It was visitation hour. He must have been 20. In a oversized black tee with sharp graphics, out of it, yawning, rocking, racing his legs, looking here and there through glazed eyes.

You brought a jigsaw puzzle. You both spoke little. You would put a piece down. He would put a piece down, then yawn, then look around.

I couldn’t stop watching. Sometimes he put his face down in his folded arms. He would look up for a moment, then over his face in his hands and rub his eyes, then go back down. You smiled quietly and stroked his head with your fingers. Eventually he would look up again and place another piece. And sometimes when he looked up he would be smiling too.

I sat a table away and wondered, was he aware of you? Did he feel your hand on his hair? Did he know who you were? You held his hand and stroked his head slowly. He pressed his face against the table and rolled it from side to side.

At the end of the hour, you put down five puzzle pieces, if that. The bell rang and I watched you both stand up. I teared up but you didn’t. You held your quiet smile. Your lips never once faltered. You held the back of his head and you both lingered there for a minute longer than the others.

When it was really time to go, I saw his restless eyes rest on yours. It all hit him at once and the glaze left his eyes. You both savored it until the nurse led him back to his room, and you went your separate ways.

You were at the corner of Octavia and Page Street. I was walking westwards up Page, towards you.

You carried a skateboard in one hand and a big empty five gallon jug in other.

You threw the jug down hard on the road, and then you yelled:

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

The Asian couple next to you walked a little faster.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

The couple was nervous now. You picked up the jug and spoke in a normal voice. Sorry! Don’t mean any harm! I’m just yelling! You laugh to yourself. You know! Just yelling! Your shirt was stained and you had a musk. You hadn’t washed or showered in a few days. But still, you were glowing.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

I reached your corner and looked at you. I was just curious. I didn’t expect you to catch me but you did. You went quiet. We paused there for a moment, not moving, not saying anything. Just looking at each other strangely.

Then, suddenly, I felt I knew you. That, somehow, we were alike. That, maybe, I actually knew you better than everyone else I passed that week.

The moment I thought this, you smiled a big and round smile, and walked up to me. Before I could react, you took the back of my hand and placed it against the side of your face. You closed your eyes, and you held it there for a moment, like I was your grandmother. Then you dropped your skateboard and skated away, not saying a thing.

note: this is my re-telling of the book of jonah based on the scripture. none of the quotes are direct. i have taken creative liberties that i hope emphasize rather than distort the meanings.

out of all the prophets, jonah is the one who truly is “just like me fr”.

now, jonah is an israelite and god tells him to go preach in nineveh. nineveh was a grand city, in what is now modern day iraq, that was the capital of what we now call the Neo-Assyrian Empire.

but, despite their material greatness, nineveh was acting up against god. and cities that acted up against god were getting rattled by god. god didn’t want to rattle nineveh, but he would if he had to. for purposes of justice and discipline. but he preferred that they change their ways on their own. and wanted jonah to be the guy to persuade them.

but my guy jonah had other plans. my guy didn’t want to be preaching in nineveh. he was tryna chill in tarshish, a bougie coastal town in spain. my guy was just tryna chill on the spanish coast and eat tapas and dance salsa-- not walk around nineveh street-preaching gods wrath all day like a crazy person.

so, jonah ignores god and hops onto the first boat to tarshish.

god doesn’t approve. and so god sends great winds and storms rack the boat he’s on. but jonah is the chillest man alive. he stays sleeping below deck while the storm is raging on. how does one man become so chill? we shall find out soon.

eventually, the rest of the boat crew members wake jonah up. they aren’t like jonah the chiller. no, they’re freaking out. they’re like jonah, you’re religious right? do something! pray to your god!

now, the sailors on the boat are gentiles. jonah is an israelite, one of the elect. he is intimate with the true god. when jonah tells them this, they realize that jonah has offended this all powerful god, and that is why the storm has come.

and so they ask him: “what should we do to you to appease god and end this storm?!”

and the chill jonah gives a surprisingly noble response: “my b. throw me into the sea. the storm is my fault.”

and so the sailors throw jonah into the ocean and the storm stops. they sailors are amazed with this and they all become ultra pious.

this is the first mystery of the book of jonah: the lazy one who incurs god’s wrath is offered as sacrifice.

once jonah’s in the ocean, god sends to him a great fish that swallows him. now jonah is in this fish belly and he has not much to do but write prayerful poetry.

out of the belly of sheol i cried...

all of your waves and your billows passed over me... weeds were wrapped around my head

i take jonah as symbolizing the slacker. in the slacker’s life, as i can attest, it feels often that they are in a dark pit, that life, the waves and billows of life, is just happening to them. their mind is wrapped with weeds. they cannot get out. once they hit their limit, once they hit rock bottom, only god can save them, can get them out of the darkness of the belly of that great fish.

so god releases our guy from the big fish. and now, jonah, renouncing his avoidant ways, finally goes to nineveh to preach. he preaches and guess what! it worked. all of nineveh repents, went through penance, and changed their heart! and god didn’t rattle them, and nineveh lived on and prospered!

amazing right!?

jonah doesn’t think so.

jonah is still mad he’s in nineveh and not eating tapas in tarshish with the homies. jonah’s like: “god, this is stupid! you were never even going to destroy nineveh! you’re too compassionate!”

jonah’s like: “my preaching in nineveh was just performative! why make me do that! you were going to save them either way! that’s why i was just going to chill in tarshish instead! because it wouldn’t have mattered! you are gracious and merciful and slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and relenting from disaster! you would have never have destroyed nineveh! i’ve wasted my life accomplishing what would have been done without me! i don’t even want to chill in tarshish anymore! just kill me god! i hate my life!”

look! it is here that the secret to jonah’s chillness is revealed!

why is jonah so chill? because he knows god is chill too. he knows god would never actually destroy nineveh. he’s too gentle. and if nineveh is going to be fine either way, why can’t jonah just go chill in tarshish???

but also, we should talk about jonah’s reaction. why does he want to die? it may seem overblown in the little context given to us, but i think jonah’s impulse here is deeply human, and deeply relatable. if we think our actions don’t matter, if we think what we do has little impact on reality, on god’s grand design, will we not feel this way? will we not feel useless? will we not feel that whether we live or die has no bearing? i think jonah feels some of this.

anyway, the bitter jonah leaves nineveh and, not really knowing what to do with himself, posts up outside and just looks on at nineveh to watch how things will go for them.

as he’s chilling, god actually appoints a plant to shade his head. jonah is very happy about this plant. but the next day, god sends a worm to kill the plant. not only is jonah mad that god would kill this wonderful plant, but the lack of shade gives him heat stroke. he cries to god again “i can’t believe you killed that innocent plant! just kill me too! this is all so stupid.”

and god’s like, “are you really that mad that i killed the plant?”

and jonahs’ like, “yes bro i am. just kill me.”

again, jonah wants to die. and again, it can seem over-dramatic, even when you read the original text. but i still find it deeply relatable. when we misunderstand god’s design, the world seems so messed up. when we misunderstand god’s design, we feel that we are completely useless. we feel that our lives are completely unfair and screwed up. this is what jonah is going through.

and jonah’s antidote is in the final verse.

in the final verse of the book of jonah, the lord says: “you pity this plant, for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow, which came into being in a night and perished in a night. so wouldn’t i pity nineveh, that great city, in which there are so many cows and more than 120,000 persons?”

