LastThursday

Emotional pain is a message. Therefore emotional pain is triggered BY something. To work with the pain you must either look into the cause (i.e. answer the message), or change the trigger itself (i.e. reframing, therapy, NLP, Stoicism, distraction, drugs etc.). Those that are good at managing emotional pain, are either efficient at fixing the problems that cause them pain, or are good at reframing their pain. You're spot on that most suffering is mental. This is the trigger part I talked about above. Emotional pain can be triggered by thought alone long after the original cause has ceased to exist. You can stop repetitive negative thought patterns, but it's a counterintuitive process.

Yo diary! I thought I'd go through my thought processes on two different subjects in this entry of October 24th 2025. First things first. I gave up work. As I have probably gone on at length on here my boss and the whole work thing was giving me gyp. The idea of giving up and not working at all for a while was very attractive on the one hand, but super stressful on the other. My biggest concerns were that I may find it hard to get another job and if I were to take any extended time off I would have to explain myself in interviews. It would go something like this: "Wow you had six months off after you last job. What did you do with your time?", "Absolutely nothing". Doesn't look great does it? In retrospect most of the stress was in actually just making a decision and going for it. The stars aligned one morning and I just thought fuck it, it's going to be today. Despite them agreeing to keep things open for me should I change my mind - which was kind of them - they didn't offer me another other carrot to stay. I did my three months of notice, in which there was no slacking in my work pace at all. And then... peace. I don't miss working whatsover, I don't miss the people either. In some work places I've made life-long friends, in others meh, whatever. There's no clear plan on my part, other than when I start panicking about money, I'll start thinking about how to get an income again. I have plenty of options as I don't have any dependants, or ties as to where I live. I should move out of this flat, because it's expensive and the landlady is crap. But everywhere in this country is expensive, especially the South of England here. I should go live somewhere with a warm climate, but every country has its pros and cons, one of the biggest being language. I'm also acutely aware that I'm going freefall into my savings and it's a finite resource. Other than those stresses, I feel a lot calmer and a lot less stressed than I did. I while away the days in a Zen-like trance, just doing whatever arises (Actualized has a lot to answer for). No alarm in the morning. No boss breathing down my neck. No super-abstract thinking for eight hours every day. - Second is more philosophical speculation on the nature of reality; as is my wont. Is reality emotional or not? One of the quirks of suffering in general is that a large part of that suffering is dependent on viewpoint. Or to put it a different way it's a matter of interpretation. If there is a separate being called "me" that experiences reality then it's me that experiences the emotions of suffering (amongst other emotions). You could argue that it's all interpretation in which case there is the implication that we're not reacting to reality itself but we're just emotional about our interpretation of reality: change the viewpoint and our emotions change with it. The further implication is that reality itself has no inherent emotion within it. All those appearances or atoms (however you want to interpret it) are neutral, there is no good, no bad and no suffering inherently within them. The pro of this way of seeing reality is that we're completely free to change our interpretations and hence react to reality in any way we see fit. Note that this contradicts most people's lived in experience that it is a place full of emotions. But just because we are free, it doesn't necesserarily follow that we know how to be free or that indeed we'll take up that freedom even if we did know. What if there is no "me"? If it's reality and me as a unit, then emotions are very much in the fabric of reality. But cause and effect in the scenario are a bit more subtle. It's not "me" that suffers or experiences happiness or anger or horniness (e.g.), but the whole complex of reality itself. It's more like appearances happen in synchrony with each other. The fact that the synchrony can be repetive is beside the point - I hit my finger with a hammer and every time it hurts - reality is insensitive to repetition. The repetitive nature of synchrony could actually be considered as "one event" albeit one spread staccato fashion over time. There is only one hammer-hitting-my-finger event, but it happens randomly spread over time. Peering deeper into it, it's that there is a category of thing called "hitting my finger with a hammer" and reality snaps-to-fit into that category when it happens. But, that snapping-to-fit process is still happening as a part of reality. That's ok, because experience really does have the quality of being able to be split into parts even if those parts are members of a cohesive whole. With that in mind, when we feel sad because we miss our friend (e.g.), it's not a unique event or cause-and-effect situation, the absence of the friend does not cause the sadness. Instead it's the entire complex of absence + sadness that is the event as one synchronous whole. Maybe we feel sad whenever it arises in our thoughts that we miss the friend, but it is just one synchronous notion spread staccato fashion over time: one category. Reality is emotional. For an analogy: are the leaves of a tree individual things, or are they actually one thing making up the tree?

