Ill start by saying i had to change the name because i remembered half way through writing that there was a substack article i read called

personal scriptures

the intimacy of never speaking again

The phrase devastates…

Read more

a year ago · 107409 likes · 435 comments · maisa

and ill add it was a great read but its only partly what im talking about today. still, I wont call it the intimacy of physical distance because. i wont.
This has to do with that phenomena, the intimacy behind never speaking again, but more specific:

this is the intimacy of physical distance.

theres something im refering to when i say the physical distance.
i mean not being able to be with someone at all.
i mean not being able to see them for extended periods of time.
I mean no communication.
Its like being locked in a basement, but its not that only similar, like a princess locked in a tower bound by fate to be saved. Bound by fate, how romantic, but what if fate weren’t bound and what if they didn’t get saved and instead the princess rotted to death in the tower. then what. then, thats pretty bad and it definatley wouldnt be a fairy tale and it certainly wouldn’t be an intimate for the princess. romantically at least... well, thats where i lay the first point.

Physical distance without the intimacy is a barrier. . so yea lets talk about letters for a minute.

i love letters mostly because im forced to sit and write them out by hand. Forced to read my handwriting im forced to care enough about what im writing because i actually have to write it out. i dont often write letters. But i love to. and when i did write letters i found it to be one of the most engaging means of communication. more so, when they didnt reply back but you knew they still got them. i wondered what they thought about. i wondered a lot about what they did with it. i did expect some back. i never got any back. How fun, to have extra media attached to communication.

fast forward to yesterday I was smoking during twilight when I noticed my roommate was home from vacation and I hadn’t texted them at all while they were on it. I didnt even think of them more than a handful of times, in the two weeks they were gone, because they hadn’t told me they were going on vacation. I didn’t care to ask how they were enjoying it because I didnt care, and good grief sometimes I also want to leave the civilized world behind and exist somewhere far away enough to actually be happy to come back and talk to people.

Im glad i didnt text them because i thought when people are away, let them be away. But damn, I was happy to talk with them when they were back. Overjoyed, actually. And with friends, when i dont see them in forever, im damn happy to see them again. to know their still alive and moving with the same time you have and experiencing the same calendar days you are, but all on their own trajectory that has nothing to do with yours. hearing about the lives that people had kept up to in years apart brings me lots of joy. im still childish in that way, thinking people dont change just becauase you dont see them changing. when i see it, sometimes it hits me in the face.

more important than friends however is ROMANCE. according to me at least, its not actually more important its just a different dimension i like to pay lots of attention to. so, this ones about experience. the physical intimacy of distance. i mean, the intimacy of physical distance. there we go.

I’ll start by saying i dont live with my partner but she stays with me for extended periods of time. usually a couple of days straight sometimes a week and a half. either way she always leaves and im glad when she does. not always, but im glad that we have our time apart. waking up together is my favorite activity, but embracing each other after the little dot of our lives drifted away from each other, the coming together is wonderful too. like a smacking of space time because the two dots of lives are close again. im thinking of this art piece i saw that illustrated the paths of relationships through lines of intimacy, with the one for a widow being apart, close and close for a long time, then one suddenly stopping.

And think about the intimacy from the first story, the princess in a tower who needs to be saved. the physical distance is evident, being locked in a high tower where nobody can reach you and communication is via screaming down the tower window, the intimacy of seeing a prince scaling your tower walls to save you must be overwhelming. in the same way, the intimacy of two people who cant be together wanting to be together can become overwhelming. the physical distance is nothing without intimacy, but with intimacy? The physical distance becomes like water where electricity flows through.

i mean, even if this quote only proves one thing, which is that someone said it once, im going to believe it happened once, and therefor it can happen again, and thats why im studying it. thats the sentence i wrote to myself before i started this essay.

Distance makes the heart grow fonder. its been said, its happened to me before, its happened to other people before since it happened to me, and its something that doesn’t exactly have a name. or maybe it does, let me find out. wait, is that not just yearning? Yea, it is. Physical distance and yearning, thats what i yearn for. and that brings me to my next point.

WHY ARE WE ALLOWED TO COMMUNICATE WITH PEOPLE WHENEVER WE WANT

The fact that i can call someone and wake them up is a disastrous consequence for the human species. i hate people if they call me earlier than — actually no, i really do just hate when people call me in general. especially if they dont have anything important that couldnt come in a text.
furthermore, i hate that i can text someone when i miss them because it breaks all the longing i have for them because of the physical distance. and as a poet, I REQUIRE YEARNING.
It is a necessary part of my diet, and I have not been yearning enough recently.
More on that another time, right now the point is real physical distance intimacy has three zones.

it has the intimacy of a barrier being crossed, like a princess being saved by the prince.
It has the intimacy of a barrier being accepted and then opened, as it is with reconnecting with old friends,
and it has the intimacy of a barrier being turned into an energy vortex that lets two people’s energy hit harder,
Like it does with two people who cant to be together, wanting to be together, and then trying to cross the barrier. im thinking of romeo and juliet. the energy needed for suicide is an interesting one, but to kill yourself because the distance of death is so great is totally romantic. and the intimacy is certainly there.

Ive come to love the feeling of yearning. its where my best poetry comes from. and ive come to learn to love loss. because thats where great poetry comes from. and more importantly, ive fallen in love with the complicated unknown emotions people can have because hell whats the point of life if your not discovering what hasn’t been discovered. the intimacy of physical distance, and the pain of communication. We take for granted how nice life is when its simple. the complicated is great, but the simple is oh so sweet. both are needed. and when i want to simplify my life i just stop talking. not sure it helps, but i enjoy the solitude.

thats how id look at that.

thanks for reading this week of Fools Proof. subscribe for more dialogues. leave a comment to start more dialogues.

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

An Easter Carol one day drafting process.

This short came to me in a moment of suppressed, joyful weeping before the cross at church on Easter Sunday. After that I thought, if Christmas has a carol, so should Easter. I never read Dickens’ original, but I knew it involved ghosts and new life following a new, given perspective. I know its a Christmas Carol, but i never read it, so to me, it also sounds like an Easter story. At least, from tonight’s Palm Sunday point of view.

Leave a comment

The outline

The outlining plotgrid inspired by Claire Fraises’s near final development of a plot grid originally based on JK Rowlings plot grid. I’ve never read JK Rowling, but im sure she wrote some long books, because this outline has the possibility to become extensive. (She wrote harry potter right?) Anyways the outline is crazy.

The chart began like this:

Then refined into this:

Then morphed into the completed outline.

Heres how.

Read more

The collective unconscious

It’s the dawn of the twentieth century. Jung and Freud were writing letters to decipher the ocean of the human mind. Studying the unconscious.

A joint expedition.

Until Jung breaks away.
Drifting towards an unknown horizon.

Freud stays behind.

A hundred years later we find Freud stuck with a big ship in a small pond. Libido. Repression. Sex.

But Jung? His tiny boat made waves.
He found the real ocean.

Freud’s libido is what an individual works with. Or against.
The collective unconscious is similar in that direction.
The difference is the scale.

We develop our libidos in life. Intrapersonal.
The collective unconscious, we inherited from lives. Interpersonal.

Its where archetypes arise. Described as an ocean which many rivers and streams flow through. These physics are no different than an ocean.

The collective unconscious is fluid

From this ocean of the collective, we find a way to think of the world. One to see the true depth. Including its obscurity and possible dangers.

From this ocean, the foundation of our collective unconscious rise to the surface as myth, story, legend, superstition, most importantly, culture. If the collective unconscious is a fluid, then culture is land, shaping the ocean as the vessel to an unconscious is contained within it. The surrounding of the ocean. Fed by the cycles of the ocean. Eroded by the ocean. Sometimes flooded.

Now the ocean of unconscious takes a larger frame. Greater understandings can be made.
Though this collective unconscious is not easy to understand. It is an ocean. Its depths are dark. Its size consuming. Most dangerous in the unknown.

But at least we know its an ocean.

From there, we can study it as such. The borders. Its flow. The rising and falling tides.

Now place the framework over human history. Over stories ingrained in our minds. The stories at the roots of our morality. Honor. Evil. Justice.

Work backwards from morality.

What stories. what understandings. what conclusions did we reach based on the time humanity spent living. the time humanity has lived as a whole.
Who are the heroes of our history. Our villains. When are deaths righteous and when are lives intertwined with prophecy?

That is where we explore the collective unconscious. Shaped by, from, and into culture. Environments that change with time, changing the collective with it. A morality that rises from depths, or falls into depths. Sunken and unseen.

History molds with the unconscious. As the unconscious.

Jung labelled it. But we find it everywhere. We’ve known it for as long as we are we. The collective unconscious. Of nations. Religions. In groups of all sizes.

Pushed along by tides of group think and social psychology.

But the collective is an ocean. vast.
A tide is a small impact on some small, relatively obscure scale. A tide is little compared to the storm forming a tsunami. A tsunami devastates its path. Naturally caused by the tectonic plates shifting, earthquakes.

Developments are made with small steps, but
Evolution is the great leap.

We can look at the tension of evolutionary psychology as an earthquake. Natural phenomena influencing the collective unconscious.

Freud’s anthropological work studying primitive civilizations, Totem and Taboo (1913), recognized the evolution of spiritual psychology by identifying the roots of the sacred and the taboo.

The evolution of psychology is as natural as the shifting of tectonic plates. Large scale. Serious impacts.

Sometimes, the impact hits like a disaster.

Obedience

Look at the national socialists of post WW1 Germany.
A collective of their own, diffusing and pumping ideology in response for ideology being pumped into them.

Hitler spearheaded the modern era by devastating the 20th century.
He capitalized on the unconscious longing for tradition and old values.
He created a tsunami in the ocean of unconscious by throwing bombs into it.

How many nazi officials claimed they were just following orders? Too many of them.
Milgram’s electrical experiment at Yale shows how obedience can override personal conscience. override personal morality.

Obedience? To what?

To culture.

The ocean of the collective swallows the individual.

In this grand scale, where does the man rest. From where does he stand and look.

He looks on from the same places we do. from the beach. from the mountains. from afar or from within.

The ocean flows whether we know it or not.

The collective unconscious can carry you far, or it can kill you quick.

We’re a drop in the ocean, but we are made of that ocean.
We’re an island, but we’re also the volcano that caused it.

The ocean is a force that we are part of as much as we are not.

We need the ocean.
The difference is this ocean does not need us.
Because the collective unconscious exists when a river of individuals dry, and it disappears alongside the civilization built beside it.
Or it swells up and takes life down with it. drowning.

An ocean can suffocate land. But it wont outlive the earth.
The collective unconscious will outlive you. But it wont outlive humanity.

What to study.

What is the point of knowing the collective unconscious like this?
It adds physics to psychology.
It reminds us that we are cultural beings before individual beings. Our ideas shaped by the outside. stirring within. then flowing back out. We are changed by it. We change it in return.

We can be a drop in an ocean. Or a meteor.
Dependent on your flow. your power. your ambition to find paths and make paths once you start.

Survival doesn’t follow morality.

Jung uses a dark lake and its crossing as metaphor to acknowledge the sacrifice of descending into darkness — integrating the shadow by descending into darkness.

Understand, even this has physics. For there to be a shadow, there must be light.
A dark lake is a dark lake because it eats up the light on the surface.

To navigate the shadow, you need to navigate without light. Without preconceived notions of good and bad. Instead, you look at whats there and what isn’t.
Recognize what you do not see, and you start to see the whole.

We must recognize every collective as a series of unified individuals.

It’s hard to see the ocean when we’re swimming in it.

Humanity only knows the seven continents. Not Pangaea.
But we traced each continent back to a unified whole.

Unified or split
The ocean moves around it.
Shapes it.
Shaped by it.
Whether we understand it or not,
It moves all the same.

Woke up worked out showered cleaned laundry cooked cleaned. Half of these are shit tasks i could do without. I got an hour before I go to the clinic and im damned to have my time stolen out from under me. Laundry. Cleaning. Cleaning again. I love cooking so ill cook and showering i dont see how that could get better and working out and waking up are parts of being human so i dont care about the effort it takes to do em.

I was throwing out my egg shells and aristotle rose up from the grave with a quote i read years ago that i can’t verify but still:

And damn what an awful thing to say but fuck is he right, we’ve always had slaves before America rode success on the backs of blacks and asians and immigrants from every country ive noticed every civilization had slavery in some way, because how many humans had wanted hot meals cooked at their leisure and to sit back and watch people build their empire while they dictate from a throne of their command whatever that might be.
So many humans id tell you, maybe every human.

The difference between the past and the present tho isnt that slaverys gone and now people are the proprietors of their own empires no the difference is that slavery is embedded into economics and debt’s the new whip and slaves come in every class as servants to somebody and freedom has been reduced and what came from that if not the most embedded form of slavery ive ever seen in a history book.

Debt

Aristotle’s greece didnt believe in racial slavery even they saw that shit was fucked but they had slaves of war and indentured servitude from citizens who couldnt pay back debts and those people would work on specific tasks that owners didnt want to do. Mundane Jobs. Mundane ass jobs like cleaning and cooking and building and it reminds me of another quote i heard because we’re living in an interesting ass time and that quote is this:

And i feel that quote embodies the most interesting thing about the physics of macro economics and that is that money moves money and the only thing wealth cares about is momentum, not prices not value but the momentum of money and how wealth generates more wealth and a lack of wealth generates less money.