now this this ending is a bit abrupt and confusing so let’s unpack it.

to recap: jonah is chill cause he knows god is chill. he doesn’t want to preach to nineveh cause he knows god is to merciful to destroy them anyway. and he knows they’ll convert whether he preaches or not. when he gets upset about god forcing him to do it anyway, god kills jonah’s favorite plant to teach him a lesson.

this last part is confusing. why does killing the plant teach jonah a lesson?

you pity the plant for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow

there are many valid interpretations of jonah, at varying levels of galaxy brain symbolism. but here’s how i see it: killing the plant is important because god is showing that his love for his own creation is not incompatible with his destruction. god is saying he must have loved that plant even more than jonah did, because god both made it and made it grow. and yet he still allowed it to die.

similarly, even though god loves nineveh, as he created the 120,000 men inside it, he’d still allow it’s destruction it came to it. his wrath is not incompatible with his love. this is foundation of justice.

and of course, this principle was why jonah was swallowed up by the great fish. jonah’s sleeping on the boat, with full faith in god’s chillness, knowing, probably, everything will be fine and soon enough he’d get to chill in tarshish with the homies. but god woke him up and threw him into a fish until he agreed to do what was asked of him!

those whom I love, i reprove and discipline.
-- revelations 3:19

i used to feel bad for jonah. i mean i still do. my guy just wants to live a chill life in tarshish. is that too much to ask? i just want him to be happy. i think most of us do. god seems harsh in the story. i don’t like it!

i also think jonah’s theology is especially relatable to our modern opinions. of course god wouldn’t destroy nineveh! a loving god wouldn’t hurt a fly!

but to the religious mind, the structure of reality is one of cause and effect. and not just the laws of physics, but moral cause and effect. wicked deeds can end up with physical consequences. and these consequences can seem brutal to us.

and by the way, nineveh was destroyed. we know this historically. it happened in 612 BC. after jonah saved them (around 750 BC), they went back to their wicked ways, and the mighty capital of the assyrian empire fell to their antagonistic neighbors.

actually, the vision of their destruction comes only a few pages after the book of jonah, in the book of nahum. so it was not simply a material-historical siege. it was divine. the fact than nahum prophesizes it, focusing on god’s wrath against them for their ways, imply that this destruction was allowed by the lord for the sake of justice.

now, the fact that it was human beings who destroyed nineveh rather than some god-wrought natural disaster softens the blow a bit. god allowed, rather than caused, the destruction. and perhaps too the weakness of nineveh that let them fall to their enemies was due to their impious ways.

now, unlike with nineveh, god appoints a worm to kill the plant. but i mean… death is an essential part of nature. worms eat plants all the time. that’s just what worms do. god made them that way. if we think this is cruel, we must think nature is cruel by design, which means either god is cruel. the alternative is that god is good, and we are misreading reality. we are simply out of touch with the authorial intent of the creator, and projecting too much of our flawed opinions onto it. this is what jonah is doing when he is furious at the plant and wants to die. he is suffering what one suffers when they see everything as cruel, irritating, too hard, too useless. i understand, jonah!

but the truth is, as god says to jonah, he loves the plant more than we do because he created it. if we think a worm eating a plant is wrong, we misunderstand reality, and we will suffer for it.

and now, a final recap: jonah’s a chill guy. but he’s chill because he doesn’t really think god would actually let anything bad happen. even when god is rocking his both with a big storm, he’s sleeping peacefully. jonah does not see that justice is compatible with love. and so he does not take up his divinely given work in preventing the potential destruction of nineveh. he just wants to chill and do his own thing. god rectifies jonah’s beliefs by showing him that, though god loves his plants, he still kills them with his worms. and in doing so, god also shows jonah that he does have an important role to play. that he did actually save nineveh (at least for a century or two). and his time was much better spent there than in tarshish with the homies.

i see jonah is the slacker who thinks his actions don’t matter. who thinks everything is gonna work out in the end and so just wants to chill. but actually, jonah is crucial. jonah’s actions and inactions had the power to change the course of history.

there is a certain axis of advice i see nowadays. on one side, people say: chill out. relax. god will get it done with or without you. on the other side, people say: what you do really matters! god is calling YOU, specifically! you must fulfill his call, or ELSE!1 it is on this side of the spectrum that we have the story of jonah.

anyway, that’s all for today. i hope you gained something from this. a lot of people don’t like the old testament, but i honestly find it most the relatable for our daily human struggles. we all have a bit of jonah in us!

Why did Eve eat the apple? Why did Adam follow suit?

Christians believe the cause of all our suffering is the Fall. The cause of all our suffering is one moment of disobedience that took place who knows how long ago.

Many find this view absurd. At the very least, such a view begs many questions-- all of which are reasonable.

Why didn’t God make humans more obedient? Why would God allow them to err so gravely and cause so much pain and suffering in the world? Why didn’t God make humans like angels: creatures who can only choose the good?

Christian theologians have tried to come up with good answers to these questions for centuries.

They answer as so: Why didn’t God make humans like angels? Why didn’t he stop Adam and Eve? Because he wanted to give us a greater freedom than that of the angels: the freedom to choose evil.

Of course this is still unsatisfying.

Yeah, ok, freedom is cool. Children disobey authority sometimes too, and they stumble into little issues out of ignorance, and it can be cute to watch them learn and grow via little follies. But these follies don’t condemn all of humanity! Why didn’t God just give Adam and Eve a little less freedom? Make them disobey in a somewhat milder way? Turn down the suffering knob a few degrees? Like, did he really need to allow them to fall into the hands of the most evil agent in the world? Did he really need to allow them to cause butterfly skin? Cluster headaches? Genocide? Isn’t a little fall here or there enough? Why did he need to make it so dire?

Then the Christian answers: his ways are mysterious. We cannot comprehend them.

Of course, this is immensely un-satisfying to the atheist. Frankly, it’s a joke. But the Christian accepts it! How can they! How can they be so silly!

I used to think like this. And I don’t blame myself. I don’t think Christians address suffering well at all. Actually, I think they do a terrible job. And so I’m going to try to do a better job. Or at least, a job that may appeal to people with sensibilities similar to mine.

Because the Christian explanation of suffering can seem calloused and hand-waivy, the atheists concludes that religion is flawed cope, God cannot be real, and suffering must be meaningless. It just is what it is. It sucks but it is what it is.

But what are the implications of this view? The suffering person is robbed of meaning and hope. Cluster headaches? That’s horrible. I’m sorry. Life can be so cruel. I hope we find a cure.

The Christian, meanwhile, has this response. That’s horrible. I’m sorry. Life can be devastating. But trust that God is still with you and that your suffering will be redeemed.

The Christian worldview sounds nicer. Actually, many atheists say that they would like to believe. They recognize that it would be nice if our suffering was redeemed. But they simply cannot bring themselves to believe in God because parts of it sound nice. The religious view has to be coherent and make sense. Parts of the Christian view sounding nice is not an argument.

Well, here is my attempt to paint a more coherent picture. Here is the picture I wish I had when I started asking these questions. I do not attempt to change the minds of any atheist. I know how insane this all sounds. I’ve been there. But I hope to at least offer a perspective on life that I rarely hear. A perspective that makes sense of questions of suffering and free will without offering unsatisfying rationalizations and logical reasonings. I will do these by making an appeal to aesthetics, rather than to rationality. Making an appeal to the artistic sense we all share.

