Spiralular

"How much of the internet was influenced by the perspective of nineteen-year-old well-off white boys?"

The first winds of autumn. Crews of fluttering leaves patrol the streets. The haunted air. The barometric pressure before El Niño gets ramped.

Facebook =  Fully optimized growth haking aka "the constant pursuit of scale."

What is motivation anyways? I'll prove you. I need me to do. Lettuce accomplish!

I brewed up a special batch of the moment
The way of now, too passive for such saucy souls
Destruction | Dark emotion
Sold on a tease

October 5
"The weight of the situation is settling. This is about to be a long few months."

Metanoia
Transportation of heart

I have this theory running that vandwellers are inherently philosophers.
Informed by "philosopher" defined as "anyone who questions how to live."

Yvon Chouinard also is a philospher, and Patagonia is a philosophy.
"Beneath all forms of denial is the hope that someone else will figure it out or that technology will save humankind in the nick of time." _Chouinard

"To expect corporations to do anything other than amass wealth is to ignore our culture's entire history, current practices, current power structure, and system of rewards. Limited Liability Corporations are institutions created explicitly to separate humans from the effects of their actions - making them, by definition, inhuman and inhumane." _Derrick Jenson
My inner futurist is piqued by capitalism x AI.

Its ok to not be ok.

"It's easier to sell promise than product." _Ronny Bell

Success: designer children in designer schools, big house in the right hood, BMW(s), a housemaid for the big house.

Health, gypsies, artists, community.

I have this theory that instagram has successfully tricked the content creator into subtle humility.

Stability has become a problem on my left foot, which I cannot stand on.

Thanks very much to Zac who brought me chanterelles when I broke my leg.

Proper minimalism requires sufficient wealth in cash and ability/knowledge to not be over-attached to things. Maybe the truth lies in minimalizing despite that prerequisite | Monk.

I started reading Essentialism

Space | Listening | Play | Sleep | Selecting

The rest is noise.

Also, The Pearl by Steinbeck. Highly recommend, like every Steinbeck.

"He had said, " I am a man," and that meant certain things to Juana. It meant he was half insane and half god. It meant that Kino would drive his strength against a mountain and plunge his strength against the sea. Juana, in her woman's soul, knew the mountain would stand while the man broke himself; that the sea would surge while the man drowned in it. And yet it was this thing that made him a man, half insane and half god, and Juana had need of a man: she could not live without a man. Although she might be puzzled by the differences between man and woman, she knew them and accepted them and needed them. Of course, she would follow him, there was no question of that. Sometimes the quality of woman, the reason, the caution, the sense of preservation, could cut through Kino's manness and save them all." _Steinbeck

Duality. I contain Kino and Juana. An essence of the masculine and the feminine so poetic. I think we live in a gender fluid future in which we (the curious and adaptable) will each drown in an ocean and also reason and preserve. Each life choice and action can swing wildly between the feminine and masculine. Understanding is a tool.

I suspect the future will provide more and more enjoyable ways to experience life.

faster e-bikes

larger and more delightful screens

better drugs.

The citizens will accept this offering and come to expect higher thrills from human interaction than possible. Our tribal humanity will both dominate and rebel against this addiction ... unless ai cuts through that too. We live in intriguing times. The majority of western civilization might already be passed the crux. Doomed to robotic bliss.

I love the sun & the moon

the wind in the storm

the soft snow and wind violence

a gentle downpour and a proper one

Equinox | a time for harvest and removal, appreciation and setting sights.

The van has provided delicious fruit. Micro-community on wheels. So much abundance. Including a solid harvest of inspiration for what it might provide moving forward.

I have learned to let go of sunk-cost projects, but it's hard. Learning to de-commit.

Both harvesting and sight-setting in the realm of healthy inter-dependant romantic relations.

I got to reading the 8 core design abilities preached at Stanford's D-School by Carissa Carter

I "a designer."

Navigate Ambiguity | "the ability to recognize and stew in the discomfort of not knowing, and then come up with tactics to emerge."

Rapidly Experiment

Move Between Concrete and Abstract | "abstracting out for meaning, goals, and principles, as well as zooming in to define details and features."

Build & Craft Intentionally

Communicate Deliberately

"There is no way to precisely know how to make someone happy."

"What actually constitutes suffering or happiness is unclear."

"Therefore Kant argued, the only way to improve the world is improving ourselves. This is because the only thing we can experience with any certainty is ourselves."

