My Too (Many) Cents

So, I recently watched a video by the YouTube channel natural hypertrophy (which is a great channel you should check out if you have time) titled "I am better than you". In Nietzschean terms he explains how saying that you are better than someone is something society constantly tries us to guilt trip over which is an example of the slave inversion of values in practice. He further differentiates between the humility of the strong will, which realizes itself to be strong and sees itself truly placed compared to all the other geniuses around us compared to weak humility which tries to downplay itself while enjoying the attention it gets from people saying that someone is so good yet remains humble. Instead of accepting the harsh reality of continuous improvement being required, it would rather stagnate itself and others around it even to the point that it starts feeling miserable about itself instead of accepting its true calling and engaging in a sort of Dionysian dance of cre...

 I haven't written here in quite a bit and it was like I was bursting at the seams to write about the new experiences I had, so I decided to just compile the things I wanted to write about in one post instead of going through the toil of fleshing out different and detailed expositions in different posts.  I recently started college and in a lot of my first semester courses, we have been studying about logic. The laws of thought such as the law of identity, the law of non contradiction and the law of the excluded middle are good enough crystallizations and approximations for the everyday process of life, but realistically they are like all our systems of thought, nothing but approximations. In a way thinking through thought is like taking a slower and more rigorous approach through the path made by the dynamic flow of awareness. I was trying to read the phenomenology of spirit, and in that it seemed that by very carefully threading language (as also seen in some religious metap...

 Hello again and to a 4 AM rant. I should probably wait and formulate my opinions on this topic in detail but thinking about this has left me with this sense of urgency, telling me that if I do not write about this now, I probably will forget about this idea. So without further ado My conception of problem solving To give an analogy, my conception of problem solving is like jumping over a hole in the ground. The harder the problem, the longer the jump. Between this end and that end of the problem, there is always that jump one has to take without thinking, for thinking itself enters new territory. As we solve harder and harder problems, the length of this hole keeps growing. For optimal growth we must confront problems which we do not know whether we can solve. If you truly do not know whether you can solve a problem or not, you do not waste time thinking about what if you can't and what if you do; you can devote yourself and your whole attention sincerely to a problem. The Process...

Here's a post I'd written previously and never published because I'd left it partially incomplete. "Change is the only constant" I'm sure you've heard of this well known platitude at least once in your life. But if you actually think about it, isn't it a bit contradictory? To say that change is constant implies some sort of constancy albeit at a meta level. As human beings we always look for things like patterns, causality and try to predict what may happen. Even though the sentiment of this statement is correct, it is this human need for everything to fall in line, perhaps only in an analysis at a higher level of abstraction which it betrays. A better image which expresses this statement would be that the universe is like a child which is only beginning to feel out its surroundings. It creates sand castles or expresses joy in the same moment as it brutally steps on and destroys some plants or bugs, yet we would never be able to resent it for its destr...

I extended a poem I'd written earlier corresponding to my deepening understanding of Nietzsche.  Standing on top of the mountain Contemplated the wanderer. What purpose had his pursuits Of only climbing higher? Tired and exhausted He finally wanted to sit down But he wanted to sit down Only when he knew others wouldn't frown He looked down for a second Into the deep dark depths A chasm of death and destruction Which cleaved the inside of his soul He shivered and backed away terrified And decided to continue his journey Higher, even higher Terrified of what he saw beneath. He didn't have it in him To confront the abyss It wasn't climbing which had tired him. Standing ever higher  Contemplated the wanderer  What purpose had his pursuit Of traveling higher and higher The toils of the world  Lay heavy at his feet As he looked down At a foggy jagged landscape He saw a chasm of stagnation Skeletons littered, the bitter and so was the snow. The sorrow of the world called ou...

Cleaning our room is something which we all know we should be doing but keep skimping out on. Recently, I cleaned out my room and my books and I had a unique insight which I thought was worth sharing (Yes, my blog is pretty random). So, how does a room or an office space or a toilet or anything get dirty? It happens with the passage of time, when you do not know the specified place to put something or when you skimp out on keeping it where you know you should. However, that which is not kept in order continues to remain where it has been put. Each time you leave your room, you are reminded of the fact that you decided to hang up your jeans right there instead of folding them and putting them back in your wardrobe or something along those lines. Over time, the pile of clothes reminding you of your laziness or your disorder keeps growing until it becomes unbearable to look at, so you either clean it all up with humility or start littering another part.  This I think, is exactly the m...

 As someone who just recently finished school, the phrase "someone is working really hard" is something that has been thrown around a lot for students, but the more I think about it, the more I realize that hard work or to be more precise, self-flagellating effort is pretty worthless and is in fact indicative of some deep rooted problems which need to be resolved. Now, just saying this probably has some alarm bells ringing for you, since as a society we romanticize such activity a lot, but once I explain my points I think you would have a better understanding of what I mean.  The Stories we Tell ourselves Our personality and our social interactions are mostly made up of stories; stories we tell each other and stories we tell ourselves. The fact that stories are convenient fictions created to derive meaning from objective reality does not deter them from having profound effects on that same objective reality; Money for example, is a story that we tell ourselves, but a huge pro...