The Dramatic View of Life

All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.
-- Shakespeare, As You Like It

The laws of drama are universal. Every good drama needs a conflict. Characters must try, fail, struggle, and grow.

Why should we enjoy these dramas? Why should we prefer to see actors struggle and fail, to see Batman stuck in a pit trying again and again to crawl out, instead of just reading stories of unending peace and harmony and utopic happiness?

One explanation is that they are simply catharsis for our own struggles. This is what Aristotle will say. We are all struggling and unsatisfied and so we want characters that can meet us where we are at, then inspire us by overcoming their fictional issues.

Another explanation is that is inherently more beautiful.

Now, I cannot argue rationally for this view of art over the other. I can only paint a picture and let is stand on its own, and let it attract or repel you on its own.

But as seekers struggling with big questions, let’s think about it.

The Christian view is that suffering leads to a greater future good.

Hidden in this view is that conflict into growth into resolution is somehow greater than a conflict-less growth, of growth through sheer pleasure. If growth through sheer pleasure was better, then all of our conflict is only an aberration from a greater good that would have been achieved without conflict, because the path to the greatest good is sheer pleasure.

Holding this theological view next to our innate attraction to tragedy in drama helped it makes sense to me. It makes the catholic argument intuitive. It gave life to the logical statements.

I already know I like conflict-resolution in stories. Even atheists are attracted to this universal law in storytelling. Everyone is attracted to such stories.

So, given that we all love such stories, is it such a leap to think that the reality we live in is good because it is, in some dimension, also such a story?

That, actually, what we find ourselves in is a living tragi-comedy of epic proportions? In this view, any conflict does not make the story bad. Actually, it makes the story better. Not in the moment, of course. But from a bird’s eye view, from the one watching the entire story through time, doesn’t it make the story better?

Of course, of course, we do not like when horrible things happen to the characters in the story we love. We do not celebrate them in the moment. It hurts us. And it’s the same in real life. It’s horrible. But, when the resolution finally arrives, don’t all the conflicts add to the glory of the ending?

I used to think that such a view was calloused to those who suffer much more than I do. But those who suffer the most often hold this view!1 And doesn’t it make sense? Doesn’t it make sense that the one who is suffering needs this view the most? That it benefits them the most? That actually, the calloused thing would to be to say that they are just coping? To rob them, via philosophical condescension, of the hopeful story of religion, a story that may, just may, be actually true?

This is how suffering makes sense to me. This is how I often grapple with these questions: where does my artistic sense lead me? And I think is how more people should think about theology. An important but oft neglected dimension of meaning is drama. Narrative. The new age gets this, the “meaning-making” crowd gets this, and they are writing all kinds of high-level narratives. But the Christian receives their narrative from revelation. The Christian tries to discover the narrative that is already there. Can we reconcile suffering not with pure rationality, but with artistic intuition?

Now we can tackle the next question.

Well, what if we don’t like this story? What if we hate the script we’re in? What if we find the idea that cluster headaches and butterfly skin are somehow “parts of the story” abhorrent? What if our aesthetic sense does not gel with life as it is? Where does that leave us?

Find out next time (or at least, eventually) on thoughtcurrents.

here is one common take: ‘jesus would have loved all gods, religions, and cults of pagan worship. jesus would not have rejected paying respect to anyone’s god.’

this is what people like sadhguru and igor kufayev think. this is what deepak chopra thinks. this is what people in the new age think.

they say: love jesus. great guy. lot of good wisdom in the bible. i just don’t like the whole christianity thing. very oppressive. intolerant. backwards. bizarre.

we all believe the most accepting answer is the correct one. we don’t like conflict. we don’t like telling people they’re wrong. we believe in “live and let live”.

but what we want to be true is not always true.

so what is true? it’s hard to determine, but we should at the very least apply a sincere effort of investigation to see what we can find.

if we are going to say we “LOVE” jesus, or admit that there is “a lot of wisdom in the bible”, shouldn’t we at least read a bit of the bible? or a bit of the perspectives of those who knew jesus personally, in real life? or a bit of the history of the time and place that he walked the earth?

one very interesting bit of history around the incarnation is the constant religious conflict between the jews and the romans. the jews at the time of christ were under roman rule.

the romans were surprisingly respectful when it came to religion. when conquering a new territory, they would beseech the local deity to come and join the roman pantheon.

they were also a practical people. they cared more about law and order than this god vs that god-- as do many people today. for the most part, they let people worship as they pleased, and this kept things peaceful.

this worked fine for most groups. but not for the jews. there was this one aspect of the jews that was difficult to reconcile with romanism. monotheism.

the romans saw monotheism as intolerant. everyone else in the empire worshipped all kinds of different gods. everyone else in the empire had no issue worshipping the emperor as a god alongside their cult deities. why were these jews so stubborn? why were they so arrogant? why did they think their religion was better than everyone else’s?

why couldn’t these annoying monotheists would not just chill out, grow up, and realize the wisdom in all ancient pagan cultures?

this difference was the source of much conflict. it is very similar to hindu-muslim or hindu-christian conflicts today. hindus see abrahamic religions as intolerant. abrahamic religions see hinduism as idolatrous. it was the same with the romans and jews.

at one point, the romans wanted to build a statue of an eagle at the entrance to the temple of jerusalem. just at the entrance! not even inside! can you not be the least bit patriotic?! meet us halfway?

but no. the jews would accept no secular modifications to their temple. they revolted.

eventually, the jews and romans reached some kind of stable state. the pragmatic romans said: ok, you’re exempt from worshipping pagan gods, but you have to at least worship the emperor.

the jews said, we will not sacrifice to the emperor, but we can sacrifice to yahweh on behalf of the emperor.

the romans said fine. whatever.

from a modern perspective, the romans seem much more enlightened than the jews.

the romans understood religious pluralism. they understood intersubjectivity. an integral theorist might say that they were at a higher level of the STAGES ego development, up in the teal / turquoise regions, while the jews were down in amber, clinging to their limited cultural perspectives.

from a modern perspective, jesus should have preferred the romans for their tolerance, magnanimity, and interfaith cultural appreciation.

but no. jesus chose the jews as his people. the intolerant, monotheistic, culturally insular, problematic jews.

and this was not accidental.

of course jesus loved and wanted to save all the nations. but the beginning of his ministry was very much for the jews. all the apostles were jewish. when a gentile begged jesus for her daughter to be healed, the first thing jesus says to her is “it is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the puppies”. the children are the jews and the puppies are the gentiles. the immense hardships endured by the jews prepared them for this honor, to be the first children. of course, two verses later, jesus still heals the woman’s daughter, showing that his plan is not to be exclusive.

it seems to me that the initial rebuff is meant to show us that judaism was special. it was important. the whole old testament was not for nothing. the jews were not just divas, they were doing something right. yes, it devolved and was corrupted. but jesus did not come to abolish hebrew scripture, but to fulfill it.

and think about this: after jesus was incarnated, did he tell the apostles to lighten up? did he tell them to be more respectful to pagan worship? no. the apostles were not at all syncretic, and the early christians would rather be slaughtered by beasts than burn incense to a roman god.

