Leo's Blog: Infinite Insights
Miscellaneous bits of wisdom and resources on personal development, life purpose, philosophy, epistemology, nonduality, psychedelics, etc. Published randomly throughout the week.
- penetrating mental vision or discernment.
- the sudden act of grasping the inner nature or truth of a situation.
- a deep understanding of a person or thing.
Insights here are meant to be quick and half-baked. Consider these food for thought.
I've deliberately disabled comments to keep the blog streamlined. If you want to discuss any of the blog posts, you can do so here: Actualized.org Forum
This is a good insight about creativity and art.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DWe7FYDjy70
But I specifically want to connect this with science and academia. To be truly intelligent, scientists and academics need to allow their minds to be messy, which they are not allowing. Modern science and academia is so anti-creative that of course they are stuck. The rampant rationalism of academia constipates the mind, lowering its natural intelligence. This is the godlessness of academia.
A messy mind is more intelligent than a buttoned-up one. Mental fluidity IS intelligence. The most intelligent mind is so fluid that it can flow around anything.
In art, you are allowed to make bad art, it's no big deal. But in science and academia you are not allowed to be imaginative. As soon as do, your colleagues will eat you alive and excommunicate you like the witch that you are. But the witch's mind is more intelligent than the scientist's.
I do not support this speaker's overall body of libertarian work and arguments. However, there are a couple of powerful insights here about the problems with socialism.
Specifically, I am talking about the insight that private property IS the mechanism by which society decides which crops you can grow. Private property is much deeper than Marxists understand. Private property is what allows each individual to decide what they want to work on. Without private property, there is no efficient mechanism to decide who can work on what. To say you own a business means you get to decide what values the business follows. That means no politician gets to tell you what you can and can't work on. Private property is a clean, efficient way to handle this issue. If you get the idea to start a business, no government bureaucrat can tell you No because the business is your private property. When you get rid to private property — as true Marxism must do — that stops being true. And that is a much bigger deal than socialists understand.
In the Soviet Union my father was imprisoned for starting his own business. That's what it actually means to eliminate private property. It isn't as cute as socialists make it sound.
"But Leo, under my socialism you can still start your own business!" If that's the case, then your socialism solves nothing, because as long as you allow people to start and own businesses, you will have disgusting levels of income inequality. The question for every socialist is this: Am I allowed to start my own business and grow it to be worth billions of dollars? Either way they answer that question, it will be bad.
Here's an academic explaining how getting a PhD has turned into a sausage factory.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DXtgb23j69s/
Turning the understanding of Reality into a mechanical factory process has corrupted what was once a serious pursuit.
Understanding Reality cannot and should not be mechanized. Understanding is a function of spirit. Removing the spirit from academia has made it into a godless bureaucracy.
Bakunin's criticism of Marxism was exactly correct.
When Marxism is enacted, it ends in replacing the old group of corrupt leaders with a new group of corrupt leaders. Because the survival pressure is too great for anything else. The viciousness necessary to overthrow the oligarchs is the same force that will produce a new set of oligarchs.
Corruption is too intelligent to be defeated by a mob of angry Marxists. If you want to end corruption you have to appreciate how intelligent it is. Corruption is more intelligent than you. That is the key missing insight.