Plenty of insights. But reality without symbols to filter it is lovecraftian, nightmare inducing: that's what the existentialists tried to tell you. The cinematographic identity is the how we evolved not to become mad at the unadulterated realness of things, and beyond the repulsiveness of what we see without symbols (the meat of the flesh, the disgusting processes). Because in the end, if we remove all symbols we would only see death, impending. And the Thing that looks unflinching at death and does not go mad is not a human anymore, and has no desires.
In french, all the things we choose to spend time on for fun are called distractions.
My take is: "reality without symbols" [RWS] is the Dao, mainly in the sense of "the RWS that can be spoken is not the real RWS". Terms like lovecraftian / nightmare-inducing are still labels that point to one aspect of that RWS [reference to Blind men and an elephant - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant ]. It feels a bit of a linguistic cheat/trick/gimmick, but [IMHO] that's part of the point, a trick to break with the linguistic aspect of it.
I think there is also a common loop where you recognize yourself slipping into a type and recognize it could be (must be!) the result of a bunch of empty posing, irony, marketing, etc, all the things you mentioned - so you think "ugh, this must not be really my true self", and reject that desire and look for something else, so you can make sure to not become "that guy", and then you keep doing that until you're spending your time on Saturday morning reading a long substack article about the end of desire and then commenting about it instead of doing literally anything else.
And here is my drawing of my partner making coffee: https://imgur.com/xwJp0ul (this is taking a while, I hope the post doesn't reference too much more drawing)
I love how you used Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain to illustrate the modern dating experience. 😆
Another interesting tool from a different discipline is Gayle Delaney’s Dream Interview Method. It’s designed for dream interpretation but can be equally effective at giving people aha moments about the meaning subconsciously assigned to everyday things.
“In Gayle Delaney’s Dream Interview Method, dreamers pretend they are telling the dream to an alien from a planet with no conception of how things are on earth. In this way, dream elements are told in the most basic way, and thus the dreamer learns what personal meaning underlies each dream element.”
> You’re a bad drawer because you can’t see properly. (...)
> As in, one day, your mother picked you up, held you up to the bathroom mirror, (...) You entered the world of symbols, and you would never leave again.
Since I read this article I keep coming back to this idea again and again. I've known for years the drawing exercise, but I hadn't made the next step and applied it to language. And that's a hard step for me, I'm still digesting it.
If I understand correctly, I would say that even Zhuangzi fell short:
> “The purpose of a fish trap is to catch fish, and when the fish are caught the trap is forgotten. (...) The purpose of the word is to convey ideas. When the ideas are grasped, the words are forgotten. Where can I find a man who has forgotten words? He is the one I would like to talk to.”
Those ideas-without-words are still not reality and, in some sense, ideas* are an impediment to perceiving reality in its rawest form. Maybe something like:
> Where can I find a man who has forgotten ideas? He is the one I want to experience reality with.
* in this context: ideas = mental models = tropes = patterns = archetypes = ...
Or maybe the translation is wrong and Zhuangzi was using "ideas" in the sense we use "reality".
> The world of symbols told you what to want, but you got handicapped by reality.
I like to say that: I do "what I want" while playing the game of "what I can".
> That’s the person that’s never learned how to desire something.
Taken at face value, that HITS HARD. But I'm not sure I totally buy the idea that "the only way to live a pianist-like life is to set impossible goals". Once you understand some things, you could live with the realistic goal of practicing everyday, and enjoy it.
> There’s two layers of cons to any good marketing strategy. The short con is telling you that spending time/money on their product gets you closer to the life you desire. The long con is convincing you that you came up with the idea of desiring that life in the first place.
I like to think I've escaped [to some degree and after a lot of work+help] from those two layers, but there is a 3rd implicit layer, the idea that success is a real thing / goal.
1.- On one hand, given that I feel I've achieved [temporarily, to some deg...] success, I can see that as me having learnt to "draw my own definition of success" without being mediated by the system.
BUT:
2.- On the other hand, I can totally see how one could reject the idea of success in itself. In that case, I would have been fooled because there are no atoms of success* and therefore my idea of success is like the "ideas of body parts" that prevent you from drawing better.
* Tangential reference to George Lakoff's Reappraisal of metaphor:
> Also, personally I hate the whole "don't you see it? isn't it obvious? do you see it now?" thing. I find it super patronizing.
Why is this a problem? Had you noticed "Reddit Romeo" didn't actually describe the women he went on a date? Was it obvious to you that the articles answered the questions they asked by simply existing? Had you thought of removing the symbolism to understand the reality it was hiding?
If not, why is his writing a problem? I find it provocative
If you did, why are you reading something that was not written for you?
On a parallel note, yhea @steffan this article could be much shorter. This is an issue not because of the text being poorly written, only because it's an innefficient meme. I think I understand what you're talking about, but I'm not sure I could explain it to someone else.
(might say more about the reader than the text though. cheers)
Plenty of insights. But reality without symbols to filter it is lovecraftian, nightmare inducing: that's what the existentialists tried to tell you. The cinematographic identity is the how we evolved not to become mad at the unadulterated realness of things, and beyond the repulsiveness of what we see without symbols (the meat of the flesh, the disgusting processes). Because in the end, if we remove all symbols we would only see death, impending. And the Thing that looks unflinching at death and does not go mad is not a human anymore, and has no desires.
In french, all the things we choose to spend time on for fun are called distractions.
My take is: "reality without symbols" [RWS] is the Dao, mainly in the sense of "the RWS that can be spoken is not the real RWS". Terms like lovecraftian / nightmare-inducing are still labels that point to one aspect of that RWS [reference to Blind men and an elephant - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant ]. It feels a bit of a linguistic cheat/trick/gimmick, but [IMHO] that's part of the point, a trick to break with the linguistic aspect of it.
