Joseph Maynor

We by Yevgeny Zamyatin

We have to be careful when we diagnose others. I'm not saying this should be a limiting belief, but sometimes when we diagnose others we may or may not be bypassing or blame -shifting responsibility from ourselves. This can become almost like an addiction sometimes.

You have to be selective of disgruntled people's bird chirpings throughout life. People have all kinds of things to say that reflect more on their issues than yours.

I agree. I frame it as a finite perspective not a human just to be more general. The a-finite doesn't erase the finite.

But you run the risk where your unembodied intelligence can just be dicta that you realize later on was less important than you thought it was.

It is important to understand power very thoroughly, that premise I agree with.

I read his first book the 48 Laws of Power and I didn't think it was a great book at all. It wanders, it's opaque in places. I liked the Laws of Human Nature more but still I thought Robert Greene is way too cynical of a person, just my judgment.

Keep in mind someone's view of human nature is literally just a view of human nature. You're believing other people instead of thinking and observing for yourself.

The first thing to look at is what do you need and want. Others will do what they do. Everyone has their own issues. It doesn't make much sense to blame outward at a certain point. That just gives power to others and is a huge distraction from you doing work that makes you better.

This might be true if you could prove the "cannot" in both places you use it.

The Dharma Bums (1958) by Jack Kerouac

This is kind of a slippery slope because we can say lying to kids that Santa Claus exists is not right, but this kind of lying is seen to be innocent.

These are people that I like to say are good introducers to newbs and also respected by advanced people. It's like Kind of Blue by Miles Davis. Is it the best Jazz album? IMO no. But what it does is fascinate newbs to the genre and also elicit a respect by people who have deeper knowledge too.

Realize what a negative person does to slow everyone down to conform to their own comfort-zone. Listen to them, but don't let that energy cripple you too much. For some reason, other peoples' success bothers these people because they need to feel like they're winning with what they got, always.

Begin a timebound challenge. You can pick the time-frame. Maybe 30 days for you. Plan this a kind of deep work exercise and commit to it. Try to get motivated to do this. See it as kind of a little chapter or challenge in your life that you can get inspired to get behind. You're not that far behind, but you need to motivate yourself to meet a goal.

How about spirituality addiction? If we want to broach the issue of addiction, let's get real and do it all the way.

Nothing like experience when it comes to creating a great artwork in an artform. This is a great video that exemplifies what mastery looks like and explaining it very well in a particular area of creation.

I'll push back on one assumption here. Is all conceptual story-telling human created?

He has obviously had a huge impact on many of you, so that speaks for itself. I worry if he has too much of an empiricist approach. Reminds me of my same worry with Zen, although this can be good on the path too.

I think the way to frame this is to what extent can my contribution benefit the whole?