information overload

July 3, 2005 | Share/Save

information overload… some days I feel like I’m losing my mind. I just started this blog a week or so ago and already it feels like something I’ve bene doing for years…. which means it is a good time to sit back, think about what i’ve figured out, and speculate about where I want to go.

Tim Boucher pointed something really important out to me. I continue to be amazed at this guy, the questions he’s asked. He really seems to understand, to have a good intuitive grasp, on the nature of questioning, what some of the pitfalls are.

You can invest a lot of energy into an idea, so much that it starts to take over your life and you become secondary to it. So maybe there comes a point where you have to release it. Do I really have to pursue every idea I run across? How much should I identify with any one idea?

Just from one week of posting and responding to other people’s posts, i’ve figured out a couple of things that are important to me (and may not be to anyone else)

1. The reason I have always admired Charles Manson is because he served as an example to me of a sort of radical, uninhibited, mystical monism that resonates strongly with a certain type of person. I don’t give a shit about his crimes. I get drunk on his words.

2. There isn’t necessarily a conflict between magic and mysticism. They aren’t the same thing either though. I’m not so interested in the pre/trans distinction Wilber writes about. The important question for me is what can you do?

Can you help someone get a job, find a mate, heal an injury, defend against an enemy? If yes then you have my respect. I don’t care if your magical thinking is based on pre-rational thinking as long as it works.

3. I have permission to speak

4. The idea that peak oil is a problem fills me with despair.

5. The idea that ritual abuse is a widespread problem fills me with cognitive dissonance.

6. I don’t really have the bird’s eye view on any of this stuff. I’m just sort of floating out there trying to figure out what I do think. That might be OK for now. There’s no rule that says I have to have some kind of platform. I’m not a political party. I’m just an individual.