Slow Like Wiki - User contributions [en]

How to Change Your Mind

2026-09-18T13:54:23Z

Robert.adlington: /* The Toad */

== Prologue: A New Door ==
* Lysergic acid diethylamide, commonly known as LSD, was first synthesized by Albert Hofmann in 1938, shortly before physicists split an atom of uranium for the first time.
* Psilocybin had been around for thousands of years, though no one in the developed world was amare of it.
* The impact of these two molecules is hard to overestimate. The advent of LSD can be linked to the revolution in brain science that begins in the 1950s, when scientists discovered the role of neurotransmitters in the brain. that quantities of LSD measured in micrograms could produce symptoms resembling psychosis inspired brain scientists to search for the neurochemical basis of mental disorders previously believed to be psychological in origin.
* Compared with other drugs, psychedelics seldom affect people the same way twice, because they tend to magnify whatever's already going on both inside and outside one's head.
* LSD appears to disable such conventionalized, shorthand modes of perception and, by doing so, restores a childlike immediacy, and sense of wonder, to our experience of reality, as if we were seeing everything for the first time.
* The Hopkins study demonstrated that a high dose of psilocybin could be used to safely and reliably "occasion" a mystical experience - typically described as the dissolution of one's ego followed by a sense of merging with the universe.
* There is not a culture of earth (except the Inuit) that doesn't make use of certain plants to change the contents of the mind, whetheras a matter of healing, habit, or spiritual practice.
* Shaking the snow globe - Over time, we tend to optimize and conventionalize our responses to whatever life brings. Each of us develops our shorthand ways of slotting and processing everyday experiences and solving problems, and while this is no doubt adaptive - it helps us get the job done with a minimum of fuss - eventually it becomes rote. It dulls us. The muscles of attention atrophy.
* Habits are undeniably useful tools, relieving us of the need to run a complex mental operation every time we're confronted with a new task or situation. Yet they also relieve us of the need to stay awake to the world: to attend, feel, think, and then act in a deliberate manner. (That is, from freedom rather than compulsion.) If you need to be reminded how completely mental habit blinds us to experience, just take a trip to an unfamiliar country. Suddenly you wake up! And the algorithms of everyday life all but start over, as if from scratch. This is why the various travel metaphors for the psychedelic experience are so apt.
* We approach experience much as an AI program does, with our brains continually translating the data of the present into the terms of the past, reaching back in time for the relevant experience, and then using that to make its best guess as to how to predict and navigate the future.
* One of the things that commends travel, art, nature, work, and certain drugs to us is the way these experiences, at their best, block every mental path forward and back, immersing us in the flow of a present that is literally wonderful - wonder being the by-product of precisely the kind of unencumbered first sight, or virginal noticing, to which the adult brain has closed itself. (It's so inefficient!)
== 1. A Renaissance ==
* LSD is one of the most powerful psychoactive compounds ever discovered, active at doses measured in micrograms (1/1000 of a milligram)
* Today, LSD devotees celebrate "Bicycle Day" each year on April 19 after Hofmann cycled home on acid.
* The Good Friday or Marsh Chapel Experiment in 1962, conducted by Walter Pahnke. 10 divinity students are given psilocybin and 10 an "active placebo". Pahnke concluded that the experiences of those who received the psilocybin were indistinguishable from, if not identical with the classic mystical experiences reported in the literature.
* Grof: Psychedlics "would be for psychiatry what the microscope is for biology or the telescope is for astronomy. These tools make it possible to study important processes that under normal circumstances are not available for direct observation.
* Bob Richards: "You go deep enough or far out enough in consciousness and you will bump into the sacred. It's not something we generate; it's something out there waiting to be discovered. And this reliably happens to nonbelievers as well as believers."
* Whether occasioned by drugs or other means, these experiences of mystical consciousness are in all likelihood the primal basis of religion.
* Boothby: "I felt all my organizing categories of opposition - dreaming and wakefulness, life and death, inside and outside, self and other - collapse into each other... Reality appeared to fold in on itself, to implode in a kind of ecstatic catastrophe of logic. Yet in the midst of this hallucinatory hurricane I was having a weird experience of ultra-sublimity. And I remember repeating to myself again and again, 'Nothing matters, nothing matters any more. I see the point! Nothing matters at all.'"
* James' marks indicating a mystical experience:
** Ineffability - The subject immediately says that it defies expression, that no adequate report of its contents can be given in words.
** Noetic - Mystical states seem to those who experience them to be also states of knowledge... They are illuminations, revelations full of significance and importance... and as a rule they carry with them a curious sense of authority.
** Transiency - The mystical experience cannot be sustained for long, but its traces persist and recur.
** Passivity - The mystic feels as if his own will were in abeyance, and indeed sometimes as if he were grasped and held by a superior power. The person may feel as if they have been permanently transformed.
*Boothby: "Our task in life consists precisely in a form of letting go of fear and expectations, an attempt to purely give oneself to the impact of the present.
*John Hayes: "sense of the concrete destabilized".
*James: "It is as if the opposites of the world, whose contradictoriness and conflict make all our difficulties and troubles, were melted into unity." This ultimate unity, he suspected, was no mere delusion.
== 2. Natural History: Bemushroomed ==
* The biggest organism on earth is not a whale or a tree but a mushroom - a honey fungus in Oregon that is 2.4 miles wide.
* "The Universality of the Mycelial Archetype" - an intricate tracery of blue lines on a night sky, the lines representing at once mycelium, roots, neurons, the Internet, and dark matter.
* The Wassons had a theory that each Indo-European people is by cultural inheritance either mycophobic (the Anglo-Saxons, Celts, and Scandinaviansà or mycrophilic (the Russians, Catalans, and Slavs.
* Wasson: "I was seeing the archetypes, the Platonic ideas, that underlie the imperfect images of everyday life."
* Terence McKenna's stoned ape theory that psilocybes gave our hominid ancestors access to realms of supernatural power, catalyzed the emergence of human self-reflection, and brought us out of the animal mind and into the world of articulated speech and imagination. This last hypothesis about the invention of language turns on the concept of synesthesia, the conflation of the sense that psychedelics are known to induce: under the influence of psilocybin, numbers can take on colors, colors attach to sounds, and so on. Language he contends, represents a special case of synesthesia, in which otherwise meaningless sounds become linked to concepts.
* Samorini hypothesizes that during times of rapid environmental change or crisis it may avail the survival of a group when a few of its members abandon their accustomed conditioned responses and experiment with some radically new and different behaviors. Much like genetic mutation, most of these novelties will prove disastrous and be discarded by natural selection. But the laws of probability suggest that a few of the novel behaviors might end up being useful, helping the individual, the group, and possibly the species to adapt to rapid changes in their environment.
* Samorini calls this a "depatterning factor." There are time in the evolution of a species when the old patterns no longer avail, and the radical, potentially innovative perceptions and behaviors that psychedelics sometimes inspire may offer the best chance for adoption. Think of it as a neurochemically induced source of variation in a population.
* The psylocin in that mushroom unlocked the 5-hydroxytryptamine 2-A receptors in my brain, causing them to fire wildly and set off a cascade of disordered mental events that, among other things, permitted some thoughts and feelings, presumably from my subconscious (and, perhaps, my reading too), to get cross-wired with my visual cortex as it was processing images of the trees and plants and insects in my field of vision.
* Not quite a hallucination, "projection" is probably the psychological term for this phenomenon: when we mix our emotions with certain objects that then reflect those feelings back to us so they they appear to glisten with meaning.
* Huston Smith, the scholar of religion, once described a spiritually "realized being" as simply a person with "an acute sense of the astonishing mystery of everything." Faith need not figure. Maybe to be in a garden and feel awe, or wonder, in the presence of an astonishing mystery, is nothing more than a recovery of a misplaced perspective, perhaps the child's-eye view; maybe we regain it by means of a neurochemical change that disables the filters (of convention, or ego) that prevent us in ordinary hours from seeing what is, like those lovely leaves, staring us in the face.
== 3. History: The First Wave ==
* The evolution of terms:
** Psychotomimetic - A mind drug that mimicked psychoses.
** Psycholytic - Mind loosening.
** Psychedelic - Mind manifesting. In 1956, the word "had no particular connotation of madness, craziness, or ecstasy, but suggested an enlargement and expansion of mind."
** Hallucination = To wander in one's mind
*"Unsanity": "a state beyond the control of the ego".
*Drugs like LSD and psilocybin promised a better route into the subconscious (than Freud's royal road of dreams)
*Cary Grant had more than 60 sessions of LSD therapy and by the end declared himself "born again".
*Al Hubbard was the first researcher to grasp the critical importance of set and setting in shaping the psychedelic experience.
*Steve Jobs often told people that his experiments with LSD had been one of his two or three most important life experiences.
*Several of the early computer engineers relied on LSD in designing circuit chips, especially in the years before they could be designed on computers. "You had to be able to visualize a staggering complexity in three dimensions, hold it all in your head. They found that LSD could help."
*Schwartz: In engineering, "you're always balancing complex variables you can never get perfect, so you're desperately searching to find patterns. LSD shows you patterns.
*How much does cyberspace, an immaterial realm where one can construct a new identity and merge with a community of virtual others, owe to an imagination shaped by the experience of psychedelics? Or for that matter virtual reality? The whole notion of cybernetics, the idea that material reality can be translated into bits of information, may also owe something to the experience of LSD, with its power to collapse matter into spirit.
*The Concord Prison Experiment in 1961 purported to show much lowered recidivism for inmates who were given psilocybin.
*Especially in the case of young people at risk for schizophrenia, an LSD trip can trigger their first psychotic episode.
*Psychedelics introduced something deeply subversive to the West that the various establishments had little choice but to repulse. LSD truly was an acid, dissolving almost everything with which it came into contact, beginning with the hierarchies of the mind (the superego, ego, and unconscious) and going on from there to society's various structures of authority and then to lines of every imaginable kind: between patient and therapist, research and recreation, sickness and health, self and other, subject and object, the spiritual and the material. If all such lines are manifestations of the Apollonian strain in Western civilization, the impulse that erects distinctions, dualities, and hierarchies and defends them, then psychedelics represented the ungovernable Dionysian force that blithely washes all those lines away.
*Before 1943, our society had never had such powerful mind-changing drugs available to it.
== 4. Travelogue: Journeying Underground ==
* To become more "open" - especially at this age, when the grooves of mental habit have been etched so deep as to seem inescapable - was an appealing prospect.

=== LSD ===

* A decades-long spiritual quest that eventually "blew my linear, empirical mind," opening him up to the possibility of past lives, telepathy, precognition, and "synchronicities" that defy our conceptions of space and time.
* "These medicines have shown me that something quote-unquote impossible exists. But I don't think it's magic or supernatural. It's a technology of consciousness we don't understand yet."
* Hyperventilation: Breathe deeply and rapidly while exhaling as strongly as you can.
* A platitude is precisely what is left of a truth after it has been drained of all emotion. To resaturate that dried husk with feeling is to see it again for what it is; the loveliest and most deeply rooted of truths, hidden in plain sight.
* What is the the sense of banality, or the ironic perspective, if not two of the sturdier defenses the adult ego deploys to keep from being overwhelmed - by our emotions, certainly, but perhaps also by our senses, which are liable at any time to astonish us with news of the sheer wonder of the world. If we are ever to get through the day, we need to put most of what we perceive into boxes neatly labeled "Known", to be quickly shelved with little thought to the marvels therein, and "Novel", to which, understandably, we pay more attention, at least until it isn't that anymore. I psychedelic is liable to take all the boxes off the shelf, open and remove even the most familiar items, turning them over and imaginatively scrubbing them until they shine once again with the light of first sight. Is this reclassification of the familiar a waste of time? If it is, then so is a lot of art. It seems to me there is great value in such renovation, the more so as we grow older and come to think we've seen and felt it all before.
* The hypnagogic consciousness, just before sleep, when the ego seems to sign off a few moments before the rest of the mind does, leaving the field of consciousness unsupervised and vulnerable to gently eruptions of imagery and hallucinatory snatches of narrative. Imagine that state extended indefinitely, yet with some ability to direct your attention to this or that, as if in an especially vivid and absorbing daydream. Unlike a daydream, however, you are fully present to the contents of whatever narrative is unfolding, completely inside it and beyond the reach of distraction. I had little choice but to obey the daydream's logic, its ontological and epistemological rules, until, either by force of will or by the fresh notes of a new song, the mental channel would change and I would find myself somewhere else entirely.
* This, I guess, is what happens when the ego's grip on the mind if relaxed but not eliminated, as a larger dose would probably have done. "For the moment that interfering neurotic who, in waking hours, tries to run the show, was blessedly out of the way," as Aldous Huxley put it in the The Doors of Perception. Not entirely out of the way in my case, but the LSD had definitely muffled that controlling voice, and in that lightly regulated space all sorts of interesting things could bubble up, things that any self-respecting ego would probably have kept submerged.
* I had had a psycholytic dose of LSD, one that allowed the patient to explore his psyche in an unconstrained but still deliberate manner while remaining sufficiently combobulated to talk about it. For me it felt less like a drug experience - the LSD feels completely transparent, with none of the physiological noise I associate with other psychoactive drugs - than a novel mode of cognition, falling somewhere between intellection and feeling.

=== Psilocybin ===

* Relax and float downstream. This was not at all like previous trips, which had left me more or less the captain of my attention, able to direct it this way or that and change the mental channel at will. No, this was more like being strapped into the front car of a cosmic roller coaster, its heedless headlong trajectory determining moment by moment what would appear in my field of consciousness.
* It turns out that Bayesian inference breaks down in some people: schizophrenics and, according to some neuroscientists, people on high doses of psychedelic drugs, neither of whom "see" in this predictive or conventionalized manner. (Nor do young children, who have yet to build the sort of database necessary for confident predictions.) This raises an interesting question: Is it possible that the perceptions of schizophrenics, people tripping on psychedelics, and young children are, at least in certain instances, more accurate - less influenced by expectation and therefore more faithful to reality - than those of sane and sober adults?
* "I" now turned into a sheaf of little papers, no bigger than Post-its, and they were being scattered to the wind. But the "I" taking in this seeming catastrophe had no desire to chase after the slips and pile my old self back together. No desires of any kind, in fact. Whoever I now was was fine with whatever happened. No more ego? That was okay, in fact the most natural thing in the world. And then I looked and saw myself out there again, but this time spread over the landscape like paint, or butter, thinly coating a wide expanse of the world with a substance I recognized as me.
* For what was observing the scene was a vantage and mode of awareness entirely distinct from my accustomed self; in fact I hesitate to use the "I" to denote the presiding awareness, it was so different from my usual first person. Where that self had always been a subject encapsulated in this body, this one seemed unbounded by any body, even though I now had access to its perspective.
* The sovereign ego, with all its armaments and fears, its backward-looking resentments and forward-looking worries, was simply no more, and there was no one left to mourn its passing. Yet something had succeeded it: this bare disembodied awareness, which gazed upon the scene of the self's dissolution with benign indifference. I was present to reality, but as something other than my self. And although there was no self left to feel, exactly, there was a feeling tone, which was calm, unburdened, content. There was life after the death of the ego. This was big news.
* To put words to an experience that was in fact ineffable at the time, and then to shape them into sentences and then a story, is inevitably to do it a kind of violence. But the alternative is, literally, unthinkable.
* That I could survive the dissolution of my ego without struggle or turning into a puddle was something to be grateful for, but even better was the discovery that there might be another vantage - one less neurotic and more generous - from which to take in reality.
* Temporarily freed from the tyranny of the ego, with its maddeningly reflexive reactions and its pinched conception of one's self-interest, we get to experience an extreme version of Keats' "negative capability" - the ability to exist amid doubts and mysteries without reflexively reaching for certainty. To cultivate this mode of consciousness, with its exceptional degree of selflessness (literally!), requires us to transcend our subjectivity or - it comes to the same thing - widen its circle so far that it takes in, besides ourselves, other people and, beyond that, all of nature. Now I understood how a psychedelic could help us to make precisely that move, from the first-person singular to the plural and beyond. Under its influence, a sense of our interconnectedness - that platitude - is felt, becomes flesh. Though this perspective is not something a chemical can sustain for more than a few hours, those hours can give us an opportunity to see how it might go. And perhaps to practice being there.

=== The Toad ===

* Being on the outside of a rocket after launch. I'm holding on with both hands, legs clenched around it, while the rapidly mounting g-forces clutch at my flesh, pulling my face down into a taut frimace, as the great cyclinder rises through successive layers of clouds, exponentially gaining speed and altitude, the fuselage shuddering on the brink of self-destruction as it strains to break free from Earth's grip, while the friction it generates as it crashes through the thinning air issues in a deafening roar.
* The other metaphor was the big bang, but the big bang run in reverse, from our familiar world all the way back to a point before there was anything, no time or space or matter, only the pure unbounded energy that was all there was then, before an imperfection, a ripple in its waveform, caused the universe of energy to fall into time, space, and matter. Rushing backward through 14Bn years, I watched the dimensions of reality collapse one by one until there was nothing left, not even being. Only the all-consuming roar. It was just horrible.
* And then suddenly the devolution of everything into the nothingness of pure force reverses course. One by one, the elements of our universe begin to reconstitute themselves: the dimensions of time and space returned first, blessing my still-scattered confetti brain with the cozy coordinates of place; this is somewherei And then I slipped back onto my familiar "I" like an old pair of slippers and soon after felt something I recognized as my body begin to reassemble. The film of reality was now running in reverse, as if all the leaves that the thermonuclear blast had blown off the great tree of being and scattered to the four winds were suddenly to find their way back, fly up into the welcoming limbs of reality, and reattach. The order of things was being restored, me notably included. I was alive!
* And yet as I felt myself reconstitute as a self and then a body, something for which I now sought confirmation by running my hands along my legs and squirming beneath the blanket, I felt ecstatic - as happy as I can ever remember feeling. But this ecstasy was not sui generis, not exactly. It was more like the equal and opposite reaction to the terror I had just endured. less of a divine gift than the surge of pleasure that comes from the cessation of unendurable pain. But a sense f relief so vast and deep as to be cosmic.
* I felt for the first time gratitude for the very fact of being, that there is anything whatsoever. Rather than being necessarily the case, this now seemed quite the miracle, and something I resolved never again to take for granted. Everybody gives thanks for "being alive", but who stops to offer thanks for the bare-bones gerund that comes before "alive"? I had just come from a place where being was no more and now vowed never to forget what a gift (and mystery) it is, that there is something rather than nothing.
* True, one had to favor doing in order to get anything done, but wasn't there also a great virtue and psychic benefit in simply being? In contemplation rather than action? I decided I needed to practice being with stillness, being with other people as I find them (imperfect), and being with my own unimproved self. To savor whatever is at this very moment, without trying to change it or even describe it. (Huxley struggled with the same aspiration during his mescaline journey: "If one always saw like this, one would never want to do anything else.")
* For me, "spiritual" is a good name for some of the powerful mental phenomena that arise when the voice of the ego is muted or silenced. If nothing else, these journeys have shown me how that psychic construct - at once so familiar and on reflection so strange - stands between us and some striking new dimensions of experience, whether of the world outside us or of the mind within. The journeys have shown me what the Buddhists try to tell us but I have never really understood: that there is much more to consciousness than the ego, as would see if it would just shut up. and that its dissolution (or transcendence) is nothing to fear; in fact, it is a prerequisite for making any spiritual progress.
* The ego, that stingy, vigilant security guard admits only the narrowest bandwidth of reality, "a measly trickle of the kind of consciousness which will help us to stay alive." It's really good at performing all those activities that natural selection values: getting ahead, getting liked and loved, getting fed, getting laid. Keeping us on task, it is a ferocious editor of anything that might distract us from the work at hand, whether that means regulating our access to memories and strong emotions from within or news of the world without.
* So perhaps spiritual experience is simply what happens in the space that opens up in the mind when "all mean egotism vanishes." Wonders (and terrors) we're ordinarily defended against flow into our awareness; the far ends of the sensory spectrum, which are normally invisible to us, our sense can suddenly admit. While the ego sleeps, the mind plays, proposing unexpected patterns of thought and new rays of relation. The gulf between self and world, that no-man's-land which in ordinary hours the ego so vigilantly patrols, closes down, allowing us to feel less separate and more connected, "part and particle" of some larger entity. Whether we call that entity Nature, the Mind at Large, or God hardly matters. but it seems to be in the crucible of that merging that death loses some of its sting.

== 5. The Neuroscience: Your Brain on Psychedelics ==
* -
== 6. The Trip Treatment: Psychedelics in Psychotherapy ==
* -
== Epilogue: In Praise of Neural Diversity ==
* -

How to Change Your Mind

2026-09-17T15:59:35Z

Robert.adlington: /* 4. Travelogue: Journeying Underground */

== Prologue: A New Door ==
* Lysergic acid diethylamide, commonly known as LSD, was first synthesized by Albert Hofmann in 1938, shortly before physicists split an atom of uranium for the first time.
* Psilocybin had been around for thousands of years, though no one in the developed world was amare of it.
* The impact of these two molecules is hard to overestimate. The advent of LSD can be linked to the revolution in brain science that begins in the 1950s, when scientists discovered the role of neurotransmitters in the brain. that quantities of LSD measured in micrograms could produce symptoms resembling psychosis inspired brain scientists to search for the neurochemical basis of mental disorders previously believed to be psychological in origin.
* Compared with other drugs, psychedelics seldom affect people the same way twice, because they tend to magnify whatever's already going on both inside and outside one's head.
* LSD appears to disable such conventionalized, shorthand modes of perception and, by doing so, restores a childlike immediacy, and sense of wonder, to our experience of reality, as if we were seeing everything for the first time.
* The Hopkins study demonstrated that a high dose of psilocybin could be used to safely and reliably "occasion" a mystical experience - typically described as the dissolution of one's ego followed by a sense of merging with the universe.
* There is not a culture of earth (except the Inuit) that doesn't make use of certain plants to change the contents of the mind, whetheras a matter of healing, habit, or spiritual practice.
* Shaking the snow globe - Over time, we tend to optimize and conventionalize our responses to whatever life brings. Each of us develops our shorthand ways of slotting and processing everyday experiences and solving problems, and while this is no doubt adaptive - it helps us get the job done with a minimum of fuss - eventually it becomes rote. It dulls us. The muscles of attention atrophy.
* Habits are undeniably useful tools, relieving us of the need to run a complex mental operation every time we're confronted with a new task or situation. Yet they also relieve us of the need to stay awake to the world: to attend, feel, think, and then act in a deliberate manner. (That is, from freedom rather than compulsion.) If you need to be reminded how completely mental habit blinds us to experience, just take a trip to an unfamiliar country. Suddenly you wake up! And the algorithms of everyday life all but start over, as if from scratch. This is why the various travel metaphors for the psychedelic experience are so apt.
* We approach experience much as an AI program does, with our brains continually translating the data of the present into the terms of the past, reaching back in time for the relevant experience, and then using that to make its best guess as to how to predict and navigate the future.
* One of the things that commends travel, art, nature, work, and certain drugs to us is the way these experiences, at their best, block every mental path forward and back, immersing us in the flow of a present that is literally wonderful - wonder being the by-product of precisely the kind of unencumbered first sight, or virginal noticing, to which the adult brain has closed itself. (It's so inefficient!)
== 1. A Renaissance ==
* LSD is one of the most powerful psychoactive compounds ever discovered, active at doses measured in micrograms (1/1000 of a milligram)
* Today, LSD devotees celebrate "Bicycle Day" each year on April 19 after Hofmann cycled home on acid.
* The Good Friday or Marsh Chapel Experiment in 1962, conducted by Walter Pahnke. 10 divinity students are given psilocybin and 10 an "active placebo". Pahnke concluded that the experiences of those who received the psilocybin were indistinguishable from, if not identical with the classic mystical experiences reported in the literature.
* Grof: Psychedlics "would be for psychiatry what the microscope is for biology or the telescope is for astronomy. These tools make it possible to study important processes that under normal circumstances are not available for direct observation.
* Bob Richards: "You go deep enough or far out enough in consciousness and you will bump into the sacred. It's not something we generate; it's something out there waiting to be discovered. And this reliably happens to nonbelievers as well as believers."
* Whether occasioned by drugs or other means, these experiences of mystical consciousness are in all likelihood the primal basis of religion.
* Boothby: "I felt all my organizing categories of opposition - dreaming and wakefulness, life and death, inside and outside, self and other - collapse into each other... Reality appeared to fold in on itself, to implode in a kind of ecstatic catastrophe of logic. Yet in the midst of this hallucinatory hurricane I was having a weird experience of ultra-sublimity. And I remember repeating to myself again and again, 'Nothing matters, nothing matters any more. I see the point! Nothing matters at all.'"
* James' marks indicating a mystical experience:
** Ineffability - The subject immediately says that it defies expression, that no adequate report of its contents can be given in words.
** Noetic - Mystical states seem to those who experience them to be also states of knowledge... They are illuminations, revelations full of significance and importance... and as a rule they carry with them a curious sense of authority.
** Transiency - The mystical experience cannot be sustained for long, but its traces persist and recur.
** Passivity - The mystic feels as if his own will were in abeyance, and indeed sometimes as if he were grasped and held by a superior power. The person may feel as if they have been permanently transformed.
*Boothby: "Our task in life consists precisely in a form of letting go of fear and expectations, an attempt to purely give oneself to the impact of the present.
*John Hayes: "sense of the concrete destabilized".
*James: "It is as if the opposites of the world, whose contradictoriness and conflict make all our difficulties and troubles, were melted into unity." This ultimate unity, he suspected, was no mere delusion.
== 2. Natural History: Bemushroomed ==
* The biggest organism on earth is not a whale or a tree but a mushroom - a honey fungus in Oregon that is 2.4 miles wide.
* "The Universality of the Mycelial Archetype" - an intricate tracery of blue lines on a night sky, the lines representing at once mycelium, roots, neurons, the Internet, and dark matter.
* The Wassons had a theory that each Indo-European people is by cultural inheritance either mycophobic (the Anglo-Saxons, Celts, and Scandinaviansà or mycrophilic (the Russians, Catalans, and Slavs.
* Wasson: "I was seeing the archetypes, the Platonic ideas, that underlie the imperfect images of everyday life."
* Terence McKenna's stoned ape theory that psilocybes gave our hominid ancestors access to realms of supernatural power, catalyzed the emergence of human self-reflection, and brought us out of the animal mind and into the world of articulated speech and imagination. This last hypothesis about the invention of language turns on the concept of synesthesia, the conflation of the sense that psychedelics are known to induce: under the influence of psilocybin, numbers can take on colors, colors attach to sounds, and so on. Language he contends, represents a special case of synesthesia, in which otherwise meaningless sounds become linked to concepts.
* Samorini hypothesizes that during times of rapid environmental change or crisis it may avail the survival of a group when a few of its members abandon their accustomed conditioned responses and experiment with some radically new and different behaviors. Much like genetic mutation, most of these novelties will prove disastrous and be discarded by natural selection. But the laws of probability suggest that a few of the novel behaviors might end up being useful, helping the individual, the group, and possibly the species to adapt to rapid changes in their environment.
* Samorini calls this a "depatterning factor." There are time in the evolution of a species when the old patterns no longer avail, and the radical, potentially innovative perceptions and behaviors that psychedelics sometimes inspire may offer the best chance for adoption. Think of it as a neurochemically induced source of variation in a population.
* The psylocin in that mushroom unlocked the 5-hydroxytryptamine 2-A receptors in my brain, causing them to fire wildly and set off a cascade of disordered mental events that, among other things, permitted some thoughts and feelings, presumably from my subconscious (and, perhaps, my reading too), to get cross-wired with my visual cortex as it was processing images of the trees and plants and insects in my field of vision.
* Not quite a hallucination, "projection" is probably the psychological term for this phenomenon: when we mix our emotions with certain objects that then reflect those feelings back to us so they they appear to glisten with meaning.
* Huston Smith, the scholar of religion, once described a spiritually "realized being" as simply a person with "an acute sense of the astonishing mystery of everything." Faith need not figure. Maybe to be in a garden and feel awe, or wonder, in the presence of an astonishing mystery, is nothing more than a recovery of a misplaced perspective, perhaps the child's-eye view; maybe we regain it by means of a neurochemical change that disables the filters (of convention, or ego) that prevent us in ordinary hours from seeing what is, like those lovely leaves, staring us in the face.
== 3. History: The First Wave ==
* The evolution of terms:
** Psychotomimetic - A mind drug that mimicked psychoses.
** Psycholytic - Mind loosening.
** Psychedelic - Mind manifesting. In 1956, the word "had no particular connotation of madness, craziness, or ecstasy, but suggested an enlargement and expansion of mind."
** Hallucination = To wander in one's mind
*"Unsanity": "a state beyond the control of the ego".
*Drugs like LSD and psilocybin promised a better route into the subconscious (than Freud's royal road of dreams)
*Cary Grant had more than 60 sessions of LSD therapy and by the end declared himself "born again".
*Al Hubbard was the first researcher to grasp the critical importance of set and setting in shaping the psychedelic experience.
*Steve Jobs often told people that his experiments with LSD had been one of his two or three most important life experiences.
*Several of the early computer engineers relied on LSD in designing circuit chips, especially in the years before they could be designed on computers. "You had to be able to visualize a staggering complexity in three dimensions, hold it all in your head. They found that LSD could help."
*Schwartz: In engineering, "you're always balancing complex variables you can never get perfect, so you're desperately searching to find patterns. LSD shows you patterns.
*How much does cyberspace, an immaterial realm where one can construct a new identity and merge with a community of virtual others, owe to an imagination shaped by the experience of psychedelics? Or for that matter virtual reality? The whole notion of cybernetics, the idea that material reality can be translated into bits of information, may also owe something to the experience of LSD, with its power to collapse matter into spirit.
*The Concord Prison Experiment in 1961 purported to show much lowered recidivism for inmates who were given psilocybin.
*Especially in the case of young people at risk for schizophrenia, an LSD trip can trigger their first psychotic episode.
*Psychedelics introduced something deeply subversive to the West that the various establishments had little choice but to repulse. LSD truly was an acid, dissolving almost everything with which it came into contact, beginning with the hierarchies of the mind (the superego, ego, and unconscious) and going on from there to society's various structures of authority and then to lines of every imaginable kind: between patient and therapist, research and recreation, sickness and health, self and other, subject and object, the spiritual and the material. If all such lines are manifestations of the Apollonian strain in Western civilization, the impulse that erects distinctions, dualities, and hierarchies and defends them, then psychedelics represented the ungovernable Dionysian force that blithely washes all those lines away.
*Before 1943, our society had never had such powerful mind-changing drugs available to it.
== 4. Travelogue: Journeying Underground ==
* To become more "open" - especially at this age, when the grooves of mental habit have been etched so deep as to seem inescapable - was an appealing prospect.

=== LSD ===

* A decades-long spiritual quest that eventually "blew my linear, empirical mind," opening him up to the possibility of past lives, telepathy, precognition, and "synchronicities" that defy our conceptions of space and time.
* "These medicines have shown me that something quote-unquote impossible exists. But I don't think it's magic or supernatural. It's a technology of consciousness we don't understand yet."
* Hyperventilation: Breathe deeply and rapidly while exhaling as strongly as you can.
* A platitude is precisely what is left of a truth after it has been drained of all emotion. To resaturate that dried husk with feeling is to see it again for what it is; the loveliest and most deeply rooted of truths, hidden in plain sight.
* What is the the sense of banality, or the ironic perspective, if not two of the sturdier defenses the adult ego deploys to keep from being overwhelmed - by our emotions, certainly, but perhaps also by our senses, which are liable at any time to astonish us with news of the sheer wonder of the world. If we are ever to get through the day, we need to put most of what we perceive into boxes neatly labeled "Known", to be quickly shelved with little thought to the marvels therein, and "Novel", to which, understandably, we pay more attention, at least until it isn't that anymore. I psychedelic is liable to take all the boxes off the shelf, open and remove even the most familiar items, turning them over and imaginatively scrubbing them until they shine once again with the light of first sight. Is this reclassification of the familiar a waste of time? If it is, then so is a lot of art. It seems to me there is great value in such renovation, the more so as we grow older and come to think we've seen and felt it all before.
* The hypnagogic consciousness, just before sleep, when the ego seems to sign off a few moments before the rest of the mind does, leaving the field of consciousness unsupervised and vulnerable to gently eruptions of imagery and hallucinatory snatches of narrative. Imagine that state extended indefinitely, yet with some ability to direct your attention to this or that, as if in an especially vivid and absorbing daydream. Unlike a daydream, however, you are fully present to the contents of whatever narrative is unfolding, completely inside it and beyond the reach of distraction. I had little choice but to obey the daydream's logic, its ontological and epistemological rules, until, either by force of will or by the fresh notes of a new song, the mental channel would change and I would find myself somewhere else entirely.
* This, I guess, is what happens when the ego's grip on the mind if relaxed but not eliminated, as a larger dose would probably have done. "For the moment that interfering neurotic who, in waking hours, tries to run the show, was blessedly out of the way," as Aldous Huxley put it in the The Doors of Perception. Not entirely out of the way in my case, but the LSD had definitely muffled that controlling voice, and in that lightly regulated space all sorts of interesting things could bubble up, things that any self-respecting ego would probably have kept submerged.
* I had had a psycholytic dose of LSD, one that allowed the patient to explore his psyche in an unconstrained but still deliberate manner while remaining sufficiently combobulated to talk about it. For me it felt less like a drug experience - the LSD feels completely transparent, with none of the physiological noise I associate with other psychoactive drugs - than a novel mode of cognition, falling somewhere between intellection and feeling.

=== Psilocybin ===

* Relax and float downstream. This was not at all like previous trips, which had left me more or less the captain of my attention, able to direct it this way or that and change the mental channel at will. No, this was more like being strapped into the front car of a cosmic roller coaster, its heedless headlong trajectory determining moment by moment what would appear in my field of consciousness.
* It turns out that Bayesian inference breaks down in some people: schizophrenics and, according to some neuroscientists, people on high doses of psychedelic drugs, neither of whom "see" in this predictive or conventionalized manner. (Nor do young children, who have yet to build the sort of database necessary for confident predictions.) This raises an interesting question: Is it possible that the perceptions of schizophrenics, people tripping on psychedelics, and young children are, at least in certain instances, more accurate - less influenced by expectation and therefore more faithful to reality - than those of sane and sober adults?
* "I" now turned into a sheaf of little papers, no bigger than Post-its, and they were being scattered to the wind. But the "I" taking in this seeming catastrophe had no desire to chase after the slips and pile my old self back together. No desires of any kind, in fact. Whoever I now was was fine with whatever happened. No more ego? That was okay, in fact the most natural thing in the world. And then I looked and saw myself out there again, but this time spread over the landscape like paint, or butter, thinly coating a wide expanse of the world with a substance I recognized as me.
* For what was observing the scene was a vantage and mode of awareness entirely distinct from my accustomed self; in fact I hesitate to use the "I" to denote the presiding awareness, it was so different from my usual first person. Where that self had always been a subject encapsulated in this body, this one seemed unbounded by any body, even though I now had access to its perspective.
* The sovereign ego, with all its armaments and fears, its backward-looking resentments and forward-looking worries, was simply no more, and there was no one left to mourn its passing. Yet something had succeeded it: this bare disembodied awareness, which gazed upon the scene of the self's dissolution with benign indifference. I was present to reality, but as something other than my self. And although there was no self left to feel, exactly, there was a feeling tone, which was calm, unburdened, content. There was life after the death of the ego. This was big news.
* To put words to an experience that was in fact ineffable at the time, and then to shape them into sentences and then a story, is inevitably to do it a kind of violence. But the alternative is, literally, unthinkable.
* That I could survive the dissolution of my ego without struggle or turning into a puddle was something to be grateful for, but even better was the discovery that there might be another vantage - one less neurotic and more generous - from which to take in reality.
* Temporarily freed from the tyranny of the ego, with its maddeningly reflexive reactions and its pinched conception of one's self-interest, we get to experience an extreme version of Keats' "negative capability" - the ability to exist amid doubts and mysteries without reflexively reaching for certainty. To cultivate this mode of consciousness, with its exceptional degree of selflessness (literally!), requires us to transcend our subjectivity or - it comes to the same thing - widen its circle so far that it takes in, besides ourselves, other people and, beyond that, all of nature. Now I understood how a psychedelic could help us to make precisely that move, from the first-person singular to the plural and beyond. Under its influence, a sense of our interconnectedness - that platitude - is felt, becomes flesh. Though this perspective is not something a chemical can sustain for more than a few hours, those hours can give us an opportunity to see how it might go. And perhaps to practice being there.

