OK! Let’s get right to it! Preface Man’s lack of power to moderate and restrain the affects, I call bondage.For the man who is subject to affects is under the control, not of himself, but of fortune, in whose power he so greatly is that often, though he sees the better for himself, he is …
Continue reading Spinoza’s Ethics, Part IV: Of Human Bondage
[12000 words] "Affects" are basically emotions. But I think keeping the term slightly technical will be useful. The first half of this piece will remain slightly abstract: "what the heck is actually happening?!!" kind of thing. The second half will finally get more concrete. We'll run through the nature of human emotions, with a bunch …
Continue reading Spinoza’s Ethics — Part III: Of the Affects
[200 words] I'm going to be spending December in a Zen Temple in the Gredos mountain range in Extremadura in Spain. By this point, I understand the basic notion I am not actually 'David Leon'. I am really just the Universe, pretending it's this monkey called 'David Leon' for a while. Essentially, it appears... for …
[500 words] It's all about doing your thing (ergon). And doing it well.Flourishing. "Eudaimonia". What your thing is depends on what you are. If you're an animal, it's eating enough food to survive, and growing. If you're a human, it's that, plus talking, thinking (...which, annoyingly, involves listening to other people) and... "creative work" is …
Continue reading Aristotle’s Self-Help Book — The Nichomachean Ethics SUMMARIZED
[9000 words] Oh God. What have I gotten myself into? No, it's OK David, it's OK -- you can do it. Alright. Lemme just paste in Spinoza's own introduction. I pass now to explaining those things which must necessarily follow from the essence of God, or the infinite and eternal being -- not, indeed, all …
[7000 words] OK. We gotta start somewhere, and I suppose this is it. So in the early 1600s, this guy called Descartes comes along and thinks about things and figures that basically everything can be boiled down to two substances. A substance is what something basically can be boiled down to. So, take a block …
[2000 words] The Ethics is a book which was published in 1677. It was written by Baruch, or Benedict, Spinoza. His first name means "Blessed". His surname means "Thorny", or, if you will, "spiky", or even "prickly". In other words: he's one of the most beautiful things to ever happen on this planet, but he …
[1200 words] The darkest thought I've ever thought which I don't consider clinically insane is this. We live in the best possible world.Everything happens for a reason -- and that reason is that everything is for the best. In other words -- it's all part of God's plan. And God is good and wise and …
Continue reading The Darkest Thought… and the Light beyond it
[This is an old post, originally published on Blastocyst on March 9, 2014.But it's pretty relevant today, when we're all on the internet together feeling pretty down about collective action and existence itself.] [9600 words] Mount Moon is our Mount Sinai, and the Helix Fossil, our One True Lord and Saviour. Oh, and one more …
Continue reading Why Twitch Plays Pokémon is literally the Best Thing Ever
[300 words] Once upon at a time, there were two nerds at a very fancy university studying psychology. Then they took acid and were like "lol, screw this. You nerds wanna continue with all these neurotic details? Fine. We'll just do acid and let the mind reveal itself." One of them kept doing acid, every …
