Scale invariance and self-similarity

When you get closer to people who are willing and able to open up they become more interesting and attractive, like zooming in on a fractal.

Of course, some people are going to be horrors nearly all the way in, and some can only talk, and lack the self-knowledge or experience to be open about anything of interest.

Zoom in on me and more often than not you'll get a flat, monochrome surface. Which is OK, but I ought to ask more questions of others and then listen to their answers.

Related post: Love as an emergent behavior

Reach for the lights

Riding at night on the bicycle listening to a DJ set and getting a thrill each time the music built to make the crowd rush on their pills, and I remembered how happy I used to be watching someone discover this world for the first time.*

Now I get a deeper feeling from watching someone get their life together and living for creativity, kindness, health and sustainable joy, which means to say I'm over the trip and want to see what happens next, how people integrate their better selves with reality, those things that [as PK Dick said] don't go away when you stop believing in them.

*I still trip once a year or so [mushrooms] but with the understanding that I'm not going to get anything out of it unless I've worked on myself in the interim using what I learned on the trip before. And at this point in the psychedelic game [just over 20 yrs in] there's very little that I'm being shown for the first time, just lessons that I should have learned long ago: it's all connected, THIS IS IT, overwhelming beauty, and the need for love and inner peace, rather than greed [in all its forms] and furious activity. All the usual suspects.

Torn between both impulses

aunt peg goes to hollywood

Doubtless the most radical division of humanity that can be made is that between two classes of creatures: those who demand much of themselves and assume a burden of tasks and difficulties, and those who require nothing special of themselves, but rather for whom to live is to be in every instant only what they already are.

José Ortega y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses

My mother was raised in care and I'm terrified of being homeless

Social class isn’t defined for individuals by how much loot one has: it’s defined by how far one can imagine oneself descending. I fear the pit.

Eric Miles Williamson

Strange fruit

Saw A Man Within, last year's Burrough's documentary. I was a big fan in my more fucked up youth, mainly of the last three novels and some essays, but even more so of the man himself. Whatever I was supposed to be [I went to a military school] I was not interested in becoming. Burroughs the man presented rebellion hiding in plain sight - short hair, three piece suit, balding and stiff. You couldn't imagine him dancing or fucking, never mind doing either of them well. For an uncool teen he represented an entirely plausible role model of sorts, as long as you ignored almost everything.

Burroughs expressed a lack of interest in psychedelics as opposed to the numbing altered states of junk and booze. This is reflected in his lack of emotion and human connection, an abstractness from himself and others. The desire to shock seemed as much aimed at himself as others. [A quote I remember runs something like: “...I think of the most horrible, disgusting things I can imagine, and then write them down...”]. What's hinted at in the work is made clear by friends / admirers in the documentary – he was incapable of confronting his own feelings for others and need to love and be loved, right up until almost the end.

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Another angle. Now I read a lot fewer fucked up writers, or if I read them, the first attraction isn't toward their fucked-upness. If I'm going to pay close attention to someone then they need to moving toward to the light in some respect, trying to make things better.

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The thing about waking up from time wasted along strange, unproductive and unfulfilling paths (again and again), is that eventually you get a sense that things need to change in quite obvious ways. And so we have our weaknesses / contradictions, and beyond a certain age are stuck with genuinely narrowing horizons, limited by decisions made long ago for reasons that at best were romantic or senseless, if not demented. There's very little that I can explain about my life, and long ago gave up trying to impose a narrative, because all the ones I came up with were just absurd creations myths.

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I had very limited expectations as a teenager, with Burroughs being the best of the worst version of myself I could have been – paranoid and repressed – and if I'd worked harder I could have achieved a shitty local optimum, being really great at something I wasn't happy with. While Burroughs seemed to push as far as possible down a blind alley, I'm glad that I turned back, broke things down, and took the simpler in the long run step of changing everything possible, an option that – narrowing horizons notwithstanding – I keep in my pocket and pat on occasion, just for kicks.

Related: You are what you read

I never had any plans beyond a certain lifestyle - II

I'm happy if I get food, sex, exercise, reading, some creativity, sociability, and a high level of control over my own time and / or space [ideally both, but often only one, being a freelancer who needs to pay the bills].

