For the past three months, I’ve been manufacturing cabinets at a local business with national reach.

My job is to build frames. I work at a sort of drafter’s table, where I apply glue and insert screws, binding the pieces together and transforming them from a pile of objects into a complete whole.

Which is then sent off to other departments to become an even greater whole.

As I work, I do so alongside seven other people, all participating in a similar way.

This taps me into a sense of collective consciousness, common vision, a shared goal.

And as this happens, I am transformed from one into a participant into a part of a whole.

I get out of my head, and into a shared logic.

My singular emotions, my (obsessive) thoughts, and my particular fancies are all rendered insignificant as I transform my mind into an agent of service.

Whereas once I had a desire to be sedentary, my mind and body are now functioning in a quick-paced, performative communion that works toward aspiration.

All of the smaller goals of turning out X number of frames, which becomes X number of cabinets is subsumed by a larger aspiration, as well.

All of these will be enjoyed by, and bring value to the homes of, those who have purchased the Goods.

They will serve as functional spaces, beautiful embellishments, and they will be a part of a room of a home or business.

These reflections allow me to have a positive impact in doing my work.

There are internecine politics, personal disagreements, some predictable angst and struggle between all of the humans who collaboratively participate in this endeavor.

But they don’t bother me, because I have a vision of the end, the project.

All of these have meaning within the context, the aspiration.

Along with this, I have a project, a livelihood, and a social role within the context, as well.

Every practice of mindful speech and action possess an aura of direct application, which makes them “really real.”

Ethics becomes less of an intellectual practice for intellectual consideration, and more of the practice it’s intended to be.

This brings me a sense of happiness and well being.

It would be a selfish goal if I didn’t realize that all humans are, indeed, social animals for whom status and affiliation are important aspects of self-hood.

To be a better self isn’t selfish — it actually makes the self a better member of the culture at large.

I’m very grateful for this, and am also grateful for the opportunity to sing about it.

Sharing this little bits of my personal experience allows me to feel that my cognition is generative and participatory.

May your day bring many wonders to you. I am also grateful for you. I hope that my writing can be of some assistance to you.

Affectionately, 

Aaron

“Oh, woe is me!” sang the refrain.

While this bit was self-referentially critical, all of the other lyrics expressed very sincere confessions of great emotional turmoil.

Something had not gone right in the relationship. She had predictably, but unexpectedly, left and he remained to try to process the experience of abject loss and sudden isolation.

Woe indeed.

But, also, the necessity to present himself with proper pathos and ethos to we, his listener, who would certainly expect him to keep all of this in perspective.

Except that we are hurting, too. And, when we allow ourselves the brief respite of a three-minute song, we can (for a spell) experience a moment of solace.

Although even we know that our emotions don’t “matter” — that they are ultimately just another process of so much semantics and serotonin, easily processed by transitioning into other modes like sleep, exercise, eating, or therapy.

But that last one — therapy — is a bit of a bugaboo. A real mother. Processing is processing, but sticking labels to oneself can often just commit one to a cycle of perpetual fixedness, never properly processing out of the alienating state.

Thus it is that listening to music from one’s youth can be both sentimental and nostalgic. But it can also be liberating.

Distance is the essence of what we once called “objectivity,” an ideal held for several hundred years as the core of scientia.

Now, of course, we’re all about shitting on science, forgetting about how much it had helped us get out of certain aspects of this mess. It was once called “Enlightenment.”

We’ve eschewed enlightenment for tarot, yoga, Catholicism, and Orthodox Christianity. The fastest-growing religious tradition in the United States, in fact, is Pentecostalism.

I have no doubt that ecstatic states of non-lingual speaking might be greatly beneficial to many people. That’s certainly what punk rock and ska meant to me in high school.

But I also know that a great deal of knowledge and even wisdom seem to come from literacy. That is, from time spent in contemplation of texts, experiencing and critiquing them, developing the dialogue that Plato so glorified in Socrates.

This takes solitude. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from participation in group therapy, it’s that no one is likely to accept your premises.

The very moment you express something, it’s shot down with an “I disagree.”

That doesn’t leave much time for proper contemplation. I’m fine with the idea of questioning the logic of an assertion, but to have it shot down on face with no discussion is just plain old violence.

And, while I’m happy with the idea that my assumptions are not only erroneous, but also biased, bigoted, nostalgic, sentimental, and even saccharine, I deserve as much of a right of time to process and compute as any other organism does.

Thus, solitude.

Also, poetry.

