WillCameron

I think the mistake that pickup often makes is getting trapped within their own system's success rate, thereby failing to see the systematic nature of the failure rate and then responsiblizing those men as being unwilling to take action. In my own life, I would get panic attacks every time I went into a nightclub and it became debilitating just trying to go out. I bullied myself for not being strong enough and would try to muscle through it. What worked for me was realizing that I am a system composed of parts at various stages of development given how trauma had broken them off. Even though I displayed high degrees of emotional intelligence, antifragility, and rationality in some domains, when it came to social environments, the less developed parts of me became very triggered. All the development I'd made in other domains was basically thrown out the window, and taking "massive action" within the system of pickup became the very vehicle of my re-traumatization. What finally helped for me was realizing that I had to become more well-rounded by addressing those parts in ways they could respond to. Relational meditative practices such as Authentic Relating and Circling can create scaffolding to help those parts heal and develop to where you need them to be. Also, don't think that nightclubs are the only place to learn game. They can be extremely effective, but if you find they're too much for you, then go to meetup.com and find hobby groups for common interests and meet people there. I made the most social development doing daygame and talking to people outside university classes while we waited for the previous class to leave. I still haven't gone through the nightgame gauntlet and really have no desire to. I'm happy with who I am and the lifestyle I'm building and nightgame isn't a part of that. It doesn't ever need to be, but try telling that to a well-intentioned pickup guy trying to motivate you to go out. It's very easy to get locked into a certain definition of success which shapes and organizes you along a path of becoming that could ultimately damage you even worse. What do you actually want out of your social life? Quick sex with super hot women or meaningful relationships? It's not an either/or situation necessarily, but be conscious of how what you pursue shapes and organizes what you could do, and given where you start, that may take you in the wrong direction from what you need. Also, just as some advice, if you go to hobby groups, don't try to fuck women. Build up your base of socialization, learning to be a fun, trustworthy guy first. Another mistake the pickup system makes is to assume that you're best positioned to learn social skills by learning to sleep with women. If you're starting from a socially damaged place, then that turns you into a sex addict who is only capable of connecting with other people through pursuing sex. So not only are you at risk of being the weird guy who tries to fuck everyone at every hobby group you go to, but you're also not actually learning how to build meaningful relationships.

Owen has said that he wants to completely remove any doubt and have a delusional level of self-belief. His rhetoric around frame control and how he wants to raise his children to be completely success-deluded are red flags. He's a traumatized autistic whose path to mastery were three of the most Machiavellian domains, pickup, sales, and marketing. He surrounds himself with narcissists and success-obsessives in LA. The man has no chance but to be an extremely corrupt individual, no matter how hard he tries. It wouldn't surprise me if he's one of the most moral Machiavellian's that exist, but he is still stuck within that paradigm and cannot challenge it because he's so obsessed with not being affected by others, giving in to conformity, etc. He's like Homelander arguing himself in the mirror trying to convince himself to stop caring what anyone thinks while being desperate for their attention, but as a consequence locking himself in his worldview. For example, he serially dates women with BPD and then convinces himself that all women are like that, so the only solution is to control the frame even more than he already did. It's a snake eating its own tail because he's so hungry for a super attractive woman who lives in LA, which is selecting for a very niche type of woman in a very toxic environment, and then learns lessons that would scare any other woman away the moment they become aware of how he operates. Great for quick sex, bad for healthy, long term relationships.

