It's intentionally obscure, I believe the stated reason was that moldbug only wanted people to use Urbit who have buy-in in the form of having spent/wasted a significant amount of time and effort
If they're not feeling charitable, they might declare you an Eternal-Hasnamuss-Individual and tell you your destiny is to become food for the moon. But at least they won't sue you or send private investigators after you (I think), so that's nice.
At least some of those terms are pretty easy to figure out.
"organ kundabuffer" was a specific organ that excreted some kind of drug (in Gurdjieff's pre-history.)
"being-partkdolg-duty" is the task and operation of remembering oneself.
"the sacred Rascooarno" is death of the physical body.
...and so on.
It appears from https://gnosticteachings.org/books-by-samael-aun-weor/the-el..., too, that: "It is necessary to know that the Kundabuffer Organ is the negative development of the fire." That's something I am certainly glad now to know! It makes the rest of it seem so much simpler.
(Leaving aside sarcasm for a moment, "the negative development of the fire" seems like just the sort of thing a Quaker might describe as a perversion of the Inner Light, or a Catholic might regard as akin to what would become of humans absent the Holy Spirit indwelling. I'm sure someone conversant with the inner mysteries of Gurdjieff's particular flavor of syncretistic guff would consider both of these analogies to be shocking misapprehensions of the true nature of whatever it is supposed to be. But I'd be astonished to find such a person able to usefully explain what it is supposed to be.)
No.
I've read Gurdjieff's "All and Everything" (as much of it as has been published) and thought about it deeply. Even so, I don't think I understand even half of it. The part I do understand makes me think that Gurdjieff was a genius, comparable only to Leonardo da Vinci, with the difference that, where Leonardo explored the external world, Gurdjieff explored the internal world.
FWIW, as far as I can tell the "kundabuffer" was literally an organ that excreted some kind of drug. It deranged our thinking and perception, essentially making us high, so that we wouldn't notice that we were being used to somehow stabilize the orbit of the Moon after some disaster. Eventually the Moon's orbit was stabilized and the organ removed, but it was too late. The effects persisted. No one (of the alien/angels that were doing all this) noticed the problem until one person discovered that earthlings were destroying each other. (War is unknown other than on Earth. The rest of the Universe literally have no idea. Which is why no aliens land on the lawn: they're all totally terrified of us.)
What's the big deal?
The big deal is that you've nicely brought me back to my point.
>Even so, I don't think I understand even half of it. The part I do understand makes me think that Gurdjieff was a genius
By taking something relatively simple, combining it with other nonsense you heard or made up, wrapping it all in deeply nested layers of made up BS and obscurantist terminology, definable only in terms of itself, you too can develop a complex, seemingly consistent "system" that looks to the unwary like a work of profound intellect! And all you have to do next is pitch it with a hot take about something that everyone knows about and relies on (e.g., "the default state of man is sleep"/"the internet is broken"), to which your system is the only solution!
A lesson Curtis Yarvin has learned very well.
> The big deal is that you've nicely brought me back to my point.
I shouldn't have omitted the sarcasm tag on that line.
> By taking ... the only solution!
Yeah, I know. I have to resist the urge to start a religion almost daily. I'm only saved by misanthropy: I couldn't stand to have the bobbies milling around.
But that's not what Gurdjieff did.
> A lesson Curtis Yarvin has learned very well.
My take from the very beginning is that Yarvin is brilliant but mentally ill. I don't mean that in a derogatory way! I feel for the guy. It seemed clear (to me anyway) from his early writings about Urbit that he's a little touched. Over the years he's seemed to get a little better.
Of Gurdjieff's work I'm comfortable saying, in paraphrase of the apocryphal Dr. Johnson, that what is worthwhile is not original, and what is original is not worthwhile. Granted that I haven't studied him deeply - but I haven't done so because, where I have looked at his work, I've found nothing that other schools of enlightenment theory haven't said better both before and after him. Robert Anton Wilson is in my estimation much more worth anyone's time, not least because he doesn't seem nearly so much to deliberately cultivate opacity.
In Yarvin's case, I suppose time has yet to tell. Certainly his opinion of the status quo, with regard to tools ostensibly for communication between people, is one I share. I doubt Urbit is the solution, but as I said, time will tell.
I don't see how that follows.
> Both wrestle with ideas that seem to be too big for them, and both clearly struggle in so doing, or at least in making their big ideas comprehensible to those less inspired.
That's not my view FWIW. Gurdjieff was very clear when he wanted to be and also very obscure when he wanted to be, often at the same time, but always in service of his fundamental goal: Transformation of man.
If you examine the notebooks of Leonardo you don't have to be able to read them nor understand every drawing to realize that you're witnessing the work of a towering genius, a mind beyond the ken of the vast majority of people not just in his own time but even far into the future.
That's what I see in "Beelzebub's Tales". Of course it's obscure and hard to understand (in places): he's trying to construct and communicate a whole world view to future generations that overturns the epistemological foundations of common society. It's gonna be a challenge to "grok".
