I want to coin a new term: Mogger. It's short for Moron+Blogger. The first thing I want you to understand is that I think this is practically redundant. (Actually, Bloron has a better ring to it.) Writing is one thing. Bloggers write. What constitutes something worth reading, however, is not just based on it's writing. There are plenty of good and bad writers in journalism. Just as there are plenty of good and bad writers in blogging. So I can't fault bloggers for what they write. Instead, it... read more

In a CD series on philosophy I am listening to, the lecturer has arrived at Descartes and is describing one of Descartes fundamental assertions that he developed after the Cogito. Though there is some uncertainly described in the lecture as to whether Descartes really takes any such position, what follows is the lecturers point in his discussion of Descartes.

The position is that there must be some type of innate knowledge that is not based on sensory experience, because if there were not... read more

(I found the following in a journal from around 2001)

A new concept of the word destiny came into my head this morning as I thought about things. I was feeling good and thinking that it’s “all OK. EVERYTHING’s OK. (I was feeling good, after all.) Everything’s good. It doesn’t matter about the alcoholism.in the world and all the alcoholics that are out there and all the ones I personally know and have as family members because it’s God’s plan, it’s God’s way."

This immediately transform... read more

"were it not for impermanence, everything would be changing" ...

inspired by Sherpa

I am studying a lecture series on the great ideas in philosophy. In the first lectures, the Homeric epics and early Hellenic thought are examined. The lecturer makes a point that in the epics "what divides humanity and divinity is mortality; otherwise, there is much that they have in common, including little power over destiny itself." As I reflected on the first phrase in this statement, it occured to me that today, by contrast, we have more differences between our view of humans and our vie... read more

i added a section of 15 links to youtube videos i crave.

Several are SRV -- Stevie Ray Vaughan -- check out the one titled "srv (life without you) amazing" -- goosebumps -- freak -- i cry every time. Wahhh. Stevie, I miss you!!!UI!#U!I##*U#*$ ( @&* #$

greetings to any iCompadres who are reading this,

i seem to be able to satisfy myself where it comes to my career. but i seem unable to satisfy myself where it comes to my love life. now, i do realize it takes two to tango. so what i mean of course is i am the problem -- i am, paradoxically, disinterested in the very activity that would bring about a love live in the first place -- engaging the world of potential mates. i wonder if i were able to muster in the personal arena whither my pro... read more

As I grew up, I learned about seances, mind-reading, the I-Ching, the Tarot, astrology, numerology, channeling, telekinesis, telepathy, and all the other Kreskinesque and Yuri Gellar spoon-bending, mind-flapping utter horseshit one can shake a divining rod at. I was enamored of all of this stuff, and spent a lot of time reading about it and studying it in an attempt to master some of the alchemy of our day. I used my special powers to locate lost keys and spent nights astrally projecting myse... read more

The first booklist (and its addendum) was posted in Jan 06 and updated in Mar 07. It is now May 08 and I have an update. The problem with any list like this is it doesn't show the hundreds of textbooks and journal articles I have read in the past 5 years. (Picture is Daniel Dennett.)

Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality by Freud (1905)
On Narcissism: An Introduction by Freud (1913)
The Ego and The Id by Freud (1923)
Psychology and the Soul by Otto Rank (1930)
Memories, Dreams, Ref... read more

As a mental health worker, i spend a great deal of my face time with patients helping people make adjustments to their thinking.

I think that what makes the people i work with troubled in the first place is that perhaps they have glimpsed one of the components of truth. They have, in a sense, come too close to reality.

