In all things, across all avenues, a choice must be made: whether to follow love, truth, or power. That choice will consume the chooser. If he follows only love then his wellbeing will be constantly at the mercy of another, though his highs will be sublime. If he follows truth then it will be a lonely journey, but potentially a noble one. If he should follow power though, not only will he come to know a desperate and revolting loneliness, but he will also never experience even a drop of satisfaction in anything.
Clipping
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books > The Fifth Science (Exurb1a)
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clippings > A feeling of loving connection is something you can produce yourself by giving
[https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/giving]
Then there are people who are actually generous—they are committed to serving others. But they see it as a sacrifice: it is painful to give, and this pain is, in a sense, what makes it valuable. “I will give of my time and energy and potential so that my baby can grow. Shouldering responsibility makes my life feel meaningful, and I want it to be hard at times; that makes me feel good about myself.”
But what people who see giving as an act of potency realize is that this feeling of a loving connection is something you can produce yourself. If a feeling of connection to the world and other people is a kind of wealth, it is a wealth you don’t need to inherit or earn. It is more like you are the federal reserve and you can just print that stuff.
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clippings > We live in imaginary worlds
[https://www.afterbabel.com/p/we-live-in-imaginary-worlds]
I’m not just talking about Gen Z. Adults also live in imaginary worlds. We now have adults who invest more time into their imaginary worlds and reputations than their real ones. Adults imagining they are “socializing” all day when they haven’t left the house. Adults editing their pictures, creating imaginary versions of the selves they pretend to be. Adults arguing with versions of people they have imagined in their heads. Adults ignoring their children to have fun with hallucinations.
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web > Mind is not reducible to computation, nor to structure
[https://www.theintrinsicperspective.com/p/what-do-you-think-about-consciousness/comment/76234098]
In research I go with via negativa (no-go theorems):
Proof based on Computer Science that mind is not reducible to computation:
Proof based on physics that mind is not reducible to structure:
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web > Atheism can't equip us for a civilizational war
[https://unherd.com/2023/11/why-i-am-now-a-christian/]
The line often attributed to G.K. Chesterton has turned into a prophecy: “When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.”
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web > The brief era of the Rock Star
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42069675]
There was a brief period in history when Being In A Band was a big deal. That’s bracketed by, perhaps, the British Invasion and Myspace Music. Before that, musicians were low-paid background music systems. After that, anybody could do it at garage-band level. In between was the brief era of the Rock Star. The nostalgia here is for that era.
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web > Actualism practice as the best defense against anxiety
Level 1
Achieve feeling good as the default baseline mood. Whenever feeling bad, first get back to feeling good.
- To do this, notice your ongoing habit of feeding the feeling (including attempts to ‘change’ it), and cease doing that. Cease everything but (simply) be aware of the feeling.
- When you do this, the body’s native intelligence will automatically see the feeling to be silly, and you are back to feeling good.
[Richard]: ‘The ego – or even the soul as pure spirit – is not to be confused with will. The bodily needs are what motivates will – and will is nothing more grand than the nerve-organising data-correlating ability of the body – and it is will that is essential in order to operate and function … not an identity. Will is an organising process, an activity of the brain that correlates all the information and data that streams through the bodily senses. Will is not a ‘thing’, a subjectively substantial passionate ‘object’, like the identity is. Will, freed of the encumbrance of the ego and soul – which are born out of instinctual fear and aggression and nurture and desire – can operate smoothly, with actual sagacity. The operation of this freed will, is called intelligence. This intelligence is the body’s native intelligence … and has naught to do with any disembodied ‘Intelligence behind the Universe’ It is a joy to be me going about my business with freed-will in this wonderful physical world’. (page 76, Article 10; ‘Richard’s Journal’; Second Edition ©2004 The Actual Freedom Trust). –AFT, Vineeto@Discourse, @sridca
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web > The flow state of nothing but observing
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42103753]
Try to imagine being in a flow state without actually doing anything other than observing. It’s something I experience at times when I’m in a beautiful natural environment. I try to bring this feeling into my everyday life.
I think you explained this very clearly and beautifully. I think I know exactly what you mean.
I used to find a lot of comfort in being able to get myself into this state of mind easily, usually, like you, by just calmly observing natural surroundings in environments that are special to me.
That was in my late teens and early twenties. I’m now about 15 years older and find it so much harder.
I think it has something to do with living a hectic adult life, and I really hope I’ll be able to find back to that some time.
Part of me really believes that to experience life in this way is what we’re here for and modern life’s way of distancing us from this experience is something we need to be very wary of.
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web > We change by tricking ourselves into new story
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42103203]
Lately, I’ve had this intuition that we change by sort of tricking ourselves. The mechanism for that change is by settling on like this one kind of character, like someone out of a movie that’s playing in your head, and acting like that person. Then, as time passes, we simply forget who we were before we started acting and the only way we know how to act is as this one character.
You say you’ve lost your ‘story’ and your ‘character’, that you don’t ‘act’ anymore.
But, it just feels like you’ve made another story and another character for you to fit into. You’ve got a new aesthetic, a new ideal, and your appreciating sunsets and nature is another thing you do because that’s what the ‘character’ you try to fit would do.
And by acting like that person in your head would, you start to feel the same way too.
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web > 5-HT1A vs 5-HT2A receptors and passive vs active coping
[https://smoothbrains.net/posts/2024-03-01-5-meo-dmt.html]
One can imagine a wolf which lives off salmon in the local river. Perhaps our wolf suffers an encounter with a bear down at these hunting grounds and develops an aversion to water. This maladaptive behavioural pattern continues for some time, during which the passive coping mechanism helps it manage the stress of hunger. But this is insufficient for survival, and eventually the animal is driven to the point of starvation, at which point a pivotal mental state is triggered. If it’s lucky, the creature overcomes its behavioural aversions, and it learns to feed itself once again.
We propose that passive coping (i.e. tolerating a source of stress) is mediated by postsynaptic 5-HT1A receptor signalling and characterised by stress moderation. Conversely, we argue that active coping (i.e. actively addressing a source of stress) is mediated by 5-HT2A receptor signalling and characterised by enhanced plasticity (defined as capacity for change).