did jesus ever tell them: bro, you’re being way too uptight. this worship stuff doesn’t matter. it’s all love brother let’s hit this j.

no. actually, many of these early pagan-god denying martyrs experienced miracles while being tortured and executed, making it seem that god approved of their denial.

of course, the close-mindedness of the jews backfired on some of them. especially the ones who crucified jesus. but this is an issue for another time.

religious “uptightness” is something most of us don’t understand because most of us are so materialist. we don’t understand why worshipping this or that is such a big deal. we do not see the power in worship. we see it all as light-hearted theatre.

but what if it’s not?

if worshipping other gods was nbd, why was it such a massive deal in the old testament? why was it such a massive deal to the martyrs? to the apostles and early church fathers? why couldn’t they just incorporate pagan gods into christianity? why couldn’t they just respectfully pay homage while still being christian? why did they prefer death?

what if the martyrs didn’t die at the fangs of beast because they had religious OCD and missed the the essence of christianity, instead getting caught up in silly infighting and technical details? but what if they preferred torture and death to compromising the purity of their worship because that is what jesus called them to do?

surely, what we worship has some effect on us. else it would not be so important. surely it is not just symbolic, but affects us in some way we are still too insensitive to recognize.

postscript:

the following is my own opinion, so take it with a big grain of salt. but what if “worship” meant something like: for what sake do you act?

if we worship jesus, we act for his sake. if we worship indra, we act for indra’s sake. if we worship money, we act for money’s sake. if we worship our own desires, we act for the sake of our own desires-- wherever they came from.

let’s say you’re a database administrator. a database administrator for the red cross would do very similar work, i would imagine, as a database administrator for ISIS. both might be doing very virtuous, honest, straightforward, work. but it would be ridiculous to think these posts are equivalent. their work is consecrated to two very different forces.

why do we do what we do? for whose sake? for what ends? if scripture is any guide, these often neglected questions are more important than we think.

plato is not interested in women. and definitely not in any individual woman. neither did his teacher, socrates. socrates was especially not interested in his wife, whom he selected specifically for her disagreeable personality, so that he may grow in virtue.

plato is not interested in individuals. he is interested in archetypes. and he thinks the archetypes are the true end of man.

plato would say: man thinks he’s attracted to woman. but really, he’s not. what he’s actually attracted to is the Divine Idea of Beauty, a real, shining, metaphysical object that exists outside of this earthly cave of mist, shadows, and appearances.

women can partake in this idea of beauty. the idea of beauty shines through them, however dimly. and man, still immature, conflates his attraction for the pure idea of beauty with attraction to some particular woman.

and so woman is not the real end of man’s eros. it is only the first stage. eventually, he will realize the coarseness of his desire. and once he refines his eros, he will no longer long for any specific, earthly goods, but only to contemplate the divine idea of beauty.

catholics, on the other hand, are interested in marriage. a successful marriage requires a care for an individual person as they are, rather than for the abstract idea they partake in. apparently the 13th century theologian duns scotus has something to do with this view. if you understand what dons scotus saying (i don’t), please contact me immediately.

you might think the platonic position sounds absurd. but it lives on under new names.

‘consort yoga’, for example, is platonic. what is consort yoga? consort yoga is having sex not for procreation or even pleasure, but for the purpose of worshipping a deity through the embrace of your partner, and so achieving spiritual communion with that deity.

it’s popular in new age and tantric yoga scenes. if you want a detailed description of what i’m talking about, check this out.

in consort yoga, the individual isn’t what matters. both of you are deified. both of you are an instrument for the other to reach the divine. sounds pretty platonist to me. just replace “deity” with “divine idea”.

in catholicism, the focus on concrete individuals. that is also why, unlike certain other spiritual schools, no individual can ever transcend ethical conduct with the justification of: we are all one.

catholics say no, each specific and unique individual, as they are, actually matters.

we see this too in the principles of the catholic faith. jesus and mary were concrete individuals who actually lived and walked on earth. in praying to jesus and mary, we are trying to have a relationship with individuals, not archetypal patterns.

I shall say only that heaven must have led me here today to console me, if he who is unfortunate can attain consolation from seeing another even more so…

The Man Who Eats Grass: O how those sweet voices of those happy students crush my spirit! And only because they are so good and so gleeful as the plan their sunny days. Because they make me search my suffering past for some fruit, some lesson, some purpose as to why I could not, and can not, be like them. Why I had to live what I lived.

But each time I mine my life for something I’ve won that they lack, I come up empty. It seems all I’ve learned through torment, insanity, and cruel suffering, they’ve learned through calm grace, by singing teachers and vibrant activity, by riding on the backs of angels!

Why, God, do you make one happy and pious from birth, and throw another the other into terrible waves? To be beat around for decades, only to wash up on some empty island, so they can live in lonely strangeness? To be all alone with scraps of petty wisdom that all others know simply as common sense.

Woe is me! Woe are those who suffer for its own sake! Woe is Job and all his wormed skin and ruptured boils!

Will you say suffering purifies? Then is my soul so corrupt that I needed such cleansing?

What is the source of my trouble!? What is it that I fail to see? Am I really still so distorted by sin that I cannot be happy? Then tell me! Correct me! Where is your hand of judgement? Answer my questions and console me! Have you felt what I felt? Do you feel what I feel now?

O God, I’m sorry. I see now that my wretched soul longs only for the perfect sacrifice. Most innocent, least deserving, how did you suffer? They say you never once lost your beatitude, but surely it was not in bliss alone, for you cried out twice. What was happening in you then? I cannot comprehend it. Why, if your better reason staid steady and fixed in knowledge, did you cry? What happened, O God?

O, who am I to ask? Surely no one has suffered more than you. Even now I cannot deny it. And never will I have the strength to drink from your cup and to know for myself. Who am I to lament! In your suffering you saved us all. In your suffering you console me now. Then, let me gather my cross, and let my peace be the peace that I give to others.

They tell the story of a wise man who one day reached a point of such poverty and misery that his only nourishment came from eating the grasses he picked.

Can there be anyone else, he said to himself, poorer and sadder than I?

And when he turned his head he found the answer, for there was another wise man gathering up the blades that he’d discarded.

— Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Life’s a Dream (trans. Michael Kidd)

on day 1, you see him struggle. on day 62, you rejoice in his great accomplishments.

of course, as i am struggle to discern my way through this fallen world, the next morning i had this thought: i should not be consuming content that is set to such sinful music.

the message of the “Cali Swag District” is unambiguously depraved.

and yet, if we look at the instagram comments of korean dougie man, they are brimming with positivity, joy, and mutual support.

here is my question: are dougie enjoyers bonding over evil and enabling mutual sin and degeneration?

or are they using what is imperfect for good?

—-

i think of jesus at the wedding at cana.

at this wedding at cana, full of imperfect, sinful, drunken humans, eating what they eat, yelling what they yell, singing what they sing: did he stand on the sidelines repulsed?

or did he dance?

well, Matthew 11:19 implies that he did drink and eat and was friendly:

The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.’ But wisdom is proved right by her deeds.

and we also know that the wedding at cana was where he performed his first miracle. he turned water into high quality wine to fuel this wedding party.

but did he dance?

the gospels do not say.

