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Our Future Fetish
The future is rad and all, but it’s never here, so if we can’t be cool now, why defer? Our Future Fetish Just wait, until we land on the moon. How great everything will be! [producer whispers… off camera] Oh fuck me, sorry folks. I’m being told — we’ve done that. And it was indeed […]
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Dear Empathetic Person
To anyone with pronounced empathy, I suspect observing humanity causes great pain? Which you are either living with — or — you developed a strategy to insulate yourself from. Put another way: Being alive begets knowing the majority of the human population is suffering. Further, it may (or may not), lead one to question the […]
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Everything Is Not Fine
My optimism:pessimism ratio is solid 9:1. Hence why my editor finds this essay abhorrent. Very off-brand. It may beget our undoing… I’m publishing this while they’re on holiday. As pioneer Grace Hopper once imparted: ’tis easier to beg for forgiveness than ask for permission. What’s the problem? Me concluding – with suspiciously unshakable certainty – […]
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Save Humanity! A Psychedelic And Spiritual Ditch.
“The psychedelic ‘hook’ goes in way deeper than anything merely addictive. It’s a ‘conversionary’ stimulus of overwhelming personal ‘inspiration’ induced in many (not all) that ‘changes everything’ for those now exalted as ‘touched’ by that ‘angel’ – igniting a compulsion every bit as consuming and destructive as any addiction. But where an addict is driven […]
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Art Is God
“[Life] sums itself up for me as a lucid invitation to live and to create, in the very midst of the desert.” Albert Camus What does it mean to embody freedom? An interview with no self, for the sake of no self. Dear self, you are hard to pin. When I think I’ve found you, […]
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Separation Is Illusion
“A human being is a spatially and temporally limited piece of the whole, what we call the ‘Universe.’ He experiences himself and his feelings as separate from the rest, an optical illusion of his consciousness. The quest for liberation from this bondage [or illusion] is the only object of true religion. Not nurturing the illusion […]
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Where There Is War, There Is Art
The last of three essays regarding (apparent) aimless chaos of the human species. It is mystifying to watch humanity, seemingly, shoot itself in the foot. Meanwhile, it is simultaneously awesome and bewildering to watch culture become increasingly complex. These two forces seem to collude with one another… traditional governance and information spaces are in disarray. […]
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Human History in 10 Bullets
Asking the question, “who am I?”, eventually dissolves into, “who are we?”. Then, what choice is there, other than to investigate BACKWARDS? As philosopher David Byrne once asked: “How Did I Get Here?“ For what it’s worth- hundreds of hours are behind these bullets (authoritative material linked). This is intentionally succinct, accentuating bits that’ve maximally […]
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Culture Can Only Get Weirder
A human mind is a miraculous survival tool. An idle human mind, bored, freed from the wilderness, hallucinates all sorts of reasons to be worried, anxious, creative, frustrated, driven absolutely wild. A billion idle human minds, hooked up to the internet with AI chatbots. Yuh oh. Fear not, buckle up. “Everybody is sort of living […]
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With Love From My Rat Car
Life is always zooming ahead. My promise to you (which, stems from a promise to myself), is to linger in the tiniest moments. Like your face when lightly-sweetened chocolate cake delights you unexpectedly, or you gaze at mushrooms lovingly and celebrate (again) that they are, in fact, not contaminated with radiation*, or when you smile […]
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Culture Is Wild
Culture is wild. If you think about humans being around for 300k-ish years. All of the wild fucking change we know about started 10k-ish years ago, with agriculture, and then another boom again with industrial era only 300 years ago. Each leap gives people more free time. The more free time we have, the larger […]
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Dear Meditation Student, You’re Doing It Right
Dear Jay [Just returned from a 3 day retreat as a novice] Retreat was overall positive. I think I went in with the wrong expectations/goals and suffered a bit for it and also didn’t devote myself to the practice as much as I would’ve liked…frankly, it was very hard to try to remain mindful all […]
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Hamilton Is Disturbing – The Tyranny of Legacy and Work Ethic
“Building a legacy is an illusion, and is really a selfish endeavor. Happiness through acquisition is an illusion. You don’t ‘own’ anything.” Rick Georges Lin-Manuel Miranda himself would agree: Alexander Hamilton was a freak of nature, “Accomplishing what would take a normal person three lifetimes“. Modern day scholars and clinicians offer conflicting descriptions… Intensely gifted? […]
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Romance Is Wildly Overrated (Happy Valentine’s Day)
“As a philosopher, I am always amazed how Plato’s account here, uttered by Aristophanes, uncannily evokes our very modern view of love. It is a profoundly moving, beautiful, and wistful account. Humans insist on looking for satisfaction in things that cannot provide real or lasting fulfillment. These false lures include material goods, also power, and fame, […]
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Spontaneous Celibacy
This phrase – “spontaneous celibacy” – isn’t a “thing”. It’s an imperfect label that arose while trying to describe my life, to a someone. It’s the best I can conjure – bearing in mind the utter failure of “labels” to ever actually fulfill their obligation. “Spontaneous celibacy? Oh, you poor thing…” Imaginary reaction from the […]
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Spiritual Atheist Speaks With Theology PhD
“YOU CAN’T EAT DONUTS UNTIL 1 HOUR AFTER COMMUNION!” My mom, to the nun: “F Off”. 7-year-old me: [watching… donut-in-hand — bewildered] I cherish this memory – the precise moment Catholic dogmatism collided spectacularly with my mom’s veteran pragmatism. There I was, just completed my “first communion” ceremony, in the church basement for coffee and donuts […]
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Stuff
Check the mail (e and non). Dryer vent cleaning. Car inspection. Delete that service (after you move your stuff). Read those articles. Read that note about reading those articles. Do that thing for that friend. Reply to that text (when you know what to say). Schedule that appointment. Put the appointment in the calendar (not […]
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Be Free
“The moment we begin to see that there are infinitely many kinds of beautiful lives, we cease being captive to the myth of normalcy — the cultural tyranny that tells us there are a handful of valid ways to be human and demands of us to contort into these accepted forms of being” Maria Popova
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A Photo, 1.29.23
May I have some food? This sparrow understands that if it stares at me long enough, sometimes doing wild aerobatics inches away from the window to snag my attention, I’ll offer a few crumbs. I get it – winter and snow make foraging especially tough.
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Death
“Don’t wait to realize you’re mortal. Invite the truth of death into your life earlier, and you’ll receive its lessons.” BJ Miller Whose intrepid eyes will land here? The title alone will send people fleeing. Are we guilty of subconscious death denial, as Ernest Becker suggests in his famous book? Death transforms the living – […]