….it was said that one god, Hermes Trismegistus, had dictated a variously estimited number of books (42, according to Clement of Alexandria; 20,000, according to Iamblichus; 36,525, according to the priests of Thoth, who is also Hermes), on whose pages all things were written. [Anomalogue: From what I’ve read, Hermes Trismegistus was not a god; … Continue reading Meditation on the ten-thousand everythings
I am leaning toward calling my book The Ten Thousand Everythings. I am going to return the term “chaos” to the fractal geometers, mythologists and the general public. Chaos is experienced disorder, with many possible metaphysical underpinnings. My own underpinning for chaos, which is speculative and entirely unprovable, but nonetheless believable and useful, is what … Continue reading The Ten Thousand Everythings
I have connected design and gifts for a good while. When I understand the core service design concept of value exchange in the clear light of gift exchange, so that it includes, but also transcends, transaction, and enters the domain of freely given gifts, service design gains importance and universality. Let us define transaction as … Continue reading The Medium
I used to say this often, but I haven’t in a while: a soul extends to the limits of what we mean when we say “everything”. Each soul is universe-sized. This is why I sometimes refer to everythings, plural. Materialists who believe that a soul (psyche) is an emergent property of our nervous system, and … Continue reading More than every possible everything
To our finite minds, the infinite appears as nothingness. It is out of this nothingness that creation proceeds ex nihilo. The shimmering halo of creation — its crown, its Keter — is sometimes called Ayin. This is the living, pregnant nothingness from which epiphanies come, by which we know Ayin and the Absolute One. Creation … Continue reading Hymn to Ayin
Yes, I am using ChatGPT as a weird kind of thought partner. If you find yourself recoiling slightly, I understand. I have the same reaction. But it is a valuable exercise. Consider the following exchange: Me: How faithfully does this represent Leibniz’s monadology? “The fundamental unit of the universe is not the atom, nor a … Continue reading ChatGPT as thought partner
I’ve used the word “natural” to four very different ways, and each is defined against a different opposite. These are each The first two are the boring obvious ones. Natural versus manmade. Is it from the wilderness, or is it from our own hands? Natural versus supernatural. Does it obey the laws of nature, or … Continue reading Natural as opposed to what?
If you know what to intuit for, the world is infused with halos of every possible tone. As with light, the gamut of intuitions trail off into the analogue of inperceivable nothingness of infravisible infrared and ultravisible ultraviolet. Intuitions, though, trail off into inconceivable nothingness of infraintelligible sub-ipseity and ultraintelligible super-alterity. Or try another anomalogy: … Continue reading On halos
We apprehend that something is, but we may not comprehend what it is. “Apprehending that” establishes something’s existence. “Comprehending what” establishes its conceptual relations within our understanding. Sometimes (often, in fact) we apprehend something, but we cannot immediately comprehend it. We either ignore it as irrelevant, gloss over it, or are forced to figure out … Continue reading Second verse, same as the first
When I first moved to Atlanta, I saw it primarily through the windsheilds of cars and windows of buildings. During my brief but transformative residence in Toronto I learned to rely on my bicycle as my primary mode of transportation. Returning to Atlanta, and experiencing it from my bicycle changed my conception of its space. … Continue reading Voluminosity
I am trying to write a post, but it keeps expanding and extending under its own power. It is displacing my reading. I am waking up and just writing. I hope this is my book. If this is the book I end up writing, my old working title, The Ten-Thousand Everythings would be the natural … Continue reading Interim report
To apprehend is to know-that. To comprehend is to know-what. When know-that stubbornly resists know-what, when we touch with the tips of our fingers something that cannot be grasped by the hand of our thought, we feel ourselves situated within something incomprehensible. We comprehend the fact that we are comprehended by something incomprehensible. The relation … Continue reading Apprehend, comprehend, suprehend
I’ve contacted some letterpress printers about making my pamphlet, which used to be titled The 10,000 Everythings, but has been sobered up into Geometric Meditations, which is a more precise description of how I use the content of the book. One printer has responded so far, and suggested some changes that seems to have improved … Continue reading Book
If you are a person who invests your best time and effort into understanding what matters most to you, chances are you’ll end up understanding things differently from most people in your life. But everyone has some kind of understanding of what matters most to them, even if they have not spent time explicitly interrogating … Continue reading Soulsizing
When we say we know what something is, or know how to do something, or know why something is valuable or worthless we implicitly assume we understand what it means to know these things. But how sure can we be of this? Are we sure we understand exhaustively what understanding is and can be? Are … Continue reading Wordless ground of meaning
Reading Whitehead’s Modes of Thought I’m reminded of Levinas’s dichotomy of totality versus infinity, and Schuon’s similar indefinite versus infinite. The former term (totality/indefinitude) is some particular conception of all possibilities, against which all particulars are defined; the latter term (infinity/infinite) is real possibility independent of any and every conception. According to Schuon, the indefinite … Continue reading Whitehead, Levinas, Schuon
Wow, this post really sprawled out. It hits a lot of my enduring interests. I’m not sure it is suitable for reading. It might just be a personal journal entry written to myself. Feel free to eavesdrop if you wish, but I cannot promise it will make sense or yield any value. * I listened … Continue reading Slurpy, mergy, touchy-feely notions of interpersonal being
Over the last year I’ve been equipping myself to make pamphlets. I’ve purchased several reams of beautiful French Paper in cover and heavy text weights, waxed linen bookbinder thread, needles, and awls and a bone folder. I’ve figured out how to use Adobe InDesign with my printer (which prints 2-sided) to create booklets in signature … Continue reading Pamphleteerism
Today, I feel a need to make an arbitrary list of consequential reconceptions. These are some of the core ideas I want to put in one of the several pamphlets I have planned. I’ve named two of them: Geometric Parables and The Ten-Thousand Everythings. Maybe this is the start of a third pamphlet, Syllabus Listicalis. Blindness is … Continue reading Syllabus Listicalis
A forgotten snark from 2013: “If only it were as easy to agree on the truth as it is to know it.” I’m going to have to work this into my Ten Thousand Everythings pamphlet.