I'm writing about masculinity for a solarpunk society. The overarching theme of the current series is a redefinition of the self that is better placed to transform society in beneficial ways. However, I use masculinity and sexual ethics as a case study for defining that self. This is the stage setting info that I use to explain it. 1. I start from the idea that the self is relational, or created out of its relations with others and the world. This calls us to consider the ethical quality of our relationships. 2. Levinas and Beauvoir state that the sexual relation is exemplary of the ethical. As such, I use romantic relationships as a case study in building the solarpunk self. 3. I use heterosexual relationships primarily because that is my own experience. I'm a heterosexual man, so I can't really speak about experiences outside that. The end goal is to understand the ethical relations in the context of sexual relations, which can help us understand the kinds of relations necessary to produce the kinds of selves necessary to create solarpunk. This is not necessarily the kinds of selves that will be "in" a solarpunk culture because we can't actually know what that would be. All of us, to a greater or lesser extent, have been shaped by neoliberal capitalism, and so we have to develop the kind of self-conception that can heal ourselves and the world. With this new conception of the self, informed by psychological and cognitive science, we are better positioned to create selves that can create solarpunk. We want to think of the movement toward solarpunk as a development toward a series of adjacent possibles. An adjacent possible is the smallest step we can take toward where we want to go. Often visions fail to realize because we try to skip too many steps. We can only be directed toward the better and so we must start where we are. In other words, this definition can only ever be aspirational. Here is the first essay in the series. I release every Saturday, and YouTube and Spotify links are inside the article. - https://solarpunkmythos.substack.com/p/solarpunk-selves-and-sexual-ethics If you have any questions feel free to ask.

That's certainly possible. I want to be clear that I am not under the illusion that this conversation will bring me closer to Truth, more that I'm trying to understand the bounds within which our current conceptions of the Truth are causing us to disagree as we are. I think the difference between us currently is that we're operating with different ontologies. My ontology is one in which the holarchy is not coupled back into the whole. I want to be careful here to speak with precision. I understand participatory to mean something different than coupled. I am participating with reality right now in that I am participating with this laptop and with you, and so my cognition is intimately bound with the particulars of the worldspace that are affording my communication, thoughts, feelings, etc. Even as I am a mini-holarchy emerging from and in participation with other mini-holarchies of varying degrees of integrated depth, my participation is still mediated through and so limited by the holarchical depth of the human brain. As such, however high the degrees of consciousness I can attain, which might be conceived as increasing depths of holarchical integration possible in this brain, it is still occurring through a human brain. In that sense, I am not capable of "coupling" into the Infinite Mind that is the entire holarchy that includes and is beyond all the mini-holarchies and the collective holarchical field. In other words, there is a limit to the degrees of consciousness I am able to attain, and thus, the degrees of Truth I am able to experience. Where your ontology differs is in that coupling. It appears that you believe that there is no limit to the degrees of consciousness you're capable of attaining other than time and commitment to practice. Given infinite time, you believe that you could attain infinitely high levels of consciousness that are uncapped by brain that appears to generate the consciousness you're experiencing at this moment. So to try to clarify, I think there is an asymptotic relationship with some limit that I can infinitely edge toward yet never exceed, whereas you believe there is no limit whatsoever. Do you think that's fair? Edit - just in case you haven't read this I thought of a way that may better put the distinction I'm trying to find. I believe that the extent to which I am able to experience Infinite Mind is dependent on having a brain that is capable of increasing degrees of holarchical integration. For example, studies that show how the brain becomes more interconnected while on psilocybin. As such, my experience of Truth is dependent on how integrated the brain could physically be. A brain that is capable of higher degrees of integration would be capable of experiencing higher degrees of consciousness, and thus Truth. However much I may deconstruct my experience of myself as a human being, that is dependent on the brain and its capacity for increasing depths of integration.

Edit - to clarify where I'm coming from, I'm arguing for a position I'm not sure I completely agree with. Just following a line of thought to see where it takes us. Original: I'm not sure I can agree that this is possible. You can experience Infinite Mind as a human, and that is profoundly deconstructive of everything we normally experience, but you cannot experience Infinite Mind as Infinite Mind. However high the levels of consciousness I can attain, a sliver of Infinite Mind that has a more complexified brain would experience more of Infinite Mind than I could ever possibly experience, just as I can experience more than a gecko, despite us both being expressions of Infinite Mind. I cannot have an experience with DMT that is not possible given the constraints created by the brain through which I am perceiving and experiencing the degrees of Infinite Mind afforded by that DMT.

