110 sats \ 0 replies \ @SilkyNinja 5h \ on: Movies everyone loves, but you don't alter_native
Most of the new Pixar/Disney are too “engineered sentimental” for my taste. I remember liking Wall-E and feeling lukewarm about Up, and after that I just haven’t gotten into another one. It feels dishonest and played out
100 sats \ 0 replies \ @SilkyNinja 5h \ parent \ on: Movies everyone loves, but you don't alter_native
I think you and I are in the audience of ten who actually watched Doghouse all the way. It’s made for those actors who think that that time they did Equus was the most important work of their lives…
I guess I’m more of a Buddhist: the idea of “cultivating” a “mindset” has never made much sense considering the incredible transience of the mind. It is much more akin to a sandcastle than something to be fortified. In fact, to fortify a mindset seems to be just putting up a front to your idea of who you should be. And if it were really who you are, would you need to cultivate and fortify it so much - or could you let it grow like a wild and dense forest?
Your argument appears to center around this idea of the individual willing their thoughts to create a new reality, beginning with the perception of their current reality. This is something a bit parroted in derivative modern mystic perspectives and belies the point of physical-spiritual practices such as prayer and meditation that cultivate a relationship with the body. I wonder if you’ve read Tolle’s The Power of Now.
A scientific perspective on the use of the mind in a top-down fashion is this: The best that thought processes (a tertiary brain function) can do to influence our behavior is to change our perspective of “ourselves” and “the past” via frameworks and perspectives, and so influence habitual behaviors. This means seeking knowledge to have a better understanding of what is going on. We may “know ourselves” better through certain thought-based practices, but to insist on putting on someone’s sunglasses to see the world is advice I cannot tolerate.
Your advice sounds like self-imposed mind control along a certain idea of what is “good” or “virtuous” behavior or a way of being. I don’t think that we can “align” to our “highest selves” if we are following the advice of someone’s idea of what is good. There are plenty of practical, earthly arguments why we are already compassionate and why generosity and mercy make practical social sense. To ascribe some sort of ineffable spiritual value to cultivating these things is to attempt to define an unseen force or power (and what it wants from us), and to try to define that unseen power (and what it wants from us) is to assume unseen dominance over others. When you argue that it is our good and our goal to embody certain traits, do you claim to know what God wants for us?
I wonder that if by warping the mind to such a specific track of goodliness, we leave room for evil to grow within ourselves via the resentment of the rejected self.
For me, again, the biggest issue is this: How do I know what my highest virtues are when I’m told that the way to “align to my highest self” is to embody a very specific list of personality traits and actions prescribed by someone else? Who are you to tell me that my worth lies not in whatever I say it is and instead what I give to others?
The surface-level message is that you do not need to follow your ideas of redemption to be redeemed: Jakub did not need to redeem himself and his father's name through a great act of public civil service; he was redeemed through the love of his wife.
Hanuš needed to teach him this, and his wisdom is in the "how" rather than the "what" - while he explains to Jakub or tries to get him to see his psychological conflict regarding his wife and his work, it's not until Jakub learns to be different through physically living with Hanuš. Physically, Hanuš is remarkably dissimilar from humans in certain ways (he's literally a giant spider) - and yet he is exceedingly gentle, curious, and enjoys the same simple pleasures we do (the food, the machine noise).
If you watch this really studying how Adam Sandler's physicality changes, you can see there is a really great shift in how he literally "handles" reality.
There's a lot of poetry you could get into when you think of this movie as a fantasy (rather than science fiction) and so Hanuš as a personification of Jakub's shadow side: literally a giant "nasty" who shows him the way to living a better life. I really appreciate this post, because I'd thought of some things that I'd liked about this movie but hadn't been forced into writing them out. Cheers!
Some people find spiritual comfort in Alan Watts. I turn out to be more a fan of Nietzsche...guess I'm just different.
Always more upright learneth it to speak, the ego; and the more it learneth, the more doth it find titles and honors for the body and the earth.A new pride taught me mine ego, and that I teach unto men: no longer to thrust one's head into the sand of celestial things, but to carry it freely, a terrestrial head, which giveth meaning to the earth!