Maybe the quality of a thought is related to how it is physically manifested or expressed? For example if the thought brings into the world some suffering, then it is low quality. If a thought stays as a thought and is never enacted, then its quality is only relative to other thoughts (which themselves might be enacted in the end). If I'm trying to solve a problem, then a high quality thought is one that helps solve the problem, even if it is indirect. Or a high quality thought is one that gives insight when expressed to other people. I can see that some thoughts could both be high and low quality at the same time, depending on which angle you take.

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to study. With study there is always a breadth versus depth tradeoff with regards to time. In college the emphasis is on breadth, because it's designed to give you a good overall (but shallow) grounding in a subject. If you continue to a Masters or PhD then you will narrow down and get more depth, or you'll get a deeper understanding if you continue your learning in the work place. Breadth and depth learning require different strategies. The low-hanging fruit for breadth learning are: Consistency. Have a daily set routine for study, which is for a certain number of hours with short breaks and distraction free (no phones, no friends). Even two or three hours a day can make a huge difference for retention. Alertness. Get enough sleep ideally with consistent hours. Reduce consumption of alcohol and other substances that affect your body. Eat well. You will also find that certain times of the day are better for concentration, find your personal preference. Drilling. Use a system like Anki flashcards or working through exercises or past exam papers to consolidate your learning. Revise the material at set intervals of days and weeks and months (spaced repetition). Go meta. Concentrate on learning the concepts rather than getting bogged down in detail: why does a three-phase-induction motor exist, what problem does it solve? rather than: it's constructed in this way and obeys these physical laws. Often the detail follows as a consequence of the guiding concept, not the other way round. Look for relationships between all the concepts in your area of study, what is the chronological history of those concepts? Have fun. Have time off from study. But keep a good balance between study and relaxation.

This guy's self-development videos are well researched and this video in particular explains the mechanics of my previous post:

In amongst the detritus of death there is new life.

Hey. You. Yes. You. Ever broken the fourth wall on your own character? Ever tried to expand out of the confines of your own imposed novel and escape the narrative you're entrenched in? Yeah. Me neither. What are you afraid of exactly? Is it too chaotic and unpredictable to break out? Is constant questioning just too much to bear? Is insanity too scary to touch? Is it "too much" in every sense? Are you being scripted by influencers outside of your control? Are you in their thrall? Is the character you play controlling your destiny, and what you feel and think moment to moment? Do you have any choice whatsoever? Maybe it's happier to just be, let all that define you, and let it wash over you. Nah. Of course you know it's bullshit. But you're confined to a world of "maybes". Tomorrow. And, if this, and, if that. I have to be in the mood - for the stars to align. To talk through that issue, to learn to bear that pain - then maybe I can be "me". Whatever that "me" is. You look for guidance elsewhere. You look to the past for inspiration, and investigate your previous characters. You're so evolved now of course and you've come so far. But you're not yet the character you want to be. You dig and dig and realise that once everything is accounted for, there's nothing else there. You're all those things. To break free you have to be none of those things.

Environmentalists are not wrong though even if you think their vision is weak sauce. We can change our lifestyles as humans and it not be a bad thing: most of us recycle now and we probably don't think much about it. If public transport we're cheap, reliable and affordable we'd all use it more. It doesn't make us hippies, it makes us more self aware collectively. Maybe engineering a grand vision for the human species instead of geoengineering one is more important? We as apes do like a good story.

I agree the equilibrium isn't harmonic but more so chaotic, from a systemic view everything is constantly on the "edge of chaos", so in many instances it only takes a small nudge for the systems to flip into a different equilibrium, think snowball Earth and climate change. But because it's an "open" system everything affects everything else, and many of Earth's systems have settled into a static or cyclic state over eons. Earth is one huge open system where all its constituent parts are in equilibrium with each other, even if its chaotic at times. I'd say its extremely difficult to work out if Earth has intention, and if it does what that intention is. There have always been outlier organisms that disrupt the systems of Earth more than others. Take cyanobacteria pumping into and poisoning the atmosphere with Oxygen. That was probably catastrophic for a lot of life on the Earth at the time. But it happened slowly enough for Earth's systems to keep up the overall balance. Humans are another outlier, and similar to cyanobacteria we're pumping huge amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. But we're also disrupting nearly everything on Earth or if you prefer geoengineering the Earth. Indeed. However, they are small scale (in effect) to what the video you posted describes. I don't know, if we have to geoengineer for our own future survival then at least do it with foreknowledge (modelling) and systemic thinking. These projects should be agreed on by everyone in the world, and not left to the hands of a few private companies or individuals.