I can understand that Truth is beyond the body, but where I'd draw the line is in one's access to that Truth given that one is limited to one's body. The body does exist and this relative experience emerges from that body. However much I may deconstruct the boundaries of my experience, I cannot deconstruct the fact that my experience is always constrained by the body. To say otherwise seems to me to be a denial of embodiment. Again, I understand the difference between Truth outside the limited body and the experience of Truth mediated by the body, and that's precisely my point. Even as I experience levels of consciousness in which I am not merely my body but are identified with the entire universe, that experience occurs through a body. I have had these experiences of oneness where I realize that my little me is merely a branch of a great tree of existence that "I" am, but that experience was only possible through a body that could experience awareness of itself. I am open to being wrong, but I don't see a way around that.

@Leo Gura I just finished the book "Philosophy in the Flesh" by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. They talk about how all knowledge is created through our embodied existence as human beings, and so most knowledge is deeply metaphorical relative to embodiment. I'm aware of 4E Cognitive Science and the 4 ways of knowing that Vervaeke often talks about, so I understand that knowledge is not only propositional. I'm curious if you've read the book and/or whether or not your own understanding of Truth is influenced by your embodied nature. Do you see Truth as a process mediated through your body and do you believe something like "Alien Consciousness" is beyond the human body? For my part, it seems like any state of consciousness we can experience will always be mediated through the human body and so limited by it. Thanks for your time.

I'd say it's more important to develop epistemic humility and the ability to work with perspectives you don't understand well enough to agree or disagree with. You can't possibly fact check every thing you come across, so hold it better instead.

I recently started a new Substack project that discusses Solarpunk psychology. I'm beginning with a definition of the self that may be better placed to create something like Solarpunk. I agree with others, which is what I say in the linked article, that most people's understanding of solarpunk is based on the fiction and aesthetic, rather than boots on the ground policy and infrastructure. That said, we need to have some sort of vision of the future in order to organize ourselves toward the future. Solarpunk offers one such vision, but has to be seen as an aspirational vision, as one that must change and evolve as we march toward it, which may cause it to change fundamentally.