I came upon this line of thought (I like the metaphor of a line of thought because it represents an image of a line of moves in chess in my mind, which is exactly what I believe this to be) while dealing with what this framework calls the problem of frameworks.  The problem of framework basically examines whether there is any grounding or consistent framework through which you can analyze the world at all. There is a deep sense of unease in accepting relativistic or nihilistic frameworks however even those themselves are consistent frameworks at a meta level. The brain, like Krishnamurti would say likes to function in total security. This problem deals with that very same meta level, and whether there is any consistent algorithm (for lack of a better word) to derive security or meaning or rather meta-meaning (if that is a word, since nihilism has in itself a sort of security built into it). Dogmatic ideologies would have you believe that the answer to this is a yes (these answers...

Introduction  Haikyuu is one of my favorite pieces of media of all time. Apart from the art style and the animation, there is something extremely deep that the series is able to grasp at emotionally and it had a lasting impact on me when I watched it (and one of the few things I consider worth re-watching). Though the story is full of many monologues and perspectives of different characters, I believe that it has even more philosophical depth than what would be demonstrated by just those words alone and that is what was able to connect even more deeply with me. The more that I think about it, the richer insights it conceals, and as it plays out on screen there is some substance to it which defies merely linguistic conceptions. I think other pieces of media or art probably have such substance behind them too, however nowhere is it more clearly relatable to me, (from what I've seen until now) than Haikyuu.  Hunger What Haikyuu is really about for me, is an attempt to describe th...

 As my previous posts might have shown I'm currently in the process of trying to digest my way through Heidegger's question concerning technology. I don't get much time to read usually so I haven't been making much progress but his ideas relating to technology seem extremely brilliant to me. Though I haven't gotten through and internalized exactly what the essay means to say yet, a lot of different ideas have been bouncing around in my head. I could have started off directly with the ideas but this preface seemed necessary to highlight what got me onto this line of thinking, though I would like to think that these ideas lie on a previously untraveled trail. I also think it's more important to do philosophy than talk about philosophy i.e. to talk about and create ideas instead of discuss a history of ideas to validate some crystallization of a worldview you have come to so I don't really know how much of these ideas are mine and how much are already about to ...

 I read a quote somewhere recently which went along the lines of "Smart people get paid to do what they like". It reminded me of something I'd read (probably in the Almanack of Naval Ravikant) about how having competition itself indicates a kind of inefficiency when compared to authenticity(he probably mentioned it in more succinct terms or caveated it but that's how I remember it). The basic idea here is that authentic creativity which flows from the individual is something that no one can be better than that individual at. I thought a bit along those lines and this is what I ended up with. In our society, we're basically compensated with money proportional to how much we change the world around us. The percentage of money out of this which we keep for ourselves is dependent on our own needs or desires. This seemed well and good prima facie without deliberating about it but then I realized that it doesn't quite cover all scenarios. Many (probably in fact most...

Introduction So, I recently watched the movie Everything Everywhere All at Once and though it's received widespread critical acclaim as a great movie, I didn't quite like it as much as I feel the myriad of people around me did. Now don't get me wrong, I think as a narrative it ties all the small ends it introduces masterfully, the humor though catered to an older demographic does land and the performances/music etc. were great (seemed great to me as a layman, I'm not knowledgeable enough to pick it apart). What I take issue with is the philosophy it pushes forward - optimistic nihilism. And just in case it wasn't clear, this opinion is entirely my own and you might disagree. Nihilism and Absurdism The movie makes the point accurately that we continuously undergo more Copernican shifts which displace us farther from our self conceptions of having a central place in the universe. At one point even explicitly stating this sentiment in dialogue. It gives Optimistic Nih...

Focus. Are you focusing right now as you read this blog? Focus is something which has been well documented to improve decision making, higher degrees of focus and presence correlate with higher levels of happiness and it intuitively makes sense to say that the more one concentrates on anything the better they will do at it.  Focus and concentration are also scarce. After all you have only 24 hours in the day and however many limited amount of years in your life. A rough estimate of the amount of focus can be the intensity with which you focus at something multiplied by the time you are working at it and it also intuitively makes sense that this quantity would be correlated with the progress you make at any task or any aspect of life. Focus is an important resource, perhaps the most important one an individual has to offer. Companies now operate in an economy of attention, coming up with better and bigger algorithms to keep us hooked onto these sites, to advertise to us, and to even...

Hello everyone, I recently found this poem I wrote 3 years ago for a water conservation contest. The sky cried, The plants died, The mountains separated from their snow-clad bride, A thin stream emerged, laden with guilt it asked, Have I fulfilled my purpose? With childish purity and tumultuous flow, Helping the mountains thrive and grow, Repaying the debt it did owe, A river emerged, with its life built it asked, Have I fulfilled my purpose? Coming down, from when the world was at its feet, Supporting civilizations from heat, giving wheat and concrete. Thinking that its work was complete, It approached the sea, and laden with silt it asked, Have I fulfilled my purpose? The stream was now old and one with the sea, Corals bloomed with pearls of wisdom, while fishes swam free, But the cycle of life had to continue and the sky had a tax to levy, As it evaporated, covering its deathbed with a quilt it asked, Have I fulfilled my purpose? The tap was open! The bucket was broken! Could no one...