Everything we do or say is painted by our own experiences and our own values. The truths we state, and the opinions that we make, are not just reflections of everything we’ve become, but creations. It is for this reason that it is important to be acutely aware of what we say and do and […]
Recently I’ve faced some rather critical life choices, and the power of it all shook me to my core and caused me to completely re-evaluate my life, where I am in it, and what I want out of it. It caused me to confront something that everyone must confront, but even I never have, because […]
Up to now I’ve been beating up on the ego a lot. But like all abstractions, it is necessary and non-arbitrary to be who you are with your ego. This dawned on me that perhaps there needs to be another way to talk about it, and that’s when I realized the best way to describe […]
I’ve defined Wealth as the measure of the ability to engage the Process of satisfaction of desires. Furthermore, I’ve examined the dangers of ascribing infinite value to things, particularly rights. To tie this all together, we need to examine the difference between value and cost. I’ve defined value (and values) elsewhere as the way that […]
To reify abstractions, to ascribe to them infinite value and immunize them from change, is a powerful need. There are few such abstractions more powerful in this regard than the concept of rights. The notion of a right comes in many forms; natural rights, human rights, God-given rights, etc. They all imply something that cannot […]
Part 1 of a three part series on this Memorial Day Weekend. It’s about high time I start tilting over into economics on infinitespiral.net, because economics is a particular ecology that manifests from the Process of the Satisfaction of Desires. It is also something that when perceived incorrectly is the cause of a great amount […]
I used to be an idealist. Quite fervently, actually. I used to believe very strongly that the principle behind what I believed was more important than its actual effects on my reality. Well, I didn’t really believe that, but that is what I was realizing with my actions. It was my ego that was attached […]
“Anything done out of love is beyond good and evil.” – Nietzsche I’ve been scratching at something on the edge of my mind for some time now, and it keeps coming up. It seems clear to me to realize a few things about the world of human actualizers as it stands today. To be really […]
A few months ago I talked about reducing certain ideas that define each other by their opposite to irrelevancy when one eliminates one of the defining terms. In the example, if I say “every action is selfish”, then it erases the distinction between selfish and selfless; the terms vanish, and the only further use of […]
We tend to connect the pieces of our life together to make a complete story. Our egos become a huge part of this, and as a result it is often difficult to separate our ego – our sense of self and self worth – from these different pieces of our life. Particularly when it comes […]
Just a quick post: This is an excerpt from Beyond the Frontier of the Mind, by the Indian mystic Osho. Great read, and captures a lot of what I am saying here.
I was speaking with a good friend the other day about a personal crisis they were having. Without going into too much detail, it was about a certain emptiness that they felt, on occassion, that boiled over sometimes while doing the simplest of things. I talked with my friend about this, and tried to put […]
There is an argument form that is useful in deconstructing abstractions one has held previously. It involves the fact that, if two things are equivalent, then they are equivalent and there is no use talking about the difference; in a sense, a third way of thinking is born. For example: If I claim that every […]
What is a ritual? Rituals are actions or a series of actions that we take for the purpose of satisfying desire and engaging the Process. They involve either realizing or deconstructing abstractions – but usually doing so purposefully, even if we aren’t aware of the purpose*. They are the tools we use to believe in […]
Just as abstractions are necessary and non-arbitrary, so are values and the process of evaluation. While we are justified in applying our own values to the values of others, it is important to understand, and thus be able to communicate and receive, the sources that “cause” people to value what they do. There are many […]
Let’s recap for a moment: Reality is the expression of the Process of becoming, or actualization. Actualizers are realized reference points of actualization. Actualizers experience the Process through desires. Since every actualizer is a unique reference point, their desires are entirely subjective. The only consistency between them, and the only way to move between the […]
I talked before about how expression of truth are expressions of value. While the basic idea is sound, it is important to note what exactly an expression of value is. It can be said that speaking words is an action, but merely speaking what you believe is true does not make it so. As an […]
The concept of the soul is an abstraction that is in use by almost every single spiritual paradigm that humans have realized over the course of their history. As I have said before, abstractions are necessary and non-arbitrary, so the ubiquitousness of this particular abstraction should not be taken lightly. Perhaps the most immediately apparent […]
Every statement of truth by a person (that is, the abstractions they make) is an expression of Desire. Put more practically, when people say “this is true” they are saying “that is how I want the world to be”. It is an assertion of authority (again in the literal sense – the ability to author […]
Imagine a river, indefintiely wide and indefinitely long. Along the riverbed are rocks that cause various flows, whirlpools, standing water. If a rock is added, moved, or taken away, the flow, and therefore entire picture of the river taken at any one time, changes. There are areas in the river that flow quickly. There is […]
This world is the will to power–and nothing besides! – Nietzsche What is real? What is reality? How can I answer that in a few short paragraphs? Reality is the continuous, inter-subjective expression of a process. That process is a system of disequilibrium (power) and the actions that use that power (actualization). It could be […]
Ideas are connected. For example: spirituality tends to exist to help humans deal with the fear of death. The fear of death spills over into other areas of life as a fear of impermanence, or a fear of change. The fear of impermanence then filters up into nearly every ritual we perform, every interaction that […]
Symbolism is useful to me. It’s for that reason that I appreciate symbolic tools like the Tarot. Not as a divination tool necessarily – I have a special appreciation for the story of the Fool’s Journey. I see it as a great story of an actualizer’s journey through self-realization. I have two Tarot card tattoos […]