled and opinionated.
I want to be fond of everything I publish and forget most of what I write.
March 8 Emulate your current best conception of your ideal self.
March 7 Recreation is the same word as re-creation. It comes from the Latin recreare: "to refresh, restore, make anew, revive, invigorate." To recreate is to re-create yourself, to make yourself anew through some refreshing, regenerative action (Etymonline entry).
You are your own judge. When you fail, the only means of expiation is to do better in the future, to bring yourself closer overtime to the ideal. You can't use confession to wipe away the week's sins on Saturday. You are the source of your own salvation. (Why? Because you are also the source of your own depravity, which comes both from your actions and your self-perception.) Only you can make yourself worthy of grace, by pursuing moral perfection as if it were your religion.
My struggle in life will be to find comfort in the fact that I will die at sea, and that I will never be able to reach as far as I can dream. No matter how far I go, I will always be the same distance from the horizon.
[[Die at Sea]]
Human = Dying Dreamer + Meaning-Maker
We dream up the furthest but can only reach so far. Despite the reaching being futile, we make it meaningful.
The Dying Dreamer is mortal yet has divine knowledge — the ability to conceive of what he will never attain. He has clarity about himself, his dreams, and his inevitable death. And he is detached from what he knows, knowing it will change; detached from what he dreams, knowing it may never be.
The Meaning-Maker is detached from ordained meaning/purpose or prescribed values. By acting in congruence with his chosen values, he imbues life with meaning.
Without detachment, the equation changes: Human = dreamer + maker. We convince ourselves that our dreams will come true, or that they must come true to be worth pursuing, and we make things that may not be meaningful to us. We need an attitude of detachment to correctly orient our reason and consciousness — to unlock the contradictory composite that is our true nature — that of the Dying Dreamer and Meaning-Maker.
(Did the (inhuman) Adam and Eve dream?)
March 6 If there are things you want to do in this world before you die, start doing them today, because you could die tomorrow. At the end of life, you won't feel any guilt or regret for not achieving your dreams, as long as you were on your way.
Skills I Want to Master in Life
- Writing
- Editing
- Skiing
- Lucid Dreaming
- Calisthenics
- Rock Balancing
- Handpan
- Public Speaking
- Backpacking/Mountaineering
It's wrong to harm people, disrespect people, degrade people, endanger people, or lie to people. But it is not morally wrong to disobey people. If by disobeying you do not harm, disrespect, degrade, endanger, or lie, then at worst what you're doing is illegal. Your duty is to uphold the moral law. If a legal law neither serves neither you nor the moral law, disobeying it is not immoral.
March 5 Here are the three steps to upholding "your half of the covenant" as a writer:
- Choose a topic that you know will be valuable and interesting to others.
- Write the first full draft and first revision for yourself.
- Finally, project yourself into the mind of your reader, and revise again and again as a service to him.
Dependent clauses are like little, opaque containers. You have to untie a bow to see their full contents. So, only put extra surprises in there — bonus items. Don't conceal what matters. Put all essential info in independent clauses, and resign supplementary info to dependent clauses, to create an intuitive hierarchy for your reader.
If you have the choice between nominalizing and using a weird adverbial phrase, choose the noun (in most cases). Neither are great options, but the noun will likely be shorter and less confusing.
Weird Adverb: “Today, that insight resonates more profoundly than ever.”
Noun: “Today, her insight has a profound resonance.”
Even better, though, would be to keep the verb and cut the weird adverb. (A “weird adverbial phrase” is one that comes after the verb or one that includes an adverb you’ve never heard before — coerced into one from another part of speech.)
Verb: “Her profound insight still resonates today.”
March 4 Ask for what you want until you get what you want, get fired, or quit. With that approach, you'll avoid the worst outcome, which is to continue working a job you resent.
People complain about a job for years and then finally muster the "courage" to quit. I'll never understand it. Try to change your job into something you love first (by either doing different work or improving your pay). And if that doesn't work, quit.
Framework for the dichotomy between concrete examples and concepts in writing (related to RPC's Ladder of Abstraction):
Anchor: Ground a heady concept or philosophical lesson in a story or concrete example.
Elevate: Relate a particular example or story to a larger concept, to give the particular thing more significance and resonance.
These are the processes that help you move up and down the Ladder of Abstraction, between the conceptual and the concrete. Anchor ideas and elevate examples.
The sooner you start doing something you love, and at which you are talented, the less you'll have to grind to achieve success. Since you love it, you'll be willing to do it indefinitely without achieving success. And since you're talented, you'll get better quickly, and you'll get good enough to earn enough money from it. The trick is to keep practicing, keep improving no matter how much success you have, because the success can disappear but not your skills. "Get so good they can't ignore you." That is the best path to lasting (worldly, masculine) success.
March 3 On my logging practice (from this Substack exchange:
I write down many of my fleeting thoughts as digital notes. And the most important part of my practice is that I render each idea in the best prose I can manage in the moment, as if for an audience. And I revisit and revise the notes. I find it improves my craft, adds clarity to my good ideas, and cements them in memory.
