[Main Blog Post] My Spiritual Path

[jprussell]

So, I'm with some of my kinfolk for the holiday weekend, and I didn't wrap up the editing I was hoping to do before getting here. As such, I want to post something on time, but I may make some edits in the next few days. At any rate, this is a walkthrough of the beliefs I've had over the years, and how they got me to where I am now. This might be super self-indulgent, but I'd like to hear what you think.

As I said, I might make some edits, but in the meantime, let me have it.

Comments

[thinking_turtle]

Thanks for the ESR links! He writes "truth is what makes the future less surprising". He must define truth as a model of reality. So there can be multiple truths with varying degrees of truthfulness. I thought truth was reality itself, infinitely more complex than the human mind can hold, and something that makes the future more surprising.

The other essay says "The religiously inclined can believe in that perfect observer and identify it with God". Not sure what to make of that. I'm sure Thor can't predict what Odin will do. That God is all-knowing means you can't have secrets from God, not that God knows everything and can predict the future.

A spectacle's material presence consists of ink, sound waves or pixels. These are what you can sense. Yet when you listen to radio news, you do not think about the voice, but about the mental image that the spectacle projects. Most people are occupied by these images most of the time.

That struck me as I was sewing a red bag, per the Magic Monday FAQ. It's so unusual to to create a thing. We mostly buy commodities!

[jprussell]

On ESR and Truth: yeah, I think he's using "truth" as shorthand for "what can we know and state confidently with a rigorous epistemology." A lot of his thinking was shaped by Korzybski's General Semantics, and since then he has said he has a lot in common with the Rationalist folks from LessWrong.

And as for the the all-knowing God, I think he was going for the most extreme version of omniscience in order to make the point of what an "outside perfect observer" could be, in service of making his wider point.

On spectacle: oh yeah, defintely. That's one thing I like about the occult philosophy JMG has introduced me to - it helps to make that distinction very clear and gives a good, solid way to think about it. It is perhaps one of the ironies of the modern world that so many folks spend so much time immersed in the non-material, but if you asked them what they believe about the world, they'd say that only the material world is real.

On making things: very much so! It really is shocking how meaningful it is to make something with your hands when you almost never do so. I'm always pleasantly surprised by how great it feels to do something crafty, even if I'm not very good at it.

[thinking_turtle]

Likewise, real-life crafting is not my strong point, yet it feels very meaningful.

Thanks for your reply, and looking forward to the next post!