At the most basic level, an archetype is a symbol that acts as a representation of several internal and external factors. Internally, they can include beliefs, perspectives, feelings within your body, the emotional categories you use to understand those feelings, potentially the whole gamut of things, categories, and processes that exist within you. Externally, the same is true. They include sociological, economic, political, and all other factors that we could think about in regards to the external world. An archetype isn’t necessarily ALL of those things, but could include any combination of them. That also means that an archetype is always overflowing with what it intends to represent. In fact, the overwhelming complexity of all that an archetype could represent is kind of the point of the archetype. Think of it like a generative simplification. By simplifying all that complexity into the form of a symbol, image, or person of some kind, it becomes more generative or productive. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. But generative of what exactly? And how? Through the archetype we are able to integrate the facets in order to see more deeply into them. Integration means that rather than there being all these disparate, seemingly disconnected factors, I am able to see them as one interconnected whole through the symbol. What’s more, think about what happens when I hold all of these factors together through contemplation of the symbol. All of the cognitive machinery that typically acts in a less coordinated fashion is now brought to bear in the attempt to integrate the factors into a unified whole. In other words, the archetype acts as a sort of focusing lens for the dynamic coupling of the cognitive machinery used in my understanding of myself, the world, and how they relate with one another. I can see not only that all these factors are connected, but how they are connected, which allows me to understand the complex causal web more deeply. This in turn allows me to see into myself as both an effect of that web of factors, but also as the knower who is modeling that complex web of factors. Remember that however much I am trying to track real features of myself and the world, that tracking is itself a map that I am creating within myself. As such, the archetype can be thought of as a type of map of a territory. That territory consists of the various factors. By collecting them all in the form of the archetypal map, I am, hopefully, given a more integrated model in which I can see the complex causal web connecting the factors. When I differentiate the various factors again, I do so in a way that has been influenced by what happened to them during the integration. For example, once I understand my emotions as not just random feelings, but as feelings that emerged out of their relation to the other factors of the map, I am able to understand those emotions in a far more conceptually rich way. I see that my feelings of shame were not because I am intrinsically shameful, but because I was raised in a culture that valorized certain modes of being because of economic pressures. Failing to live up to that ideal makes me feel ashamed because that shame is meant to drive me to try harder to conform to that ideal. Knowing this, I am now better able to deal with that shame when it arises. I can instead choose to aspire to better ideals that are more in alignment with the kind of person I want to be. I’m no longer pulled so strongly by what my culture expects of me simply because of economic pressures I’ve realized I don’t personally care about. The focusing power of the archetypal map helped me understand the reasons for my feelings better, which helped me deal with the specific feeling better the next time it arose. I’m now able to see more deeply into myself in regards to how that feeling manifests within me, how it influences me, and so make better decisions. The integration of the different factors helped me differentiate them in a beneficial manner. Once I can understand each differentiated factor better, think about what that means when I re-integrate them into another archetypal map. This new map may be very similar, but also different given how the previous cycle of integration and differentiation affected it. This can continue as repeated cycles where a recursively differentiating integration opens me reciprocally with the world through the archetype. The deeper I see into the world through the archetypal map, the more deeply I am able to see into myself. This allows me to see deeper into and through the archetype into the territory it maps, which allows me to see more deeply into myself. This recursively differentiating integration can open me up to a self and world beyond the territory that the archetype was mapping. An archetypal map is not just a beautiful picture, but a map for becoming more causally powerful in the world. The symbol itself helped me see what I was currently living by and aspiring to, even though I wasn’t aware of it. I can now more consciously aspire to something more. An archetypal map is not just created willy-nilly by bringing disparate factors together, but was already functioning without me realizing it. When used properly, such a map helps me see real relations between all the factors that I mistakenly believed to be disconnected, or I was simply ignorant of the way in which they were already connected. As such, when I bring those factors together in the form of an archetype I am called to function in a way given what the archetype implies. For example, if the archetype is a Heroic archetype, I am called to aspire toward it. If it is a Shadow archetype, that means that I was rejecting some aspect of myself or the world, and so I am called to find a better way of relating to that aspect than I was. I may have labelled something a threat when it wasn’t a threat, or was a treat that I was dealing with in a way that made the threat even more threatening. There are other functions of course, but let’s keep it as simple as we can. What happens if an archetypal map has both Heroic and Shadow aspects? This is the promise and danger of the archetypes. Remember that our first conception of an archetype helps us learn that this was the map we were already using to navigate the complex of factors it represents. If we bring together that archetypal map we are better able to understand how the factors are connected, but that doesn’t necessarily mean we really see the real relations nor does it mean that we are automatically able to use that map wisely. We could be wrong on both accounts. For example, we may bring together a map that contains both Heroic and Shadow aspects, but believe it is primarily Heroic. This means as we reciprocally open through the recursively differentiating integrations of the map, we are doing so in a way that augments the unresolved Shadow aspects of the Hero we aspire to be. The more we aspire the more we reject those facets of our self and the world that we are perhaps most called to relate to better. The overarching structure of the archetypal map also influences the way in which I can integrate the related factors. A Chinese globe will be very different from the globes made in a country that recognizes Tibet. The American globe was likely very different from the British globe during the revolution. A Hero in the shape of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Robin Hood, and King Richard I will make for a very different kind of aspiration, as will an altogether different archetypal map for aspiration than the Heroic. That’s precisely why the factors that an archetype integrates matter for the shape the archetype itself and vice versa. My emotions mapping into cultural and economic factors that produced shame for not becoming the Heroic Entrepreneur are all real relations. I aspired to be the Heroic Entrepreneur because of that shame, because of those cultural expectations, and because of those economic pressures. Even though I wasn’t fully conscious that my engagement with the world was defined by the archetypal map of the Heroic Entrepreneur, it acted almost like an autonomous agent, pushing me and pulling me toward ends that were intimately bound to and made up by the relevant factors. In fact, we can better understand the archetypes by dialoguing with them as if they were fully autonomous agents. This is one of the ways in which we can get all of that cognitive machinery working together. When I sit down to talk to the archetype, imagining what it would say and how it would react, I am modelling all the factors I am trying to keep in mind. In some cases this can be felt like a real conversation with another person. Such experiences are also found in Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy and I can speak from personal experience how powerful both archetypal dialogue and IFS can be. Sometimes they are so powerful that they quite literally force themselves upon us. When we’re living from an archetype that is maladaptive and dysfunctional we experience it as a rage, depression, addictive acting out, or a whole range of other behaviours that can cause horrible damage to ourselves and others. Whether or not we seek to change those behaviours depends on the archetype that lives within us and all the various factors that make it up. That can lead us to seek help or lead us to justify our rage as righteous fury on the unbelievers. The purpose of identifying and working with the archetypes is to integrate all these different factors so that we can understand them better and to transcend the limitations of the archetype itself toward a new, higher, wider, and more inclusive archetypal map. This archetype will always be overflown by the complexity it seeks to represent, but this can help us grow to be overflown even just a little less. This can never be a definite growth to goodness, but the growth to goodness can be profoundly afforded by it. Though, of course, it can’t be the only practice, because as Vervaeke says, there is no panacea practice. If you’d like to see how I’ve engaged with archetypes, here are some of my essays relevant to the image: Psychology of the Succubus Psychology of Epithymia Psychology of the Zombie The Rise of Epithymian Idolatry

