So what happens is when society, when community converts into society, the version of what we’re talking about becomes ideology. So ideology is a simulacrum of this more real wholesome thing, which is a properly ordered actual live set of values, because you can’t actually live any ideology. It’s literally impossible, but you can browbeat other peo... See more

Here's the crucial question: What kinds of inputs make me want to create versus consume more? ... Does this input expand or contract my capacity for original thought?

the art of feeding your mind: a framework for conscious consumption: thoughts on the curation of consciousness stepfanie tyler 7.17.2025

the Digital Sphere’s grammar depends on naming and remembering. In contrast, Television’s grammar depends on capturing images through cameras and sounds through microphones, converting those images and sounds to radio-frequency waves, then transmitting those waves to receivers that convert the waves back into images through flicker-flash hardware i... See more

Pirkei Avot teaches “Everything that the Holy One created in His world, He created only for His glory” (Avot 6:11). This includes the serpent, the evil inclination, evil itself. As the Baal Shem Tov taught, evil has no independent existence; it’s simply divine energy that has become concealed from its source. Evil is good that does not know itself ... See more

The stones of Mount Washington admittedly have a bit more color than the Melissa Arctic, but they have the same mottled patterning, their weathered skins a maze of blackish-brown and grayish-green lichens and moss, touched occasionally with ocher highlights, the whole nicely broken up by webs of tiny fractures where the summer sun has dried things ... See more

[living stones]

The heart that grasps the mysteries is one that is naive enough to think all souls worthy of Paradise, even souls who may have drenched their heart’s life with bitterness. It is a heart that feels and sings like a bird, without caring if there is no one there to hear it. It rejoices over everything that is beautiful, everything that ... See more

[figure and ground] [television] [memes]

social media flipped memes (the disjointed building blocks of “democracy”) from ground to figure .... Now, the memes ... have to be promulgated and enforced. And that’s why political propriety in much of today’s West is gauged not in terms of policy substance or even popularity, as it is in one’s ability to r... See more