=== The Toad ===

* -

== 5. The Neuroscience: Your Brain on Psychedelics ==
* -
== 6. The Trip Treatment: Psychedelics in Psychotherapy ==
* -
== Epilogue: In Praise of Neural Diversity ==
* -

Books

2026-09-17T03:02:06Z

Robert.adlington:

== Books to Buy ==

Used:
* [https://www.amazon.fr/Nightmare-Reason-Life-Franz-Kafka/dp/0374523355/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=3UVJCLJFIY2CS&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.u3RaalBtg8bvWBbE8fVyXaCIirwCIkTLbUk5cwh_aYdlxQvg0yct5WxpF8hlFrbZxzIlPisTw_LJ-XermdOvrvQTKJR1xhGnjBQeBOOkj7UvLDqubVbBqOs4xWZlUjrzTneCM3AQNtLpEPT7T52XEL13eNQRCBZrMnVuSMk128RVqDk4IOYDPBhUWZzf9mHNv9T-yqA9Qv2JRg8l61zGhg.6VgqDbi7D-Vl19NQyoPSj86-nLG9IM98Vpm9Z9m-uGo&dib_tag=se&keywords=nightmare%2Bof%2Breason&qid=1783763181&sprefix=nightmare%2Bof%2Breason%2Caps%2C131&sr=8-1&th=1&psc=1 The Nightmare of Reason]: A Biography of Franz Kafka- Pawel i know that you know that I know - George Butte [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dormant-Einstein-Wittgenstein-Frankenstein-Re-Inventing/dp/0670804800 Einstein, Gertrude Stein, Wittgenstein and Frankenstein] : Reinventing the Universe by John Brockman
* Gormenghast - Mervyn Peake
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/What-Name-This-Book-Recreational/dp/0486481980 What is the Name of this Book]: Raymond Smullyan
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Thought-Contagion-International-Engineering-Paperback/dp/B00FDVRANQ Thought Contagion]: How Ideas Act Like Viruses - Aaron Lynch
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Language-Thought-Other-Biological-Categories/dp/0262631156 Language, Thought, and other Biological Categories]: New Foundations for Realism - Ruth Garrett Millikan

Paperbacks:

* A Natural History of the Senses- Diane Ackerman
* Ram Dass - Be Here Now
* luke Bergis - [https://www.amazon.com/Wanting-Power-Mimetic-Desire-Everyday/dp/1250266645/ref=pd_aw_fbt_img_m_sccl_1_1/139-2587675-0340248?pd_rd_w=hV8j6&content-id=amzn1.sym.7766b57a-a0a0-4f33-935d-91822a4c15c0&pf_rd_p=7766b57a-a0a0-4f33-935d-91822a4c15c0&pf_rd_r=JQZSCYCZN9A2FBM0ABFQ&pd_rd_wg=Sf4rz&pd_rd_r=2b67db45-7810-4a08-8cd4-c4fc12f2e398&pd_rd_i=1250266645&psc=1 Wanting], The One and the 99
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/1399417509/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?ie=UTF8&dib_tag=se&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.SQM7Fcey4aad63hBfUW3aw.ctIlU9WAvr7a0KcGQ6Trzvv10dT7aouxiR_JgFN38Qc&qid=1784816314&sr=8-1 The Illuminated Man]: The Life, Death, and Worlds of JGB (apr 27)
* [https://www.amazon.fr/Center-Cannot-Hold-Journey-Madness/dp/1401309445/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=30LPLKNP3IZ6T&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.1ymUySu7SSRnF7VrIuk7F9G8mDn0vUlYjj2Ku5JZ3_PYON6iIUmcNCX9ai20Y0vZox6uJDtrT6HWKPcMOwUgffTs0AKgu-nJljkfuSqPliiinzJYFv3sqyAMrGqzWIfw1fGZbsff-kHjLgzZIx0OxtARGswv-lBF3OKikrjGNBjWl7yb3jt78g-xLiJJZ7UBKQF4OOJNYWJrOzJwiNmtFQ.o-6a46h4dxUo_ekLzSagCPkaFyAF6FjIdkVnB7TcOUI&dib_tag=se&keywords=elyn+saks&qid=1783197867&sprefix=elyn+sa%2Caps%2C193&sr=8-1 the center cannot hold]: my journey through madness - Elyn Saks
* [https://www.amazon.fr/One-Cares-About-Crazy-People/dp/0316341134/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=1G9JUB6IDN3BF&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.8pmsCx59KiaAt10bvF9HMZoqKCLpjaKJ384UkB8fA1A.YfWbCZxI4NByVLmIFTKMyWu3fJ8kBRIsi0sDSjv8Yrg&dib_tag=se&keywords=no%2Bone%2Bcares%2Babout%2Bcrazy%2Bpeople&qid=1783198086&s=books&sprefix=no%2Bone%2Bcares%2Babout%2Bcrazy%2Bpeople%2Cbooks%2C146&sr=1-1&th=1&psc=1 no one cares about crazy people] - Ron Powers Born on a Blue Day - Daniel Tammet
* Pellis - [https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/1851687602/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?ie=UTF8&dib_tag=se&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.H3yYZI7yMy8UMo0DZRtBXC7wbyUv2gRGlVcNGkDlLMJgXzHKvH1465fjUMkPxFfF6Gy4SxJZF5iHJj2-KPFajMqmXBiYahwhe5kfd66JSukAwSqbKylXct02KUMpWpWQCIW6bCM_Ht6bSd14GU33N14R__7O6CnhnzxNZy9X2zb3i5AfMj6mzwHRCKmg4ksQwKR6te7VhUOppALivblKNw.VKJXzbK6PkVwM-NWQcVACHw9NKJAMBuwXSLAEcjus40&qid=1775903643&sr=8-1 The Playful Brain]
* Strauss - The Three Waves of Modernity
* Peter Handke - Insulting the Audience
* Lorrie Moore - Self Help
* La Modification - Michel Butor
* Un Homme qui dort - Georges Perec
* How Like a God - Rex Stout

* Time and Narrative - Paul Ricoeur
* Flight of Icarus - Raymond Queneau
* Nausea - Sartre
* [https://www.amazon.fr/Seven-Joanna-Kavenna/dp/0571338151 Seven], [https://www.amazon.fr/Zed-Joanna-Kavenna/dp/0571245161 Zed], etc by Joanna Kavenna. See [https://blog.adlington.fr/index.php/2026/01/12/seven-or-how-to-play-a-game-without-rules-by-joanna-kavenna/ blog].
* Building a second brain
* how to solve it
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Adam-Eve-Paradise-E%C3%A7a-Queir%C3%B3s/dp/0811239144 Adam and Eve in Paradise] - eca de queiros
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bounds-Possibility-Puzzles-Modal-Variation/dp/0198910770 The Bounds of Possibility] - Philosophy book about categories
* Nicola Barker - [https://www.amazon.co.uk/TonyInterruptor-Nicola-Barker/dp/1803512563 Tony Interrupter] [https://www.amazon.co.uk/H-PPY-Nicola-Barker/dp/1785151142 Happy], etc
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Growth-Form-Canto-Classics/dp/1107672562 On Growth and Form] - D'Arcy Thompson
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Alpha-Omega-Jane-Ellen-Harrison/dp/1961341417 Alpha and Omega] - Jane Ellen Harrison
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Willard-Gibbs-Whole-Simpler-Parts/dp/1961341158 the Whole is Simpler than its Parts] - Willard Gibbs
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Stranger-Than-Fiction-Lives-Twentieth-Century/dp/152992572X Stranger Than Fiction]: Lives of the Twentieth-Century Novel - Edwin Frank
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Gray-Matters-Biography-Brain-Surgery/dp/1836430396 Gray Matters]: A Biography of Brain Surgery - Theodore Schwartz
*

Hardbacks:

* Mark Solms - The Only Cure - Freud and Neuroscience

* [https://kottke.org/26/03/beginning-comes-after-the-end The Beginning Comes After the End] - Rebecca Solnit
* [https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/02/being-and-time-an-annotated-translation.html Being and Time Annotated] or [https://www.amazon.com/Heideggers-Being-Time-Paraphrased-Annotated/dp/1786613417/ref=sr_1_1?crid=22NKOIU8DE86V&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.DTYI13qU7soxuiueo4-e128MDF_Ax3dyLaUSGkoN5Ia4UdUOk_Dq1I7NCzXbEWWQnCsZ_8TnpI_r-Aut-ca4ur7QoC5kObPu2gII5w37OPLBu35YwyZZIcQAH6cz3tSLhX00snAOwxwxFPCfiq2S-wt5XmSjCN3Hg5m3Btu2C-mHF7lEv6A6EaaeWIdcwChz23nuiyKnrHs62cHAUXQspCNW8TuE65y1CydE89Xp8as.iBxvGfEz3Ac-ZaaYxIBUO8lpCpF0iHOejymlghbifJ4&dib_tag=se&keywords=thomas+sheehan&qid=1771981151&s=books&sprefix=thomas+sheehan%2Cstripbooks%2C198&sr=1-1 paraphrased] ?
* [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/dec/23/capitalism-by-sven-beckert-review-an-extraordinary-history-of-the-economic-system-that-controls-our-lives Capitalism]: A Global History-Sven Beckert
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Violent-Saviours-Capitalism-Without-Consent/dp/1399811215 Violent Saviors]: How the West Conquered the Rest - William Easterly
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Master-Contradictions-Thomas-Making-Mountain/dp/0300233744 The master of contradictions]: Thomas Mann and the making of the Magic Mountain
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Story-CO2-Everything-Planetary-Experiment/dp/0241631165 The Story of CO2 Is the Story of Everything]: A Planetary Experiment
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/M%C3%B6bius-Book-Catherine-Lacey/dp/1803511494 the moebius book] - Catherine Lacey
* Chance and Necessity - Jacques Monod
* L'homme microscopique - Pierre Auger
* Why Machines Learn: The Elegant Maths Behind Modern AI (out in paperback Jan 30 2025)
* A History of the Muslim World: From Its Origins to the Dawn of Modernity (awaiting paperback)
* The New Roman Empire: A History of Byzantium
* Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as Civilization
* Consolations - David Whyte

== Books to Read ==

* Reading to Learn - William Zinger
* Breakfast of Champions - Kurt Vonnegut

== Currently Reading ==

* [[Atomic Habits]] - James Clear
*[[Die Montez-Juwelen]] - Sabine Vôhringer
* [[The Book: A Cover-to-Covet Exploration of the Most Powerful Object of Our Time]] - Keith Houston
*[[Understanding Media]] - Marshall McLuhan (re-read)
*[[The Practice of Not Thinking]]: A Guide to Mindful Living - Ryunosuke Koike

== Books Read ==

=== 2026 (week 37) ===

* 41. [[How to Change Your Mind]]: The New Science of Psychedelics - Michael Pollan
* 40. [[The Knowledge Illusion]] - Sloman/ Fernbach
* 39. [[The Red Book: Liber Novus]] - CG Jung
* 38. [[G: A Novel]] - John Berger
* 37. [[Thinking in Numbers]] - Daniel Tammet
* 36. [[Every Word is a Bird We Teach to Sing]] - Daniel Tammet
* 35. [[The Perpetual Race of Achilles and the Tortoise]] - Borges
* 34. The Oldest Book in the World: Philosophy in the Age of the Pyramids - Bill Manley
* 33. Congo, Une Histoire - David Van Reybrouck
* 32. [[The Art of Logic]]: How to Make Sense in a World that Doesn't - Eugenia Cheng
* 31. [[Why Read]] - Will Self
* 30. [[The Collected Schizophrenias]] - Esmé Weijun Wang
* 29. L’Intranquille Monsieur Pessoa (BD) - Nicolas Barral
* 28. [[Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain]] - Lisa Feldmann Barrrett.
* 27: [[Nine Minds]]: Inner Lives on the Spectrum - Daniel Tammet
* 26: [[Ambigrammia]]: Between Creation and Discovery - Douglas Hofstadter
* 25. [[Once Upon a Prime]]:The Wondrous Connections Between Mathematics and Literature - Sarah B. Hart
* 24. [[Short Stories in German for Beginners]] - Olly Richards (reread - with Ricky)
* 23. Books v. Cigarettes - George Orwell
* 22. Der Nasse Fische - Volker Kutscher (in German!)
* 21. [[We Are Our Brains: From the Womb to Alzheimer's]] - Dick Swaab
* 20. [[Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife]] - Francesca Wade
* 19. [[How the World Made the West]] - Josephine Quinn
* 18. [[Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning]] - Sigmund Freud
* 17. [[This is Your Mind on Plants]]: Opium - Caffeine - Mescaline - Michael Pollen
* 16. [[Open Socrates]]: The Case for a Philosophical Life - Agnes Callard

* 15. [[Consciousness: How Our Brains Turn Matter Into Meaning]] - John Parrington
*14. [[The Happiness of Dogs]]: Why the Unexamined Life is Most Worth Living - Mark Rowlands
*13. [[The Hidden Spring]] - Mark Solms
*12. [[The Interpretation of Dreams]] - Sigmund Freud
*11. [[A Certain Lucas]] - Julio Cortazar
*10. [[The Intentional Stance]] - Daniel Dennett
*9. [[La Conquête de Plassans]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 4) - Zola
*8. [[Why We Read Fiction]]: Theory of Mind and the Novel - Lisa Zunshine

* 7. On the Calculation of Volume: 3 - Solvej Balle
* 6. [[Unnatural Voices]]: Extreme Narration in Modern and Contemporary Fiction - Brian Richardson
* 5. The Seven Dials Mystery - Agatha Christie
* 4. [[Le Ventre de Paris]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 3) - Zola
*3. [[The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative]] (2nd Edition) - H. Porter Abbott
* 2. [[Autocracy Inc]]: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World - Anne Applebaum
* 1. [[The Secret Life of the Periodic Table]] - Dr Ben Still

=== 2025 ===

* 55. The White Priory Murders - Carter Dickson (re-read)
* 54. [[How Life Works]]: A User's Guide to the New Biology - Philip Ball
* 53. [[Who Killed Father Christmas]]? and Other Seasonal Mysteries - Martin Edwards
* 52. [[Chemistry: A Very Short Introduction]] - Peter Atkins
* 51. [[The Scheme of Things]] - Allen Wheelis
* 50. [[La Fortune des Rougon]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 1) - Zola
* 49. [[Cause for Alarm]] - Eric Ambler
* 48. [[The Man from the Future]]: The Visionary Life of John Von Neumann - Ananyo Bhattacharya
*47. [[Everything is Predictable]]: How Bayes' Remarkable Theorem Explains the World - Tom Chivers
* 46. [[The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are]] - Alan Watts
* 45. [[La Curée]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 2) - Zola
* 44. [[The Emperor of All Maladies]]: A Biography of Cancer - Siddhartha Mukherjee
* 43. [[La Bête Humaine]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 17) - Zola (re-read)
* 42. [[The Society of Mind]] - Marvin Minsky
* 41. [[Le Père Goriot]] - Honore Balzac
* 40. [[Gravity's Rainbow]] - Thomas Pynchon (re-read)
* 39. [[Le Colonel Chabert]] - Balzac
* 38. [[Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett]] - James Knowlson (re-read)
* 37. [[Reading for the Plot]]: Design and Intention in Narrative - Peter Brooks (re-read)

* 36. [[Steps to an Ecology of Mind]] - Gregory Bateson (re-read)
* 35. [[Le Bilan de L'intelligence]] - Paul Valéry
* 34. [[Zero]] - Charles Seife
* 33. [[Alan Turing: The Enigma]] - Andrew Hodges
* 32. [[How to Do Things with Words]] - J L Austin
* 31. [[The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society]] - Norbert Wiener
* 30. [[The Mind is Flat]]: The Illusion of Mental Depth and the Improvised Mind - Nick Chater
* 29. [[Possible Minds: 25 Ways of Looking at AI]] - John Brockman
* 28. [[A Little History of Philosophy]] - Nigel Warburton
* 27. [[All Fours]] - Miranda July
* 26. [[Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern]] - Douglas R Hofstadter
* 25. [[The French Lieutenant’s Woman]] - John Fowles
* 24. [[Short Stories in German for Beginners]] - Olly Richards
* 23. [[On the Calculation of Volume: 2]] - Solvej Balle
* 22. [[Deep Simplicity: Chaos, Complexity, and the Emergence of Life]] - John Gribbin
* 21. [[Das Ludwig Thoma Komplott]]- Sabine Vöhringer
* 20. [[Maus]] - Art Spiegelman
* 19. [[On the Calculation of Volume: 1]] - Solvej Balle
* 18. [[The Concept of Mind]] - Gilbert Ryle
* 17. [[Cognitive Neuroscience: A Very Short Introduction]] - Richard Passingham
* 16. [[The Experience Machine]] - Andy Clark
* 15. [[Why We Remember: Revealing the Hidden Power of Memory]] - Dr Charan Ranganath
* 14. [[From Bacteria to Bach and Back]] - Daniel Dennett (re-read)
* 13. [[The Village of Eight Graves]] - Seishi Yokomizo
* 12. [[Science: A History]] - Richard Crockett
* 11. [[Vienna: How the City of Ideas Created the Modern World]] - John Gribbin
* 10.[[The Inugami Curse]] - Seishi Yokomizo
* 9. [[The Rise and Reign of the Mammals]]
* 8. [[Four Ways of Thinking]] - David Sumpter
* 7. [[I've Been Thinking]] - Daniel Dennett
* 6. [[Serendipities: Language and Lunacy]] - Umberto Eco
* 5. [[I Am Dynamite: A Life of Friedrich Nietzsche]] - Sue Prideaux
* 4. [[A Brief History of Intelligence]] - Max S. Bennett
* 3. [[Foucault’s Pendulum]] - Umberto Eco (re-read)
* 2. [[Kant and the Platypus]] - Umberto Eco
* 1. [[Le cerveau m’a beaucoup déçu. L’esprit, non]] - Antoine Sénanque

=== 2024 ===

* The Plot - Will Eisner
* The Prague Cemetery - Umberto Eco
* The Nonjin Murders - Seishi Yokomizo
* When We Cease to Understand the World - Labatut
* Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert Pirsig (reread)
* The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind’s Hidden Complexities - Fauconnier and Turner
* The Singularity is Nearer - Ray Kurzweil
* Physics and Philosophy - Werner Heisenberg
* Le Ton Beau de…
* The Origins of Creativity - Edward O Wilson
* Psychonauts -
* The MANIAC - Benjamin Labatut
* In Search of Memory - Eric R. Kandel
* Dreaming: A Very Short Introduction - Hobson
* Les Effinger - Gabriele Target
* Triad - Tom Keve
* Nietzsche - Stefan Zweig
* The Weirdest People in the World - Joseph Henrich
* How Language Works - David Crystal
* The Invention of Nature - Andrea Wolf
* [[The Song of the Cell]] - Siddhartha Mukherjee
* [[Gödel, Escher, Bach]] - Douglas Hofstadter
* [[From Bacteria to Bach and Back]] - Daniel Dennett

== Challenging Books (per ChatGPT) ==
That’s a great (and slippery) question, because “challenging” can mean different things: difficulty of language, density of allusion, fractured narrative structure, philosophical depth, or even sheer length. Here’s a map of novels often considered among the most challenging, grouped by ''what makes them hard'':
----

=== 1. Language & Style Difficulties ===

* '''James Joyce – ''Finnegans Wake''''' (1939) Probably the hardest novel in English: dream-logic, multilingual puns, and invented words.
* '''William Gaddis – ''The Recognitions'' (1955)''' and ''JR'' (1975) Huge cast, little exposition, dialogue-driven (often without quotation marks).
* '''Samuel Beckett – ''The Unnamable'' (1953)''' Interior monologue collapsing into language itself; syntax dissolves.

----

=== 2. Length & Scope ===

* '''Marcel Proust – ''In Search of Lost Time''''' (1913–27) ~4,000 pages, long sentences, obsessive detail, profound reflections on memory.
* '''David Foster Wallace – ''Infinite Jest'' (1996)''' ~1,000 pages + 100 pages of endnotes; encyclopedic, fragmented plotlines.
* '''Norman Mailer – ''Harlot’s Ghost'' (1991)''' or ''Ancient Evenings'' (1983) Dense, sprawling, philosophically ambitious.

----

=== 3. Experimental Structure ===

* '''Thomas Pynchon – ''Gravity’s Rainbow'' (1973)''' Fragmented narrative, technical language, paranoia, hundreds of characters.
* '''Clarice Lispector – ''The Passion According to G.H.'' (1964)''' A single, intense interior monologue; metaphysical and unsettling.
* '''Julio Cortázar – ''Hopscotch'' (1963)''' Offers multiple reading orders; disruptive structure.

----

=== 4. Philosophical / Esoteric Depth ===

* '''Hermann Broch – ''The Sleepwalkers'' (1931–32)''' Mixes fiction with philosophy and essay.
* '''Robert Musil – ''The Man Without Qualities'' (1930–43)''' Massive unfinished modernist work, blending narrative with philosophical treatises.
* '''Thomas Mann – ''Joseph and His Brothers'' (1933–43)''' Retells biblical myth with immense erudition and depth.

----

=== 5. Dense Intertextuality ===

* '''James Joyce – ''Ulysses'' (1922)''' Homeric parallels, stylistic experiments, deep allusion to Irish politics and myth.
* '''Roberto Bolaño – ''2666'' (2004)''' Five interlinked novels, ranging from literary criticism to detective fiction to Holocaust history.
* '''José Lezama Lima – ''Paradiso'' (1966)''' Baroque Cuban prose, mythic density.

----

=== 6. Postmodern Labyrinths ===

* '''Mark Z. Danielewski – ''House of Leaves'' (2000)''' Multiple narrators, typographical experimentation, layered commentary.
* '''Viktor Pelevin – ''The Sacred Book of the Werewolf'' (2004)''' (or ''Generation “P”'') Satirical, reality-bending narratives.

----

=== A few contenders often called “the hardest of the hard”: ===

* ''Finnegans Wake'' (Joyce)
* ''The Recognitions'' (Gaddis)
* ''The Man Without Qualities'' (Musil)
* ''Gravity’s Rainbow'' (Pynchon)
* ''In Search of Lost Time'' (Proust)

[[Category:Books]]

How to Change Your Mind

2026-09-16T17:05:07Z

Robert.adlington: /* 3. History: The First Wave */

Books

2026-09-16T16:59:29Z

Robert.adlington:

== Books to Buy ==

Used:
* [https://www.amazon.fr/Nightmare-Reason-Life-Franz-Kafka/dp/0374523355/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=3UVJCLJFIY2CS&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.u3RaalBtg8bvWBbE8fVyXaCIirwCIkTLbUk5cwh_aYdlxQvg0yct5WxpF8hlFrbZxzIlPisTw_LJ-XermdOvrvQTKJR1xhGnjBQeBOOkj7UvLDqubVbBqOs4xWZlUjrzTneCM3AQNtLpEPT7T52XEL13eNQRCBZrMnVuSMk128RVqDk4IOYDPBhUWZzf9mHNv9T-yqA9Qv2JRg8l61zGhg.6VgqDbi7D-Vl19NQyoPSj86-nLG9IM98Vpm9Z9m-uGo&dib_tag=se&keywords=nightmare%2Bof%2Breason&qid=1783763181&sprefix=nightmare%2Bof%2Breason%2Caps%2C131&sr=8-1&th=1&psc=1 The Nightmare of Reason]: A Biography of Franz Kafka- Pawel i know that you know that I know - George Butte [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dormant-Einstein-Wittgenstein-Frankenstein-Re-Inventing/dp/0670804800 Einstein, Gertrude Stein, Wittgenstein and Frankenstein] : Reinventing the Universe by John Brockman
* Gormenghast - Mervyn Peake
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/What-Name-This-Book-Recreational/dp/0486481980 What is the Name of this Book]: Raymond Smullyan
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Thought-Contagion-International-Engineering-Paperback/dp/B00FDVRANQ Thought Contagion]: How Ideas Act Like Viruses - Aaron Lynch
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Language-Thought-Other-Biological-Categories/dp/0262631156 Language, Thought, and other Biological Categories]: New Foundations for Realism - Ruth Garrett Millikan

Paperbacks:

* Ram Dass - Be Here Now
* luke Bergis - [https://www.amazon.com/Wanting-Power-Mimetic-Desire-Everyday/dp/1250266645/ref=pd_aw_fbt_img_m_sccl_1_1/139-2587675-0340248?pd_rd_w=hV8j6&content-id=amzn1.sym.7766b57a-a0a0-4f33-935d-91822a4c15c0&pf_rd_p=7766b57a-a0a0-4f33-935d-91822a4c15c0&pf_rd_r=JQZSCYCZN9A2FBM0ABFQ&pd_rd_wg=Sf4rz&pd_rd_r=2b67db45-7810-4a08-8cd4-c4fc12f2e398&pd_rd_i=1250266645&psc=1 Wanting], The One and the 99
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/1399417509/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?ie=UTF8&dib_tag=se&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.SQM7Fcey4aad63hBfUW3aw.ctIlU9WAvr7a0KcGQ6Trzvv10dT7aouxiR_JgFN38Qc&qid=1784816314&sr=8-1 The Illuminated Man]: The Life, Death, and Worlds of JGB (apr 27)
* [https://www.amazon.fr/Center-Cannot-Hold-Journey-Madness/dp/1401309445/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=30LPLKNP3IZ6T&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.1ymUySu7SSRnF7VrIuk7F9G8mDn0vUlYjj2Ku5JZ3_PYON6iIUmcNCX9ai20Y0vZox6uJDtrT6HWKPcMOwUgffTs0AKgu-nJljkfuSqPliiinzJYFv3sqyAMrGqzWIfw1fGZbsff-kHjLgzZIx0OxtARGswv-lBF3OKikrjGNBjWl7yb3jt78g-xLiJJZ7UBKQF4OOJNYWJrOzJwiNmtFQ.o-6a46h4dxUo_ekLzSagCPkaFyAF6FjIdkVnB7TcOUI&dib_tag=se&keywords=elyn+saks&qid=1783197867&sprefix=elyn+sa%2Caps%2C193&sr=8-1 the center cannot hold]: my journey through madness - Elyn Saks
* [https://www.amazon.fr/One-Cares-About-Crazy-People/dp/0316341134/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=1G9JUB6IDN3BF&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.8pmsCx59KiaAt10bvF9HMZoqKCLpjaKJ384UkB8fA1A.YfWbCZxI4NByVLmIFTKMyWu3fJ8kBRIsi0sDSjv8Yrg&dib_tag=se&keywords=no%2Bone%2Bcares%2Babout%2Bcrazy%2Bpeople&qid=1783198086&s=books&sprefix=no%2Bone%2Bcares%2Babout%2Bcrazy%2Bpeople%2Cbooks%2C146&sr=1-1&th=1&psc=1 no one cares about crazy people] - Ron Powers Born on a Blue Day - Daniel Tammet
* Pellis - [https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/1851687602/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?ie=UTF8&dib_tag=se&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.H3yYZI7yMy8UMo0DZRtBXC7wbyUv2gRGlVcNGkDlLMJgXzHKvH1465fjUMkPxFfF6Gy4SxJZF5iHJj2-KPFajMqmXBiYahwhe5kfd66JSukAwSqbKylXct02KUMpWpWQCIW6bCM_Ht6bSd14GU33N14R__7O6CnhnzxNZy9X2zb3i5AfMj6mzwHRCKmg4ksQwKR6te7VhUOppALivblKNw.VKJXzbK6PkVwM-NWQcVACHw9NKJAMBuwXSLAEcjus40&qid=1775903643&sr=8-1 The Playful Brain]
* Strauss - The Three Waves of Modernity
* Peter Handke - Insulting the Audience
* Lorrie Moore - Self Help
* La Modification - Michel Butor
* Un Homme qui dort - Georges Perec
* How Like a God - Rex Stout

* Time and Narrative - Paul Ricoeur
* Flight of Icarus - Raymond Queneau
* Nausea - Sartre
* [https://www.amazon.fr/Seven-Joanna-Kavenna/dp/0571338151 Seven], [https://www.amazon.fr/Zed-Joanna-Kavenna/dp/0571245161 Zed], etc by Joanna Kavenna. See [https://blog.adlington.fr/index.php/2026/01/12/seven-or-how-to-play-a-game-without-rules-by-joanna-kavenna/ blog].
* Building a second brain
* how to solve it
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Adam-Eve-Paradise-E%C3%A7a-Queir%C3%B3s/dp/0811239144 Adam and Eve in Paradise] - eca de queiros
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bounds-Possibility-Puzzles-Modal-Variation/dp/0198910770 The Bounds of Possibility] - Philosophy book about categories
* Nicola Barker - [https://www.amazon.co.uk/TonyInterruptor-Nicola-Barker/dp/1803512563 Tony Interrupter] [https://www.amazon.co.uk/H-PPY-Nicola-Barker/dp/1785151142 Happy], etc
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Growth-Form-Canto-Classics/dp/1107672562 On Growth and Form] - D'Arcy Thompson
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Alpha-Omega-Jane-Ellen-Harrison/dp/1961341417 Alpha and Omega] - Jane Ellen Harrison
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Willard-Gibbs-Whole-Simpler-Parts/dp/1961341158 the Whole is Simpler than its Parts] - Willard Gibbs
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Stranger-Than-Fiction-Lives-Twentieth-Century/dp/152992572X Stranger Than Fiction]: Lives of the Twentieth-Century Novel - Edwin Frank
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Gray-Matters-Biography-Brain-Surgery/dp/1836430396 Gray Matters]: A Biography of Brain Surgery - Theodore Schwartz
*

Hardbacks:

* Mark Solms - The Only Cure - Freud and Neuroscience

* [https://kottke.org/26/03/beginning-comes-after-the-end The Beginning Comes After the End] - Rebecca Solnit
* [https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/02/being-and-time-an-annotated-translation.html Being and Time Annotated] or [https://www.amazon.com/Heideggers-Being-Time-Paraphrased-Annotated/dp/1786613417/ref=sr_1_1?crid=22NKOIU8DE86V&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.DTYI13qU7soxuiueo4-e128MDF_Ax3dyLaUSGkoN5Ia4UdUOk_Dq1I7NCzXbEWWQnCsZ_8TnpI_r-Aut-ca4ur7QoC5kObPu2gII5w37OPLBu35YwyZZIcQAH6cz3tSLhX00snAOwxwxFPCfiq2S-wt5XmSjCN3Hg5m3Btu2C-mHF7lEv6A6EaaeWIdcwChz23nuiyKnrHs62cHAUXQspCNW8TuE65y1CydE89Xp8as.iBxvGfEz3Ac-ZaaYxIBUO8lpCpF0iHOejymlghbifJ4&dib_tag=se&keywords=thomas+sheehan&qid=1771981151&s=books&sprefix=thomas+sheehan%2Cstripbooks%2C198&sr=1-1 paraphrased] ?
* [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/dec/23/capitalism-by-sven-beckert-review-an-extraordinary-history-of-the-economic-system-that-controls-our-lives Capitalism]: A Global History-Sven Beckert
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Violent-Saviours-Capitalism-Without-Consent/dp/1399811215 Violent Saviors]: How the West Conquered the Rest - William Easterly
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Master-Contradictions-Thomas-Making-Mountain/dp/0300233744 The master of contradictions]: Thomas Mann and the making of the Magic Mountain
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Story-CO2-Everything-Planetary-Experiment/dp/0241631165 The Story of CO2 Is the Story of Everything]: A Planetary Experiment
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/M%C3%B6bius-Book-Catherine-Lacey/dp/1803511494 the moebius book] - Catherine Lacey
* Chance and Necessity - Jacques Monod
* L'homme microscopique - Pierre Auger
* Why Machines Learn: The Elegant Maths Behind Modern AI (out in paperback Jan 30 2025)
* A History of the Muslim World: From Its Origins to the Dawn of Modernity (awaiting paperback)
* The New Roman Empire: A History of Byzantium
* Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as Civilization
* Consolations - David Whyte

== Books to Read ==

* Reading to Learn - William Zinger
* Breakfast of Champions - Kurt Vonnegut

== Currently Reading ==

* [[Atomic Habits]] - James Clear
*[[Die Montez-Juwelen]] - Sabine Vôhringer
* [[The Book: A Cover-to-Covet Exploration of the Most Powerful Object of Our Time]] - Keith Houston
*[[Understanding Media]] - Marshall McLuhan (re-read)
*[[The Practice of Not Thinking]]: A Guide to Mindful Living - Ryunosuke Koike

== Books Read ==

=== 2026 (week 37) ===

* 41. [[How to Change Your Mind]]: The New Science of Psychedelics - Michael Pollan
* 40. [[The Knowledge Illusion]] - Sloman/ Fernbach
* 39. [[The Red Book: Liber Novus]] - CG Jung
* 38. [[G: A Novel]] - John Berger
* 37. [[Thinking in Numbers]] - Daniel Tammet
* 36. [[Every Word is a Bird We Teach to Sing]] - Daniel Tammet
* 35. [[The Perpetual Race of Achilles and the Tortoise]] - Borges
* 34. The Oldest Book in the World: Philosophy in the Age of the Pyramids - Bill Manley
* 33. Congo, Une Histoire - David Van Reybrouck
* 32. [[The Art of Logic]]: How to Make Sense in a World that Doesn't - Eugenia Cheng
* 31. [[Why Read]] - Will Self
* 30. [[The Collected Schizophrenias]] - Esmé Weijun Wang
* 29. L’Intranquille Monsieur Pessoa (BD) - Nicolas Barral
* 28. [[Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain]] - Lisa Feldmann Barrrett.
* 27: [[Nine Minds]]: Inner Lives on the Spectrum - Daniel Tammet
* 26: [[Ambigrammia]]: Between Creation and Discovery - Douglas Hofstadter
* 25. [[Once Upon a Prime]]:The Wondrous Connections Between Mathematics and Literature - Sarah B. Hart
* 24. [[Short Stories in German for Beginners]] - Olly Richards (reread - with Ricky)
* 23. Books v. Cigarettes - George Orwell
* 22. Der Nasse Fische - Volker Kutscher (in German!)
* 21. [[We Are Our Brains: From the Womb to Alzheimer's]] - Dick Swaab
* 20. [[Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife]] - Francesca Wade
* 19. [[How the World Made the West]] - Josephine Quinn
* 18. [[Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning]] - Sigmund Freud
* 17. [[This is Your Mind on Plants]]: Opium - Caffeine - Mescaline - Michael Pollen
* 16. [[Open Socrates]]: The Case for a Philosophical Life - Agnes Callard

* 15. [[Consciousness: How Our Brains Turn Matter Into Meaning]] - John Parrington
*14. [[The Happiness of Dogs]]: Why the Unexamined Life is Most Worth Living - Mark Rowlands
*13. [[The Hidden Spring]] - Mark Solms
*12. [[The Interpretation of Dreams]] - Sigmund Freud
*11. [[A Certain Lucas]] - Julio Cortazar
*10. [[The Intentional Stance]] - Daniel Dennett
*9. [[La Conquête de Plassans]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 4) - Zola
*8. [[Why We Read Fiction]]: Theory of Mind and the Novel - Lisa Zunshine

