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(March 2023) I’m in the process of overhauling, seriously, this profile. Partly a lot of what I wrote before was negative emoting, kinda the distant cousins of the core negative meandering thought trip I spent much of the last you know thirty years or so on, although it’s gradually been lightening up for a good seven years, you know.

But also a lot of it is, I don’t know, me thinking things and explaining, and saying things that I think are true and which are indeed my truths, but—and although obviously no one has to pay me for this—my internal concept is that I’m creating something of worth, something that will one day be recognized as being of value—worth something in money, even! Worth a book’s going-over!—but what I’ve done although perhaps true and perhaps honest and perhaps truly sincere, aren’t helpful to anyone and don’t accomplish anything or systematically (or non-systematically) solve any problem, and at least sometimes simply emoted negatively, and indeed were often centered around my own battle with negative emotions.

I’ve since received some help with the emotional energies, and the whole change is the culmination of my practice, but anyway the point is, although I write, from now on I have to seriously consider—at the very least, seriously consider—erring on the side of simple and dismissible positive emoting, rather than to explain in a way that only serves ego, and which doesn’t and actually which really /can’t/ help anyone else, or even me, really.

You know?

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(March 2023) On the one hand, I do try to include different sorts of books in several different ways, but on the other hand, if it’s bad enough I delete it. It’s only a record of all the books that I’ve read that are worth something; it’s not some legal document. If a book doesn’t have a redeeming factor and deserves to be forgotten, I’ll forget it.

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(Pre-3/23) Just briefly: diversity is part of integrity; you still have to be honest about whatever you choose to speak about, and it’s nice to go deep into the abstract ‘nature of things’, but without virtuous action towards people of all backgrounds—to the extent humanly possible, just like we’re always limited, to some extent even in our honesty, (automatic, reactive instinctual thoughts that aren’t true) let alone metaphysics—without that diversity there’s no integrity, no morality….

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The forms of philosophy and psychology (and success), draft (April-May 2023)

I’ll try to describe how I feel about the forms of philosophy and psychology in the light of success and in a new way, correcting some of my earlier misconceptions and addressing the life-avoiding energy of pure philosophy in a less alarmist way. My one friend is a philosopher’s philosopher, and he’s made me see both the life-avoiding ways of pure philosophy (thinking about knowledge, etc.) through his dysfunction, and also to see it all in a sympathetic way, since he is my friend and we have history—actually since the moment we met, since he reminded me of my father, or rather, how my father sometimes imagined himself to be.

Aside from science, which in its non-psychological aspect isn’t concerned with the human personality, the most ‘academic’ or stilted topic here, perhaps, is philosophy. Then there’s general academic psychology (cognitive and biological), which uses science to investigate the human personality, and then there’s popular & applied psychology (and mental health memoirs), which can be difficult to distinguish from the former—cognitive academic or semi-academic psychology and formally written applied (non-academic) psychology, I mean—but the audience is different, and the diversity aspect in authorship is different, and it has a different way of being, almost like religious and new age people have different ways of being, although they can be confused, and finally there’s spiritual psychology, which although it can be true and profound, and even truer and profounder and even more practical than the secular psychologies, are not likely to be accepted as being valid by all, some of whom might dismiss it as vulgar or childlike or non-Western or mentally ill or something, and which sociologically has a ‘marginal’ character from the top-down perspective, even though it might be far more accessible for intelligent people on the bottom than scientific journal articles about the stages of physical development, you know. Anyway—

I call general philosophy that which is generally termed philosophy simply, the study of life based on the traditional Western texts and ways, which can either be ‘practical’—although, like becoming a vegan, only practical in one particular sense! 😸—and which is basically politics aesthetics and ethics—and theoretical, “knowledge”, etc. (I am very much an intuitive and not a formal thinker, and most modern philosophers don’t think as I do.)

Academic psychology has a strong link to science and biology, although cognitive psychology, also smiled on by the academy, has formal links to practical (individualist) philosophy, and can be difficult to distinguish from the more popular applied forms. Certainly once we reach mental health memoirs we are downstream from, or below, academic psychology, even though these forms of writing have been nourished by it, and are often seen as aligned by people on both sides of the divide, the way that unorthodox religion and spiritual philosophy are sometimes mixed together.