The vocation that appeared to me at age 15 has never left me as a standard operating principle. The more life I cherish via experience continuing to confront, question, and participate in discourse and strife, the more I see clearly that this vocation is a solid one, and sound.

Of course, I can’t do it alone, as no one can. But what it looks like to be “together” is something worth exploring with some curiosophy.

I look forward to your letters.

Attendantly,

Aaron

This isn’t to say I didn’t get lucky. For one thing, in high school I was part of a poetry group who workshopped our writing every two weeks — its members socializing in the meanwhile.

And then, through the combination of a supportive mother and teachers, as well as institutions which promoted access to higher learning, I made it to the state university next door, where I was surrounded by people who came from families very different to mine, as well as a host of folks with PhDs. (My boss, a retired philosophy professor who had bought the used bookstore where I worked, would become my mentor.)

The result of this, however, became that I felt more and more isolated from my home turf, and more and more alone when among my new friends — prompting the affection for alcohol and marijuana which gave me the “social lubricant” I needed to feel at home with them. I felt different now, and couldn’t relate to people from town. But I also felt like an impostor around my new friends.

The more literate I became, the more dissatisfied I was with common parlance. I grew almost resentful to it, finding it (at best) sloppy and confused, and (at worst) fatally limited and misguided.

So began my descent into Hell. I can trace the beginnings of my slip from solitude into isolation somewhere around my graduation from UNI. From that moment forward, as I moved to Milwaukee with my then-girlfriend (a graduate student), I would begin to feel essentially alien in every social situation I would encounter.

I began to feel that every time I spoke with uneducated folks I was adopting a posture of resigned temperance. Whatever they were going to say I would have a contradictory reaction to and, instead of just creating a horrible scene every Christmas, I would hold my tongue and hope that I could just get through without having to comment specifically on any topic.

Or, I would drink. Then at least I got fuzzy and sloppy myself, and could at least enjoy goofing off with them.

If you’ve followed any addiction narratives, you see where this goes. The person continues to drink too much in social situations, and then begins to drink more and more whilst alone (a habit which had already started in college).

The first reason I stopped being able to communicate came from resentment. Why had I bothered going through so much effort to earn a degree if no one could care less about it? Any time a topic came up where I had learned a new perspective, it was never met with any appreciation. My strong desire to share what I had learned to help, for example, my parents live better lives was going to be a very steep climb, if it was even possible at all. This troubled me, because they had sacrificed so much for me to succeed, yet didn’t seem to desire to profit from their efforts.

Conversations would start with someone making a proposition. Generally, there was some piece of information missing from the assumption. But attempting to add that piece to the discourse was folly, for it often seemed that the person did not in actuality believe what they had proposed — at least not in the manner they had phrased it.

It occurred to me that folks had not even nailed down what I’d learned in high school composition class, that a thesis needed to be well-stated and backed up with evidence throughout the rest of the essay.

Oftentimes my conversation would do one of two things. Either they would backtrack, contending “well, I wasn’t saying that,” or they would get defensive and double-down on the proposition and lock into their contention.

Eventually, conversation would become completely impossible.

Looking back now, I realize I should have worked harder in my Humanities class when we studied Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. I could’ve learned more, and it would’ve helped a lot.

For propositions are but one of at least four ways of knowing. The perspectival, procedural, and participatory all offer greater context which can offer much more calmness, and the potential for wisdom.

When I got my first successful two-year stint of sobriety, it was thanks to Alcoholics Anonymous.

I still had trouble with the propositions then. I would bristle when we read “How It Works” at meetings, I was flabbergasted at the weak and confused theology, and I resented older men in the groups who would say what I perceived to be shitty, mean things.

But I got sober through it all because of the other three ways of knowing. Interactions with many different people, all with a common goal — “the desire to stop drinking,” allowed me to get out of my isolation and “Into Action.”

I had not found Dr. Vervaeke then, and my confusion caused me to eventually leave the group and relapse.

Now I see the forest, rather than the trees alone. This perspective, enriched by my participation in the excellent After Socrates series, has upped my quality of life, and increased my agency.

But, more, it has given me a strong medicine for my isolation. And, combined with Internal Family Systems parts work (on which I will write soon), I’m starting to feel whole — and my Lenten sobriety is going swimmingly.

Add in philosopher Kent Dunnington’s work, and “baby, you’ve got a stew goin’.”

Now, I’m beginning to look forward to conversations with all sorts of people, especially my family. And I’m less hung up on my narcissistic perfectionism.

This allowed me to get a day job which I’m going to enjoy, and has me more confident than ever about my freelance writing career.

I look forward to your letters.

