a collection of further writings

excerpts of related ideas



-oswald spengler (addition 1/8/24)


your personality is the same as your limit on an understanding of what "everything" means

5/12/23 the type of emotions you are capable of feeling determines above all other factors what your ideological/philisophical worldview can be. most people aren't aware that they have a spectrum of emotions, they only imagine that there exists a spectrum of emotions.
7/14/23 addition; a spectrum of emotions which we imagine everyone falls on, we imagine any different experience of things to just be somewhere else on the same spectrum of emotions we feel. not that the same experiences are fundementally part of a different world entirely, where every emotion is felt in a different way and all things have a completely different context to exist in that nothing between the two is the same at all, except for in how two different emotions and internal experiences can make us externally respond in the same way.


web2.0 has literally ruined the ability to understand anything before or outside of itself. like the world itself has changed so much and become so superficial and homogenized to the point that its like mental pollution is causing niche emotional worldviews to go extinct.
Pre-web2.0 art is going extinct even though it’s still physically preserved because it’s no longer possible to experience correctly



7/4/23 thinking about all the pre-internet and early internet emotions which have gone extinct. emotions you can never feel again. like waking up from a dream with the most complex and unique world of experiences and emotions you've never felt in your entire life before and will never feel again, and suddenly realizing you cant remember if you ever even had a dream in the first place, it feels more like you're just going crazy imagining it. it was all there just a few seconds ago. the last thing you remember was simply laying down to sleep the night before. that whole world just vanished, a world of a million unique emotions gone forever. you cant even be sure it was ever there.




Is your green the same as... your old green? From when you were a child? Maybe literally, but not in any other way.

5/2/23 I think the classic philosophical dilemma of "how do I know your red is the same as my red, what if you see red the way I see blue?" applies to our psychology and fundamental experience of the world more than we are capable of expressing, especially when we realize we are not even connected to our own experiences as soon as the smallest aspect of yourself changes. As time passes and we experience different worlds and cultures We go through times of experiences we will never be able to experience or understand again. We almost always imagine these intuitively as chronological, as eras of our life, and when we look back to them from a distance we call it nostalgia but the reality is that they are more of a place, our mental world, and we are wandering without even knowing there is such thing as steering, and even when we try to change anything, we will only find ourselves as an individual living through history and within our environment, being swept by cultural currents almost impossible to fight against or even see. And when we don’t see these internal worlds as a chronology but as a place of the human ego within consciousness, it's likely from contrasting life against only a single experience, when we come home from a trip somewhere, when we escape from the metropolis into nature, when we emerge from a great story, when we awake from a dream or escape Plato's cave. But there is no "outside", there is definitely a direction to strive for, there is better culture and personalities, but ultimately the worlds are infinite, they are literally as infinite as anything that the mind could imagine.



5/4/23 I’m thinking about the concept of being “different friends to different people” where you have a different personality depending on what friend or friend group you’re in, your personality adapts depending on what their personality is like. But it makes me wonder, if everyone does the same thing, there’s definitely lots of cases where two people could have had many different personalities towards eachother, depending on more random variables around how they met, neither of them knew it but the personality they think they need to preform to be friends could have been any one of a whole bunch of other personalities instead. “I’m this way because I thought you were this way, well I’m this way because I thought you were” makes me nervous to realize that when I talk to new people, I’m not just meeting them, but actually creating the person I will talk to. It feels like a little too much free will, choosing who I want to be is already so hard, how do I choose the personality of a new person/group of people? Also I feel obligated to say I imagine this ties into the gedankenwelt.




6/5/23 you dont choose yourself as a person within a strata of your own, you assume there exists a world, and then choose yourself within it. The person you might really want to be may not exist in your world.

the obvious examples of worlds being something like the world of the phyiscal location you exist in, the world of the generation you exist in, or the world of the social media, and internet subculture you exist in. All worlds of their own social circle, worldview, aesthetics, mythos. Even in wanting to be a person from outside this world, you will find yourself yearning twoards that personality, that identity, distinctly as someone /not/ from it's world.

what really bothers me is seeing, mostly on social media, that however much anyone ever tries to reach for embodying some imagined version of themselves or for some worldview or some expereince that is individuated from those around them, they only ever have it in the language and aesthetics of their world.

Like someone on twitter sruggling to capture in words something I know to be culturally gored beyond revival in the spheres of socialization of twitter. Someone wishing, while still remaining ignorant of their world, that they could be shown more of or be able to appreciate things which require longer format than twitter allows, or wishes for twitter to market them the atmosphere and personality of an old internet which was destroyed by twitter, which is mutually exclusive with twitter.