[Special note, May 2023: I actually had to redivide this; I tried kinda academic/prestigious vs. popular/applied (plus the memoirs), but the line between cognitive and applied (soc psych, for example, or just prestigious-popular), was always kinda arbitrary, and biological and cognitive literally Only have their prestige in common. Some things from the academy, like Albert Ellis, kind flow out in this grand hierarchy that’s nevertheless connected, cognitive to applied to popular to memoir, and some of it just kinda sits up by the window and sneers at passersby (biological and ‘pure’ stuff, you know, the textbooks). And then, everything that’s not set apart like that is one piece, all the psychology except for the biological, the spiritual, and psychiatry and psychoanalysis (I actually forgot to mention those last two before, I think), is part of that grand hierarchical yet connected stream of mainstream stuff.]

And finally, there is, for some of us, that very spiritual psychology (and various forms of eastern and shamanistic philosophy). The places along edges of the circle can be very far apart even if they are all the edges of the circle. Some new agers study the life after death questions or the spirit beings question or any question too large and insane for science; others simply challenge the idea that money is somebody else’s damn question to study, and has nothing to do with your feelings. Although, if there were no question of practical questions in a somewhat broad sense—all questions of practicality, background to practicality—then it would be outside the magic circle of psychology (interesting questions of your life and emotions) entirely, and be practicality itself (concretely, how to do your life).

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(histories) (May 2023)

I’ve thought about this but I’ll try to keep it brief; history is less subject to a truly exhaustive treatment in terms of details than something like philosophy (although the details in philosophy are mysterious). There are two main forms of history/sociology: majoritarian (‘general’) and diverse. People of privileged and underprivileged backgrounds differ in many things; they actually have asymmetrical experiences. Where you are on this dividing line of the asymmetrical in some sense matters more (unfortunately) than mere legal nationality—American/non-American, for example. There’s a lot of diversity in most American cities, states, and counties, sometimes more than we imagine. Strangely it’s probably often easier to go to Paris, than it is to go to the airport.

Although I think most white people’s (or white men’s) assumption that diversity should be optional/peripheral, in society certainly and at times even in education, at least compared to the majority culture’s influence, is one of the main things that holds us back and divides us, for the sheer sake of not being driven mad, driven silly, by the madness of the world, I will try to include more majoritarian than diverse history/sociology, even if again I don’t think that “history” and “white men’s history” are synonymous, right. But maybe, say, 60/40 would work. Although I do think that I shall try to include IIs, IIIs, and IVs in the ‘general’ column to the extent that I can. Optimism, reformism instead of angry radicalism, openness to commoner experiences, these are all good things—exclusion, not so much.

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Miscellaneous notes, YouTube videos (May 2023)

Sometimes these are “like a book”, sometimes not. If they’re five to ten minute videos, or even less, then it’s kinda naturalistic, like talking; you don’t watch 149 of them and count it as a book, you know. But if they’re longer and more formal—5 or seven videos, or ten videos, of an hour each, or even longer—at least say forty minutes, you know; then it is “like a book”, because it’s like a formal class, right. One’s not better than the other; sometimes I over-emphasize “like a book”. Formal isn’t inherently better than naturalistic…. If I but knew.

Watching sporting events also isn’t “like a book”, although books can be read about sports, and doing this latter thing obviously implies the former, lol.

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Literature, total: 101

N.B. Where the editor and source (eg of folklore) differ, this is noted

I: 37 (2 H, 1 ME, 1 w/ME, 4 w/II)

II: 43 (3 ME; 1 w/III or IV, N; 1 w/I-ME, 2 Q, 1 w/I, 1 ?)

III: 12 (5 B 5 A 2 N {1 w/II})

IV: 9 (5 B 3 A 1 N)

Spiritual psychology, total: 32

I: 10 (1 H, 1 w/A {PI})

II: 10

III: 4 (3 A, 1 N)

IV: 3 (2 B, 1 A)

N/A: 5

General history, sociology and politics, total: 33

I: 18

II: 8

III: 4 (3 B, 1 A)

IV: 1 (1 M)

N/A: 2

Music, total: 27

I: 10 (1?, 1 H, 1 J w/III or IV, B)

II: 5

III: 11 (2 A?, 3 A, 5 B, 1 N?)

