AwesomeWriters

By hook or by crook (Carl Jung quote)

August 13th, 2024

“But why on earth, you might ask, should it be necessary for man to achieve, by hook or by crook, a higher level of consciousness?

This is truly the crucial question, and I do not find the answer easy. Instead of a real answer, I can only make a confession of faith. I believe that, after thousands and millions of years, someone had to realize that this wonderful world of mountains and oceans, suns and moons, galaxies and nebulae, plants and animals, exists.

https://youtu.be/Iyvnukd3qQY?si=xfsXWL4Cgo4J_1Kg

(3 hours and 48 minutes in)

This one was earlier in the video and is one of those quotes you would think someone said yesterday, if we paid a fraction of the attention to intellectuals. But is there anyone who speaks like this anymore? Why do I have to go back 50 or 60 or 70 years for a good quote? Maybe it has something to do with WW2 and the Cold War after. Finally, the quote:

We have let the house our fathers built fall into decay, and now we try to break into Oriental palaces that our fathers never knew. Anyone who has lost the historical symbols and cannot be satisfied with substitutes is certainly in a very difficult position today: before him there yawns the void, and he turns away from it in horror. What is worse, the vacuum gets filled with absurd political and social ideas, which one and all are distinguished by their spiritual bleakness.
Zarathustra: Self-Surpassing

May 14th, 2024

Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra, XXXIV. SELF-SURPASSING

In a text to a friend this morning I wrote: Nietzsche dude. A paradox. A wonderful horrible man. A terrible genius.

Again, this idea of paradox being at the heart of reality. From a very different author and prophet, Eckhart Tolle, I heard a quote in one of his guided meditations recently, something like: “If it’s not a paradox then it is not the deepest truth.”

Can’t have a Nietzsche blog post without mentioning “God is dead.” Carl Jung observed that that was more of an observation than a proclamation or commandment. Still I wonder how much of WWII one can lay at Nietzsche’s feet with all his “Uber mench” talk, and the stuff about destroying the world before building it anew. Mostly I credit deviants who claim Nietzsche as their leader as having a shallow understanding of his ideas, picking and choosing this or that phrase like a Republican picks from the Bible.

Still…

“Hearken now unto my word, ye wisest ones! Test it seriously, whether I have crept into the heart of life itself, and into the roots of its heart!

Wherever I found a living thing, there found I Will to Power; and even in the will of the servant found I the will to be master.

That to the stronger the weaker shall serve—thereto persuadeth he his will who would be master over a still weaker one. That delight alone he is unwilling to forego.”

– Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra, Chapter 34: Self-Surpassing

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1998/1998-h/1998-h.htm#link2H_4_0040

https://books.google.com/books/about/Thus_Spoke_Zarathustra.html?id=a9VxKgui0mEC
I Do Not Exist

December 8th, 2023

Joyce Carol Oates’s Relentless, Prolific Search for a Self by Rachel Aviv

In a letter to the editor, Oates responded, “Since critics are constantly telling me to ‘slow down,’ I must say gently, very gently, that everything I have done so far is only preliminary to my most serious work.” She went on, “There is a sense in which ‘I’ do not exist at all, but am a process recording phases of American life.”
– Rachel Aviv quoting Joyce Carol Oates

This quote fits nicely into the theme of recent blog posts and Eastern Philosophy.

From my main man Alan Watts:

We suffer from a hallucination, from a false and distorted sensation of our own existence as living organisms. Most of us have the sensation that ‘I myself’ is a separate center of feeling and action, living inside and bounded by the physical body — a center which ‘confronts’ an ‘external’ world.
– Alan Watts

I thought I read something in Carl Jung’s introduction to The Secret of the Golden Flower but something more directly applicable I must have come across somewhere else (or not noted…) I’ve got that book in front of me so… talking about “Wu Wei” (a.k.a “going with the flow”) and this quote about something that breaks one out of a psychological conflict:

In no case was it conjured into existence through purpose and conscious willing, but rather seemed to be born on the stream of time.
– Carl Jung in the introduction to The Secret of the Golden Flower

Later Aviv quotes Oates:

She dragged herself to the typewriter each morning to “write it all out, somehow, anyway, thinking I might as well get some use out of going mad,” she told Godwin.
– Rachel Aviv quoting Joyce Carol Oates

The correct word to describe Oates’ career seems to be “prolific.” I will have to pick out one of her many books. She may still have questions about the self but… that’s good. I hope she keeps up her pursuit. Maybe times answers her questions but… I hope it takes some time.
The Thunderstorm in the Valley