> Granted that I haven't studied him deeply - but I haven't done so because, where I have looked at his work, I've found nothing that other schools of enlightenment theory haven't said better both before and after him.
I don't know what to tell you. I've also studied him deeply and compared to most "other schools of enlightenment theory" he's like an adult among kindergartners.
> Robert Anton Wilson is in my estimation much more worth anyone's time, not least because he doesn't seem nearly so much to deliberately cultivate opacity.
I love RAW. He is ~#3 in my personal pantheon. But he once wrote a book that, by his own admission, was crammed with jokes that no one ever got.
> In Yarvin's case, I suppose time has yet to tell. Certainly his opinion of the status quo, with regard to tools ostensibly for communication between people, is one I share. I doubt Urbit is the solution, but as I said, time will tell.
Regardless of Urbit, I care about Yarvin and I hope he's a healthy happy person, or at least on his way.
I hear this Gurdjieffite dodge a lot. "He totally meant to do it that way, for reasons you and I can't fathom. It was all part of his brilliant plan, for he has assumed no less of a burden on himself than the total transformation of mankind!" They say that about his numerous scams like painting sparrows yellow and selling them as canaries. "That was just Gurdjieff testing the public, to determine who was truly worthy of receiving his teachings." No, it was a scam.
For God's sakes they say that about his penchant for reckless driving -- which nearly got him killed twice! It's just proof of his Jedi reflexes which he developed through his genius and years of study.
Come on, man! I won't doubt that he was a clever bloke -- as is Yarvin -- but he was a huckster. His stock in trade was getting people to think he was a unique genius with the power to bring about a new age of enlightenment. It's a testament to his intelligence that it worked, but it doesn't legitimize his claims or even put him on equal footing with Da Vinci.
And no, I haven't been hanging around "the wrong Gurdjieffites". The argument that you are not allowed to criticize Gurdjieff or his Great Work without having fully oriented your brain to his cosmology and philosophy is so common that there's a Gurdjieffian slur for it. "Wiseacring" is the word Gurdjieffites use to mean "talking about things you do not and cannot understand because you are not yet as galaxy-brained as Gurdjieff was".
My exposure to Gurdjieff's impenetrable web of BS and the cult of personality around him that it induced has made me suspicious of anyone who claims to be or is claimed to be a towering intellect with unique powers to change the world, especially if they are surrounded by sycophants who confuse obscurantism for genius. Yarvin rings this same alarm inside me, as does Stephen Wolfram.
In re: the canary caper, that story comes from Gurdjieff himself, from his book. It's only assumed to be true, and autobiographical. Why did he include it?
If Ouspensky couldn't fully understand Gurdjieff (as I believe) why should we expect to, who haven't the benefit of ever meeting him? I just pulled my copy of "Beelzebub's Tales" and read some passages to double check, and yeah, he's unfathomably intelligent. I actually read Wolfram's tome. The whole damn thing. (He cured me of megalomania!) To me there's no comparison.
I appreciate the chance to discuss this stuff. It almost never comes up IRL. As I said, I got a lot out of Gurdjieff (or think I did), and you have made it plain that you did not. Fair enough.
"In his most important book, BEELZEBUB'S TALE TO HIS GRANDSON, Gurdjieff talks about an organ that was implanted into humanity called the "organ kundabuffer". It was planted by two archangels in response to galactic catastrophe which affected the solar system which includes the planet Earth.
The organ was temporarily implanted into humankind in order to minimize the sorrow of adapting to the stabilization period where the two moons, Luna and Anulios, would return to a balanced orbit around the Earth."
So now you know.
https://sites.google.com/site/amritayanabuddhism/Home/the-or...
So basically you have to be on board with his sci-fi extended universe in order to grasp the cause behind the central tenet of the Fourth Way: that man is asleep.
> "being-partkdolg-duty" is the task and operation of remembering oneself.
Defining one Gurdjieffism in terms of another Gurdjieffism. Nice. "Remembering oneself" is, roughly, what Hackernews knows as mindfulness, but seems to involve a lot more following Gurdjieff (or one of his disciples, or his disciples' disciples, there must be an unbroken chain to the Master you see) around, scrubbing his floors and latrines, and doing his silly dances. Giving him your money also seemed to help.
> "the sacred Rascooarno" is death of the physical body.
So why does Gurdjieff say "the sacred Rascooarno" and not "death"? Because the Gurdjieffian concept of death is alien to anyone outside the Work. As you say, Rascooarno is the death of the physical, planetary body, but a person (or "three-brained being"), in the course of their life, has or develops other, "finer" bodies made up of even smaller particles than the matter which makes up their planetary body, like the body-kesdjan, which is often equated to the astral body but isn't really. One might say, in other religions, that a person has a soul. But for Gurdjieff even this is wrong: it's more like a person has the potential for a soul. Thanks to -- you guessed it -- the maleficent consequences of the organ Kundabuffer, a soul can only be attained through 20 or 30 years or so in the Work... do you see where I'm going with this?