IV: 1 (1 A)

Christian memoir, total: 20

I: 8

II: 8 (1 Q)

III: 2 (1 B, 1 A)

IV: 2 (2 B)

Interfaith, total: 24

I: 12 (3 J, 1 ME, 1 H)

II: 4 (1 J)

III: 7 (6 A, 1 N)

IV: 1 (1 B)

Diversities, total: 28 (w/o audiobooks)

I: 5 (1 Q, 1 H)

II: 9 (1 J, 1 Q, 1 ME, 1 N, 1 w/I)

III: 7 (5 B, 2 A)

IV: 6 (4 B, 1 A, 1 H)

N/A: 1

biological (and ‘pure’) psychology and popular psychiatry, total: 5

I: 4

II: 1

III: 0

IV: 0

Cognitive applied and popular psychology (and mental health memoirs): 19

I: 9

II: 8

III: 1 (1 B)

IV: 1 (1 B)

Audiobooks, total: 13

I: 7 (1 w/ME)

II: 4

III: 1 (1 B)

IV: 1 (1 B)

Bibles & Bible commentaries & analysis, and Christian sermons and essays, total: 15

I: 10 (1 J)

II: 3 (1 J)

III: 1

IV: 1

Christian practices & devotions, total: 16

I: 7 (1 H, 1 w/II)

II: 7

III: 2 (2 B)

IV: 0

“Practical”, total: 28

I: 15 (1 J, 1 w/II & IV, 1 ?)

II: 7

III: 4 (3 A, 1 ?, B?, w/I & II).

IV: 2 (1 B, 1 A)

Visual arts etc [subjects same as authors unless noted], total: 9

I: 5 (1 w/IV, B)

II: 2

III: 1

IV: 0

N/A: 1

Christian theology, total: 4

I: 3

II: 1

III: 0

IV: 0

general TV shows, total: 5

I: 2 (1 H)

II: 2

III: 0

IV: 0

N/A: 1

Christian psychology, total: 11

I: 4

II: 6

III: 1 (1 B)

IV: 0

Nature & science: 9

I: 6 (1 ME)

II: 1

III: 2 (1 A, 1 B)

IV: 0

general philosophy: 8 [n.b. not audiobooks]

I: 5 (1 ME)

II: 2

III: 1

IV: 0

Films: 7

I: 4

II: 2

III: 1

IV: 0

Church history etc: 6

I: 5 (1 w/III or IV, 1 w/II)

II: 1 (1 w/I)

III: 0

IV: 0

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Religion & literature (and success), (April 2023)

Sometimes thinking makes me afraid, but I’ll try to say this once so I can figure out what I think, and then I’ll avoid saying it again and again because it’s “interesting” and difficult.

In the past I read a lot of religion and literature—it was almost my only gold and silver—and I was afraid of being a specialist, you know, someone who only does what pays, but now I see that I should still be a success (in that particular way), and not just someone who “deserves it”, right.

Religion, for example, certainly can be good, but it certainly shouldn’t become instead of the way of drawing all things together, the way of driving all things apart, and away. I’ve done a certain amount of paring down the religion collection, so I’m not left either accusing, or supporting the wrong things. (And it can easily start as the second and end as the first.)

…. I mean, if you have this memoir of the girl in the small town orthodoxy, talking about how she loves her friends there, (and this sort of book will certainly suffer in people’s eyes from being /her/ book), then the really difficult people will just cut her off for liking people, and she’ll wander through the book terrified because she knows this will happen. And if it’s some classic era guy’s theology of the global hierarchy, it might be scholarly and thoughtful, but there will be a certain amount of suspicion at the suggestion that anyone has a choice, when you’re there to fight the war in heaven, and the metaphors will be taken beyond the place where they work, and your only choice will be obey/disobey, so then, why protect the institution from its mistakes? (And with the liturgical liberals, you kinda wake up sometimes for a really good sermon, but then you go right back to autopilot, mumbling that you don’t really like Jesus because you’re afraid of him, and you don’t want him to get too close…. And that’s the main third group, really.)