Attendantly,

Aaron

Today I went into a brief, context-dependent mini-depression. It was one of the ones where there were actual challenges I was confronting which quickly compounded, and I had legitimate reason to suffer a metabolic slow-down.

Curiosophy got me through. The Acceptance, Loving-kindness, and a Motivation Toward Valued States of being were already there.

They were already there, because I practice them. While they don’t naturally arise on their own, they do now because I’ve chosen to adopt them through a mixture of CBT, IFS, Mindful Awareness, Buddhism, and Christianity.

Now, provided I am staying sober and practicing self-care, I can simply engage Curiosity about the situation I’m in, and I can more-or-less easily navigate the complexity.

This is why (I’m learning now, after the fact) I am inclined to favor the term Curiosophy over mere Curiosity. When I situate my Curio- (akin to cura "care") in devotion to Lady Wisdom, it becomes less of an intellectual miscellany and more of an act of agapic love — a centering in participation with the cosmos, and an autopoietic exercise in autonomy and the establishment of a greater (and more potent) agency.

There can and should be a wisdom to Curiosity. While intellectual play is important, it’s not the most important thing.

I look forward to your letters.

Attendantly,

Aaron

“Life is far too important

to be taken seriously.”

— Oscar Wilde

A few weeks ago, my mother took me to an arts fair where I was reminded of an admonition made to me by my brother. It was two cliches but, like John Ashbery, I find a lot of sturdy, utilitarian meaning in cliches. “Stop pushing people away. Learn to enjoy being goofy around others.”

Kurt Vonnegut said that people were put on this earth to fart around. He valued family, too, especially extended family. But he also carried guilt and shame about his immediate family, partly because he had found his mother after she had killed herself, and partly because he left his wife and mother of his children, who had made many sacrifices for his writing career, for a younger woman.

I have a lot of attachment issues, too, which have prevented me from being able to maintain proper emotional balance in intimate relationships. Because of this, I've been something of a serial monogamist, not really feeling whole without a relationship, while being too destructively self-interested to be able to sustain one.

That was, at least, until I found the CALM MO, and thus became capable of taking a third person vantage with myself such that I can leave the need for parental care aside in favor of a matrix of selves which can be recognized in relationship to others.

Of course, I've been able to do this since 1995, when T.S. Eliot taught me how in “The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock,” and I managed three introspective works of unreadable doggerel called “The Ballad of the Self,” where I managed my first forays into meta-consciousness.

I will forever be a derivative, second-class poet, but I filch from good poets like Coleridge, Stevens, Laura Riding, Mina Loy, and (of course) John Ashbery.

This Yule, I have been revisiting Ashbery, I think in preparation for Christ’s Mass, where I wish to be joyful and loving around my family.

"All beauty, resonance, integrity,
Exist by deprivation or logic
Of strange position."

— “Le Livre est sur la Table” (The Book is on the Table) by John Ashbery

YouTube showed me that one of my favorite filmmakers was also influenced by him:

“My work is funny not because I think that’s an end in itself, but I find that some of the juxtapositions that make something seem beautiful to me are also funny.” — Kenneth Koch

Walking around Evansdale (which is, technically, my home town) I wrote this poem. Hope you like it okay. As I suggested earlier, it’s derivative.

À Bientôt!

Aaron

Disclaimer: I’m trying to talk about a personal situation as generically as possible, so some of this language might be confusingly abstract. While I might be able to illustrate the concept better using a hypothetical, it is therapeutic for me to use this writing as a way of dealing with the unfortunate situation. Forgive me if this writing is particularly confusing.

This Sunday last, I acted regrettably.

At lunch with a person with whom I have a strained relationship, I experienced a negative emotion due to a comment that had nothing to do with me whatsoever.

Associating with the person in the story, the negative inflection in the comment caused me the sensation of a personal affront. However, while the character and I share several (unsavory) things in common, there was no cause for me to so intensely make the connection and, as I said, my lunch date had no intention of referring to me in any way.

This was exacerbated by my critical assumptions about a cluster of contexts and situations within this particular social circle — a circumstance which caused me to feel lonely, isolated, and dejected.

I raised my voice, said a couple of mean things, and had to take a walk around the block to cool off.

While walking, I visualized the CALM-MO Flashlight and, while it did not immediately solve everything entirely, it did at least downshift my mood enough for me to enjoy my meal — after which I felt considerably better.

So, what happened, and why am I talking to you about it?

I had been caught in the grip of a neurotic loop. My experiential self had a negative, but perhaps justifiable, emotion. Then, my ego self created a narrative justifying the emotion, which then caused me to feel even more negative about the situation.