Poor people in capitalism trade labor and time for money and wages and thats cool if the rules of capitalism were prepared for an industrial revolution but it wasnt, and those who capitalized on the lack of rules in the beginning are benefiting despite the rules after. it takes a brief look into the history of poverty and classes during the industrial revolution to realize how fucked it was and how simple it is for slavery to be recreated in a system where capital moves capital and even tho im not a communist and actually love the idea of capitalism im upset that we’ve traded the transparency of feudalism and the set classes of indentured servitude for the opacity of neo-liberalism and the idea that poverty or wealth is based on merit not momentum. MOMENTUM.

Back to the shit tasks i dont want to do lets take a look at the shit tasks civilized people take part in so they can eat. I think cashiers garbagemen accountants blue collar warehouse or construction workers and administrative white collars workers all to an extent do jobs at various pays based on how wealthy the industry is divided by the amount that people DONT want to do those jobs. In the near future, i see these jobs being taken cared of by robots because people dont want to do them and the people who want them done already have enough motion to speed up that process by putting down the upfront cost to not deal with desperate people.

Long ago most of the mundane tasks were assigned to slaves back then including cooking cleaning and manual labor. The physics of class did not change, the mundane tasks are still given to the bottom of society but the bottoms of society are determined locally, as a slave in modern New York can still have a house and believe he has freedom but if his life is entirely dependent on his ability to work a schedule that isn’t his he does not have true freedom but crumbs of freedom when afforded to him.

Now i believe a good life has a balance between leisure and work but i also believe theres a big gap in the balance of capitalisms idea of freedom, that meaning that those who are truly free exist on the fringes of upper and lower class society, the similarity being that money exists like gasoline to move you from place to place, and those with lots of money dont care about spending it and those with no money find other ways to move, or die trying.

A homeless man in new york is more free than a college graduate working to free himself from the debt of a degree, and though the difference in quality of life is stark the real focus should be the degrees of freedom between the two. being forced to work to live is slavery adjacent. working to better society and your position in it is freedom. and having your quality of life squeezed away from you because your unwilling to work means your a product of system that gives you two options: trade freedom for quality of life, or trade your quality of life for freedom.
Thats the state of poverty.
In contrast, the upper fringes of society live with both: Freedom, and quality of life. That is the goal of capitalism i would say, freedom and quality of life. That brings the potential of AI into account.

For the first time in history, the necessity of slavery can take a less bleak outlook.

We now have the possibility to make machines slaves. For better or for worse, and without looking at any new types of morals considering the quality of life for machines, progress has finally reached the spearhead allowing the quality of life for all to skyrocket because mundane tasks can be taken cared of without human slavery, and the biggest problem that arises from this new spear is that of capital.

There is only so much raw capital in the world: natural resources, that is, and only so much wealth to go around. In an economy where the varying degrees of “The Top” can compare their quality of life to those on the bottom, giving up the 100th floor penthouse for a 50th floor penthouse feels like a loss that nobody is willing to give up, even if it means that 50% of the people sleeping on the pavement outside their apartments can have a bed and running water.

The problem of AI is not that it might (be)come conscious, creating moral issues about AI slavery, the problem is that EVEN if AI has the potential to replace cashiers and mundane jobs, the physics of capitalism favor momentum and will not allow itself to slow down to pick up the wounded soldiers left behind because those on top truly believe in the physics and meritocracy of wealth. not in humanity.

We have technology that can pull people out of poverty, but to pull people up, others must be pulled down. And that is at the forefront of the AI issue of our new age.

The AI arms race between America and China will not slow down because for one to slow down, it means the other will get ahead. It is humanity that is the issue, the problem of our economics are secondary to the problems of the human ego. And we are in a spiritual crisis. We’ve focused on the material for so long that anything put in before it will risk defamation and resistance from those who’ve held it true for so long.

The problem is evident and that is the first problem: how to make the problem seem natural and not manufactured.
Instead of looking at AI as something that can increase efficiency and make work less demanding to open up more free time, we’ve turned AI into a way to make work less demanding to open up routes of doing MORE work. How?
By making work virtuous instead of making virtuous what work accomplishes.

Efficiency is secondary to total work completed.

Back to the original problem the necessity of slavery does it still hold true? close.

The necessity of slavery has been replaced with the necessity for progress.

And when the slaves are no longer needed,
they wont be freed. Hell no.

They’ll be discarded.
Because all throughout history (if Marx WAS right) the enemy of the powerful are the masses.

And for the first time in history:

The masses are replaceable.

Entertainment Psychosis. Pleasure Psychosis.

The wise man said: Ignorance is Bliss.

And to the world that knows bliss as happiness, these words are a prophecy, not warning.

Technology has done everything but drive desire from the brain and primality from our bones.
Technology has plugged us into a machine that beats our hearts for us. pumps our blood for us. breaths the air for us. eats the food for us.
It has taken the needs of survival and repackaged it into pills or programs to follow.

Our brains became demystified. and in time, the machines will do the thinking for us. And the question becomes: What do we have left, when everything is done for us?
Is it time? Yes, is the simple answer.
But time means nothing other than yesterday or tomorrow. Right now isnt a time, its a place.

Are we left with peace? No, is the simple answer. Because desire doesn’t leave when we reach where we’re going. Peace doesn’t come when there’s nothing left to think about. Peace isn’t an option for creatures given a mission.

Will we still be left with a mission when everything is done for us?
No.
We’ll be left with no embers to put out and without a path to walk on. left desolate and devoid of meaning wandering between bright lights and neon signs advertising comfortable demise.

And what happens to the man without a mission?
He grows neurotic.
Not in the typical sense, but close to it.

The man without a mission will grows neurotic in his cells.
Neurotic in the sense that: reality becomes a stage and our bodies the most important actor, handing away our humanity and calling it freedom, growing neurotic in the mind that no longer creates but attaches. grabbing hold to anything that was real. stretching hands grasping smoke to feel a warmth we’ve forgotten exists.

We watch movies about fire and it pulls us in like we’re there. the power of movies isn’t to show us of what we’re capable of when we find a why. its to distract us from the fact that we don’t have a why.

And without a why, there is no how. to interpret and paraphrase another wise mans words: Know Why to live, Know How to live. No Why to live, No How to live.

So we hand our flames to the stage and step off into the audience. considering our passion as something to be witnessed, not lived.

We detach our will from our selves. removing our mission from our minds. keeping the cage locked because from within, we can be seen and we can be gawked at for who we could have been.

Have you seen a tiger at the zoo? We don’t go to see a sad, captured creature.
We go to see a sad, captured creature that we persuade ourselves to believe is the embodiment of a predator, the top of the food chain, the indomitable spirit of a creature that declares war on anything but itself.
It hunts with fury. shedding blood as part of its nature.
But we look at the tiger in the cage and look past its pacing behind bars to search for the spirit of something that is no more...

We see the spirit and ignore the reality
and the reality bends into distortion…

The cage bars stay up but we see through them, see through them like nothing is there, and we believe that what was captured on the stage is reality. not a reflection.
and we drink ignorance like ambrosia because its the only thing that covers up a dismal life with draperies to make it beautiful.
Something it is not.

So the men of today stare into screens, swiping with the illusion that they have a choice, scrolling with the illusion that they are still able to hunt.
masturbating into a void to forget that what they drain is what they really are.
Life.
So the movies capture men who no longer exist.
The stage moves with actors who think they embody what they capture.
The audience claps at the sight of a re-enactment of lives they’re too scared to live. Passion too far down the drain to ever believe it was flowing.

Entertainment becomes a moving reflection of life.
People watch the shadows and call it reality.
We stay locked in the chains of our cage and we call the shadows reality. and the light that burns those shadows, we do not consider reality. we consider the light of plato’s cave the backdrop, the scene that has always been. and nobody ventures out.

Nobody wants to venture out.
Nobody has to venture out.

We are sedated by shadows. Nurtured by illusion. Neurotic to the core.

Entertainment has become the closest tie to a reality we are meant to hold onto.
Passionate.

Real Life has become an idea. Entertainment an ideal.

Psychosis is what happens to those who live outside of reality.
But i have not often seen a man in the depths of psychosis who knows he is in psychosis.
He is in reality, whole-heartily,

The difference that he is in a reality of his own.

And the men of today “live”, staring at screens, sucking in pleasure, knowing he possesses a fire that he may allow himself to witness but never to feel.
Accepting that to be a fire is to burn and grow and to dwindle and die.
Watching fire through the glass to never knows its depths

But to feel that warmth, you must know the heat as what it is.

Warmth. Pain. Power and destruction.

But we treat fire as something to capture and display.

So the man acts and acts on a stage of his own construction. in a fantasy where his reality is created by the performance he puts on. as the labels the audience gives back to him.

They stare at the tiger in the cage and don’t see the bars,
They see a tiger in a cage and call it care.
They see pacing back and forth and don’t see a predator without a hunt, a soul with a stolen mission; they see teeth and they think bites, a ferocious pair of eyes and they think danger,
but what they’re really looking at is glass of water they’ve confused with vodka.

They see a spirit ripped from its body and believe it truly is

A sword for display is not a sword. If its purpose isn’t war, but display, it’s no longer a sword, but decoration.

And so the men of today live in a psychosis fabricated by stages in every facet of life.

They live in a psychosis that, who they are is what they say they are.

They do not see life as action, but a reflection of action.

They see shadows and call it real.

They see the sun and think it rises for them.

They talk to God like he’s a simple narrator.

They die a thousand deaths giving their life to soft reality.
Where passion is reserved for a stage
Because a stage is the only place they see passion.
They’ll never live a real life,
because all those lives are filled with actors and its script in the hand of directors.

Reality is not the stage they act on.
They are the audience, waiting to be told when to clap, to laugh, to cry,
based on plot points they’ve been trained to react to.

And they believe they are part of the story.

They are not.
They are seats without a body.
Souls without a presence.
Ghosts in the aftermath of a wrecked world.

Admire the tiger.
But do not ignore the beast behind bars.

relativism /rĕl′ə-tĭ-vĭz″əm/

noun

1. The theory that value judgments, as of truth, beauty, or morality, have no universal validity but are valid only for the persons or groups holding them.

2. a view that ethical truths depend on the individuals and groups holding them

   ---

Sure. People might hold the belief that relativism is a truth. Very nietzschean and will to power. But is it actually true?

Truth is made up in the mind. It adapts.

Rarely, do we find an unmovable truth.
If we do, it integrates into the system of how we view the world. A pillar of truth.
When its seems spiritual, it becomes sacred.

Though, whats the difference between something seeming and actually being spiritual?

Good question. Very good question. I’ve wondered that myself.

divinatory /də̇ˈvinəˌtōrē/

adjective

1. using or depending upon intuition or perception

   ---

Okay. Theres more to that definition, but this is the main point im looking at.

Intuition. Or hallucination. What makes the difference between a schizo and a prophet?
The Truth, Right?

The truth. How do we actually know the truth. How do i know that reality is the same for me and you. I don’t. But i trust in it. Because we agree on it.

Is there truth in trust? Is reality reality because we both agree on it and trust that the other’s sees what we’re seeing?

When the only thing we can hold to a standard of truth is our own experience, it makes trust damn important to the interpretation of reality.

The power of not knowing.

With the “existence” of a nothing, it implies there is also a something to contrast it.

When we do not know what happens after death, the reality of death is open to nearly any possibility.

I love bringing up quantum mechanics. Think about superposition. It is both a wave and a particle, until observed.
KEYWORD: UNTIL OBSERVED

There’s power in not knowing. The less I know, the better. Sometimes I don’t want to know.

This way of thinking opens doors for me. One of them is about how hard it is to prove a religion or spiritual belief incorrect.
And by that merit, making it very, very hard to prove them right.
And when it comes to something like, where im going to go after I die, it makes choosing the “right” religion seem very important.

Divinatory Relativism

[noun]

1. Where you believe, you’ll find divinity.

One believing in God and heaven or hell will have that outcome in their death. One believing in the karmic cycle will have that outcome in their death. One believing in nothing will have that outcome in their death.

Morality is relative.
Truth is Not.
Unknown truths are relative,
As truth is hard to find.

Divinatory Relativism

[noun]

2. The faith of an individual determines the physics of their divine world.

   1. Atheism can run to science. Others to God. One can worship various gods of the many ideas, ideals, behaviors, desires, etc. Or even to worship themselves.

   2. This relativism determines the outcome of their death. The nature of their afterlife.

I keep falling back to death because it remains the great unknown. As we do learn more, like the dmt surge that releases, the better we can make our predictions.

Operating under the assumption that the outcome of death is relative to an individuals belief about death, we can make an assumption about the afterlife.

If an individual believes in the afterlife, than they go through to the afterlife.
Critically, if they do not believe in an afterlife, than they do not go through.

The mechanisms of an afterlife are wayyy unknown to me, but the key to the door is in our mind. Here’s why i think so.

The Psychology of an Afterlife

Two psychological principles ill be bringing up. Both going back to trust.

1. Predictive Processing.

The idea is that the mind makes predictions about reality and uses its senses to double check it. We truth them.

Senses are an input and consciousness is an output.
The two roll-around in real time, fact-checking each other. Adapting quickly.

2. Quantum Coherence

Quantum mechanics. Strictly dictionary:

“Refers to the ability of quantum systems, like particles, to exist in multiple states simultaneously and maintain a stable relationship between these states.”

“Coherence is a measure of how well certain systems will maintain their relationships with each other and how well we are able to predict the evolution of those systems.”