November 28th, 2023

Carl Jung in the Introduction to The Secret of the Golden Flower

I have often seen individuals simply outgrow a problem which had destroyed others. This ‘outgrowing’, as I formerly called it, on further experience was seen to consist in a new level of consciousness. Some higher or wider interest arose on the person’s horizon, and through this widening of his view the insoluble problem lost its urgency. It was not solved logically in its own terms, but faded out when confronted with a new and stronger life-tendency. It was repressed and made unconscious, but merely appeared in a different light, and so did indeed become different. What, on a lower level, had led to the wildest conflicts and to panicky outbursts of emotion, viewed from the higher level of the personality, now seemed like a storm in the valley seen from a high mountain-top. This does not mean that the thunderstorm is robbed of its reality, but instead of being in it, one is now above it.
– Carl Jung, The Secret of the Golden Flower

I’m a bit ashamed to say that I have experienced “panicky outbursts of emotion”, quite recently as well.

I’m also proud of myself that I feel like I’ve made it out of the valley, albeit for only 48 (or maybe 47… or 46! weeks out of the year) Some of my family are still in the valley.

When I read Jung, I find things that help me transform my anger into pity. It wasn’t easy to get out of that valley. I remember a moment in time when I decided: “No! There is nothing wrong with me! I do not deserve to be treated this way by my father!” despite his repeatedly and consistently over many years telling me that there was something wrong with me every time I was angry with him.

Jung continues:

However, since we are both valley and mountain with respect to the psych, it might seem a vain illusion to feel oneself beyond what is human. One certainly does feel the affect and is shaken and tormented by it, yet at the same time one is aware of a higher consciousness, which prevents one from becoming identical with the affect, a consciousness which takes the affect objectively, and say, ‘I know that I suffer.’ What our text says of indolence: ‘Indolence of which a man is conscious and indolence of which he is unconscious are a thousand miles apart’, holds true in the highest degree of affect also.
– Carl Jung

I’m sometimes ashamed that I turn 43 in just days and I still find myself “in the valley” and swept away in a tidal wave of emotion. But I’m largely out of the valley and I’m also proud of myself for climbing out because I can easily imagine how some people never make it out.
The Shadow Projected

November 21st, 2023

The shadow is often project on to others. Examination of those attributes which a man most condemns in other people (greed, intolerance, disregard for others, etc.) usually shows that, unacknowledged, he himself possesses them.
– C.G. Jung

Unfortunately there can be no doubt that man is, on the whole, less good than he imagines himself to or wants to be. Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. If an inferiority is conscious, one always has a chance to correct it. …. But if it is repressed and isolated from consciousness, it never gets corrected, and is liable to burst forth suddenly in a moment of unawareness.
– C.G. Jung

Side anecdote: I was bringing this book into the sauna and this dude said “Hey… you read Jung! I went to a liberal arts school.” I told him I had read “Memories, Dreams, Reflections” recently. He told me he had the book.

At this point I started to get the feeling that he might have a lot of books but read very few (alas, like the quote above, I am guilty of the same and so find it unbecoming.)

Then he told me that I shouldn’t bring the book into the sauna because it could ruin the binding. I said that I was just going in for a couple minutes and that it should be fine. Then he added: “You know… I’m saying this as a lover of books…” As if I am not one!

I wasn’t quick enough, and I wouldn’t have said anything anyway, but it would make a good story if I had retorted: “Oh, well then, you should try reading one.”
Swedenborg: Buddha of the North

November 21st, 2023

By D.T. Suzuki

I picked up Swedenborg: Buddha of the North when we were browsing the book store for Christmas gifts. I’ve heard Alan Watts mention his name in many lectures and I’ve heard him referenced by others as well. Looking at another title on Thriftbooks, I see it was published first in 1955. My understanding is that Suzuki was among the cohort of philosophers who made popular Eastern Religions to the open minded peoples of the 1960s, a.k.a. The Hippies.

Swedenborg seemed to be the most exotic of the choices at Used Books. Two quotes caught my attention:

There are enough in one century who pold on in the old beaten track, while there are scarcely six or ten in a whole century, who are able to generate novelties which are bard upon argument and reason.
Emanuel Swedenborg

I believe here he is referencing some of his inventions rather than his literary and philosophical works. He was apparently somewhat of a polymath with interested ranging from mathematics to metallurgy and then to, what he is most known for, speaking with the dead in both heaven and hell, and espousing their opinions, and what especially caught people’s attention: espousing how they had changed their opinion after death.