My persona, or social self, was then further injured because I acted rudely to the person out of defensiveness. This then caused me to add guilt and shame to the already tempestuous blend of emotions, and finally I had a dreadful fight or flight response that luckily got me some air which allowed me to address my inner turmoil to a slight degree. Oftentimes the fight response can go the other way, making things even worse.

On What I Had Done

In this video, Dr. Gregg Henriques describes what is happening during one of these neurotic loops.

“This diagram depicts the central features that drive neurotic loops. Namely, it represents the fact that many people try to avoid or control their negative feelings. They do this by adopting a stance of an inner critic that is defensive or judgmental or avoidant in the way they try to cope with those feelings.

Unfortunately, this often leads to a building up of negative feelings and a trigger will then release strong emotions, and the person will feel flooded, overwhelmed, and out of control — and might snap in a fit of rage, or experience a panic or overwhelming anxiety.

Of course, if this happens it just teaches the individual that negative feelings are indeed bad, and they will often then double down in their efforts to control them.”

And What I Had Failed To Do

“What is better is learning to approach emotional functioning — and how to be aware and attuned to one's feelings on the one hand, and how to adaptively regulate them on the other.

This is called the emotional sweet spot.

CALM MO helps people learn how to process emotions in the emotional sweet spot. It starts with the MO — which is a metacognitive observer.

This means adopting a deliberative, reflective responsive (versus reactive) observing position of one's mind.

Now, there were a number of reasons I had trouble getting into the CALM MO that day. Let’s just say they mostly involved a lack of self care, eating and drinking the wrong things and not getting quality sleep. This put my primate, experiential self at a disadvantage going in, and made it all the harder to maintain the meta-perspective necessary to maintain the agile loving-kindness I needed to keep me out of the loop.

Today, being in a better state, I’m practicing Curiosity, Acceptance, Lovingkindness, and a Motivation toward valued states of being to assist me in learning from the situation. Part of this involves the acceptance that, even though I acted badly, I also did at least visualize the flashlight, and it at least partially allowed me to navigate the emotions and get through the situation without exacerbating it further.

So, while I still feel guilty about the situation today, I can mindfully honor that guilt while simultaneously loving myself for at least being self-aware and considering the potential for improvement going forward.

And, with the Holidays coming up, I know that I have my flashlight in hand, and also what to do to better fuel and equip my MO. If I do these things in good faith, I’m bound to have a pleasant holiday, even in challenging situations. And, since challenges are part of the spice of life, that’s something to celebrate.

We’ve been bickering about Free Will for way too long. @Rick Ripetti, the meditation guy over at the Foundation, and editor of the Routledge Handbook on the Philosophy of Meditation, has a “soft compatibilist” take on the “Free Will Debate,” but he also has a better way of talking about it: Agency.

Here’s a brief glimpse of a conversation that gets pretty deep into this:

I think that agency is something that you can cultivate and increase by practicing (exercising) some of the component skills that make up your agency, and I think one of the key (central) skills is Selective Attention Focus.

This is something that you practice in meditation. People might come to meditation with other purposes but they're cultivating these skills two skills — which to me are two aspects of the same, more generic skill.

The two basic meditation techniques are one-pointedness and open monitoring.

One-pointedness is where you select something like the breath or a mantra a candle flame, whatever — a thought — and it's a narrowing of your attention. It’s selective attention focused narrowly on one sub-component of your experiential field, whatever that is. The practice is that you intend to maintain focus, and mind wandering naturally happens — which is healthy.

I think this goes back to predator/prey — if you were focused only on the prey some predator might get you if you didn't have peripheral awareness. So it's smart for us to toggle back and forth between folk and figure and ground. That's not a bug. A lot of meditation teachers think it's a bug — it's a feature. But you want to control that feature by practicing it voluntarily, so when your mind wanders off the intended target you notice it and you return your attention. And the more that that happens — this is like weightlifting — the more you cultivate that muscle of maintaining focus and eventually you achieve it, you do get this blissful, trans, peaceful mindstate thing. You know about CALM-MO, but I'm just rehearsing this for the purposes of this discussion.

There are many variations on these two techniques. These are the two most popular Buddhist techniques, but they’re found everywhere, anyway. The other is what's called open monitoring, which is kind of more global unfocused awareness where the entire field of Consciousness is the target, so to speak. You maintain this kind of global, peripheral, not centered, almost like whack-a-mole, state where you are attentive to what appears in the field of Consciousness. This is being in the present moment, like a Zen kind of thing, fully responsive to whatever is arising in the field of consciousness.