Keywords: Stable, and Predict.

And what does this mean for an afterlife?

Predictive Processing. and our Quantum Consciousness.

The argument has already been made to support the quantum nature of consciousness.

We’ll go forward assuming that consciousness is integrated into the fabric of the universe, and that both consciousness and time come into existence with each other. In a similar way that the input of sensation and the output of prediction come together to form consciousness.

With this in mind, we will make a point: What we believe becomes reality.

After death. If we do not know what happens. The power is in what we think will happen.

I don’t mean to say: “I think I’ve been good, so I’ll go to heaven.”

I mean the core of our beliefs make up the physics of where we go, but where we really go, I cannot say without visiting myself.

In my belief, I’ll use heaven and hell as an example.

We might think ourselves holy and worthy of going to Heaven, but when we die, and when we review our lives from the perspective of God,
whatever ego we have will be put aside and any ignorance and injustices of our worldly lives will be on display and taint our souls,
and we will suffer eternally knowing: “I made that choice.”
That would be hell.
Suffering eternally in the knowledge that you are light but chose darkness.
Christ, of course, makes all the difference in our souls being tainted, if they’re tainted at all. But that’s a different story.

That’s how I view it. That’s what i mean when i say, our beliefs make up the physics of our ending. It does not write our ending, but it guides the pen. Still, something outside of ourselves is ultimate in the decision, call it the universal energy, I call it God.
And because I’ve chosen God in my faith, it is those physics I live by.

The fate of our consciousness beyond death is an outcome of true belief; suggesting there is no “single” divinatory figure, but that there is truth in each worshiped belief.

This is crucial for the development of the soul. For this reason, this divine relativism can be influential on the evolution of a collective psychology, or collective unconscious.
It fuels myth, which often act as representations of various paths and outcomes, thus shaping belief.
Belief (being responsible for the shaping of our world) is influential on the outcomes of not just the external world, but also the internal world.

With that in mind, one can bring into scrutiny the effects of divinitory relatavism in the evolution of cultures, and the sociology of nations based on their religion. Which has already been done.

Keep in mind cultural differences are fine. their is no truth, just truths that seem to triumph over other truths. that is the human truth, which we confuse for truth as a principle in the way our world works.

We all compete using beliefs, and for that reason, their must be some strength in each that convince people against it or to stay with it.

Going further, I suppose you can judge some divinatory systems in the way their beliefs cause or solve problems; the way they’ve evolved alongside human psychology; the inspirations on art; the influences on collective psychology using myth and story.

Divinatory Relativism

An idea that faith makes up the physics of our world.

Leave a comment

Sterling Memorial Library,
Yale New Haven.

Inside and downstairs. Magnificent collection of books.

I sat with a laptop and an urge to kill my work. A green hardcover on the bottom shelf by my foot, shining. A book of essays by T.S. Eliot. I’ve heard the name. Somewhere. I think back. My Brit lit class from two years ago. Or maybe I saw a quote on substack. Either way I’m curious enough to grab and open it. It was old. It was annotated. The first chapter in the table of contents had an arrow pointing to it.

Tradition and The Individual Talent (1919)

I open to a random page in that essay. A paragraph jumps out in underlines. It speaks of the poet.

Interesting.

A damn good hook if not at least for me. Which is important. I’ve written enough poetry to compare myself. To the dead and the living. More often its the dead. Among the dead worth comparing are the Greats, the classics, people with works that outlast themselves and define eras. In poetry, I think of the romantics. Wordsworth. Coleridge. They rebuilt poetry off the Greek ideal and became an ideal atop of it. Keats, Byron, Shelly, romantics in a different sense become an ideal of their own. Built on the past.

A past that changes in few ways; fact not being one of them.

Another underline.

I read on. I realize this essay speaks on something intimate, a relation between the collective as art and the art in an individual. Tradition and The Individual Talent.
Tradition. Historical significance. Conformity.
Talent. Individual. Instinctual. Deviance.

The individual talent? The underlying phenomena of some beautiful laws that Eliot lays out. Laws that, like legal laws, can and are broken — but as spiritual law it is felt deep in the heart like a unifying truth. Not unlike the unifying truths, Eliot’s observations of tradition live beyond what he calls out in that 1919 essay. The truth in his observations are captured once, by himself and his writing in the essay; and again in the way the essay aged over the century.

Everything quoted here is from TS Eliot’s 1919 essay, “Tradition and The Individual talent”

Subscribe now

I read that again. I read it a third time those underlined words and pulled my attention away onto the whole of the two pages.
Brackets mark the strong paragraphs. Arrows and dots sit at the start of sentences. Pages are half underlined. No writing.
No writing because that would make it about the annotator. That annotator reading the same book as me, probably for a class, added to the essay by only putting his focus onto it.
Focus that ends up being the reason I’m still reading it. Strange luck already to just pick up the book — stranger luck to be guided by arrows and underlines to an image I’ve never seen. Not like how Eliot was seeing it. But what he explores in this essay goes beyond just art; beyond the artist and the expression and contemporary times and historical significance. He speaks of the journey of the collective unconscious. The soul of the species. Pulling them from the dens that Jung and Freud used to illuminate the cloudy unconscious: that of story, tradition, art, and passion.
Tied together in Eliot introducing the past as a living entity.

In my hands was a hundred year old essay, annotated at some point between the books printing and that day. Here I was forming my own opinions on the essay, on top of the annotators focus, and building my own focus from his. All conversation. With a book’s author and its reader. Pure presence. Listening was the secret. But the key is in reading it like I was writing it. In getting into Eliot’s head and being with him as he says it.

Well, Eliot. I’m in the present. I’m altering one thing. That’s my observation of your hundred year old essay that feels like it could have been written at anytime. Like standing in front of a mountain, then looking at a photograph of the mountain taken a hundred years earlier. The mountain is unchanged, but everything around it is changed.

What Eliot writes is a picture of the mountain.

Subscribe now

You, Eliot, say that the artist cannot be judged on his own. On his own, his art is only his art. In fact, there is no art, just smears of dyes on animal hide.
Though when the next man comes along and does his own smear, a contrast is borne. A color is changed and there begins comparison. A different shape of hide. Or someone paints in a cave. Even if its the same thing being remade a second time, that original is to be valued differently as an original.

The whole thing being, there is no value, no real value, without comparison, until comparison. Contrast is the value. Contrast.

In studying the Great (thank you Dr. Roden for your excellent British literature class) I found the ideals. The points of comparison.
To capture their brilliance, I can study the techniques sure, but that would provide at best a technically brilliant poem.
The real magic was in something else. Something deeper.
Their lives, perhaps. Their human lives lived to the point of becoming literature itself. Stories and stories as rich as imagination, sharp as a fact and heavy with history. The opium dreams of Coleridge. The romantics and their trip to Italy, the creation of Frankenstein, Keats death from consumption. Wilde’s extravagance. Kipling in British India. There lives were in their styles. Their styles in their lives. Influenced entirely by the experience of life. Shaped and molded by thoughts of their contemporaneity, as my thoughts are shaped by my own.

Art never improves.

Time goes on and what does improve?

Their impression. Despite time untouched they can they can remain organic. Living because the impression continues changing, from the time of its creation, through to the last moment someone looks at it. Being judged loved hated or mocked, it is changed by the present. It lives only because of the present, and a present built on any past must know its history.

And the material of art? What is the material of art? Is it the words in a poem? The technique of a painting? The content of a photo?

Centuries will pass. New eras with new poets, building off the tradition laid out in the past. The change? You’ll find a change in medium. Not to say the language of poems change, though they do, but the poet is the one changing; the observer, the artist, they’re changing and that is the medium.

Poems are poems, but a poem is not just a collection of words feelings and ideals, nor is a poem the simple reflection of the poet, no; but the poet is a better reflection of the poem — the sponge soaking their times to squeeze itself into history as history was destined to happen — the artist is but a vessel of history. The artist is what makes the difference. The poet is the medium for feeling’s combinations, a chemical waiting on catalyst.

Underlined:

Subscribe now

The distilling of art. The poet being a chemical required for catalyst. Their reaction to the catalyst the result of numberless feelings, phrases, images, then resulting in the work of art.

Poems are poems, art is art. Though does Eliot snap at something particular.

The separation between the body that experiences and the mind that creates,
“the man who suffers and mind the which creates,” and the perfection of the artist being reached.
That perfection of the artist is in the work they’re required to do. The work that lives outside of them, through their experiences and passions, coming to life as the living art. The more perfect, the more separate, with complete separation being perfection…
Separation of art and artist…

Eliot writes:

He brings the past up as a vessel because the past is the only way we can compare true art. If the progress of an artist lays in extinction, what is being lost is as crucial as what is being created. The artists we lost are the reason we can value the artists we have.

Some one said: “The dead writers are remote from us because we know so much more than they did.” Eliot responds with: “Precisely, and they are that which we know.”

The past holds a physical distance away from us. Eliot says we can reach it only in the present, by being present. With the awareness of ourselves in place of our past, we reconnect to our past. He offers advice on the business of the poet:

This was a breakthrough for me. This essay turned into something i’ve been contemplating since. I’ve run out of commentary and opinion and can only offer observation. I’ll leave the essay linked somewhere near the bottom, so go check it out.

Subscribe now

These final paragraphs are of substantial value. They’ve left me with little response.
I leave them here for you to chew on. All on poetry, so for the poets out there, I hope you’ve practiced philosophy.

…

Eliot then concludes the entirety of this essay with this paragraph:

He speaks heavily. Though, he is in the right place to do so.

TS Eliot, Tradition and The Individual Talent (1919)

Find his entire essay online as a PDF or click this link to the poetry foundation.

To: aliciarumpe03@fmail.com
Re: We DID NOT HAVE SEX STOP FUCKING TELLING PEOPLE WE DID

---

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

Alicia. Believe whatever you want. Everyone already thought we had sex that night. And whether you like the idea or not. All i had to do was agree. So, we had sex. Maybe it wasn't in this timeline, but considering how close we came, I know for a fact we had sex in another universe. Hell, im pretty sure we’re having sex right now.

Fast forward maybe three hours and he’s in her dorm room again. Invited.

“Explain.” is the only word she said

“according to quantum mechanics, i DID fuck you. I did have sex with you. Because i know you could’ve said yes and even though you said no, im content knowing another me is fucking another you in another timeline because —”

“Your a fucking loser” she cuts him off, “Get the fuck out.” she ends with.

Cant crack an egg twice.

Yea. I’m hoping everyone starts claiming some absolutely fuckin absurd ass shit like that, just cause they can.

Its not like this knowledge has been hidden for a thousand years in esoteric circles, guised in mysticism and alchemy just so the common mind cant use it.

And now its been outed as public knowledge. Oh well.

Its not the first time science cracked the egg of something that wasn’t ready to be born. Now its a disgusting oozing little fetus thats gonna have to grow in a lab.
Our Lab.

Oh Well.

But what is this silly little egg thats been cracked and what type of fetus do we have to deal with?

I’ll tell you. Because i got nothing better to do with my time on this dawn of evening.

Subscribe now

A Physicist and an Anesthesiologist walk into a bar…

Roughly fifteen months ago, a study in August of 2024 found that a cancer drug which stabilizes microtubule proteins in the brain also delays anesthetic induced unconsciousness in rats. It was also found to bring them back to consciousness quicker than if they didn’t have the drug.

Okay…

Its not a psychoactive drug. Just a protein stabilizer. But the fact that it reduced the amount of unconscious time in these rats suggests something significant:
that microtubules in the brain have an influence over consciousness.

What kind of influence? That’s being debated.
But a model of consciousness proposed thirty years ago now sits at the top of those debates.

Why? Because it suggests microtubules are a suitable “Quantum Channels” for the brain to compute non-algorithmic based processes (quantum computing; non-deterministic).
And the study mentioned above validates that assumption. Validates it heavily.

So the brain has the ability for quantum computing? So what? How does that change anything?
Let me tell you, young scholar, that this changes everything. But also nothing at the same time. Lost? Good. Lets get out of the jargon and back to reality.

The Reality of Consciousness

So the brain has quantum capacities. Whys that important?
Because our brain is where we believe consciousness to arise from. And that would be correct, mostly. But what psychologists and neuroscience could not figure out about consciousness, nor agree on, is the bridge between actual experience and our conscious perception of it.

And quantum consciousness has the answers. Thanks to Orchestrated Objective Reduction Theory. As proposed by the anesthesiologist and physicist who walked into a bar (probably, not certainly, where they came up with Orch OR).

The Problems Being Answered (simply, with quantum mechanics)

1. Unity of Self = Non-Locality and Quantum Coherence
2. Free Will = Quantum Indeterminacy and Superposition
3. Conscious Perception = Wave Function Collapse

And what could these equations possibly mean?

They mean we have a map to explore beyond the limitations of classic physics in understanding consciousness. But to explain that would be more mumbo jumbo, I’ll dedicate that to another essay. Here, Ill explain why that annoying fuck sending the email thinks he had sex with someone he hasn’t had sex with. And why you can make equally offensive statements at varying degrees of truth.

I had sex with you and there’s nothing you can do about it.

So that fucker didn’t have sex. But he claims quantum mechanics says he did. Why? Because hes a pretentious little fuck and is terrible to have at parties. But still, there’s some truth in his filthy lie. That truth begins with the idea that alternative universes exist. That is a simple fact of quantum mechanics backed by quantum indeterminacy. That truth ends at the fact that no, he did not have sex and there is no way he’s having sex in any timeline branching off from his current state.
So what is this truth?