* 7. On the Calculation of Volume: 3 - Solvej Balle
* 6. [[Unnatural Voices]]: Extreme Narration in Modern and Contemporary Fiction - Brian Richardson
* 5. The Seven Dials Mystery - Agatha Christie
* 4. [[Le Ventre de Paris]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 3) - Zola
*3. [[The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative]] (2nd Edition) - H. Porter Abbott
* 2. [[Autocracy Inc]]: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World - Anne Applebaum
* 1. [[The Secret Life of the Periodic Table]] - Dr Ben Still

=== 2025 ===

* 55. The White Priory Murders - Carter Dickson (re-read)
* 54. [[How Life Works]]: A User's Guide to the New Biology - Philip Ball
* 53. [[Who Killed Father Christmas]]? and Other Seasonal Mysteries - Martin Edwards
* 52. [[Chemistry: A Very Short Introduction]] - Peter Atkins
* 51. [[The Scheme of Things]] - Allen Wheelis
* 50. [[La Fortune des Rougon]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 1) - Zola
* 49. [[Cause for Alarm]] - Eric Ambler
* 48. [[The Man from the Future]]: The Visionary Life of John Von Neumann - Ananyo Bhattacharya
*47. [[Everything is Predictable]]: How Bayes' Remarkable Theorem Explains the World - Tom Chivers
* 46. [[The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are]] - Alan Watts
* 45. [[La Curée]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 2) - Zola
* 44. [[The Emperor of All Maladies]]: A Biography of Cancer - Siddhartha Mukherjee
* 43. [[La Bête Humaine]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 17) - Zola (re-read)
* 42. [[The Society of Mind]] - Marvin Minsky
* 41. [[Le Père Goriot]] - Honore Balzac
* 40. [[Gravity's Rainbow]] - Thomas Pynchon (re-read)
* 39. [[Le Colonel Chabert]] - Balzac
* 38. [[Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett]] - James Knowlson (re-read)
* 37. [[Reading for the Plot]]: Design and Intention in Narrative - Peter Brooks (re-read)

* 36. [[Steps to an Ecology of Mind]] - Gregory Bateson (re-read)
* 35. [[Le Bilan de L'intelligence]] - Paul Valéry
* 34. [[Zero]] - Charles Seife
* 33. [[Alan Turing: The Enigma]] - Andrew Hodges
* 32. [[How to Do Things with Words]] - J L Austin
* 31. [[The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society]] - Norbert Wiener
* 30. [[The Mind is Flat]]: The Illusion of Mental Depth and the Improvised Mind - Nick Chater
* 29. [[Possible Minds: 25 Ways of Looking at AI]] - John Brockman
* 28. [[A Little History of Philosophy]] - Nigel Warburton
* 27. [[All Fours]] - Miranda July
* 26. [[Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern]] - Douglas R Hofstadter
* 25. [[The French Lieutenant’s Woman]] - John Fowles
* 24. [[Short Stories in German for Beginners]] - Olly Richards
* 23. [[On the Calculation of Volume: 2]] - Solvej Balle
* 22. [[Deep Simplicity: Chaos, Complexity, and the Emergence of Life]] - John Gribbin
* 21. [[Das Ludwig Thoma Komplott]]- Sabine Vöhringer
* 20. [[Maus]] - Art Spiegelman
* 19. [[On the Calculation of Volume: 1]] - Solvej Balle
* 18. [[The Concept of Mind]] - Gilbert Ryle
* 17. [[Cognitive Neuroscience: A Very Short Introduction]] - Richard Passingham
* 16. [[The Experience Machine]] - Andy Clark
* 15. [[Why We Remember: Revealing the Hidden Power of Memory]] - Dr Charan Ranganath
* 14. [[From Bacteria to Bach and Back]] - Daniel Dennett (re-read)
* 13. [[The Village of Eight Graves]] - Seishi Yokomizo
* 12. [[Science: A History]] - Richard Crockett
* 11. [[Vienna: How the City of Ideas Created the Modern World]] - John Gribbin
* 10.[[The Inugami Curse]] - Seishi Yokomizo
* 9. [[The Rise and Reign of the Mammals]]
* 8. [[Four Ways of Thinking]] - David Sumpter
* 7. [[I've Been Thinking]] - Daniel Dennett
* 6. [[Serendipities: Language and Lunacy]] - Umberto Eco
* 5. [[I Am Dynamite: A Life of Friedrich Nietzsche]] - Sue Prideaux
* 4. [[A Brief History of Intelligence]] - Max S. Bennett
* 3. [[Foucault’s Pendulum]] - Umberto Eco (re-read)
* 2. [[Kant and the Platypus]] - Umberto Eco
* 1. [[Le cerveau m’a beaucoup déçu. L’esprit, non]] - Antoine Sénanque

=== 2024 ===

* The Plot - Will Eisner
* The Prague Cemetery - Umberto Eco
* The Nonjin Murders - Seishi Yokomizo
* When We Cease to Understand the World - Labatut
* Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert Pirsig (reread)
* The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind’s Hidden Complexities - Fauconnier and Turner
* The Singularity is Nearer - Ray Kurzweil
* Physics and Philosophy - Werner Heisenberg
* Le Ton Beau de…
* The Origins of Creativity - Edward O Wilson
* Psychonauts -
* The MANIAC - Benjamin Labatut
* In Search of Memory - Eric R. Kandel
* Dreaming: A Very Short Introduction - Hobson
* Les Effinger - Gabriele Target
* Triad - Tom Keve
* Nietzsche - Stefan Zweig
* The Weirdest People in the World - Joseph Henrich
* How Language Works - David Crystal
* The Invention of Nature - Andrea Wolf
* [[The Song of the Cell]] - Siddhartha Mukherjee
* [[Gödel, Escher, Bach]] - Douglas Hofstadter
* [[From Bacteria to Bach and Back]] - Daniel Dennett

== Challenging Books (per ChatGPT) ==
That’s a great (and slippery) question, because “challenging” can mean different things: difficulty of language, density of allusion, fractured narrative structure, philosophical depth, or even sheer length. Here’s a map of novels often considered among the most challenging, grouped by ''what makes them hard'':
----

=== 1. Language & Style Difficulties ===

* '''James Joyce – ''Finnegans Wake''''' (1939) Probably the hardest novel in English: dream-logic, multilingual puns, and invented words.
* '''William Gaddis – ''The Recognitions'' (1955)''' and ''JR'' (1975) Huge cast, little exposition, dialogue-driven (often without quotation marks).
* '''Samuel Beckett – ''The Unnamable'' (1953)''' Interior monologue collapsing into language itself; syntax dissolves.

----

=== 2. Length & Scope ===

* '''Marcel Proust – ''In Search of Lost Time''''' (1913–27) ~4,000 pages, long sentences, obsessive detail, profound reflections on memory.
* '''David Foster Wallace – ''Infinite Jest'' (1996)''' ~1,000 pages + 100 pages of endnotes; encyclopedic, fragmented plotlines.
* '''Norman Mailer – ''Harlot’s Ghost'' (1991)''' or ''Ancient Evenings'' (1983) Dense, sprawling, philosophically ambitious.

----

=== 3. Experimental Structure ===

* '''Thomas Pynchon – ''Gravity’s Rainbow'' (1973)''' Fragmented narrative, technical language, paranoia, hundreds of characters.
* '''Clarice Lispector – ''The Passion According to G.H.'' (1964)''' A single, intense interior monologue; metaphysical and unsettling.
* '''Julio Cortázar – ''Hopscotch'' (1963)''' Offers multiple reading orders; disruptive structure.

----

=== 4. Philosophical / Esoteric Depth ===

* '''Hermann Broch – ''The Sleepwalkers'' (1931–32)''' Mixes fiction with philosophy and essay.
* '''Robert Musil – ''The Man Without Qualities'' (1930–43)''' Massive unfinished modernist work, blending narrative with philosophical treatises.
* '''Thomas Mann – ''Joseph and His Brothers'' (1933–43)''' Retells biblical myth with immense erudition and depth.

----

=== 5. Dense Intertextuality ===

* '''James Joyce – ''Ulysses'' (1922)''' Homeric parallels, stylistic experiments, deep allusion to Irish politics and myth.
* '''Roberto Bolaño – ''2666'' (2004)''' Five interlinked novels, ranging from literary criticism to detective fiction to Holocaust history.
* '''José Lezama Lima – ''Paradiso'' (1966)''' Baroque Cuban prose, mythic density.

----

=== 6. Postmodern Labyrinths ===

* '''Mark Z. Danielewski – ''House of Leaves'' (2000)''' Multiple narrators, typographical experimentation, layered commentary.
* '''Viktor Pelevin – ''The Sacred Book of the Werewolf'' (2004)''' (or ''Generation “P”'') Satirical, reality-bending narratives.

----

=== A few contenders often called “the hardest of the hard”: ===

* ''Finnegans Wake'' (Joyce)
* ''The Recognitions'' (Gaddis)
* ''The Man Without Qualities'' (Musil)
* ''Gravity’s Rainbow'' (Pynchon)
* ''In Search of Lost Time'' (Proust)

[[Category:Books]]

How to Change Your Mind

2026-09-16T16:45:30Z

Robert.adlington: /* 2. Natural History: Bemushroomed */

How to Change Your Mind

2026-09-14T16:23:22Z

Robert.adlington: /* Prologue: A New Door */

How to Change Your Mind

2026-09-14T15:49:01Z

Robert.adlington: Created page with "== Prologue: A New Door == * - == 1. A Renaissance == * - == 2. Natural History: Bemushroomed == * - == 3. History: The First Wave == * - == 4. Travelogue: Journeying Underground == * - == 5. The Neuroscience: Your Brain on Psychedelics == * - == 6. The Trip Treatment: Psychedelics in Psychotherapy == * - == Epilogue: In Praise of Neural Diversity == * -"

== Prologue: A New Door ==
* -
== 1. A Renaissance ==
* -
== 2. Natural History: Bemushroomed ==
* -
== 3. History: The First Wave ==
* -
== 4. Travelogue: Journeying Underground ==
* -
== 5. The Neuroscience: Your Brain on Psychedelics ==
* -
== 6. The Trip Treatment: Psychedelics in Psychotherapy ==
* -
== Epilogue: In Praise of Neural Diversity ==
* -

Books

2026-09-14T15:45:54Z

Robert.adlington: /* Currently Reading */

== Books to Buy ==

Used:
* [https://www.amazon.fr/Nightmare-Reason-Life-Franz-Kafka/dp/0374523355/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=3UVJCLJFIY2CS&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.u3RaalBtg8bvWBbE8fVyXaCIirwCIkTLbUk5cwh_aYdlxQvg0yct5WxpF8hlFrbZxzIlPisTw_LJ-XermdOvrvQTKJR1xhGnjBQeBOOkj7UvLDqubVbBqOs4xWZlUjrzTneCM3AQNtLpEPT7T52XEL13eNQRCBZrMnVuSMk128RVqDk4IOYDPBhUWZzf9mHNv9T-yqA9Qv2JRg8l61zGhg.6VgqDbi7D-Vl19NQyoPSj86-nLG9IM98Vpm9Z9m-uGo&dib_tag=se&keywords=nightmare%2Bof%2Breason&qid=1783763181&sprefix=nightmare%2Bof%2Breason%2Caps%2C131&sr=8-1&th=1&psc=1 The Nightmare of Reason]: A Biography of Franz Kafka- Pawel i know that you know that I know - George Butte [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dormant-Einstein-Wittgenstein-Frankenstein-Re-Inventing/dp/0670804800 Einstein, Gertrude Stein, Wittgenstein and Frankenstein] : Reinventing the Universe by John Brockman
* Gormenghast - Mervyn Peake
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/What-Name-This-Book-Recreational/dp/0486481980 What is the Name of this Book]: Raymond Smullyan
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Thought-Contagion-International-Engineering-Paperback/dp/B00FDVRANQ Thought Contagion]: How Ideas Act Like Viruses - Aaron Lynch
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Language-Thought-Other-Biological-Categories/dp/0262631156 Language, Thought, and other Biological Categories]: New Foundations for Realism - Ruth Garrett Millikan

Paperbacks:

* luke Bergis - [https://www.amazon.com/Wanting-Power-Mimetic-Desire-Everyday/dp/1250266645/ref=pd_aw_fbt_img_m_sccl_1_1/139-2587675-0340248?pd_rd_w=hV8j6&content-id=amzn1.sym.7766b57a-a0a0-4f33-935d-91822a4c15c0&pf_rd_p=7766b57a-a0a0-4f33-935d-91822a4c15c0&pf_rd_r=JQZSCYCZN9A2FBM0ABFQ&pd_rd_wg=Sf4rz&pd_rd_r=2b67db45-7810-4a08-8cd4-c4fc12f2e398&pd_rd_i=1250266645&psc=1 Wanting], The One and the 99 [https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/1399417509/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?ie=UTF8&dib_tag=se&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.SQM7Fcey4aad63hBfUW3aw.ctIlU9WAvr7a0KcGQ6Trzvv10dT7aouxiR_JgFN38Qc&qid=1784816314&sr=8-1 The Illuminated Man]: The Life, Death, and Worlds of JGB (apr 27)
* [https://www.amazon.fr/Center-Cannot-Hold-Journey-Madness/dp/1401309445/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=30LPLKNP3IZ6T&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.1ymUySu7SSRnF7VrIuk7F9G8mDn0vUlYjj2Ku5JZ3_PYON6iIUmcNCX9ai20Y0vZox6uJDtrT6HWKPcMOwUgffTs0AKgu-nJljkfuSqPliiinzJYFv3sqyAMrGqzWIfw1fGZbsff-kHjLgzZIx0OxtARGswv-lBF3OKikrjGNBjWl7yb3jt78g-xLiJJZ7UBKQF4OOJNYWJrOzJwiNmtFQ.o-6a46h4dxUo_ekLzSagCPkaFyAF6FjIdkVnB7TcOUI&dib_tag=se&keywords=elyn+saks&qid=1783197867&sprefix=elyn+sa%2Caps%2C193&sr=8-1 the center cannot hold]: my journey through madness - Elyn Saks
* [https://www.amazon.fr/One-Cares-About-Crazy-People/dp/0316341134/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=1G9JUB6IDN3BF&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.8pmsCx59KiaAt10bvF9HMZoqKCLpjaKJ384UkB8fA1A.YfWbCZxI4NByVLmIFTKMyWu3fJ8kBRIsi0sDSjv8Yrg&dib_tag=se&keywords=no%2Bone%2Bcares%2Babout%2Bcrazy%2Bpeople&qid=1783198086&s=books&sprefix=no%2Bone%2Bcares%2Babout%2Bcrazy%2Bpeople%2Cbooks%2C146&sr=1-1&th=1&psc=1 no one cares about crazy people] - Ron Powers Born on a Blue Day - Daniel Tammet
* Pellis - [https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/1851687602/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?ie=UTF8&dib_tag=se&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.H3yYZI7yMy8UMo0DZRtBXC7wbyUv2gRGlVcNGkDlLMJgXzHKvH1465fjUMkPxFfF6Gy4SxJZF5iHJj2-KPFajMqmXBiYahwhe5kfd66JSukAwSqbKylXct02KUMpWpWQCIW6bCM_Ht6bSd14GU33N14R__7O6CnhnzxNZy9X2zb3i5AfMj6mzwHRCKmg4ksQwKR6te7VhUOppALivblKNw.VKJXzbK6PkVwM-NWQcVACHw9NKJAMBuwXSLAEcjus40&qid=1775903643&sr=8-1 The Playful Brain]
* Strauss - The Three Waves of Modernity
* Peter Handke - Insulting the Audience
* Lorrie Moore - Self Help
* La Modification - Michel Butor
* Un Homme qui dort - Georges Perec
* How Like a God - Rex Stout

* Time and Narrative - Paul Ricoeur
* Flight of Icarus - Raymond Queneau
* Nausea - Sartre
* [https://www.amazon.fr/Seven-Joanna-Kavenna/dp/0571338151 Seven], [https://www.amazon.fr/Zed-Joanna-Kavenna/dp/0571245161 Zed], etc by Joanna Kavenna. See [https://blog.adlington.fr/index.php/2026/01/12/seven-or-how-to-play-a-game-without-rules-by-joanna-kavenna/ blog].
* Building a second brain
* how to solve it
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Adam-Eve-Paradise-E%C3%A7a-Queir%C3%B3s/dp/0811239144 Adam and Eve in Paradise] - eca de queiros
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bounds-Possibility-Puzzles-Modal-Variation/dp/0198910770 The Bounds of Possibility] - Philosophy book about categories
* Nicola Barker - [https://www.amazon.co.uk/TonyInterruptor-Nicola-Barker/dp/1803512563 Tony Interrupter] [https://www.amazon.co.uk/H-PPY-Nicola-Barker/dp/1785151142 Happy], etc
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Growth-Form-Canto-Classics/dp/1107672562 On Growth and Form] - D'Arcy Thompson
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Alpha-Omega-Jane-Ellen-Harrison/dp/1961341417 Alpha and Omega] - Jane Ellen Harrison
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Willard-Gibbs-Whole-Simpler-Parts/dp/1961341158 the Whole is Simpler than its Parts] - Willard Gibbs
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Stranger-Than-Fiction-Lives-Twentieth-Century/dp/152992572X Stranger Than Fiction]: Lives of the Twentieth-Century Novel - Edwin Frank
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Gray-Matters-Biography-Brain-Surgery/dp/1836430396 Gray Matters]: A Biography of Brain Surgery - Theodore Schwartz
*

Hardbacks:

* Mark Solms - The Only Cure - Freud and Neuroscience

* [https://kottke.org/26/03/beginning-comes-after-the-end The Beginning Comes After the End] - Rebecca Solnit
* [https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/02/being-and-time-an-annotated-translation.html Being and Time Annotated] or [https://www.amazon.com/Heideggers-Being-Time-Paraphrased-Annotated/dp/1786613417/ref=sr_1_1?crid=22NKOIU8DE86V&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.DTYI13qU7soxuiueo4-e128MDF_Ax3dyLaUSGkoN5Ia4UdUOk_Dq1I7NCzXbEWWQnCsZ_8TnpI_r-Aut-ca4ur7QoC5kObPu2gII5w37OPLBu35YwyZZIcQAH6cz3tSLhX00snAOwxwxFPCfiq2S-wt5XmSjCN3Hg5m3Btu2C-mHF7lEv6A6EaaeWIdcwChz23nuiyKnrHs62cHAUXQspCNW8TuE65y1CydE89Xp8as.iBxvGfEz3Ac-ZaaYxIBUO8lpCpF0iHOejymlghbifJ4&dib_tag=se&keywords=thomas+sheehan&qid=1771981151&s=books&sprefix=thomas+sheehan%2Cstripbooks%2C198&sr=1-1 paraphrased] ?
* [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/dec/23/capitalism-by-sven-beckert-review-an-extraordinary-history-of-the-economic-system-that-controls-our-lives Capitalism]: A Global History-Sven Beckert
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Violent-Saviours-Capitalism-Without-Consent/dp/1399811215 Violent Saviors]: How the West Conquered the Rest - William Easterly
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Master-Contradictions-Thomas-Making-Mountain/dp/0300233744 The master of contradictions]: Thomas Mann and the making of the Magic Mountain
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Story-CO2-Everything-Planetary-Experiment/dp/0241631165 The Story of CO2 Is the Story of Everything]: A Planetary Experiment
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/M%C3%B6bius-Book-Catherine-Lacey/dp/1803511494 the moebius book] - Catherine Lacey
* Chance and Necessity - Jacques Monod
* L'homme microscopique - Pierre Auger
* Why Machines Learn: The Elegant Maths Behind Modern AI (out in paperback Jan 30 2025)
* A History of the Muslim World: From Its Origins to the Dawn of Modernity (awaiting paperback)
* The New Roman Empire: A History of Byzantium
* Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as Civilization
* Consolations - David Whyte

== Books to Read ==

* Reading to Learn - William Zinger
* Breakfast of Champions - Kurt Vonnegut

== Currently Reading ==

* [[Atomic Habits]] - James Clear
*[[Die Montez-Juwelen]] - Sabine Vôhringer
* [[The Book: A Cover-to-Covet Exploration of the Most Powerful Object of Our Time]] - Keith Houston
*[[Understanding Media]] - Marshall McLuhan (re-read)
*[[The Practice of Not Thinking]]: A Guide to Mindful Living - Ryunosuke Koike

== Books Read ==

=== 2026 (week 37) ===

* 41. [[How to Change Your Mind]]: The New Science of Psychedelics - Michael Pollan
* 40. [[The Knowledge Illusion]] - Sloman/ Fernbach
* 39. [[The Red Book: Liber Novus]] - CG Jung
* 38. [[G: A Novel]] - John Berger
* 37. [[Thinking in Numbers]] - Daniel Tammet
* 36. [[Every Word is a Bird We Teach to Sing]] - Daniel Tammet
* 35. [[The Perpetual Race of Achilles and the Tortoise]] - Borges
* 34. The Oldest Book in the World: Philosophy in the Age of the Pyramids - Bill Manley
* 33. Congo, Une Histoire - David Van Reybrouck
* 32. [[The Art of Logic]]: How to Make Sense in a World that Doesn't - Eugenia Cheng
* 31. [[Why Read]] - Will Self
* 30. [[The Collected Schizophrenias]] - Esmé Weijun Wang
* 29. L’Intranquille Monsieur Pessoa (BD) - Nicolas Barral
* 28. [[Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain]] - Lisa Feldmann Barrrett.
* 27: [[Nine Minds]]: Inner Lives on the Spectrum - Daniel Tammet
* 26: [[Ambigrammia]]: Between Creation and Discovery - Douglas Hofstadter
* 25. [[Once Upon a Prime]]:The Wondrous Connections Between Mathematics and Literature - Sarah B. Hart
* 24. [[Short Stories in German for Beginners]] - Olly Richards (reread - with Ricky)
* 23. Books v. Cigarettes - George Orwell
* 22. Der Nasse Fische - Volker Kutscher (in German!)
* 21. [[We Are Our Brains: From the Womb to Alzheimer's]] - Dick Swaab
* 20. [[Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife]] - Francesca Wade
* 19. [[How the World Made the West]] - Josephine Quinn
* 18. [[Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning]] - Sigmund Freud
* 17. [[This is Your Mind on Plants]]: Opium - Caffeine - Mescaline - Michael Pollen
* 16. [[Open Socrates]]: The Case for a Philosophical Life - Agnes Callard

* 15. [[Consciousness: How Our Brains Turn Matter Into Meaning]] - John Parrington
*14. [[The Happiness of Dogs]]: Why the Unexamined Life is Most Worth Living - Mark Rowlands
*13. [[The Hidden Spring]] - Mark Solms
*12. [[The Interpretation of Dreams]] - Sigmund Freud
*11. [[A Certain Lucas]] - Julio Cortazar
*10. [[The Intentional Stance]] - Daniel Dennett
*9. [[La Conquête de Plassans]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 4) - Zola
*8. [[Why We Read Fiction]]: Theory of Mind and the Novel - Lisa Zunshine

* 7. On the Calculation of Volume: 3 - Solvej Balle
* 6. [[Unnatural Voices]]: Extreme Narration in Modern and Contemporary Fiction - Brian Richardson
* 5. The Seven Dials Mystery - Agatha Christie
* 4. [[Le Ventre de Paris]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 3) - Zola
*3. [[The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative]] (2nd Edition) - H. Porter Abbott
* 2. [[Autocracy Inc]]: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World - Anne Applebaum
* 1. [[The Secret Life of the Periodic Table]] - Dr Ben Still

=== 2025 ===

* 55. The White Priory Murders - Carter Dickson (re-read)
* 54. [[How Life Works]]: A User's Guide to the New Biology - Philip Ball
* 53. [[Who Killed Father Christmas]]? and Other Seasonal Mysteries - Martin Edwards
* 52. [[Chemistry: A Very Short Introduction]] - Peter Atkins
* 51. [[The Scheme of Things]] - Allen Wheelis
* 50. [[La Fortune des Rougon]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 1) - Zola
* 49. [[Cause for Alarm]] - Eric Ambler
* 48. [[The Man from the Future]]: The Visionary Life of John Von Neumann - Ananyo Bhattacharya
*47. [[Everything is Predictable]]: How Bayes' Remarkable Theorem Explains the World - Tom Chivers
* 46. [[The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are]] - Alan Watts
* 45. [[La Curée]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 2) - Zola
* 44. [[The Emperor of All Maladies]]: A Biography of Cancer - Siddhartha Mukherjee
* 43. [[La Bête Humaine]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 17) - Zola (re-read)
* 42. [[The Society of Mind]] - Marvin Minsky
* 41. [[Le Père Goriot]] - Honore Balzac
* 40. [[Gravity's Rainbow]] - Thomas Pynchon (re-read)
* 39. [[Le Colonel Chabert]] - Balzac
* 38. [[Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett]] - James Knowlson (re-read)
* 37. [[Reading for the Plot]]: Design and Intention in Narrative - Peter Brooks (re-read)

* 36. [[Steps to an Ecology of Mind]] - Gregory Bateson (re-read)
* 35. [[Le Bilan de L'intelligence]] - Paul Valéry
* 34. [[Zero]] - Charles Seife
* 33. [[Alan Turing: The Enigma]] - Andrew Hodges
* 32. [[How to Do Things with Words]] - J L Austin
* 31. [[The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society]] - Norbert Wiener
* 30. [[The Mind is Flat]]: The Illusion of Mental Depth and the Improvised Mind - Nick Chater
* 29. [[Possible Minds: 25 Ways of Looking at AI]] - John Brockman
* 28. [[A Little History of Philosophy]] - Nigel Warburton
* 27. [[All Fours]] - Miranda July
* 26. [[Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern]] - Douglas R Hofstadter
* 25. [[The French Lieutenant’s Woman]] - John Fowles
* 24. [[Short Stories in German for Beginners]] - Olly Richards
* 23. [[On the Calculation of Volume: 2]] - Solvej Balle
* 22. [[Deep Simplicity: Chaos, Complexity, and the Emergence of Life]] - John Gribbin
* 21. [[Das Ludwig Thoma Komplott]]- Sabine Vöhringer
* 20. [[Maus]] - Art Spiegelman
* 19. [[On the Calculation of Volume: 1]] - Solvej Balle
* 18. [[The Concept of Mind]] - Gilbert Ryle
* 17. [[Cognitive Neuroscience: A Very Short Introduction]] - Richard Passingham
* 16. [[The Experience Machine]] - Andy Clark
* 15. [[Why We Remember: Revealing the Hidden Power of Memory]] - Dr Charan Ranganath
* 14. [[From Bacteria to Bach and Back]] - Daniel Dennett (re-read)
* 13. [[The Village of Eight Graves]] - Seishi Yokomizo
* 12. [[Science: A History]] - Richard Crockett
* 11. [[Vienna: How the City of Ideas Created the Modern World]] - John Gribbin
* 10.[[The Inugami Curse]] - Seishi Yokomizo
* 9. [[The Rise and Reign of the Mammals]]
* 8. [[Four Ways of Thinking]] - David Sumpter
* 7. [[I've Been Thinking]] - Daniel Dennett
* 6. [[Serendipities: Language and Lunacy]] - Umberto Eco
* 5. [[I Am Dynamite: A Life of Friedrich Nietzsche]] - Sue Prideaux
* 4. [[A Brief History of Intelligence]] - Max S. Bennett
* 3. [[Foucault’s Pendulum]] - Umberto Eco (re-read)
* 2. [[Kant and the Platypus]] - Umberto Eco
* 1. [[Le cerveau m’a beaucoup déçu. L’esprit, non]] - Antoine Sénanque

=== 2024 ===

* The Plot - Will Eisner
* The Prague Cemetery - Umberto Eco
* The Nonjin Murders - Seishi Yokomizo
* When We Cease to Understand the World - Labatut
* Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert Pirsig (reread)
* The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind’s Hidden Complexities - Fauconnier and Turner
* The Singularity is Nearer - Ray Kurzweil
* Physics and Philosophy - Werner Heisenberg
* Le Ton Beau de…
* The Origins of Creativity - Edward O Wilson
* Psychonauts -
* The MANIAC - Benjamin Labatut
* In Search of Memory - Eric R. Kandel
* Dreaming: A Very Short Introduction - Hobson
* Les Effinger - Gabriele Target
* Triad - Tom Keve
* Nietzsche - Stefan Zweig
* The Weirdest People in the World - Joseph Henrich
* How Language Works - David Crystal
* The Invention of Nature - Andrea Wolf
* [[The Song of the Cell]] - Siddhartha Mukherjee
* [[Gödel, Escher, Bach]] - Douglas Hofstadter
* [[From Bacteria to Bach and Back]] - Daniel Dennett

== Challenging Books (per ChatGPT) ==
That’s a great (and slippery) question, because “challenging” can mean different things: difficulty of language, density of allusion, fractured narrative structure, philosophical depth, or even sheer length. Here’s a map of novels often considered among the most challenging, grouped by ''what makes them hard'':
----

=== 1. Language & Style Difficulties ===

* '''James Joyce – ''Finnegans Wake''''' (1939) Probably the hardest novel in English: dream-logic, multilingual puns, and invented words.
* '''William Gaddis – ''The Recognitions'' (1955)''' and ''JR'' (1975) Huge cast, little exposition, dialogue-driven (often without quotation marks).
* '''Samuel Beckett – ''The Unnamable'' (1953)''' Interior monologue collapsing into language itself; syntax dissolves.

----

=== 2. Length & Scope ===

* '''Marcel Proust – ''In Search of Lost Time''''' (1913–27) ~4,000 pages, long sentences, obsessive detail, profound reflections on memory.
* '''David Foster Wallace – ''Infinite Jest'' (1996)''' ~1,000 pages + 100 pages of endnotes; encyclopedic, fragmented plotlines.
* '''Norman Mailer – ''Harlot’s Ghost'' (1991)''' or ''Ancient Evenings'' (1983) Dense, sprawling, philosophically ambitious.

----

=== 3. Experimental Structure ===

* '''Thomas Pynchon – ''Gravity’s Rainbow'' (1973)''' Fragmented narrative, technical language, paranoia, hundreds of characters.
* '''Clarice Lispector – ''The Passion According to G.H.'' (1964)''' A single, intense interior monologue; metaphysical and unsettling.
* '''Julio Cortázar – ''Hopscotch'' (1963)''' Offers multiple reading orders; disruptive structure.

----

=== 4. Philosophical / Esoteric Depth ===

* '''Hermann Broch – ''The Sleepwalkers'' (1931–32)''' Mixes fiction with philosophy and essay.
* '''Robert Musil – ''The Man Without Qualities'' (1930–43)''' Massive unfinished modernist work, blending narrative with philosophical treatises.
* '''Thomas Mann – ''Joseph and His Brothers'' (1933–43)''' Retells biblical myth with immense erudition and depth.

----

=== 5. Dense Intertextuality ===

* '''James Joyce – ''Ulysses'' (1922)''' Homeric parallels, stylistic experiments, deep allusion to Irish politics and myth.
* '''Roberto Bolaño – ''2666'' (2004)''' Five interlinked novels, ranging from literary criticism to detective fiction to Holocaust history.
* '''José Lezama Lima – ''Paradiso'' (1966)''' Baroque Cuban prose, mythic density.

----

=== 6. Postmodern Labyrinths ===

* '''Mark Z. Danielewski – ''House of Leaves'' (2000)''' Multiple narrators, typographical experimentation, layered commentary.
* '''Viktor Pelevin – ''The Sacred Book of the Werewolf'' (2004)''' (or ''Generation “P”'') Satirical, reality-bending narratives.