Apparently he spoke of these sojourns and conversations in other realms in a deadpan serious way, as if they were… mundane experiences. Suzuki comments on how this may have been interpreted.

Another bit that caught my attention: he fell in love with the eldest daughter of Christopher Polhem, an engineer and his mentor. The marriage was sanctioned by Polhem and the king. But a couple years later, the daughter did not want to marry Swedenborg anymore and so he “relinquished his claim” on her (how thoughtful of him).

The quote:

Throughout the rest of his life, he never thought again of marriage, but single-mindedly pursued his studies. As a result of this rebuff, he ended up gaining a lifetime free from encumbrances and came to think of nothing else but the divine will. It may be, then, that the divine will was at work from the start.
– Suzuki

I’ve heard that some philosopher’s and monks have adopted a solitary life not out of a vow of chastity but because it is “terribly convenient not to have a wife.”

Well… thanks Swedenborg. I think I prefer my wife and family though to conversations with dead people in various levels of heaven and hell. I joke…

It reminds me of what I’ve said about Elon Musk: I’m glad he exists and I’m very glad that I am not him.

Sometimes people make advancements and have great insights but I wonder at what cost. I don’t doubt that I will learn much from Swedenborg and Suzuki alike reading this book. But I wonder… was he driven mad by loneliness?

If so, I pity him, and hope to honor him by learning what I can from his… unique (unique seems not quite the right word…) life. Another example perhaps of the fine line between madness and genius.
Behold, He that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep

October 25th, 2023

Excerpt from the essay The Spirit of Violence and the Matter of Peace in Does It Matter? by Alan Watts

This quote about Israel captured my attention because of the war that broke out these past couple weeks. I’m astounded that this psalm was so prescient.

More and more, the scientists are saying that man must now take his future evolution into his own (i.e., the ego’s) hands, and rely no longer upon the caprices of “natural selection.” Yet those who speak thus do not seem to realize that this is going to require increasing violence against “deviant” forces within the individual and within society. The aspiration to direct evolution is also the aspiration to be “as God,” and thus—as God is generally conceived in the West—to be dictator of the world.

But, as the psalm says, “Behold, He that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.” This is really the same as the saying that “There is no peace for the wicked,” for those who, like the tyrant-image of God, take the law into their own hands. For our traditional model of the universe is basically military.
– Alan Watts, Does It Matter?, The Spirit of Violence and the Matter of Peace

A couple pages later this paragraph caught my attention:

Only a supernaturalist would deliberately press the button to set off nuclear warfare, in the belief that his spiritual values are more important than material existence. And this involves the open or tacit supposition that the spiritual dimension is immortal, that in heaven or on some higher level of vibration unaffected by bodily death he will continue his existence, congratulating himself on his fidelity to principle and wagging the finger of reproof at the surprisedly immortal souls of dialectical materialists, eating crow in the sky instead of pie. This simply goes to show that belief in the superiority and final authority of the rational, intellectual, conceptual, and symbolic domain as the ultimate reality may be inconsistent with the survival of mankind.
– Alan Watts, Does It Matter?, The Spirit of Violence and the Matter of Peace

It is perhaps the truth that the most horrible people have the best intentions.

I’m reminded of Alan when he talks about the priests who burned people at the stake in the hopes that they would repent because they truly believed that they had a chance of saving them from eternal damnation.

“Kindly let me help you or you will drown said the monkey putting the fish safely up a tree.”
– Alan Watts (Goodreads.com link)
First Impressions: Thus Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche

July 19th, 2023

A couple quotes from the prologue

I picked this up at Powell’s City of Books in Portland because it’s been referenced in so many things that I’ve read, most recently Memories Dreams Reflections by C.G. Jung.

What good is my virtue! As yet it hath not made me passionate.
Thus Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche

This quote stood out to me because I had a conversation recently with a friend where we came to the conclusion that the most important thing in life is to be passionate (about anything). The context was that I was criticizing a friend for his lack of passion for his work, the only passion being money and security; a desire to keep everything the same, to stop life from changing, which is impossible, and a rejection of what it means to live. Life is change. And I’m reminded of Jung: “Anyone who takes the sure road is as good as dead.”

At some age it becomes impossible for someone to question their big decisions and beliefs. It becomes too painful to accept a serious mistake in judgement that has had a profound effect on one’s life. If one is confronted with this situation it could mean the collapse of the ego and a total mental breakdown. The ego and the mind protect itself. And so the big things are not questioned in our later years, and so I think it is important to constantly question yourself and your beliefs and have your life be a semi-continuous stream of improvement and modification of beliefs. Or else be crushed by the consequences of not doing so.