Now I make the a kind of metaphorical analogy — if there was a bullseye, any rung on it could be where you focus. One-pointedness is the bullseye. The open monitoring is the entire board. You want to be aware of the entire dart board. Now, when you're practicing that level, mind-wandering happens and you get pulled into this sub-component — you're off on a train of thought, or that sound, this feeling in your knee, and you fall into it and then you realize it, and you come back to the global focal range.

It's the same exercise — you have an intended focal range, which is broad, and you lose it, and then you come back. Or narrow, and you lose it and you come back.

So that's why I say they're both versions of a more generic skill, which is maintaining your intended focal range. The more that you do that, the more you're in control of when things are normally arising in your psychodynamic, phenomenological, experiential sensory organism environment, interactive field, agent/arena — whichever way you want to call it. If you’re globally aware, you're more capable of noticing when your attention is being grabbed and how. The more meta-awareness you have, the more control you have. It's as simple as that, and that's been my experience. I've been practicing for 50 (FIVE ZERO) years. This is anecdotal, but it’s also part of meditative lore.

Dr. Henriques then links this to CALM-MO, and how this awareness lends itself to enlightened liberation via psychotherapy:

I'll just say this now as a psychotherapist who developed CALM-MO, where the focus essentially is on stepping out into a recursive/reflective thing. To go to psychotherapy — to hear “hey, what brings you in?” — I'm going to shift my perspective and start the process of telling the story. Then it’s a meta-observer. You're going to learn that, and get recursively aware of certain kinds of attentional, adaptive processes.

So whereas it's less about — although I certainly appreciate this from a meditative perspective — the focus in, or the broadening, it's sort of like how do I become aware of the certain (for me) neurotic loops to which I'm vulnerable?

So in the Psychotherapy lore, it’s like — “Oh I hate this. I feel negative. There's a negative situation.” And now my ego grabs a hold of that, resists it — to talk about pain times resistance — grabs a hold of that and then tries to control that, or avoid that, or blame other people for that, and then all of a sudden you know you're in a negative dukkha spiral. And we want to figure out how to shine a light on that, and let that go, and recursively build the muscle of “sage mode.”

That's why MO is a “modus operandi.” It's like actually you’ve got to do it. You’ve got to do it under pressure. You’ve got to do it when it matters.

And you can't do that right away. You can get the concept, but you don't know how to do it without procedural practice, without knowing what these things are, and without doing it a lot, getting better and better at it.

There may or may not be an ontological disagreement between the two thinkers about the ultimate nature of the Self and how that plays into this agency. But to get there, you’re going to have to listen to the podcast.

À bientôt!

Aaron

For an in-depth conversation with Dr. Henriques about the Meaning Crisis and its implications for Mental Health (among other things) see my conversation with him posted Monday, 10/30/23 Toward a Science of Psychology.

There, I will learn how to very technically craft highly-tuned machine parts. In turn, I will be able to grow into their quoting and purchasing departments, and will likely start to look to the machining industry as a niche for copywriting.

The hours are perfect for me to continue to grow in my career, and I will be learning very useful things along the way.

“You can’t be seen until you learn to see,” writes Seth Godin. I’m learning to open my eyes.

Hope you are all well!

I Will Forever Love You, Tony Bennett

About four years ago, my mother and I had the opportunity to see him. He was just as powerful as he was on those early records. Lucid, subtle, forceful, sorrowful, and joyous. And he brought his dog out to wave good night after the encore!

Please enjoy the below selections I’ve made. All of these songs deeply affect me. I have also assembled them as a playlist on YouTube for easier listening.1

Have a great day. Remember Tony’s big, beautiful smile. It's Monday. Go out and get it!

https://youtu.be/r5pUP0V_PZQ

Well, we return with good news! Danny Masterson was convicted of two counts of forcible rape and will likely spend the rest of his days in prison!

BIG THANKS to for his skill and diligent labor in reporting.

Current Listening

Freakin' Out on the Interstate by Briston Maroney

It’s a good time to be interested in philosophy.

While the past century has been largely characterized by the shift toward analytic academic work, the past decade in particular has marked not only a renaissance of virtue ethics, but also the idea of “Philosophy as a Way of Life.”1

Part of this has been fueled by the technology of YouTube, where all variety of armchair scholar and commentator can participate in the discourse. Queue one of my favorite channels there, “Seekers of Unity,” devoted to the “Philosophical Study of Mysticism,” and featuring well-researched and crafted videos about everything from Kabbala and Spinoza to Shamanism and Cognitive Science.

