[Main Blog Post] The Open-Minded Materialist's Gentle Introduction to Spirituality

[jprussell]

I've written my first "full" blog post of the year and posted it to my main blog here. If you have any thoughts or ways I might make it better, kindly let me know by commenting here or dropping me an email!

Comments

[jprussell]

1) On Peterson: I had vaguely heard of Maps of Meaning, I think maybe via ESR, then a friend shared a "clean your room" video, and then I started hearing about all the controversy, so I did a deep dive - read all of Maps of Meaning, taking pretty extensive notes, listened to every lecture and podcast he had put out by that point (2018-2019-ish?). I found him very helpful at the time, and these days I see him as most helpful as a) a reasonably good intro to/map of Jung and Jungian thinking, and b) a good source for highlighting links between big, influential thinkers like Nietzsche and Jung, and between the sciencey-er side of psychology and the humanities-er side. 12 Rules for Life was alright, but I had already listened to so many of his lectures by the time I read it that not much was new, and I haven't read Beyond Order yet. I think Maps of Meaning is likely far more interesting/helpful for making sense of how psychology works, but it's also a lot less concrete, and already knowing what he's on about makes a lot of it easier to digest. From an extremely uncharitable review a friend of mine shared with me, I realized that a lot of the description/diagrams are so simplified/schematic as to be not-actually-helpful unless you have a pretty good feel for a lot of the complexity they're pointing to. For example, reducing all of "Chaos" to "Good Mother and Devouring Mother" doesn't do much on its own, but gives valuable insights once you know what those mean and start applying them automatically to feminine figures in myths and stories.

Incidentally, a previous draft of this post had a lot more of my "how I got here" in it, and included the fact that Peterson's Genesis lectures were 1) incomprehensible to me when I tried to watch them as the first thing of his I had seen, and then 2) a very useful step in my process of realizing "oh, maybe there's some there there when it comes to religion". And oh yeah, seeing happy, jokey JBP was pretty weird after some of his portrayal as angriest man on the planet or his own grimness in some more recent stuff.

2) Well, I ended up reading every post in the archive of Hotel Concierge instead of doing other work I should have been doing, and my assessment stands - a lot there that is consonant in places with other thinking I have found helpful, a lot of helpfully different takes on stuff I care about, and a handful of "huh, I never thought of that" moments, so thank you again for the recommendation. I'm just sad he hasn't posted anything new in so long.

3) On JMG's commentariat, yeah, you're definitely right there. Even if everyone involved were utterly devoid of hero-worship, sycophantism, in-group policing, or the other shitty behaviors of cults of personality (and as you say, it very much is free to a blessed degree of such things), there's a lack of other vectors of potentially relevant information, and that's sad. Because even if all the information shared is great, there's still got to be vast swathes of interesting stuff from people and fields that just happen not to have noticed JMG or vice versa.

4) Oh, hah, I hadn't forgotten to mention that influence from ESR after all! And I'm not sure on ESR writing an occult book - if you had asked me 5 or 6 years ago I would have said "HELL YES!" I think if you do a site-search of his blog for a few juicy search terms like "neopagan", "ritual", "zen", or "meditation" and then look through the comment threads, he's maybe said a touch more on his thinking, but the basic impression I get is that he is firmly in the little-r "rationalist" camp, has scorn for "mysterians" (folks who believe in non-material causes that affect material reality), and evaluates any "mystic practices" (his seemingly preferred term) on their compatibility with that worldview. Further, he's made a few comments that make it seem like they're not a huge focus for him - he does zazen for its clarity and serenity, occasional neopagan rituals for the emotional fulfillment and bonding, and that's most of what I can remember him talking about. The adjacent topics where I think he might be most interesting would be his epistemology and his experience with altered awareness in martial arts.

[deketemoisont]

1) "an extremely uncharitable review a friend of mine shared with me" - Do you remember how to find it?

"Incidentally, a previous draft of this post had a lot more of my "how I got here" in it" - And why did you go to the trouble of cutting it? :) (OK, it may've been too personal.)

"happy, jokey JBP (...) angriest man on the planet" - I saw the first first - and his largely female students (or at least the ones laughing were largely female, but we know how it is in psychology these days) laughing at his jokes - clearly a man who despises women and beats his wife and daughter every day, you know!

2) "Well, I ended up reading every post in the archive of Hotel Concierge instead of doing other work I should have been doing" - Sorry for that part!

"I'm just sad he hasn't posted anything new in so long." - Same here.

3) "there's still got to be vast swathes of interesting stuff from people and fields that just happen not to have noticed JMG or vice versa." - I think that for other occultists using the Internet in English, to not have noticed JMG at all is pretty hard; but for us to get something through his blogs, it'd be a matter of him noticing the others (much easier for him not to, maintaining large conversations with his own readers and preferring to read dead people), or his readers (about which I commented previously).

4) "the basic impression I get is that he is firmly in the little-r "rationalist" camp, has scorn for "mysterians" (folks who believe in non-material causes that affect material reality), and evaluates any "mystic practices" (his seemingly preferred term) on their compatibility with that worldview" - You think I wouldn't take a book on magic from someone with that perspective (sure, not my ideal these days) as smart and unconventional as he is?

"they're not a huge focus for him" - Yes, that's true; however, he supposedly invented some Wicca stuff back then, some of which he might still use sometimes? (A Wiccan I'd listen to! OK, JMG's commentariat has at least 2 - ritaer and Deborah Bender.)

"epistemology and his experience with altered awareness in martial arts" - Well, and if *that* is the non-hacking subject he could be convinced to write a book about ... it's not as if Meditations on Violence isn't one of my (even on a very short list) favorite books.

[jprussell]

1) It was "The Intellectual We Deserve" from Current Affairs, a quick search of my text message history tells me.

2) Naw, that's fine, I think it was worth it

3) Fair enough, though I've adopted something of a heuristic like "folks I'm interested in probably aren't as well-known as I assume" - obviously that applies less within their particular field, but sometimes I'm surprised, like I meet a science fiction fan that's never heard of Neal Stephenson.

4) Yeah, I'd also still be thrilled to read such a book, I just reckon I'd find it far less helpful than I would have five or six years ago.

And hah! Meditations on Violence is great. I don't know how short a list of favorite books it would go on, and I haven't read it in like 10 years, but I remember it being great. I'd also pre-order an ESR book on such topics the moment I could.

[deketemoisont]

Thanks for the link!