“A child has Zarathustra become; an awakened one is Zarathustra: what will thou do in the land of the sleepers?”
Thus Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche

This line makes me wonder about how much exposure Nietzsche had to Eastern religions: Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism. ” “Awakened” is an adjective that I associate with “enlightenment” and these Eastern religions. And the idea that the highest achievement is to retain a “child’s mind” I associate with Buddhism and the acceptance and belief that our reality is pattern and change and nothing is eternal. This is related to the first quote / idea I mentioned above, that it is best to continually evolve over the course of one’s life.

“Believe not those who speak unto you of superearthly hopes! Poisoners are they, whether they know it or not.. Despisers of life are they.”
Thus Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche

I would like to leave this quote as a comment on one of my “born again” Facebook friend’s posts. But I won’t. It would be too much. Which brings me back to that idea that at some point… it’s better not to question the big decisions but rather to just “ride it out” to the grave.

I’m reminded of Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari where he writes a bit about how the father who sends his son off to war and then to have him be killed, the father only becomes more patriotic, can only support the nation and the war more. It is too much to accept that the decision and initial judgement was foolish. Also, not wearing masks during Covid, anyone who took this position and then had a relative die of Covid… the only thing that makes sense is to hate Fauci and the CDC more, it’s too much to accept that a different decision could have prevented the death of a loved one…

This post got a little dark… My first impressions are that Zarathustra was a good buy and I expect I’ll find hundreds of quotes that could warrant a blog post each. Even after the first couple pages, I just picked out a couple of the quotes I underlined.
Startup Teams

June 12th, 2023

Notes on the chapter “The Mechanics of Mafia” from “Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future” by Peter Thiel

“‘Company Culture’ doesn’t exist apart from the company itself: no company has a culture; every company is a culture. A startup is a team of people on a mission, and a good culture is just what that looks like on the inside.”
– Peter Thiel, Zero to One, Chapter 10: The Mechanics of Mafia

Describing two accomplished and intelligent people who started a company that failed Thiel writes:

“But the relationships between them were oddly thin. The spent all day together, but fer of them seemed to have much to say to each other outside of the office.”
– Peter Thiel, Zero to One, Chapter 10: The Mechanics of Mafia

This reminds me of the small company I worked for (for a brief time…) My first career job was at a small startup company and I thought that going back to a company of eleven lonely together souls, I might find a similar experience. Nine of us in a small room and… no one really talked to each other for most of day. Sometimes people would circle at lunchtime, the four of us who sat next to each and back to back flipping our seats around at the designated hour. The two people on the other side of my desk looking over during the break in silence.

“If you can’t count durable relationships among the fruits of your time at work, you haven’t invested your time well – even in purely financial terms.”
– Peter Thiel, Zero to One, Chapter 10: The Mechanics of Mafia

I thought this was a nice sentiment but also true. The best memories I have of “work” have not all that much to do with the work work. I’m reminded of some people I should reach out to…

I think it’s a good sign that friendship came first with my two partners on this new project. In retrospect, it looks planned, especially if we are successful, but this startup seemed to “happen of itself.”

I am borrowing that phrase from my main man Alan Watts:

‘ When you say to anything spontaneous—see, life is spontaneous. It happens—in the words of the Taoists—zìrán, which means “of itself so”—that’s the Chinese expression for nature, what happens by itself.
– Alan Watts, Out of Your Mind
Four Pebbles Guided Meditation with Thich Nhat Hanh

June 12th, 2023

This was a nice guided meditation.

I like Thich Nhat Hanh‘s guided meditation. The videos I’ve seen, even when he is giving a talk that is not specifically a guided meditation, it feels like a meditation; his pace is slow and his voice is calm and soothing.

I dug “Peace Is Evey Step” out of the office book shelf so I could add a quote:

“Our breathing is the link between our body and our mind. Sometimes our mind is thinking of one thing and our body is doing another, and mind and body are not unified.”
Thich Nhat Hanh in “Peace Is Every Step“

But the real gem of a quote is the phrase I scribbled inside the front cover:

“My ego is out to kill me.”
Me, March 27, 2017

Let’s see… 2017… Yup, that checks out.

By D.T. Suzuki

Excerpt from the essay The Spirit of Violence and the Matter of Peace in Does It Matter? by Alan Watts

A couple quotes from the prologue

Notes on the chapter “The Mechanics of Mafia” from “Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future” by Peter Thiel