The truth rests in the implication of quantum consciousness

Know: the universe operates with both quantum and classical physics.
What can now be added to our repertoire of knowledge is that consciousness, like the universe, operates with both quantum and classical physics.
What this implies is consciousness, human or otherwise, is intimately embedded into the fabric of the universe.

How so? Thanks to the breakthrough of quantum mechanics made by Schrödinger Equation, validating the wave-particle duality of matter, as explained by his “Schrödinger’s Cat” thought experiment, we learn that electrons, a fundamental building block in the makeup of the universe, can be two things at once — a wave and a particle. Further evidence to explain this connection is found in the other mechanics of quantum physics, but the one that allows this fucker to claim he had sex when he didn’t have sex is that of quantum indeterminacy, superposition, and freewill.

Those three mechanics are intertwined, explained by Schrödinger’s cat.

Until the box with Schrödinger’s cat inside is opened, and the cat observed, the radioactive isotope with a perfect 50/50 chance of decaying (thus killing the cat), or not decaying (not killing the cat), creates a quantum state of superposition. Where the cat is both alive and dead, until the box is opened and the cat perceived.

So what does that have to do with anything?
Well, it has everything to do with freewill.
Because the human has a choice (not to effect the outcome of the isotope and whether or not the cat is alive), but to open the box and either kill the cat by opening it, or spare it by opening it.

The freewill is in our agency of being able to effect the outside world with internal decisions, and quantum consciousness means our freewill is entangled with the freewill of the universe.
What does that mean? It means the universe will follow its own path unless an agent comes in to act against it, with it, or both. or none, even.

The Importance of Observation

He claims he had sex when he, in fact, most definitely did not have sex.
Why does he claim this and why is he, unfortunately, somewhat correct?
Because he acknowledged the indeterminate state of the situation where she could have said Yes, but said No instead. So for that reason, under the principles set out by superposition explained by Schrödinger’s Cat, that precious moment before she answered opened up the possibility for both options to occur: her saying yes (and having sex), and her saying no (and not having sex).

In that moment before she answered, both realities opened up and were equally plausible (according to him), and for that reason, he sees that as proof for them having sex in another universe because, although the wave function collapsed into the reality of her saying “no”, it also collapsed to an alternate reality where she said yes.
So where does the difference lie? The Difference is in OBSERVATION and OBSERVATION is what makes that difference.

Notice, human decisions are not made into fifty/fifty split like how it is with radioactive isotopes. For that reason, the chance of her saying yes and no were likely skewed in one way or the other, if not already determined, whenever they were in that hot and spicy moment. Observation is what makes the difference, however.

She said no, the universe observed, he observed, and THAT is where the connection between consciousness and the universe emerges. In observation, and in feedback.

In his observation of her saying no, the universe followed and was given the feedback, and now he lives in the reality of her having said no. To explain why this is a connection between consciousness and the universe is to explain something that is more esoteric than quantum mechanics: the origin of the universe and the observing mind come from the same source, the same origin, and are now in different positions, entangled with each other thanks to the tight pop of the big bang and the certainty that we all began as One.

So, quantum consciousness is just the scientific backup to Hermetic Principle 1:

That fucker in the email now lives in the reality of not having sex. But what does that prove? That proves absolutely nothing. Nothing! Precisely the point.

In the nothingness between the possibility of her yes and the certainty of her no, the universe rips ever so slightly to accommodate a possibility for another future. That future plays out, somewhere (another question entirely) and that man claims that in that somewhere, he is having sex with that someone. I hope this is confusing. Lets clear it up.

Conclusion

He had sex but not in that universe. Truth. He had sex. False.

The universe is linked with consciousness. Truth.
Consciousness is the universe. Truth.
The universe is consciousness. Truth.
Everything is what I make it out to be. False

The truth rests beyond our observation of things. But our observations make it true.
Though we have truth only so much as we have the universe fitting into our mind.
What plays out in reality is what we know of as truth. And reality can be defined as two people looking at an outcome (the color of an apple for example) and agreeing on that outcome, despite the difference in their perceptions.

In a quantum mess (perhaps like the one we’re living in now), you and I can be seeing a red apple, despite me seeing green and you seeing blue, and if we both call it red, It Is Red.

So although in reality he did not have sex, it is still true that he did have sex. Until it can be proved otherwise, observably (which happened, when the girl noticed she did not have sex with him… because in observation, in our consciousness, that is where reality manifests), for in the universe, reality manifests because of consciousness, as consciousness is reality observed.

And this fucker is living in a world where he will never have sex and claim he does because he thinks he’s smarter than reality. When he’s really living in a fantasy of possibility. Not fact. Not truth. Not anything close to the two. Truly, just possibilities.

What’s the point of this essay? Other than to write one.

It is to say with certainty: our beliefs are more powerful than we may have imagined. Because in our beliefs, we model the world. And the world follows our model. Algorithmically, the world manifests. Non-algorithmically, we manifest the world. The two are dancing, always correcting each other. But one leads, one follows.
It is your choice which one.

On quitting Nicotine.

Nicotines that friend you only have because he’s always in the group when drinks are goin round and his jokes are on fire and you’re caught up in his sound that you think you want him as your best man at the wedding just to hear him talking about you.

then the next day rolls in with a hangover and you talk to him, trying to hold onto the ideas he’s shooting chaotically like bullets in a shopping mall. and then you realize he’s only there to talk. the questions, the ideas aren’t up for debate. or conversation.

it’s just how it is.

you learn your presence is being feasted on. your eaten alive as someone needed stand there to hear him talk. and he is all talk. devoid of any thought about the future. just the past, and bringing it back to the present.

that hollow body your speaking to holds you hostage with last nights fun. in conversation you dont want to have. in plans you dont want to make. poking you to go out again and do it all over. have as much fun as before. more fun.

and before you know your being dragged along your fingers stain yellow with stink and consumption like a pigs tooth. fingernails bitten or overgrown. no inbetween.

an abusive relationship. but not without its benefits.

you can back off. or you can roll with the punches and punch back. have some fun with it.

personally, id be chain smoking in parking lots to enjoy the clouds better. chain smoking packs at the end of an acid trips to watch the snow sparkle with smoke. behind restaurants, making my mother wait while they thought i was in the bathroom.

the whole time you tell yourself you want to quit.

but it grabs you by the throat and tells you to play along.

and you just might.

it’ll twist the wheel while you drive.

and you might not mind.

you fight it or you flee.

replace the fixations. dismiss the cravings.

when it gets closer, throw a punch.

dont take that risk

or accept your place as nicotines bitch.

let it command you like you owe it karmic debt.

let it make you do its dishes and laundry.

after five years, i kicked nicotine in the ass and sent it on its way. and when it came crawling back i spat in its face. let it rot in the rain while i enjoyed the sun.

this is how I made nicotine my bitch.

Quitting requires a two-prong approach:

1. Reducing the fixations (Psychological)

2. Dismissing the dependency (Biological)

Mentally, most of you wants to stop. Now its about gathering the tools you need to dig you out of your pit.

It then requires maintenance

3. Respecting Nicotine

Its got its place. and a pretty good place, at that. its an evening stimulant that wont stop you from sleeping. unlike coffee. and an appetite suppressant.

but also cancer causing. toxic to the body. terrible for the lungs. and the lungs are in the top three most important organs. don’t mess around with those.

Subscribe now

The Psychological Fix

The fixations refer to the associations created or reinforced by Nicotine use

• The most common association with nicotine is the oral fixation.

• Other associations include

  • Being relaxed; Being alone; Being rebellious; Being bored; Being social

• Anything that is positively associated with nicotine usage needs an alternative to replace those associations.

  • Positive associations include:

    • Anything positive nicotine adds to life

    • Anything negative nicotine takes away from life

• If nicotine is not replaced, it will come back.

Respecting Nicotine

• Nicotine has its place. What it doesn’t have is a right to take away from your life.

  • If nicotine is taking away from your life, identify how and where;

    • It will take complete honesty and accountability.

      • Nobody can quit for you.

• Nicotine doesn’t need to be cut out cold turkey, or even quit completely.

  • What it needs to have is its control of our brains taken away.

    • To take away its control, replace its associations

      • Nicotine must be replaced.

The Biological Fix

• Nicotine is an incredibly addictive drug, one with comparisons made to heroin

  • To quit, it may take more than your own will

• Nicotine does not create intoxication,

  • It is not a “high”, but a parasite disguising itself as a “companion to sobriety”; “the little boost needed for the day”.

  • For this reason, Dependency creates associations with behaviors (instead of the high)

• Nicotine will associate itself with behaviors. What kinds?

With anything that leads to using.

• Since Dependency is associated with behavior (instead of a high), the addiction feels easier to manage.

• As the addiction feels easier to manage, nicotine becomes an invisible enemy.

  • It changes how you think. It justifies its usage, making you excuse nicotine just because you want it. It is not easier to manage, only less obvious.

• When Nicotine Dependency becomes associated with Behaviors, it means Behaviors trigger nicotine use and are* triggered by nicotine use.

*Behaviors associated with Nicotine Dependency are crafted early on in the addiction. When nicotine still gave a noticeable effect, like a buzz, it became a positive reinforcer for behaviors that lead to that buzz. Long term users who don’t get a buzz still use because of the initial feeling from when they first started using (even if they can’t remember what it felt like).

Respecting Nicotine

• If nicotine is not recognized as a force that can change your thoughts, wants, and emotions, it will not leave your brain.

• The fix to this is biological.

  • To break nicotine, the associations must first be weakened

This is the psychological FIX

• To stop nicotine, it must be replaced.

This is the biological fix

To Replace Nicotine, it must be with something of equivalent psychological value (more on this at the end).

• Identify what you use nicotine for. Knowing will help find your solution.

Dismissing Dependency.

• Will power can be used, but there is only so much willpower you can use in a day.

  • [Self-Depletion Theory: suggests that self-control relies on a limited resource that can be used up. When people exert self-control on one task, they may have less available for subsequent tasks, leading to decreased self-control over time. Baumeister et al. (1998) demonstrated with experiments where participants who resisted eating cookies or sweets had less self-control later in unrelated tasks.

• Considering there is only so much willpower that can be used, it’s important to conserve it when possible.

  • For this reason, alternative forms of nicotine use is a way to break certain fixations while still quitting.

• Reducing nicotine use each day, week, shift, or drive IS quitting nicotine.

  • The more nicotine a brain has, the more used to it it becomes, and the more dependent it becomes.

• By giving the brain LESS nicotine, it slowly starves off the neurons that make you want more.

  • This requires willpower; the neurons put up a small fight

• By giving the brain NO nicotine, it starves off all the neurons that make you want nicotine at all.

  • This requires tremendous willpower; the neurons put up a big fight.

My Recommendations

For dismissing the oral fixation and the nicotine dependency. Find out. You can also just use whatever works for you. These are just my recommendations, which worked for me.

1. Fum Prominent ($70):

https://tryfum.com/products/prominent

• THIS IS HOW TO GET RID OF THE ORAL FIXATION WITH VAPES

• Rewires the fixation with the mouth created by vaping.

  • It works by being a genuine alternative to vaping.

  • It offers the satisfaction of vape hits by using essential oils

• Relieves the anxiety of not having anything to do with hands, mouth when not talking

  • It has a heavy weight to it and the quality of both the wood and metal make it worth holding, carrying around and using.

• I contribute 60% of my success in quitting nicotine, weed, alcohol to the use of the Fum and letting myself fall into a healthy fixation.

• THIS IS HOW TO GET RID OF THE ORAL FIXATION WITH VAPES

  • This is genuinely worth every penny. Every. Penny. Buy this and consider it your sword. The flavors i recommend are cranberry something, orange vanilla, and the maple pepper. Buy this version too, but they have other style selections if you want a cooler looking one. Just this is the heavy one and its weight and quality make it the reason it actually works for quitting.

2. Ceretine ($40)

https://www.getsett.co/

• THIS IS HOW TO DISMISS THE DEPENDENCY CREATED BY NICOTINE

• Non-Irritating “nicotine” pouches

  • Everyone who tries pouches either hates them or loves them. Usually its because of the burn they give. The buzz is great too.

  • THESE POUCHES DO NOT HAVE A BURN, they are PH balanced and don’t cause that aching in the gums.

  • THESE POUCHES SATISFY THE CRAVING FOR NICOTINE

• Pouches are going to become a new oral fixation, but it’s one that removes the largest negative effect of most nicotine users, the irreversible lung damage caused by vaping.

• These sett pouches were specifically designed with a nicotine alternative called Ceretine.

  • It satisfies the two main nicotine receptors that we cognitively crave (Focus and energy) while completely missing the nicotine receptor that causes dependency (makes you anxious if you don’t have it). Look into the website for more. I’m not paid by them they just really work.

3. EUROPEAN Nicotine Pouches / SWEDISH SNUS

• It’s better than vaping. Still has that nicotine burn. Snus is still tobacco

• Use whatever MG suits you, go up or down it, use these forever or WHATEVER!

• You can find both online if you google. they ship, bit expensive but worth it to upgrade the habit.

• This is if you want to keep using nicotine but you don’t want to destroy your lungs. (vaping causes permanent, irreversible lung scarring. tobacco, cancer. zyns, just better.)