Recently, they have compiled what they boast is the “World’s Largest Philosophy Collab,” involving over 30 individual contributions compiled in one long video answering the question “Can philosophy provide meaning to the modern person?”

The video features several Curiosophy favorites like Dr.s Gregory Sadler and John Vervaeke, and also new-found gems like Dr. Justin Sledge, creator and leader of Esoterica, a channel dedicated to providing “university level content on topics in Esotericism and the Occult.”

So what does “explor[ing] the arcane in history, philosophy, and religion” supplying “content relating to topics such as alchemy, magic, Kabbalah, mysticism, hermetic philosophy, theosophy, the occult and more” have to do with living life from the vantage of philosophy? His website answers as follows:

What is the value in studying Esotericism?

Philosophy and religion all have esoteric currents that have proved to be influential in world history.  Further, the study of esotericism, occult and mysticism is, for me, often awe-inspiring and such experiences of daily awe have been shown to be psychologically beneficial.

Additionally, Dr. Sledge’s description of what he believes it means to be a philosopher offers some refreshing insight. Here is an excerpt from that text:

Philosophy must be inclusive, diverse, and violent.  It is a human project and that so many have been excluded from it is a scar of shame.  The philosopher must struggle against the petty, decadent, and temporal forces which render it the boring and irrelevant purview of the privileged elite.  Philosophy must not only change the world rather than interpret it, it must also change itself.  Philosophers who do not struggle against the oppressions of our epoch are complicit in them.  

In recapping the themes brought up in the video, my understanding is that the consensus seems to be something of this nature: Philosophy can be meaningful (and indeed vital) should one implement it in such a way so as to create self-awareness, reduce self-deception, and integrate it into one’s pursuit of the good life (ie. a life lived in pursuit of Wisdom or, perhaps, of the Good).

Watching the video was, for me, no doubt largely a reinforcement of this intuition which had been building in me over the past five years. That said, it’s always nice to get the occasional emotional support, even when I know that bias confirmation is a risk of which I must always be aware.

This weekend Jayne and I watched a good movie which appears to have been completely forgotten by almost everyone. The Object of Beauty2 is about a couple living a posh yet transitory life in a hotel in London (played by John Malkovich and Andie MacDowell). Stricken by financial woes when an investment opportunity goes awry, the two are forced to appraise the value of a small statuette by Henry Moore. This item is of great value to Tina, and similarly enthralls other characters in the story.

Intensified by plenty of plot twists, humor, drama, and suspense, the picture ultimately asks us to consider the nature of Tina and Jake’s relationship, which forces both of them to appraise their own character and values. In this context, the meaning of the statuette (and, indeed, material wealth in general) is called into provocative consideration.

May many blessings grace you this week.

All Best,
Aaron

Echo (Observing Narcissus Gazing Into the Pool):

“But ay! Sorrow makes me dumb;

already words stick to my tongue.

Where is my Pride? Won’t she appear?

Why does she not relieve my fear?

And my Self-Love, why doesn’t he

restore my reasoning to me?

I am dumb! Oh, misery!

— Sor Juana Inéz de la Cruz. Il Divino Narcissus.1

The most difficult lesson I’ve learned about life is that it is necessary to lean *in* to discomfort. Every time I find myself evading a difficulty, I also find myself isolated, lonely, and in far worse shape than before.

This can be an issue with a friend or family member, a problem with a coworker or employer, a financial tension, or really almost anything.

This is part of the philosophy of the “Bottom” which they talk about in AA. One gets to a place where we can not tolerate things getting any worse, and are forced to rebuild from the bottom up. This is the purpose of the idea of “Surrender.” As I’ve mentioned before, this does NOT need to imply a loss of agency. Rather it is a due deference to the world of things outside of one’s control so that we can own up to and be responsible for the decisions we need to make.

One subscriber, in reading one of my Substack notes, spoke about Curiosophy involving

The return of wonder and awe and humility.

Ego is going to get pummeled by the house of consequences it built.2

It’s been my mission in this experiment to refuse easy answers. Awe can be both Awesome and Awful, as we well know. Reality is not here to conform to our ideas of it. Rather, we are here to learn to recognize and adapt to reality. We can either do that in such a way so as to cultivate flourishing, or we can do it in such a way so as to “be a part of the problem.” Sometimes I need to participate in the problem in order to know how to free myself from its perpetuation.