----

=== A few contenders often called “the hardest of the hard”: ===

* ''Finnegans Wake'' (Joyce)
* ''The Recognitions'' (Gaddis)
* ''The Man Without Qualities'' (Musil)
* ''Gravity’s Rainbow'' (Pynchon)
* ''In Search of Lost Time'' (Proust)

[[Category:Books]]

The Knowledge Illusion

2026-09-09T11:54:27Z

Robert.adlington: /* 10: The New Definition of Smart */

== Introduction: Ignorance and the Community of Knowledge ==
* In fact, most knowledge is little more than a bunch of associations, high-level links between objects or people that aren't broken down into detailed stories.
* The ability to think vastly increases the effectiveness of action. In that sense, thought is an extension of action.
* Our thought processes, our language, and our emotions are all designed to engage causal reasoning to help us to act in reasonable ways.
* Thought is masterful at extracting only what it needs and filtering out everything else.
* The mind is not built to acquire details about every individual object or situation. We learn from experience so that we can generalize to new objects and situations. The ability to act in a new context requires understanding only the deep regularities in the way the world works, not the superficial details.
* The study of the mind cannot be reduced to the study of the brain. Cognitive science is not the same as neuroscience.
== 1: What We Know ==
* This is the illusion of explanatory depth. Before trying to explain something (eg, how a toilet works, or how a bike's parts fit together), people feel they have a reasonable level of understanding; after explaining, they don't.
* Human beings are not warehouses of knowledge.
* Most of cognition consists of intuitive thought that occurs below the surface of consciousness. It involves processing huge quantities of information in parallel. When people search for a word, for example, we don't consider one word at a time sequentially. Instead, we search our entire lexicon - our mental dictionary - simultaneously, and the word we're looking for usually rises to the top. That's not the kind of computation that von Neumann and Turing had in mind in the early days of computer science and cognitive science.
* Looking closer at things (is like zooming in on a fractal) just raises more questions. There is always more to understand.
* Adults forget how complex things are and decide to just stop asking questions. Because we are not conscious that we have made this decision to stop probing, we end up thinking we understand how things work more deeply than we do.
== 2: Why We Think ==
* Hyperthymesia, highly superior autobiographical memory, is extremely rare, affecting only a handful of people, who can remember in copious detail everything that has happened to them.
* Almost all animals have brains. The neuron as one of the earliest adaptations when animals branched off from other organisms. Even animals that don't have fully structured brains have nervous systems, networks of neurons that work together to process information. Plants on the other hand do not have brains. No plant evolved cells that can organize into networks to process information.
* As soon as animals developed neurons and nervous systems, the complexity of their actions exploded and developed at a remarkable rate. This happened because the neuron is the building block of a flexible system that evolution can use to program more and more complex information-processing algorithms.
* Bring smart is all about having the ability to extract deeper, more abstract information from the flood of data that comes into our senses. Instead of just reacting to the light, sounds, and smells that surround them, animals with sophisticated large brains respond to deep, abstract properties of the world that they are sensing.
* Remembering everything gets in the way of focusing on the deeper principles that allow us to recognize how a new situation resembles past situations and what kinds of actions will be effective.
* Storing details is often unnecessary to act effectively; a broad picture is generally all we need.
== 3: How We Think ==
* We are familiar with a huge number of mechanisms that produce effects.
* For each mechanism we're familiar with, we understand enough about how it works to know what must be true for the mechanism to have the effect we expect and what must be false for the mechanism not to have its effect.
* We're not good at everything. What we do excel at is reasoning about how the world works. We're gifted causal reasoners, and rats, as it happens, are too. What could be more useful if you're an animal who has evolved to operate in the world?
* We infer all kinds of things that we're not told and we don't observe directly.
* We may make inferences all the time, but those inferences are not based on textbook logic; they are based on the logic of causality.
* Rather than thinking in terms of propositional logic, the logic that tells us whether a statement is true or false, people think in terms of causal logic, the logic of causation that incorporates knowledge about how events actually come about in order to reach conclusions.
* Our ability to project our thoughts into the distant future is also a kind of causal reasonng.
* Predicting the effects of our actions on other people is sometimes hard, but again, we do it all the time, mostly successfully.
* Forward reasoning is thinking about how causes produce effects.
* Reasoning backward is reasoning from effects to causes. Doctors do it to diagnose the cause of symptoms and mechanics do it to diagnose what's wrong with your car.
* Backward reasoning from effect to cause may be hard, but it's also what makes humans special; it's not clear that any other organism has the capacity or interest to figure out the causes of what has happened.
* People don't worry about alternative causes when thinking about the likelihood of an effect given a cause.
* When reasoning diagnostically, from effect to cause, our respondents didn't neglect alternative alternative causes.
* Perhaps the most common way that people pass causal information to one another is by storytelling.
* One tale from the Bible discusses the root cause of everything, how the world was created. Many biblical stories tell us about the consequences of our actions and why, therefore, certain actions are right and other wrong.
* Fairy tales and urban legends tend to teach us about what we should avoid, what's dangerous, and how we determine who to trust. Stories about heroic acts tell us about the surprising extent of our own potential.
* A good story has a moral that applies jot just this world but also to other worlds that we might find ourselves in.
* Storytelling helps us to imagine how the world would be if something were different. This is clearest in science fiction.
* Thinking about alternative possible worlds is an important part of being human. It is called counterfactual thought, and you can see that it depends on our capacity to reason causally. Why do we do this? Why do we so naturally tell stories that require reasoning about counterfactual worlds? Perhaps the main motivation is that it allows us to consider alternative courses of action.
* Psychologists have proposed that stories make up our identities, both our individual identities and the identities of the groups we are a part of. We tell stories about the past - we reminisce and romanticize. We tell stories about the future - we predict and fantasize. And we tell stories about the present - we construct who we are and daydream. All of this is about identifying causes and foreseeing effects. How did we come to be? Where are we going? What actions should I take right now?
* Stories are about the causal relations in the world, however much we simplify them. So individuals need a cognitive system that can understand the causality inherent in whatever the story they are telling us about. We need a cognitive system that can understand what protagonists and antagonists want to achieve, how obstacles prevent achievement of those goals, and how those obstacles are overcome (or not, as the case may be). These are all causal notions involving agents trying to cause the world to be a certain way. It is no coincidence that storytelling, the most natural mode of human discourse, depends on the very sam resource - causal knowledge - that allows thinking to produce more effective action.
== 4: Why We Think What Isn't So ==
* Thought is full of guesswork and approximation.
* For the small range of conditions we encounter, shallow causal reasoning is all we need to get by.
* People excel at causal reasoning; we just tend to do it superficially outside our area of expertise.
* Intuition vs deliberation:
** Intuition provides answers that come to mind quickly, spontaneously, and effortlessly - An animal beginning with E? Elephant!
** Deliberation is when you're conscious not only of the response, but also how you got there. [but the example, of a hardish anagram, does not feel very deliberative to me - I feel I'm still using deliberation - It's just that I'm concentrating attention on the anagram for longer to force intuition to keep returning responses to me until the right one comes along]
*Intuitions and passions are not the same, but there is a close link between them.
*Sometimes the conclusions we come to intuitively - quickly and effortlessly - are overruled by conclusions that we come to more slowly and effortfully, via deliberation. Intuition leads to one conclusion, but deliberation makes us hesitate.
*In certain Hindu and yoga traditions, there are seven chakras:
**The first is lowest down and has to do with rooting the to the earth.
**The sacral chakra is slightly below the navel and is associated with sexuality and related entities and drives.
**The third is slightly above the navel and relates to fire.
**The fourth is near the heart and has to do with love.
**The fifth is in the throat and is related to communication
**The sixth, the Ajna chakra, is between the eyebrows. It is like a third eye and is associated with visual imagery and intuition, the thoughts that come automatically, shaped by unconscious processes.
**The seventh, the Sahaswara chakra is at the crown of the head and is associated with intelligence and consciousness - ie deliberation.
*A team of people cannot intuit together, but they can deliberate together.
*The illusion of explanatory depth is a product of the intuitive mind; we think about how things work automatically and effortlessly. But when we deliberate about our knowledge, our illusion is shattered.
*When asked a problem in the Cognitive Reflection Test, most people intuit the answer (wrongly). A small proportion of people check their intuitive answer, realize that it is wrong and then calculate the right answer. These reflective people tend to suppress their intuitive responses and deliberate before responding.
*More reflective people are more likely than less reflective people to prefer dark chocolate to milk chocolate. they are also less likely to believe in God. And they show less of an illusion of explanatory depth then less reflective people.
*Intuition gives us a simplified, coarse, and usually good enough analysis, and this gives us the illusion that we know a fair amount. But when we deliberate, we come to appreciate how complex things actually are, and this reveals to us how little we actually know.
*Unlike most people, highly reflective people crave detail. They like to explain things, so it is not far-fetched to assume that they explain things even before they are asked to. And anyone who does that will not suffer the illusion of explanatory depth.
== 5: Thinking with Our Bodies and the World ==
* The subsumption architecture conceives of intelligence as a grand hierarchy: High-level sophisticated tasks are performed by combing simpler skills that are in turn just organizations of even simpler skills. Sophisticated tasks get done not through exhaustive computation and planning but by engaging a hierarchy of actors in an organized way that, at the lowest level, are just responding directly to the environment.
* The assumption that the world is behaving normally gives people a giant crutch. It means that we don't have to remember everything because the information is stored in the world. If I need to know something, all I have to do is look at it. If I need to know what the sentence was at the top of the page, I don't have to remember it - I can just look at it again. The visual environment functions as a sort of outside.
* You're seeing only a tiny bit of the world at a time, but you know the rest is there, just not in your head.
* The world is acting as your memory.
* We feel like we have a model of our environment in our heads, a detailed representation of everything that is there. But we don't.
* Our cognition is unified with the objects that we're thinking about and with. When we make music, our thought about music and the music we make with our mouth or an instrument are part of the same process and highly interdependent.
* Mental activities do not simply occur in the brain. Rather, the brain is only one part of a processing system that also includes the body and other aspects of the world.
* The brain and the body and the external environment all work together to remember, reason, and make decisions. The knowledge is spread through the system, beyond just the brain. Thought does not take place on a stage inside the brain. Thought uses knowledge in the brain, the body, and the world more generally to support intelligent action. In other words, the mind is not in the brain. Rather, the brain is in the mind. The mind uses the brain and other things to process information.
== 6: Thinking with Other People ==
* When multiple cognitive systems work together, group intelligence can emerge that goes beyond what each individual is capable of.
* Before humans, success at hunting mandated superior physical abilities: strength, size, or speed. Then humans appeared with their ability to think and, quite suddenly, being as big as a bus provided scant protection.
* The mind did not evolve in the context of individuals sitting alone solving problems. It evolved in the context of group collaboration, and our thinking evolved interdependently, to operate in conjunction with the thinking of others. Much like a beehive, when each individual is master of a domain, the group intelligence that emerges is more than the sum of its parts.
* The social brain hypothesis attributes the increase in intelligence to the increasing size and complexity of hominid social groups.
* The ability to reason about other people's mental states is a critical talent for working together in large groups.
* Humans have an ability that no other machine or animal cognitive system does: Humans can share their attention with someone else. When humans interact with one another, they do not merely experience the same event; they also know they are experiencing the same event.
* Once we can share attention, we can share common ground. We know some things that we know others know, and we know that they know that we know, etc. The knowledge is not just distributed; it is shared. One knowledge is shared in this way, we can share intentionality; we can jointly pursue a common goal. A basic human talent is to share intentions with others so that we accomplish things collaboratively.
* Infants as young as fourteen months old can understand an adult's intention. Chimpanzees and other apes cannot at any age.
* Apes are sophisticated, but they cannot share a human's intention. An ape can follow a human's gaze to see what they are looking at but cannot understand that the human is pointing to an object that they were playing with together. They cannot attend to the object and understand that the human is attending to the same object.
* Human babies as young as nine months old use gesture to attract other people's attention so they can jointly attend to objects. In contrast, chimps and other apes gesture only as a way of manipulating others - telling others how to do things or to respond to requests. Humans gesture to get on the same wavelength as someone else; apes gesture to get things done
* Children want to engage for the sake of engagement; chimps cannot grasp the concept of engagement. What distinguishes people is their ability - even their need - to jointly attend with other people to what they are doing. People are built to collaborate.
* People naturally divide up cognitive labor, often without thinking about it.
* Individuals made less of an effort to remember items when their partners' area of expertise included that item. In other words, each partner deferred to the other's expertise to store and recall the items relevant to that expertise. People tend to remember what they have to within a particular community to best make their contribution to the division of cognitive labor. We rely on experts to remember everything else.
* Individual thinking and group thinking are so intertwined, it's hard to keep track of the boundaries.
* Merely knowing that knowledge is available in the community makes people feel knowledgeable.
* My ability to act doesn't depend on the knowledge that happens to be in my head at a given moment; it depends on what knowledge I can access when I need it.
* My knowledge has to be full of pointers and placeholders rather than just facts.
* When I say "the Sphinx" to other English speakers, I assume we are talking about the same thing even though they may know as little about it as I do. So my knowledge of the Sphinx is really just a placeholder that says this is where the Sphinx resides. My knowledge about Egypt is choc-full of pointers like this that tell me that the details are elsewhere.
* What's amazing about people is that, at least when we agree, we're gesturing toward the same little piece of the world even though we have different scraps of information about it. And this leads to the second property of communal knowledge; The different bits of knowledge that different members of the community have must be compatible. We may not all always agree entirely, and in many case we don't, but we have to at least be thinking about related things or the division of cognitive labor would fall apart.
* Nothing is completely within our conceptual grasp.
* The knowledge illusion occurs because we live in a community of knowledge and we fail to distinguish the knowledge that is in our heads from the knowledge outside of it.
* A lot of human understanding consists simply of awareness that the knowledge is out there. Sophisticated understanding usually consists of knowing where to find it. Only the truly erudite actually have the knowledge available in their own memories.
* The curse of knowledge is that we tend to think what is in our heads is in the heads of others. In the knowledge illusion, we tend to think what is in others' heads is in our heads. In both cases, we fail to discern who knows what.
== 7: Thinking with Technology ==
* At each step in human evolution, tools, culture, cognition, and genes changed together to create a new balance that gave our ancestors more power to alter the environment to their liking.
* Humans are made for technological change. Our bodies and brains are designed to incorporate new tools into our activities as if they were extensions of our bodies.
== 8: Thinking About Science ==
* Our beliefs are not isolated pieces of data that we can take and discard at will. Instead, beliefs are deeply intertwined with other beliefs, shared cultural values, and our identities. To discard a belief often means discarding a whole host of other beliefs, forsaking our communities, going against those we trust and love, and in short, challenging our identities. According to this view, is it any wonder that providing people with a little information about GMOs, vaccines, evolution, or global warming has little impact on their beliefs and attitudes? The power that culture has over cognition just swamps these attempts at education.
* We typically don't know enough individually to form knowledgeable, nuanced views about new technologies and scientific developments. We simply have no choice but to adopt the positions of those we trust. Our attitudes and those of the people around us thus become mutually reinforcing. And the fact that we have a strong opinion makes us think that there must be a firm basis for our opinion, so we think we know a lot, more than in fact we do.
== 9: Thinking About Politics ==
* Just as people overrate their own understanding of toilets and can openers, they also overrate their understanding of political policies.
* If a polarized group are asked to explain a policy, their positions tend to converge.
== 10: The New Definition of Smart ==
* Our tendency to mentally substitute individuals for complicated entities can be seen in how we talk about institutions (MLK for civil rights, Obama for the ACA, etc).
* Human memory is finite and human reasoning is limited. Students of history can understand only so much. As a result, we tend to simplify. One way we simplify is through hero worship, but conflating significant individuals with the community of knowledge they represent. Instead of understanding the enormous complexity that goes along with multiple people pursuing multiple aims and trying to remember all of it - an impossible task - we wrap events up into a little ball and associate them with a single individual. Not only does that allow us to ignore vast amounts of gory detail, but also it allows us to tell a story. The story of the great individual's life becomes a surrogate for the complex web of interpersonal relationships and events that constitute a community. We do it when we think about politics, entertainment, and science. We substitute individual stories for the truth.
* Fluid intelligence is the ability to come to conclusions quickly whatever the topic and is able to figure new things out
* Crystallized intelligence refers to how much information one has at one's disposal stored in memory. It includes the size of one's vocabulary and one's access to general knowledge.
* One theory breaks intelligence down into three separate skills:
** Language ability
** The speed and ability to perceive the world accurately, and the ability to perceive the world accurately.
** The ability to manipulate spatial images in one's head.
*Another theory argues for eight dimensions:
**Linguistic
**Logical-mathematical
**Spatial
**Musical
**Naturalist
**Bodily kinesthetic
**Interpersonal
**Intrapersonal
*Another theory argues that intelligence reflects people's ability to formulate and attain their own goals, using the abilities to:
**Generate novel and creative ideas
**Analytic skills
**Practical skills
**Skills related to wisdom that help to achieve a common good through the infusion of positive ethical values.
*It turns out that as long as you measure performance on a wide enough variety of mental abilities, the test you choose doesn't really matter.
*It turns out that the best racetrack gamblers, IQ was not even related to the complexity of the process they used to make their decisions.
*An effective group doesn't need a lot of people with high g scores; it needs a balance of people with different skills.
== 11: Making People Smart ==
* People are primarily designed for action, not for listening to lectures, not for manipulating symbols, and not for memorizing facts.
* The illusion of comprehension arises because people confuse understanding with familiarity or recognition.
* An important part of an education consists of learning whether a claim is plausible, who would know, and whether that person is likely to tell the truth.
== 12: Making Smarter Decisions ==
* Most of us are explanation foes - We want a little explanatory detail, but not too much.
* Some people are explanation fiends - They try to master all the details before making a choice.
* The marketplace is set up to take advantage of explanation foes' abhorrence of detail. Most advertising relies on the vaguest of justifications.
* Most of us are explanation foes. Our lives are filled with situations where we are confronted with things we don't really understand. Sometimes we don't even realize there are gaps in our understanding. Even when we do, we are often too uninterested or embarrassed to ask for help.
* Buying a mortgage is perhaps the most consequential financial decision most of us will ever make. The community of knowledge makes us feel like we understand more deeply than we do, and this gives us the necessary confidence to make this complicated decision.
* The nudge approach - It is easier and more effective to change the environment than it is to change the person. And once we understand what quirks of cognition drive behavior, we can design the environment so that those quirks help us instead of hurt us.
* Knowing what you don't know allows you to get help and fill in the gaps when the need arises.
== Conclusion: Appraising Ignorance and Illusion ==
* -

The Knowledge Illusion

2026-09-09T11:37:42Z

Robert.adlington: /* 10: The New Definition of Smart */

== Introduction: Ignorance and the Community of Knowledge ==
* In fact, most knowledge is little more than a bunch of associations, high-level links between objects or people that aren't broken down into detailed stories.
* The ability to think vastly increases the effectiveness of action. In that sense, thought is an extension of action.
* Our thought processes, our language, and our emotions are all designed to engage causal reasoning to help us to act in reasonable ways.
* Thought is masterful at extracting only what it needs and filtering out everything else.
* The mind is not built to acquire details about every individual object or situation. We learn from experience so that we can generalize to new objects and situations. The ability to act in a new context requires understanding only the deep regularities in the way the world works, not the superficial details.
* The study of the mind cannot be reduced to the study of the brain. Cognitive science is not the same as neuroscience.
== 1: What We Know ==
* This is the illusion of explanatory depth. Before trying to explain something (eg, how a toilet works, or how a bike's parts fit together), people feel they have a reasonable level of understanding; after explaining, they don't.
* Human beings are not warehouses of knowledge.
* Most of cognition consists of intuitive thought that occurs below the surface of consciousness. It involves processing huge quantities of information in parallel. When people search for a word, for example, we don't consider one word at a time sequentially. Instead, we search our entire lexicon - our mental dictionary - simultaneously, and the word we're looking for usually rises to the top. That's not the kind of computation that von Neumann and Turing had in mind in the early days of computer science and cognitive science.
* Looking closer at things (is like zooming in on a fractal) just raises more questions. There is always more to understand.
* Adults forget how complex things are and decide to just stop asking questions. Because we are not conscious that we have made this decision to stop probing, we end up thinking we understand how things work more deeply than we do.
== 2: Why We Think ==
* Hyperthymesia, highly superior autobiographical memory, is extremely rare, affecting only a handful of people, who can remember in copious detail everything that has happened to them.
* Almost all animals have brains. The neuron as one of the earliest adaptations when animals branched off from other organisms. Even animals that don't have fully structured brains have nervous systems, networks of neurons that work together to process information. Plants on the other hand do not have brains. No plant evolved cells that can organize into networks to process information.
* As soon as animals developed neurons and nervous systems, the complexity of their actions exploded and developed at a remarkable rate. This happened because the neuron is the building block of a flexible system that evolution can use to program more and more complex information-processing algorithms.
* Bring smart is all about having the ability to extract deeper, more abstract information from the flood of data that comes into our senses. Instead of just reacting to the light, sounds, and smells that surround them, animals with sophisticated large brains respond to deep, abstract properties of the world that they are sensing.
* Remembering everything gets in the way of focusing on the deeper principles that allow us to recognize how a new situation resembles past situations and what kinds of actions will be effective.
* Storing details is often unnecessary to act effectively; a broad picture is generally all we need.
== 3: How We Think ==
* We are familiar with a huge number of mechanisms that produce effects.
* For each mechanism we're familiar with, we understand enough about how it works to know what must be true for the mechanism to have the effect we expect and what must be false for the mechanism not to have its effect.
* We're not good at everything. What we do excel at is reasoning about how the world works. We're gifted causal reasoners, and rats, as it happens, are too. What could be more useful if you're an animal who has evolved to operate in the world?
* We infer all kinds of things that we're not told and we don't observe directly.
* We may make inferences all the time, but those inferences are not based on textbook logic; they are based on the logic of causality.
* Rather than thinking in terms of propositional logic, the logic that tells us whether a statement is true or false, people think in terms of causal logic, the logic of causation that incorporates knowledge about how events actually come about in order to reach conclusions.
* Our ability to project our thoughts into the distant future is also a kind of causal reasonng.
* Predicting the effects of our actions on other people is sometimes hard, but again, we do it all the time, mostly successfully.
* Forward reasoning is thinking about how causes produce effects.
* Reasoning backward is reasoning from effects to causes. Doctors do it to diagnose the cause of symptoms and mechanics do it to diagnose what's wrong with your car.
* Backward reasoning from effect to cause may be hard, but it's also what makes humans special; it's not clear that any other organism has the capacity or interest to figure out the causes of what has happened.
* People don't worry about alternative causes when thinking about the likelihood of an effect given a cause.
* When reasoning diagnostically, from effect to cause, our respondents didn't neglect alternative alternative causes.
* Perhaps the most common way that people pass causal information to one another is by storytelling.
* One tale from the Bible discusses the root cause of everything, how the world was created. Many biblical stories tell us about the consequences of our actions and why, therefore, certain actions are right and other wrong.
* Fairy tales and urban legends tend to teach us about what we should avoid, what's dangerous, and how we determine who to trust. Stories about heroic acts tell us about the surprising extent of our own potential.
* A good story has a moral that applies jot just this world but also to other worlds that we might find ourselves in.
* Storytelling helps us to imagine how the world would be if something were different. This is clearest in science fiction.
* Thinking about alternative possible worlds is an important part of being human. It is called counterfactual thought, and you can see that it depends on our capacity to reason causally. Why do we do this? Why do we so naturally tell stories that require reasoning about counterfactual worlds? Perhaps the main motivation is that it allows us to consider alternative courses of action.
* Psychologists have proposed that stories make up our identities, both our individual identities and the identities of the groups we are a part of. We tell stories about the past - we reminisce and romanticize. We tell stories about the future - we predict and fantasize. And we tell stories about the present - we construct who we are and daydream. All of this is about identifying causes and foreseeing effects. How did we come to be? Where are we going? What actions should I take right now?
* Stories are about the causal relations in the world, however much we simplify them. So individuals need a cognitive system that can understand the causality inherent in whatever the story they are telling us about. We need a cognitive system that can understand what protagonists and antagonists want to achieve, how obstacles prevent achievement of those goals, and how those obstacles are overcome (or not, as the case may be). These are all causal notions involving agents trying to cause the world to be a certain way. It is no coincidence that storytelling, the most natural mode of human discourse, depends on the very sam resource - causal knowledge - that allows thinking to produce more effective action.
== 4: Why We Think What Isn't So ==
* Thought is full of guesswork and approximation.
* For the small range of conditions we encounter, shallow causal reasoning is all we need to get by.
* People excel at causal reasoning; we just tend to do it superficially outside our area of expertise.
* Intuition vs deliberation:
** Intuition provides answers that come to mind quickly, spontaneously, and effortlessly - An animal beginning with E? Elephant!
** Deliberation is when you're conscious not only of the response, but also how you got there. [but the example, of a hardish anagram, does not feel very deliberative to me - I feel I'm still using deliberation - It's just that I'm concentrating attention on the anagram for longer to force intuition to keep returning responses to me until the right one comes along]
*Intuitions and passions are not the same, but there is a close link between them.
*Sometimes the conclusions we come to intuitively - quickly and effortlessly - are overruled by conclusions that we come to more slowly and effortfully, via deliberation. Intuition leads to one conclusion, but deliberation makes us hesitate.
*In certain Hindu and yoga traditions, there are seven chakras:
**The first is lowest down and has to do with rooting the to the earth.
**The sacral chakra is slightly below the navel and is associated with sexuality and related entities and drives.
**The third is slightly above the navel and relates to fire.
**The fourth is near the heart and has to do with love.
**The fifth is in the throat and is related to communication
**The sixth, the Ajna chakra, is between the eyebrows. It is like a third eye and is associated with visual imagery and intuition, the thoughts that come automatically, shaped by unconscious processes.
**The seventh, the Sahaswara chakra is at the crown of the head and is associated with intelligence and consciousness - ie deliberation.
*A team of people cannot intuit together, but they can deliberate together.
*The illusion of explanatory depth is a product of the intuitive mind; we think about how things work automatically and effortlessly. But when we deliberate about our knowledge, our illusion is shattered.
*When asked a problem in the Cognitive Reflection Test, most people intuit the answer (wrongly). A small proportion of people check their intuitive answer, realize that it is wrong and then calculate the right answer. These reflective people tend to suppress their intuitive responses and deliberate before responding.
*More reflective people are more likely than less reflective people to prefer dark chocolate to milk chocolate. they are also less likely to believe in God. And they show less of an illusion of explanatory depth then less reflective people.
*Intuition gives us a simplified, coarse, and usually good enough analysis, and this gives us the illusion that we know a fair amount. But when we deliberate, we come to appreciate how complex things actually are, and this reveals to us how little we actually know.
*Unlike most people, highly reflective people crave detail. They like to explain things, so it is not far-fetched to assume that they explain things even before they are asked to. And anyone who does that will not suffer the illusion of explanatory depth.
== 5: Thinking with Our Bodies and the World ==
* The subsumption architecture conceives of intelligence as a grand hierarchy: High-level sophisticated tasks are performed by combing simpler skills that are in turn just organizations of even simpler skills. Sophisticated tasks get done not through exhaustive computation and planning but by engaging a hierarchy of actors in an organized way that, at the lowest level, are just responding directly to the environment.
* The assumption that the world is behaving normally gives people a giant crutch. It means that we don't have to remember everything because the information is stored in the world. If I need to know something, all I have to do is look at it. If I need to know what the sentence was at the top of the page, I don't have to remember it - I can just look at it again. The visual environment functions as a sort of outside.
* You're seeing only a tiny bit of the world at a time, but you know the rest is there, just not in your head.
* The world is acting as your memory.
* We feel like we have a model of our environment in our heads, a detailed representation of everything that is there. But we don't.
* Our cognition is unified with the objects that we're thinking about and with. When we make music, our thought about music and the music we make with our mouth or an instrument are part of the same process and highly interdependent.
* Mental activities do not simply occur in the brain. Rather, the brain is only one part of a processing system that also includes the body and other aspects of the world.
* The brain and the body and the external environment all work together to remember, reason, and make decisions. The knowledge is spread through the system, beyond just the brain. Thought does not take place on a stage inside the brain. Thought uses knowledge in the brain, the body, and the world more generally to support intelligent action. In other words, the mind is not in the brain. Rather, the brain is in the mind. The mind uses the brain and other things to process information.
== 6: Thinking with Other People ==
* When multiple cognitive systems work together, group intelligence can emerge that goes beyond what each individual is capable of.
* Before humans, success at hunting mandated superior physical abilities: strength, size, or speed. Then humans appeared with their ability to think and, quite suddenly, being as big as a bus provided scant protection.
* The mind did not evolve in the context of individuals sitting alone solving problems. It evolved in the context of group collaboration, and our thinking evolved interdependently, to operate in conjunction with the thinking of others. Much like a beehive, when each individual is master of a domain, the group intelligence that emerges is more than the sum of its parts.
* The social brain hypothesis attributes the increase in intelligence to the increasing size and complexity of hominid social groups.
* The ability to reason about other people's mental states is a critical talent for working together in large groups.
* Humans have an ability that no other machine or animal cognitive system does: Humans can share their attention with someone else. When humans interact with one another, they do not merely experience the same event; they also know they are experiencing the same event.
* Once we can share attention, we can share common ground. We know some things that we know others know, and we know that they know that we know, etc. The knowledge is not just distributed; it is shared. One knowledge is shared in this way, we can share intentionality; we can jointly pursue a common goal. A basic human talent is to share intentions with others so that we accomplish things collaboratively.
* Infants as young as fourteen months old can understand an adult's intention. Chimpanzees and other apes cannot at any age.
* Apes are sophisticated, but they cannot share a human's intention. An ape can follow a human's gaze to see what they are looking at but cannot understand that the human is pointing to an object that they were playing with together. They cannot attend to the object and understand that the human is attending to the same object.
* Human babies as young as nine months old use gesture to attract other people's attention so they can jointly attend to objects. In contrast, chimps and other apes gesture only as a way of manipulating others - telling others how to do things or to respond to requests. Humans gesture to get on the same wavelength as someone else; apes gesture to get things done
* Children want to engage for the sake of engagement; chimps cannot grasp the concept of engagement. What distinguishes people is their ability - even their need - to jointly attend with other people to what they are doing. People are built to collaborate.
* People naturally divide up cognitive labor, often without thinking about it.
* Individuals made less of an effort to remember items when their partners' area of expertise included that item. In other words, each partner deferred to the other's expertise to store and recall the items relevant to that expertise. People tend to remember what they have to within a particular community to best make their contribution to the division of cognitive labor. We rely on experts to remember everything else.
* Individual thinking and group thinking are so intertwined, it's hard to keep track of the boundaries.
* Merely knowing that knowledge is available in the community makes people feel knowledgeable.
* My ability to act doesn't depend on the knowledge that happens to be in my head at a given moment; it depends on what knowledge I can access when I need it.
* My knowledge has to be full of pointers and placeholders rather than just facts.
* When I say "the Sphinx" to other English speakers, I assume we are talking about the same thing even though they may know as little about it as I do. So my knowledge of the Sphinx is really just a placeholder that says this is where the Sphinx resides. My knowledge about Egypt is choc-full of pointers like this that tell me that the details are elsewhere.
* What's amazing about people is that, at least when we agree, we're gesturing toward the same little piece of the world even though we have different scraps of information about it. And this leads to the second property of communal knowledge; The different bits of knowledge that different members of the community have must be compatible. We may not all always agree entirely, and in many case we don't, but we have to at least be thinking about related things or the division of cognitive labor would fall apart.
* Nothing is completely within our conceptual grasp.
* The knowledge illusion occurs because we live in a community of knowledge and we fail to distinguish the knowledge that is in our heads from the knowledge outside of it.
* A lot of human understanding consists simply of awareness that the knowledge is out there. Sophisticated understanding usually consists of knowing where to find it. Only the truly erudite actually have the knowledge available in their own memories.
* The curse of knowledge is that we tend to think what is in our heads is in the heads of others. In the knowledge illusion, we tend to think what is in others' heads is in our heads. In both cases, we fail to discern who knows what.
== 7: Thinking with Technology ==
* At each step in human evolution, tools, culture, cognition, and genes changed together to create a new balance that gave our ancestors more power to alter the environment to their liking.
* Humans are made for technological change. Our bodies and brains are designed to incorporate new tools into our activities as if they were extensions of our bodies.
== 8: Thinking About Science ==
* Our beliefs are not isolated pieces of data that we can take and discard at will. Instead, beliefs are deeply intertwined with other beliefs, shared cultural values, and our identities. To discard a belief often means discarding a whole host of other beliefs, forsaking our communities, going against those we trust and love, and in short, challenging our identities. According to this view, is it any wonder that providing people with a little information about GMOs, vaccines, evolution, or global warming has little impact on their beliefs and attitudes? The power that culture has over cognition just swamps these attempts at education.
* We typically don't know enough individually to form knowledgeable, nuanced views about new technologies and scientific developments. We simply have no choice but to adopt the positions of those we trust. Our attitudes and those of the people around us thus become mutually reinforcing. And the fact that we have a strong opinion makes us think that there must be a firm basis for our opinion, so we think we know a lot, more than in fact we do.
== 9: Thinking About Politics ==
* Just as people overrate their own understanding of toilets and can openers, they also overrate their understanding of political policies.
* If a polarized group are asked to explain a policy, their positions tend to converge.
== 10: The New Definition of Smart ==
* Our tendency to mentally substitute individuals for complicated entities can be seen in how we talk about institutions (MLK for civil rights, Obama for the ACA, etc).
* Human memory is finite and human reasoning is limited. Students of history can understand only so much. As a result, we tend to simplify. One way we simplify is through hero worship, but conflating significant individuals with the community of knowledge they represent. Instead of understanding the enormous complexity that goes along with multiple people pursuing multiple aims and trying to remember all of it - an impossible task - we wrap events up into a little ball and associate them with a single individual. Not only does that allow us to ignore vast amounts of gory detail, but also it allows us to tell a story. The story of the great individual's life becomes a surrogate for the complex web of interpersonal relationships and events that constitute a community. We do it when we think about politics, entertainment, and science. We substitute individual stories for the truth.
* Fluid intelligence is the ability to come to conclusions quickly whatever the topic and is able to figure new things out
* Crystallized intelligence refers to how much information one has at one's disposal stored in memory. It includes the size of one's vocabulary and one's access to general knowledge.
* One theory breaks intelligence down into three separate skills:
** Language ability
** The speed and ability to perceive the world accurately, and the ability to perceive the world accurately.
** The ability to manipulate spatial images in one's head.
*Another theory argues for eight dimensions:
**Linguistic
**Logical-mathematical
**Spatial
**Musical
**Naturalist
**Bodily kinesthetic
**Interpersonal
**Intrapersonal
*Another theory argues that intelligence reflects people's ability to formulate and attain their own goals, using the abilities to:
**Generate novel and creative ideas
**Analytic skills
**Practical skills
**Skills related to wisdom that help to achieve a common good through the infusion of positive ethical values.
== 11: Making People Smart ==
* -
== 12: Making Smarter Decisions ==
* -
== Conclusion: Appraising Ignorance and Illusion ==
* -

