Personal Introductions (2016–2019)

Hi @Petros, welcome. I’ve looked at your site and read some of your Milestone Writings, and am really glad you showed up here. I have a feeling this community could learn a lot from your experience and way of thinking. I’m quite sure I will learn something, at a minimum. I hope we can help you too, in your situation. You may very well be on the cutting edge of what many more of us will experience over the coming years: a little collapse, a little revolution, and a whole lot of sado-masochism in between.

The middle, indeterminate part of things is not a bad place to be, though, if we’re in good company and doing what we can to keep the fire of human intelligence alive. The ‘prefigurative vernacular realm’ you refer to reminds me of Cornel West’s ‘Chekovian Christianity,’ which he describes as living on the 2nd day between the crucifixion and the resurrection.

I’m obvioiusly interested in your ideas about liberatory technology as well, and hope we can get some resources to you as we develop the co-op and marketplace features. Let’s talk sometime. Maybe you could give us a report from the rotting bottom of the neoliberal rubbish can; and we can talk practically about how to make some form of digital solidarity work.

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@madrush

Thank you for your friendly welcome. I am now starting a new project, which may be even more interesting. I just received a preliminary invitation from a solidarity group working in Rojava. The scope is more or less to help building a hacklab there, contributing to the needs of war-devastated region in the process.
I am now working on checking the credibility of the invitation and as soon as I have a go, I will publish more about it.
I imagine that first-hand reports, written by someone of my background, may be interesting for you folks.
Planned departure is January 2018 and the timespan is 6 months. So, we have enough time to make it interesting and useful.
Will be back soon with this topic.

Meanwhile, if anyone is interested, here is a compilation I co-edited some time ago. I think it can be a good primer on Rojava ideological roots.
Towards Stateless Democracy

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Yopladoow !

I prefer to be constrained by my own chains than by the chains of others.

This sentence guides my life today. I left on a world tour of humor, play, playfulness with the intentions of reinventing myself.

I’d like play, humor to be my basis in this reinvention. I’m in this process of deconstructing narratives ruling my life, and letting go of the emotions tied to them. I’m ingesting the 2017 video courses of Maps of Meaning (Jordan B Peterson) to give me an intellectual background in this adventure.

For the moment, I’m traveling with my bike. I’m in Budapest right now. In two days, I’ll go help a Hungarian with his starting edible forests. I love edible forests.

Then I’ll go pass the winter in Greece and surely Sicily, I’ll write an essay on transformative play and an essay on share (I left France on this journey with 20€). Yes I’m ambitious. Surely, life will make great jokes about this two-essays plan ^^

My journey deeply started when I embrace spontaneity. I had no money in Italy. But still I decided to go to this Gibberish course ran by Alex Sternick.

It changed my life. It was the perfect tool to change narratives and purge deep emotions. At some point, we did a therapeutic exercise. One person will take a role I decided. It was the role how my grand father who is dead. The goal was to talk to my grand father through this person in gibberish and say what I had to say in gibberish.

I did. Still words, even non sense gibberish, were not enough to express what I felt. I had the choice to hug this person. I did. Tears starting gently flowing on my cheeks. The person could not see if I was crying or not. He described this hug as a rock slowly melting until the rock disappeared.

I usually don’t cry in public. Last time I did was 2 years ago while reading Finite and Infinite games by James P. Carse.

I hesitated a lot to present myself here. Most of intellectual discussions seems like gibberish to me, and it’s not fun anymore for me to talk gibberish and pretending it’s serious.

I need clarify. Because I find great content on the blog. I think I already loose myself in all the content because I find it great (discussions on FB, on future and divine feminism). If there is face to face discussions I’ll be glad to participate if I have the internet connection. I prefer talking that writing.

I post notes of my journey on Facebook : Redirecting.... Maybe I’ll try Steemit. I still don’t know what to do with money. I need to experiment more with gift economy. I don’t want to do a travel blog. There are many.

Still I want to explore deep narratives with people. I’m incubating a game including gibberish. I have great ideas to make it work virtually. But it is not my focus.

I want to do spontaneous events in the public physical space. It’s a challenge for me. I’ll be patient and see where life gets me :smile:

If you are on my way from Balaton Lake in Hungary to Greece, I’ll be glad to meet :slight_smile:

Petros shared his MBTI. Seems like I’m a mix of ENFP, ENTP and ENTJ.

Thank you for this space Mesdames et Messieurs !

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Hello all. I’m Jim Trattner. I’ve been flirting with this site for over a year but had not yet introduced myself. Who am I? This is such an advanced philosophical question that I’ve hesitated to take a stab since my mid-2016 arrival at this site. Today, it occurred that I might take a stab and worry about the accuracy at a later time, or not.