The irony of this realization is that the way to being present in and conscious of the world is via work done internally. The way that I can muster the courage to be able to face a problem is by addressing my thoughts and emotions about it. Participatory and Procedural knowledge can be really beneficial here. Rather than trying to do everything via Propositional analysis, participating with others dealing with the same situation can communicate new thought and understanding almost instantaneously. Hence the surrender to Divinity and the decision to attend meetings and “work the steps.”

It’s not that Bill W. of AA worked out a methodology and tested it empirically using control groups and blind studies, then was able to replicate the experiment to prove its efficacy beyond the shadow of a doubt. It’s rather that he spent a long time with other alcoholics, writing down what seemed to be the pattern he observed and, by writing, codified it into a procedure. Whether or not the method is proven or replicable is not the point. The point is that when people get out of their cocoons and interact with other personae, the Holy Spirit is present and we suddenly perceive escapes we had not hitherto been able to discern. (And if you don’t like the term “Holy Spirit,” consider “Distributed Cognition” instead. One can even think of it as a division of cognitive labor.)

The Perils of Pluralism

I call myself a Classic Liberal (slightly different than a Classical Liberal). I sometimes self-identify as a Liberal Socialist, or a Left Libertarian. My #1 Libertarian position is on the issue of a woman’s (or — as I like to specify — a female-bodied Sapien’s) Right to Sexual Autonomy and Agency re: Reproductive Healthcare.

Enter a new online friend I’ve made recently. Here, Gavin hypothesizes on the potential to co-operate and co-ordinate re: Legislation via Consensus. (Read: Consent.) I really could give about zero fucks as to whether or not the framers of the Constitution in the 18th Century had any understanding of Reproductive Rights at a time when Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication had not yet been written, and reliable contraception was almost two centuries away. (Let alone the fact that whatever influence savvy women managed to extract from the dominant paradigm, female bodies were basically seen as property, especially as far as the law was concerned.)

As a non-binary person who grew up in a fatherless home, you will please forgive me for my lack of patience with respect to this issue, particularly in the context of how an elite class of Ivy League Justices, none of whom are Taoists, Hindi, Atheist, or Pagan (and SIX of whom [that is, 67% of whom] are CATHOLICS) are using Originalism as an excuse to impose theocratic morality from the bench. To repeat a phrase oft dropped by John McWhorter, “This simply will not do.”

The World is My Cloister

And, in related news re: Pluralism, an adage of mine was recently re-inforced in Substack’s pages.

Here is Peter Limberg of The Stoa:

Our capitalistic system is designed to profit from our lack of agency and people's agency directed toward non-sacred pursuits.

What is the solution for those whose calling exists outside of a monastery? Consider the world your monastery. I first heard the phrase "monasticization of daily life" from the Coaches Rising podcast, and it resonated immediately. All life is practice, and the monasticization of daily life is the art of flipping unexamined practices into examined ones.3

The piece is a marvelous summation of how to best assemble an individualized Ecology of Practices to succeed as an Ethical being who promotes flourishing in this World.

All Best. Much Appreciation and Respect.

Aar.

3

Less Foolish

Monasticization of Daily Life

This entry is a part of the “No Method: Practical Philosophical Skills” series. Part 1: Existential Wayfinding. Part 2: Weltanschauung Remodeling. Part 3: Monasticization of Daily Life. In the book You Must Change Your Life, German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk argues we are practicing animals and sees philosophy as a “multisport,” an “exercise of existen…

Read more

3 years ago · Peter N Limberg

Dear Readers,

There’s been a slight delay in the production of this week’s interview with Novelist Richard Mirabella.

Due to a recent change in Operating Systems, I have lost access to the audio editing software I usually use to produce Curiosophy Now. Because of this, I have not been able to produce the episode as I normally would.

While I only edit the podcasts slightly, it is important to me to get the balance of the sound correct. You will notice here that has not been done, and there is also no theme music at the front. Before I upload to YouTube, I will have this corrected.



Amiably,

Aaron

Notes is a new space on Substack for us to share links, short posts, quotes, photos, and more. I plan to use it for things that don’t fit in the newsletter, like work-in-progress or quick questions.

Go to Notes

[EDIT ME] Why Substack Notes [EDIT ME]

***[EDIT THIS TEXT. Share your personal reasons for giving Notes a spin with readers.]***

Fellow writers and readers are spending time in Notes for a variety of reasons.

Ted Gioia sees Notes as a forum for dialogue.

The idea behind Notes is simple. Millions of people now participate in Substack as writers and readers—but much of this is built on long articles and essays. We now have a forum for dialoguing and sharing shorter posts.

Chris Ryan is drawn to Substack as an alternative for legacy social media.