The Knowledge Illusion

2026-09-08T20:07:36Z

Robert.adlington: /* 6: Thinking with Other People */

== Introduction: Ignorance and the Community of Knowledge ==
* In fact, most knowledge is little more than a bunch of associations, high-level links between objects or people that aren't broken down into detailed stories.
* The ability to think vastly increases the effectiveness of action. In that sense, thought is an extension of action.
* Our thought processes, our language, and our emotions are all designed to engage causal reasoning to help us to act in reasonable ways.
* Thought is masterful at extracting only what it needs and filtering out everything else.
* The mind is not built to acquire details about every individual object or situation. We learn from experience so that we can generalize to new objects and situations. The ability to act in a new context requires understanding only the deep regularities in the way the world works, not the superficial details.
* The study of the mind cannot be reduced to the study of the brain. Cognitive science is not the same as neuroscience.
== 1: What We Know ==
* This is the illusion of explanatory depth. Before trying to explain something (eg, how a toilet works, or how a bike's parts fit together), people feel they have a reasonable level of understanding; after explaining, they don't.
* Human beings are not warehouses of knowledge.
* Most of cognition consists of intuitive thought that occurs below the surface of consciousness. It involves processing huge quantities of information in parallel. When people search for a word, for example, we don't consider one word at a time sequentially. Instead, we search our entire lexicon - our mental dictionary - simultaneously, and the word we're looking for usually rises to the top. That's not the kind of computation that von Neumann and Turing had in mind in the early days of computer science and cognitive science.
* Looking closer at things (is like zooming in on a fractal) just raises more questions. There is always more to understand.
* Adults forget how complex things are and decide to just stop asking questions. Because we are not conscious that we have made this decision to stop probing, we end up thinking we understand how things work more deeply than we do.
== 2: Why We Think ==
* Hyperthymesia, highly superior autobiographical memory, is extremely rare, affecting only a handful of people, who can remember in copious detail everything that has happened to them.
* Almost all animals have brains. The neuron as one of the earliest adaptations when animals branched off from other organisms. Even animals that don't have fully structured brains have nervous systems, networks of neurons that work together to process information. Plants on the other hand do not have brains. No plant evolved cells that can organize into networks to process information.
* As soon as animals developed neurons and nervous systems, the complexity of their actions exploded and developed at a remarkable rate. This happened because the neuron is the building block of a flexible system that evolution can use to program more and more complex information-processing algorithms.
* Bring smart is all about having the ability to extract deeper, more abstract information from the flood of data that comes into our senses. Instead of just reacting to the light, sounds, and smells that surround them, animals with sophisticated large brains respond to deep, abstract properties of the world that they are sensing.
* Remembering everything gets in the way of focusing on the deeper principles that allow us to recognize how a new situation resembles past situations and what kinds of actions will be effective.
* Storing details is often unnecessary to act effectively; a broad picture is generally all we need.
== 3: How We Think ==
* We are familiar with a huge number of mechanisms that produce effects.
* For each mechanism we're familiar with, we understand enough about how it works to know what must be true for the mechanism to have the effect we expect and what must be false for the mechanism not to have its effect.
* We're not good at everything. What we do excel at is reasoning about how the world works. We're gifted causal reasoners, and rats, as it happens, are too. What could be more useful if you're an animal who has evolved to operate in the world?
* We infer all kinds of things that we're not told and we don't observe directly.
* We may make inferences all the time, but those inferences are not based on textbook logic; they are based on the logic of causality.
* Rather than thinking in terms of propositional logic, the logic that tells us whether a statement is true or false, people think in terms of causal logic, the logic of causation that incorporates knowledge about how events actually come about in order to reach conclusions.
* Our ability to project our thoughts into the distant future is also a kind of causal reasonng.
* Predicting the effects of our actions on other people is sometimes hard, but again, we do it all the time, mostly successfully.
* Forward reasoning is thinking about how causes produce effects.
* Reasoning backward is reasoning from effects to causes. Doctors do it to diagnose the cause of symptoms and mechanics do it to diagnose what's wrong with your car.
* Backward reasoning from effect to cause may be hard, but it's also what makes humans special; it's not clear that any other organism has the capacity or interest to figure out the causes of what has happened.
* People don't worry about alternative causes when thinking about the likelihood of an effect given a cause.
* When reasoning diagnostically, from effect to cause, our respondents didn't neglect alternative alternative causes.
* Perhaps the most common way that people pass causal information to one another is by storytelling.
* One tale from the Bible discusses the root cause of everything, how the world was created. Many biblical stories tell us about the consequences of our actions and why, therefore, certain actions are right and other wrong.
* Fairy tales and urban legends tend to teach us about what we should avoid, what's dangerous, and how we determine who to trust. Stories about heroic acts tell us about the surprising extent of our own potential.
* A good story has a moral that applies jot just this world but also to other worlds that we might find ourselves in.
* Storytelling helps us to imagine how the world would be if something were different. This is clearest in science fiction.
* Thinking about alternative possible worlds is an important part of being human. It is called counterfactual thought, and you can see that it depends on our capacity to reason causally. Why do we do this? Why do we so naturally tell stories that require reasoning about counterfactual worlds? Perhaps the main motivation is that it allows us to consider alternative courses of action.
* Psychologists have proposed that stories make up our identities, both our individual identities and the identities of the groups we are a part of. We tell stories about the past - we reminisce and romanticize. We tell stories about the future - we predict and fantasize. And we tell stories about the present - we construct who we are and daydream. All of this is about identifying causes and foreseeing effects. How did we come to be? Where are we going? What actions should I take right now?
* Stories are about the causal relations in the world, however much we simplify them. So individuals need a cognitive system that can understand the causality inherent in whatever the story they are telling us about. We need a cognitive system that can understand what protagonists and antagonists want to achieve, how obstacles prevent achievement of those goals, and how those obstacles are overcome (or not, as the case may be). These are all causal notions involving agents trying to cause the world to be a certain way. It is no coincidence that storytelling, the most natural mode of human discourse, depends on the very sam resource - causal knowledge - that allows thinking to produce more effective action.
== 4: Why We Think What Isn't So ==
* Thought is full of guesswork and approximation.
* For the small range of conditions we encounter, shallow causal reasoning is all we need to get by.
* People excel at causal reasoning; we just tend to do it superficially outside our area of expertise.
* Intuition vs deliberation:
** Intuition provides answers that come to mind quickly, spontaneously, and effortlessly - An animal beginning with E? Elephant!
** Deliberation is when you're conscious not only of the response, but also how you got there. [but the example, of a hardish anagram, does not feel very deliberative to me - I feel I'm still using deliberation - It's just that I'm concentrating attention on the anagram for longer to force intuition to keep returning responses to me until the right one comes along]
*Intuitions and passions are not the same, but there is a close link between them.
*Sometimes the conclusions we come to intuitively - quickly and effortlessly - are overruled by conclusions that we come to more slowly and effortfully, via deliberation. Intuition leads to one conclusion, but deliberation makes us hesitate.
*In certain Hindu and yoga traditions, there are seven chakras:
**The first is lowest down and has to do with rooting the to the earth.
**The sacral chakra is slightly below the navel and is associated with sexuality and related entities and drives.
**The third is slightly above the navel and relates to fire.
**The fourth is near the heart and has to do with love.
**The fifth is in the throat and is related to communication
**The sixth, the Ajna chakra, is between the eyebrows. It is like a third eye and is associated with visual imagery and intuition, the thoughts that come automatically, shaped by unconscious processes.
**The seventh, the Sahaswara chakra is at the crown of the head and is associated with intelligence and consciousness - ie deliberation.
*A team of people cannot intuit together, but they can deliberate together.
*The illusion of explanatory depth is a product of the intuitive mind; we think about how things work automatically and effortlessly. But when we deliberate about our knowledge, our illusion is shattered.
*When asked a problem in the Cognitive Reflection Test, most people intuit the answer (wrongly). A small proportion of people check their intuitive answer, realize that it is wrong and then calculate the right answer. These reflective people tend to suppress their intuitive responses and deliberate before responding.
*More reflective people are more likely than less reflective people to prefer dark chocolate to milk chocolate. they are also less likely to believe in God. And they show less of an illusion of explanatory depth then less reflective people.
*Intuition gives us a simplified, coarse, and usually good enough analysis, and this gives us the illusion that we know a fair amount. But when we deliberate, we come to appreciate how complex things actually are, and this reveals to us how little we actually know.
*Unlike most people, highly reflective people crave detail. They like to explain things, so it is not far-fetched to assume that they explain things even before they are asked to. And anyone who does that will not suffer the illusion of explanatory depth.
== 5: Thinking with Our Bodies and the World ==
* The subsumption architecture conceives of intelligence as a grand hierarchy: High-level sophisticated tasks are performed by combing simpler skills that are in turn just organizations of even simpler skills. Sophisticated tasks get done not through exhaustive computation and planning but by engaging a hierarchy of actors in an organized way that, at the lowest level, are just responding directly to the environment.
* The assumption that the world is behaving normally gives people a giant crutch. It means that we don't have to remember everything because the information is stored in the world. If I need to know something, all I have to do is look at it. If I need to know what the sentence was at the top of the page, I don't have to remember it - I can just look at it again. The visual environment functions as a sort of outside.
* You're seeing only a tiny bit of the world at a time, but you know the rest is there, just not in your head.
* The world is acting as your memory.
* We feel like we have a model of our environment in our heads, a detailed representation of everything that is there. But we don't.
* Our cognition is unified with the objects that we're thinking about and with. When we make music, our thought about music and the music we make with our mouth or an instrument are part of the same process and highly interdependent.
* Mental activities do not simply occur in the brain. Rather, the brain is only one part of a processing system that also includes the body and other aspects of the world.
* The brain and the body and the external environment all work together to remember, reason, and make decisions. The knowledge is spread through the system, beyond just the brain. Thought does not take place on a stage inside the brain. Thought uses knowledge in the brain, the body, and the world more generally to support intelligent action. In other words, the mind is not in the brain. Rather, the brain is in the mind. The mind uses the brain and other things to process information.
== 6: Thinking with Other People ==
* When multiple cognitive systems work together, group intelligence can emerge that goes beyond what each individual is capable of.
* Before humans, success at hunting mandated superior physical abilities: strength, size, or speed. Then humans appeared with their ability to think and, quite suddenly, being as big as a bus provided scant protection.
* The mind did not evolve in the context of individuals sitting alone solving problems. It evolved in the context of group collaboration, and our thinking evolved interdependently, to operate in conjunction with the thinking of others. Much like a beehive, when each individual is master of a domain, the group intelligence that emerges is more than the sum of its parts.
* The social brain hypothesis attributes the increase in intelligence to the increasing size and complexity of hominid social groups.
* The ability to reason about other people's mental states is a critical talent for working together in large groups.
* Humans have an ability that no other machine or animal cognitive system does: Humans can share their attention with someone else. When humans interact with one another, they do not merely experience the same event; they also know they are experiencing the same event.
* Once we can share attention, we can share common ground. We know some things that we know others know, and we know that they know that we know, etc. The knowledge is not just distributed; it is shared. One knowledge is shared in this way, we can share intentionality; we can jointly pursue a common goal. A basic human talent is to share intentions with others so that we accomplish things collaboratively.
* Infants as young as fourteen months old can understand an adult's intention. Chimpanzees and other apes cannot at any age.
* Apes are sophisticated, but they cannot share a human's intention. An ape can follow a human's gaze to see what they are looking at but cannot understand that the human is pointing to an object that they were playing with together. They cannot attend to the object and understand that the human is attending to the same object.
* Human babies as young as nine months old use gesture to attract other people's attention so they can jointly attend to objects. In contrast, chimps and other apes gesture only as a way of manipulating others - telling others how to do things or to respond to requests. Humans gesture to get on the same wavelength as someone else; apes gesture to get things done
* Children want to engage for the sake of engagement; chimps cannot grasp the concept of engagement. What distinguishes people is their ability - even their need - to jointly attend with other people to what they are doing. People are built to collaborate.
* People naturally divide up cognitive labor, often without thinking about it.
* Individuals made less of an effort to remember items when their partners' area of expertise included that item. In other words, each partner deferred to the other's expertise to store and recall the items relevant to that expertise. People tend to remember what they have to within a particular community to best make their contribution to the division of cognitive labor. We rely on experts to remember everything else.
* Individual thinking and group thinking are so intertwined, it's hard to keep track of the boundaries.
* Merely knowing that knowledge is available in the community makes people feel knowledgeable.
* My ability to act doesn't depend on the knowledge that happens to be in my head at a given moment; it depends on what knowledge I can access when I need it.
* My knowledge has to be full of pointers and placeholders rather than just facts.
* When I say "the Sphinx" to other English speakers, I assume we are talking about the same thing even though they may know as little about it as I do. So my knowledge of the Sphinx is really just a placeholder that says this is where the Sphinx resides. My knowledge about Egypt is choc-full of pointers like this that tell me that the details are elsewhere.
* What's amazing about people is that, at least when we agree, we're gesturing toward the same little piece of the world even though we have different scraps of information about it. And this leads to the second property of communal knowledge; The different bits of knowledge that different members of the community have must be compatible. We may not all always agree entirely, and in many case we don't, but we have to at least be thinking about related things or the division of cognitive labor would fall apart.
* Nothing is completely within our conceptual grasp.
* The knowledge illusion occurs because we live in a community of knowledge and we fail to distinguish the knowledge that is in our heads from the knowledge outside of it.
* A lot of human understanding consists simply of awareness that the knowledge is out there. Sophisticated understanding usually consists of knowing where to find it. Only the truly erudite actually have the knowledge available in their own memories.
* The curse of knowledge is that we tend to think what is in our heads is in the heads of others. In the knowledge illusion, we tend to think what is in others' heads is in our heads. In both cases, we fail to discern who knows what.
== 7: Thinking with Technology ==
* At each step in human evolution, tools, culture, cognition, and genes changed together to create a new balance that gave our ancestors more power to alter the environment to their liking.
* Humans are made for technological change. Our bodies and brains are designed to incorporate new tools into our activities as if they were extensions of our bodies.
== 8: Thinking About Science ==
* Our beliefs are not isolated pieces of data that we can take and discard at will. Instead, beliefs are deeply intertwined with other beliefs, shared cultural values, and our identities. To discard a belief often means discarding a whole host of other beliefs, forsaking our communities, going against those we trust and love, and in short, challenging our identities. According to this view, is it any wonder that providing people with a little information about GMOs, vaccines, evolution, or global warming has little impact on their beliefs and attitudes? The power that culture has over cognition just swamps these attempts at education.
* We typically don't know enough individually to form knowledgeable, nuanced views about new technologies and scientific developments. We simply have no choice but to adopt the positions of those we trust. Our attitudes and those of the people around us thus become mutually reinforcing. And the fact that we have a strong opinion makes us think that there must be a firm basis for our opinion, so we think we know a lot, more than in fact we do.
== 9: Thinking About Politics ==
* Just as people overrate their own understanding of toilets and can openers, they also overrate their understanding of political policies.
* If a polarized group are asked to explain a policy, their positions tend to converge.
== 10: The New Definition of Smart ==
* Our tendency to mentally substitute individuals for complicated entities (MLK for civil rights, Obama for the ACA, etc) can be seen in how we talk about institutions
== 11: Making People Smart ==
* -
== 12: Making Smarter Decisions ==
* -
== Conclusion: Appraising Ignorance and Illusion ==
* -

The Knowledge Illusion

2026-09-08T16:13:38Z

Robert.adlington: /* 4: Why We Think What Isn't So */

The Knowledge Illusion

2026-09-07T18:16:00Z

Robert.adlington: /* Introduction: Ignorance and the Community of Knowledge */

The Knowledge Illusion

2026-09-07T17:31:19Z

Robert.adlington: Created page with "== Introduction: Ignorance and the Community of Knowledge == * - == 1: What We Know == * - == 2: Why We Think == * - == 3: How We Think == * - == 4: Why We Think What Isn't So == * - == 5: Thinking with Our Bodies and the World == * - == 6: Thinking with Other People == * - == 7: Thinking with Technology == * - == 8: Thinking About Science == * - == 9: Thinking About Politics == * - == 10: The New Definition of Smart == * - == 11: Making People Smart == * - =..."

== Introduction: Ignorance and the Community of Knowledge ==
* -
== 1: What We Know ==
* -
== 2: Why We Think ==
* -
== 3: How We Think ==
* -
== 4: Why We Think What Isn't So ==
* -
== 5: Thinking with Our Bodies and the World ==
* -
== 6: Thinking with Other People ==
* -
== 7: Thinking with Technology ==
* -
== 8: Thinking About Science ==
* -
== 9: Thinking About Politics ==
* -
== 10: The New Definition of Smart ==
* -
== 11: Making People Smart ==
* -
== 12: Making Smarter Decisions ==
* -
== Conclusion: Appraising Ignorance and Illusion ==
* -

Books

2026-09-07T17:21:22Z

Robert.adlington: /* 2026 (week 37) */

== Books to Buy ==

Used:
* [https://www.amazon.fr/Nightmare-Reason-Life-Franz-Kafka/dp/0374523355/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=3UVJCLJFIY2CS&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.u3RaalBtg8bvWBbE8fVyXaCIirwCIkTLbUk5cwh_aYdlxQvg0yct5WxpF8hlFrbZxzIlPisTw_LJ-XermdOvrvQTKJR1xhGnjBQeBOOkj7UvLDqubVbBqOs4xWZlUjrzTneCM3AQNtLpEPT7T52XEL13eNQRCBZrMnVuSMk128RVqDk4IOYDPBhUWZzf9mHNv9T-yqA9Qv2JRg8l61zGhg.6VgqDbi7D-Vl19NQyoPSj86-nLG9IM98Vpm9Z9m-uGo&dib_tag=se&keywords=nightmare%2Bof%2Breason&qid=1783763181&sprefix=nightmare%2Bof%2Breason%2Caps%2C131&sr=8-1&th=1&psc=1 The Nightmare of Reason]: A Biography of Franz Kafka- Pawel i know that you know that I know - George Butte [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dormant-Einstein-Wittgenstein-Frankenstein-Re-Inventing/dp/0670804800 Einstein, Gertrude Stein, Wittgenstein and Frankenstein] : Reinventing the Universe by John Brockman
* Gormenghast - Mervyn Peake
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/What-Name-This-Book-Recreational/dp/0486481980 What is the Name of this Book]: Raymond Smullyan
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Thought-Contagion-International-Engineering-Paperback/dp/B00FDVRANQ Thought Contagion]: How Ideas Act Like Viruses - Aaron Lynch
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Language-Thought-Other-Biological-Categories/dp/0262631156 Language, Thought, and other Biological Categories]: New Foundations for Realism - Ruth Garrett Millikan

Paperbacks:

* luke Bergis - [https://www.amazon.com/Wanting-Power-Mimetic-Desire-Everyday/dp/1250266645/ref=pd_aw_fbt_img_m_sccl_1_1/139-2587675-0340248?pd_rd_w=hV8j6&content-id=amzn1.sym.7766b57a-a0a0-4f33-935d-91822a4c15c0&pf_rd_p=7766b57a-a0a0-4f33-935d-91822a4c15c0&pf_rd_r=JQZSCYCZN9A2FBM0ABFQ&pd_rd_wg=Sf4rz&pd_rd_r=2b67db45-7810-4a08-8cd4-c4fc12f2e398&pd_rd_i=1250266645&psc=1 Wanting], The One and the 99 [https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/1399417509/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?ie=UTF8&dib_tag=se&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.SQM7Fcey4aad63hBfUW3aw.ctIlU9WAvr7a0KcGQ6Trzvv10dT7aouxiR_JgFN38Qc&qid=1784816314&sr=8-1 The Illuminated Man]: The Life, Death, and Worlds of JGB (apr 27)
* [https://www.amazon.fr/Center-Cannot-Hold-Journey-Madness/dp/1401309445/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=30LPLKNP3IZ6T&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.1ymUySu7SSRnF7VrIuk7F9G8mDn0vUlYjj2Ku5JZ3_PYON6iIUmcNCX9ai20Y0vZox6uJDtrT6HWKPcMOwUgffTs0AKgu-nJljkfuSqPliiinzJYFv3sqyAMrGqzWIfw1fGZbsff-kHjLgzZIx0OxtARGswv-lBF3OKikrjGNBjWl7yb3jt78g-xLiJJZ7UBKQF4OOJNYWJrOzJwiNmtFQ.o-6a46h4dxUo_ekLzSagCPkaFyAF6FjIdkVnB7TcOUI&dib_tag=se&keywords=elyn+saks&qid=1783197867&sprefix=elyn+sa%2Caps%2C193&sr=8-1 the center cannot hold]: my journey through madness - Elyn Saks
* [https://www.amazon.fr/One-Cares-About-Crazy-People/dp/0316341134/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=1G9JUB6IDN3BF&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.8pmsCx59KiaAt10bvF9HMZoqKCLpjaKJ384UkB8fA1A.YfWbCZxI4NByVLmIFTKMyWu3fJ8kBRIsi0sDSjv8Yrg&dib_tag=se&keywords=no%2Bone%2Bcares%2Babout%2Bcrazy%2Bpeople&qid=1783198086&s=books&sprefix=no%2Bone%2Bcares%2Babout%2Bcrazy%2Bpeople%2Cbooks%2C146&sr=1-1&th=1&psc=1 no one cares about crazy people] - Ron Powers Born on a Blue Day - Daniel Tammet
* Pellis - [https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/1851687602/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?ie=UTF8&dib_tag=se&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.H3yYZI7yMy8UMo0DZRtBXC7wbyUv2gRGlVcNGkDlLMJgXzHKvH1465fjUMkPxFfF6Gy4SxJZF5iHJj2-KPFajMqmXBiYahwhe5kfd66JSukAwSqbKylXct02KUMpWpWQCIW6bCM_Ht6bSd14GU33N14R__7O6CnhnzxNZy9X2zb3i5AfMj6mzwHRCKmg4ksQwKR6te7VhUOppALivblKNw.VKJXzbK6PkVwM-NWQcVACHw9NKJAMBuwXSLAEcjus40&qid=1775903643&sr=8-1 The Playful Brain]
* Strauss - The Three Waves of Modernity
* Peter Handke - Insulting the Audience
* Lorrie Moore - Self Help
* La Modification - Michel Butor
* Un Homme qui dort - Georges Perec
* How Like a God - Rex Stout

* Time and Narrative - Paul Ricoeur
* Flight of Icarus - Raymond Queneau
* Nausea - Sartre
* [https://www.amazon.fr/Seven-Joanna-Kavenna/dp/0571338151 Seven], [https://www.amazon.fr/Zed-Joanna-Kavenna/dp/0571245161 Zed], etc by Joanna Kavenna. See [https://blog.adlington.fr/index.php/2026/01/12/seven-or-how-to-play-a-game-without-rules-by-joanna-kavenna/ blog].
* Building a second brain
* how to solve it
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Adam-Eve-Paradise-E%C3%A7a-Queir%C3%B3s/dp/0811239144 Adam and Eve in Paradise] - eca de queiros
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bounds-Possibility-Puzzles-Modal-Variation/dp/0198910770 The Bounds of Possibility] - Philosophy book about categories
* Nicola Barker - [https://www.amazon.co.uk/TonyInterruptor-Nicola-Barker/dp/1803512563 Tony Interrupter] [https://www.amazon.co.uk/H-PPY-Nicola-Barker/dp/1785151142 Happy], etc
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Growth-Form-Canto-Classics/dp/1107672562 On Growth and Form] - D'Arcy Thompson
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Alpha-Omega-Jane-Ellen-Harrison/dp/1961341417 Alpha and Omega] - Jane Ellen Harrison
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Willard-Gibbs-Whole-Simpler-Parts/dp/1961341158 the Whole is Simpler than its Parts] - Willard Gibbs
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Stranger-Than-Fiction-Lives-Twentieth-Century/dp/152992572X Stranger Than Fiction]: Lives of the Twentieth-Century Novel - Edwin Frank
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Gray-Matters-Biography-Brain-Surgery/dp/1836430396 Gray Matters]: A Biography of Brain Surgery - Theodore Schwartz
*

Hardbacks:

* Mark Solms - The Only Cure - Freud and Neuroscience

* [https://kottke.org/26/03/beginning-comes-after-the-end The Beginning Comes After the End] - Rebecca Solnit
* [https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/02/being-and-time-an-annotated-translation.html Being and Time Annotated] or [https://www.amazon.com/Heideggers-Being-Time-Paraphrased-Annotated/dp/1786613417/ref=sr_1_1?crid=22NKOIU8DE86V&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.DTYI13qU7soxuiueo4-e128MDF_Ax3dyLaUSGkoN5Ia4UdUOk_Dq1I7NCzXbEWWQnCsZ_8TnpI_r-Aut-ca4ur7QoC5kObPu2gII5w37OPLBu35YwyZZIcQAH6cz3tSLhX00snAOwxwxFPCfiq2S-wt5XmSjCN3Hg5m3Btu2C-mHF7lEv6A6EaaeWIdcwChz23nuiyKnrHs62cHAUXQspCNW8TuE65y1CydE89Xp8as.iBxvGfEz3Ac-ZaaYxIBUO8lpCpF0iHOejymlghbifJ4&dib_tag=se&keywords=thomas+sheehan&qid=1771981151&s=books&sprefix=thomas+sheehan%2Cstripbooks%2C198&sr=1-1 paraphrased] ?
* [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/dec/23/capitalism-by-sven-beckert-review-an-extraordinary-history-of-the-economic-system-that-controls-our-lives Capitalism]: A Global History-Sven Beckert
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Violent-Saviours-Capitalism-Without-Consent/dp/1399811215 Violent Saviors]: How the West Conquered the Rest - William Easterly
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Master-Contradictions-Thomas-Making-Mountain/dp/0300233744 The master of contradictions]: Thomas Mann and the making of the Magic Mountain
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Story-CO2-Everything-Planetary-Experiment/dp/0241631165 The Story of CO2 Is the Story of Everything]: A Planetary Experiment
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/M%C3%B6bius-Book-Catherine-Lacey/dp/1803511494 the moebius book] - Catherine Lacey
* Chance and Necessity - Jacques Monod
* L'homme microscopique - Pierre Auger
* Why Machines Learn: The Elegant Maths Behind Modern AI (out in paperback Jan 30 2025)
* A History of the Muslim World: From Its Origins to the Dawn of Modernity (awaiting paperback)
* The New Roman Empire: A History of Byzantium
* Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as Civilization
* Consolations - David Whyte

== Books to Read ==

* Reading to Learn - William Zinger
* Breakfast of Champions - Kurt Vonnegut

== Currently Reading ==

* [[Atomic Habits]] - James Clear
*[[Die Montez-Juwelen]] - Sabine Vôhringer
* [[The Book: A Cover-to-Covet Exploration of the Most Powerful Object of Our Time]] - Keith Houston
*[[Understanding Media]] - Marshall McLuhan (re-read)
*[[The Practice of Not Thinking]]: A Guide to Mindful Living - Ryunosuke Koike

== Books Read ==

=== 2026 (week 37) ===

* 40. [[The Knowledge Illusion]] - Sloman/ Fernbach
* 39. [[The Red Book: Liber Novus]] - CG Jung
* 38. [[G: A Novel]] - John Berger
* 37. [[Thinking in Numbers]] - Daniel Tammet
* 36. [[Every Word is a Bird We Teach to Sing]] - Daniel Tammet
* 35. [[The Perpetual Race of Achilles and the Tortoise]] - Borges
* 34. The Oldest Book in the World: Philosophy in the Age of the Pyramids - Bill Manley
* 33. Congo, Une Histoire - David Van Reybrouck
* 32. [[The Art of Logic]]: How to Make Sense in a World that Doesn't - Eugenia Cheng
* 31. [[Why Read]] - Will Self
* 30. [[The Collected Schizophrenias]] - Esmé Weijun Wang
* 29. L’Intranquille Monsieur Pessoa (BD) - Nicolas Barral
* 28. [[Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain]] - Lisa Feldmann Barrrett.
* 27: [[Nine Minds]]: Inner Lives on the Spectrum - Daniel Tammet
* 26: [[Ambigrammia]]: Between Creation and Discovery - Douglas Hofstadter
* 25. [[Once Upon a Prime]]:The Wondrous Connections Between Mathematics and Literature - Sarah B. Hart
* 24. [[Short Stories in German for Beginners]] - Olly Richards (reread - with Ricky)
* 23. Books v. Cigarettes - George Orwell
* 22. Der Nasse Fische - Volker Kutscher (in German!)
* 21. [[We Are Our Brains: From the Womb to Alzheimer's]] - Dick Swaab
* 20. [[Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife]] - Francesca Wade
* 19. [[How the World Made the West]] - Josephine Quinn
* 18. [[Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning]] - Sigmund Freud
* 17. [[This is Your Mind on Plants]]: Opium - Caffeine - Mescaline - Michael Pollen
* 16. [[Open Socrates]]: The Case for a Philosophical Life - Agnes Callard

* 15. [[Consciousness: How Our Brains Turn Matter Into Meaning]] - John Parrington
*14. [[The Happiness of Dogs]]: Why the Unexamined Life is Most Worth Living - Mark Rowlands
*13. [[The Hidden Spring]] - Mark Solms
*12. [[The Interpretation of Dreams]] - Sigmund Freud
*11. [[A Certain Lucas]] - Julio Cortazar
*10. [[The Intentional Stance]] - Daniel Dennett
*9. [[La Conquête de Plassans]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 4) - Zola
*8. [[Why We Read Fiction]]: Theory of Mind and the Novel - Lisa Zunshine

* 7. On the Calculation of Volume: 3 - Solvej Balle
* 6. [[Unnatural Voices]]: Extreme Narration in Modern and Contemporary Fiction - Brian Richardson
* 5. The Seven Dials Mystery - Agatha Christie
* 4. [[Le Ventre de Paris]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 3) - Zola
*3. [[The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative]] (2nd Edition) - H. Porter Abbott
* 2. [[Autocracy Inc]]: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World - Anne Applebaum
* 1. [[The Secret Life of the Periodic Table]] - Dr Ben Still

=== 2025 ===

* 55. The White Priory Murders - Carter Dickson (re-read)
* 54. [[How Life Works]]: A User's Guide to the New Biology - Philip Ball
* 53. [[Who Killed Father Christmas]]? and Other Seasonal Mysteries - Martin Edwards
* 52. [[Chemistry: A Very Short Introduction]] - Peter Atkins
* 51. [[The Scheme of Things]] - Allen Wheelis
* 50. [[La Fortune des Rougon]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 1) - Zola
* 49. [[Cause for Alarm]] - Eric Ambler
* 48. [[The Man from the Future]]: The Visionary Life of John Von Neumann - Ananyo Bhattacharya
*47. [[Everything is Predictable]]: How Bayes' Remarkable Theorem Explains the World - Tom Chivers
* 46. [[The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are]] - Alan Watts
* 45. [[La Curée]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 2) - Zola
* 44. [[The Emperor of All Maladies]]: A Biography of Cancer - Siddhartha Mukherjee
* 43. [[La Bête Humaine]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 17) - Zola (re-read)
* 42. [[The Society of Mind]] - Marvin Minsky
* 41. [[Le Père Goriot]] - Honore Balzac
* 40. [[Gravity's Rainbow]] - Thomas Pynchon (re-read)
* 39. [[Le Colonel Chabert]] - Balzac
* 38. [[Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett]] - James Knowlson (re-read)
* 37. [[Reading for the Plot]]: Design and Intention in Narrative - Peter Brooks (re-read)

* 36. [[Steps to an Ecology of Mind]] - Gregory Bateson (re-read)
* 35. [[Le Bilan de L'intelligence]] - Paul Valéry
* 34. [[Zero]] - Charles Seife
* 33. [[Alan Turing: The Enigma]] - Andrew Hodges
* 32. [[How to Do Things with Words]] - J L Austin
* 31. [[The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society]] - Norbert Wiener
* 30. [[The Mind is Flat]]: The Illusion of Mental Depth and the Improvised Mind - Nick Chater
* 29. [[Possible Minds: 25 Ways of Looking at AI]] - John Brockman
* 28. [[A Little History of Philosophy]] - Nigel Warburton
* 27. [[All Fours]] - Miranda July
* 26. [[Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern]] - Douglas R Hofstadter
* 25. [[The French Lieutenant’s Woman]] - John Fowles
* 24. [[Short Stories in German for Beginners]] - Olly Richards
* 23. [[On the Calculation of Volume: 2]] - Solvej Balle
* 22. [[Deep Simplicity: Chaos, Complexity, and the Emergence of Life]] - John Gribbin
* 21. [[Das Ludwig Thoma Komplott]]- Sabine Vöhringer
* 20. [[Maus]] - Art Spiegelman
* 19. [[On the Calculation of Volume: 1]] - Solvej Balle
* 18. [[The Concept of Mind]] - Gilbert Ryle
* 17. [[Cognitive Neuroscience: A Very Short Introduction]] - Richard Passingham
* 16. [[The Experience Machine]] - Andy Clark
* 15. [[Why We Remember: Revealing the Hidden Power of Memory]] - Dr Charan Ranganath
* 14. [[From Bacteria to Bach and Back]] - Daniel Dennett (re-read)
* 13. [[The Village of Eight Graves]] - Seishi Yokomizo
* 12. [[Science: A History]] - Richard Crockett
* 11. [[Vienna: How the City of Ideas Created the Modern World]] - John Gribbin
* 10.[[The Inugami Curse]] - Seishi Yokomizo
* 9. [[The Rise and Reign of the Mammals]]
* 8. [[Four Ways of Thinking]] - David Sumpter
* 7. [[I've Been Thinking]] - Daniel Dennett
* 6. [[Serendipities: Language and Lunacy]] - Umberto Eco
* 5. [[I Am Dynamite: A Life of Friedrich Nietzsche]] - Sue Prideaux
* 4. [[A Brief History of Intelligence]] - Max S. Bennett
* 3. [[Foucault’s Pendulum]] - Umberto Eco (re-read)
* 2. [[Kant and the Platypus]] - Umberto Eco
* 1. [[Le cerveau m’a beaucoup déçu. L’esprit, non]] - Antoine Sénanque

=== 2024 ===

* The Plot - Will Eisner
* The Prague Cemetery - Umberto Eco
* The Nonjin Murders - Seishi Yokomizo
* When We Cease to Understand the World - Labatut
* Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert Pirsig (reread)
* The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind’s Hidden Complexities - Fauconnier and Turner
* The Singularity is Nearer - Ray Kurzweil
* Physics and Philosophy - Werner Heisenberg
* Le Ton Beau de…
* The Origins of Creativity - Edward O Wilson
* Psychonauts -
* The MANIAC - Benjamin Labatut
* In Search of Memory - Eric R. Kandel
* Dreaming: A Very Short Introduction - Hobson
* Les Effinger - Gabriele Target
* Triad - Tom Keve
* Nietzsche - Stefan Zweig
* The Weirdest People in the World - Joseph Henrich
* How Language Works - David Crystal
* The Invention of Nature - Andrea Wolf
* [[The Song of the Cell]] - Siddhartha Mukherjee
* [[Gödel, Escher, Bach]] - Douglas Hofstadter
* [[From Bacteria to Bach and Back]] - Daniel Dennett

== Challenging Books (per ChatGPT) ==
That’s a great (and slippery) question, because “challenging” can mean different things: difficulty of language, density of allusion, fractured narrative structure, philosophical depth, or even sheer length. Here’s a map of novels often considered among the most challenging, grouped by ''what makes them hard'':
----

=== 1. Language & Style Difficulties ===

* '''James Joyce – ''Finnegans Wake''''' (1939) Probably the hardest novel in English: dream-logic, multilingual puns, and invented words.
* '''William Gaddis – ''The Recognitions'' (1955)''' and ''JR'' (1975) Huge cast, little exposition, dialogue-driven (often without quotation marks).
* '''Samuel Beckett – ''The Unnamable'' (1953)''' Interior monologue collapsing into language itself; syntax dissolves.

----

=== 2. Length & Scope ===

* '''Marcel Proust – ''In Search of Lost Time''''' (1913–27) ~4,000 pages, long sentences, obsessive detail, profound reflections on memory.
* '''David Foster Wallace – ''Infinite Jest'' (1996)''' ~1,000 pages + 100 pages of endnotes; encyclopedic, fragmented plotlines.
* '''Norman Mailer – ''Harlot’s Ghost'' (1991)''' or ''Ancient Evenings'' (1983) Dense, sprawling, philosophically ambitious.

----

=== 3. Experimental Structure ===

* '''Thomas Pynchon – ''Gravity’s Rainbow'' (1973)''' Fragmented narrative, technical language, paranoia, hundreds of characters.
* '''Clarice Lispector – ''The Passion According to G.H.'' (1964)''' A single, intense interior monologue; metaphysical and unsettling.
* '''Julio Cortázar – ''Hopscotch'' (1963)''' Offers multiple reading orders; disruptive structure.

----

=== 4. Philosophical / Esoteric Depth ===

* '''Hermann Broch – ''The Sleepwalkers'' (1931–32)''' Mixes fiction with philosophy and essay.
* '''Robert Musil – ''The Man Without Qualities'' (1930–43)''' Massive unfinished modernist work, blending narrative with philosophical treatises.
* '''Thomas Mann – ''Joseph and His Brothers'' (1933–43)''' Retells biblical myth with immense erudition and depth.

----

=== 5. Dense Intertextuality ===

* '''James Joyce – ''Ulysses'' (1922)''' Homeric parallels, stylistic experiments, deep allusion to Irish politics and myth.
* '''Roberto Bolaño – ''2666'' (2004)''' Five interlinked novels, ranging from literary criticism to detective fiction to Holocaust history.
* '''José Lezama Lima – ''Paradiso'' (1966)''' Baroque Cuban prose, mythic density.

----

=== 6. Postmodern Labyrinths ===

* '''Mark Z. Danielewski – ''House of Leaves'' (2000)''' Multiple narrators, typographical experimentation, layered commentary.
* '''Viktor Pelevin – ''The Sacred Book of the Werewolf'' (2004)''' (or ''Generation “P”'') Satirical, reality-bending narratives.