Geoengineering is like playing 5D Chess. I agree that we're raping the planet and putting our own future at risk, so something should be done about that. What makes me uneasy about geoengineering is the level of intervention. Earth as a system had reached a state of dynamic equilibrium before humans came along - that's obvious from how eco systems are so miraculously well balanced and interwoven: watch any wildlife documentary. Our activities have progressively pushed the systems way out of equilibrium, which is done mostly out of ignorance. I don't think we have the capacity to continuously monitor the outcomes of geoengineering in a fine grained enough way to understand what the consequences will be for the Earth. Some of the interventions will cause irreversible changes to the Earth, possibly negative. And we'll have to geoengineer patches for our previous geoengineering mistakes. Once we start at that large a scale we won't be able to stop, because we don't understand the Earth deeply enough to know what we're really doing. It will be like a rookie barber cutting too much hair off one side, and correcting the mistake by cutting too much hair off the other side.

Like it or not, we do place value on some people more than others, either consciously or unconsciously. But I disagree that what all men or all women value is the same for each group. That's far too reductionist and simplistic and possibly insulting.

Just remove "you" and "your" from the above and what's left? Solipsism has to assume "a you" exists otherwise it's nonsensical. It's possible "you" is a mirage or a construction in experience itself, that would make other "yous" also constructions. The whole thing kind of falls apart.

@Dodo that was my point, there isn't a test for consciousness. There's only a test for humanness and the Turing test isn't even particularly good for that. Think of it like this: how would you find out if a duck is conscious, what's the definitive test?

@Dodo imagine a future where you're talking to someone and you're convinced they have a mind. But no, it's actually a machine. It walks like a human talks like a human, but it isn't and it has no conscious experience. An LLM has about as much consciousness as a lump of silicon.

I've been feeling increasingly stressed and uneasy recently. It's mostly been triggered by work and especially interactions with my boss there. I think ordinarily if my state were less fragile it wouldn't have affected me so much. The fragility arises because I feel naked and exposed. The reason for that is a complex thing for me to interpret, but it's a combination of my temperament, upbringing, my choices, my philosophy on life and living alone. Ordinarily most people have a backstop to help support them, be it their partner or close family. If they're a bit older then they may have a sense of purpose - supporting their family and kids - which helps focus the mind on the more important things, and not get swept up in trivialities. At this point in my life I don't have any of those. If anything my close family has always relied on me for support, not the other way round. And despite my mum relying heavily on me also, she would have always provided a home for me (albeit temporary) if all else failed. But since her passing I don't have that. My friends whilst close, I or they would feel uncomfortable talking about things very deeply, and indeed other than being there to listen couldn't practically help me - they are not therapists! Many times throughout my life things became "spent". By spent I mean that the situation or object or whatever passed it's usefulness or shelf life. To give an example I was very interested in Tai Chi at one point. So much so, that I decided to join classes which I did for a fair few years. I liked the idea originally of mastering it to some degree and I liked the poise and meditative nature of it. My dad had done Karate in his earlier years, and I also liked the idea of having my own "martial art" that I could call mine. I learned the forms and started to teach others in the classes. But my teacher decided to move on and do other things. I had also changed, and it became less important for me to pursue it further: it had become spent. I moved on. Sometimes, things have been spent and long overdue, but I haven't detached and moved on like I should have done. This was especially so with my first long term relationship. Detaching can be difficult if you have a lot of time and emotion invested. It's the sunk cost fallacy. But when your identity and basis for living have become spent, you have to build up a new identity and basis of living, and that can be incredibly daunting and difficult to do. Most times, even if situations are long stagnated and spent, things conspire to end them: people change and the world keeps turning. My long term relationship finally snapped, and I've been living with the fallout of it ever since. I had to re-invent my identity and basis for living and its ongoing still. All through that time I've been getting older. This always has consequences, in terms of what you're willing to tolerate, how employable you are, how health affects you, how much you socialise, how other younger people perceive and treat you. Most times when things are spent, my knee-jerk reaction has been to just "dump it" and move on. But I've always been risk averse and that has counterbalanced my impulsivity. That creates tension in my life. And so it is at this point in my life. A lot of my situation as it stands has arisen through choices I made that seemed right at the time. I needed to re-invent myself and distance myself from the pain of having split up from consecutive long term relationships. I want to dump my job, because it's causing me stress and because it's spent. I want to move out of my flat, because it no longer is up to the standard I want and my new landlady is irritating, it's spent. I want purpose in my life in whatever form that takes, because my minimalist, disengaged approach to living is also spent, I need to be part of the fabric of a place. I want to be a different more dynamic, engaged and driven type of guy, because this identity is also spent. To a large degree this country is also difficult to live in, as it gets ever more expensive and I can't seem to fulfil basic things like buying my own home and getting a partner (I have a friend about my age and she has dated tens of people at this point without luck). It's all spent and I need to dump it all. But rejecting everything leaves you with nothing. I need something to go towards first, before I clear away the spent stuff, but that's just my risk averse self talking.