Nilsi

I think we’re in disagreement about what we’re actually doing here. You think this is about truth; I see it as about power - but not in the vulgar sense of me wanting to dominate you. Rather, there’s something here (a “will to power”) that wants to assert itself through this text. That’s what I’m interested in understanding, while you seem focused on the text itself, which for me is meaningless on that level. It’s like you’re working within a realist linguistic framework, where words and their combinations inherently mean something. I don’t share that view. For me, words don’t mean anything in themselves; they’re just the surface expressions of something deeper, something that resists “clarification.” This is why I don’t see this dialectical attempt to clarify our texts getting us anywhere - in fact, I think it takes us further from the actual intent.

I’m sorry, but I can’t help dramatizing this even further. I’d argue that it’s fundamentally impossible for me to truly grasp what you mean - or for you to fully grasp what I mean - through any act of “clarification.” If you pressed me for clarity, I’d inevitably double down on the particular discourse I’m engaging in, desperately trying to circle back to the original; without this grounding, I’d lose its meaning entirely. And this is where I think you're still assuming that a given X remains the same X when reframed or translated into another context. It’s akin to asking an artist to “clarify” a painting. There’s nothing he can do but point you back to the work itself, if you’re truly interested. X, in this sense, is a singularity; it resists any kind of clarification. There’s an endless range of interpretations, but none will fully capture what X “means.” Because X doesn’t mean or want anything - it simply exists as pure self-affirmation, an eternity unto itself. This is where Nietzsche’s method of “Genealogy” comes into play. Rather than asking, “What does it mean?” he asks, “Who does it?” - thus bypassing the search for universal meaning, exposing the drives, motives, and “wills” that lie behind values. This is what Nietzsche calls the “Will to Power,” the underlying force driving each perspective or interpretation.

That’s assuming quite a lot, though. I firmly believe that if you want to understand a particular discourse, the responsibility is on you to engage with its specific language and framework. For example, you could never fully grasp a Marxist discourse through psychological terms. To understand what Marx means by "alienation," you have to examine the historical material conditions of labor and production. Trying to frame it within Ken Wilber's quadrants would entirely miss the point. Marxist discourse is a singularity, and it’s up to you to engage with it seriously - or not at all. This is why I’m much more interested in a Deleuzian metaphysics of difference, which he aptly calls "Transcendental Empiricism," rather than the usual "Transcendental Idealist" (I like to call it "Transcendental Imperialism") approach, where everything gets interpreted through some universal "Theory of Everything" or reduced to a reflection of some underlying identity or logos.

How would I know? I'm not a psychologist. I do recall a remarkable series of talks by Zak Stein on this subject, filled with the usual array of tripartite structures, labeled "Transcendence, Ensoulment, and Development." My issue with this approach feels a lot like the frustration I had with mathematics in school. I could always solve the problems, but I had no idea why it worked or what the point of it all was. In my own experience, there's nothing that suggests triples hold any special meaning. It feels more like an abstraction - something accessed through abstract reasoning and logic and then projected onto the world. Nor do I see how this would be useful for anything, which is why I asked about your work as a psychologist. It seems like there's something I'm missing here, as you're clearly not the only person obsessed with this kind of structure.

The first half hour (aside from Zizek’s usual introductory antics) offers by far the most compelling exposition of game theory in politics I’ve ever had the pleasure to witness. And then Varoufakis proceeds to deliver a dazzling exposition of the contemporary economic system that leaves even Zizek speechless - seriously, I’ve never seen him this quiet. I’ll hold back on adding my own two cents - this is simply a breathtaking glimpse into the true dynamics of politics and economics.

I think the fourth "O" got lost somewhere in all the noise. I’m talking about “obscure,” which is concerned with the "why" (as in, “Why on earth am I reading this?”) Seriously, though - I’m actually curious. It seems like you’re starting from a transcendental idealist stance, where a priori concepts ground your reality, rather than reality grounding those concepts (which I couldn’t be more opposed to, but that’s not the point). So, what’s your project here? And this is a general question I have for you. What are you actually on about? I thought you were a psychologist, so supposedly you should be involved in some kind of actual research. Are you perceiving currently existing metapsychological paradigms as inadequate (theoretically and practically)? I’m sorry for this inquiry, but as a good Nietzschean, I can’t help myself from asking these kinds of questions.