----

=== A few contenders often called “the hardest of the hard”: ===

* ''Finnegans Wake'' (Joyce)
* ''The Recognitions'' (Gaddis)
* ''The Man Without Qualities'' (Musil)
* ''Gravity’s Rainbow'' (Pynchon)
* ''In Search of Lost Time'' (Proust)

[[Category:Books]]

Books

2026-09-07T17:20:55Z

Robert.adlington: /* 2026 (week 34) */

== Books to Buy ==

Used:
* [https://www.amazon.fr/Nightmare-Reason-Life-Franz-Kafka/dp/0374523355/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=3UVJCLJFIY2CS&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.u3RaalBtg8bvWBbE8fVyXaCIirwCIkTLbUk5cwh_aYdlxQvg0yct5WxpF8hlFrbZxzIlPisTw_LJ-XermdOvrvQTKJR1xhGnjBQeBOOkj7UvLDqubVbBqOs4xWZlUjrzTneCM3AQNtLpEPT7T52XEL13eNQRCBZrMnVuSMk128RVqDk4IOYDPBhUWZzf9mHNv9T-yqA9Qv2JRg8l61zGhg.6VgqDbi7D-Vl19NQyoPSj86-nLG9IM98Vpm9Z9m-uGo&dib_tag=se&keywords=nightmare%2Bof%2Breason&qid=1783763181&sprefix=nightmare%2Bof%2Breason%2Caps%2C131&sr=8-1&th=1&psc=1 The Nightmare of Reason]: A Biography of Franz Kafka- Pawel i know that you know that I know - George Butte [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dormant-Einstein-Wittgenstein-Frankenstein-Re-Inventing/dp/0670804800 Einstein, Gertrude Stein, Wittgenstein and Frankenstein] : Reinventing the Universe by John Brockman
* Gormenghast - Mervyn Peake
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/What-Name-This-Book-Recreational/dp/0486481980 What is the Name of this Book]: Raymond Smullyan
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Thought-Contagion-International-Engineering-Paperback/dp/B00FDVRANQ Thought Contagion]: How Ideas Act Like Viruses - Aaron Lynch
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Language-Thought-Other-Biological-Categories/dp/0262631156 Language, Thought, and other Biological Categories]: New Foundations for Realism - Ruth Garrett Millikan

Paperbacks:

* luke Bergis - [https://www.amazon.com/Wanting-Power-Mimetic-Desire-Everyday/dp/1250266645/ref=pd_aw_fbt_img_m_sccl_1_1/139-2587675-0340248?pd_rd_w=hV8j6&content-id=amzn1.sym.7766b57a-a0a0-4f33-935d-91822a4c15c0&pf_rd_p=7766b57a-a0a0-4f33-935d-91822a4c15c0&pf_rd_r=JQZSCYCZN9A2FBM0ABFQ&pd_rd_wg=Sf4rz&pd_rd_r=2b67db45-7810-4a08-8cd4-c4fc12f2e398&pd_rd_i=1250266645&psc=1 Wanting], The One and the 99 [https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/1399417509/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?ie=UTF8&dib_tag=se&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.SQM7Fcey4aad63hBfUW3aw.ctIlU9WAvr7a0KcGQ6Trzvv10dT7aouxiR_JgFN38Qc&qid=1784816314&sr=8-1 The Illuminated Man]: The Life, Death, and Worlds of JGB (apr 27)
* [https://www.amazon.fr/Center-Cannot-Hold-Journey-Madness/dp/1401309445/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=30LPLKNP3IZ6T&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.1ymUySu7SSRnF7VrIuk7F9G8mDn0vUlYjj2Ku5JZ3_PYON6iIUmcNCX9ai20Y0vZox6uJDtrT6HWKPcMOwUgffTs0AKgu-nJljkfuSqPliiinzJYFv3sqyAMrGqzWIfw1fGZbsff-kHjLgzZIx0OxtARGswv-lBF3OKikrjGNBjWl7yb3jt78g-xLiJJZ7UBKQF4OOJNYWJrOzJwiNmtFQ.o-6a46h4dxUo_ekLzSagCPkaFyAF6FjIdkVnB7TcOUI&dib_tag=se&keywords=elyn+saks&qid=1783197867&sprefix=elyn+sa%2Caps%2C193&sr=8-1 the center cannot hold]: my journey through madness - Elyn Saks
* [https://www.amazon.fr/One-Cares-About-Crazy-People/dp/0316341134/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=1G9JUB6IDN3BF&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.8pmsCx59KiaAt10bvF9HMZoqKCLpjaKJ384UkB8fA1A.YfWbCZxI4NByVLmIFTKMyWu3fJ8kBRIsi0sDSjv8Yrg&dib_tag=se&keywords=no%2Bone%2Bcares%2Babout%2Bcrazy%2Bpeople&qid=1783198086&s=books&sprefix=no%2Bone%2Bcares%2Babout%2Bcrazy%2Bpeople%2Cbooks%2C146&sr=1-1&th=1&psc=1 no one cares about crazy people] - Ron Powers Born on a Blue Day - Daniel Tammet
* Pellis - [https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/1851687602/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?ie=UTF8&dib_tag=se&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.H3yYZI7yMy8UMo0DZRtBXC7wbyUv2gRGlVcNGkDlLMJgXzHKvH1465fjUMkPxFfF6Gy4SxJZF5iHJj2-KPFajMqmXBiYahwhe5kfd66JSukAwSqbKylXct02KUMpWpWQCIW6bCM_Ht6bSd14GU33N14R__7O6CnhnzxNZy9X2zb3i5AfMj6mzwHRCKmg4ksQwKR6te7VhUOppALivblKNw.VKJXzbK6PkVwM-NWQcVACHw9NKJAMBuwXSLAEcjus40&qid=1775903643&sr=8-1 The Playful Brain]
* Strauss - The Three Waves of Modernity
* Peter Handke - Insulting the Audience
* Lorrie Moore - Self Help
* La Modification - Michel Butor
* Un Homme qui dort - Georges Perec
* How Like a God - Rex Stout

* Time and Narrative - Paul Ricoeur
* Flight of Icarus - Raymond Queneau
* Nausea - Sartre
* [https://www.amazon.fr/Seven-Joanna-Kavenna/dp/0571338151 Seven], [https://www.amazon.fr/Zed-Joanna-Kavenna/dp/0571245161 Zed], etc by Joanna Kavenna. See [https://blog.adlington.fr/index.php/2026/01/12/seven-or-how-to-play-a-game-without-rules-by-joanna-kavenna/ blog].
* Building a second brain
* how to solve it
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Adam-Eve-Paradise-E%C3%A7a-Queir%C3%B3s/dp/0811239144 Adam and Eve in Paradise] - eca de queiros
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bounds-Possibility-Puzzles-Modal-Variation/dp/0198910770 The Bounds of Possibility] - Philosophy book about categories
* Nicola Barker - [https://www.amazon.co.uk/TonyInterruptor-Nicola-Barker/dp/1803512563 Tony Interrupter] [https://www.amazon.co.uk/H-PPY-Nicola-Barker/dp/1785151142 Happy], etc
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Growth-Form-Canto-Classics/dp/1107672562 On Growth and Form] - D'Arcy Thompson
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Alpha-Omega-Jane-Ellen-Harrison/dp/1961341417 Alpha and Omega] - Jane Ellen Harrison
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Willard-Gibbs-Whole-Simpler-Parts/dp/1961341158 the Whole is Simpler than its Parts] - Willard Gibbs
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Stranger-Than-Fiction-Lives-Twentieth-Century/dp/152992572X Stranger Than Fiction]: Lives of the Twentieth-Century Novel - Edwin Frank
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Gray-Matters-Biography-Brain-Surgery/dp/1836430396 Gray Matters]: A Biography of Brain Surgery - Theodore Schwartz
*

Hardbacks:

* Mark Solms - The Only Cure - Freud and Neuroscience

* [https://kottke.org/26/03/beginning-comes-after-the-end The Beginning Comes After the End] - Rebecca Solnit
* [https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/02/being-and-time-an-annotated-translation.html Being and Time Annotated] or [https://www.amazon.com/Heideggers-Being-Time-Paraphrased-Annotated/dp/1786613417/ref=sr_1_1?crid=22NKOIU8DE86V&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.DTYI13qU7soxuiueo4-e128MDF_Ax3dyLaUSGkoN5Ia4UdUOk_Dq1I7NCzXbEWWQnCsZ_8TnpI_r-Aut-ca4ur7QoC5kObPu2gII5w37OPLBu35YwyZZIcQAH6cz3tSLhX00snAOwxwxFPCfiq2S-wt5XmSjCN3Hg5m3Btu2C-mHF7lEv6A6EaaeWIdcwChz23nuiyKnrHs62cHAUXQspCNW8TuE65y1CydE89Xp8as.iBxvGfEz3Ac-ZaaYxIBUO8lpCpF0iHOejymlghbifJ4&dib_tag=se&keywords=thomas+sheehan&qid=1771981151&s=books&sprefix=thomas+sheehan%2Cstripbooks%2C198&sr=1-1 paraphrased] ?
* [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/dec/23/capitalism-by-sven-beckert-review-an-extraordinary-history-of-the-economic-system-that-controls-our-lives Capitalism]: A Global History-Sven Beckert
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Violent-Saviours-Capitalism-Without-Consent/dp/1399811215 Violent Saviors]: How the West Conquered the Rest - William Easterly
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Master-Contradictions-Thomas-Making-Mountain/dp/0300233744 The master of contradictions]: Thomas Mann and the making of the Magic Mountain
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Story-CO2-Everything-Planetary-Experiment/dp/0241631165 The Story of CO2 Is the Story of Everything]: A Planetary Experiment
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/M%C3%B6bius-Book-Catherine-Lacey/dp/1803511494 the moebius book] - Catherine Lacey
* Chance and Necessity - Jacques Monod
* L'homme microscopique - Pierre Auger
* Why Machines Learn: The Elegant Maths Behind Modern AI (out in paperback Jan 30 2025)
* A History of the Muslim World: From Its Origins to the Dawn of Modernity (awaiting paperback)
* The New Roman Empire: A History of Byzantium
* Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as Civilization
* Consolations - David Whyte

== Books to Read ==

* Reading to Learn - William Zinger
* Breakfast of Champions - Kurt Vonnegut

== Currently Reading ==

* [[Atomic Habits]] - James Clear
*[[Die Montez-Juwelen]] - Sabine Vôhringer
* [[The Book: A Cover-to-Covet Exploration of the Most Powerful Object of Our Time]] - Keith Houston
*[[Understanding Media]] - Marshall McLuhan (re-read)
*[[The Practice of Not Thinking]]: A Guide to Mindful Living - Ryunosuke Koike

== Books Read ==

=== 2026 (week 37) ===

* 40. The Knowledge Illusion - Sloman/ Fernbach
* 39. [[The Red Book: Liber Novus]] - CG Jung
* 38. [[G: A Novel]] - John Berger
* 37. [[Thinking in Numbers]] - Daniel Tammet
* 36. [[Every Word is a Bird We Teach to Sing]] - Daniel Tammet
* 35. [[The Perpetual Race of Achilles and the Tortoise]] - Borges
* 34. The Oldest Book in the World: Philosophy in the Age of the Pyramids - Bill Manley
* 33. Congo, Une Histoire - David Van Reybrouck
* 32. [[The Art of Logic]]: How to Make Sense in a World that Doesn't - Eugenia Cheng
* 31. [[Why Read]] - Will Self
* 30. [[The Collected Schizophrenias]] - Esmé Weijun Wang
* 29. L’Intranquille Monsieur Pessoa (BD) - Nicolas Barral
* 28. [[Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain]] - Lisa Feldmann Barrrett.
* 27: [[Nine Minds]]: Inner Lives on the Spectrum - Daniel Tammet
* 26: [[Ambigrammia]]: Between Creation and Discovery - Douglas Hofstadter
* 25. [[Once Upon a Prime]]:The Wondrous Connections Between Mathematics and Literature - Sarah B. Hart
* 24. [[Short Stories in German for Beginners]] - Olly Richards (reread - with Ricky)
* 23. Books v. Cigarettes - George Orwell
* 22. Der Nasse Fische - Volker Kutscher (in German!)
* 21. [[We Are Our Brains: From the Womb to Alzheimer's]] - Dick Swaab
* 20. [[Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife]] - Francesca Wade
* 19. [[How the World Made the West]] - Josephine Quinn
* 18. [[Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning]] - Sigmund Freud
* 17. [[This is Your Mind on Plants]]: Opium - Caffeine - Mescaline - Michael Pollen
* 16. [[Open Socrates]]: The Case for a Philosophical Life - Agnes Callard

* 15. [[Consciousness: How Our Brains Turn Matter Into Meaning]] - John Parrington
*14. [[The Happiness of Dogs]]: Why the Unexamined Life is Most Worth Living - Mark Rowlands
*13. [[The Hidden Spring]] - Mark Solms
*12. [[The Interpretation of Dreams]] - Sigmund Freud
*11. [[A Certain Lucas]] - Julio Cortazar
*10. [[The Intentional Stance]] - Daniel Dennett
*9. [[La Conquête de Plassans]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 4) - Zola
*8. [[Why We Read Fiction]]: Theory of Mind and the Novel - Lisa Zunshine

* 7. On the Calculation of Volume: 3 - Solvej Balle
* 6. [[Unnatural Voices]]: Extreme Narration in Modern and Contemporary Fiction - Brian Richardson
* 5. The Seven Dials Mystery - Agatha Christie
* 4. [[Le Ventre de Paris]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 3) - Zola
*3. [[The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative]] (2nd Edition) - H. Porter Abbott
* 2. [[Autocracy Inc]]: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World - Anne Applebaum
* 1. [[The Secret Life of the Periodic Table]] - Dr Ben Still

=== 2025 ===

* 55. The White Priory Murders - Carter Dickson (re-read)
* 54. [[How Life Works]]: A User's Guide to the New Biology - Philip Ball
* 53. [[Who Killed Father Christmas]]? and Other Seasonal Mysteries - Martin Edwards
* 52. [[Chemistry: A Very Short Introduction]] - Peter Atkins
* 51. [[The Scheme of Things]] - Allen Wheelis
* 50. [[La Fortune des Rougon]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 1) - Zola
* 49. [[Cause for Alarm]] - Eric Ambler
* 48. [[The Man from the Future]]: The Visionary Life of John Von Neumann - Ananyo Bhattacharya
*47. [[Everything is Predictable]]: How Bayes' Remarkable Theorem Explains the World - Tom Chivers
* 46. [[The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are]] - Alan Watts
* 45. [[La Curée]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 2) - Zola
* 44. [[The Emperor of All Maladies]]: A Biography of Cancer - Siddhartha Mukherjee
* 43. [[La Bête Humaine]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 17) - Zola (re-read)
* 42. [[The Society of Mind]] - Marvin Minsky
* 41. [[Le Père Goriot]] - Honore Balzac
* 40. [[Gravity's Rainbow]] - Thomas Pynchon (re-read)
* 39. [[Le Colonel Chabert]] - Balzac
* 38. [[Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett]] - James Knowlson (re-read)
* 37. [[Reading for the Plot]]: Design and Intention in Narrative - Peter Brooks (re-read)

* 36. [[Steps to an Ecology of Mind]] - Gregory Bateson (re-read)
* 35. [[Le Bilan de L'intelligence]] - Paul Valéry
* 34. [[Zero]] - Charles Seife
* 33. [[Alan Turing: The Enigma]] - Andrew Hodges
* 32. [[How to Do Things with Words]] - J L Austin
* 31. [[The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society]] - Norbert Wiener
* 30. [[The Mind is Flat]]: The Illusion of Mental Depth and the Improvised Mind - Nick Chater
* 29. [[Possible Minds: 25 Ways of Looking at AI]] - John Brockman
* 28. [[A Little History of Philosophy]] - Nigel Warburton
* 27. [[All Fours]] - Miranda July
* 26. [[Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern]] - Douglas R Hofstadter
* 25. [[The French Lieutenant’s Woman]] - John Fowles
* 24. [[Short Stories in German for Beginners]] - Olly Richards
* 23. [[On the Calculation of Volume: 2]] - Solvej Balle
* 22. [[Deep Simplicity: Chaos, Complexity, and the Emergence of Life]] - John Gribbin
* 21. [[Das Ludwig Thoma Komplott]]- Sabine Vöhringer
* 20. [[Maus]] - Art Spiegelman
* 19. [[On the Calculation of Volume: 1]] - Solvej Balle
* 18. [[The Concept of Mind]] - Gilbert Ryle
* 17. [[Cognitive Neuroscience: A Very Short Introduction]] - Richard Passingham
* 16. [[The Experience Machine]] - Andy Clark
* 15. [[Why We Remember: Revealing the Hidden Power of Memory]] - Dr Charan Ranganath
* 14. [[From Bacteria to Bach and Back]] - Daniel Dennett (re-read)
* 13. [[The Village of Eight Graves]] - Seishi Yokomizo
* 12. [[Science: A History]] - Richard Crockett
* 11. [[Vienna: How the City of Ideas Created the Modern World]] - John Gribbin
* 10.[[The Inugami Curse]] - Seishi Yokomizo
* 9. [[The Rise and Reign of the Mammals]]
* 8. [[Four Ways of Thinking]] - David Sumpter
* 7. [[I've Been Thinking]] - Daniel Dennett
* 6. [[Serendipities: Language and Lunacy]] - Umberto Eco
* 5. [[I Am Dynamite: A Life of Friedrich Nietzsche]] - Sue Prideaux
* 4. [[A Brief History of Intelligence]] - Max S. Bennett
* 3. [[Foucault’s Pendulum]] - Umberto Eco (re-read)
* 2. [[Kant and the Platypus]] - Umberto Eco
* 1. [[Le cerveau m’a beaucoup déçu. L’esprit, non]] - Antoine Sénanque

=== 2024 ===

* The Plot - Will Eisner
* The Prague Cemetery - Umberto Eco
* The Nonjin Murders - Seishi Yokomizo
* When We Cease to Understand the World - Labatut
* Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert Pirsig (reread)
* The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind’s Hidden Complexities - Fauconnier and Turner
* The Singularity is Nearer - Ray Kurzweil
* Physics and Philosophy - Werner Heisenberg
* Le Ton Beau de…
* The Origins of Creativity - Edward O Wilson
* Psychonauts -
* The MANIAC - Benjamin Labatut
* In Search of Memory - Eric R. Kandel
* Dreaming: A Very Short Introduction - Hobson
* Les Effinger - Gabriele Target
* Triad - Tom Keve
* Nietzsche - Stefan Zweig
* The Weirdest People in the World - Joseph Henrich
* How Language Works - David Crystal
* The Invention of Nature - Andrea Wolf
* [[The Song of the Cell]] - Siddhartha Mukherjee
* [[Gödel, Escher, Bach]] - Douglas Hofstadter
* [[From Bacteria to Bach and Back]] - Daniel Dennett

== Challenging Books (per ChatGPT) ==
That’s a great (and slippery) question, because “challenging” can mean different things: difficulty of language, density of allusion, fractured narrative structure, philosophical depth, or even sheer length. Here’s a map of novels often considered among the most challenging, grouped by ''what makes them hard'':
----

=== 1. Language & Style Difficulties ===

* '''James Joyce – ''Finnegans Wake''''' (1939) Probably the hardest novel in English: dream-logic, multilingual puns, and invented words.
* '''William Gaddis – ''The Recognitions'' (1955)''' and ''JR'' (1975) Huge cast, little exposition, dialogue-driven (often without quotation marks).
* '''Samuel Beckett – ''The Unnamable'' (1953)''' Interior monologue collapsing into language itself; syntax dissolves.

----

=== 2. Length & Scope ===

* '''Marcel Proust – ''In Search of Lost Time''''' (1913–27) ~4,000 pages, long sentences, obsessive detail, profound reflections on memory.
* '''David Foster Wallace – ''Infinite Jest'' (1996)''' ~1,000 pages + 100 pages of endnotes; encyclopedic, fragmented plotlines.
* '''Norman Mailer – ''Harlot’s Ghost'' (1991)''' or ''Ancient Evenings'' (1983) Dense, sprawling, philosophically ambitious.

----

=== 3. Experimental Structure ===

* '''Thomas Pynchon – ''Gravity’s Rainbow'' (1973)''' Fragmented narrative, technical language, paranoia, hundreds of characters.
* '''Clarice Lispector – ''The Passion According to G.H.'' (1964)''' A single, intense interior monologue; metaphysical and unsettling.
* '''Julio Cortázar – ''Hopscotch'' (1963)''' Offers multiple reading orders; disruptive structure.

----

=== 4. Philosophical / Esoteric Depth ===

* '''Hermann Broch – ''The Sleepwalkers'' (1931–32)''' Mixes fiction with philosophy and essay.
* '''Robert Musil – ''The Man Without Qualities'' (1930–43)''' Massive unfinished modernist work, blending narrative with philosophical treatises.
* '''Thomas Mann – ''Joseph and His Brothers'' (1933–43)''' Retells biblical myth with immense erudition and depth.

----

=== 5. Dense Intertextuality ===

* '''James Joyce – ''Ulysses'' (1922)''' Homeric parallels, stylistic experiments, deep allusion to Irish politics and myth.
* '''Roberto Bolaño – ''2666'' (2004)''' Five interlinked novels, ranging from literary criticism to detective fiction to Holocaust history.
* '''José Lezama Lima – ''Paradiso'' (1966)''' Baroque Cuban prose, mythic density.

----

=== 6. Postmodern Labyrinths ===

* '''Mark Z. Danielewski – ''House of Leaves'' (2000)''' Multiple narrators, typographical experimentation, layered commentary.
* '''Viktor Pelevin – ''The Sacred Book of the Werewolf'' (2004)''' (or ''Generation “P”'') Satirical, reality-bending narratives.

----

=== A few contenders often called “the hardest of the hard”: ===

* ''Finnegans Wake'' (Joyce)
* ''The Recognitions'' (Gaddis)
* ''The Man Without Qualities'' (Musil)
* ''Gravity’s Rainbow'' (Pynchon)
* ''In Search of Lost Time'' (Proust)

[[Category:Books]]

Films

2026-09-06T19:39:34Z

Robert.adlington: /* 2026 */

== Films to Watch ==

[https://www.cinealcazar.fr/fichier/programme.pdf Cinema Alcazar Program]

* Wicker: https://youtu.be/HP0BWBWn14I?si=E5oThE4uNiED28b3
* morvern Callar
* Do the right thing
* run Lola Run
* Mind trips
** Triangle
** Beyond the infinite two minutes
** Enemy
** Under the Silver Lake
** The Vanishing
** Angel Heart
** Following
** The Invisible Guest
** Perfect Blue
** Resolution
* fast times
* the Jerk
* Mutiny on the Bounty
* Entrapment
* Mask of Zorro
* PTA - Hard Eight, Magnolia, Boogie Nights, etc
* Little Big and Far - weird scandinavian film
* This is Spinal tap
* Big Night - Tucci and Shaloub
* Punch drunk love
* Boyhood
* Kind hearts and coronets
* A night at the opera
* Blazing saddles
* Lives of others
* Lost in Translation
* One flew over
* Get out
* Maltese falcon
* Early mad maxes
* Joule of the Nile
* the man with two brains
* Psycho Therapy - Steve Buscemi is a serial killer who wants to advise an author, but ends up playing a marriage counselor.
* Early Steve Martin
* A Complete Unknown
* la La Land -
* The Phoenician Scheme - new Wes Anderson comedy espionage thriller
* Thelma - Grandma fights con artists
* Kinds of Kindness
* 2001
* The Elephant Man
* The Fabulous Baker Boys
* Network

== Films Watched ==

=== 2026 ===

* 57. The Sixth Sense
* 56. Alter Ego
* 55. Franz K
* 54. Taxi Driver
* 53. The Tailor of Panama
* 52. La bataille de Gaulle: J'écris ton nom
* 51. Training Day
* 50. The Guns of Naverone
* 49. La bataille de Gaulle: L'age de fer
* 48. Kind Hearts and Coronets
* 47. Parasite
* 46. Arsenic and Old Lace
* 45. Get Out
* 44. Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure (rewatch)
* 43. Apex
* 42. 21 Jump Street
* 41. Scream 3
* 40. Shutter Island
* 39. Scream 2
* 38. Wall-E
* 37. Get Smart
* 36. Se7en
* 35. The Producers
* 34: Garfield: The Movie
* 33. Leon
* 32. Shimmer Lake
* 31. Unforgiven
* 30. A Mighty Wind
* 29. Magnolia
* 28. Escape from Alcatraz
* 27. The Sting
* 26. Pulp Fiction
* 25. Failure to Launch
* 24. Hudson Hawk
* 23. Mystère à St Tropez
* 22. The Thomas Crown Affair
* 21. The Three Amigos (1986)
* 20. The Silence of the Lambs (1991) - Jonathon Demme
* 19. Top Secret (1984)
* 18. One Battle After Another (2025) - Paul Thomas Anderson
* 17. Memento (2000) - Christopher Nolan (rewatch)
* 16. Pleasantville (1998) - Gary Ross
* 15. The Fisher King (1991) -
* 14. The Mastermind
* 13. The Birdcage
* 12. Fight Club (rewatch)
* 11. Knives Out: Glass Onion (rewatch)
* 10. Twins
* 9. The Remains of the Day
* 8. The Ladykillers
* 7. Us (rewatch)
* 6. Saving Private Ryan (rewatch)
* 5. Event Horizon
* 4. Insomnia (2002) - Christopher Nolan (rewatch)
* 3. Knives Out (rewatch)
* 2. Gattaca (1997) - Andrew Niccol
* 1. Eddington (2025) - Ari Aster

=== 2025 ===
* 65. Wake Up Dead Man (Knives Out 3)
* 64. Miller's Crossing
* 63. Blood Simple
* 62. Crazy Stupid Love
* 61. Happiest Season
* 60. Bridge of Spies
* 59. Identity
* 58. Clueless
* 57. Ace Ventura 2: Call of Nature
* 56. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
* 55. Apollo 13
* 54. LA Confidential (rewatch)
* 53. Inside Llewyn Davis
* 52. M3gan
* 51. Clear and Present Danger
* 50. 12 Monkeys
* 49. No Country for Old Men
* 48. The Hudsucker Proxy
* 47. La Cuisse ou l'aile
* 46. Mission Impossible : The Final Reckoning
* 45. Dumb and Dumber
* 44. Rear Window
* 43. Raising Arizona
* 42. Tenet (rewatch)
* 41. The fifth Element
* 40. Burn Without Reading
* 39. The Big Lebowski (rewatch)
* 38. Fargo (rewatch)
* 37. 28 Days Later (rewatch)
* 36. O Brother, Where Art Thou
* 35. Mickey 17
* 34. Empire of the Sun
* 33. The Fugitive
* 32. Wet Hot American Summer (rewatch)
* 31. Ted
* 30. Hundreds of Beavers
* 29. Wayne’s World (rewatch)
* 28. True Grit (Coen Bros)
* 27. Groundhog Day (rewatch)
* 26. Moonrise Kingdom
* 25. Asterix et Obelix: Mission Cleopatra
* 24. Adaptation (rewatch)
* 23. Romancing the Stone (rewatch)
* Easter Film Festival
** 22. Mad Max: Fury Road (rewatch)
** 21. Witness
** 20. The Grand Budapest Hotel (rewatch)
** 19. Conclave
** 18. Ace Ventura: Pet Detective
** 17. Lincoln
** 16. Being John Malkovitch (rewatch)
** 15. AI (rewatch)
** 14. The Royal Tenenbaums (rewatch)
** 13. Total Recall 1990 (rewatch)
** 12. In the Line of Fire (rewatch)
* 11. Flow
* 10. Juror No. 2
* 9. The Savage Robot
* 8. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (rewatch)
* 7. Dead Poet's Society
* 6. Notting Hill (rewatch)
* 5. My Neighbor Totoro (rewatch)
* 4. Kiki’s Delivery Service (rewatch)
* 3. Dr Strangelove (rewatch)
* 2. Dune 2
* 1. Austin Powers: The Spy who Shagged Me (rewatch)

=== 2024 and Earlier ===
* The Big Lebowski
* The Holiday
* Love Actually
* Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure
* The Mask
[[Category:Films]]

Books

2026-09-06T19:38:04Z

Robert.adlington: /* Currently Reading */

== Books to Buy ==

Used:
* [https://www.amazon.fr/Nightmare-Reason-Life-Franz-Kafka/dp/0374523355/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=3UVJCLJFIY2CS&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.u3RaalBtg8bvWBbE8fVyXaCIirwCIkTLbUk5cwh_aYdlxQvg0yct5WxpF8hlFrbZxzIlPisTw_LJ-XermdOvrvQTKJR1xhGnjBQeBOOkj7UvLDqubVbBqOs4xWZlUjrzTneCM3AQNtLpEPT7T52XEL13eNQRCBZrMnVuSMk128RVqDk4IOYDPBhUWZzf9mHNv9T-yqA9Qv2JRg8l61zGhg.6VgqDbi7D-Vl19NQyoPSj86-nLG9IM98Vpm9Z9m-uGo&dib_tag=se&keywords=nightmare%2Bof%2Breason&qid=1783763181&sprefix=nightmare%2Bof%2Breason%2Caps%2C131&sr=8-1&th=1&psc=1 The Nightmare of Reason]: A Biography of Franz Kafka- Pawel i know that you know that I know - George Butte [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dormant-Einstein-Wittgenstein-Frankenstein-Re-Inventing/dp/0670804800 Einstein, Gertrude Stein, Wittgenstein and Frankenstein] : Reinventing the Universe by John Brockman
* Gormenghast - Mervyn Peake
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/What-Name-This-Book-Recreational/dp/0486481980 What is the Name of this Book]: Raymond Smullyan
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Thought-Contagion-International-Engineering-Paperback/dp/B00FDVRANQ Thought Contagion]: How Ideas Act Like Viruses - Aaron Lynch
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Language-Thought-Other-Biological-Categories/dp/0262631156 Language, Thought, and other Biological Categories]: New Foundations for Realism - Ruth Garrett Millikan

Paperbacks:

* luke Bergis - [https://www.amazon.com/Wanting-Power-Mimetic-Desire-Everyday/dp/1250266645/ref=pd_aw_fbt_img_m_sccl_1_1/139-2587675-0340248?pd_rd_w=hV8j6&content-id=amzn1.sym.7766b57a-a0a0-4f33-935d-91822a4c15c0&pf_rd_p=7766b57a-a0a0-4f33-935d-91822a4c15c0&pf_rd_r=JQZSCYCZN9A2FBM0ABFQ&pd_rd_wg=Sf4rz&pd_rd_r=2b67db45-7810-4a08-8cd4-c4fc12f2e398&pd_rd_i=1250266645&psc=1 Wanting], The One and the 99 [https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/1399417509/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?ie=UTF8&dib_tag=se&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.SQM7Fcey4aad63hBfUW3aw.ctIlU9WAvr7a0KcGQ6Trzvv10dT7aouxiR_JgFN38Qc&qid=1784816314&sr=8-1 The Illuminated Man]: The Life, Death, and Worlds of JGB (apr 27)
* [https://www.amazon.fr/Center-Cannot-Hold-Journey-Madness/dp/1401309445/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=30LPLKNP3IZ6T&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.1ymUySu7SSRnF7VrIuk7F9G8mDn0vUlYjj2Ku5JZ3_PYON6iIUmcNCX9ai20Y0vZox6uJDtrT6HWKPcMOwUgffTs0AKgu-nJljkfuSqPliiinzJYFv3sqyAMrGqzWIfw1fGZbsff-kHjLgzZIx0OxtARGswv-lBF3OKikrjGNBjWl7yb3jt78g-xLiJJZ7UBKQF4OOJNYWJrOzJwiNmtFQ.o-6a46h4dxUo_ekLzSagCPkaFyAF6FjIdkVnB7TcOUI&dib_tag=se&keywords=elyn+saks&qid=1783197867&sprefix=elyn+sa%2Caps%2C193&sr=8-1 the center cannot hold]: my journey through madness - Elyn Saks
* [https://www.amazon.fr/One-Cares-About-Crazy-People/dp/0316341134/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=1G9JUB6IDN3BF&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.8pmsCx59KiaAt10bvF9HMZoqKCLpjaKJ384UkB8fA1A.YfWbCZxI4NByVLmIFTKMyWu3fJ8kBRIsi0sDSjv8Yrg&dib_tag=se&keywords=no%2Bone%2Bcares%2Babout%2Bcrazy%2Bpeople&qid=1783198086&s=books&sprefix=no%2Bone%2Bcares%2Babout%2Bcrazy%2Bpeople%2Cbooks%2C146&sr=1-1&th=1&psc=1 no one cares about crazy people] - Ron Powers Born on a Blue Day - Daniel Tammet
* Pellis - [https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/1851687602/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?ie=UTF8&dib_tag=se&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.H3yYZI7yMy8UMo0DZRtBXC7wbyUv2gRGlVcNGkDlLMJgXzHKvH1465fjUMkPxFfF6Gy4SxJZF5iHJj2-KPFajMqmXBiYahwhe5kfd66JSukAwSqbKylXct02KUMpWpWQCIW6bCM_Ht6bSd14GU33N14R__7O6CnhnzxNZy9X2zb3i5AfMj6mzwHRCKmg4ksQwKR6te7VhUOppALivblKNw.VKJXzbK6PkVwM-NWQcVACHw9NKJAMBuwXSLAEcjus40&qid=1775903643&sr=8-1 The Playful Brain]
* Strauss - The Three Waves of Modernity
* Peter Handke - Insulting the Audience
* Lorrie Moore - Self Help
* La Modification - Michel Butor
* Un Homme qui dort - Georges Perec
* How Like a God - Rex Stout

* Time and Narrative - Paul Ricoeur
* Flight of Icarus - Raymond Queneau
* Nausea - Sartre
* [https://www.amazon.fr/Seven-Joanna-Kavenna/dp/0571338151 Seven], [https://www.amazon.fr/Zed-Joanna-Kavenna/dp/0571245161 Zed], etc by Joanna Kavenna. See [https://blog.adlington.fr/index.php/2026/01/12/seven-or-how-to-play-a-game-without-rules-by-joanna-kavenna/ blog].
* Building a second brain
* how to solve it
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Adam-Eve-Paradise-E%C3%A7a-Queir%C3%B3s/dp/0811239144 Adam and Eve in Paradise] - eca de queiros
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bounds-Possibility-Puzzles-Modal-Variation/dp/0198910770 The Bounds of Possibility] - Philosophy book about categories
* Nicola Barker - [https://www.amazon.co.uk/TonyInterruptor-Nicola-Barker/dp/1803512563 Tony Interrupter] [https://www.amazon.co.uk/H-PPY-Nicola-Barker/dp/1785151142 Happy], etc
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Growth-Form-Canto-Classics/dp/1107672562 On Growth and Form] - D'Arcy Thompson
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Alpha-Omega-Jane-Ellen-Harrison/dp/1961341417 Alpha and Omega] - Jane Ellen Harrison
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Willard-Gibbs-Whole-Simpler-Parts/dp/1961341158 the Whole is Simpler than its Parts] - Willard Gibbs
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Stranger-Than-Fiction-Lives-Twentieth-Century/dp/152992572X Stranger Than Fiction]: Lives of the Twentieth-Century Novel - Edwin Frank
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Gray-Matters-Biography-Brain-Surgery/dp/1836430396 Gray Matters]: A Biography of Brain Surgery - Theodore Schwartz
*

Hardbacks:

* Mark Solms - The Only Cure - Freud and Neuroscience

* [https://kottke.org/26/03/beginning-comes-after-the-end The Beginning Comes After the End] - Rebecca Solnit
* [https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/02/being-and-time-an-annotated-translation.html Being and Time Annotated] or [https://www.amazon.com/Heideggers-Being-Time-Paraphrased-Annotated/dp/1786613417/ref=sr_1_1?crid=22NKOIU8DE86V&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.DTYI13qU7soxuiueo4-e128MDF_Ax3dyLaUSGkoN5Ia4UdUOk_Dq1I7NCzXbEWWQnCsZ_8TnpI_r-Aut-ca4ur7QoC5kObPu2gII5w37OPLBu35YwyZZIcQAH6cz3tSLhX00snAOwxwxFPCfiq2S-wt5XmSjCN3Hg5m3Btu2C-mHF7lEv6A6EaaeWIdcwChz23nuiyKnrHs62cHAUXQspCNW8TuE65y1CydE89Xp8as.iBxvGfEz3Ac-ZaaYxIBUO8lpCpF0iHOejymlghbifJ4&dib_tag=se&keywords=thomas+sheehan&qid=1771981151&s=books&sprefix=thomas+sheehan%2Cstripbooks%2C198&sr=1-1 paraphrased] ?
* [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/dec/23/capitalism-by-sven-beckert-review-an-extraordinary-history-of-the-economic-system-that-controls-our-lives Capitalism]: A Global History-Sven Beckert
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Violent-Saviours-Capitalism-Without-Consent/dp/1399811215 Violent Saviors]: How the West Conquered the Rest - William Easterly
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Master-Contradictions-Thomas-Making-Mountain/dp/0300233744 The master of contradictions]: Thomas Mann and the making of the Magic Mountain
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Story-CO2-Everything-Planetary-Experiment/dp/0241631165 The Story of CO2 Is the Story of Everything]: A Planetary Experiment
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/M%C3%B6bius-Book-Catherine-Lacey/dp/1803511494 the moebius book] - Catherine Lacey
* Chance and Necessity - Jacques Monod
* L'homme microscopique - Pierre Auger
* Why Machines Learn: The Elegant Maths Behind Modern AI (out in paperback Jan 30 2025)
* A History of the Muslim World: From Its Origins to the Dawn of Modernity (awaiting paperback)
* The New Roman Empire: A History of Byzantium
* Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as Civilization
* Consolations - David Whyte

== Books to Read ==

* Reading to Learn - William Zinger
* Breakfast of Champions - Kurt Vonnegut

== Currently Reading ==

* [[Atomic Habits]] - James Clear
*[[Die Montez-Juwelen]] - Sabine Vôhringer
* [[The Book: A Cover-to-Covet Exploration of the Most Powerful Object of Our Time]] - Keith Houston
*[[Understanding Media]] - Marshall McLuhan (re-read)
*[[The Practice of Not Thinking]]: A Guide to Mindful Living - Ryunosuke Koike
*The Knowledge Illusion - Sloman/ Fernbach