"Backworldsmen"
No longer can your Self do that which it desireth most - create beyond itself. That is what it desireth most; that is all its fervor.But it is now too late to do so; so your Self wisheth to succumb, ye despisers of the body.To succumb - so wisheth your Self; and therefore have ye become despisers of the body. For ye can no longer create beyond yourselves.And therefore are ye now angry with life and with the earth. And unconscious envy is in the sidelong look of your contempt.
"The Despisers of the Body"
both from Thus Spake Zarathustra
There’s got to be some width/height/print size ratio that makes sense. I have a few turkey sandwich sized pocket paperbacks with teeny tiny print and it’s just like, man, I think I’d take a slightly taller book at this rate.
The book The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan is likely the source material for the perspective you are criticizing.
Friedan emphasizes the widespread malaise and discontent of college educated women who are barred from the workforce or are otherwise marginalized on account of pregnancy and motherhood (herself as a writer included). This is accomplished via mostly firsthand interviews if I recall. It is more about a lack of vocational fulfillment (exacerbated by higher education and intellectual capacity). There was a more recent anthropology text (I can’t recall the name) that I read part of that implied it is a cross-species phenomenon for females to need to have work in addition to motherhood as part of a psychology of individuated success.
Motherhood is arguably the most important job in the world. However, there is evidence to suggest that women need work outside of motherhood to feel fulfilled as individuals. My own grandmother, who was more a “housewife” in the sixties, ended up working as her husband’s business partner and has always emphasized to me the importance of working as it relates to mental health. I remember vividly her mad dash to bridge the gap of fulfilling activity in her life following retirement. Her perspective is that women who do not have some work outside of child-rearing mentally suffer compared to women who do.
Super fascinating article (though the writing was tedious as heck). I think when we are encouraged to value a utilitarian perspective over the sanctity of the individual perspective, there isn't an actual moral fabric to rest on or start from. It's my understanding that ethics are handed down from other people, and morality depends on individual perspective & choice.
My impression is #1 is trying to elevate his idol; #2 is seeking refuge/relief; #3 is seeking sanctuary. My perceptions here (on #1 and #2 particularly) are highly influenced by my cultural/political upbringing. #4 is smugly pleased, although he appears ready for action in the world.
In other words, 1-3 are more/less asking for something and probably also “giving” something back - to ask is to concede inferiority/lack. That act of giving power to the “worshipped” is I think what is colloquially understood as religious worship. I just wonder if these examples are bit anemic compared to the otherwise secular use of the word as in “to worship a lover.”
If we could be a little liberal and imaginative, could we make up a story where #4 actually “worships” life because he is willing to do what it takes to act within it and fulfill life’s desires?
I got myself a copy of Wreck This Journal by Keri Smith for my birthday because I want to get more visually creative with my work. I remember when I first saw this book, before I started a serious artistic journey, I just didn’t get it. I felt inspired the other day to look it up and now I totally get it; it seems like the perfect antidote to my visual/plastic art “perfectionism” (which means not getting anything even started).
Her mantra is “to create is to destroy.” So badass.
If Bitcoin is very important to you, you might want to think of your “life story” as a science fiction. Science fiction has certain “genre rules”, as do all genres. Science fiction, more expressly than fantasy, emphasizes social slavery (pretty beautiful when you remark on that alongside Bitcoin values); fantasy is more about individual liberation.
Some interesting notes flipping through the chapter “Science Fiction” in Anatomy of Genre by John Truby:
- SF is about social systems. All social systems have elements of freedom and imprisonment, so the story isn’t about a free system vs an enslaving system, but all social systems have elements of both.
- SF says the most profound choices we make are influenced by the technology we have invented
- The best SF writers compare, in detail, the opponent’s vision of the future with the hero’s vision
- Like Fantasy, there are symbolic/allegorical relations between the hero’s internal state/character and the visual/physical world. In SF, “often the hero’s weaknesses turn on what it means to be human” and “stories connect the hero’s lack of evolution with the planet’s lack of evolution.”
100 sats \ 0 replies \ @SilkyNinja OP 23 Apr \ parent \ on: Make Aerial Yoga Masculine mostly_harmless
For some reason we started gendering exercise types.
This sparked a lot of interesting thoughts in me that are all half-baked, but I hope get cooked all the way someday.
I think the idea of "masculine" exercise needing to be expressions of aggression is a narrow-minded perspective of the human experience.