This feels good until I meet people who are working hard with talent and luck on more focused and appealing plans that seem to offer greater prospects for overall and long-term fulfillment, and then the monkey comparisons kick in. I'm getting better at being myself – becoming a better self to be – but sometimes it's dizzying to wonder how I got here and the hacking off of other branches at an early age, with the clear hells I escaped far outnumbering any plausible better outcomes.

Almost everything that's happened to me has been a surprise, a surrender into circumstances that then coalesce around something that can be sustained for a while, or else falls apart before being recognized as anything real enough to be destroyed. And things fall apart continuously, and if they don't then I seem to destroy them.

But this surrender and surprise is probably true for most people, based on the long-standing principle that there's very little that's exceptional about me. We all fall into particular reality tunnels, and moving between them requires only a trickster / daydream kit that involves a sine wave flow between concentration / lack of focus.

This is mostly OK. If I thought about it deeply or not there would only be different sets of rapidly evolving and semi-fictional rationalizations that reveal more about that day's particular tunnel vision than tell a coherent or plausible story. Instead I only get on with things – with no talent, a lot of luck, and sporadic bursts of hard work.

Related:
I never had any plans beyond a certain lifestyle

Confessions of a low self-monitor

From an unpublished paper I'm editing:

High self-monitors tend to engage in several activities in different specialized social systems, and they will play different roles and tailor their self-presentation behaviors to suit the specialized situation, whereas low self-monitors tend to take part in many activities in the same social system, which is often homogeneous and well-suited to their personalities (Snyder & Gangestad, 1982). This shows that high self-monitors prefer to play diverse social roles in a segmented social world, while low self-monitors are more likely have more uniform one

Related:

Working hypotheses

The imperatives of survival on six distinct time scales
Turtles all the way
Why I go out drinking more often than before

Back into salvia space

So I posted that psychedelics post and then went off to a meeting the implications of which I hadn't really considered. I did some cleaning the other week and found a vial of salvia left over from several years ago, when I growing / smoking a lot as a way to cut stress on a brutal split shift and ease into meditation / self-hypnosis to refresh and also blank out the dull horror of permanent work crisis and creeping personal ones ahead of finding out I could untie all knots just by gently pulling the right thread, instead of all the wrong ones, harder.

I suggested to a friend that they might want to try it, so I went over to demonstrate. They saw me inhale, lie down eyes shut, do the thirty count in my head, then pass out. They were not enthused.

I used to smoke a lot of salvia over a period of several years, and I think I mapped the territory as well as I could, devising stories that satisfied me for certain problems it raised that seemed tractable, and letting other parts – the bulk of the experience – rest easy as mysteries to be lived with.

Long / short: I went back into salvia space and it was as welcoming as that first trip seven or so years ago [“Hey........you're back!” these little corn-headed flower entities waved at me and cheered back then, the first time, third hit a charm, as I descended and rematerialized into the land of extreme waking dreams. This time everyone was going about their business and I dropped back in almost incognito, the weirdness, as ever, unfailing, but no longer an obvious tourist].

Shorter: the infantile ego was silenced, and relief was felt, and I came back smiling with forgetfulness.

The relief you can feel on a good psychedelic trip

overlook

The fantasy they’re selling [on a luxury cruise] is the whole reason why all the subjects in all the brochures’ photos have facial expressions that are at once orgasmic and oddly slack: these expressions are the facial equivalent of going “Aaaahhhhh,” and the sound is not just that of somebody’s Infantile part exulting in finally getting the total pampering it’s always wanted but also that of the relief all the other parts of that person feel when the Infantile part finally shuts up.

David Foster Wallace, A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again

The best of the rest of the time just being ways of surfing the needs / wants and / or distracting them with some zen / art magic or stoic practice.

Coming off a long few weeks of intense work and waking up to a reality that I haven't found my way in yet, just suspicions that the old one isn't going to serve much longer without some changes that remain obscure.

Somewhat related:
Posts that refer to the hedonic treadmill.

Drinking [of limited interest]

I spent the summer when I was 19 working at a summer camp in the US, and that was a dry season, but in the 21 yrs since then I don't think I've gone any less than 3 days out of 5 without a drink, and more often 14 in 15.