March 2 I am steeped in this boiling concrete.
Kant in Religion:
The original good is *holiness* of *maxims* in the compliance to one’s duty, hence merely out of duty, whereby a human being, who incorporates this purity into his maxims, though on this account still not holy as such (for between maxim and deed there still is a wide gap), is nonetheless upon the road of endless progress toward holiness. When the firm resolve to comply with one’s duty has become a habit, it is called virtue.
One long quote from Kant's Religion that summarizes the fallacy of an ecclesiastical faith:
"The courage to stand on one’s own feet is itself strengthened through the doctrine of atonement which follows from it. For this doctrine represents what cannot be altered as wiped out, and opens up for us the path to a new conduct of life; whereas, when the doctrine is made to come first, the futile endeavor to render undone what has been done (expiation), the fear concerning the imputation of expiation, the representation of our total incapacity for the good, and the anxiety lest we slip back into evil, must take the courage away from the human being,* and must reduce him to a state of groaning moral passivity where nothing great and good is undertaken but instead everything is expected from wishing for it. – As regards moral disposition, everything depends upon the highest concept to which the human being subordinates his duties. If reverence for God comes first, and the human being therefore subordinates virtue to it, then this object [of reverence] is an idol, i.e. it is thought as a being whom we may hope to please not through morally upright conduct in this world but through adoration and ingratiation; religion is then idolatry. Thus godliness is not a surrogate for virtue, a way of avoiding it, but its completion, for the sake of crowning it with the hope of the final success of all our good ends."
Kant, Immanuel. Kant: Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason (Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy) (p. 209). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition.
The narrower your scope — the more micro it is — the more likely it is to map to the macro. To reveal something about the forest, write about a leaf.
"Rationalize" is a more accurate word than "confabulate" when referring to someone who has deluded themself into thinking their actions more ethically sound than they are.
To rationalize is to offer probable justifications for your actions that actually aren't true. To confabulate is to do a similar process unconsciously but believe it as truth, without the intent to deceive or appear more ethical to others.
Below is more context, from a chat with ChatGPT.
Prompt: "Talk to me about the subtle difference in meaning between these three verbs, as they relate to moral action: 'confabulate,' 'justify,' and 'rationalize.'"
Answer: Confabulate: This term often implies the creation of fabricated or imagined explanations without conscious intent to deceive. It can suggest that the person is filling in gaps in their memory or understanding with false information, often due to a cognitive disorder or to protect their self-esteem. In the context of moral action, confabulation might involve inventing reasons for one's behavior that are not based on actual motivations or ethical considerations.
Justify: To justify something is to provide a valid or acceptable reason or explanation for it. This can involve explaining why an action was necessary, reasonable, or morally right based on one's beliefs or values. Justification typically implies a more conscious and deliberate effort to defend or explain one's actions, often in a way that aligns with ethical principles.
Rationalize: Rationalization involves providing logical or seemingly reasonable explanations for behavior that may not actually be the true motivations. It often involves self-deception or an unconscious attempt to make one's actions seem more logical or acceptable, even if they are not morally justified. Rationalization can involve distorting facts or beliefs to make them fit with one's actions or desires.
In summary, "confabulate" suggests an unintentional or non-deceptive fabrication of explanations, "justify" implies a conscious effort to provide valid reasons for actions, and "rationalize" suggests a more self-serving or deceptive effort to make one's actions seem reasonable or moral.
The concept of Original Sin is the result of species-level confabulation (to fill in gaps of memory by fabrication). We do not know from whence we came or how we were made, only how it feels to live. Since we perceive evil and pain and suffering in the world and within ourselves, we have confabulated an origin story to justify our depravity (a false depravity that comes from an avoidably low level self-esteem): Original Sin.
Glacial Parenting
The glacier engenders the river that erodes the valley.
The river thanks the glacier and gives it credit: "You shaped this valley and gave me life. All I have accomplished I owe to you."
The glacier objects: "The marks you have made on this earth are all your own. All I did was give you enough to get going. You have done the rest, and you could have done it without me."
This is the best and simplest model I've conceived of for good parenting. And really, both are true; the river could not have done it without the glacier, and the river is due credit for what it has done.
There is an island too small to stand on at the center of the infinite sea. That's what you're searching for: Truth within the fabric of reality. That's what you're searching for, but you will never find it; you must rest in comfort with the pursuit itself. And if it suits you, hope that the afterlife may reveal what you sought in life.
We humans are constantly translating the ineffable to the physical, and back again. Every spoken word is made flesh. It begins as a formless thought, then crystalizes into an idea, then it becomes matter in the world through speech. The friend who receives your words-on-air, does the reverse process — from the physical to the ineffable.
As a writer, you want to make the reverse process as smooth and satisfying as possible for your reader. They perceive your words as ink or pixels and transmute them into some immaterial thing that we can't understand. Good writing is easy to transmute from the physical into the ineffable, from words to memory.
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