One of my main reasons for joining Substack was to wean myself off exploitative social media platforms. I’m hoping this is going to help move us along on that journey!

Sherman Alexie wants to create a kind and creative new space in Notes.

I’m going to focus on being positive, with my own thoughts and photos and by linking to songs, stories, poems from around the web and from other Substacks.

How to join

Head to substack.com/notes or find the “Notes” tab in the Substack app. As a subscriber to The Assimilationist, you’ll automatically see my notes. Feel free to like, reply, or share them around!

You can also share notes of your own. I hope this becomes a space where every reader of The Assimilationist can share thoughts, ideas, and interesting quotes from the things we're reading on Substack and beyond.

If you encounter any issues, you can always refer to the Notes FAQ for assistance. Looking forward to seeing you there!

Go to Notes

It’s strange that, despite interviews with people like Robert Wright and Sam Harris, I can’t recall anyone asking the author of Consciousness Explained about meditation.1

Furthermore, somewhere in the annals of Google, I stumbled on a single line in a write up of a scientific conference where it was said that one Daniel Dennett practiced a modified form of transcendental meditation.

Unfortunately, I could find no corroborations of his account. So, I did what any amateur (wannabe) journalist would do: I emailed the guy.

Here’s what he said:

Yes, I was once courted by a TM leader, hoping I would become a philosopher-spokesman for TM. I tried it, found some value, but couldn’t abide the surrounding aura. So I continued the meditating, off and on, and found it a valuable way of settling and centering, but I’m not a habitual meditator. I often wake up in the middle of the night and think about what I’m working on, often with good results—worth keeping a notepad on my bedside table. That takes the place of meditating for me now.

DCD

Yes, I will be commenting on this middle of the night thing, as well as telling you more about Dr. Dennett in the future.

As a TM meditator myself, I also suspect I’ll have not a few things to say about the practice, as well as my history with it.

Have a Wonderful Friday, and I hope your Eostral plane is rich with signs of all variety of life.


À Bientôt.

Aar.

Contemplatio

Yesterday, I awoke to what I call the “Perfect Sunday Morning.” 

A dear friend and I came into consciousness in one another’s arms. To celebrate, we participated in some sacred sexuality. We murmured some spiritual pillow talk and dozed off for another hour. 

As they readied themself for the day, I read a poem by Robert Graves. Before leaving for the coffee shop, we lingered on half of my personal library for a while, and they made a selection to keep. Then, at the coffee shop, we talked for a while before each settling into collaborative solitude. They worked on something on their laptop, and I wrote the beginnings of a poem.

And here I am after a hike, summing it all up. Participatory knowing. Contemplation. Ritual. Signs. Tenderness and affection.

“Day of Rest.”

Right now I’m reading Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World by Tara Isabella Burton. I’m beginning to shift perspective toward what I call the “Lunar” (as opposed to the “Solar”) faiths. I’m doing this deliberately during Lent as we prepare for l’Eostre. (Depite being called Pascha [“Passover”] in Eastern Orthodox Christianity, the bulk of the American and Western European world (I think) still use the Pagan term for Spring rituals. (I believe this may be due to a resurgence in interest in the medieval during the Romantic and Victorian eras, but I have research to do on that.)

If you, or anyone you know, consider yourself a “Witch,” please consider sending me 300 words or less stating “What I mean when I say I’m a Witch.” There is a broad array of content out there on this topic, and I am specifically looking for personal testimonials. My intention is to feature a selection of them in a post on the subject. If you choose to contribute, please let me know whether you like to have your name attached to your writing, or whether you wish to remain anonymous.

I am sharing the merit of my prayer and meditation with the trans children who will be affected by the recent legislation in Iowa. When I was 14, I was sexually assaulted in a boy’s locker room at Logan Elementary after a girl I was “going with” told one of the boys that I was bisexual. I am worried about the safety of some of these children. I can’t imagine the horror of identifying feminine and having to be naked with boys. My heart and soul weeps in solidarity with some of these kids.

Here is what the David Lynch character Gordon Cole in Twin Peaks says to anti-trans people:

New Word Alert

Poesophy

I came up with this during my hike on Sunday, while listening to a Vervaeke lecture. I define it as “the pursuit of wisdom through the act of creativity.”

As with every word I coin (including Curiosophy), as soon as I Googled it I saw that someone else had come up with it first.

I don’t care. I’m using it my way, anyway.

And now for a feel-good, meaningful groove to start your week! Here’s the new single from our good friends Har-di-Har:

Thank you all for your generous contribution of your time and attention.

Have a wonderful week.

À Bientôt.

Aar.