WOW. I’ve listened to a staggering amount of music over the years, and I’m drawn to the dark, brutal, and depressing. Safe to say, I’ve built up a thick skin and grown pretty desensitized to the emotional impact of this kind of music. But this song just gave me full-body goosebumps when I heard it a few hours ago. I honestly can’t remember the last time that happened - it’s been a while. An absolutely devastating portrayal of alienation.

Here’s another redpill for you: I came across this in a McKinsey & Company whitepaper on the state of marketing in 2024. For those unfamiliar, McKinsey is one of the “Big 3” global consulting firms - a group you can hire to conduct deep market research and solve specific issues for your company. They also produce independent reports and whitepapers, like the one I was reading. There’s also the “Big 4” - firms that started as accounting giants but shifted heavily toward consulting over recent decades, drawn by its higher profitability. What these companies essentially offer is a giant brain for hire - - now, here’s the kicker: In 2021, the combined revenue of the Big 3 and Big 4 was about $242.1 billion. For comparison, the entire research budget for U.S. universities and colleges was around $86 billion. The CIA’s budget that same year? Just $60.8 billion. Draw your own conclusions about where the real cutting-edge research is happening (- of course they don't teach you about that in academia, do they?)

Another case in point: I just read about Heinz’s move into pasta sauce and their push for category dominance. You’d think a successful pasta sauce campaign would lean on “archetypal” Italian imagery to tap the “collective unconscious.” Instead, Heinz looked at trending pasta recipes on TikTok. They stumbled on a viral clip of supermodel Gigi Hadid making Pasta alla Vodka and teamed up with Absolut to create a Heinz x Absolut Tomato Vodka Pasta Sauce, netting 500 million impressions and a 50% increase in pasta sauce sales. And this was the go-to strategy from a global food giant with hundreds of millions in yearly R&D spend.

If by that you mean the argument that humans are more deeply moved by unconscious, irrational drives than they’d like to admit, then yes. However, I think he has it completely backwards in terms of how that influence actually manifests. It’s not the deepest, most archetypal images that have the greatest impact but rather the highly particular, of-the-moment ones that stick and go viral - like the Brat meme Kamala Harris used to leverage for her campaign.

Absolutely. I’m far more moved by a poem than some dry academic writing. And the psychology of masses only exponentiates this effect.

No, I don’t. It‘s all about the image. “The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth—it is the truth which conceals that there is none. The simulacrum is true.” - Jean Baudrillard

This assumes that a presidential debate is more than just a spectacle. Trump and his team understand how media works, while the Democrats remain stuck in a modernist fantasy of what politics should be. It’s actually the Democrats who need to “grow up” and accept the postmodern condition we’re in if they genuinely care about being effective and practical. Instead, they seem more invested in upholding an image of being “good and rational” actors in service of “democracy.” You can see Kamala Harris wrestling with this - desperately trying to create her own viral moment. I actually thought the “Kamala is brat” moment was quite genius; it captured the zeitgeist and youth culture and could have been the perfect segue to position herself as the voice of the youth against Trump, the out-of-touch figure who still thinks going to frat parties at 40 is cool. But they couldn’t sustain the momentum, and now some 20-something dudes still see Trump as “cool” (and I can’t blame them) - which will ultimately cost her the election. I’m afraid it’s too little, too late this time.

Now you’re being the post-structuralist. There’s a vast body of phenomenological and existentialist philosophy that develops a language for the “modern” human-being to understand being and their place in it - such as Heidegger’s Being and Time or even Peter Ralston’s theoretical work, which people here are likely more familiar with. Why go to the fucking Upanishads, or whatever, and their mystical, pre-modern language when Heidegger offers a more “accurate” and pragmatic language? If you’re still talking about “Brahman” in a post-Heideggerian discourse, I have to assume you’re referring to something wacky.

My god, this was hard to watch. Dawkins desperately tries to enforce a naive realist distinction between what is "real" and what is "imaginary," while Jordan is attempting to collapse these distinctions within his conception of an implicit order of reality, as portrayed in biblical texts. The core idea here is to be understood by archaeologically tracing human moral systems back through natural evolution, which is conditioned by cultural influences - stretching back through human civilization, pre-homo sapiens "societies," and even to the "origin of the universe." This interplay between evolution and culture gives rise to archetypal structures, or a logos to reality, as seen, for example, in the story of Cain and Abel in Genesis, which reflects the adverse relationship between historical agents, or something along those lines. This "story," by the way, is very much "scientific" and could be likened to something more formal like Game Theory. Dawkins, however, takes issue with the fact that an archetype like Cain’s can’t be proven to be "real" (whatever that even means). This stance is just one step away from dismissing Game Theory as "not real," which is particularly ironic given that Dawkins’ fame rests on ideas from his book The Selfish Gene (which is essentially a book on Game Theory). This whole debate, in essence, is just a trivial language game that distracts from the genuinely contentious positions Jordan holds. Jordan fundamentally wants to advocate for an archetypal order that reflects the most universal patterns of human existence, from which he derives a moralistic structure. Yet, intrinsic to the notion of order is chaos. Jordan’s goal is for us to "confront" this chaos, by subordinating it to the moral order most archetypically represented in the biblical text. This idea is most evident in his treatment of Nietzsche, whom he one hands concedes is an absolute genius, but who, according to Jordan, made a grave mistake: the idea of the "Übermensch," the individual creating their own values. This notion is, of course, antithetical to an eternal moral order, to which the individual must subordinate himself so as not to "upset the Gods." Ironically, Jordan’s own philosophy is extremely eclectic and Promethean. It weaves together depth psychology, postmodernism, comparative theology, systems theory, and numerous other disciplines to create a unique worldview. There’s nothing in the Bible that suggests one should study Foucault, Psychoanalysis, Neuroscience, etc., and yet Jordan does, relying heavily on these influences to construct his worldview. My point is this: Jordan seems to overlook the deeper dialectic between order and chaos that underpins and shapes his idea of the absolute goodness of the archetypal order. This, I believe, is where a serious conversation with him could actually begin.

Which "self" is reflecting here?

Whatever, I was just free associating. "Brahman" is ultimately a construct of your imagination; there's no "Being" beyond your human-being, if you're honest. Even Peterson gets this. I actually took the time to start reading his books, and in the overture to 12 Rules for Life, he explicitly names Heidegger's "Dasein" as a significant influence on his concept of "Being" - which is surprisingly insightful.

This is precisely the kind of dirty Platonist game that Ken Wilber loves to play, where everything is just a different name for some ideal, eternal image. But of course, it’s not - as you correctly pointed out, each of these are completely distinct discourses dealing with entirely different realities. And the idea that this is sufficiently acknowledged in Wilber’s work by distinguishing between some silly quadrants and colors is absolutely laughable. This is where I think the critiques of Foucault, Derrida, Butler, etc. are properly applied, as much as I usually find them to be a pain in the ass.

Or in Freudian terms: Unconscious-Thanatos-Eros. Again, it's a stretch - I get it.

I understand the Brahman-Shiva-Shakti dynamic as follows: Brahman (Chaos) represents the nondual and undifferentiated ground of existence, the pure essence beyond distinction. Shiva (Complicatedness) embodies this ground as perceived through logic and intellect - the realm of the virtual, encompassing ideas and concepts. Shakti (Complexity) represents this same ground as experienced through the senses - the tangible, natural world of complex phenomena. Obviously, this is a conceptual stretch, and I wouldn't usually discuss metaphysics in either of these terms.

Or the Cynefin framework (Chaotic, Complicated, Complex).

Lovely.