—-

so is it wrong to hit the dougie?

the history of the church provides different solutions to this problem.

the benedict option: reject it and pursue perfection. shine your light from afar. the people will soon grow weary and come to you for refuge. (see: catholics build intentional community of like-minded believers).

(o ye who hit the dougie, do not pretend that you are following in the footsteps of christ, whom nothing can corrupt, but see how your environment corrupts your fragile soul, leave, and take refuge in holy community.)

the jesuit option: meet people where they’re at. go to their parties. wear their clothes, eat their food, dance to their music. demonstrate real understanding. then, offer an alternative. (see: Priest slays dance to NSYNC's 'Bye, Bye, Bye' during halftime show).

some think the benedictines are ineffective. they do not do enough to engage with the world.

others think the jesuits have ceded way too much.

there are catholic scholars who think even most classical music is vain, who would be horrified at the mere name Cali Swag District.

and then there is Reverend Guilherme Peixoto, an ordained priest who is throwing headache-inducing EDM raves in actual cathedrals, with full blessings of the pope.

considering the magisterial approval of both, it seems that both approaches are permissible. therefore, it is up to each individual to trust their conscience.

Here’s another simple Catholic question it’s surprisingly hard to get good answers to.

What actually is a demon?

I’ve found some passages in Augustine’s City of God to be quite helpful here.

First, the word “demon” is translated from the Latin word “daimon”, which is a word taken from the Greek “daimon”.1

In English, we have two words for daimon: demon and daemon. You use the word “demon” if you think daimons are bad. You use the word “daemon” if you think they are neutral or good. Few people seem to connect the two.

People who think “daemons” are good see them as helpful muses that inspire arts and poetry, or as the attendant spirits behind genius.

—-

Saint Augustine describes daimons as having: “immortality of body in common with the gods, but perturbations of the mind in common with men” (City of God, Book 8).2

This description gives us an easy way to discern angels from daimons, or demons.

And so, if you worried that someone is worshipping a demon, you can ask a simple question to help discern: is the spirit they are worshipping passionate or perturbed? Is the fruit of this worship more perturbation?

If you want to see examples of real demons, I recommend this Al Jazeera documentary.

Humans are able to care about anything. Some people care about their home baseball team to the point of violence. Others care about fictional characters to the point of heartbreak. Others care about their religion to the point of violence and heartbreak, while others dismiss the same religion as a sports team full of fictional characters.

Some people care about the Yankees baseball team because their parents and their neighbors cared about the Yankees baseball team. This care is developed via repetition, exposure, and a lack of rebellion.

But other people care about the Yankees from an inexplicable and all consuming longing. These people love the Yankees. They would die for the Yankees. They want to kill the Red Sox. They draw up elaborate and illegal plans to blow up the Red Sox stadium. They have life sized mannequins of the Yankees players in their bedroom. They spend thousands of dollars on Yankee baseball cards.

Some people say: passion follows action. Do something enough, expose yourself enough, and you will begin to care about it. (I’m going to use passion and care interchangeably, because I think, in most modern contexts, they refer to the same thing. I can prove this later if you want.)

One person who says this is Cal Newport. He wrote a very popular book about it called So Good You Can’t Ignore You. He says passion is a myth. Whatever we practice, we will be passionate about.

Cal Newport has clearly never met the second Yankees fan, which from here on will be named Steve (the best possible phonetic representation of the average baseball enjoyer).

Cal Newport would never be able to match the care Steve has for the Yankees. No amount of digital minimalism or deep work blocks would make Cal Newport as caring for the Yankees as Steve. The care follows action principle has a ceiling.

Nor would Steve ever be able to use the care follows action principle to redirect his care away from the Yankees. If Steve ever stopped caring about the Yankees, it would be through extensive therapy, or radical divine intervention. Not habituation.

It is clear to us Steve has some kind of gift that cannot be matched by most people. But, as philosophers, it behooves us to ask: is there something wrong with Steve? Why does he care about a baseball team so much?

This is an important question. Nations rise and fall based on the answers to such questions.

If Steve were living in Sparta, the Spartans would say yes. Steve is wrong. Instead of training for battle, he is playing with baseball cards. This is not good.

If Steve were living in a Disney movie, the maternal Disney movie character would say no. Of course not. Steve’s zany passion for the Yankees is awesome, and we should celebrate it.

The arc of the movie would be something like this: Steve is obsessed with the Yankees, and wants to be a sports commentator, but his Spartan uncle wants him to “be a man”, join the military, and defend his country. After a long journey, which involves a mystical grandmother, running away from home, and a series of lucky breaks, Steve becomes the world’s best sports commentator, and his uncle finally comes around.

Most of us today believe the Disney movie is philosophically sound. Steves quirks should be nurtured, not therapized. Steve’s hero’s journey is not to become noble by renouncing his passions, but to become noble by embracing them.

First, let’s look at the Spartan view. Let’s say Steve can support himself by participating in the Yankee fandom economy. Maybe he makes a living for himself writing a paid Substack on Yankee news.

The Spartan might say: Steve’s passion is not contributing to society in any meaningful way. People give money to Steve because they also have an unreasonable interest in the Yankees. No one should be watching baseball. It is merely escapist entertainment. We should all be preparing ourselves to battle the barbarian hordes. By writing about baseball, Steve is encouraging other people to pay attention to baseball. Now even more people are distracting themselves from what matters in life: getting jacked, mastering horseback archery, and blacksmithing weapons.

Maybe the Spartan sits the Disney mom for a dialogue.

The Spartan says: I think we can both agree that the actual particulars of the Yankees are irrelevant. I know what you really want is for Steve is for him to be happy and excited. Though I want to kill Steve for his frivolity, for your sake, I will constrain myself. Therefore, let try applying therapy. Let us use therapy to help Steve uncover the inevitably silly subconscious reasons for his obsession. Perhaps he is obsessed with the Yankees because he never made the varsity baseball team in high school, and obsessing over a professional sports team is one way to fill the pain and longing linked to this failure.

Once we fix Steve, he can then become passionate about joining the Spartan army while retaining his zeal for life. The Disney mom, while perhaps horrified by this perspective and means, will be satisfied in the end. Relieved, even. Because she always sensed that something was slightly off with Steve. She just didn’t want to be rude.

Here is the best case for the Spartan: After five years of intensive therapy, it was revealed that Steve was in fact obsessing over the Yankees for some silly subconscious reason. Once free of this obsession, Steve, via the action-passion principle, habituates a passion for militarism, and prevents Sparta from being extinguished by the barbarian hoardes1. In his old age, Steve retires, satisfied with his contribution to his community, and thanking God he never went through with his plans to murder the Red Sox.

Now, there are two rebuttals to this steel man. The first is that Steve cannot change. To try to “fix” Steve would only repress his love for the Yankees, and muffle his spirit. This is a possibility we will explore later.

The second rebuttal is that Steve should not change. That actually, his passion for the Yankees is linked to his god given destiny. It is what defines him as a unique and particular human being. And not only this, but the Spartan was wrong in his statement to the Disney mom. Actually, the particulars of the Yankees do matter. The Yankees and baseball are a unique and valuable form through which God discloses himself to us.

The philosophy behind the second rebuttal is that the particulars of our personalities, whether they be “natural” or not, conditioned or not, subconscious or conscious, income generating or not, and especially, whether they be materially useful or not, are good, and should be affirmed.