4. Ego-Depletion Theory

• This theory suggests that self-control relies on a limited resource that can be used up. When people exert self-control on one task, they may have less available for subsequent tasks, leading to decreased self-control over time.

• Keep this idea in mind when your fighting cravings. You should be finding new ways to reward yourself. food is the best way.

• Notable study: Baumeister et al. (1998) demonstrated this with experiments where participants who resisted eating cookies or sweets had less self-control later in unrelated tasks.

Understanding this theory will become a tool to help you quit. Using this, pick your battles wisely, and accept that this is a unique period in your life. You may have to treat yourself in other ways for your efforts in quitting. Know, quitting is a commitment, But its a battle that gets much, much easier.

5. “Why?” Questionnaire

Why Quit?

These questions are answered by you.

Use keywords and short sentences to answer these questions.

• Firstly, quitting removes the negatives that nicotine adds to your life.

1. What are the negatives to vaping?

_________________________________________________

• Second, it adds new positives to replace nicotine with.

2. What are the positives to vaping?

_________________________________________________

3. What is needed to replace vaping?

_________________________________________________

• Third, you beat out the spirit of addiction and dependency.

1. When do you last remember not being addicted to a vape _________________________________________________

2. How did you first use nicotine? When did you?

_________________________________________________

3. How did you realize you were addicted? When did you?

_____________________________________________________

Leave a comment

Kind words of wisdom

You can decide right now to spend the money to unlock your chains. Or you can wait for the day that never comes. stay handcuffed to a nagging, anxious, weak voice.

One that doesn’t belong in you. One that needs fucking. Until that voice submits and knows even chains wont hold you back.

Throw that punch. make nicotine your bitch.

Its not using nicotine that’s the problem. Its being used by nicotine.

Now i smoke cigars when i go on walks. when im thinking. when i want the tobacco to do something for me. when i want the smoke of power and the fire of its execution smothered between my fingers.

Now I smoke like its sex with my ex.

Power. not pleasure.

My friend knocks at the door.
I open it.

Hes wearing a punisher t-shirt and black pants.

“Is that your fuckin costume” I ask him, already knowing the answer.
Hes worn that punisher t-shirt for three Halloweens. In a row. I’ve been with him for all of them.

I know he doesn’t give a fuck.

I know what he thinks about costumes.

“Yea, it is. The fuck are you supposed to be” he asks me.

My irrelevant responses proceeds,
and I tell him its been three years of wearing a punisher t-shirt and calling himself the punisher.

“I don’t really care” he says.

and mind you, im not in the greatest costume myself.
leather bandana and black face paint. a simple bandit.
and i don’t want to debate him on not caring. i dont care that much either.

but something in me was upset at the fact he was wearing that shirt.

So he did a good job at upsetting me. But, still I asked him:
”Do you really think people dress up on halloween for fun?”

and he looked at me like i said the sun was green.
and to be fair, i kinda did.

Because everyone and their mama thinks halloween is for fun. Dressing up in masks and costumes for fun. and im not about to say some shit like:
Oh No! Halloween is so spiritual! Its really about honoring spirits! Nah fuck that.

Halloween is the only time a year when people act like who they really are.

Halloween is the only day that people dont dress up.

It’s the only holiday that I consider truly in touch with the part of ourselves we think we’re dressing up.
the part of ourselves that we think is ourselves.

We put on A Mask but in reality, when the costume goes on, The Masks come off.

The Madonnas put on whiskers.

The Monsters carry props.

The Jesters and Clowns put on their makeup.

We call it dress up and costumes but its really dressing down into bare-skin.

The cats have always been cats. but they’ll go insane if you call them a slut.
which, to be fair, is an expected response from blatant disrespect.

But call them a slutty cat on halloween and they’ll pounce in all the right ways.

Or the frat-boys who (though so few people mention or knows it about them) only throw parties to get girls drunk to fuck them. borderline rape. if not rape itself.
Will dress up as Michael Myers. When maybe they should’ve dressed up as Ted Bundy.
But thats too on the nose.

Or the men with no-backbone who always looks for applause. who make themselves the butt of the joke because nobody takes them seriously. will dress up as a banana.

A fucking banana.

Out of all the funny jokes they couldve made, they made themselves a walking joke.

And they dont do it because they consider themselves sluts, monsters, or clowns.

They do it because they DONT consider themselves sluts, monsters, or clowns.
But halloween is the one day they need to dress up. So: Pick Something.

And more often than not they’ll pick something that really calls out to them.

Like my friend in the punisher t-shirt.
He really considers himself a punisher.
He really doesn’t care about how he’s perceived.

I respect it.

Mostly because, he’s not wearing a costume. he just needs to put something on.

And to the people who dont wear costumes on halloween, i say:
your not lazy. your you

but you better be good already.
dont need a costume then.

But my friend picked that same “costume” to go out to house parties
for three years (maybe more)

not because he doesn’t care (which, is true),
but because that’s really who he is.

Thats what he covers up everyday…

He makes it seem like he cares. goes to work, acts respectful, whatever.

But i’ve known him for more than three years and have gotten to know him.

The thing he hides is how little he cares.
But the thing he doesn’t know, is not caring is just fine, wise even.

But not caring about yourself?
Not caring to change?

Thats death.

And when i opened up my door and saw him in that shirt.
Maybe what really upset me. what really scared the shit out of me.
is the realization that my friend is dead.

Doomed to be the same person for the rest of his life.
Cursed to think he’s complete. That he doesn’t need changing.

And with that
Whether he knows it or not

He might have the scariest costume this halloween.
But only to me.

Because only I know the haunted years behind that shirt.

And like everybody else, I see what really comes out in the “costume”.

Subscribe now

“Oh, You’re a writer? Where can I find your writing!”

and ill contemplate for a millisecond and then tell them to google my name.

Pretentious, yes.

But now my name shows up on google.

And now it makes sense (to them) why I chain-smoke cigarettes outside bars

And stare at brick buildings like theirs a code written in the mortar.

Or just randomly quote some fool who died.

Or stare into the sky between breaths.

Or simply speak with the rhythm that I do.

If only they knew how important acting is.

Then maybe nothing would surprise them anymore.

Because people have been done before. No reason to not do them again.

But, in my opinion, sub-stack has the best people. The most delusional, the most determined, and the most despicable people sharing space.

All outspoken. Sharing thoughts.

Here are the things i’ve learned about human nature, a year after throwing myself into the wilderness.

1. Nobody cares unless they’re made to care.

Pour your heart and soul into the keyboard?
Well, better to have been a typewriter, its pretty page photographed, and posted as a note.

Made something worth reading?
It better be marketable. Duh.

How about people being on substack just to obverse?

Well, you too observer are here to be observed.

Its an unspoken agreement that the Gravitas of Any Commenter lie in their profile.

It must be checked out
For science, no,
for respect.

You need to know where those words are coming from. Need to.

And the people who dont comment? Lurkers? They exist as that little views statistic on the dashboard.

What does this information tell me about human nature?
It tells me people are made to care. and they dont care automatically, nope, gotta make them.

Got a story worth telling? You better be telling good stories already.

Want more viewers and lurkers? Need to become one.

More interaction wanted? More interactions given.

Give and take on substack. Most of the time, we give to receive. I dont see anyone who makes it without putting effort into being someone on notes.

Notes are the personality. The writings are the depth.

Nobody wants to jump into green water.
even if they know the waters crystal clear and clean underneath.

But, they’ll jump if they see other people jumping.

Better have something worth jumpin for.

Because nobody cares just to care.

2. You are only what you say you are, if you can prove it.

“You’re a writer? What do you write?”

Imagine not being able to answer that. And calling yourself a writer.

Anyone can answer that. Or make something up.

“I write poetry”

Thats an easy one. I can write a poem on a napkin and call myself a poet.
In fact, I have. It’s fun. Then youre forced to live up to it.

“Can you write a poem for me. Like, right now?”

Most of the time, yes. i can write a poem for you right now.
doesnt mean it’ll be good. Still, whats important is how you do it.

If you hand them the poem and explain yourself while you do it,
”this ones about blah blah; its not my best work blah blah; i usually write about blah and blah”

performative slop. awful.

But if you hand them the poem and say nothing,
maybe say something with your eyes

then you hand them a cypher. a mystery. something in words to be discovered.
then they’ll know you as someone who always has something to say. but thats not important.
its the way you say it they’ll care about.

Thats where action and reality meet.

Same thing with stories.

Sure, you can send them a story. let them read it and tell you how much they like it. they always do.

But tell a real story. with your voice. with you brain. using your memory and a little bit of imagination.

and do it at anytime you have something to share.
and you’ll become a story.
and anything you write becomes interesting because your words have already been infested with worth.

Your a writer?
theyll ask. and anybody can answer that with a yes

Theres a reason monkeys on a typewriter can write hamlet in any language. if you have enough of them.
Anybody can write a fuckin page of any thought that comes to mind.

But not everybody has what it takes to be a story in the making. To leave stories everywhere you walk like bloody footsteps in the snow. Not everybody can be interesting, but those who truly are aren’t trying to be. Its something in their face that tells it all. Both ways.

And what has this taught me about human nature?
It’s taught me that authenticity is built, not found.

That everybody is acting and only those who act with enough sweat and tears can be the crying, sweaty man on stage. Let authenticity be a lesson built by life, not a performance so well crafted that you put your blood into a routine.

You are only what you say you are, if you can prove it.
Prove it to yourself, that is.

Authenticity is a force that builds gravity.
Breath it, and live it, you become it.
Act like it, feel like it, realize your performing — hate it, stop it, and if you try again, it was really meant to be.

3. Time means something, sometimes.

“How long have you been writing”

Loaded question. No answer.

“Eight years, if you count high school papers.
Four is how long i’ve actually enjoyed writing
Three years ago i thought about writing for myself
Two years i’ve been writing stuff i actually call poetry
Twelve months of acting like i have an audience
Eight months of actually calling myself a writer
Two months of writings im proud to call my own
And maybe a week ago i Decided I can actually be a writer.”

Time means something, only if its packed with proof. Ive been writing for so damn long and only started really writing for myself about two months ago. when i realized ive been acting like a writer, trying to write something to actually let me call myself a writer, then finding all my bullshit staring back at me in the mirror and calling it out to really write some shit I can call my own.

That means out of the three years i’ve been writing for myself, only two months ago i became proud of what i produced, enough to want other people to actually read it.
And it has nothing to do with the months, or the time.

But when I tell people i’ve been writing for three years, or four years, or eight years, or however many years i choose to tell them, i always tell them with the expectation that its going to change how they view my current writing.

Because time only matters in context. or context only matters with time…
Nope, time only matters in context. I’ve decided. Because time frames every action, and the excellence that makes me a genius in the short term makes me persistent in the long.

Time only matters, sometimes. With context. Perception is always context.

4. Writing is the best way to get to know someone

Writing is thinking. Filtered writing is propaganda. Unfiltered writing is unfiltered thought. enough said.

5. Beauty is everywhere

Having a substack really just means i have a place to throw my words. The void is a void, no matter how loud it gets.

Being so attached to my work, or intimate with it maybe, means i care a great deal about its appearance

So, i work and work till i chisel the marble of words into a standing david. And then i dress it up with my favorite part, an image.

each statue needs a robe. so i have the excuse of taking photos of absolutely any and everything that has an aesthetic worth capturing.
Subjective, surely, but certainly objective in the way that a lack of effort or taste will muddy an otherwise good thing.

A bad photo is a bad photo. Just as a good one is a good one.

So, i take my time with my photos. take multiple, whatever who cares about that.
The important thing is i take lots of photos now and my eye for a beautiful thing has gotten much, much better.

And what does that teach me? That people and their works are like flowers.

Many types, different seasons. Some unlike any other. Some the best of the crop.
Others. unwatered. or out of place. Or just plastic knockoffs of real ones.
Still with some beauty. maybe some more care is needed. no shame in that.

Subscribe now

Final Thoughts

I’ll be honest. I dont think a year on substack means that much. Not anymore.

Why? Because who really cares how long i’ve been here. Not me. Im here for other reasons.

Its an anniversary of something more than publishing. Im almost at a hundred posts. Thats what matters more to me.
Actually, im almost upset i’ve hit a year and dont have a hundred posts. Why?

Because ive been caring a lot more about effort recently. and quantity goes up for that.
Though, im not upset because quality matters even more. and the number isnt important.
and the time isnt important.

Whats really important.

What really matters.

Is something i wont say here.

My first non-fiction publication.

I’ve started this maybe, three times now? Third times the charm, fuckin finally.

I’ve needed an outlet to be both a scientist and a journalist, and I’ve found the unifying force comes simply as: an Observer.

Consider this: Nothing is understood without careful observation.

I’ll be putting my observations, insights, and analysis into words because I want to understand them better. I’ll be sharing it here.

NOTE: As of the Fall of 2025, Poetry and Fiction have been taking up most of my time. It will take a bit of transitioning before I get into a groove of publishing non-fiction pieces.

My goal is for this publication to be both a place that inspires me to study and respond to the world and its questions, and for readers to feel that same spark to study and respond to the world.

With that in mind, I hope to create a web of readers who can be inspired to become creators (if they haven’t already), and find good topics to create thoughtful feedback loops.

We spend too much time being consumers, so it’s due time we start producing. (Bonus points if we find topics that need some serious thinking (or rethinking)).

Leave a comment

Writing has become a lifeline for me. Poetry. Research. Journalism. Bloodletting. Writing is thinking.