== Books Read ==

=== 2026 (week 34) ===

* 39. [[The Red Book: Liber Novus]] - CG Jung 38. [[G: A Novel]] - John Berger
* 37. [[Thinking in Numbers]] - Daniel Tammet
* 36. [[Every Word is a Bird We Teach to Sing]] - Daniel Tammet
* 35. [[The Perpetual Race of Achilles and the Tortoise]] - Borges
* 34. The Oldest Book in the World: Philosophy in the Age of the Pyramids - Bill Manley
* 33. Congo, Une Histoire - David Van Reybrouck
* 32. [[The Art of Logic]]: How to Make Sense in a World that Doesn't - Eugenia Cheng
* 31. [[Why Read]] - Will Self
* 30. [[The Collected Schizophrenias]] - Esmé Weijun Wang
* 29. L’Intranquille Monsieur Pessoa (BD) - Nicolas Barral
* 28. [[Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain]] - Lisa Feldmann Barrrett.
* 27: [[Nine Minds]]: Inner Lives on the Spectrum - Daniel Tammet
* 26: [[Ambigrammia]]: Between Creation and Discovery - Douglas Hofstadter
* 25. [[Once Upon a Prime]]:The Wondrous Connections Between Mathematics and Literature - Sarah B. Hart
* 24. [[Short Stories in German for Beginners]] - Olly Richards (reread - with Ricky)
* 23. Books v. Cigarettes - George Orwell
* 22. Der Nasse Fische - Volker Kutscher (in German!)
* 21. [[We Are Our Brains: From the Womb to Alzheimer's]] - Dick Swaab
* 20. [[Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife]] - Francesca Wade
* 19. [[How the World Made the West]] - Josephine Quinn
* 18. [[Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning]] - Sigmund Freud
* 17. [[This is Your Mind on Plants]]: Opium - Caffeine - Mescaline - Michael Pollen
* 16. [[Open Socrates]]: The Case for a Philosophical Life - Agnes Callard

* 15. [[Consciousness: How Our Brains Turn Matter Into Meaning]] - John Parrington
*14. [[The Happiness of Dogs]]: Why the Unexamined Life is Most Worth Living - Mark Rowlands
*13. [[The Hidden Spring]] - Mark Solms
*12. [[The Interpretation of Dreams]] - Sigmund Freud
*11. [[A Certain Lucas]] - Julio Cortazar
*10. [[The Intentional Stance]] - Daniel Dennett
*9. [[La Conquête de Plassans]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 4) - Zola
*8. [[Why We Read Fiction]]: Theory of Mind and the Novel - Lisa Zunshine

* 7. On the Calculation of Volume: 3 - Solvej Balle
* 6. [[Unnatural Voices]]: Extreme Narration in Modern and Contemporary Fiction - Brian Richardson
* 5. The Seven Dials Mystery - Agatha Christie
* 4. [[Le Ventre de Paris]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 3) - Zola
*3. [[The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative]] (2nd Edition) - H. Porter Abbott
* 2. [[Autocracy Inc]]: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World - Anne Applebaum
* 1. [[The Secret Life of the Periodic Table]] - Dr Ben Still

=== 2025 ===

* 55. The White Priory Murders - Carter Dickson (re-read)
* 54. [[How Life Works]]: A User's Guide to the New Biology - Philip Ball
* 53. [[Who Killed Father Christmas]]? and Other Seasonal Mysteries - Martin Edwards
* 52. [[Chemistry: A Very Short Introduction]] - Peter Atkins
* 51. [[The Scheme of Things]] - Allen Wheelis
* 50. [[La Fortune des Rougon]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 1) - Zola
* 49. [[Cause for Alarm]] - Eric Ambler
* 48. [[The Man from the Future]]: The Visionary Life of John Von Neumann - Ananyo Bhattacharya
*47. [[Everything is Predictable]]: How Bayes' Remarkable Theorem Explains the World - Tom Chivers
* 46. [[The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are]] - Alan Watts
* 45. [[La Curée]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 2) - Zola
* 44. [[The Emperor of All Maladies]]: A Biography of Cancer - Siddhartha Mukherjee
* 43. [[La Bête Humaine]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 17) - Zola (re-read)
* 42. [[The Society of Mind]] - Marvin Minsky
* 41. [[Le Père Goriot]] - Honore Balzac
* 40. [[Gravity's Rainbow]] - Thomas Pynchon (re-read)
* 39. [[Le Colonel Chabert]] - Balzac
* 38. [[Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett]] - James Knowlson (re-read)
* 37. [[Reading for the Plot]]: Design and Intention in Narrative - Peter Brooks (re-read)

* 36. [[Steps to an Ecology of Mind]] - Gregory Bateson (re-read)
* 35. [[Le Bilan de L'intelligence]] - Paul Valéry
* 34. [[Zero]] - Charles Seife
* 33. [[Alan Turing: The Enigma]] - Andrew Hodges
* 32. [[How to Do Things with Words]] - J L Austin
* 31. [[The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society]] - Norbert Wiener
* 30. [[The Mind is Flat]]: The Illusion of Mental Depth and the Improvised Mind - Nick Chater
* 29. [[Possible Minds: 25 Ways of Looking at AI]] - John Brockman
* 28. [[A Little History of Philosophy]] - Nigel Warburton
* 27. [[All Fours]] - Miranda July
* 26. [[Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern]] - Douglas R Hofstadter
* 25. [[The French Lieutenant’s Woman]] - John Fowles
* 24. [[Short Stories in German for Beginners]] - Olly Richards
* 23. [[On the Calculation of Volume: 2]] - Solvej Balle
* 22. [[Deep Simplicity: Chaos, Complexity, and the Emergence of Life]] - John Gribbin
* 21. [[Das Ludwig Thoma Komplott]]- Sabine Vöhringer
* 20. [[Maus]] - Art Spiegelman
* 19. [[On the Calculation of Volume: 1]] - Solvej Balle
* 18. [[The Concept of Mind]] - Gilbert Ryle
* 17. [[Cognitive Neuroscience: A Very Short Introduction]] - Richard Passingham
* 16. [[The Experience Machine]] - Andy Clark
* 15. [[Why We Remember: Revealing the Hidden Power of Memory]] - Dr Charan Ranganath
* 14. [[From Bacteria to Bach and Back]] - Daniel Dennett (re-read)
* 13. [[The Village of Eight Graves]] - Seishi Yokomizo
* 12. [[Science: A History]] - Richard Crockett
* 11. [[Vienna: How the City of Ideas Created the Modern World]] - John Gribbin
* 10.[[The Inugami Curse]] - Seishi Yokomizo
* 9. [[The Rise and Reign of the Mammals]]
* 8. [[Four Ways of Thinking]] - David Sumpter
* 7. [[I've Been Thinking]] - Daniel Dennett
* 6. [[Serendipities: Language and Lunacy]] - Umberto Eco
* 5. [[I Am Dynamite: A Life of Friedrich Nietzsche]] - Sue Prideaux
* 4. [[A Brief History of Intelligence]] - Max S. Bennett
* 3. [[Foucault’s Pendulum]] - Umberto Eco (re-read)
* 2. [[Kant and the Platypus]] - Umberto Eco
* 1. [[Le cerveau m’a beaucoup déçu. L’esprit, non]] - Antoine Sénanque

=== 2024 ===

* The Plot - Will Eisner
* The Prague Cemetery - Umberto Eco
* The Nonjin Murders - Seishi Yokomizo
* When We Cease to Understand the World - Labatut
* Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert Pirsig (reread)
* The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind’s Hidden Complexities - Fauconnier and Turner
* The Singularity is Nearer - Ray Kurzweil
* Physics and Philosophy - Werner Heisenberg
* Le Ton Beau de…
* The Origins of Creativity - Edward O Wilson
* Psychonauts -
* The MANIAC - Benjamin Labatut
* In Search of Memory - Eric R. Kandel
* Dreaming: A Very Short Introduction - Hobson
* Les Effinger - Gabriele Target
* Triad - Tom Keve
* Nietzsche - Stefan Zweig
* The Weirdest People in the World - Joseph Henrich
* How Language Works - David Crystal
* The Invention of Nature - Andrea Wolf
* [[The Song of the Cell]] - Siddhartha Mukherjee
* [[Gödel, Escher, Bach]] - Douglas Hofstadter
* [[From Bacteria to Bach and Back]] - Daniel Dennett

== Challenging Books (per ChatGPT) ==
That’s a great (and slippery) question, because “challenging” can mean different things: difficulty of language, density of allusion, fractured narrative structure, philosophical depth, or even sheer length. Here’s a map of novels often considered among the most challenging, grouped by ''what makes them hard'':
----

=== 1. Language & Style Difficulties ===

* '''James Joyce – ''Finnegans Wake''''' (1939) Probably the hardest novel in English: dream-logic, multilingual puns, and invented words.
* '''William Gaddis – ''The Recognitions'' (1955)''' and ''JR'' (1975) Huge cast, little exposition, dialogue-driven (often without quotation marks).
* '''Samuel Beckett – ''The Unnamable'' (1953)''' Interior monologue collapsing into language itself; syntax dissolves.

----

=== 2. Length & Scope ===

* '''Marcel Proust – ''In Search of Lost Time''''' (1913–27) ~4,000 pages, long sentences, obsessive detail, profound reflections on memory.
* '''David Foster Wallace – ''Infinite Jest'' (1996)''' ~1,000 pages + 100 pages of endnotes; encyclopedic, fragmented plotlines.
* '''Norman Mailer – ''Harlot’s Ghost'' (1991)''' or ''Ancient Evenings'' (1983) Dense, sprawling, philosophically ambitious.

----

=== 3. Experimental Structure ===

* '''Thomas Pynchon – ''Gravity’s Rainbow'' (1973)''' Fragmented narrative, technical language, paranoia, hundreds of characters.
* '''Clarice Lispector – ''The Passion According to G.H.'' (1964)''' A single, intense interior monologue; metaphysical and unsettling.
* '''Julio Cortázar – ''Hopscotch'' (1963)''' Offers multiple reading orders; disruptive structure.

----

=== 4. Philosophical / Esoteric Depth ===

* '''Hermann Broch – ''The Sleepwalkers'' (1931–32)''' Mixes fiction with philosophy and essay.
* '''Robert Musil – ''The Man Without Qualities'' (1930–43)''' Massive unfinished modernist work, blending narrative with philosophical treatises.
* '''Thomas Mann – ''Joseph and His Brothers'' (1933–43)''' Retells biblical myth with immense erudition and depth.

----

=== 5. Dense Intertextuality ===

* '''James Joyce – ''Ulysses'' (1922)''' Homeric parallels, stylistic experiments, deep allusion to Irish politics and myth.
* '''Roberto Bolaño – ''2666'' (2004)''' Five interlinked novels, ranging from literary criticism to detective fiction to Holocaust history.
* '''José Lezama Lima – ''Paradiso'' (1966)''' Baroque Cuban prose, mythic density.

----

=== 6. Postmodern Labyrinths ===

* '''Mark Z. Danielewski – ''House of Leaves'' (2000)''' Multiple narrators, typographical experimentation, layered commentary.
* '''Viktor Pelevin – ''The Sacred Book of the Werewolf'' (2004)''' (or ''Generation “P”'') Satirical, reality-bending narratives.

----

=== A few contenders often called “the hardest of the hard”: ===

* ''Finnegans Wake'' (Joyce)
* ''The Recognitions'' (Gaddis)
* ''The Man Without Qualities'' (Musil)
* ''Gravity’s Rainbow'' (Pynchon)
* ''In Search of Lost Time'' (Proust)

[[Category:Books]]

Films

2026-09-06T19:36:04Z

Robert.adlington: /* 2026 */

== Films to Watch ==

[https://www.cinealcazar.fr/fichier/programme.pdf Cinema Alcazar Program]

* Wicker: https://youtu.be/HP0BWBWn14I?si=E5oThE4uNiED28b3
* morvern Callar
* Do the right thing
* run Lola Run
* Mind trips
** Triangle
** Beyond the infinite two minutes
** Enemy
** Under the Silver Lake
** The Vanishing
** Angel Heart
** Following
** The Invisible Guest
** Perfect Blue
** Resolution
* fast times
* the Jerk
* Mutiny on the Bounty
* Entrapment
* Mask of Zorro
* PTA - Hard Eight, Magnolia, Boogie Nights, etc
* Little Big and Far - weird scandinavian film
* This is Spinal tap
* Big Night - Tucci and Shaloub
* Punch drunk love
* Boyhood
* Kind hearts and coronets
* A night at the opera
* Blazing saddles
* Lives of others
* Lost in Translation
* One flew over
* Get out
* Maltese falcon
* Early mad maxes
* Joule of the Nile
* the man with two brains
* Psycho Therapy - Steve Buscemi is a serial killer who wants to advise an author, but ends up playing a marriage counselor.
* Early Steve Martin
* A Complete Unknown
* la La Land -
* The Phoenician Scheme - new Wes Anderson comedy espionage thriller
* Thelma - Grandma fights con artists
* Kinds of Kindness
* 2001
* The Elephant Man
* The Fabulous Baker Boys
* Network

== Films Watched ==

=== 2026 ===

* 56. The Sixth Sense 55. Franz K 54. Taxi Driver 53. The Tailor of Panama
* 52. La bataille de Gaulle: J'écris ton nom
* 51. Training Day
* 50. The Guns of Naverone
* 49. La bataille de Gaulle: L'age de fer
* 48. Kind Hearts and Coronets
* 47. Parasite
* 46. Arsenic and Old Lace
* 45. Get Out
* 44. Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure (rewatch)
* 43. Apex
* 42. 21 Jump Street
* 41. Scream 3
* 40. Shutter Island
* 39. Scream 2
* 38. Wall-E
* 37. Get Smart
* 36. Se7en
* 35. The Producers
* 34: Garfield: The Movie
* 33. Leon
* 32. Shimmer Lake
* 31. Unforgiven
* 30. A Mighty Wind
* 29. Magnolia
* 28. Escape from Alcatraz
* 27. The Sting
* 26. Pulp Fiction
* 25. Failure to Launch
* 24. Hudson Hawk
* 23. Mystère à St Tropez
* 22. The Thomas Crown Affair
* 21. The Three Amigos (1986)
* 20. The Silence of the Lambs (1991) - Jonathon Demme
* 19. Top Secret (1984)
* 18. One Battle After Another (2025) - Paul Thomas Anderson
* 17. Memento (2000) - Christopher Nolan (rewatch)
* 16. Pleasantville (1998) - Gary Ross
* 15. The Fisher King (1991) -
* 14. The Mastermind
* 13. The Birdcage
* 12. Fight Club (rewatch)
* 11. Knives Out: Glass Onion (rewatch)
* 10. Twins
* 9. The Remains of the Day
* 8. The Ladykillers
* 7. Us (rewatch)
* 6. Saving Private Ryan (rewatch)
* 5. Event Horizon
* 4. Insomnia (2002) - Christopher Nolan (rewatch)
* 3. Knives Out (rewatch)
* 2. Gattaca (1997) - Andrew Niccol
* 1. Eddington (2025) - Ari Aster

=== 2025 ===
* 65. Wake Up Dead Man (Knives Out 3)
* 64. Miller's Crossing
* 63. Blood Simple
* 62. Crazy Stupid Love
* 61. Happiest Season
* 60. Bridge of Spies
* 59. Identity
* 58. Clueless
* 57. Ace Ventura 2: Call of Nature
* 56. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
* 55. Apollo 13
* 54. LA Confidential (rewatch)
* 53. Inside Llewyn Davis
* 52. M3gan
* 51. Clear and Present Danger
* 50. 12 Monkeys
* 49. No Country for Old Men
* 48. The Hudsucker Proxy
* 47. La Cuisse ou l'aile
* 46. Mission Impossible : The Final Reckoning
* 45. Dumb and Dumber
* 44. Rear Window
* 43. Raising Arizona
* 42. Tenet (rewatch)
* 41. The fifth Element
* 40. Burn Without Reading
* 39. The Big Lebowski (rewatch)
* 38. Fargo (rewatch)
* 37. 28 Days Later (rewatch)
* 36. O Brother, Where Art Thou
* 35. Mickey 17
* 34. Empire of the Sun
* 33. The Fugitive
* 32. Wet Hot American Summer (rewatch)
* 31. Ted
* 30. Hundreds of Beavers
* 29. Wayne’s World (rewatch)
* 28. True Grit (Coen Bros)
* 27. Groundhog Day (rewatch)
* 26. Moonrise Kingdom
* 25. Asterix et Obelix: Mission Cleopatra
* 24. Adaptation (rewatch)
* 23. Romancing the Stone (rewatch)
* Easter Film Festival
** 22. Mad Max: Fury Road (rewatch)
** 21. Witness
** 20. The Grand Budapest Hotel (rewatch)
** 19. Conclave
** 18. Ace Ventura: Pet Detective
** 17. Lincoln
** 16. Being John Malkovitch (rewatch)
** 15. AI (rewatch)
** 14. The Royal Tenenbaums (rewatch)
** 13. Total Recall 1990 (rewatch)
** 12. In the Line of Fire (rewatch)
* 11. Flow
* 10. Juror No. 2
* 9. The Savage Robot
* 8. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (rewatch)
* 7. Dead Poet's Society
* 6. Notting Hill (rewatch)
* 5. My Neighbor Totoro (rewatch)
* 4. Kiki’s Delivery Service (rewatch)
* 3. Dr Strangelove (rewatch)
* 2. Dune 2
* 1. Austin Powers: The Spy who Shagged Me (rewatch)

=== 2024 and Earlier ===
* The Big Lebowski
* The Holiday
* Love Actually
* Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure
* The Mask
[[Category:Films]]

The Red Book: Liber Novus

2026-09-06T17:57:46Z

Robert.adlington: /* Appendices */

== Introduction ==

* As Jung saw it, part of us lives in the present and the other part is connected to the centuries.
* "I am no longer alone with myself, and I can only artificially recall the scary and beautiful feeling of solitude. This is the shadow side of the fortune of love."
* "If we feel our way into the human secrets of the sick person, the madness also reveals its system, and we recognize in the mental illness merely an exceptional reaction to emotional problems which are not strange to us."
* In Transformations and Symbols of the Libido, Jung differentiated two kinds of thinking. Taking his cue from William James, among others, Jung contrasted directed thinking and fantasy thinking. The former was verbal and logical, while the latter was passive, associative, and imagistic. The former was exemplified by science and the latter by mythology. Jung claimed that the ancients lacked a capacity for directed thinking, which was a modern acquisition. Fantasy thinking took place when directed thinking ceased.
* One particular myth was given a central role: that of the hero. For Jung, this represented the life of the individual, attempting to become independent and to free himself from the mother.
* One without a myth "is like one uprooted, having no true link either with the past, or with the ancestral life which continues within him, or yet with contemporary human society."
* "...a conviction that the unconscious did not consist of inert material only, but that there was something living down there."
* He argued that there were two basic movements of the libido: extraversion, in which the subject's interest was oriented toward the outer world, and introversion, in which the subject's interest was directed inward. Following from this he posited two types of people, characterized by a predominance of one of these tendencies.
* His scientific question was to see what took place when he switched off consciousness.
* The constructive standpoint asked, "how, out of this present psyche, a bridge can be built into its own future."
* Whereas Zarathrustra proclaimed the death of God, Liber Novus depicts the rebirth of God in the soul. There are also indications that Jung read Dante's Commedia at this time, which also informs the structure of the work. Liber Novus depicts Jung's descent into Hell. But whereas Dante could utilize an established cosmology, Liber Novus is an attempt to shape an individual cosmology. The role of Philemon in Jung's work has analogies to that of Zarathrustra in Nietzsche's work and Virgil in Dante's.
* "It is the devil who says: Disdain all reason and science, mankind's highest powers. That is never appropriate even though we are forced to acknowledge [the existence of] the irrational."
* The overall theme of the book is how Jung regains his soul and overcomes the contemporary malaise of spiritual alienation.
* He realized that until then, he had served the spirit of the time, characterized by use and value. In addition to this, there existed a spirit of the depths, which led to the things of the soul. The spirit of the times corresponds to personality 1 and the spirit of the depths corresponds to personality 2. Thus, this period could be seen as a return to the values of personality 2.
* The task of individuation lay in establishing a dialogue with the fantasy figures - or contents of the collective unconsciousness - and integrating them into consciousness, hence recovering the value of the mythopoeic imagination which had been lost to the modern age, and thereby reconciling the spirit of the time with the spirit of the depth.
* Adaptation to the "inner" led to the demand for individuation, which was contrary to adaptation to others.
* The individual had to produce values that could serve as a substitute for his absence from society. These new values enabled one to make reparation to the collective. Individuation was for the few. Those who were insufficiently creative should rather reestablish collective conformity with a society. The individual had not only to create new values, but also socially recognizable ones, as society had a "right to expect realizable values."
* Society demanded imitation.
* "The training consists first of all in systematic exercises for eliminating critical attention, thus producing a vacuum in consciousness." One commenced by concentrating on a particular mood, and attempting to become as conscious as possible of all fantasies and associations that came up in connection with it. The aim was to allow fantasy free play, without departing from the initial affect in a free associative process. This led to a concrete or symbolic expression of the mood, which had the result of bringing the affect nearer to consciousness, hence making it more understandable.
* The outbreak of war had made apparent the deep subliminal connections between individual fantasies and world events - and hence between the psychology of the individual and that of the nation.
* Jung argued that the era of reason and skepticism inaugurated by the French Revolution had repressed religion and irrationalism. This in turn had serious consequences, leading to the outbreak of irrationalism represented by the world war. It was thus a historical necessity to acknowledge the irrational as a psychological factor. The acceptance of the irrational forms one of the central themes of Liber Novus.
* "Our age is seeking a new spring of life. I found one and drank of it and the water tasted good."
* All of us stand between two worlds: that world of external perception and the world of the perception of the unconscious.
* <section begin="jung_symbols" />Symbols, Jung maintained, stemmed from the unconscious, and the creation of symbols was the most important function of the unconscious.<section end="jung_symbols" />
* The soul gave rise to images that were assumed to be worthless from the rational perspective. There were four ways of using them:
** Artistic
** Philosophical speculation
** Quasi-religious
** Licentiousness
** [and a fifth] Psychology, if Jung can clearly distinguish it from the other uses (particularly art)
== Liber Primus ==
=== Prologue: The Way of What is to Come ===
* Woe betide those who live by way of example! Life is not with them. If you live according to an example, but who should live your own life if not yourself? So live yourselves.
=== I: Refinding the Soul ===
* I did not consider that my soul cannot be the object of my judgment and knowledge; much more are my judgment and knowledge the objects of my soul.
* The wealth of the soul exists in images.
=== II: Soul and God ===
* -
=== III: On the Service of the Soul ===
* -
=== IV: The Desert / Experiences in the Desert ===
* The soul has its own peculiar world. Only the self enters in there, or the man who has completely become his self, he who is neither in events, nor in men, nor in his thoughts.
=== V: Descent into Hell in the Future ===
* Speak then of sick delusion when the spirit of the depths can no longer stay down and forces a man to speak in tongues instead of in human speech, and makes him believe that he himself is the spirit of the depths. But also speak of sick delusion when the spirit of this time does not leave a man and forces him to see only the surface, to deny the spirit of the depths and to take himself for the spirit of the times. The spirit of this time is ungodly, the spirit of the depths is ungodly, balance is godly.
* Therefore whoever considers the event from outside always sees only that it already was, and that it is always the same. But whoever looks from inside, knows that everything is new. The events that happen are always the same. But the creative depths of man are not always the same. Events signify nothing, they signify only in us. We create the meaning of events. The meaning is and always was artificial. We make it.
* The heroic in you is the fact that you are ruled by the thought that this or that is good, that this or that performance is indispensable, this or that cause is objectionable, this or that goal must be attained in headlong striving work, this or that pleasure should be ruthlessly repressed at all costs. Consequently you sin against incapacity. But incapacity exists. No one should deny it, find fault with it, or shout it down.
=== VI: Splitting of the Spirit ===
* My soul: "Who gives you thoughts and words? Do you make them? Are you not my serf, a recipient who lies at my door and picks up my alms? And you dare think that what you devise and speak could be nonsense? Don't you know yet that it comes from me and belongs to me?
* Everything that becomes too old becomes evil, the same is true of your highest. Learn from the suffering of the crucified God that one can also betray and crucify a God, namely the God of the old year. If a God ceases being the way of life, he must fall secretly.
* The God becomes sick if he oversteps the height of the zenith. That is why the spirit of the depths took me when the spirit of this time had led me to the summit.
=== VII: Murder of the Hero ===
* We also live in our dreams, we do not live only by day. Sometimes we accomplish our greatest deeds in dreams.
* In that night my life was threatened since I had to kill my lord and God, not in single combat, since who among mortals could kill a God in a duel? You can reach your God only as an assassin, if you want to overcome him.
* But this is the bitterest for mortal men: our Gods want to be overcome, since they require renewal. If men kill their princes, they do so because they cannot kill their Gods, and because they do not know that they should kill the Gods in themselves.
* If the God grows old, he becomes shadow, nonsense, and he goes down. The greatest truth becomes the greatest lie, the brightest day becomes the darkest night.
* As day requires night and night requires day, so meaning requires absurdity and absurdity requires meaning.
=== VIII: The Conception of the God ===
* The divine child approached me out of the terrible ambiguity, the hateful-beautiful, the evil-good, the laughable-serious, the sick-healthy, the inhuman-human and the ungodly-godly.
* Hell is when you must think and feel and do everything that you know you do not want. Hell is when you know that your having to is also a wanting to, and that you yourself are responsible for it. Hell is when you know that everything serious that you have planned with yourself is also laughable, that everything fine is also brutal, that everything good is also bad, that everything high is also low, and that everything pleasant is also shameful.
* But the deepest Hell is when you realize that Hell is also no Hell, but a cheerful Heaven, not a Heaven in itself, but in this respect a Heaven, and in that respect a Hell.
* That is the ambiguity of the God: he is born from a dark ambiguity and rises to a bright ambiguity. Unequivocalness is simplicity and leads to death. But ambiguity is the way of life. If the left foot does not move, then the right one does, and you move. The God wills this.
* [note] In 1916, Jung wrote: "Man has one ability which, though it is of the greatest utility for collective purposes, is the most pernicious for individuation, and that is imitation. Collective psychology can hardly dispense with imitation."
* Then there will no longer be a hero, and no one who can imitate him. Because from that time henceforth all imitation is cursed. The new God laughs at imitation and discipleship. He needs no imitators and no pupils. He forces men through himself. The God is his own follower in man. He imitates himself.
* If you are in yourself, you become aware of your incapacity. You will see how little capable you are of imitating the heroes and of being a hero yourself. So you will also no longer force others to become heroes. Like you, they suffer from incapacity. Incapacity, too, wants to live, but it will overthrow the Gods.
=== IX: Mysterium. Encounter ===
* [note] In a 1925 seminar, Jung recounted: "Whenever you take journeys like this you find a young girl with an old man... Salome is an anima figure, blind because, though connecting the conscious and the unconscious, she does not see the operation of the unconscious. Elijah is the personification of the cognitional element, Salome of the erotic. Elijah is the figure of the old prophet filled with wisdom. One could speak of these two figures as personifications of Logos and Eros very specifically shaped.
* The scene of the mystery play is a deep place like the crater of a volcano. My deep interior is a volcano, that pushes out the fiery-molten mass of the unformed and the undifferentiated. Thus my interior gives birth to the children of chaos, of the primordial mother. He who enters the crater also becomes chaotic matter, he melts. The formed in him dissolves and binds itself anew with the children of chaos, the powers of darkness, the ruling and the seducing, the compelling and the alluring, the divine and the devilish. These powers stretch beyond my certainties and limits on all sides, and connect me with all forms and with all distant beings and things, through which inner tidings of their being and their character develop in me.
* The powers of my depths are predetermination and pleasure. Predetermination of forethinking is Prometheus, who, without determined thoughts, brings the chaotic to form and definition, who digs the channels and holds the object before pleasure. Forethinking also comes before thought. But pleasure is the force that desires and destroys forms without form and definition. It loves the form in itself that it takes hold of, and destroys the forms that it does not take. The forethinker is a seer, but pleasure is blind. it does not foresee, but desires what it touches. Forethinking is not powerful in itself and therefore does not move. But pleasure is power, and therefore it moves.
* If pleasure lacked forming, pleasure would dissolve in manifoldness and become splintered and powerless through unending division, lost to the unending. If a form does not contain and compress pleasure within itself, it cannot reach the higher, since it always flows like water from above to below. All pleasure, when left alone, flows into the deep sea and ends in the deathly stillness of dispersal into unending space. Pleasure is not older than forethinking, and forethinking is not older than pleasure. Both are equally old and in nature intimately one. Only in man does the separate existence of both principles become apparent.
* The serpent is the earthly essence of man of which he is not conscious.
* One cannot live with forethinking alone, or with pleasure alone. You need both. But you cannot be in forethinking and in pleasure at the same time, you must take turns being in forethinking and pleasure, obeying the prevailing law, unfaithful to the other, so to speak. But men prefer one or the other. Some love thinking and establish the art of life on it. They practice their thinking and their circumspection, so they lose their pleasure. Therefore they are old and have a sharp face. The others love pleasure, they practice their feeling and living. Thus they forget thinking. Therefore they are young and blind. Those who think base the world on thought, those who feel, on feeling. You find truth and error in both.
* The way of life writhes like the serpent from right to left and from left to right, from thinking to pleasure and from pleasure to thinking. Thus the serpent is an adversary and a symbol of enmity, but also a wise bridge that connects right and left through longing, much needed by our life.
* The place where Elijah and Salome live together is a dark space and a bright one. The dark space is the space of forethinking. It is dark, so he who lives there requires vision. this space is limited, so forethinking does not lead into the extended distance, but into the depth of the past and the future. The crystal is the formed thought that reflects what is to come in what has gone before.
* A thinker should fear Salome, since she wants his head, especially if he is a holy man. A thinker cannot be a holy person, otherwise he loses his head. It does not help to hide oneself in thought. There the solidification overtakes you. You must turn back to motherly forethought to obtain renewal. But forethought leads to Salome.
* The thinker's passions are bad, therefore he has no pleasure. The thoughts of one who feels are bad, therefore he has no thoughts.
* The thinker feels the disgust of feeling, since the feeling in him is mainly disgusting. So the serpent lies between the thinker and the one who feels. They are each other's poison and healing.
* What a thinker does not think he believes does not exist, and what one who feels does not feel he believes does not exist. You begin to have a presentiment of the whole when you embrace your opposite principle, since the whole belongs to both principles, which grow from one root.
* May the thinking person accept his pleasure, and the feeling person accept his thought. Such leads one along the way.
=== X: Instruction ===
* Will you therefore confuse yourself with a tree or animal, because you look at them and because they exist with you in one and the same world? Must you be your thoughts, because you are in the world of your thoughts? But your thoughts are just as much outside your self as trees and animals are outside your body.
* [note] You cannot say you are wrong when you have a thought. For the understanding of the unconscious we must see our thoughts as events, as phenomena.
* Through reciprocal imitation you live according to the average expectation. The image of the hero was set up for all in every age through the appetite for imitation. Therefore the hero was murdered, since we have all been aping him. Do you know why you cannot abandon apishness? For fear of loneliness and defeat.
* To live oneself means: to be one's own task. Never say that it is a pleasure to live oneself. It will be no joy but a long suffering, since you must become your own creator. If you want to create yourself, then you do not begin with the best and the highest, but with the worst and the deepest. Therefore say that you are reluctant to live yourself. The flowing together of the stream of life is not joy but pain, since it is power against power, guilt, and shatters the sanctified.
* You create order according to what you know, you do not know the thoughts of chaos, and yet they exist. My thoughts are not my self, and my I does not embrace the thought. Your thought has this meaning and that, not just one, but many meanings. No one knows how many.
* My thoughts are not my self, but exactly like the things of the world, alive and dead. Just as I am not damaged through living in a partly chaotic world, so too I am not damaged if I live in my partly chaotic thought world. Thoughts are natural events that you do not possess, and whose meaning you only imperfectly recognize. Thoughts grow in me like a forest, populated by many different animals. But man is domineering in his thinking, and therefore he kills the pleasure of the forest and that of the wild animals. Man is violent in his desire, and he himself becomes a forest and a forest animal. Just as I have freedom in the world, I also have freedom in my thoughts. Freedom is conditional.
* You change those things of the world that, not being useful in themselves, endanger your welfare. Proceed likewise with your thoughts. Nothing is complete, and much is in dispute. The way of life is transformation, not exclusion. Well-being is a better judge than the law.
=== XI: Resolution ===
* Since, after the death of the hero our urge to live could no longer imitate anything, it therefore went into the depths of every man and excited the terrible conflict between the powers of the depths. Forethinking is singleness, love is togetherness. Both need one another, and yet they kill one another. Since men do not know that the conflict occurs inside themselves, they go mad, and one lays the blame on the other. If one-half of mankind is at fault, then everyman is half at fault. but he does not see the conflict in his own soul, which is however the source of the outer disaster. If you are aggravated against your brother, think that you are aggravated against the brother in you, that is, against what in you is similar to your brother.
* If you go to thinking, take your heart with you. If you go to love, take your head with you. Love is empty without thinking, thinking hollow without love.
* Whoever is in love is a full and overflowing vessel, and awaits the giving. Whoever is in forethinking is deep and hollow and awaits fulfillment.
* Love and forethinking are in one and the same place. Love cannot be without forethinking, and forethinking cannot be without love. Man is always too much in one or the other. This comes with human nature. Animals and plants seem to have enough in every way, only man staggers between too much and too little. He wavers, he is uncertain how much he must give here and how much there.
* [...] fundamentally, you are terrified of yourself, and therefore you prefer to run to all others rather than to yourself.