Now, we can immediately come up with counterexamples to this: imagine the sadist or serial killer. So let us make a more specific claim: any passion that is not hurting anyone or hurting oneself is good.

The Spartan could still argue that not grinding fighting ability IS hurting other people. Because if the barbarians invade and kill everyone (or if the soil turns to dust, or if the AI kills us all) because Steve and too many people like Steve were spending all your time watching baseball, they’ve done harm. They might even say Steve’s baseball passion is hurting him too. Because he’s corrupting his soul with frivolous things.

But to the Disney mom, this is too extreme. Life is not just about service and defense and avoiding all possible failure to protect others. Life is about exploring and enjoying the particulars of the strange situation we have found ourselves in. The Yankees, the new restaurant down the street, artisanal coffee brewing techniques, these are not just frivolous distractions from higher and more nobler pursuits. They are also good.

And why are they good? They are good because they are important to individuals, individuals of infinite depth and complexity, individuals who may see something the Spartan does not.

Who’s right?

Find out next time on thoughtcurrents.

Catholics are quite bad at interfaith understanding.

Many clergymen seem to believe that yoga-asanas are all dedicated to demonic beings.

Clearly they have never heard of “boat pose” or “triangle pose”.

One contested question in the church is whether or not the Hindu gods are demons.

This was especially relevant to me as a Hindu convert.

My parents are Hindu. Are all the deities in our puja cabinet at home actually demons? If they are, how should I make sense of the Hindu practices I used to do? Of the scriptures I read? Of the practices of my parents? Of the practices of one billion people in India and of many of my friends? Of yoga, of meditation, of mantra?

There is little to no available writing on Hindu deities being angels. It seems, despite it being the religion of over a billion people, Catholics do not care to actually address the question of whether or not they believe that Krishna is a demon. Rajiv Malhotra addresses this lack of fundamental engagement in his book, Being Different, which I will review soon.

Because there is no clearly thought out or articulated view, it seems that conservatives quitely believe all of South Asia are worshipping demons, and progressives quietly practice neo-tantra themselves.

To answer this question, I asked a local spiritual director. He thinks it’s all demonic, a view many Catholics seem to share.

I couldn’t believe this because there is obviously wisdom in Hinduism. So I tried to get a second opinion from Francis J. Clooney, a Jesuit and professor at Harvard Divinity School, who specializes in Hindu-Catholic interfaith dialogue.

Here’s what he told me:

I’m grateful he replied, even though 50% of his reply was telling me to talk to someone else (which I already had, Mr. Clooney!)

While he didn’t give me a straightforward answer, and even if he did he is not an authority— Clooney also has his biases and blind-spots— he did leave me with an interesting thread: could Hindu deities be angels or messengers of God?

I’m familiar with this idea only from the work of Rudolf Steiner, who believed the Archangel Gabriel was involved in the Bhagavad Gita, and that Hinduism, along with other pre-Christian spiritual streams, laid the groundwork for the incarnation of Christ.

Before converting, I had gone quite deep into Rudolf Steiner’s thought, even studying at his institution in Switzerland. Part of my conversion was influenced by Valentin Tomberg, one of Steiner’s most prominent disciples, who then renounced all of it, and converted to mainstream Catholicism.

Tomberg wrote a book called Meditations on the Tarot, which is quite sympathetic to pagan wisdom. The interesting thing about Meditations on the Tarot is that the afterward to this book is written by Hans Urs Von Balthasaar, one of the 20th centuries most important Catholic theologians, and a close advisor to Pope’s John Paul II and Benedict XVI.

The afterward shows that present mainstream of calling every stream of non-Christian thought, except for Aristotle, demonic, is not orthodox. The early church fathers, like St. Justin Martyr, respected elements of pagan wisdom, and tried to incorporate the insights of those like Hermes Trismegistus into Christian theology. And 20th century church theologians revived these views.

Balthasaar’s afterward that helped me see that perhaps everything that I have known and tried is not actually demonic, even though some of it might be, and all of it is lacking in a fundamental way.

The Balthasar afterward led me to Cardinal Jean Daniélou, another 20th century theologian. Daniélou was very interested in the idea of the angels of the nations. These angels, referenced in the Old Testament, may have ministered to the Greeks, Persians, Egyptians, and Indians before the incarnation of Christ, and gave them some amount of good guidance and wisdom.

Now, the Bhagavad Gita is clearly not a demonic text. I would love for someone to argue otherwise. And so Krishna, the alleged progenitor of the text, is probably not a demon.

So, what if Krishna was not a demon, but an angel to the Indian nation?

The question is quite nuanced and I have not gone all the way into it. The Bhagavat Purana paint a much more passionate picture of Krishna than the Gita does. Moreover, I haven’t even read the entire Mahabharata. Also, some say the angels of the other nations rebelled against the the angel of Israel.

I’m shocked that these perspectives are so little discussed considering the rapidly growing popularity of Hinduism in the West. I should not be the one speculating on whether or not Krishna was an angel to the Indian nation. I’m just a guy on the internet. But it seems no one else is. If they are, I can’t find them.

(play this soundtrack)

i used to love staying up late in the dark

on my laptop, with cheap string lights—

little balls that glowed amber green and indigo—

and i’d play these strained, nostalgic songs

to feel my longing for something else,

something more beautiful,

to escape into fantasy,

away from mundane thought,

into another planet,

into a rich and vivid life,

i’d light incense

and lie on my carpet

and watch the ceiling

for as long as i could,

until finally,

i accepted disappointment

and went to sleep

still longing for something barely articulate,

dreading waking up

to the bright sun,

to people hustling about,

to scrum meetings

and dry textbooks

and TurboTax reminders—

is it wrong?

is it slothful, god?

to crave to be floating

in a big dark cloud,

in swirling purples

and friendly planets

where cities look like little christmas lights—

why do you make me choose

between loneliness and beauty

between my neighbor and my fantasies

set with heartbreaking cellos

that the world desecrates

by sounds of productivity

how could you not want it too?

is this all frivolous to you? immature?

well how dare you make the world like this

to make me read disgusting facts

and fill my mind with ugly practicalities

how could you not see what i see?

and force me between two worlds

you reject the more beautiful one

now how will you resolve me

without shattering the good in it

to accurately represent reality we must see it clearly.

sometimes, we have not the capacity or peace of mind to articulate. then we must grunt or moan or scream or wail.

sometimes, we have not the capacity to understand. then we must call it a mystery, or admit our ignorance.

problems arise when we stop trying to articulate and understand. when everything becomes inarticulate expression. when we call things that are very much expressible incomprehensible mysteries that should not be put into words. this is ‘primitivism’.

people who have not read the dao de ching sometimes appeal to daosim to to say thinking and words are lame. they often cite (short) lines from poems they have not read about how heaven is inexpressible and therefore we should reason less. the dao de ching, however, contains many words that seem to describe structures in reality.