I stopped last week [1/26], other than a small glass of beer socially if we go out for dinner, and things were good, other than being at a loss what to drink at night and having too much energy and focus in the evenings. And fortunately I live in a place and move in circles where weed is hard to find and expensive.

As a weakness / test of the system I drank again last night [2.25L of beer] with the predicted results, but then stopped there, rather than moving on to something else. It was interesting to see how clear it is where the problem lies, and so back to no drinking again.

I got divorced in March of this year

Opportunists move on.

James Ellroy, The Hillicker Curse: My pursuit of women

Unenlightened self-interest

antony gormley

Due to a 7-yr old house guest have only been to a bar once in the past month, and thus spent no time listening to people who drink, smoke, eat too much, exercise too little and carry too much debt complaining how stupid ‘the masses’ are for not acting in their own interests.

What I'm doing now

almost taiwan

Philosophy calls for simple living, not for doing penance, and the simple way of life need not be a crude one.

Seneca, Letters from a Stoic p37

My girlfriend moved into this house a few weeks ago, with the gaps between her going back to her place becoming longer and longer and then ending. We work together, break for meals and eat good food, drink coffee and wine. So far it's an easy way to live, with no fight and no resistance.

One odd thing about the last few months is how contentment has stopped me from needing or even wanting to update this blog.

When I was a lot younger and writing [very badly] all the time it was because I had none of the good things in my life that I have now, and even though I enjoyed writing a lot, it was like drink or drugs, a poor substitute for the thing itself, a coping mechanism rather than a solution.

Great things can come out of sickness, but never mine, and the only way out after butting my head against the wall for so long was to change my life. I quit my job and keep whatever hours I want as long as the work I accept gets done. I work in shorts or a sarong, take breaks and bike rides whenever needed, never face a boss and never need to work when not in the mood. It's as close to idyllic as I could expect with minimal effort or talent.

My ambitions when I was younger mostly concerned lifestyle rather than achievement, but for a long time I focused on the latter and failed. When I gave in and went straight for the thing itself rather than tokens I found that it was easy to achieve and [so far] to maintain. Life is essentially a joke and a game at the moment, although I'm sure it'll get serious again soon enough.

If you shape your life according to nature, you will never be poor; if according to people's opinions, you will never be rich.

Seneca quoting Epicurus, Letters from a Stoic p65

Of limited interest

I haven't posted much because I've been so happy lately that it feels like I've been living entirely in the present, with almost no reflection or planning. This works because I've finally cultivated some good, simple habits - work hard, eat right, exercise, save $, love, and party at least twice a week. Plus I'm doing this in nice surroundings and self-employed, setting my own hours, rates and so on.

A simple life, but with rules that I easily adhere to, so the illusion of control is not required. Things are set in motion, and I follow them, with complex behavior emerging from the interaction of a few simple systems.

The long line of supposedly beaten generations

Portrait of the author as a young man

'That is how the hero of our time must be,' [wrote a contemporary critic of Mikhail Lermontov's 1840 novel A Hero of Our Time] 'he will be characterized either by determined inactivity of else by futile activity' - that is, by either passive conformity to the social norm or petty rebellion against it.

From the introduction to Mikhail Lermontov's A Hero of Our Time

Nothing changes. That said, I got divorced the other week, and events surrounding that have been behind the recent lack of posts, as I wanted to avoid explicitly dealing with the topic, although it's really all that I've been thinking about for the last two months or so. Hence the easing back into things with just quotes from things I've been reading. But the one above, and the whole air of the novel, reminds me that every modern generation seems to think that's uniquely on the verge of disaster and disillusionment, from the fin de siècle by way of the Lost Generation and through the Beats and on to the Millennials.

What amazes me about Lermontov's feeling that there's nothing to be done is that it comes only 40 - 50 yrs after the French revolution, and only 20 since the death of Napoleon, but this is something for another post - I just need to get back in the habit.

