Rewire (Your Innate Inanities & Intellectual Onanisms)

I'm in the middle of this one. I'm reading someone else's copy. He started reading it, said it was the perfect book for him. Perfect to help him change the bad life habits he's had for his entire life. 

Because while we are all good or bad to varying degrees in the area of good habit formation, we are all experts at habit formation itself. 

& while this means we may be innately terrible at good habit formation & uncannily prone to bad habit formation -- even those among us with the worst habits has the occasional moment of clarity, in which they see & know at least what it is, those good habits they wish they could have.

Sam Harris, a man who's considered this very issue philosophically more than all the AA members across America collectively have. This man, with an IQ that provides shade for us mere mortals...

...even he, Sam Harris, who's travelled & studied with monks & Buddhist masters...he doesn't hope for more than these mere moments of clarity, in which one at least visions 'the Good' or 'the Way,' for you can only extend the moment indefinitely until you are hurled back against the shores of your reptile mind, ego, & it's innate inanities.

***

Sadly my friend doesn't seem to want to finish the book, let alone study it as a life class or whatever. I'm only able to read the physical book because he isn't. 

It reminds me of the first commandment I made (link). The hardest part for my friend is that all of this questing to change of necessity can only occur against the backdrop of civilization, with its own ego, inertia, & of course all of the silliest, most evil habits. 

The world doesn't stop because you've decided to knock yourself down a peg. In fact, until you get to the end of the rainbow I'm trying to help Sam Harris point to, you're better off tuning me out altogether, if monetary success (they used to call it worldly) is near the top of your list of priorities.

But note well, if you happen to get to the end of the rainbow, & you haven't achieved he floccinaucinihilipilification of lucre, then by golly you'll have skills enough to get all the lucre you could ever want.

The money game is the only game in town because the best games are always the ones where the suckers are most abundant. The winners in this game are the ones who have achieved lucre floccinaucinihilipilification because not giving a frack is the same thing as being 'above the rim,' the same thing as Nietzche's 'beyond good & evil,' the goddamned same thing as Jesus's kingdom of God, le meme chose que Maslow's 'self-actualized,' Heidegger's authentic living. 

How many fracks do you give? 

The frack you give isn't worth a frack until you're able to admit, that from a certain perspective at least, nothing fracking matters, especially not you.

***

Then & only then can you say, "everything fracking matters, especially me, everyone & everything."

***

Don't forget these two chestnuts:

The test of a first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.

&

Insanity: doing the same thing over & over again, expecting different results.