Synthetic living is manifested by being situationally aware which requires us to be self-aware. To do so, we must stop placing our own feelings and sense of identity at the center of every situation.
Add to it the self-help industry, churches, and the entertainment industry. What you have is a huge culture for the promotion of narcissism and borderline personality disorder. I don’t think most people in those industries are “aware” that their message is promoting something so destructive. The antidote is to recognize that suffering in life is not evil, but normal, and source of real awareness about ourselves and the world.
It's interesting that this sort of 'wisdom' inflected conclusion would get you branded as Nazi-adjacent in some quarters. That's another problem in the culture
Yes. Exactly what I want. The old binary of natural and artificial does work. Particularly when high fructose corn syrup is treated as natural and non-sugar sweeteners like Stevia are considered artificial. Even my reality vs. simulation is a difficult comparison. It is a test. Because I want a different way of talking about the way Hegel talked which no longer really applies in a culture where non-materiality is used as the lever against the patriarchy of the old Enlightenment materiality. This is why I see that this moment in time is not just a cultural transition from the modern to the postmodern, but a historical one at a multiple millennial level. I am questioning the assumptions that been in place for four or five thousand years. This is what the next book, most likely, will be about. It has been five years since Circle of Impact was published. All the clues to where this is going are there. The irony is that I see myself repeating the way science and philosophy in the past experienced breakthroughs in innovation. A lot of those men and women were not doing it in an institutional context. They were doing it in their spare time as they did other things. For my whole career, I have seen institutional culture as the obstacle to innovation and discovery. So, all these ideas like emergence, iteration, whole-ism, and my toying with Synthetic, is a quest to understand what follows the collapse of the modern institution. But that is just a marker of change, not the essential change that matters. That change has more to do with us as human beings. Writing on Substack is kind of like a signal tower. I’m looking to see who notices. Thank you for your question. I have not articulated what I am doing yet. You gave me the opportunity to do it.
Self-awareness. No wonder it isn't taught in school.
Add to it the self-help industry, churches, and the entertainment industry. What you have is a huge culture for the promotion of narcissism and borderline personality disorder. I don’t think most people in those industries are “aware” that their message is promoting something so destructive. The antidote is to recognize that suffering in life is not evil, but normal, and source of real awareness about ourselves and the world.
It's interesting that this sort of 'wisdom' inflected conclusion would get you branded as Nazi-adjacent in some quarters. That's another problem in the culture
Excellent. Synthetic is a bit of a double edged word for me. When I read it, I get connotations of "artificial", like "synthetic biology".
Yes. Exactly what I want. The old binary of natural and artificial does work. Particularly when high fructose corn syrup is treated as natural and non-sugar sweeteners like Stevia are considered artificial. Even my reality vs. simulation is a difficult comparison. It is a test. Because I want a different way of talking about the way Hegel talked which no longer really applies in a culture where non-materiality is used as the lever against the patriarchy of the old Enlightenment materiality. This is why I see that this moment in time is not just a cultural transition from the modern to the postmodern, but a historical one at a multiple millennial level. I am questioning the assumptions that been in place for four or five thousand years. This is what the next book, most likely, will be about. It has been five years since Circle of Impact was published. All the clues to where this is going are there. The irony is that I see myself repeating the way science and philosophy in the past experienced breakthroughs in innovation. A lot of those men and women were not doing it in an institutional context. They were doing it in their spare time as they did other things. For my whole career, I have seen institutional culture as the obstacle to innovation and discovery. So, all these ideas like emergence, iteration, whole-ism, and my toying with Synthetic, is a quest to understand what follows the collapse of the modern institution. But that is just a marker of change, not the essential change that matters. That change has more to do with us as human beings. Writing on Substack is kind of like a signal tower. I’m looking to see who notices. Thank you for your question. I have not articulated what I am doing yet. You gave me the opportunity to do it.
I have heard before.
Ed — deep again! Deep, deep, deep. Love it. So much to unpack — looking forward to chatting… I'll drop you an email now…