Anyway, if you had a true friend in the Work, that friend would rebuke you for doing what Gurdjieff specifically enjoined his followers not to do: attempt to interpret his works to outsiders, lest you transmit wrong information and cause those outsiders to be crystallized in the wrong hydrogens.
Yes and no. His opus "All and Everything" is comprised of three volumes. The first "Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson" (itself divided into three volumes) is the part that is couched as a kind of autobiographical reminiscences of an alien, Beelzebub, to his grandson on the occasion of his pardon and reprieve from exile to Mars. It's allegory. That book is designed to affect the mind of the reader, it's a machine or program, not a book per se.
> Defining one Gurdjieffism in terms of another Gurdjieffism. Nice.
Don't be pissy.
> "Remembering oneself" is, roughly, what Hackernews knows as mindfulness, but seems to involve a lot more
"Remembering oneself" is literal. As literal as words can be. There was no concept of mindfulness in the West at the time. Buddhism was alien and barely known.
> following Gurdjieff
He discouraged followers.
> (or one of his disciples, or his disciples' disciples, there must be an unbroken chain to the Master you see)
The Fourth Way is not a lineage school. There may be people out there who try to make something like that out of it, I don't know. I don't hang out with them. The "Eneagram" craze was an example of a kind of degenerate cargo-cult residue of Gurdjieff's effect. But I don't think you should blame him for what people do with his work after he died.
> around, scrubbing his floors and latrines,
I'm not sure what you're referring to. Are you upset that he didn't clean the toilets personally at his dance school?
> and doing his silly dances.
Have you seen them? They are not silly.
> Giving him your money also seemed to help.
He could extract money from people seemingly at will (have you read the story of the time he nearly initiated an orgy?) He also spent lots of money, time, and effort feeding and taking care of elderly people during the war. In Paris if I recall correctly.
> So why does Gurdjieff say "the sacred Rascooarno" and not "death"?
To distinguish it from the current concept of death, which is very different. the sacred Rascooarno is a natural molting of the physical body, like a kind of second birth, and life carries on in the second and third being bodies. Our deaths, however, are merely the wearing out of a machine. Not having "coated" higher being-bodies into our physical body by the process of "being-partkdolg-duty" we "die like dogs", leaving nothing.
> But for Gurdjieff ... it's more like a person has the potential for a soul.
Exactly! Everyone says "There's a soul" or "There's no such thing" and Gurdjieff comes along and says "You have to make one sucker!"
It's the first new thing under the sun, eh?
> Thanks to -- you guessed it -- the maleficent consequences of the organ Kundabuffer,
You lost me...
> a soul can only be attained through 20 or 30 years or so in the Work...
No, you "coat" a "second being-body" and then you "coat" a "third being-body" and then you molt ("the sacred Rascooarno") and leave the Earth to go live in space with cool aliens that like you, or something.
These higher being bodies are like holograms that you use to store human-style experience in the next world. They're like emulators for your old software, eh?
> do you see where I'm going with this?
Yeah, but why? You obviously know a lot of this stuff but seem really unimpressed. Is it so wrong that I got a lot out of G.I. Gurdjieff without becoming some sort of esoteric edgelord weanie?
I know there are a lot of knobs and fools out there. The "enneagram" craze proves that. But there's also something else there. (Or maybe I'm just crazy. I still haven't quite decided yet.)
> Anyway, if you had a true friend in the Work,
I don't.
> that friend would rebuke you for doing what Gurdjieff specifically enjoined his followers not to do
Well, fuck em' Gurdjieff didn't appoint a successor, so I'll say what I like to whom I please.
> attempt to interpret his works to outsiders, lest you transmit wrong information and cause those outsiders to be crystallized in the wrong hydrogens.
Yeah, this is almost certainly "pearls before swine" but whatever, I'm bored and lonely.
"What was that about hats?"
Reminds me of Mochizuki's Inter-universal Teichmüller theory [1]
Looks like the same psychological trickery works both on the bleating masses and the highly educated.
[1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/math-mystery-shin...
Is there any consensus for this? Or are you being sarcastic? I don't know anything about these things so I googled it:
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=the+num...
The top box says
>> The No. 1 Cause of IT Failure: Complexity. ... According to software architect Roger Sessions, the primary cause of software project failures is complexity. Complexity can create delays, cost overruns and systems that don't meet business needs, according to Sessions, who is chief technology officer at ObjectWatch Inc.Dec 21, 2009
Another question below mentions these points:
Software Management Common Software Failure Causes
Lack of user participation.
Changing requirements.
Unrealistic or unarticulated project goals.
Inaccurate estimates of needed resources.
Badly defined system requirements.
Poor reporting of the project's status.
Lack of resources.
Unmanaged risks.
It doesn't make sense to me why barrier to entry being too low would be a problem. Am I missing something? The one thing that comes to mind is javascript but it isn't really a failure if the metric is user adoption.