Not drowning, but waving

I got my first positive response from an unknown reader a few weeks ago, and then didn't post anymore. The events were unrelated, I just let myself slip out of time for a while. I've been away doing other things, and it was confusing, but very soon it all made sense. My life has totally changed, and I'm still in the process of hitting old beliefs and seeing if they ring true.

When I was a teenager I got given a copy of 'Notes from the Underground' and sat down and read it in one go, glowing in recognition that someone had got things down true. I'd never been much of a reader before that, but starting the next day I began to read everything, and my life was changed by that night.

A little later than that I took LSD for the first time, and all the things I'd read about it were true, but more so, and everything changed again. All the old beliefs had to be questioned, a process that's ongoing - the psychedelic life.

And the same thing happened when I met this woman about a month ago, and knew fast that my old life would have to end if I was going to live at all honestly with the truth of what had happened. My life fell apart and came together over the course of a few hours, but there were still some things I had to change if I was ever going to walk straight again.

Things are still kind of fucked up, objectively speaking, at the home of A DEEP LUST, but subjectively they're better than they've ever been, and I've got full confidence in how things will play out over time - the past few weeks the universe has been conspiring in my favor.

Normal posting will resume when my head falls in place.

Signal / noise

simon page via grain edit

Following on from the last post, I kind of reset my head the other week at the beach (and in a new year frame of mind), so I'm going to try and take my hands off the controls for the foreseeable future [which with me, is very short]. What this means is focusing solely on inputs inre. overall well-being, and not worrying about the outputs.

What this means in more detail is:

• work hard / well
  
• save $
• keep active
• eat right
• socialize
• be nice
• drink less
  

Only the last item is a change in the current regime, but a small thing that ought to make a huge difference to how things play out.

He was not conscious that he had once been a man

steve blackburn

In the grip of this terror he went upstairs to his bedroom and sat down on the bed alone. There was no one honourable thought in his head; he was not conscious that he had once been a man. The sweat ran down his face unceasingly; his head swam; his whole body trembled in an agony of despair, tormented as he was by slavish fears and craven anxieties utterly unworthy of a man.

Procopius, The Secret History, p58

I haven't felt like that in a long time, but it'd be foolish to think that it'll never happen again.

The other day I was in Kanding / Kenting [see picture], beshroomed and a little drunk. I was with some friends and it was after 1am and the place was dead, which is an odd experience in Taiwan.

We walked to a beach and in the pavement someone spotted a jagged hole that went deep. One wrong step you'd be lucky if you just broke your leg, with a smashed jaw or slashed throat more likely.

On the way back we were all distracted, and nobody looked out for the hole. We noticed this soon after, and one of us could easily have fallen in. Absolute terror.

In bed I kept getting flash visions of terrible injuries, as if in all the multiverses nearby my life had taken a bloody and significant turn for the worse.

Sometimes it seems like after the bad joke of my youth the universe is conspiring on my behalf.

Procopius has a great story about an ultra-slut that I'll shoehorn into my next post, which ought to be about sex.

OMG (of limited interest)

Illustration from Listen, Little Man [full text]

This week is the one year anniversary of me quitting my job and going full time freelance. The year has gone very fast, in a blizzard of work and extremely late nights, with all kinds of systems tried and abandoned, essentially a series of mid-life crises that start in a quest for fun, seem to end with the joke being pushed too far, and then start up all over again. Somehow the center holds, I move between the poles of discipline and dissipation, and things do not fall apart.

At some point I'll buckle down and write a post about it, just to get my thoughts together, but right now I'm grateful that I've got no boss, the $ comes in every day and it looks like I'll get away with it for longer.

Repetitive behaviors

More from The Guru Papers: Masks of Authoritarian Power, by Joel Kramer & Diana Alstad, [p212].

Limiting ourselves to the configuration of addiction that involves an inner battle about being addicted has the advantage of isolating the most elusive, controversial, and seemingly mysterious component - control. In focusing on the inner conflicts around control, including the ostensible loss of it, there are two related factors:

1. Doing repetitive behaviors that one feels either incapable of stopping or that take great effort to try and stop - and should one succeed, their possible return is always lurking the background.
2. These repetitive behaviors are judged by the person involved to be (or in fact are) interfering in a non-trivial way with one's well-being - in short, they are self-destructive.