One version of the truth comprises the following. First, our existence is profoundly ephemeral. In geologic time, our death horizon is in the same blip as our birth. Sec... read more

actually, i almost never truly blog. but this is one. i needed to register a prediction. in the campaigns of barrack obama, the democratic nominee (prediction) versus mccain, there will be some form of race war (prediction) ... not necessarily waged on the streets ... but some form of racial showdown ... and it will be angry, senseless, dim-witted urban black mayhem versus angry, senseless, dim-witted redneck white mayhem wrestling to a stalemate.

ugly, ugly, ugly. i hope it doesn't happen... read more

is the picture of glacier national park beautiful or hideous? if you said beautiful, realize it is only possible because the earth warmed and the glacier that had been the picture many years ago is now melted. did global warming create this valley?

did we do that? (of course, we have not caused this in man's history, but what of future valleys that are today covered by the ice that our carbon emissions are melting?)

if we in this human era melt a glacier thus creating a similar view, ca... read more

if man is god-made, nothing man makes can be unnatural, so the phrase "man-made vs. natural" is nonsense.

in reality, since god only exists in the mind of man, god is one of the only things that is man-made, along with time, good & evil, etc. everything else, including nature and the man-made physical things such as tricycles and hampers, are natural.

so "man-made or natural?" is a non-sequitur, in most cases; humans occus in nature, therefore anything man-made is natural, but we look a... read more

this was my final drawing (click on it to get a closer look)

I had so much fun playing with my 7 month old grand-niece. She is so full of giggles and love right now. I already miss her! Awwww. Just sitting on the floor with her and letting her play with my face and clothes while giving her a million love kisses ... ooooooh.

My God, what's come over me! I'm in Love! Thanksgiving is wonderful! Many grateful returns ... izzy

Another fantasy drawn against the still life studies. (Purposefully drawn rotated 90 degrees).

... based on one of the prior stil life studies.

Still life using (for the first time) both contour line and tone (value). Drawn on charcoal paper (drill down for more detail)

i missed posting the previous drawing .. a pumpkin, i'll post it next

new skill level every week ... i have a teacher who i think is awesome

i started a drawing class. this is the result of about 2 months practice. my first class in drawing ever.

Is there evidence of God outside the mind of human-kind? Is the existence of God only within the mind of human-kind sufficient to say that God exists? Do hallucinations exist? The content of a hallucination does not exist. But that something is hallucinated is fairly certain. But does that make it real?

Can a non-physical entity exist? If the answer is no, then if God exists, God must be physical.

Is time physical? It is neither matter nor energy. Is it more than an idea? Yes. How about... read more

I can't remember what I had for breakfast on Saturday. Memory doesn't work that way. If I try to remember what I had for breakfast, I usually start by listing recognizable breakfast foods, or in my case, restaurants that serve breakfast, until I create an association that instantiates a recall.

Nor can I remember the emotions I had the first time I danced socially at Dick Chaplin Studios when I was seven years old and dancing with a girl for the first time. Memory doesn't work that way eit... read more

What the world needs now
is love, sweet love.
It's the only thing
that there's just too little of.
What the world needs now
is love, sweet love.
No, not just for some,
but for everyone.

Surrender, Rosie. You who have mistaken mean-spiritedness for conviction, vitriol for argument, and combustion for contrariness.

You are at best a sad, personality-disordered spectacle. At worst, you are an acrid media whore. So please surrender. I see no other hope for your recovery.

Love,
... read more

stream of consciousness stream of con don't con me poodle muffins i don't want you to think that i know what i'm going to say or that i know what you are thinking but that you might be thinking is entertaining in and of itself things in and of themselves is an interesting statement unto itself i don't i mean i'm not sure what it even means living life on life's terms is another one of those phrases another such phrase as it were would you like to peek inside my trousers exclaimed mister johns... read more

This morning I awoke in new digs and in a new town. I rented a room in the Marin county home of a Brazilian woman. She occupies the master suite and there is a third roommate -- a woman from South Dakota who rents the room next to mine. The house is nice; it overlooks a harbor across the street. I think I see the house on the left side of this picture.