I read A Psalm for the Wild-Built and a Prayer for the Crown-Shy by Becky Chambers. They're very meditative and focused on the post-heroic meaning-making of a solarpunk society. I can't say they're good stories because I think they're only good insofar as you're ready for them in your own development. A similar situation is with Vinland Saga. The first part is incredibly heroic whereas the second is post-heroic. Many people who weren't ready for the post-heroic are turned off by the change, but for those of us who are, the second part is incredibly beautiful precisely because of how different it is from the first part. So point being, if you're ready for the post-heroic and you're interested in seeing a vision of a future that is positive in its comfortability and focus on the cultivation of meaning, then they can be worthy reads.

There's research that if people have more communal values before gaining power, then power amplifies their communal values. The authors stated that it may be because while more power makes you more self-interested, if you're already interested in the community then more self-interested means more interested in what you already value, which is community. Read it in the book, "Agency and Communion in Social Psychology".

Spiral Dynamics is a good training wheels model for understanding development, but it has real limitations. Understand that there is an entire body of research with competing theories and perspectives within and outside academia. If you collapse all of developmental theory to just Spiral Dynamics then you're going to be missing much higher quality perspectives. It can get you oriented, but you have to move beyond it as quickly as possible. I highly recommend Hanzi Freinacht's The Listening Society and then Brendan Graham Dempsey's The Evolution of Meaning Vol1 and Vol2. These can help make a good distinction between psychological and cultural development, and then between deep structural psychological development and surface features psychological development. Deep structure is the hierarchical complexity of cognition, whereas surface features is how that deep structure appears given the cultural and systemic context. Freinacht makes the point that a paradigmatic genius such as Thomas Aquinas can't readily be called "Stage Blue" despite the fact that he lived in a Stage Blue culture. Stage Blue cognition is abstract, and obviously Aquinas was far beyond that.

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "challenging the taboos" and how that has a positive effect. Could you say a bit more about what she's doing and how that is expanding the conversation on sexuality in a positive way? I feel like you're making an interesting point but I'd like to see it fully fleshed out.

I'm with the idea of sexuality being sacred and liberated, but I don't consider what they're doing to be anything like that. They treat sex in consumptive terms from the having mode rather than as a process of intimate co-creation in the being/becoming mode. Ask yourself, does what they do bring people closer together or drive them further apart? The men who obsess over them are not learning to connect more deeply with themselves let alone women. That is not sacred sexuality, at least imo.