Phool Proof will be my structured thoughts. Emphasis on learning, and teaching.

Essays

My plan is to create standalone essays for single topics; multi-essay attacks on complex ideas; and organized/chaptered texts on any research or theory produced.

The themes you can expect from this publication:

Psychology — a focus on consciousness, drugs and behavior, and the noetics;

Sociology — critical observation of contemporary times;

Literature — the reviewing, reflecting, and interpretation of fiction writings;

Spirituality — I love the mix of spirituality and psychology (Jungian inspired);

The Publication will not have a set theme, or any lofty requirements apart from fulfilling its sole purpose of teaching and educating (myself, if nobody else!), and if any fiction is to appear, it’s because it fulfills that purpose!

Podcasts

The podcast ideas are slightly scattered at the moment. One is in the distant works, and one finally needs to be set into full motion. For the one that just needs the key to be turned, it is an interview style podcast I call NPC or NOT.

NPC or NOT

NPC or NOT is pretty straightforward. I interview someone on the podcast, and the comments decide if the person is a non-playable character (not a real person, AI generated, soulless, etc.), or if they’re a real person (complete with self-awareness, motivations outside the rat-race, and desires that permeate the artificial barriers of our social world).

For the people I’ll be interviewing, it’s going to range from close friends to complete strangers. It’ll be open to everyone, and anyone walking in an interesting-enough way with thirty-minutes to spare will be a suitable candidate.

This podcast will be the bread and butter podcast of Phool Proof.

It’s purpose is to expose the thoughtlessness or thoughtfulness of ordinary people. Or vice versa, whichever ends up happening.

X-Pect Convict

This idea came to me when I interned for addiction services at my states only mental-health correctional facility. The goal of this podcast is for ex-convicts to share the stories that most matter to them, the wisdom they’ve gained in life, and any advice they have for people struggling with similar problems.

For most, it’ll be about lessons that forced them onto their feet.

For others, it’ll be the fears that keep them from going back.

For the lucky few, it’ll be about a gratefulness that stings; a gratefulness to still have life despite not deserving it, to be alive despite dying mentally so long ago. These are the people who’ve been resurrected and have the hearts to share it.

The two most common positives that people leave prison with are gratitude and a religious conviction. How they found these are stories all can hear. Letting people have a place to talk is the goal.

Considering I only know a few ex-convicts, this podcast may die in its cradle.

Extras

This is anything that I come across that interests me enough to write about, and my interests are pretty intertwined with who I am.

As for who I am [on paper at least], my background can be summed up into a single occupation: Student.

To give that some context, my studies (and story) truly began with schooling. Being told I couldn’t learn chemistry until high-school gave me my first question without a suitable answer: Why do I need to wait? Being dismissed with a “You have to” made me wonder …

Authority, where does it comes from?”

Later on, my first conscious insights about people and their behavior came during middle-school. When the “group-leader” (aka the popular one) from my middle-school friend turned his back on me, I watched as everyone else I called friends slowly turned their backs from me too. I didn’t wonder much about it, just observed and accepted.

Group-think, I would later learn it was called, then wondering why some fell for it when others didn’t.

When my rebellious years of high-school became filled with psychedelics and weed, a spotlight on my mind was turned on, and DAMN was it illuminating! piercing every thought in my bloody skull, down through my veins and into my beating heart, slamming right into my soul with truths so blatant, it felt like I’ve been walking into walls for seventeen years.

Simply put, it all comes from the mind, as one; it all returns to its mind, as one. This period allowed me a discovery of my soul, the rationality behind faith, and my personal calling toward the studying of the mind. It remains the most impactful era of my life, and much of what I do today is for seventeen year old me.

Most recently (May 2025), I earned a Bachelors degree in Psychology with a Minor in English and a Minor in Sociology. It proves my obedience with a paycheck in gravitas. My pursuit of a masters is there in the distance, but my dream of being a journalist/scientist/author/artist rests HERE and NOW, standing at the intersection of writing and thinking.

and that dream needs an outlet.

Phool Proof will be that outlet.

Anything that I think fits the purpose of education will be the “extras” that work itself into this publication.

And in this world, anything can be educational.

If you’ve made it this far into reading, then I’ll say Welcome! To the newest publication; one that I want to take far. Phool Proof, a providence of humble, open, and original living. with proof.

An affirmation:

See you in the comments :)

-Adam

Leave a comment

Subscribe now

Share

Hermetic Principles in Political America

Applying Hermetic principles Four (IV) Polarity and Five (V) Rhythm into the Leftist wave that secured Trump his victory.

Understanding Hermetic principles, economics, physics, and history will help to better understand this text.

*The purpose of this section is to outline my predictions about the future of the American political landscape and to open a dialogue for further analysis, interpretation, and critique.

The Future: A Dialogue

It's important to apply universal principles when trying to predict patterns.

Trump capitalized on the force of gravity to secure a landslide election for his second term. We can understand the ideology of Trumpism as a force, one with the power to influence and change.

We know that it is natural for forces to swing between polarities. By understanding polarities, we can estimate the depth that each force will swing into. We can now make assumptions of the future by analyzing the extent to which an energy (like politics) can become polarized; using its potential energy as a baseline, we can make an inference as to how far Trumpism will swing into its polarity.

The following are my interpretations. It is important to note that my thoughts are only educated guesses based on what I know in the current moment. They are subject to change, review, and criticism. The goal is for the reader to be able to make their own interpretations using universal principles, and to open a dialogue with others.

The Religious Right

The religious right had been steadily losing its influence before and after Reagan and Trump's administrations. Part of that change is in part due to the changing culture and new forms of expression, relating to technology and major advances in science.

Both Reagan and Trump capitalized on the conservative Christian vote, defining their legacies with religious ethics on policy making.

Lacking power in the preceding political terms, I believe there will be an increase in Christian support policy making to compensate.

That may include ethical changes, like the 2022 overruling of Roe v Wade and the loss of federal protections to abortion. There may also be continuing support for religious allies overseas, like Israel, and a continuing caution for Muslims (as seen during 2017-2018 travel bans).

It may also include systematic changes. One example could be an increase in economic support for religious institutions, with the purpose to replace the government's role in social support and opt for a charity based approach.

It may also include a reworking of the criminal justice system, perhaps to emphasize rehabilitation over incarceration. That could suggest a change in capital punishment.

If the religious right were to secure power away from the government (through decreased federal power over state laws), it could potentially open up conflicts in certain states or locales if there is a de-secularization of religious and political doctrines.

This is problematic if religious ethics take precedence over individual rights and secular governance; it could potentially jeopardize civil liberty, create discrimination, or conflict with the constitution.

Social Change, Progress.

If social progress is being attacked in the dismantling of economic populism, we can assume that social conservatism will replace it.

That may include going back and fighting previous supreme court rulings. It may also include the demolition of certain social services, as seen with Trump's 2025 dismantling of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion services.

In 2025, Trump also federally declared the government recognition of only two sexes. The impact that might have on those aligning outside the government recognition (which according to Pew Research is about four million, nine hundred-thousand Americans) might include discrimination, disrespect, or assault.

As race recognition played an important role in liberalism, conservatism may convert to race nonrecognition — the act of viewing all races as the same, and treating them as such.

Though it sounds good on paper to view all races the same, liberal social-scientists believe a person's race is an integral part of their identity; it heavily affects their relationship to power systems and their place within the structure of society.

Through an intersectionalist’s lens, services like DEI are implemented with the purpose of targeting structural biases. They believe that social inequalities should be viewed through a multifaceted lens, accounting for class status, race and gender, legislative history, and social structures.

Neither the efficacy of services like DEI, nor the ethics of race recognition or nonrecognition, will be discussed here.

If race nonrecognition is established, it may reinforce personal or structural biases found in institutional systems. Historically, racial discrimination following the civil war perpetuated race based financial inequality. Criminally, lower financial statuses are associated with higher crime rates. Together, a statistic can be created that explains how a certain race is associated with higher crime, ignoring confounding variables.

The result of race nonrecognition and the dismantling of DEI services may increase discrimination against minorities, allowing more freedom for personal judgements that can serve to improve or reduce certain types of discrimination.

Trump believes that the government should not have an influence on the type of people a company can hire. Liberals believe that past discrimination create current disparities and should be remedied by labeling and amending a dysfunctional system.

Power Dynamics — The Elites and the People

Trump represents conservative populism and a mix of economic nationalism/populism. Trump believes that government elites are corrupt, that the economy should benefit the nation first to then benefit the people, and that unchecked immigration is a threat to national identity, security, and the economy. He champions a direct connection between the leader and the people, upholding traditional beliefs about gender and family, and the preservation of national sovereignty.

By cutting taxes for the rich, he goes against standard economic populist values —favoring the national benefits that come from nationalizing the rich. His favoring of corporate elites over government elites can be seen in his political connections and is a recognition of his type of economic nationalism.

Whereas many people on the left believe corporations do not hold the interests of the people in mind, followers of Trump believe the core corruptions lie in the government.

By reducing government influence on social affairs, but increasing government influence on foregin policy economics, Trump's America first doctrine levels the power of the nation on its own resource and production value. This means there will be a heavy focus on utilizing the labor of its citizens, the power of its natural resources, and the progress incentivized by capitalism to increase American influence and economic security.

If economic stability is maintained, and growth is achieved, it will be reflected in the value of the nations most profitable companies. The stock market will increase, the power of the dollar will increase, and potentially the national quality of life will improve. Who is to benefit directly from economic growth is not something I can make an accurate prediction on. There is a possibility, and many ways, to remedy current inequality, as well as the many ways in which it won't be.

Technological advancements, particularly in AI, may disrupt employment rates and thus contribute to inequality. Systematic biases may continue to be an influence; a higher incarceration or crime rate can also affect it.

As employment rates may be a reflection of economic stability for the people, and is something I would like to comment on, its many variables muddy any predictions I can make.

On the other hand, if economic stability is not maintained, it will be reflected in similar ways as economic growth, but in reverse. Likely, there will be much more inequality if the power of the dollar decreases, if the stock markets become bearish, and the quality of life goes down.

Economic struggle is always an indicator of social change, and Trump created his platform on the economy. It's important to note, Trump's favoritism of corporate elites may be criticized if they do not suffer the same economic damage as the people.

If Trump does not do well, the dysfunction of the economic system will (truthfully or not) no longer be seen as a result of inefficient leadership or government policy, but a broad reflection of economic decline.

What that would do to American influence and reputation overseas could potentially mark the end in America's dominance of the global economy. It could signal the chance for another economic powerhouse to seize lost control in the global market.

If economic struggle rests primarily on the people, there will likely be tremendous dissatisfaction. The same economic gravity that Trump used to secure his victory and shift the ideology away from the left, may become the gravity that tears down his support. If Trump does not keep the economy stable, the people who believed in him will further polarize.

Extreme political polarization following Trump's potential economic failure could be a catalyst to serious civil conflicts. People may lose trust in the leader giving them hope for a better future. If people lose hope, or trust, completely — civil unrest may overhaul the systems and structures within the nation.

If there is any time where a civil war could be likely, it would be an economic recession during the Trump administration.

Conclusion

This essay was written with the purpose of exercising the connection between hermetic principles and American political trends. Hopefully, it delivers a new perspective on the interpreting and analyzing of politics in a very turbulent time.

The purpose of this essay is not to push any particular ideology as is right or wrong, but to make objective observations connecting the macrocosm of history and the microcosm of politics. I do not intend to convince any reader about the quality of any administration.

I do intend to educate the readers on potential causes and consequences of political ideology, economic philosophy, and social change.

More than anything, I encourage open dialogue in the form of support, criticism, and debate. Feel free to contact me personally or respond publically to anything I said.

• Please Note: These essays are subject to continuous review and editting as I see fit, but the overall goal and aim of the text will remain.

Leave a comment

The Previous Sections:

Hermetic Principles in Political America

Applying Hermetic principles Four (IV) Polarity and Five (V) Rhythm into the Leftist wave that secured Trump his victory.

Understanding Hermetic principles, economics, physics, and history will help to better understand this text.

*The purpose of this section is to show how universal principles can be reworked into a political mindset.

Applying Universal Principles

Obama and Biden pushed hard to align themselves with the changing culture of America. They tried to take the youth vote through a progressive mindset, frightening conservatives with the rapid cultural shifts and frustrating them with their economic policies. Fears and frustrations were capitalized on, and the baby of social change was thrown out with the bathwater of economic inefficiency.

The principle of Polarity (IV) highlights the similarities of both parties in their attempt to take down the elites, but distinguishes them in how they do so.

The principle of Rhythm (V) aligns with the flowing power dynamics between each party, as seen in the cultural dominance of either one during select periods of the American political landscape.

We can thus map the relation between economic forces and these two hermetic principles by understanding economics as a force similar to gravity.

Economic Gravity and Physics

Imagining the pendulum swing (V) as moving between the polarities (IV) of liberal and conservative populism, economics would be the force that pulls the pendulum back towards the center.

Quoting the law of inertia, “An object at rest will stay at rest, and an object in motion will stay in motion unless acted upon by an external force." This applies directly to the pendulum swing metaphore and will be discussed

If we see economics like gravity, and understand economic gravitation as the ability for money and wealth to draw in more money and wealth (increasing exponentially the larger the economy), then we can make the assumption that economic gravity also has an effect on factors outside of the economy alone. We can make this assumption on sociological grounds and suggest the larger the national GDP, the stronger the economic influence.