Another very specific example that bothers me is tiktok's hand in steering horror content. The whole brand is completely antithetical to any sense of atmosphere, authenticity and believability, or long-form entertainment to draw in suspense, and generally anything else you could say makes horror good. Yet somehow tiktok has become a hub for filtering and dispersing vast swaths of the horror content now created on the internet, all the while it scoops up the would-be fanbases of horror, and drains them of good taste. The content gets worse, and as the tiktok audience notices, they ask eachother where all the good content went, they ask why they cant find anything that feels the same. They want tiktok to "go back" to a style of content it never created in the first place, to go back to an atmosphere which tiktok had never cultivated. They simply expect it to be possible if they find the right way to do it. They cant see tiktok as mutually exclusive to what they want, or that to change the site to be good for horror content [any content actually] would be like the ship of theseus, it wouldnt be tiktok anymore. Unable to see the world that they are in, unable to stop projecting their assumptions about this in-world to the outside world, they search elsewhere for the good content, only their "elsewhere" is simply some other part of tiktok. They are simply drawn to new trends while kept running in place.

I should stop focusing my writings on social media so much, my point is that these things are universal, and the worlds restrict individuation within any culture or subculture or social circle


i do see this even when learning about cultural movements from past decades and centuries, people feeling trapped in a certain zeitgeist and wishing for a revolution in (or escape from) aesthetics and mythos etc. because there is some cloudy idea they are striving to experience or exress more clearly

What bothers me is the knowledge that I am in the very same position, and i can't have the outside knowledge to know where to turn next, I'm not even guarenteed that there even is any mental/cultural world to flee to, or if I will only ever find new cultural spheres where i can keep running in place while i think i'm searching for what is actually good. For the internet, more than the tangable world, I'm sure this is increasingly, objectively true. That is what the algorithms are for, after all.

7/30/23 Someone said that they’re sick of “this cultural moment” and someone else said it felt like changing channels on cable tv when you know it’s all the same cable.



3/24/23 After pondering a lot of neuroscience/psychology videos and articles, in addition to just my own experience, I’m convinced that an environmental change as simple as rearranging furniture could make you change in ideology, or at least it leaves you open to lots of fundamental changes in your worldview. Simply because you grow patterns of thought which are tied to environmental awareness. Your brain becomes shaped around physical objects, there doesn’t need to be a specific reason for a certain environmental factor to evoke a way of thinking, it’s just that your brain gets used to thinking in patterns, and disrupting an environment which you feel mentally integrated into causes your brain to refresh and try to make some new connections, as it needs to adjust to the outside world

5/27 when you're physically stuck, you're mentally stuck, you're not as free inside your mind as you think. The tangable world around you very arbitrarly guides your thoughts. I think i meant to describe something similar in my draft entry on 3/24

Feng shui feels made up, until suddenly it feels very real. You realize how a physical environment effects your mind. This room feels like an alien world, and through these kinds of small changes you can find everything to be just as alien, you can find an entirely new world.

I mentioned this online back when i made my other draft entry (specifically using an example of furnature as an environment), and a mutual commented that this sounded like feng shui, i've heard the expression but never actually knew what it was, after researching it, it does really seem interesting and relevant. (It's actually suprising to me that what i was trying to describe was already so close to such a well known concept). However i think that what i'm trying to describe isnt just physical in the sense of tangable objects making up an environment, but is also combined with the sensation of "physical" in the sense of motion. Think for example; taking a walk to "clear your mind" (i want to take this chance to mention the relevant term "volta" as a known concept). Maybe "clearing" isnt how I'd describe it, its really like roaming your mind. With absolutely no effort or intention, new ideas just appear already formed in your mind like magic. The moving through physical environment moves you mentally, as every part of your mental world is arbitrarly tied to your physical surroundings, especially to the extent that you form habits and routine in the presence of specific environments. It seems like the brain can't process abstract concepts without tying them in some subliminal way to our long-evolved ability to understand the physical world or tangable experiences.
Think of how you go on autopilot or become forgetful when you exist in relation to some specific thing or place. You feel or think something once while you experience something, it could be a place or even something like a song, and then whenever you go to that place or listen to that part of a song again you are primed to stick to the same cycle of thoughts and emotions over and over again. Instead of simply experiencing, you add layers on top. You dont even need anything to reinforce or condition this, your brain always tries to anchor every abstract thought and emotion to physical places, things, or actions. I think I noticed the most strongly during quarentine when I spent nearly every hour and every day in the exact same spot on my couch, and when I stared off into space I saw the exact same wall, the same edges and corners, the frame around closet, the shelf. As that same view became burned in my mind, every single thought and emotion became burned in too, it was hard not to just think in circles. That effect is constant in life even when it's not so obvious, even when it's not for a year but just for a few days, even if our view is a walk, we feel the same if its the same walk, if it's the same drive to school, or drive to work.