—-

many ipad kids wish to return to the world of pure sound. a world where clear articulation, and thus clear thought, is not necessary. this is the attraction of italian brainrot and non-sensical semi-onomopeias such as skibidi toilet and GRRRRRRRRT-BOW.

people who can barely read and have especially not read the birth of tragedy sometimes call this a ‘dionysian’ mode of being.

yelling skibidi toilet seems fine in moderation. but the one who is brain-rotted becomes addicted to this verbal sloth. and before they know it, their conceptual space is reduced to that of damianluck925 who repeats the same few phrases again and again day after day. “bro i’m fried right now”, “we’re out here hitting blinkers”, etc.

the terp guy is a similar phenomena. but he is self-aware. he says: i don’t speak english, i speak terpenese.

the dao de ching says the dao cannot be expressed. but other things can be expressed. the expression: “my hands touch my laptop” can be expressed.

we can think rigorously about what cannot be expressed. we can delineate the boundaries between what is expresible and what is inexpressible. good scientists and philosophers do this.

to describe is not to reduce. i used to think to describe was to reduce. but this is not necessarily true. i had just picked up some strain of pseudo-spiritual mind virus. such viruses thrive in grey and hazy minds, especially those exposed to youtube videos such as Blinkers in TARGET! *i got too lit*.

to describe is to enhance and to clarify. to describe the movement of atoms is beautiful. to reduce all of reality is atoms because we can describe bits and pieces of atom-related causality is wrong. this is the mindset of reddit atheists.

facts do not just describe reality. they are reality. this is what wittgenstein believed.

language is our tool to represent facts, and so to represent reality. philosophy, according to him, is the task of clarifying reality via clarifying its representation in language.

mathematics also clarifies reality by clarifying a symbolic representation.

because language is our primary mode of representing reality, the degeneration of language corresponds to the degeneration of clarity.

wittgenstein thought this more clearly than i am capable of:

from colloquial language it is humanly impossible to gather immediately the logic of language.

language disguises the thought; so that from the external form of the clothes one cannot infer the form of the thought they clothe, because the external form of the clothes is constructed with quite another object than to let the form of the body be recognized

the silent adjustments to understand colloquial language are enormously complicated.

basically, colloquial language conceals rather than portrays reality. to understand reality from colloquial language is like trying to see someone’s physique when they are inhabiting a full body mascot suit. e.g:

rudolf steiner says similar. he loves german and hates english. and french. see also notes on languages.

word on the street is that heidegger once said the only languages he could think in were greek and german.

i understand, i think. i’m learning latin. it feels more noble. at the very least, the namespace is less polluted.

ayn rand’s fountainhead is in part a polemic against people who refuse to clarify what can be clarified and reason about what can be reasoned about.

if you cannot articulate what is in your mind, your thoughts are unclear.

it is ok to have unclear thoughts. all of us have unclear thoughts (with the possible exception of thomas aquinas). but unclear thoughts, aka confusion, is not something, i think, to take pride in.

when my thoughts are soup i feel like confused mr krabs:

some antidotes: grammar, learning latin, talking to people, locking in.

in other words, learning abstract words and concepts changed his perception of reality.

this is basically the sapir-whorf hypothesis.

somehow, abstract thought vibrations in our head (aka words) change how we perceive the world.

this is amazing news for wordcels everywhere.

i’m currently learning the names of obscure colors to see if it changes my visual perception of the world.

i downloaded this goofy anki deck:

and copped Werner’s nomenclature of colors, which Charles Darwin used to describe critters in more exact language.

a beautiful thing about this book is it includes the natural source of each color. if you want the most beautiful example of this ever, ask a friendly LLM about the relationship between Isaiah 1:18, the color crimson, and the tola’ath worm.

apparently Russian speakers distinguish shades of blue 10% faster than English speakers because they have colloquial words for light and dark blue.

that’s cool. but two different blues? that’s child’s play.

i’m juggling fifty categories or more. i’m delineating cornflower, ultramarine, and periwinkle in everyday discourse.

actually even that’s not enough. i shall be learning perfect pitch, but for colors. i will perceive the exact nanometer wavelength of every color on the visible and invisible spectrum. i will become a human spectrometer.

anyway, let’s connect this back to grammar.

grammar is one of the three liberal arts of the trivium. classical education theorists claim grammar is extremely important. but most of us moderns find it extremely lame.

but it is not lame. grammar is glorious. it’s just that our terrible schools did not present it in its full glory.

grammar is the art of noticing distinctions and similarities between things. it is also the art of categorizing.

in the grammar of language, we group words by verb and noun classes. we divide sentences by parts of speech.

but in the classical sense, any kind of taxonomizing, categorization, observation of similarities and differences can be considered grammar. to learn to identify plants, for example, is to learn the grammar of plants. to learn to name emotions is to learn the grammar of emotions (e.g. an emotion wheel).

organizing is a fundamental pleasure of the human being. people love putting trays of different sizes in their drawers and placing objects of similar categories into these trays. people love bento boxes that separate the categories of their meal into neat compartments.

why? reality is grammatical. the human being wants to do grammar. this is what the philosophers have discovered. by noticing similarities and distinctions and types, we approach a deeper and more subtle understanding of reality.

Who sang the strained words of this psalm?

Though rulers sit together and slander me,

your servant will meditate on your decrees…

I am laid low in the dust;

preserve my life according to your word…

My soul is weary with sorrow;

strengthen me according to your word

What was he suffering? Who were those against him?

And as he suffered, did he ever doubt?

Did he ever doubt: did God really part the Red Sea? Could it be that Moses just waited for the tide to ebb?

Did he ever doubt: will I really believe this God, who would have me stone my own son to death should he be rebellious? Who commanded Abraham to sacrifice his only son? Who tortured the pious Job for a reason He would not reveal?

But in his affliction, where else could he turn? And when the doubt dissolved into tears, and the uncertainty into renewed obedience, he began to sing:

I have chosen the way of faithfulness;

I have set my heart on your laws…

This is my comfort in my affliction,

your promise gives me life…

Uphold me according to Your word, so that I may live,

And do not let me be ashamed of my hope.

And as he sang and prayed, the arrogant mocked him unmercifully. But he did not turn from the law (119:51).

(And let’s imagine there were therapists back in Babylon. Would they call his prayer a symptom? Would they ask: what repressed emotions is he compensating for? How strange a way of processing grief?)

The man must have lived and died in Babylon. Did he ever live to see his prayers answered? Did he ever get the comfort of a sing? A whisper? We cannot know.

But can know that, 630 years later, he was vindicated. Because there stood Yeshua. Exactly as promised. God walking in the flesh, opening the eyes of the blind, unstopping the ears of the deaf (Isaiah 35:5). The faith of the singer was proven. The prophecy was fulfilled. The law served its purpose.

And so I imagine the struggling man of this prayer now. I imagine him, wherever he may be, as he looks down upon the Earth, watching in wonder as a million choirs sing the prayer he once cried on his knees.

Here is their argument:

Knowledge is limited about the deep-sea environments and marine life that will be affected — and potentially irreparably harmed — by mining extraction. Therefore, I am urging the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to stop this leasing process and listen to the countless countries, scientists, marine policy experts, businesses, financial institutions, Indigenous leaders, and civil society groups worldwide calling for a moratorium on deep sea mining.

Instead, there are alternatives to deep-sea mining that we should be considering. Deep sea mining is an industry that doesn’t currently exist at scale or meaningfully contribute to the economy. We can continue to prioritize:

** innovation in battery technologies that do not require critical minerals and instead use easier-to-source elements;

** circular economy practices like increased recovery, responsible recycling, repurposing, refurbishing, repairing, and reuse; and

** the continued extraction of metals from existing and established sources under improved environmental and social governance rules.

