Nilsi

Also, hanging out with rich people sounds cool and intriguing - until you actually do it and realize they’re some of the most insufferable people on earth, especially those born into wealth. Their aura of superiority and condescension is unbearable. All they care about is how well they were born and raised, their manners, and whatever is deemed "appropriate" in their family and social circles. They’re practically soulless. I can respect a self-made person, but even then, once wealth reaches a certain level, you can bet it’s just a narcissistic psychopath acting out unresolved childhood trauma.

It’s easier to focus on metaphysical matters when you’re not burdened by financial worries. Anything beyond covering your basic needs doesn’t enhance spirituality - it’s more likely to become a distraction, an end in itself that drains your time and energy from truly spiritual pursuits. I’m not saying don’t do it, just don’t fool yourself into thinking it’s some radical work. It’s not.

I love Osho, but the size of this book has always been a bit intimidating. Still, I’m really intrigued and will probably check it out sooner or later.

Sounds good! Always happy to help.

Long live J Dilla.

David Bowie's Low was the moment rock went post-rock. Westside Gunn is the moment hip-hop goes post-hip-hop - turning the MC into an echo, the beat into a museum piece, and the genre’s symbols (luxury, violence, nostalgia) into looped artifacts. Both mark the point where a genre accelerates past itself, collapses into a self-referential loop, and ceases to evolve - less movement, more recursion. It’s Freud’s death drive in sound - a genre circling its own ruins, consuming itself in excess. It’s Lacan’s jouissance - pleasure pushed past its limit, repeating until it becomes unbearable. It’s Deleuze’s repetition without origin - not progressing, just intensifying. Westside Gunn and Low don’t just signal artistic shifts; they expose something fundamental about how systems - whether musical, psychological, or ontological - drive themselves to exhaustion, push beyond their limits, and, in that excess, reveal what they were all along. Yet they never die; they become undead - looping forever. And isn’t the hip-hop sample the ultimate metaphor for this? A voice ripped from time, severed from its origin, looping endlessly over crackling vinyl. A breakbeat chopped and stretched, repeating itself into oblivion. A scratched record stuttering on the same syllable, caught in its eternal return.

Peter Ralston’s Consciousness Trilogy and classic phenomenological texts like Edmund Husserl’s Ideas and Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time. Classic Hindu/Buddhist texts like the Rig Veda, Bhagavad Gita, Upanishads, etc. Friedrich Nietzsche’s Collected Works, Gilles Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition, and Jacques Lacan’s Écrits.

Years of heavy smoking caught up with my lungs, and at some point, I developed mild sleep apnea. Switching to nicotine patches helped (though being on stimulants 24/7 isn’t exactly ideal for sleep in either case), and after dialing in everything I could on optimal sleep, my sleep score is back over 90% - even on „just“ 7.5 hours. Pretty happy with that.

How’s that working out for you anyways? I’m curious - what strategy has delivered the best results so far?

The problem at hand is integration - how to take what is commonly referred to as postmodernism, that diffuse and unstable field of post-Hegelian continental thought, and incorporate its insights without negating them. The case being made here is that Ken Wilber’s integral philosophy is not the radical new paradigm it presents itself as but rather a return to the dialectical movement of Hegel, albeit one expanded to accommodate the discursive explosions of the 20th century. The issue is not just academic; it concerns how we determine what is good, true, and beautiful, how we rank reality without falling into an arbitrary pluralism, and how we approach the implicit order of things without imposing an external hierarchy upon them. Wilber’s method, his transcend-and-include logic, is not neutral. It assumes that each stage of development is both preserved and subsumed into a higher order, which implicitly imposes a hierarchical structure that may not reflect the lived reality of difference and multiplicity. This suggests that the method functions as a filtering mechanism that selects what is worth retaining while discarding other elements as lower-order remnants. Implicit in his holarchic model is a movement that functions through negation - each stage of consciousness or development is preserved, but in a way that assumes its essential sublation into a higher, more comprehensive form. This is an old structure, deeply familiar: the teleological unfolding of Spirit in Hegel. While Wilber may resist such a framing, the end is always already assumed in his model - there is always a higher integration, always a new synthesis that situates previous stages within a broader framework. And yet, a rigorous experiential exploration of consciousness shows beyond doubt that such a priori assumptions do not exist as actual structures but are, at best, contingent projections of flawed sensemaking. This is where Wilber’s project begins to break down, and where Nietzsche and Deleuze offer an alternative that does not require the negation of difference, the subordination of experience to an unseen totality, or the smuggling in of a final state. The Problem of Wilber’s Holarchy: A Return to Hegelian Negation Wilber presents his integral framework as an open system, incorporating science, psychology, and spirituality within a developmental sequence. His AQAL (All Quadrants, All Levels) model is structured holarchically: each level of reality contains and transcends the previous one. This applies to everything - matter, life, mind, culture, consciousness. But what remains unquestioned is the structural assumption that these levels form a necessary progression. While Wilber presents this as a natural unfolding of reality, it could be argued that this progression is an imposed framework rather than an emergent property of reality itself. Wilber does acknowledge variations and regressions in development, yet his framework ultimately leans toward an upward trajectory that does not fully account for radical breaks or ontological disruptions. At its core, this is Hegel’s dialectical movement restated in evolutionary terms. Wilber’s model replicates the logic of Aufhebung - sublation - where contradiction is not left as difference but resolved at a higher level. He incorporates postmodern critiques, but only as another layer to be subsumed. His problem is that he does not take postmodernism seriously on its own terms; rather, he treats it as a necessary but ultimately incomplete phase. The insights of Derrida, Foucault, and Lyotard are framed as important correctives but ultimately steps toward a greater integral synthesis. This, however, is precisely where the teleology becomes apparent. Wilber claims that each new stage is a genuine transcendence, but if the structure itself is preordained, then what is happening is not truly an open-ended unfolding but a confirmation of an already-determined totality. There is no radical contingency, no fundamental rupture - only the reassurance that the next phase will arrive and that it will integrate what came before it. But reality does not move in such a way. Nietzsche and Deleuze: Difference, Immanence, and the Refusal of Totality Nietzsche does not think in terms of developmental stages but in terms of forces, intensities, and values. There is no single arc of evolution, no universal ladder of consciousness - only the play of will to power, structuring and restructuring itself through infinite configurations. Wilber’s problem is precisely Nietzsche’s critique of Hegel: that the dialectic assumes negation as its engine, when what is actually needed is affirmation - an expansion and intensification of difference rather than its resolution into a synthetic whole. Deleuze follows Nietzsche in rejecting the logic of negation and sublation. The dialectic, for Deleuze, is always a reduction - a way of taming difference by forcing it into a developmental sequence where each contradiction is resolved within a higher unity. Instead, Deleuze proposes multiplicity, assemblage, and becoming. The real movement of thought and being is not a progression from lower to higher states but a constant differentiation, an open system where intensities shift and interact without an overarching synthesis. This is why Wilber’s holarchy is suspect - it presupposes a reality that unfolds in a necessarily upward motion, while Deleuze insists that reality is always immanent, lateral, and without pre-given hierarchy. Wilber might counter this by arguing that his model is open-ended and adaptive, capable of integrating new perspectives. However, the underlying structure still functions as a telos-driven model that organizes difference into a synthesized unity rather than allowing it to proliferate as singular and incommensurable intensities. Difference is not a problem to be solved but the very condition of existence. Ranking Reality Without Teleology: A Non-Negational Hierarchy If Wilber is wrong to assume a structured totality, then the question remains: how do we rank reality? Not all ideas, states of consciousness, or ways of being are equal. There is still the question of higher and lower, but it must be formulated differently. Nietzsche’s answer is found in will to power - what is “higher” is that which affirms itself, which intensifies its own power and expands its capacity for creation. There is no developmental necessity, only degrees of strength and intensity. What is higher is not that which transcends and includes but that which overcomes without negation, that which multiplies difference rather than subordinating it to a greater whole. Deleuze’s answer lies in assemblages and intensities - there are thresholds of complexity, but they do not form a fixed sequence. Instead, hierarchies emerge through zones of intensity, through qualitative shifts in capacity and relation. One does not “move up” in a predetermined way but enters into different configurations of being. Thus, a new model must be hierarchical without being teleological. Such a model would rank reality not based on a predetermined endpoint but through intensities of force, creativity, and expansion. Instead of moving through a rigid sequence of transcendence, hierarchies should emerge contextually, adapting fluidly to the interactions of forces at play, much like Nietzsche’s understanding of will to power as a shifting, contingent structure of domination and resistance. Rather than a holarchy that assumes a final synthesis, we need a structure that allows for ever-expanding relations of complexity and force, without closure. Some things are more powerful than others, some experiences richer, some thoughts more transformative - but this is not because they are preordained stages but because they constitute singular intensities, irreducible to any given sequence. Conclusion: Integration Without Totalization Wilber’s project is an attempt to solve a real problem - how to bring disparate philosophical insights into dialogue. To his credit, his model succeeds in providing a broad framework where multiple perspectives can interact. However, the challenge is ensuring that this inclusivity does not neutralize the disruptive power of difference. If integration becomes a process of containment, then the very possibility of true multiplicity is foreclosed. A genuinely integrative framework must allow for antagonism, contradiction, and radical breaks, rather than smoothing over tensions into a prefabricated synthesis. But his solution is a disguised return to dialectical totalization, a movement that assumes negation as its method and teleology as its structure. Nietzsche and Deleuze offer a different path, one that does not reject hierarchy but rethinks it in terms of force, difference, and immanence. The challenge is not to transcend and include but to affirm and expand. The new paradigm must be integrative without being totalizing, ranking without reducing, dynamic without assuming a final point of arrival. It must be an open hierarchy of intensities, a field of becoming rather than a preordained arc of evolution. Reality presents itself with implicit order, but that order is always shifting, always singular, always in the process of being made. Wilber seeks to resolve this into a whole, but the only true integration is that which leaves room for the unassimilable, the excessive, and the uncontainable movement of difference itself. Appendix It must be acknowledged that in critiquing Wilber’s integral framework and Hegelian dialectics, one inevitably engages in a performative contradiction. To argue against totalization is still to enact a form of ordering - constructing a structured critique that, even if based on intensities and immanence rather than synthesis, still imposes a certain logic. In rejecting negation, one must also confront the irony of implicitly negating negation itself. Deleuze, however, offers a way through this paradox - what he calls double affirmation. Instead of simply negating negation (which would still remain within a dialectical structure), he posits an affirmation that does not require an underlying opposition. The first affirmation is the rejection of negation as the motor of thought. The second, more radical affirmation, is the recognition that reality is composed of forces and intensities that do not require resolution into a higher unity. This is not a passive acceptance but a generative expansion - difference proliferates rather than being contained. Yet, even this doubling of affirmation, this strategy of avoiding negation while affirming difference, remains within the sphere of discourse. Philosophy, even in its most radical forms, remains bound to language, to concept, to the endless interplay of thought. But there is a point at which one must ask: what is the lived reality of this critique? To challenge hierarchy, to undo totalization, to refuse negation - these are not merely conceptual maneuvers, but gestures toward a different way of being. And yet, to live otherwise is not merely to continue the process of thinking about alternatives, but to step outside of thought itself, into the space of silence and direct experience. Both Nietzsche and Deleuze, in their own ways, hint at this. There is a point where affirmation is no longer a conceptual strategy but a way of being - one in which philosophy does not resolve itself into another theory, but dissolves into action, embodiment, intensity. To truly affirm difference is not just to argue for it, but to live it; not just to construct an ontology, but to discard the need for one. At a certain point, the only real response to the dialectic is not another theory, but a life that refuses to be contained by it. Perhaps the highest affirmation is not a new synthesis, not even an alternative structure, but a relinquishing of the need for structure altogether. To step beyond the mind’s compulsion to order, to negate, to include - to move instead toward a lived immediacy, where the movement of difference does not need to be spoken, only enacted. In the end, one must be silent, not in resignation but in the fullest affirmation: not to debate life, but to live it.