And that’s not to say that religion can’t be a blessing—it can be the knowledge of God that leads to happiness and community. But nothing in that should make success impossible. Sometimes we have a habit of luring people in with ‘it will be better for you and your neighbor’ or you know ‘now you’ll have a real neighbor’, and then it gets switched to this resentment of everything that’s not fear and abstraction, you know—things that would certainly be the issues of my personality type, you know.

I love you; I bless you.

…. Community is important for people in general, but as religious people, I think we owe something to those who “don’t believe” or “don’t belong/want to belong” under our guidelines, and that’s the idea that we don’t just hang together out of a sense of party, you know. (Although sometimes clearly we do.)

But as for literature—lit isn’t as different from religion as it’s sometimes assumed, and it is something of a devotion for many of those relatively few people who read books. Not being able to believe enough in a holistic way to even read a novel (or for some people, to focus enough), is something that might be a missing positive element for a lot of people. But equally, even though as for myself, I’ve always had an extremely powerful ability to suspend disbelief for a story, sometimes this also has not made me happy. Novel reading isn’t productive in the narrow sense, and sometimes understanding how money or relationship would work isn’t as important as actually gathering money and doing relationships. Equally it’s hard to balance the demands (if you like) of different kinds of genres, and not trying can lead to a very unbalanced psyche, whether from some sort of high ideology or I guess religion in fiction, an over-devotion to the past, for example, or else a popular and highly gendered style where everything is about the nervous proving of identity, can be bad. I’ve been both contra-phobic and femme mystique ideology, both in very exclusive ways at different times, but I guess my greatest literature-illusion has been dreaming dreams and not making them happen, you know. And certainly a lot of dreamers and thinkers are like that, and although it is good to have a perspective on time and the classics, escapism and lacking a critical gaze or some sort of ambition, other than checking boxes on the grand list—that’s just marking time, in a way.

But I don’t want to take it too far; fiction is holistic, and a lot of good can come through ‘the telling of the good story’ (the gospel, if you like), and I know I’ll always read lit books. It’s just not the same as practical living, even if it is the most down to the earth thing they teach you in high school, arguably—indeed it’s too close to real life for some of the nerds, of whom I was probably one.

But there’s a lot they don’t teach you at normie school, you know.

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(religious memoirs, miscellaneous) (April 2023)

Sometimes religion memoirs are stories of Loss and Hardship; people are sold the idea that this will bring them bravery and resilience. Sometimes they get their money’s worth. But it’s also true that sometimes people tell stories like that to seem more profound than they really are, (even women do this), or to protect themselves—like people will like them because theyre unhappy; they’ll get pity or, at least, they’ll be protected from jealousy…. Or maybe it’s their ticket to the mainstream, right; “I may be an immigrant, but I got cancer! Anybody can get cancer! I’m one of you! I uphold your values!”…. And, sometimes, people tell stories of “loss” not because something terrible has happened to them—of course, oft-problematic human nature happens to us all, but sometimes the protagonists of stories of “loss” are unusually fortunate— but simply out of habit, they complain. So a story of loss could either create gratitude from terrible trials, or a sense of entitlement and pessmism from unusual good fortune.

…. (religion, history, etc— late May 2023)

I think about my parents a lot, not least my dad, even though my mom would probably be less scandalized by my opinions (although she’s not a great communicator, doesn’t like to engage with what she doesn’t like). Anyway, my dad always says or thinks—or at least tries to give the impression that he believes deeply—that religion is the ‘best thing’, the good, orderly thing, but realistically he talks about history, widely considered, in the sense of history, politics, fighting, and feeling poorly, much more than religion, and almost never gives an impromptu thing about Jesus the way he can give an impromptu thing about ‘liberals are bad’, you know. He also probably thinks that religion is the ‘best thing’, but he’s not the best-person, but if he sticks with history, at least he’s the good white man, you know. I don’t know; it’s a little hard to work out. But since I want the ‘best thing’, and since God is indeed the best thing, and history, politics, fighting, and feeling poorly is the noise of life, I tried to maximize religion as the ‘best thing’ and minimize history as the distraction.