Tell us a little about yourself…: 8/5/2017
I’m curious to see what evolves here on this site and (big HERE), on our planet. Honestly I’m somewhat intimidated by the level of intectuality found here, I am mostly interested to see if there is a place/space for me to meaningfully contribute.

I’m a retired Clinical Psychologist, Executive Search Headhunter in the Computer Software and bio-technology/ medical clinical trials industries. I was an early student (1964-65) of Richard Alpert (Ram Das), and Timothy Leary(Tim) who were my Professors at Harvard University Dept of Social Relations. I also played Jazz Vibraphones during the 50s and 60s in Lower East Side NY and South Central Los Angeles as well as various UCLA frat parties to help pay my way through college. Grew exceptional Weed in the early 70s on Maui, matriculated through several well known Cults including Scientology, The Source Family, LifeSpring, Gurdjieff/Ouspensky inspired Fellowship of Friends and Advaita (non-dual) teachings as introduced by Wayne Liquorman.

Currently reside in Venice, CA while fortunately sharing my life with my 5th wife, 4 children and 8 grandchildren. Very lucky man, indeed. Terminally curious about what’s next.

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wrote this to a dear friend a minute ago:
i am planning on sending them some images of the ‘holomind perceiver’, the 6 spheres of consciousness* that sit in your head like an internalized crown … or like that rainbow thorn crown i got coloured with by Greg the tobacco shaman in the mid eighties, somewhere in Aspen Colorado … i might even have that piece of art somewhere still …

actually, … the first thing i wanted to tell them is that i feel (over the years and with multiple reconfirmations) PS ventriloquizes me (my body of thought/ethics rather) so often it seems like a staple to him. He points towards me with very ‘circumvoluntarizing’ … ‘circonvolute’ gossamer, threading it thru the whole weave of that literate history portion/sliver accesible to him … yet seems to enjoy keeping it all cloaked with riddle filters, piles of swaddle … which … given the taboo drenched being i am is understandable; you’d jeopardize jobsecurity and standing when looking straight at what i try to stand for (tree-crops, it’s not a secret)

would they be impressed if i tell them i spent 2 weeks with rashneesh in poonah and PS xx?? prolly long before me?
that i met him a few times for a few hours near his house and once in america, working where he turned up as guest?

i have no regrets about joining though … this was worth the price of entry:
eine ruhige Kugel schieben (literally, “to push a quiet ball”) which more or less means “to have it pretty cushy”
in light of what you’ll see i mean here:
plus.google.com/collection/w0uox
yeah, i’m the ultra me[n]tal/ffyzical aanzwengelaar (cranker), root me.

PS: fresh new and all for U:
johannes 7
voorwaar, voorwaar, wie mijn WOORD BEWAARD, zal de dood niet zien tot in de eeuwigheid
CORE ACTION CORRECTION:
= voor aar voor aar … oord beaard, …
oord is location … aard = earth
which brings me to an explanation for my moniker (an ‘acrynome’ really)
Rocks Rolled and spun to earth

i saved the bad news for last:
my friend quotes a line from Gibran and i go:
i did not slog thru all of the new to me WIT i found today (which brought me here… i ‘aud’ it with robotsoftware, having lost patience with literacy [off- and onscreens] a long time ago) but did note his recent jibe at Gibran in ‘deadwood’
… found it off the wall disconcerting he scolds Assad and blames him for stuff the deep state [zog] which Trump shills for, pins on him succesfully thru their mega ‘roeptoeters’ … becoming a scary globalist was always a threatening ‘avenue’ towards his ethical downfall … in the end he avoided it as little as the pharmaffiya he seems to have surrendered to and does equally cynical poems on …

he’s always been a puffy guy and prolly hid a fondness of / dependency on alcohol pretty well all this ‘while’ … i could quote Morelli calling PS a farmintbrewskier or some such around heah and perhaps that IS what prevents clarity … who knows how deep that robotwhole goes down his genetree?
I usually see and call it when/soon as i feel folks deliberately distract & steal from, blaspheme, taunt and subvert mindbody nexus care; this is where i’ll heavaleave it for now:
my failing is forcing the hour, his is hanging back … ??

Hello everyone!

My name is Jamie, I’m a postgraduate student from the UK. I graduated from the University of Sheffield with a BA in Politics and Philosophy in 2014, and then from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) with a Msc. in Political Theory in 2015. I spent a year as a teaching assistant in a primary school and working in a secondhand bookshop before moving to the University of Oxford, where I’m currently an MPhil student in Politics, with a concentration in Political Theory. Plan A is to transition onto the DPhil programme (what they call a PhD here for some historical reason) and become an academic in a Politics department somewhere. Plan B (should my proposal be rejected) would be to take a year out and have a think about whether I want to pursue my other interests full-time.

I found myself drawn to this community for a multitude of reasons; firstly, I’ve been watching the Sloterdijk discussions, which I found fascinating, as I am alone in my department for even knowing who Sloterdijk is (aside from German students who perceive him as an irritant from public TV!), and I am probably the only person in the department who has ever attempted to read the Spheres trilogy. I have read both Bubbles and Globes, and I’m currently halfway through Foams, and I’d love to bounce some ideas off fellow readers on this bizarre sojourn into his mind.

The second reason I was drawn to the community was due to its anarchistic setup (a political ideology for which I have much sympathy) and its unashamed belief in the creative potential of human beings. I’ve been toying with the idea of writing a novel (I’ve been writing short stories since I was a child), and I’ve written several television pilot scripts (mainly hitherto-rejected comedies), and I’m looking forward to seeing if, with group support, I may return to my proverbial side cabinet full of half-baked ideas, and eventually conjure something remotely presentable.

I’ll try to be as active as possible as a member of the community, but keep in mind the time difference (I’ll be up at 1am my time if I am to contribute to Sloterdijk discussions!) and my hectic MPhil schedule (I’ve got a 25,000-word thesis due in two months!), so if I suddenly disappear, I apologise in advance!

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I can commiserate, Jamie. I was in Australia for several of the Bubbles conversations and I had to get up at 4 a.m. to be present! I also encourage you on the novel writing business. I am a senior academic, and for the past 6 years I have been writing a science-fiction opus (currently 2400 pages) as a side-line. So it is possible. I joined up with a group this last November called NaNoWrMo - they are writers who support each other, ostensibly over the month of November but to a lesser extent all year round, to motivate writing. I currently write 1000 words per day on average, in addition to my academic career (and the Sloterdijk reading!).

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Hello. I’m Eduardo Rocha from Brazil. I began to read about Sloterdijk in 2016 and let some things back in 2017. But I returned recently in my studies. I hope to help in some way.

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Hello Everyone,

My name is Lorin Martin and I live in Florida, USA. Some of my interests include writing, poetry, philosophy, learning about almost anything, and psychedelic culture. In May of 2017, I received my degree in neuroscience. I am interested in meeting the so called other people. I would love to participate in a book reading or discussion. If someone could give me a rundown on how to participate that would be awesome. Much gratitude for the creation of this website.

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Welcome Lorin,

I am liking your mixture of the (neuro)sciences and the arts…wondering what directions you have taken this concoction in your personal life, academic or otherwise.

Once you go exploring a bit on this site, you will discover the “other people” are hiding in plain sight, and that we, too, enjoy learning about almost everything and we are not the least bit timid about sharing our collective atypicality. Perhaps you can start by participating in the discussion thread of our friend @jfmartel’s podcast “Weird Studies” …or on any of the various threads to be found on the site.

We are approaching the end of a couple readings in the Readers Underground (Peter Sloterdijk’s 2nd book in the Spheres trilogy entitled Globes and Gao Xingjian’s Soul Mountain) and about to begin another reading group on Sri Aurobindo’s The Life Divine at the end of May. From you listed interests, you might find you’d like to participate in the reading of Erin Manning’s The Minor Gesture. We had the second session for The Minor Gesture today (May 9th) ; the recording of the first session can be found here. You can join the Readers Underground by clicking the link below:

It is never too late to join any of the groups. We also have a weekly Cosmos Café discussion on Tuesdays @ 1 pm MDT (3 pm EDT). @madrush can help if you run into any tech. issues.

I knew your image seemed familiar…artist Fred Tomaselli has his art figured out. I love this work titled Night Music for Raptors
image
This is a good depiction of listening with the third ear! Hope to hear you around here soon!

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Thank you very much for the introduction!
In terms of academic studies in neuroscience, I primarily studied autonomic nervous system “dysfunctions” in stress disorders. Specifically, I researched and studied heart rate variability (HRV) as a measure of autonomic nervous system function- the balance between sympathetic and parasympathetic activation. There are many correlations between higher HRV and increased ability to activate the ‘rest and digest’ system. Practically, I believe this is very interesting because it teaches us about self-care behaviors and relaxation. Many modern people spend most of their days in states of psychological stress and fear. With these measures of HRV, we could design bio-feedback systems that teach people how to control their own autonomic nervous systems. Also, we can discover what methodologies of healing work for different people with different psychological disorders. For example, some people have increased HRV after talking to someone, whereas, people with borderline personality disorder often have a lower HRV after talking to someone. Deep breathing can be a good method for activating the vagus nerve and parasympathetic nervous system. Meditation too can be useful, but in people with PTSD it can have the opposite of the intended relaxation effect. Broadly, I guess I am interested in how neuroscience can inform us about the healing arts and the design of a society that encourages human flourishing. I am no longer a part of academia, but I strive to make learning a life-long endeavor. In my personal life, I am very interested in exploring philosophy of mind and consciousness studies. I like to walk the boundaries between the languages of mysticism, science and philosophy. I can’t say that I am unique for wondering why am I here, breathing, experiencing the world as I am: a witness, knower, and embodied consciousness. That seems like a natural human curiosity!

I would love to be part of the reading of the Life Divine. Auroville has always fascinated me as a city that seems to have actually manifested utopian ideals.
Yes! I am glad you recognize the artist. I have a small collection of visionary artists on my hard drive, and Tomaselli is one of my favorites by far. Very beautiful :slight_smile: I hope that in my time here, I can get to you better. It is very nice to meet you!

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This is very cool work, @lorinmartin… you’ll find a number of people here quite interested in this. I have done some work on measuring posture and breathing and have been interested in HRV for some time. I can see how work in this area might naturally lead you towards an interest in altered states of consciousness, but at the same time, I think it takes a special sensitivity to actually engage in this reading - not every neuroscientist would be so open, I would hazard. I look forward to hearing more.

In addition to the Aurobindo reading group, you might enjoy our reading of Erin Manning’s The Minor Gesture. If you have time, listen to the recording of our first session, at which the author was herself present. Although a philosopher rather than a scientist, Erin has worked a lot with issues of neurodiversity, which is another area where the two domains intersect. Our discussions are ongoing, every two weeks, but we are only on Chapter Two so you wouldn’t have to catch up much… Just a suggestion :slight_smile:

Hello! My name is Natalia. I am in my first year of college at Front Range. I’ve always been an artist. My mom says she knew I would be an artist when she was pregnant with me, so I wonder if her insistence on me being an artist turned me into one or if I really was fated to be.

A little bit about me and how my mind works,
I don’t know what I want to do or be in life, im just attempting to live life like a game. Not to say trivially, just playfully. What I mean by that is playing with things trying to see all the layers to the human perception of reality, wowing myself by trying to comprehend all of them at once. I like when my understanding moves faster than my words. I also like learning to meditativly just enjoy color and form in front of my eyes. Most especially, melt into the eyes of another human being. Human being as a term illustrates a theory I have that we are beings that are just inhabiting the temporal human form. Its all empty and meaningless to me with such fullness, so I just want to explore this beautiful experiential gift of life and not waste a second of it.

The future I’m creating for myself is to stretch myself out into the world, and not live a small life inside my head thinking and living only to preserve my sense of safety and survival. I want to give away what I’ve gotten to others. I want to have a career as an artist, particularly working on film. I think films have become a very trivial thing and that they have so so much more potential. I can’t even convey the absolute wow and beauty like nothing other that has permeated into my waking life due to movies like 2001 a Space Oddessey, Sycneche New York, My Dinner With Andre, Waking Life, Enter the Void, It’s Such a Beautiful Day, American Beauty, and others. I don’t really believe in myself or my ability to do that at the moment but that’s what I want with a passion.

I’m excited to be on this website, and be apart of the evolution of consciousness.

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Errg … my default response to this site. Simplify please! Here’s my intro:

I’m a 68 yr-old white male, military brat, w/a BA in Psychology/Anthropology, cum laude, 1996, and graduate studies in social work. Married & divorced 3xs with grown children, bio & step. I’ve lived alone in the wilderness in white winter, w/o modern conveniences. I’ve done more mind-altering drugs than perhaps any living human. I’ve lived in 4 countries & 9 states. I’ve owned, built, sold and given-away - possessions, businesses, and homes. I’m the poorest, smart person I know. I am curious, open-minded, creative, adventurous, risk-taking, free-spirited … and disagreeable. I’ve built real things - homes and furniture, tended minds - young and old, male & female, watched loved ones be born and die, wrote novels and taught others how to write - whatever was their preference. Now, I’m working on a book about the 2016 election. It’s experimental. I need human connection with (somewhat) similar humans.

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Hi, again, @takeurvitamins. A pleasure to make your acquaintance, moreover w/r/t your perspective on the film mother (and your mother’s). Try, if you can, to keep @madrush grounded, lest I have to come over there & take matters into my own hands. Cheers.

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Hello everyone,

Arkapravo, from New Delhi, India. My day job is teaching undergraduate engineering students and writing has come to be more than just a hobby. I stumbled upon the forum while looking around for the various options to get my metafiction pieces published.

Until early this year, most of my writing was academic, broadly research papers. My first textbook on AI and robotics was published in January of this year. Since then, I have been writing science fiction, magical realism and metafiction, mostly short pieces and I hope to pen down longer stories in the near future.

I will try to add in a bit of humor to this introduction with two cartoons made by me.

The first one is, ‘my meeting with my creator’

The second one is a caricature of Stephen Hawking with a roomba robot appealing against AI moratorium. I used this cartoon on the title page of my recently published book.

You can find lot more of me at (1) my wordpress blog - https://gaffingaround.wordpress.com/, (2) quora - Arkapravo Bhaumik - Quora and (3) goodreads - https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/77344935-arkapravo-bhaumik

Regards,

Arkapravo

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I will just repeat my IC Profile summary here (if y’all don’y mind):

Birthplace: Virginia

DESCRIPTION: A retired, full-time, classroom teacher (K-12 Special Education) and lifelong student and disciple of everlasting Truth. I am passionately in LOVE with Wisdom (with a capital “W”)! I am also desperately lovelorn, until I find her and can embrace her with my forehead resting upon hers and our hands clasped in fervent prayers of gratitude. I am just a foolish and insignificant woman who creates her own despair passionately pining after the Truth. It is my only friend and will always be until the End and Everlasting into the New Beginnings. Most importantly, I am an lifelong disciple of Christ Jesus and a faithful believer in absolute Truth (with a capital “T”)!

INSPIRATION: “Do not forsake wisdom, and she will protect you; love her, and she will watch over you. The beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom. Though it cost all you have, get understanding.” (Proverbs 4: 6 - 7)

VOCATION:

Currently teaching part-time, online among several E-Learning platforms and second part-time vocation as an Online Network of Evaluators (ONE), “Constructed Response Scoring Professional” with Educational Testing Services (ETS). Certified Scorer/Rater of national and statewide, high stakes, standardized assessments via an online platform, incl. SAT - Reading Analysis; SAT - Writing Analysis; the State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness (STAAR - Grades 6 thru 11); the English Language Proficiency Assessments for California (ELPAC); the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress (CAASPP); and the Test Of English as a Foreign Language - Speaking Integration - Internet Based Test (TOEFL - IbT).

EDUCATION:

  • Undergraduate Bachelor of Arts (B. A.) in Philosophy and Abrahamic Faiths from the College of William and Mary (W&M) - Class of 1996.

  • Master of Science in Education (MSEd) - Curriculum and Instruction from Old Dominion University
    (ODU) - Graduated in 2007

  • Licensed and Certified, K-12, Master Special Education Teacher with 17 years of classroom teaching
    experience with endorsements in Specific Learning Disabilities, Emotional and Behavioral Disturbance and Social Communication Disorder”

EXPERIENCE:

Among the above-mentioned, stigmatizing labels is also a conditon referred to as a mysterious continuum of social language expression via autistic behaviors. I despise all previous attempts of the APA to label the remarkable phenomenon of the autistic child and instead, prefer to call it “Social Communication Misinterpretation” on behalf of a non-autistic world that is equally responsible for bridging the social communication gap by sharpening and developing their receptive language skills, and putting more effort into solving the communication challenge via becoming better and more active listeners instead of burdening the autistic child / individual with the full responsibility of making themselves understood by others. Perhaps our
antennae need calibrating.

Divorced. No children.

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Hi there, just a little introduction :crystal_ball: I’m a curator and PhD student in the Art dept in Newcastle UK (up north), but living and working in London (down south). I’m interested in sci-fi, cybernetics and magic. I teach undergrad students in contemporary art history, I make exhibitions and I write : )
I’m really keen to join the 2019 Bateson and Bateson group, although 5.30am might be a bit exhausting for live contribution (!) :zzz:
Looking forward to joining in x

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Hi @artex, it would be great to have you on board for the Bateson group. I’m not sure how you arrived at 5:30 a.m. for the meeting time, though - the meeting should be at 4:30 p.m. your time…

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Oh yes! @Geoffreyjen_Edwards you are, of course, correct. I counted five hours in the wrong direction, thank you for the correction. That’s good news.
I would love to join the group, am I right in thinking it will take place on Zoom? I am extremely new to this forum, so please forgive my ignorance. Thanks a lot.