I got dressed and found the Brazilian woman rushing though breakfast in the kitchen. Using a time tested technique which combines a thimble... read more

So with existentialism pushing us forward, what shape do our personalities take as they begin to move? For the answer, we turn to object relations, which is a general theory that describes how we, instead of developing a personality, essentially borrow our first one. The formative idea from object relations is that the nascent personality’s development precedes separation and individuation. In the phase when the infant first realizes she is a separate entity from her mother, she has psycholog... read more

We next seek ways in which to describe the phenomenological experience of being human beyond the reach of the hard sciences. My way of viewing human development is centrally informed by two theories. These are existential psychology and the object relations branch of psychoanalysis. I feel that of all the theories, existentialism and object relations do the best job of explaining exactly why we all are just the way we are. Existentialism has many useful ideas of which I am only going to focus... read more

Freud, who wrote and rewrote the story of who he was as the first therapist over his lifetime, endeavored to explain human behavior in universals. In so doing, he always first turned to explanations from human biology. Of his own theory of libidinal energy (as it relates to primary narcissism), Freud (1913/1989) wrote:

... we must recollect that all our provisional ideas in psychology will presumably some day be based on an organic substructure. This makes it probable that it is special su... read more

The job is going great. It's intensimundo. I've never felt so alive. This is an experience I never expected. The difference is what I am doing now and anything else is far greater than I had imagined it would be. I mean, I could certainly wish for it to be *better?* in certain ways, such as more pay, less stressful, more or less whatever ... but as far as pure excitement, it is unparalleled. My boss has already decided to have me solo this one afternoon group that meets 3 times a week from 2 ... read more

Wow, it was way better than robbing a bank, unless you count the money part. It was awesome. I walked in at 8:30 Monday a.m. and into a staff meeting where they discuss all the clients. (Turns out there were 5 such meetings this week -- one each morning at 8:30.) Then I was introduced to all the clients at the Monday community meeting, a once a week event with all staff and residents. From there, the week was filled with group therapy sessions, individual counseling sessions, education sessio... read more

In the fall of 2003, some 3 and half years ago now, I found myself in the autumn of my career as a software test engineer. In that career, I ran the gamut from succeeding wildly to failing utterly. It was a career I never picked. It picked me. I was adrift one day and somebody asked me if I wanted to work for a software company. I said sure. Then I went to work and later found out what a software company was.

44 months, ago, I looked for what was next, and I decided I would fulfill a drea... read more

I want to do the hardest damn trail there is.
I want to do days that are too long, ascents that are too steep, scrambles that are too dangerous,
Because if I'm not doing the hardest thing there is,
then I'm not even on this trip.
I'm not even alive.
I don't even exist.

It's how we live our lives. "You're going to be hurt by fat, cholesterol, saccharine, and birds," we hear. Maybe birds is a falsehood, but we still hear it. Maybe cholesterol is something, because we're genetically predetermined, that doesn't apply to us. So we say, "you can't go around being afraid of everything." Because we're over-warned, we lose impetus, we lose motivation, for *caution*. The boy who cried wolf comes to mind.

So now, fat and saccharine, or SARS and oysters, or what-hav... read more

you can debate this. i don't plan to debate anyone because i am neither an expert logician nor philosopher, nor jungian, nor debater.

i post this simply to share a bit of my thinking which impressed itself upon me. this thinking has been revelatory for me, as a skeptic and a materialist. jung, in MDR proved logically, to me at least, that the personal unconscious exists. what i share is a logical, if novice and inexact (you'll see), explanation of why the collective unconscious is certainl... read more

SF Mayor Gavin Newsome and Rep. Mark Foley - sexual misconduct plus alcoholic admission.

I think there are two things happening, both real. One is the politcal escape, in which an alcoholic, sex-addicted person (the concomitance rate on those are probably startling), hides the more shameful of the two behind the other. Both issues are real. And even though I assume this to be true, I can't help but feel it is a despicable dodge! Not so?!

The other phenomenon is just the alcoholic hitti... read more

... but then i forgot to write it down. (just kidding)

i was reading Aristotle where he says something to the effect that our purpose is to do what we do best. then i was reading his position on happiness. then i did some thinking of my own. and, from there, i somehow managed to draw this conclusion, which has left me hollow inside:

humankind's purpose is to be happy in fulfilling our role as preservationists of the Earth and quite possibly soon, the general caretaking of the solar syst... read more