We can see economic gravity as an internal force within the economy acting upon external forces (like political leaders, culture, etc.). Said external forces will pull the pendulum from one polarity to the other, and the intrinsic force of economic gravity can determine the depth into each polarity.

It's important to remember the pendulum swing represents not the average thought process of Americans, but the overall direction of the nation as determined by those in power. It swings from polarity to polarity thanks to economic gravity.

Economic Physics

It is important to further discuss the physics of this pendulum swing to best understand it.

At the peak of its swing, gravity slows the pendulum’s kinetic energy (energy of motion) and turns it into potential energy (energy of its position). The direction of the swing changes when the potential energy is reconverted to kinetic energy.

The key point is the conversion of potential energy back into kinetic energy. The further the pendulum swings into each polarity, the more potential energy is created, and thus, the stronger the kinetic energy will be in return.

Applying this in political terms, the degree at which a nation is polarized is roughly equal to the distance of its travel frome one extreme into the other.

Understanding economics as a force of gravity (keeping the pendulum in its rhythm), we can predict how far conservatism will swing in response to liberalism during Trump's second administration.

A review of the history.

First, we must understand that liberalism before Trump was a response to overall cultural shifts in the nation, and in line with the populist ideology of the left. Second, we must understand the many outside forces that influenced the economy before Trump, including a failure to successfully integrate leftist populist ideologies with lasting change. Third, we must understand the economic tension between the two parties as a lasting force that keeps the pendulum swing in motion.

Economic Physics in Effect

The economic gravity of the two financial crises during the Obama and Biden administrations created a very strong tension. Despite working with the cultural flow of the time, the focus on social change ignored the force of gravity.

The left pulled hard on the pendulum swing, relying on cultural changes for power instead of economics. The tension created by their spending on social services and progressive policies generated an economic deficit of potential energy allowing a powerful swing in the opposite direction to take place (as long as economic gravity is still in play).

When Trump stood on economic strength as his political backbone, he told the nation that he recognized the power of a strong economy. As a businessman, Trump knows how powerful money can be, and he used this knowledge to secure the force of gravity as a powerful ally.

Where the Left had chosen to use economics as a means of empowering social change— globalization and multi-culturalism, for example, go hand in hand because acceptance of all races and ethnicities produce better international relations; through healthcare, student loan forgiveness, and minority inclusion — their strides for social progress had gone against the pivotal force of gravity and created a wave for Trump to ride all the way to the white house.

Through economics, Trump capitalized on the potential energy that was eagerly swinging from liberalism towards conservatism, and smashed through the cultural tides of change that the Left chose as their foundation.

How Trump might use this energy to his advantage will be discussed in section four (4/4).

Next Section:

Previous Sections:

Leave a comment

Get more from Adam-Dylan Bowlby in the Substack app

Available for iOS and Android

Get the app

Hermetic Principles in Political America

Applying Hermetic principles Four (IV) Polarity and Five (V) Rhythm into the Leftist wave that secured Trump his victory.

Understanding Hermetic principles, economics, physics, and history will help to better understand this text.

* The purpose of this section is to outline the trends of the American political landscape before and during the Trump administrations. It focuses on the relation between American economic policy and social well being.

The Swings of the Left

Liberal Dominance

Economics plays an important role in the tides of American politics. Following World War II, a rise in liberal policies influenced by presidents Truman (1945-53 D), Eisenhower (1953-61 R), Kennedy (1961-1963 D), and Johnson (1963-69 D) saw a liberal dominance in both parties. The new deal was expanded, embedded liberalism became the model of economics, the welfare state and interventionist policies were accepted by both the left and the right, all the while the civil rights movement began making serious social change. This was a time marked by liberal dominance, thanks to the economic policies of the time.

Under embedded liberalism, wages rose, strong unions backed workers and gave them good right, economic growth increased, and inequality was generally reduced. This era is known as the golden age of capitalism (though it's still tainted by McCarthyism and the racial inequality of the time).

The economic downturn beginning around the 1970s marked the end of this liberal domination. This is where the discussion of polarization (IV) and rhythm (V) begins.

Conservative Backlash

Nixon's presidency (1969-74) began the conservative backlash to embedded liberalism, the economic order that balanced free-market capitalism with government intervention and social protections. The rise of neoliberalism was a reaction to the growing dissatisfaction of high taxes, welfare spending, government control, high unemployment + inflation, and the oil shock of 1973.

The conservative backlash and rise of neoliberalism saw the dismantling of the welfare state, lowered taxes, a call for deregulation, and a hands-off approach to managing markets. Nixon took America off the gold standard in 1971 and the market was freeing itself from government grips.

The Vietnam war and its protests reflected the polarization of the parties. People on both sides were arguing about the right way to use American influence. In this case, those on the Right believed American influence was marked by economic and ideological security; this included a deathly fear of communism — capitalism's counterpart — and a push to fight it however they can. By establishing the economic superiority of capitalism through free markets, the Right was able to push their economic philosophy into politics by taking away government influence over the people.

The Left believed American influence was driven by their power to make social change for the good of everyone. That includes domestic aid, social aid, civil change, and government protections — which all require a strong government influence. They believed that by empowering the government, they were empowering the people, and by supporting the people, they can support the world.

Both parties believed they were working in the interests of the American people, either by empowering the government or disempowering the government. Fueled by economic hardship, the pendulum swung from a liberally dominated past and into conservative backlash and the ensuing conservative revolution.

Conservative Revolution

President Reagan (1981-89) and his administration gave rise to his economic spinoff of neoliberalism — Reaganomics. This saw heavy tax cuts for corporations with the purpose of trickling down to the people. A massive slash in social spending was recycled into massive spending for the defense sector (thanks to the cold war).

The tax cuts, deregulation and reduced government spending marked the major shift away from embedded liberalism and into free-market capitalism. Reagan was the peak of the pendulum swing away from liberalism and into conservatism. After him, the pendulum would begin its swing back to the left.

Following the short-term economic gains of Reaganomics, future economic hardships would bring the pendulum swing away from free-market conservatism and towards economic populism. The rise of corporate control, globalization, and inequality polarized the political parties even further.

Where the parties were once diverse, with conservative and liberal wings to the republican and democratic parties, the divide between the two had deepened when entering into the 2000s.

The 2000s and beyond

Cultural shifts, economic inequality, and disillusionment with the political establishment gave rise to the populist movements for both the republicans and democrats.

People on both sides distrusted elites and questioned their influence. The 2008 financial crisis, the terrorist attack of September 11th, and organized backlash against the corporate elite (Occupy Wall Street in 2011) set the stage for a populist attack on the government.

The Obama era (2009-17) saw a rise in left and right wing populism. The great recession can be blamed on many factors, the big one being the deregulation brought about by the preceding free-market capitalism.

Bailouts for the 1% and hardships for the general population brought the effectiveness of neoliberalism into question. Both the right and left scrutinized the current system and fought for change. They are both fighting the same problems, but in radically different ways. Both had a growing distrust towards elites and establishment, were skeptical towards globalization and free-market policies (like NAFTA), did not trust the media, and believed Washington politicians to be corrupt.

This is where the principle of Polarity (IV) best establishes itself.

Contemporary

The right-wing populists blamed government elites and globalists, while the left-wing populists blamed corporate elites and billionaires. Both knew the powerful did not have their interests in mind, but they had different ideas as to what people make up the powerful.

The scale they were fighting was deeply intertwined into economic policies: the left was fighting for economic populism, which used the wealth of the nation for the betterment of the people; the right was fighting for economic nationalism, using the wealth of the people for the benefit of the nation. These opposites are not singular, but they represent different degrees of belief operating on the same scale.

Understanding the principles of Polarity (IV) can help us understand the direction of the pendulum swing that works under the principles of Rhythm (V). By understanding the principle of Rhythm, the principle of Polarity, and the driving force of economics, we can make predictions about the current political landscape's future and its consequences.

Trumpism

The progressive legacy brought about by the Obama and Biden administrations are the most recent leftist swings now being balanced out by the Trump administration.

The Obama Administration oversaw the legalization of same-sex marriage, gender equality, and healthcare access. Biden (2021-24) further supported these social liberties. Both administrations succeeded in advancing general social conditions by increasing inclusivity for minorities and troubled people, at the expense of government spending. The increases in government spending are attributed by conservatives to the economic inefficiency of these changes.

As we have seen before, economics is a driving force in the political landscape. Trump plays an interesting role because his non-consecutive administration fell at the intersection of Obama’s and Biden’s administration. He fights on a strong economic foundation, echoing populist sentiments and capitalizing on the frustrations of the people, using that energy as a force of change. For all populists, the elites are the enemy. For conservative populists, the elites are embedded in the government.

It's important to note, both Obama and Biden began their administration during a time of serious turmoil. The financial crash of 2008 and the COVID pandemic are still fresh wounds in the minds of many Americans, as are their frustrations. The economic strain during both crises’ intensified public dissatisfaction and played into the rise of Trumpism. However, when Trump was first nominated as the Republican’s presidential candidate, both conservatives and liberals were wary.

The mark of Trump's legacy boils down to the fact that he was not a part of the political system — he was outside of it. This gave populists the idea that he is more trustworthy than those operating within the political system. His channeling of the religious right, his platform being built off of economic strength, and his echoing of populist ideals made him the face of conservative populism. The polarization of both parties fought on the battleground of economics using the weapons of populism.

Battle of the Poles

The rise of Sanders socialism, the attempt to secure the first woman presidency, and the inclusion of transgender and women's rights in healthcare are examples of political battlegrounds. The Democrats chose not to fight the shifting cultural landscape of America, but to align themselves with it. Progressive cultural and social change became the face of economic populism.

*In doing so, the failure of the left to establish economic security under their administration caused people to critique not only their economic philosophy, but their social philosophy on top. Thus, as the face of economic populism, the progressive cultural changes made by the Democrats became a target of scrutiny.

The biggest target became immigration. It also included spending on healthcare, minority rights, social services, and government institutions. Government spending was at the core of the Rights economic attack.

Social Change as a Scapegoat

Economics played into frustrations, and social change became an outlet for the frustration.

Trump’s first term (2017-2021) saw a reversal of the progressive legacy left by Obama. He used the democrats progressive ideology as a scapegoat for their economic inefficiency. Whether the Democrats' economic policies were efficient or not can be debated by economists and political scientists better than I. Still, Trump made a point to the conservatives that he would make America great again. His foundation was economic, but his direction was aimed at the philosophy of the Democrats as a whole.

During his first term, Trump was able to secure a conservative majority in the supreme court. This gave the conservatives serious executive powers in determining the outcome of key rulings, giving them the final say in controversial issues like gun-control and abortion laws. This also secured the favor of the republican party.

Polarization continues to increase as the left saw this attack on progressive policies as an attack on their way of life. The economic policies flaunted by Trump was/are his shield and his sword.

Trump's second term (2025 - present) is marked by incredibly rapid change. In his first thirty days, he has signed over 300 hundred policies and executive actions. The purpose is to make the government elites cower while empowering corporate elites, as seen by his cabinet choices. To the conservative populists that Trump and his MAGA now embody, his policy changes and reversals are paving the way towards economic nationalism.

Knowing the history of Americas political landscape is the basis to making accurate predictions of the future. In section three (3/4), we will discuss the application of universal principles to further refine the predictions made in section four (4/4).

Leave a comment

Get more from Adam-Dylan Bowlby in the Substack app

Available for iOS and Android

Get the app

Following Sections:

Previous Section:

Hermetic Principles in Political America

Applying Hermetic principles Four (IV) Polarity and Five (V) Rhythm into the Leftist wave that secured Trump his victory.

Understanding Hermetic principles, economics, physics, and history will help to better understand this text.

* At the bottom of the page, there will be a list of terms I use sparingly throughout the four sections of the essay. I recommend using it as reference to ensure term familiarity.

Preface

America has its opposites, the left and the right; Everything is dual, everything has its pair of opposites — but opposites are the same, only differing in degree (IV). The political left and the right are made up of the same people — a people united in ideology and with desire to actualize it; the same scale, with their difference in the degree (as hot and cold are); Americans believe in personal liberty but differ on how to achieve it.

Each direction, left or right, reflects the principle of polarity (IV); it is important to reiterate that they are opposites, and those opposites are working towards the same goals.

The Forces at Play

The opposites that I see in America are ones that follow particular historical trends.

Following the end of the first world war, the Democratic German government was known as the Weimar Republic. Progressive shifts in how the public viewed sexuality and psychology made Berlin in 1920 akin to San Diego in 1960; the Republic was one of the most progressive societies of its time.

When the Nazi regime took over in 1933, the suppression of the Weimar Republic’s free thinking was the first step in Germany taking it’s nation down a dark path. It can be said that the rise of the authoritarian party is a reaction to the liberalism that preceded it. We can now turn our attention to Americas history.

Following WWII, the free-living of 1960s America was reacted to by the political leaders of the 70s and 80s. Their attempts at suppression, namely through legislature, is a reflection of the pendulum swing. All things rise and fall; everything has its tides — the measure of the swing to the left is the measure of the swing to the right; rhythm compensates (V).

Looking at the political landscape of the 1990s to the 2000s, the swing to the right had balanced out with the swing to the left. Analyzing the 2010s and the historic 2016, and 2020, and 2024 presidential elections, the rhythm of America's political landscape is swinging back, much faster than ever.