The clean energy transition can be achieved without risking the destruction of the deep ocean.

You can find the government request for information and interest here.

—-

Obviously running giant underwater bulldozers that indiscriminately scoop up ocean bed and smash through coral reefs with spinning blades that kill octopi is bad and we should not do that.

But, being the annoying skeptic that I am, I would still like to know:

1. Does the deep ocean ecosystem rely on critical minerals for health?

2. Are there non-invasive ways to harvest critical minerals from the ocean? Maybe tiny little cute sea-floor-friendly harvester robots?

Do Fish Really Need Cobalt?

The answer is yes. They do.

Deep sea mining is a problem of epistemic humility.

Our current Secretary of the Interior is Mr. Doug Burgum, a software businessman turned real-estate developer with no environmental science background:

After graduating from North Dakota State University in 1978 with a bachelor’s degree in university studies and earning an MBA from Stanford University two years later, he mortgaged inherited farmland in 1983 to invest in Great Plains Software in Fargo. Becoming its president in 1984, he took the company public in 1997. Burgum sold the company to Microsoft for $1.1 billion in 2001. While working at Microsoft, he managed Microsoft Business Solutions. He has served as board chairman for Australian software company Atlassian and SuccessFactors. Burgum is the founder of Kilbourne Group, a Fargo-based real-estate development firm, and also is the co-founder of Arthur Ventures, a software venture capital group.

Personally, I don’t think a real-estate developer has the right worldview to steward our nation’s ecosystems.

I assume Mr. Doug Burgum had a similar thought as me: do the fish really need the cobalt? But instead of spend five minutes to look it up, he just thought about it on his own. Fish don’t eat cobalt, therefore, let’s get it.

Fish aren’t eating cobalt, it’s true. But the minerals on the deep sea floor serve as a vital component in an extremely complex ecosystem we do not even begin to understand.

Some humbling phrases:

• Dark oxygen is oxygen magically produced by mineral deposits

• “Polymetallic nodule fields” (Burgum’s mining targets) support “highly vulnerable abyssal fauna much of which lives attached to nodules or in the sediment immediately beneath it”

Such science is above my pay grade. I’m sure it’s above Doug’s too. Given this, I don’t even need to answer my second question around non-invasive extraction. Earthjustice is right.

Speak out against the initiative here.

But I Would Still Like To Know About The Robots

Ok, there are indeed mineral harvesting robots that are allegedly non-invasive. (But what I’m saying is how can we prove they won’t disturb the ecosystem when we don’t know how it works?)

The robot company is “Impossible Metals”.

When asked about the unknown unknowns question they respond:

What scope is there for potential unexpected consequences of seabed mining?

I would say that there is not going to be a yes or no answer to that, in the same way that there will never be a yes or no answer to that with any human impact on any project. That makes it a complicated or not-straightforward question.

The work that we will be doing will have an impact. Even with our minimally invasive approach, there is an impact – and it’s critical as a society for us to understand and study those impacts and then collect these metals in a way that has a net benefit for the planet but also has minimum negative impacts.

I think this is reasonable. I err on the side of caution to protect the delicate balance of nature, and they err on the side of taking risks for the sake economic pragmatism.

If Burgum does get his way, we should at least be enforcing use of the minimally invasive technologies, like Impossible Metals.

More on “Dark Oxygen”

From the article on “dark oxygen” I linked:

According to Boston University microbiologist Jeffrey Marlow, the idea that some of Earth’s oxygen gas may come not from photosynthesizing organisms but from inanimate minerals in total darkness “really strongly goes against what we traditionally think of as where oxygen is made and how it’s made.” Marlow is a co-author of the new study, which was published in Nature Geoscience.

The mechanism appears to be these polymetallic nodules acting as natural underwater batteries that can exhibit up to a volt of charge!

“Amazingly, there was almost a volt [of electric charge] on the surface of these nodules,” Sweetman says; for comparison, an AA battery carries about 1.5 volts. The nodules may become charged as they grow, as different metals are deposited irregularly over the course of millions of years and a gradient of charge develops between each layer.

Since the nodules are charged, oxygen is produced through what is called “seawater electrolysis”.

We learn a lot through mimicry. It applies 10x for children.

Ideally, children grow into healthy, magnanimous adults by mimicking healthy, magnanimous adults. Less ideally, children mimick average, troubles adults. Even less ideally, children mimick goofy cartoon characters, like Spongebob and Patrick Star. And even less ideally, children mimick archetypes of troubled, despondent, teenagers they see in movies.

Back in middle school I mimcked the Sleepy Kid archetype. The Sleepy Kid Archetype thinks being tired is cool. What wasn’t cool was school, learning, authority, discipline. And so the coolest thing one could do while trapped in any authoritative environment is to reject it by slouching onto your desk, cheek resting on your arms, hood up, passing the day in a hazy fantasy of being somewhere else.

And so I spent my formative years slouched and daydreaming. There are many reasons this archetype attracted me, but that’s an investigation for another time. What’s relevant now is that I don’t want to be the Sleepy Kid anymore. I’d want to be the Jacked Nobleman. Maybe not in all aspects. But at least posturally.

A few weeks later I went to the Uffizi gallery in Florence. The gallery is full of jacked guys with noble sentiments and flawless biomechanics:

I had another transmission experience, where I saw this guy’s (Caesar? idk) bulging oblique:

Prior to this, I didn’t even know there existed a muscle in that location in my body. But I am now doing bicycle kicks with the expression of calm determination (an expression also mimicked from Greek sculpture). My nervous system has been educated.

It makes me wonder: was cultural education a conscious function of art in Greek society? Like, maybe they scouted the noblest people and carved them into stone, so their appearance, feeling, and stories were preserved and transmitted to the rest of their society, who then mimed it.

What a culture chooses to capture and glorify represents its tastes. What are our tastes today? In high fashion, it’s all Sleepy Kids. Designer mannequins are all slouched. Here’s a one from a Prada store in Rome:

I gotta admit, she does looks cool. I still have a soft spot for sleepiness. But we must concede that this bad for her cerebral blood flow and organ functioning. If she had a cigarette, she’d look even cooler. Some desinger mannequins had cigarettes. But of course, that’s even worse for your health, and probably your soul.

Our fashion elite determines much of our physiological desires. But their tastes are unhealthy. Putting size 0 models on a pedestal gave millions of girls eating disorders. Why did we go from glorifying perfect health to glorifying aesthetic sickness? I don’t know, but I’m fascinated with the question.

I think back to the movement from Renaissance to Baroque art. The Renaissance revived Classical restraint, sobriety, and harmonious proportions. The Baroque went “wild” (by 17th century standards) and maximalist for marketing reasons. Have we too grown tired of balance? In a dulled culture, maybe the stimulation of poison and empty excitement sells better than the peace of balance.

Things are getting better now that Instagram is clouting “Girls Who Eat”. But still, none of these intense fluctuations of beauty standards are conscious.

Unlike the Greeks, we don’t have a assembly of Ergot-pilled visionaries who are guiding the impressions we receive. Now, the individual, especially with AI image generation, has near unlimited choice. But in most cases, this just means the algorithms are in the driver seat. People are fucked up in the Waymo with no idea what their destination is. Infinite feeds flip the lizard brain on and a few minutes later they start genuinely wanting the $1300 Balenciaga “T-shirt Shirt”: