TopicsPhilosophy & the self
Philosophy & the self
Absurdism, attention to one’s own mind, and the stories we tell to live with both.
Posts
- EVERGREEN — Considered finished and maintained.
The Rational Actor Is Dead
Homo economicus never existed but we still build policy like it does, and people keep getting hurt. - EVERGREEN — Considered finished and maintained.
Silicon Valley's Death Problem
Transhumanism is terror management theory funded by venture capital, and it is telling on itself. - BUDDING — Developing, partially revised.
Boredom Is a Skill
We engineered boredom out of existence and lost something we cannot get back from a screen. - BUDDING — Developing, partially revised.
Nihilism Is Lazy Philosophy
Nothing matters is the intellectual equivalent of not voting and it deserves the same respect. - BUDDING — Developing, partially revised.
The Meditation Industrial Complex
How mindfulness got stripped from its Buddhist roots and sold back as a productivity hack for corporate America. - BUDDING — Developing, partially revised.
You Don't Find Yourself
The 'finding yourself' narrative assumes a fixed self waiting to be discovered; the research says you build one, and keep rebuilding it. - BUDDING — Developing, partially revised.
Nostalgia Is a Political Weapon
The mythologized past that authoritarian movements promise to restore never existed, but the longing they exploit is real. - SEEDLING — Rough notes, still forming.
Wu Wei and the Backwards Law
The harder you chase something, the more it evades you. Alan Watts' backwards law and the paradox of effortless action. - BUDDING — Developing, partially revised.
Abolition Isn't What You Think
Abolition is not the absence of safety but the presence of something better than cages. - SEEDLING — Rough notes, still forming.
Against Optimization
You cannot life-hack your way to meaning, and the productivity industry is counting on you not noticing. - BUDDING — Developing, partially revised.
The Quantified Self Is a Prison
We turned our bodies into dashboards and our lives into optimization problems. The numbers aren't setting us free. - BUDDING — Developing, partially revised.
Attention Is Not a Resource
The 'attention economy' metaphor gets it wrong, and the error isn't academic. - SEEDLING — Rough notes, still forming.
Effort Without Striving
Working hard and trying hard look identical from the outside, and only one of them burns you out. - BUDDING — Developing, partially revised.
The Loneliness Epidemic Is Structural
Loneliness isn't a personal failing. It's what happens when you design cities for cars instead of people. - BUDDING — Developing, partially revised.
Surrender Is Not Giving Up
Surrender and defeat get treated as the same word, and the confusion costs you the one move that actually works under pressure. - BUDDING — Developing, partially revised.
The Taoist Case Against Hustle Culture
Hustle culture treats more force as more results, and a 2,500-year-old text already explained why that breaks. - SEEDLING — Rough notes, still forming.
Flow States Are Not Achievements
You can't grind your way into flow, and the harder you try to manufacture it the further off it gets. - BUDDING — Developing, partially revised.
Science Studies for People Who Like Science
The social construction of scientific facts doesn't make them less real. It makes the work that produced them more interesting. - SEEDLING — Rough notes, still forming.
The Myth of the Neutral Tool
Technology embeds politics, and the design is the argument. No tool is a mere instrument; every one shapes what's possible and what's thinkable. - SEEDLING — Rough notes, still forming.
Secular Society Isn't
We replaced church with other rituals. They're just less honest about what they are. - SEEDLING — Rough notes, still forming.
Liberation Theology Was Right
The radical tradition within Christianity that sided with the poor. What happens when religion takes material conditions seriously. - SEEDLING — Rough notes, still forming.
Meaning Isn't Optional
Humans require narrative. The question isn't whether you have a mythology, but which one. - EVERGREEN — Considered finished and maintained.
Actual Reformation
A look at what we as individuals must do to reform instead of more grandiose gestures that would only cause short-term fixes like electing a new president for example. - SEEDLING — Rough notes, still forming.
Against Productivity Time
Clock-discipline is a three-hundred-year-old invention that we now mistake for a law of nature. - EVERGREEN — Considered finished and maintained.
Nick Land: The Philosopher Who Became Explicitly Racist
Nick Land went from calling for feminist guerrilla war to advocating 'hyper-racism,' and the innovations of his early work don't excuse what he became. - EVERGREEN — Considered finished and maintained.
The Empirical Case for 'Impractical' Majors
Philosophy majors now have lower unemployment than computer science graduates, and the salary gap reverses by age 40. - EVERGREEN — Considered finished and maintained.
Bostrom's Simulation Argument Is Less Than You Think
Bostrom's trilemma is logically valid and empirically empty, and the real question is whether 'simulated' is even a meaningful category. - EVERGREEN — Considered finished and maintained.
The Psychology of Self-Deception: What Research Shows About Ego
Self-enhancement bias averages d=0.86, the Dunning-Kruger effect is misunderstood, and Terror Management Theory explains why ego threats feel like survival threats. - BUDDING — Developing, partially revised.
Software is Magic: Understanding Consciousness Through Computational Patterns
What it means to say your mind is software running on biological hardware, and why animists may have been pointing at something real.