The progressive attitudes towards sexuality and civil duties in America are now eagerly being opposed. Whether this is, or is not, the proper direction to take America’s future will not be discussed here. What will be discussed is the leftist political failures that led into a right wing takeover of American philosophy. The argument will be supplemented with the hermetic principles mentioned earlier.

The purpose of this essay is to analyze contemporary political trends, compare them with historical patterns, and make inferences towards the future. In section two (2/4), we will thoroughly discuss the history of Americas political and economic landscape following the second world war, and its influence on contemporary politics.

Leave a comment

Terms

Hermetic Terms

Principle of Polarity: "Everything is Dual; everything has poles; everything has its pair of opposites; like and unlike are the same; opposites are identical in nature, but different in degree; extremes meet” — The Kybalion.

Principle of Rhythm: Everything flows, out and in; everything has its tides; all things rise and fall; the pendulum-swing manifests in everything; the measure of the swing to the right is the measure of the swing to the left; rhythm compensates." — The Kybalion.

Polarity: “In everything there are two poles, or opposite aspects, and [those] "opposites" are really only the two extremes of the same thing, with many varying degrees between them.” — The Kybalion.

Unique to this essay

The Pendulum Swing: A metaphor to describe the principle of Rhythm (V). It uses the image of a swinging pendulum to capture a flow between polarities; the moving of a pendulum left to right and back.

Economic Gravity: A term suggesting economics is a force of gravity; the tension between political polarities is created by this economic force. (Unique to this essay; does not refer to traditional definition of economic gravity)

Economic Terms

Economics: Social science that deals with the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services and with the theory and management of economies or economic systems. — The American Heritage Dictionary

Economic Populism: A political approach that prioritizes the economic interests of the common people over those of the elite, often advocating for policies that redistribute wealth and address economic inequality. Can be left-wing (e.g., socialist-leaning policies) or right-wing (e.g., protectionism mixed with social benefits), but its core idea is empowering the general population economically. — Wikipedia; Chat GPT

Economic Nationalism: An ideology with the core belief that the economy should serve nationalist goals; About protecting the national economy from external influences. — Wikipedia

Embedded Liberalism: Combines free trade with the ability of states to implement welfare policies and regulate their economies to promote stability and cooperation. It emphasizes the role of international institutions in embedding economic practices within a framework of rules and norms. — Wikipedia

Reaganomics: Focused on tax cuts, deregulation, and reducing government spending to stimulate economic growth. This approach aimed to promote free-market principles and individual entrepreneurship. Trickle down strategy, cutting taxes for corporations believed to benefit the people.

Political Terms

Populism: A political movement or philosophy that claims to represent the interests of ordinary people, often contrasting them against a perceived corrupt elite. It typically emphasizes the idea of a unified "people" and can be found across the political spectrum, sometimes manifesting in both democratic and authoritarian forms. — Merriam Webster Dictionary.

Liberalism: Emphasizes individual rights, equality, and government intervention to promote social welfare, often advocating for progressive reform. A political ideology. — Wikipedia

Conservatism: Focuses on preserving traditional institutions and values, favoring limited government intervention in the economy and a cautious approach to social change. A political ideology. — Wikipedia.

Trumpism: A blend of populism, nationalism, and conservative principles, combined with Trump's personal style and rhetoric.

The Next Section:

Subscribe now

Share

Get more from Adam-Dylan Bowlby in the Substack app

Available for iOS and Android

Get the app

This paper was written for my psychology of consciousness class in Fall of 2024. It has undergone no revisions since then. Its purpose is to demonstrate the findings made by Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff

Microtubules, Anesthetics, and Quantum Consciousness

Adam-Dylan

Psych 3502 – Psychology of Consciousness

Professor Leslie Burton

October 21st, 2024

Microtubules and quantum consciousness

It was proposed that the hard questions of consciousness involve finding correlations between brain processes and the phenomenon of consciousness. Decades of research and technological evolution shed light on the true complexity of the functions of our cognition and its relation to consciousness. Hundreds of theories spanning fields of neuroscience, biology, evolution, psychology, and sociology have attempted to explain the phenomenon of consciousness: what it means to be, what it’s like to be, how it is we are — conscious. A recent breakthrough in the understanding of anesthetic effects on the brain collides with the newest frontier of a previously unrelated field in psychology, quantum physics.

It was first speculated by an anesthesiologist and physicist that the brain has the capability for non-algorithmic based computing, also known as quantum computing. For this to be possible, a place within the brain must be able to maintain quantum coherence; meaning a state where electrons, protons, or atoms exist in multiple states simultaneously. The quantum state is defined by the features of superposition, that of existing in multiple states simultaneously; and of phase relations, the fixed alignment of the wave-functions of different particles with each other. For this to be possible, the extreme fragility of quantum coherence must be isolated from environmental disturbances, such as observation, to maintain this quantum state. Stuart Hameroff suggests that the tiny tube-like proteins found in almost all cells of the body, including neurons, are reasonably isolated and stable for such a process to go on. These tube-like proteins are known as microtubules.

These microtubules are cylindrically shaped with a spiral lattice, allowing for ‘helical macroscopic “quantum highways” … suitable for topological quantum computing’ (Hameroff, 2012, as cited in Blackwell & Troscianko, 2024, p. 142). The assumption that these microtubules have anything to do with consciousness was first suggested in a study investigating the possible mechanisms of anesthesia by Allison & Nunn (1968). It is found that numerous cellular systems are affected by general anesthetics, with cytoplasmic microtubules being found in all these systems. It is further suggested that “microtubular proteins are also susceptible to reversible depolymerization by anæsthetics”, however, “how this depolymerization results in narcosis is not yet clear, but one possibility (suggested by the abundance of microtubules in neurons) is that microtubules participate in nerve-impulse transmission (Allison & Nunn, 1968). Over half a century later, a groundbreaking study on rats uncovered an integral link between microtubules, anesthetics, and consciousness.

In 2024, a team of researchers began their study linking anesthetics with microtubules, which I will now refer to as MTs. Epothilones, a drug treatment for cancer that stabilizes MTs, is differentiated from older MT stabilizers by their heightened efficacy for penetrating the blood-brain barrier and affecting both the brain and the spinal cord. By administering this microtubule stabilizer on rats, this experimental group was compared to a control group through a latency to loss of righting reflex (LORR). The LORR latency was recorded when the rat was fully unconscious, as assessed by turning on its back, and if it failed to place all four paws back on the ground within 30 seconds. The anesthetic was administered in all rats before the MT stabilizer was administered and after the LORR latency was recorded, to reduce data variability accounting for the induced stress of epothilone injection. The results of this experiment found that the average LORR latency increased after the epothilone injection (Khan et al., 2024). This result suggests that rats administered with MT stabilizers were able to return to a conscious state quicker than rats that were not administered with MT stabilizers. This makes MTs a plausible action site for anesthetics, thus linking MTs with consciousness. The authors of this experiment comment upon these implications for competing theories of consciousness. They suggest that the results “are potentially consistent with classical models of consciousness, but they represent a more stringent test of these MT-based models, because while the classical models are agnostic about MTs as a functional anesthetic target, the MT-based models specifically predict that directly disrupting the physical state of MTs should contribute to loss of consciousness” (Khan et al., 2024). They go on to say, “Overall the Orch OR theory, in which MTs mediate anesthetic action, has more explanatory power, biological connection, and experimental validation than the classical theories” (Khan et al., 2024).

The theory proposed by physicist Roger Penrose in collaboration with anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff suggests that consciousness emerges from the quantum coherence in microtubules. This theory, known as Orchestrated Objective Reduction (Orch OR), best explains what Penrose lists as the three main problems of understanding consciousness: The unitary sense of self; free will; and the effects of anesthesia (Blackwell & Troscianko, 2024, p.142). As quoted by the authors in Khan et al. (2024), the results of the experiment “corroborate the plausibility of the MT-based quantum physical model of consciousness and the hypothesis that isoflurane could contribute to abolishing consciousness by interacting with an entangled state of MT”. Furthermore, “these results support that the MT vibrational state and resultant electromagnetic field can interact systematically with the membrane voltage that we know is closely related to mental function and behavior and again that this coupling can traverse the physical gap between neurons” (Khan et al., 2024). The results of this study and the comments of the authors suggest that “The physical substrate of consciousness in the brain must be a nontrivial macroscopic quantum state”, its implications declaring: “(1) the existence of a macroscopic quantum entangled state in the brain, [and] (2) that this quantum brain state is likely related to consciousness and cognitive functioning, (Khan et al., 2024). What this opens is a methodology of understanding consciousness as a quantum phenomenon, suggesting that our unified sense of self as well as free will do not have properties stemming from classic physics, but they manifest from a quantum origin. The validity given to Orch OR by this study integrates the problems of consciousness into the mechanics of quantum physics.

The fundamental principles of Orchestrated Objective Reduction are alluded to in its name. As proposed by Penrose and Hameroff, consciousness emerges from quantum processes within the brain’s microtubules. A key principle of these mechanics is the collapse of wavefunctions into particles, a phenomenon that occurs when the superimposed state of particles grows too far apart and collapse into one possibility or the other. In Orch OR, consciousness can be stated as a process that is “gravitational but nonlocal in nature”, ‘creating a large-scale link between things in a widely seperated area’ (Blackwell & Troscianko, 2024, p.141). What he means by gravitational is the idea that quantum states collapsed not through environmental interference or observation, but through a certain threshold of gravitational instability leading to the non-computable collapse of the wave function. He deems this threshold the Penrose Threshold, from which consciousness emerges. He suggests that when these collapses happen within the brain’s microtubules in an organized manner, they contribute to ‘our causal selection of our particular actions and perceptions” (Hameroff 2022). Orchestrated, meaning coordinated and controlled, suggest the nature of these collapses to be induced by our biological processes. Objective reduction, referring to the collapse of the wave function into a singular possibility, is the key component of consciousness, a phenomenon that arises if and when they happen in a controlled and coordinated manner — hence the theories name, orchestrated objective reduction.

The problem that Penrose into the realm of a quantum conscious and his Orch OR theory is within the troublesome explanatory gap that arises between actual experience and conscious perception of it. First, he explains the problem of going from classical physics to quantum, or vice versa. He explains that superposed states are possible — quantumly — but either one or the other must be the case — classically (Blackwell & Troscianko, 2024, p.140). To solve this, his suggestion that the isolated system of the brain’s microtubules is capable of quantum coherence strongly links consciousness with the mechanics of quantum physics. That includes nonlocality (particles being linked across vast distances unexplained by classical physics), quantum indeterminacy (systems existing in a superposition of states until a quantum collapse occurs) and non-algorithmic computing (superposition collapsing into one specific state). These quantum implications answer a few hard problems for understanding consciousness: The unitary sense of self; free will; and the effects of anesthesia. He suggests that the unitary sense of self arises from the non-locality of quantum processing. The quantum processing of information on a global scale allows for a single, unified conscious experience despite the underlying processes being distributed across neurons. Our sense of free-will comes from quantum indeterminacy. Instead of consciousness being completely determined by previous states, the mind instead could exert influence over which quantum states collapse, creating a conscious decision-making process that is not bound by strict determinism. The effects of anesthesia, specifically the abrupt transitions from unconscious to conscious or vice versa, may be explained as quantum state reduction.

As the quantum events and the collapses proposed by Orch OR are not random, this suggests the presence of an invisible agency (Blackwell & Troscianko, 2024, p.142). This invisible agency can be called consciousness, as this invisible agent is responsible for the orchestrated collapse of wave functions that give rise to the unitary awareness of the self and the self-efficacy of decision making, which is considered fundamental to consciousness. As the universe operates on a quantum level, this suggests that consciousness isn’t just a product of the brain’s classical processes, but that it’s intertwined with the very fabric of the universe on a quantum level. The true hard question of consciousness as proposed by Blackwell & Troscianko, (2024, p.28) — that being, how physical processes give rise to subjective experience — can now be understood as a path that quantum physics may hold an answer to. However, part of the problem still remains. What is the mechanism that links microtubule behavior to qualia, our subjective experiences of perception? In what ways can we test the claims of Orch OR? — that being how and why our invisible agent operates. One thing that we can claim with sincerity is that quantum processing within the brain is a truly distinctive trait separating natural intelligence with artificial intelligence. Perhaps what links humanity to the rest of nature isnt intelligence, or divine stewardship, but the simple fact that we are all a part of life. With this new understanding in mind, hopefully new breakthroughs will bring us closer to unlocking life’s final mystery — understanding consciousness.

Subscribe now

References

Allison, A. C., & Nunn, J. F. (1968). Effects of general anæsthetics on microtubules: A possible mechanism of anesthesia. The Lancet, 292(7582), 1326-1329. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(68)91821-7

Blackwell, S., & Troscianko, T. (2024). Psychology of consciousness: An introduction (4th ed.). Routledge

Hameroff S (2022) Consciousness, Cognition and the Neuronal Cytoskeleton – A New Paradigm Needed in Neuroscience. Front. Mol. Neurosci. 15:869935. doi: 10.3389/fnmol.2022.869935

Khan, S., Huang, Y., Timuçin, D., Bailey, S., Lee, S., Lopes, J., Gaunce, E., Mosberger, J., Zhan, M., Abdelrahman, B., Zeng, X., & Wiest, M. C. (2024). Microtubule-stabilizer epothilone B delays anesthetic-induced unconsciousness in rats. eNeuro, 11(8), Article ENEURO.0291-24. https://doi.org/10.1523/ENEURO.0291-24.2024