7/15/23 You have difficult conversations in the car because the words get left behind with the physical world, the scenery that's constantly dissapearing behind you. When you stop you get trapped and uncomfortable. A similar thing might be said of the conversations had while looking over rolling by waves or flickering fire. The impermanence of the physical moves through the impermanence of a thought.

8/16/23 there truly is no way to actually convey anything. the only reality is coexperience. no more digital medium of conveyence anymore, i dont want to be dependent on a method that will never work. i want to coexperience again. i need people physically present to coexperience reality. Art will never fully work. we just have to experience it all together. (8/18/23 add) but where are those people, if not also trapped in the same place! nobody is waiting outside to greet anyone, if you escape you are alone!

Nothing has any atmosphere anymore because everywhere is actually just the phone

(8/18/23 add) go anywhere, with or without technology, and in your mind it will only be the exact same place you are digitally. go somewhere meant to have it's own atmosphere and yet you will still be in the same cultural moment. the mobile feed has caused a psychological change where any physical location is no longer seperate from the emotion of the outside world. you can experience a uniform feed of stimulation anywhere, your spacial and temporal reasoning no longer links with emotions, how is this space different from anywhere else in the mind? you're primed to feel the same no matter what. you can escape to nature, but it will still be there cluttering up you mind, you will not move between different feelings like you used to be able to, now that feelings are no longer about time or place. It feels like tinnitus, you just hear this whining noise, you can't hear the silence anymore even as you escape the noise.

Every religion contains "everything", except other religions, which also contain everything. Even outside religion, our worlds of “everything” work the same way.

On the early internet, a lot of people were inspired by the shocking wealth of information to create aesthetics that captured the everything-ness of using the internet, of course now, from *our* worldview of everything, their aesthetic and worldview is not "everything" but just a kind of "old internet" aesthetic.

(Shouldnt "everything" also include some quiet rural hills?)

Personality, again, (of an individual, of a culture, of an era) is the same as it's limit on understanding what "everything" means.

10/17/23 if you actually combine every genre well enough you just get real life. genres are just what would happen if you removed everything except a choice spectrum of emotions that follow a certain personality, and every personality being the expression of a subconscious philosophy. genre exists because there is a mutual exclusivity between experiencing different spectrums of emotion, or having different personalities or philosophies within one person- despite the emotions and personalitites and philosophies coexisting in the world outside of the individual. real life is a conbination of emotions that cannot coexist within one person, this poses a limit on our sense of everything, which is why for one thing i feel we are supposed to become different people, and rather than finding a definite philosophy there are different philosophies we live at different times just as we get to experience more of the world by constantly changin our personality and leaving behind our old personality. A 7 year old should not have the same philosphy as a 70 year old, we intuitively know this, but does this mean only one of them is correct? no, or at least if the 7 year old is wrong about how the world works then they are meant to be wrong, they are meant to understand their world, not the world.

5/4/23 In life, you come across increasingly great realizations or discoveries, these change our worldview, both in terms of what emotions and experiences we are capable of having, our worldview from a social circle, our worldview from a greater cultural circle and in terms of our more conscious ideas, our ideological worldview. This change of our worldview, that is our internal psychological world and lived experience, means the destruction or transformation of our current worldview (gedankenwelt). Our world becomes our personality. And the growth of the world means the destructive act of deciding how to dispose of old ideas to account for our discovery, this becomes harder as the world becomes more complex, and especially as it determines our personality, especially because we invest socially and physically in who we are, and do not want to lose these investments.

In this sequence of increasingly great discoveries and revelations that make up life, these things which destroy and overwrite our old selves and old mentalities, there almost inevitably comes something which is absolute, some discovery or revelation which is superlative within our(as an individual) world. Some experience which is "world-changing", which "shatters our reality" something that changes who we are as a person. It's not a change of our world, but a changing between worlds.

(addition 1/8/24) Demian: Die Geschichte von Emil Sinclairs Jugend (1919)


Most people limit themselves to only one, or maybe two entirely world-changing moments in life. They live incomplete lives looking for (or at least stumbling upon) more discovery, and then they find some specific great truth which is superlative.

This greatest truth, is in fact only the greatest yet, and in addition it is only the greatest within a worldview. It's hard to believe that after the entire world is shattered, there is still more to discover. How can there possibly be something left after something encompasses everything, after something demands a reevaluation of all values? But before this worldview was the greatest truth, there was something else instead, and before that there was something else within our incomplete worldview that was the greatest truth. For something to encompass everything means the end of growth, we reach the limit of discovering a certain worldview.