Again, it’s undeniable - surrendering to pure virtuality, dissolving into the primordial flux from which everything arises, is a profound and transformative experience. But it is not an ultimate state. It has always been there, shifting yet ungraspable, which is precisely why life does not consist in retreating to it, but in riding the waves of its differentiation. That’s why transvaluation is not about replacing one framework with another but experimenting with new modes of existence. If one truly seeks to explore life on its own terms, then the fixation on dissolution - on passive absorption into the infinite - must not be "broken" in the sense of negation, but rather abandoned in favor of an unfolding, an expansion of singular intensities. Life isn’t found in retreating to pure potential, but in the force of what is particular, the movement of what becomes, the creation of what was never prefigured.

You’re turning what is not yet actual into the highest form of being, as if potentiality itself contained some hidden superiority. But this is precisely the trick of negation: dissolving the real into an abstract, passive virtuality that never fully arrives. You can’t act from this suspended state of complexity, this endless “holding” of perspectives, because action is not a movement between states - it is an immanent surge, an unfolding that does not wait for permission. The moment you act, you reveal that so-called integration was never stable, never whole - only a temporary crystallization of forces that now shift, mutate, and reform in new configurations. Every real action affirms itself, not by negating what came before, but by intensifying and differentiating what it brings into existence. This is precisely what Nietzsche’s Will to Power points toward - not an equilibrium, not a dialectic, but an unfolding of intensities, a force that expands without needing to justify itself against some external framework. The real test of what is "low" or "high" is how an action composes itself, how it unfolds difference, how it creates anew. When you paint, you’re not operating from a reconciled, integrated state. You are affirming an intensity that insists on its own existence. The greater its force, the more real it becomes - not because it integrates more, but because it extends, mutates, pushes into new zones of becoming.

Feel free to move it there.

Why assume I haven’t realized "God"? Nothing I’ve said contradicts the reality of oneness - this just isn’t a conversation I care to have. I have no need to argue this, nor do I seek your approval or validation. What interests me are the implications and possibilities of this reality. I don’t know about your "awakenings," but be careful not to fall into a myopic, post hoc interpretation of your experience. Reality is infinite possibility, and I’m here to explore it. If that’s not your thing, I couldn’t care less. There are plenty of people who will indulge your particular flavor of mysticism - you don’t need me for that. Anything you can imagine.

I literally wrote a whole fucking essay on this - which you’re commenting on right now.

This lecture series offers a great introduction to Deleuze’s metaphysics and its significance within the Western philosophical tradition.

I’ve been doing deep spiritual work for almost a decade now, and of course, any real spiritual experience is profound and meaningful. But I find myself seeking them out less and less - not because they’ve lost their depth, but because I no longer see them as destinations. They’re like breathtaking panoramic views along the way - beautiful, yes, but I’m not about to set up camp there. The real journey is in the wandering. That’s precisely what I find so vulgar about Ken Wilber - he’s so fixated on gazing at the mountain peak that he doesn’t even see the path beneath his feet. He misses the infinite possibilities of the valley, the wild, untamed landscapes beyond, or the fact that there is no singular “top” to arrive at in the first place. It’s a strangely myopic way to look at reality - ironically, not very spiritual at all. Not all those who wander are lost, you know.

The way he hits those falsettos in the post-chorus 😤

Currently in my David Bowie era.

Your strategy is deeply flawed - even by your own low standards. You can’t manipulate your way to real success, and sooner or later, this approach is going to bite you in ways you don’t see coming. Take your plan to market a low-quality supplement. The kind of people who fall for that are bottom-tier customers and business partners - the type who create more problems than they’re worth. Any short-term win will be drowned out by the long-term mess you’ll have to clean up. I know this game well. Yes, persuasion and salesmanship are powerful tools, but exaggeration and false promises aren’t a strategy - they’re a ticking time bomb. You can’t build anything sustainable on deception. The real move is figuring out what your supplement actually does well, who it genuinely benefits, and marketing to them in a way that’s both persuasive and honest. That’s how you build something that lasts. This is how people with real power operate - not by scamming their way into a temporary high. Right now, you’re not some smooth, sophisticated operator - you’re just King of the Losers, ruling over the gullible and the desperate. If that’s the legacy you want, go for it. But if you actually want to build something meaningful, it’s time to level up.

North Korean TV feels like an endless fever dream.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/28/podcaster-andrew-huberman-goop-for-bros Pahaha, I honestly don’t know what to say. Nothing against polygamy, but keeping six girlfriends secret from each other for years? That’s honestly quite remarkable - Rollo Tomassi and the Red Pill scene would be proud of this self-proclaimed Christian ascetic.

Because this attitude has pissed me off for years, I’ve mostly tried to remain respectful and appreciative of the hospitality. But sometimes, Leo’s delusions just spiral so far out of control that I can’t sit by silently. I want to make sure the message comes through loud and clear because, frankly, no one else seems willing to push back on this nonsense. It’s basically an echo chamber at this point, at least when it comes to calling him out on this behavior.