I think there is also a common loop where you recognize yourself slipping into a type and recognize it could be (must be!) the result of a bunch of empty posing, irony, marketing, etc, all the things you mentioned - so you think "ugh, this must not be really my true self", and reject that desire and look for something else, so you can make sure to not become "that guy", and then you keep doing that until you're spending your time on Saturday morning reading a long substack article about the end of desire and then commenting about it instead of doing literally anything else.
Was re-reading DFW's E Unibus Pluram recently and thought pretty much exactly this.
Still find it fun though. Maybe when you've read like 10 saying the same thing time to move on and go on a hike or something.
Who is "that guy"? Does he live freely without gazing in the mirror?
Here is my elephant drawing: https://imgur.com/KO6d3pY
You forgot the tusks!
Indeed, I thought something was off, and I laughed heartily when I looked up an actual picture of an elephant afterwards
And here is my drawing of my partner making coffee: https://imgur.com/xwJp0ul (this is taking a while, I hope the post doesn't reference too much more drawing)
I love how you used Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain to illustrate the modern dating experience. 😆
Another interesting tool from a different discipline is Gayle Delaney’s Dream Interview Method. It’s designed for dream interpretation but can be equally effective at giving people aha moments about the meaning subconsciously assigned to everyday things.
“In Gayle Delaney’s Dream Interview Method, dreamers pretend they are telling the dream to an alien from a planet with no conception of how things are on earth. In this way, dream elements are told in the most basic way, and thus the dreamer learns what personal meaning underlies each dream element.”
https://www.bps.org.uk/psychologist/dreamwork-dream-groups-and-psychotherapy
> You’re a bad drawer because you can’t see properly. (...)
> As in, one day, your mother picked you up, held you up to the bathroom mirror, (...) You entered the world of symbols, and you would never leave again.
Since I read this article I keep coming back to this idea again and again. I've known for years the drawing exercise, but I hadn't made the next step and applied it to language. And that's a hard step for me, I'm still digesting it.
If I understand correctly, I would say that even Zhuangzi fell short:
> “The purpose of a fish trap is to catch fish, and when the fish are caught the trap is forgotten. (...) The purpose of the word is to convey ideas. When the ideas are grasped, the words are forgotten. Where can I find a man who has forgotten words? He is the one I would like to talk to.”
Those ideas-without-words are still not reality and, in some sense, ideas* are an impediment to perceiving reality in its rawest form. Maybe something like:
> Where can I find a man who has forgotten ideas? He is the one I want to experience reality with.
* in this context: ideas = mental models = tropes = patterns = archetypes = ...
Or maybe the translation is wrong and Zhuangzi was using "ideas" in the sense we use "reality".
> The world of symbols told you what to want, but you got handicapped by reality.
I like to say that: I do "what I want" while playing the game of "what I can".
> That’s the person that’s never learned how to desire something.
Taken at face value, that HITS HARD. But I'm not sure I totally buy the idea that "the only way to live a pianist-like life is to set impossible goals". Once you understand some things, you could live with the realistic goal of practicing everyday, and enjoy it.
> There’s two layers of cons to any good marketing strategy. The short con is telling you that spending time/money on their product gets you closer to the life you desire. The long con is convincing you that you came up with the idea of desiring that life in the first place.
I like to think I've escaped [to some degree and after a lot of work+help] from those two layers, but there is a 3rd implicit layer, the idea that success is a real thing / goal.
1.- On one hand, given that I feel I've achieved [temporarily, to some deg...] success, I can see that as me having learnt to "draw my own definition of success" without being mediated by the system.
BUT:
2.- On the other hand, I can totally see how one could reject the idea of success in itself. In that case, I would have been fooled because there are no atoms of success* and therefore my idea of success is like the "ideas of body parts" that prevent you from drawing better.
* Tangential reference to George Lakoff's Reappraisal of metaphor:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Lakoff#Reappraisal_of_metaphor
I will keep working on these... *ideas* :).
Thanks!
I think I get TLP's "The Second Story Of Echo And Narcissus" now.
Dude, you're a pretty good writer but this article is WAY too long.
You're getting at a difficult idea - that we identify more with simulacra than the real thing. Plato's cave and all that. Yada yada.
I don't blame you for drawing it out a bit, but come on this is at least 4x longer than it needed to be.
Also, personally I hate the whole "don't you see it? isn't it obvious? do you see it now?" thing. I find it super patronizing.
> Also, personally I hate the whole "don't you see it? isn't it obvious? do you see it now?" thing. I find it super patronizing.
Why is this a problem? Had you noticed "Reddit Romeo" didn't actually describe the women he went on a date? Was it obvious to you that the articles answered the questions they asked by simply existing? Had you thought of removing the symbolism to understand the reality it was hiding?
If not, why is his writing a problem? I find it provocative
If you did, why are you reading something that was not written for you?
On a parallel note, yhea @steffan this article could be much shorter. This is an issue not because of the text being poorly written, only because it's an innefficient meme. I think I understand what you're talking about, but I'm not sure I could explain it to someone else.
(might say more about the reader than the text though. cheers)
i mean it's an audience thing. it's very long if you're familiar with a lot of the ideas already.
i still quite like it
and yeah i try to write stuff that will annoy some % of readers, not doing anything interesting otherwise
I think you might be interested in https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_semantics It's about recognizing that your perception is made symbolic by your body.
wow yes this is very close
Great reference!
It didn't surprise me to see George Lakoff named on the Further Reading section. His Reappraisal of metaphor is also related:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Lakoff#Reappraisal_of_metaphor