"'Self-improvement' is the ability to adhere to the categorical imperative"

"Self-love and self-care, therefore, are not something you learn about or practice. They are something you are ethically called to cultivate within yourself. Even if they are all you have left."

_Mark Manson on Kant

"Buildings are never finished. They require constant maintenance and occupation to function well." _Dr Lucas

Abstract aesthetics

Abstract intellect

Aesthetic intellect

"The way forward is exactly the chaos with which I got here." _2017

The world congratulates those who are most authentically and completely themselves.

"I live a lot of my life riding around on the ethereal winds of imagination." _2017

It's all a journey through insanity to an inevitable end point of insanity.

Soul chow | Maybe the drive for soul rampaging with the other people, the mischievous darlings, is inspired by contrast. I thirsted for it like I'd been stuck in a desert.

Is flow the only truth?

Beauty, nature, sex,

Two forms of "lost"

The joyous meanderings associated with wander, wonder, adventure, creativity, and flexibility.

The gloom-drenched directionless, passionless dead space associated with depression.

Ethereality the enabler

Recharged to charge.

Wood, paper, leather, metal, canvas, cotton, wool, ink, glass

Surround me, drown me.

I find art beautiful when there is no perceivable ego, like how cinema must suspend disbelief.

"The opposite of loneliness is not togetherness, its intimacy." _Richard Bach

"There is no true joy and compassion except through difficult emotions - all we get without the experience of fear, anger, and sadness are cheap imitations of joy and compassion - pleasantness and sentimentality." _Gabrielle Roth

Lost: is everything

Especially most of my record of Burning Man this year.
"Be at one with the dust of the earth. This is primal union." _Lao Tzu

I had one solid re-affirmation that the best art at burning man is the underground interactivity of humanity. All media regarding Burning Man misses the essence of experience.

And for the creators out there, Burning Man offers a way to create without adhering to your image or name of default. Freedom.

I spent more time this year getting tight with the Ten Principles. Especially understanding how self-reliance fits into my story, particularly emotional self-reliance. I did plenty of immediacy as always. These past few months have helped me identify debt-relationships in life, and generally, try to avoid them. I notice that a gift must require no hidden agenda, and that I appreciate gift-heavy community. Radical self-reliance is requisite to entering this space.

These principles have become somewhat of an expectation I have developed for the people surrounding me. I struggle with the duality of keeping low expectations about experiences and life because I believe it is healthy and good, and also using filters/judgments/expectations of people to keep my life full of positive inspiration. You don't need to go to Burning Man to understand the principles, they live in morality, logic and life. However, I do find the deliberate exposure and statement through Burning Man assists in a community of positive growth.

</Burning Man thoughts>

I like to ask people what their favorite creative outlet is. A funny guy named Jace informed me the ultimate answer to the question is "the self." I realized after thinking it through that I agree and it informs much of my inquisition into Burning Man and life. It's a simple quest to my "self." The entire mission is to peel away delusion and understand what's underneath. Radical Self-Inquisition.

I hurt my back last month and wrote in my journal "It's worth noting that I should not attempt to break my self so eagerly as previously considered in the name of nothing." Seems I will have some spite for my unheard wisdom.

In vanlyfe you experience a massive array of emotions in the van, and thus become more and more connected to it as a space. 

I named my van Ashwa.

Ashwa is the chaotic midground, and happy. Productivity defined as me living hard and whole has been well accomplished despite the build state.

I live in a wealth of amazing people. Truly epic, highly intelligent, quality humans.

I don't feel anger very often. I felt it recently, a deep-seated anger for consumerism; the motives, the results, a society-wide sickness.

Does vulnerability need to be witnessed?
I mostly consider this blog to be a vulnerability project, but I actively keep the publicity limited.

"Craft is something that has no form. It is an abstract notion unique to each and every individual's interpretation." _Professor Yamamoto

I had a moral breakthrough reading Mark Manson's ideas about Immanuel Kant. Mostly about categorical imperatives and other philosophic baselines that I realized I inherently knew to be true as a conscious being. I also appreciated how the ideas train lead to this quote:

"For Kant, consent was the act of demonstrating respect. Anything that didn't lead towards consent between two people was, to some degree, disrespectful." _Mark Manson

I have this idea that to move fluidly through class barriers is the most coveted class because being stuck in the upper-class is entirely overrated. The ultimate privilege.

There's only one photo surfaced so far of me at Burning Man. I'm passed out on a couch.