aspirant

Also, our bodies evolved walking 10+ miles per day. Not standing in one place for hours. The broader point is about reconciling modern lifestyles with the evolutionary past that we are still largely bound by.

Natural gas is overwhelmingly used for the production of ammonia..." — Wikipedia

- Elon Musk

That's what drug companies say. Another theory is that depression is a healthy response to something in the outer or inner life that must change. So a bout of depression, uncomfortable as it may be, can be integral to growth.

You can't tell whether something is good or bad until you hold it against some value like... speed of execution, or intuitiveness, or least code. Once you do, judge away.

That's why postmodernism is especially challenged, it can't decide what about life is valuable.

I think he's on to something as far as spotting what modern "chores" should be. And the kids will probably benefit from knowing they are doing something skilled that actually benefits their family.

Therefore, we can know a want from a need because a need is anything that if you were to go without it, would result in your death or stunted growth.

This piece, like Walden, is about how we can trade what we have mistaken for physiological needs for legitimate psychological needs.

This seemed very efficient to me. Why go around guessing when you need to shower when others can more tell you more accurately?

But different strokes for different folks. I'd rather be known, not for my complete lack of odor, but for having an independent intellect.

But people gave me a lot of crap about using cold water anyway. So part of my process, just to be safe, was to ensure the clean dishes dried very well, next to a window, in the sunlight.

I quite believe in it now and looking back, credit it as the source that allowed me to quit various dead-end jobs, even when they paid a lot and were held in high regard by everyone around me. My ego said, "Hey, be content this is a great job!" But the Self doesn't care how much money a job makes. It cares about 'individuation' and growth.

For me it started when I began to view the unconscious mind as a separate processor I could offload work to. But since then things have snowballed and I've found that the unconscious can behave, not just like another processor, but like a whole other person. And apparently I'm not the only one.

At any rate, these past few months spent hacking my mind has been quite a ride.

A person whose summum bonum is maximum comfort and security will have a very different life than if they had instead pursued creativity, justice, progress, etc. above all else.

We're not talking about the abolishment of comfort and security, but rather their subjugation to what is greater.

Cambridge may be more about ideas than anywhere else, but it also seemed home, more than anywhere else, to people doing scholarship for scholarship sake and to people who had subjugated significant ideas to serve their little ideas.

Again and again I ran into people studying great thinkers and great thoughts for no greater reason than that they had never been out of academia, didn't want to leave, and were using these thinkers and thoughts as fodder for their thesis (job application) in order to get a professorship that would shield them from the outside world forever.

Encountering those sickly sorts will leave any results oriented person, like Charlie, wary.

""Systemic learning theory suggests that it is valuable to distinguish levels of learning.

It is clear that most learning that goes on within and outside learning institutions makes no difference at all to individuals’ or society’s overall paradigm. This is because it is first order learning or basic learning. Bateson distinguished three orders of learning and change, corresponding with increases in learning capacity.

Learning I - basic learning learning, thinking, knowing

Learning II - meta-learning learning about learning, thinking about thinking, knowing about knowing

Learning III: epistemic learning learning about learning about learning, thinking about thinking about thinking, knowing about knowing about knowing

Seeing as how no one may ever read this post, I'm not going to expound any more, but again, I have found studying epistemology to be exhilarating.