Obviously very extreme mysticism where you don’t care about the difference between ordinarily different things as a matter of pride can be detrimental, so I would read a little history and even a very little science, you know. But that thing I had found kinda remained: religion is the ‘best thing’, and then something else covers it up. But I’m starting to think that religion—formal religion, as opposed to seeking God—is not really the ‘best thing’, even formally seeking God or consciousness is not always the ‘best thing’, and history and such, in a broad sense and not synonymous with feeling poorly, is not really the enemy—because there is no enemy. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of insecure, little-dick tyrants out there who feel sorry for themselves, and who want you to know that until their enemies are crushed more finely, they—the little-dick tyrants—won’t be able to deal with the undeserved scorn and terribly real oppression that they’re suffering under, you know. But there are really no enemies in life, not even people like that, so even “history” and other gargantuan things like science, but history is more romantic because it’s like a malicious boy doing the bad thing…. I don’t know. It’s part of the path. And so are, really at least as important as both those other things put together, making money and being prosperous enough to be like the Silver Hermes, you know; you’re Hermes, and then the Silver Hermes is like your dream-self, your guide-self, who has what you desire….

(shrugs) And that’s very different from history, politics, fighting, and feeling poorly, formally, science, formally, or God, religion, and consciousness, formally—but there’s no separation, really there is no dark god and light god, because they’re both one.

…. (May 2023)

Two brief and (mostly) unrelated thoughts:

—As I noted on the previous profile page in different words, there’s probably nothing I’ll say that I won’t come to disagree with later, either in an obvious way, or subtly. You either take a walk, turn around, and go back; or else you venture further into the crystal cave. That’s life.

—As I’ve also written before, if somewhat sloppily, I guess—and I’m a perfectionist—although I’ve worked very very long and hard on taming anger and not being weird and resentful or lashing out at people; at the same time, a certain amount of discontent at the way that normal people dump on the world and on each other, is satisfactory, in my opinion. You have to be a little sad that you’re angry and you have to take care of yourself, but you can’t just will yourself to be the sort of uncaring robot who is indeed one of the different kinds of normie who dumps on the world and on people. “Be ye angry, and sin not.”

(May 2023) But it’s never personal, you know. Others simply act in the way that some dream or some pattern suggests to them; whether it’s an artful pattern or not to me might not be a part of their reality. But ultimately I choose my own feelings in the matter, whether those of love or some other feeling, you know.

Over mij

(March 2023) Although I wrote the odd decent thing before now, like say the quote “I am one of those gentle ones who use the devil himself with courtesy”, and a lot of stuff that’s true but can come off as I don’t know, Harry Potter and the Secret of Death, because there was just too much of it—eg “The death of the dammed, that is the true death, the other is a passage only”, but because I was not always being courteous, even though I wasn’t being sincere to spite people or put them off as an end in itself, and because I certainly wasn’t living the life of the blessed yet, I’ve decided to start the process of deleting ALL of my pre-3/23 profile page sayings (some of the reviews obviously have opinion drift too, but the reviews are at least About Something), and I trust that if juxtapose Kenny G and the Brazil Jesus statue flying through the universe, or do another goose saying, it will come off at least as well now, that I see my life as going somewhere, you know.

[Except for the background count, that’s useful, and maybe someday I’ll actually finish it, too. It’s the one thing I’ve actually referred back to, and that’s organized.]

[The other kind of old thing when I, well one time I used Hitler as a verb—though we liked to Hitler away the Tainos and the Pequots—but, although that’s true, you know…. I don’t know. I do want to bear witness, but I don’t want to complain, and in the past with my negative emoting, I’m not sure I did it right. Nothing truly transformative can come from the old way of being in the world, you know, just the same “old man” instead of the “new man”.

It’s a hard line to walk sometimes. Maybe it gets easier, but you have to learn how in the beginning.]

[And it is true that sometimes mercy or whatever can come off as condescending—like I tell you that you can’t go to hell because I’m better than you, and it’s worse than if we had an honest fight…. But I don’t know.

It’s not an easy call, because either path can lead to isolation.]

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Woonplaats

The Temple of Infinite Cosmic Power

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