We have incomplete worldviews as we develop and seek discovery, but for most people it only makes sense that superlitive truth is the end of growth, it's too difficult to completely destroy and reinvent our world after we complete it (or are in the proccess of completion under a guiding truth), and without an outside force, some broader cultural current, some force of historical proportions, most people will never grow again.

>For example, every major religion in the world is self-superlative, within its many interpretations all provide their own absolute and complete worldviews. Religions can answer everything, and from that perspective, there can never be any real question or escape or change in worldview without destruction of what is already the highest truth, without complete undoing of the world and self.
But all these religions of the world, all meant to be either completely infallible, or all-encompassing, or at least provide a set of highest truths (which an individual can always guide themselves with), are in competition with each other, they have separate truths. You could endlessly convert to new systems of belief and say that from your new understanding of the world, this is the highest truth, you could infinitely self-destroy and perceive growth. And even if you were to stray from religion, from thought experiments which are non-falsifiable, the same process could apply to secular philosophy.
And to take this ever further, what applies to most people is that even if without (or independent of) religion or philosophy, your experience of everyday life and your personality can be continually readapted to new personalities, new aesthetics of life, new things you consume, new "eras'' of life, you can switch subcultures and change as you follow trends, you can endlessly consume the concept of having a personality, and from within any of them say that *this* is the superlative version.



5/3/23 I think I've been unusually willing to pick up and drop literally any idea or emotion (unintentionally). It keeps me from creating a personality or identity but allows me to much better explore a mental landscape, and by extension, artistic, cultural, philosophical and other landscapes as well. I know it's natural for most people to grow but it definitely seems that most people would have found ideas they could stick to better by now. It seems like at least one of the things that define me should have stayed the same, either something surface level which doesn't matter enough to change, or some deep held belief which is too important to let go of. But nothing has really stuck yet, and it makes me even more skeptical of every new thing I find myself believing or experiencing. I can't help but stop and feel that no matter who I am, what world I mentally live in, it's only a matter of time before I change my mind. There's simply too many mental worlds to commit to, choosing any one means committing so wholly that I don’t allow myself not to be bothered by what may lie beyond my chosen self, my chosen image of the world. There's too many people to be, but too late I discover that not choosing is also a choice. At least it keeps me from falling into any one world. It would not surprise me if many of my ideas about the "gedankenwelt" come from me having a personality disorder, either way my writing about it stands on its own.

maybe it’s that my obsessive self-consciousness as i watch the breakdown of my “self” lets me see just a little outside the boundaries. I don’t think a personality disorder would count as biased in that sense.



https://canvas.oregonstate.edu/

i wonder if in part my realizations about mental worlds and personhood come from hating myself as both a person and as a way of seeing the world, from hating the sort of personality i pick up and seeing myself as a cultural artifact or world to escape from. -actually thats almost definetly part of why



people who know me may have grown comfortable associating me with certain things. believing that i have interests and beliefs which i can confidently call part of my personality. but ive always been afraid of letting myself really have a personality. if i chose the wrong thing, and then comitted to it- could i grow out of it again? Ive never been descicive about it, what im left with is a personality of least resistence, i have some passing interest in the things that (in the minds of those around me) make up who i am. but i dont know if i would have chosen any of these traits if i was given a choice again

with my beliefs as well- my philosphy and ideology- i have the same problem with being completely defined by indeciciveness. maybe i give a different impression when it comes to my emotions, how i sound during in-person conversation. but anything i believe, no matter how fundemental, i will completely doubt constantly. and anything that completely challenges my beliefs, or even outright attacks me as a person, i cant help but consider, im so curious, even empathetic to literally any philosophy or ideology, no matter how blatantly it should seem wrong. no matter how harsh or violent or destablizing of my self-image. its a way of thinking both easily suceptable to propaganda and completely immune to it. i'm just never decisive. in the end there's almost never any way to settle my ideas. theres only the ideas which find the path of least resistance in my everyday life (not that ive always had the emotional maturity to adhere to them)









1/6/24 the fundemental question is this; what emotions do we miss out on? how do these emotions effect our lives and cultures and those in turn effect how we are capable of judging philisophical values? Should we question not simply experiencing some part of our spectrum of emotions but instead rewiring our brains entirely, by being conscious of how we interface with the world, to become an entirely distinct new person, so completely new that we cannot even process emotions that "we" once felt? Because if we don't, then how do we naturally experience this process of self-dissociation and world-shattering in the course of our lives when we are not conscious of it? If we cannot be sure that people experience basic emotions of things like hapiness and sadness in the same way, it puts into question all of our moral values. We then are tasked with asking if there exist self constructs and mental worlds which be ascribed philisophical values, philosophy becomes not just a question of material condition or trancendental values, but of a self-determination of the very concept of experiencing the world, and questioning the concept of revelation itself.

The Slave