== Liber Secundus ==
=== The Images of the Erring ===
* -
=== I: The Red One ===
* I feel that my will is paralyzed and that the spirit of the depths possesses me. I know nothing about a way. I can therefore neither want this nor that, since nothing indicates to me whether I want this or that. I wait, without knowing what I'm waiting for.
* I earnestly confronted my devil and behaved with him as with a real person. This I learned in the Mysterium: to take seriously every unknown wanderer who personally inhabits the inner world, since they are real because they are effectual.
* [note] the scientific credo of our time has developed a superstitious phobia about fantasy. But the real is what works. The fantasies of the unconscious work - there can be no doubt about that.
* The devil is convinced that dancing is neither lust nor madness, but an expression of joy, which is something proper to neither one nor the other.
* [...] he accepted some of my seriousness, and I accepted some of his joy. This gave me courage. but if the devil has gotten more earnest, one must brace oneself. It is always a risky thing to accept to joy, but it leads us to life and its disappointment, from which the wholeness of our life becomes.
=== II: The Castle in the Forest ===
* [...] does it want to grow into some silly ghost story? To what nonsense am I damned? Is it my soul that harbors such novelistic brilliance? Must this, too, happen to me? I am truly in Hell - the worst awakening after death, to be resurrected in a lending library.
* Only what is human and what you call banal and hackneyed contains the wisdom that you seek.
* If no outer adventure happens to you, then no inner adventure happens to you either. The part that you take over from the devil - joy -, that is - leads you into adventure. It is necessary for you to know your limits. If you do not know them, you run into the artificial barriers of your imagination and the expectations of your fellow men. But your life will not take kindly to being hemmed in by artificial barriers. Life wants to jump over such barriers and you will fall out with yourself.
* As a man you have no soul, since it is in the woman; as a woman you have no soul, since it is in the man. But if you become a human being, then your self comes to you.
* Man belongs not only to an ordered world, he also belongs in the wonder-world of his soul.
* Just as you become a part of the manifold essence of the world through your bodies, so you become a part of the manifold essence of the inner world through your soul. This inner world is truly infinite, in no way poorer than the outer one. Man lives in two worlds. A fool lives here or there, but never here and there.
* Your Hell is made up of all the things that you always ejected from your sanctuary with a curse and a kick of the foot.
* You cannot at the same time be on the mountain and in the valley, but your way leads you from mountain to valley and from valley to mountain. Much begins amusingly and leads into the dark. Hell has levels.
=== III: One of the Lowly ===
* At your low point you are no longer distinct from your fellow beings. You are not ashamed and do not regret it, since insofar as you live the life of your fellow beings and descend to their lowliness you also climb into the holy stream of common life, where you are no longer an individual on a high mountain, but a fish among fish, a frog among frogs.
* Your heights are your own mountain, which belongs to you and you alone. There you are individual and live your very own life. If you live your on life, you do not live the common life, which is always continuing and never-ending, the life of history and the inalienable and ever-present burdens and products of the human race. There you live the endlessness of being, but not the becoming.
* To be that which you are is the bath of rebirth. In the depths, being is not an unconditional persistence but an endlessly slow growth. You think you are standing still like swamp water, but slowly you flow into the sea that covers the earth's greatest deeps, and is so vast that firm land seems only an island imbedded in the womb of the immeasurable sea.
* As a drop in the ocean you take part in the current, ebb and flow. You swell slowly on the land and slowly sink back again in interminably slow breaths. You wander vast distances in blurred currents and wash up on strange shores, not knowing how you got there. You mount the billows of huge storms and are swept back again into the depths. And you do not know how this happens to you. You had thought that your movement came from you and that it needed your decisions and efforts, so that you could get going and make progress. But with every conceivable effort you would never have achieved that movement and reached those areas to which the sea and the great wind of the world brought you.
* From endless blue plains you sink into black depths; luminous fish draw you, marvelous branches twine around you from above. You slip through columns and twisting, wavering, dark-leaved plants, and the sea takes you up again in bright green water to white, sandy coasts, and a wave foams you ashore and swallows you back again, and a wide smooth swell lifts you softly and leads you again to new regions, to twisting plants, to slowly creeping slimy polyps, and to green water and white sand and breaking surf.
* But from far off your heights shine to you above the sea in a golden light, like the moon emerging from the tide, and you become aare of yourself from afar. And longing seizes you and the will for your own movement. You want to cross over from being to becom-ing, since you have recognized the breath of the sea, and its flowing, that leads you here and there without your ever adhering; you have also recognized its surge that bears you to alien shores and carries you back, and gargles you up and down.
* You saw that it was the life of the whole and the death of each individual. You felt yourself entwined in the collective death, from death to the earth's deepest place, from death in your own strangely breathing depths. Oh you long to be beyond; despair and mortal fear seize you in this death that breathes slowly and streams back and forth eternally. All this light and dark, warm, tepid, and cold water, all these wavy, swaying, twisting plantlike animals and bestial plants, all these nightly wonders become a horror to you, and you long for the sun, for light dry air, for firm stones, for a fixed place and straight lines, for the motionless and firmly held, for rules and preconceived purpose, for singleness and your own intent.
* He who abides in common life becomes aware of death with fear. Thus the fear of death drives him toward singleness. He does not live there, but he becomes aware of life and is happy, since in singleness he is one who becomes, and has overcome death.
* Your heights are like the moon that luminously wanders alone and through the night looks eternally clear. Sometimes it covers itself and then you are totally in the darkness of the earth, but time and again it fills itself out with light. The death of the earth is foreign to it. Motionless and clear, it sees the life of the earth from afar, without enveloping haze and streaming oceans. Its unchanging form has been solid from eternity. It is the solitary clear light of the night, the individual being, and the near fragment of eternity.
* From there you look out cold motionless, and radiating. With otherworldly silvery light and green twilights, you pour out into the distant horror.
* Your gaze rests on silvery seas, on snowy peaks, on blue valleys, and you do not hear the groaning and howling of the human animal.
* The moon is dead. Your soul went to the moon, to the preserver of souls. Thus the soul moved toward death. I went into the inner death and saw that outer dying is better than inner death. And I decided to die outside and to live within. For that reason I turned away and sought the place of the inner life.
=== IV: The Anchorite. Dies I ===
* Surely you know that one can read a book many times - perhaps you almost know it by heart, and nevertheless it can be that, when you look again at the lines before you, certain things appear new or even completely new thoughts occur to you that you did not have before. Every word can work productively in your spirit. And finally if you have once left the book for a week and you take it up again after your spirit has experienced various different changes, then a number of things will dawn on you.
* You must know one thing above all: a succession of words does not have only one meaning. But men strive to assign only a single meaning to the sequence of words, in order to have an unambiguous language. This striving is worldly and constricted, and belongs to the deeper layers of the divine creative plan. On the higher levels of insight into divine thoughts, you recognize that the sequence of words has more than one valid meaning. Only to the all-knowing is it given to know all the meanings of the sequence of words. Increasingly we try to grasp a few more meanings.
* John gave to living men the meaning of the Logos, but Philo gave Logos as the dead concept that usurped life, even the divine life. Through this the dead does not gain life, and the living is killed. And this was also my atrocious error.
* When you grow, then you see everything living again as it was. And when you sleep, you rest, like everything that was, and your dreams echo softly again from distant temple chants. You sleep down through the thousand solar years, and you wake up through the thousand solar years, and your dreams full of ancient lore adorn the walls of your bedchamber. You also see yourself in the totality.
* The writing lies before you and always says the same, if you believe in words. But if you believe in things in whose places only words stand, you never come to the end. And yet you must go an endless road, since life flows not only down a finite path but also an infinite one. But the unbounded makes you anxious since the unbounded is fearful and your humanity rebels against it. Consequently you seek limits and restraints so that you do not lose your-self, tumbling into infinity. Restraint becomes imperative for you. You cry out for the word which has one meaning and no other, so that you escape boundless ambiguity. The word becomes your God since it protects you from the countless possibilities of interpretation. The word is protective magic against the daimons of the unending, which tear at your soul and want to scatter you to the winds. You are saved if you can say at last that is that and only that. You speak the magic word, and the limitless is finally banished. Because of that men seek and make words.
* He who breaks the wall of words overthrows Gods and defiles temples. The solitary is a murderer. He murders the people, because he thus thinks and thereby breaks down ancient sacred walls. He calls up the daimons of the boundless. And he sits, leans back, and does not hear the groans of mankind, whom the fearful fiery smoke has seized. And yet you cannot find the new words if you do not shatter the old words. But no one should shatter the old words, unless he finds the new word that is a firm rampart against the limitless and grasps more life in it than in the old word. A new word is a new God for old men.
* If you comprehend the darkness, it seizes you. It comes over you like the night with black shadows and countless shimmering stars.Silence and peace come over you if you begin to comprehend the darkness. Only he who does not comprehend the darkness fears the night. Through comprehending the dark, the nocturnal, the abyssal in you, you become utterly simple.
=== V: Dies II ===
* [note] The goal is not the heights but the center.
* Nothing happens in which you are not entangled in a secret manner; for everything has ordered itself around you and plays your innermost. Nothing in you is hidden to things, no matter how remote, how precious, how secret it is. It inheres in things.
=== VI: Death ===
* -
=== VII: The Remains of Earlier Temples ===
* I was born into life from below, and I grew up as heroes do, in hours rather than years.
* ... neither beautiful nor ugly, neither good nor bad, merely living, primordially old and yet completely young, naked and yet naturally clothed, not man but nature, frightened, laughable, powerful, childish, weak, deceiving and deceived, utterly inconstant and superficial, and yet reaching deep down, down to the kernel of the world.
* I had absorbed the life of both of my friends; a green tree grew from the rins of the temple.
* Because both of them believed in themselves and in their own goodness, each in his own way, they ultimately became mired in the natural and conclusive burial ground of all outlived ideals.
* The ideal is also a tool that one can put aside anytime, a torch on dark paths. But whoever runs around with a torch by day is a fool.
* And thus I learned to live without the world and spirit; and I was amazed how well I could live like this.
* It seems to be nearly impossible to live as a man. As long as you are not conscious of your self you can live; but if you become conscious of your self, you fall from one grave into another. All your rebirths could ultimately make you sick.
* After all the rebirths you still remain the lion crawling on the earth, the Chameleon, a caricature, one prone to changing colors, a crawling shimmering lizard, but precisely not a lion, whose nature is related to the sun, who draws his power from within himself, who does not crawl around in the protective colors of the environment, and who does not defend himself by going into hiding.
* I hurry toward the East and my rising - I will my rising.
=== VIII: First Day ===
* [note] In The Gay Science, Nietzsche argued that thinking originated through the cultivation and uniting of several impulses which had the effect of poisons: the impulse to doubt, to negated, to wait, to collect, and to dissolve.
* Have you no Gods anymore? No, words are all we have left. But are these words powerful? So they claim, but one notices nothing of this.
* I wandered toward the South and found the unbearable heat of solitude with myself. I wandered toward the North and found the cold death from which all the world dies. I withdrew to my Western land, where the men are rich in knowing and doing, and I began to suffer from the sun's empty darkness. And I threw everything from me and wandered toward the East. I did not ask, I simply waited.
* ... as I moved toward the East, one from the East hurried toward me and strove toward the sinking light. I wanted light, he wanted night. I wanted to rise, he wanted to sink. I was dwarfish like a child, while he was enormous like an elementally powerful hero. Knowledge lamed me, while he was blinded by the fullness of the light. And so we hurried toward each other; he, from the light; I from the darkness; he, strong; I, weak; he, god; I, serpent; he, ancient; I, utterly new; he, unknowing; I, knowing; he, fantastic; I, sober; he, brave, powerful; I, cowardly, cunning. But we were both astonished to see one another on the border between morning and evening.
* No longer do outer opposites stand in my way, but my own opposite comes toward me, and rises up hugely before me, and we block each other's way.
* From afar wanderers walk along solitary roads, looking here and there. Hurrying becomes impossible, patience grows.
* The ancients called the saving word the Logos, an expression of divine reason. So much unreason was in man that he needed reason to be saved. If one waits long enough, one sees how the Gods all change into serpents and underworld dragons in the end. This is also the fate of the Logos; in the end it poisons us all. In time, we were all poisoned, but unknowingly we kept the One, the Powerful One, the eternal wanderer in us away from the poison. We spread poison and paralysis around us in that we want to educate all the world around us into reason.
* Men always want to destroy the beautiful and much loved outside of themselves, but never within themselves.
* He whom I sought I now possessed. The East could give me nothing other than him, the sick and fallen one.
* You need to undertake only half of the way, he will undertake the other half. If you go beyond him, blindness will befall you. If he goes beyond you, paralysis will befall him. Therefore, and insofar as it is the manner of the Gods to go beyond mortals, they become paralyzed, and become as helpless as children. Divinity and humanity should remain preserved, if man should remain before the God, and the God remain before man. The high-blazing flame is the middle way, whose luminous course runs between the human and the divine.
* The God is afraid of man.
* His essence is blind excessive longing and tempestuous force. My essence is seeing limitation and the incapacity of cleverness. He possesses in abundance what I lack.
=== IX: Second Day ===
* The way there is long and lonely, and when you reach the plains after crossing the mountains, you will meet the powerful sun which will blind you.
* These are not men, they are so-called relics of the past which one still often encounters in the Western land. They used to be very important. They're now used mostly as shepherds.
* This tangible and apparent world is one reality, but fantasy is the other reality. So long as we leave the God outside us apparent and tangible, he is unbearable and hopeless. But if we turn the God into fantasy, he is in us and is easy to bear. The God outside us increases the weight of everything heavy, while the God within us lightens everything heavy. Hence all Christophers have stooped backs and short breath, since the world is heavy.
* Therefore, if you are clever, take the God with you, then you know where he is. If you do not have him with you in the Western lands, he will come running to you at night with clanking armor and a crushing battle axe. If you do not have him with you in the land of the dawn, then you will step unawares on the divine worm who awaits your unsuspecting heel.
=== X: The Incantations ===
* Whence do you delight me, Oh God? He is the eternal emptiness and the eternal fullness. Nothing resembles him and he resembles everything. Eternal darkness and eternal brightness. Eternal below and eternal above. Double nature in one. simple in the manifold. Meaning in absurdity. Freedom in bondage. Subjugated when victorious. Old in youth. Yes in no.
* These are the powers that make you afraid and conquer you; these have been your Gods and your rulers since time immemorial: yet you can put them in your pocket. What is blasphemy compared to this? I would like to be able to blaspheme against the God: That way I would at least have a God whom I could insult, but it is not worth blaspheming against an egg that one carries in one's pocket. That is a God against whom one cannot even blaspheme.
* That is the demise of the Gods: man puts them in his pocket.
* Are we not the sons of the Gods? Why should Gods not be our children?
=== XI: The Opening of the Egg ===
* [note] What proves to be most difficult is to grasp the playfulness of life (the childish, so to speak).
* Where was I? I was completely sun.
* Through haste and increased willing and action we want to escape from emptiness and also from evil. But the right way is that we accept emptiness, destroy the image of the form within us, negate the God, and descend into the abyss and awfulness of matter. The God as our work stands outside us and no longer needs our help. He is created and remains left to his own devices. A created work that perishes again immediately once we turn away from it is not worth anything, even if it were a God.
* Thus your soul is your own self in the spiritual world. As the abode of the spirits, however, the spiritual world is also an outer world. Just as you are also not alone in the visible world, but are surrounded by objects that belong to you and obey only you, you also have thoughts that belong to you and obey only you. But just as you are surrounded in the visible world by things and beings that neither belong to you nor obey you, you are also surrounded in the spiritual world by thoughts an beings of thought that neither obey you nor belong to you.
=== XII: Hell ===
* -
=== XIII: The Sacrificial Murder ===
* Do you recognize me? How strangely familiar you are! Who are you? I am your soul.
=== XIV: Divine Folly ===
* But if I am truly to understand Christ, I must realize how Christ actually lived only his own life, and imitated no one. He did not emulate any model. If I thus truly imitate Christ, I do not imitate anyone, I emulate no one, but go my own way, and I will also no longer call myself a Christian.
=== XV: Nox Secunda ===
* On the right is my thinking, on the left is my feeling.
* Every man has a quiet place in his soul, where everything is self-evident and easily explainable, a place to which he likes to retire from the confusing possibilities of life, because there everything is simple and clear, with a manifest and limited purpose.
* I see behind you, behind the mirror of your eyes, the crush of dangerous shadows, the dead, who look greedily through the empty sockets of your eyes, who moan and hope to gather up through you all the loosed ends of the ages, which sigh in them. Your cluelessness does not prove anything. Put your ear to that wall and you will hear the rustling of their procession.
* For this is the place where day and night agonizingly merge. What you excluded from your life, what you renounced and damned, everything that was and could have gone wrong, awaits you behind that wall before which you sit quietly.
* The animal does not rebel against its own kind. Consider animals: how just they are, how well-behaved, how they keep to the time-honored, how loyal they are to the land that bears them, how they hold to their accustomed routes, how they care for their young, how they go together to pasture, and how they draw one another to the spring.
* We are a blinded race. We live only on the surface, only in the present, and think only of tomorrow. We deal roughly with the past in that we do not accept the dead. We want to work only with visible success. Above all we want to be paid. We would consider it insane to do hidden work that does not visibly serve men. There is no doubt that the necessity of life forced us to prefer only those fruits one can taste. But who suffers more from the tempting and misleading influence of the dead than those who have gone wholly missing on the surface of the world.
* Do not look forward so much, but back and into yourself, so that you will not fail to hear the dead.
* I accepted the chaos, and in the following night, my soul approached me.
=== XVI: Nox Tertia ===
* Madness is a special form of the spirit and clings to all teachings and philosophies, but even more to daily life, since life itself is full of craziness and at bottom utterly illogical. Man strives toward reason only so that he can make rules for himself. Life itself has no rules. That is its mystery and its unknown law. What you call knowledge is an attempt to impose something comprehensible on life.
* But I am Nietzsche, only rebaptized, I am also Christ, the Savior, and appointed to save the world, but they won't let me.
* I see a tree arise from the sea. Its crown reaches to Heaven and its roots reach down into Hell.
* You don't need to find ways now. He speaks the truth. The way, or whatever it might be, on which people go, is our way, the right way. There are no paved ways into the future. We say that it is this way, and it is. We build roads by going on. Our life is the truth that we seek. Only my life is the truth, the truth above all. We create the truth by living it.
* So if I fall prey to the web of words, I fall prey to the greatest and the smallest. I am at the mercy of the sea, of the inchoate waves that are forever changing place. Their essence is movement and movement is their order. He who strives against waves is exposed to the arbitrary.
* But for him who has seen the chaos, there is no more hiding, because he knows that the bottom sways and knows what this swaying means. He has seen the order and disorder of the endless, he knows the unlawful laws. He knows the sea and can never forget it. The chaos is terrible: days full of lead, nights full of horror.
* There are many graves and corpses in us, an evil stench of decomposition.
* If I accept the lowest in me, I lower a seed into the ground of Hell. The seed is invisibly small, but the tree of my life grows from it and conjoins the Below with the Above. At both ends there is fire and blazing embers. The Above is fiery and the Below is fiery. Between the unbearable fires grows your life. You hang between these two poles. In an immeasurably frightening movement the stretched hanging welters up and down.
* But he who accepts what approaches him because it is also in him, quarrels and wrangles no more, but looks into himself and keeps silent.
* To unlearn all distinctions save that concerning direction is part of your salvation. Hence you free yourself from the old curse of the knowledge of good and evil. Because you separated good from evil according to your best appraisal and aspired only to the good and denied the evil that you committed nevertheless and failed to accept, your roots no longer suckled the dark nourishment of the depths and your tree became sick and withered.
* My speech is neither light nor dark, since it is the speech of someone who is growing.
=== XVII: Nox Quarta ===
* My soul speaks to me in a bright voice: "The door should be lifted off its hinges to provide a free passage between here and there, between yes and no, between above and below, between left and right. Airy passages should be built between all opposed things, light smooth streets should lead from one pole to the other.
=== XVIII: The Three Prophecies ===
* I find the treasures of all past cultures, magnificent images of Gods, spacious temples, paintings, papyrus rolls, sheets of parchment with the characters of bygone languages, books full of lost wisdom, hymns and chants of ancient priests, stories told down the ages through thousands of generations.
=== XIX: The Gift of Magic ===
* Great is the power of the way. In it Heaven and Hell grow together, and in it the power of the Below and the power of the Above unite.
=== XX: The Way of the Cross ===
* The symbol can neither be thought up nor found: it becomes. Its becoming is like the becoming of human life in the womb.
=== XXI: The Magician ===
* [note] The magician has preserved in himself a trace of primordial paganism, he possesses a nature that is still unaffected by the Christian splitting, which means he has access to the unconscious, which is still pagan, where the opposites still lie in their original naive state, beyond all sinfulness, but, if assimilated into conscious life, produce evil and good with the same primordial and consequently daimonic force... Therefore he is a destroyer as well as savior. This figure is therefore pre-eminently suited to become the symbol carrier for an attempt at unification.
* It will never be lost to humanity, since magic is reborn with each and every one of us.
* Whenever I want to learn something and understand something, I leave my so-called reason at home and give whatever it is that I am trying to understand the benefit of the doubt. I have learned this gradually, because nowadays the world of science is full of scary examples of the opposite.
* Above all you must know that magic is the negative of what one can know.
* Magic happens to be precisely everything that eludes comprehension.
* Reason declines with old age, since it is an essential counterpart of the drives, which are much more intense in youth that in old age. Have you ever seen young magicians?
* Well, that's another advantage of magic: not even the devil gets the better of me.
* It is an error to believe that there are magical practices that one can learn. One cannot understand magic. One can only understand what accords with reason. Magic accords with unreason, which one cannot understand. Thee world accords not only with reason but also with unreason. But just as one employs reason to make sense of the world, in that what is reasonable about it approaches reason, a lack of understanding also accords with unreason.
* This meeting is magical and eludes comprehension. Magical understanding is what one calls noncomprehension. Everything that works magically in incomprehensible, and the incomprehensible often words magically. One call incomprehensible workings magical. The magical always surrounds me, always involves me. It opens spaces that have no doors and leads out into the open where there is no exit. The magical is good and evil and neither good nor evil. Magic is dangerous since what accords with unreason confuses, allures and provokes; and I am always its first victim.
* The practice of magic consists in making what is not understood understandable in an incomprehensible manner.
* The magical way arises by itself. If one opens up chaos, magic also arises.
* Where reason establishes order and clarity, magic causes disarray and a lack of clarity.
* Alas, we have known everything since time immemorial and yet e will never know it until it has been accomplished. Who exhausts the mystery of love?
* But the true one always disowns himself, since he knows nothing higher than to be a man.
* The sun rises without our help. Only he who knows the darkest error knows what light is.
* He who is becoming belongs in the desert or in a prison, for he is beyond the human. If men want to become, they behave like animals. No one saves us from the evil of becoming, unless we choose to go through Hell.
* Listen, something has just happened to us: we have united the opposites. Among other things, we have bonded you with God.
* We are weary of the webs that the day weaves and the night unpicks.
* [note] The Cabiri are, in fact, the mysterious creative powers, the gnomes who work under the earth, ie below the threshold of consciousness, in order to supply us with lucky ideas. As imps and hobgoblins, however, they also lay all sorts of nasty tricks, keeping back names and dates that were on the tip of the tongue, making us say the wrong thin, etc. They give an eye to everything that has not already been anticipated by consciousness and the functions at its disposal... deeper insight will show that the primitive and archaic qualities of the inferior function conceal all sorts of significant relationships and symbolic meanings, and instead of laughing off the Calibri as ridiculous Tom Thumbs he may begin to suspect that they are a treasure-house of hidden wisdom.
* The Cabiri: We carry what is not to be carried from below to above. We are the juices that rise secretly, not by force, but sucked out of inertia and affixed to what is growing. We know the unknown ways and the inexplicable las of living matter. We carry up what slumbers in the earthly, what is dead and yet enters into the living. We do this slowly and easily, what you do in vain in your human way. We complete what is impossible for you.
* The Cabiri: You forget the lethargy of matter. You want to pull up with your own force what can only rise slowly, ingesting itself, affixed to itself from within. Spare yourself the trouble, or you will disturb our work.
* Let me see it, the great knot, all wound round! truly a masterpiece of inscrutable nature, a wily natural tangle of roots grown through one another! Only Mother Nature, the blind weaver, could work such a tangle! A great snarled ball and a thousand small knots, all artfully tied, intertwined, truly, a human brain! Am I seeing straight? What did you do? You set my brain before me! Did you give me a sword so that its flashing sharpness slices through my brain? What were you thinking of?
* The Cabiri: The womb of nature wove the brain, the womb of the earth gave the iron. So the Mother gave you both: entanglement and severing.
* Mysterious! Do you really want to make me the executioner of my own brain?
* The Cabiri: It befits you as the master of the lower nature. Man is entangled in his brain and the sword is also given to him to cut through the entanglement.
* What is the entanglement you speak of?
* The Cabiri: The entanglement is your madness, the sword is the overcoming of madness.
* What will happen if I strike?
* The Cabiri: Then you will no longer be your brain, but will exist beyond your madness. Do you not see, your madness is your brain, the terrible entanglement and intertwining in the connection of the roots, in the nets of canals, the confusion of fibers. Being engrossed in the brain makes you wild. Strike! He who finds the way rises up over his brain. You are a Tom thumb in the brain, beyond the brain you gain the form of a giant. We are surely sons of the devil, but did you not forge us out of the hot and the dark? So we have something of its nature and of yours. The devil says that everything that exists is also worthy, since it perishes. As sons of the devil we want destruction, but as your creatures we want our own destruction. We want to rise up in you through death. We are roots that suck up from all sides. Now you have everything that you need, therefore chop us up, tear us out.
* I set foot on new land. Nothing brought up should flow back. No one shall tear down what I have built. My tower is of iron and has no seams. The devil is forged into the foundations. The Cabiri built it and the master builders were sacrificed with the sword on the battlements of the tower. Just as a tower surmounts the summit of a mountain on which it stands, so I stand above my brain, from which I grew. I have become hard and cannot be undone again. No more do I flow back. I am the master of my own self. I admire my mastery. I am strong and beautiful and rich. The vast lands and the blue sky have laid themselves before me and bowed to my mastery. I wait upon no one and no one waits upon me. I serve myself and I myself serve. Therefore I have what I need.
* Only he who finds the entrance hidden in the mountain and rises up through the labyrinths of the innards can reach the tower, and the happiness of he who surveys things from there and he who lives from himself.
* But is the beyond so colorless? It seems so; there is nothing but motion, when I make my way over there. Everything merely surges back and forth in a shadowy way. There is nothing personal whatsoever.
* So long as I wanted to satisfy only my own demands, I was personal and therefore living in the sense of the world. But when I recognized the demands of the dead in me and satisfied them, I gave up my earlier personal striving and the world had to take me for a dead man.

== Scrutinies ==

* I resist. I cannot accept this hollow nothing that I am. What am I? What is my I? I always presuppose my I. Now it stands before me - I before my I. I speak now to you, my I.
* [note] The mirror does not flatter; it faithfully shows whatever looks into it; namely the face we never show to the world because we cover it with the persona, the mask of the actor.
* [note] Understanding is a terribly binding power, possibly a veritable soul murder when it levels out vitally important differences. The core of the individual is a mystery of life, which dies when it is grasped. That is also why symbols want to keep their secrets, they are mysterious not only because we are unable to clearly see what is at their bottom... All understanding as such, being an integration into general viewpoints, contains the devil's element, and kills.
* If one becomes one's own slave - and this happens to everyone who surrenders himself - one is lived by the self. One does not live one's self; it lives itself.
* For vices and virtues always want to live outside. But through constant outerward living we lose the self and through this we also become secretly selfish in our best endeavors. What we neglect in ourselves blends itself secretly into our actions toward others.
* The self is not God, although we reach the God through the self. The God is behind the self, above the self, the self itself, when he appears. But he appears as our sickness, from which we must heal ourselves. We must heal ourselves from the God, since he is also our heaviest wound.
* Therefore we must wrestle with the God for the self. Since the God is an unfathomable powerful movement that sweeps away the self into the boundless, into dissolution.
* [note] But inasmuch as the I is only the center of my field of consciousness, it is not identical with the totality of my psyche, being merely one complex among other complexes. I therefore distinguish between the I and the self, since the I is only the subject of my consciousness, while the self is the subject of my total psyche, which also includes the unconscious.
* I must free my self from the God, since the God I experienced is more than love; he is also hate, he is more than beauty, he is also the abomination, he is more than wisdom, he is also meaninglessness, he is more than power, he is also powerlessness, he is more than omnipresence, he is also my creature.
* But we, we who are still near and incomplete, would like to immerse ourselves in the sea of the air and return to earth, to the living. Do you not have an animal form into which I can enter?
* [note] Hecate, the Goddess of magic and spells, guarded the underworld, and was seen as the sender of madness.
* There is a community of spirits founded on outer signs with a solid meaning.
* Let us build the bond of community so that the living and the dead image will become one and the past will love on in the present. Our desire pulls us to the living world and we are lost in our desire.
* Only recently have men begun to forget the dead and to think that they have now begun the real life, sending them into a frenzy.
* Every so-called fixed and certain thing is only relative. That alone is fixed and certain that is subject to change.
* Our very nature is differentiation. If we are not true to this nature we do not differentiate ourselves enough. We must therefore make distinctions between qualities. You ask: what harm is there in not differentiating oneself? If we do not differentiate, we move beyond our essence, beyond creation, and we fall into nondifferentiation, which is the other quality of the Pleroma. We fall into the Pleroma itself and cease to be created beings. We lapse into dissolution in nothingness. this is the death of the creature.
* You must not forget that the Pleroma has no qualities. We create these through thinking. If, therefore, you strive for distinctiveness or sameness, or any qualities whatsoever, you pursue thoughts that flow to you out of the Pleroma: thoughts, namely, concerning the non-existing qualities of the Pleroma.
* Everything that differentiation takes out of the Pleroma is a pair of opposites, therefore the devil always belongs to God.
* The Sun has a definite effect, and so does the devil. Therefore they appear to us more effective than the indefinite Abraxas. He is force, duration, change.
* Four is the number of the principal Gods, as four is the number of the world's measurements. One is the beginning, the Sun God. Two is Eros, for he binds two together and spreads himself out in brightness. Three is the Tree of Life, for it fills space with bodies. Four is the devil, for he opens all that is closed. He dissolves everything formed and physical; he is the destroyer in whom everything becomes nothing.
* The world of the Gods is made manifest in spirituality and in sexuality. The celestial ones appear in spirituality, the earthly in sexuality. Spirituality conceives and embraces. It is womanlike and therefore we call it MATER COELESTIS, the celestial mother. Sexuality engenders and creates. It is manlike, and therefore we call it PHALLOS, the earthly father.
* The daimon of sexuality approaches our soul as a serpent. She is half human soul and is called thought-desire. The daimon of spirituality descends into our soul as the white bird. He is half human soul and is called desire-thought.
* Man is a gateway, through which you pass from the outer world of Gods, daimons, and souls into the inner world, out of the greater into the smaller world. Small and inane is man, already he is behind you, and one again you find yourselves in endless space, in the smaller or inner infinity. At immeasurable distance a lonely star stands in the zenith. This is the one God of this one man, this is his world, his Pleroma, his divinity. In this world, man is Abraxas, the creator and destroyer of his own world. This star is the God and the goal of man. This is his one guiding God, in him man goes to his rest, toward him goes the long journey of the soul after death, in him everything that man withdraws from the greater world shines resplendently.
* Illustrious one, you teach that man is a gateway? A gateway through which the procession of the Gods passes? Through which the stream of life flows? Through which the entire future streams into the endlessness of the past?
* The shade answered. "I bring you the beauty of suffering. That is what is needed by whoever hosts the worm."

== Appendix A: The Mandalas ==

* The systema munditorus portrays the antinomies of the microcosm within the macrocosmic world and its antinomies. At the very top, the figure of the young boy in the winged egg, called Erikapaios or Phanes and thus reminiscent as a spiritual figure of the Orphic Gods. His dark antithesis in the depths is here designated as Abraxas. He represents the dominus mundi, the lord of the physical world, and is a world-creator of an ambivalent nature. Sprouting from him we see the tree of life, labeled vita ("life') while its upper counterpart is a light-tree in the form of a seven-branched candelabra labeled ignis fire') and Eros (love'). Its light points to the spiritual world of the divine child. Art and science also belong to this spiritual realm, the first represented as a winged serpent and the second as a winged mouse (as hole-digging activity!). The candelabra is based on the principle of the spiritual number three (twice-three flames with one large flame in the middle), while the lower world of Abraxas is characterized by five, the number of natural man (the twice-five rays of his star). The accompanying animals of the natural world are a devilish monster and a larva. This signifies death and rebirth. A further division of the mandala is horizontal. To the left we see a circle indicating the body or the blood, and from it rears the serpent, which winds itself around the phallus, as the generative principle. The serpent is dark and light, signifying the dark realm of the earth, the moon, and the void (therefore called Satanas). The light realm of rich fullness lies to the right, where from the bright circle frigus sive amor dei [cold, or the love of God] the dove of the Holy Ghost takes wing, and wisdom (Sophia) pours from a double beaker to left and right.-This feminine sphere is that of heaven.—The large sphere characterized by zigzag lines or rays represents an inner sun; within this sphere the macrocosm is repeated, but with the upper and lower regions reversed as in a mirror. These repetitions should be conceived of as endless in number, growing even smaller until the innermost core, the actual microcosm, is reached."

== Appendix B: Commentaries ==
* The action is set in a dark earthly depth, evidently an allegorical representation of the inner depths beneath the extension of the bright space of consciousness or the psychic field of vision. Sinking into such a depth corresponds to averting the mental gaze from outer things and focusing it on the inner dark depths. Gazing at the darkness to some extent animates the previously dark background. Since gazing at the darkness occurs without conscious expectation, the inanimate psychic background has an opportunity to let its contents appear, undisturbed conscious assumptions.
* Eros is desire, longing, force, exuberance, pleasure, suffering. Where Logos is ordering and insistence, Eros is dissolution and movement. They are two fundamental psychic powers that form a pair of opposites, each one requiring the other.
* What is the power of the individual against the voice of the whole people in him? He is entranced, possessed, and consumed. Nothing makes this effect clearer than the serpent. It signifies everything dangerous and everything bad, everything nocturnal and uncanny, which adheres to Logos as well as to Eros, so long as they can work as the dark and unrecognized principles of the unconscious spirit.
* Wherever Logos rules, there is order but too much persistence. The allegory of paradise where there is no struggle and therefore no development is fitting here.
* The I is consciousness, which only has eyes in front. It never sees what is behind it. But that is where the passion it has overcome in front regroups. Unguided by the eye of reason, unmitigated by humaneness, the fire becomes a devastatin, bloodthirsty Kali, who devours the life of man from within.
* Essentially, the good needs to be regarded an an inherently no-less-dangerous principle than evil.

== Appendix C: The Cosmology ==

* Something in me is part animal, something part God, and a third part human. Below you serpent, within you man, and above you God. Beyond the serpent comes the phallus, then the earth, then the moon, and finally the coldness and emptiness of outer space.
* Above you comes the dove or the celestial soul, in which love and foresight are united, just as poison and shrewdness are united in the serpent. Shrewdness is the devil's understanding, which always detects smaller things and finds chinks where you suspect none.
* If I am not conjoined through the uniting of the Below and the Above, I break down into three parts: the serpent, and in that or some other animal form I roam, living nature daimonically, arousing fear and longing. The human soul, living forever within you. The celestial soul, as such dwelling with the Gods, far from you and unknown to you, appearing in the form of a bird. Each of these three parts then is independent.
* The celestial world is illuminated through the spiritual sun. Its counterpart is the moon. And just as the moon is the crossing to the dead of space, the spiritual sun is the crossing to the Pleroma, the upper world of fullness. The moon is the God's eye of emptiness, just as the sun is the God's eye of fullness. The moon that you see is the symbol, just as the sun that you see. Sun and moon, that is, their symbols, are Gods. There are still other Gods; their symbols are the planets.
* Abraxas is to be feared. Therefore it was a deliverance when he separated himself from me. You do not need to seek him. He will find you, just like Eros. He is the God of the cosmos, extremely powerful and fearful. He is the creative drive, he is form and formation, just as much as matter and force, therefore he is above all the light and dark Gods. He tears away souls and casts them into procreation. He is the creative and created. He is the God who always renews himself, in days, in months, in years, in human life, in ages, in peoples, in the living, in heavenly bodies. He compels, he is unsparing. If you worship him, you increase his power over you. Thereby it becomes unbearable. You will have dreadful trouble getting clear of him.
* The death of Christ took no suffering away from the world, but his life has taught us much; namely that it pleases the one God if the individual lives his own life against the power of Abraxas.
* So do not fell from Abraxas, do not seek him. You feel his coercion, do not resist him, so that you shall live and pay your ransom.
* I, your soul, am your mother, who tenderly and frightfully surrounds you, your nourisher and corrupter; I prepare good things and poison for you. I am your intercessor with Abraxas. I teach you the arts that protect you from Abraxas. I stand between you and Abraxes the all-encompassing. I am your body, your shadow, your effectiveness in this world, your manifestation in the world of the Gods, your effulgence, your breath, your odor, your magical force. You should call me if you want to live with men, but the one God if you want to rise above the human world to the divine and eternal solitude of the star.

The Red Book: Liber Novus

2026-09-05T10:54:00Z

Robert.adlington: /* Appendices */

== Introduction ==

* As Jung saw it, part of us lives in the present and the other part is connected to the centuries.
* "I am no longer alone with myself, and I can only artificially recall the scary and beautiful feeling of solitude. This is the shadow side of the fortune of love."
* "If we feel our way into the human secrets of the sick person, the madness also reveals its system, and we recognize in the mental illness merely an exceptional reaction to emotional problems which are not strange to us."
* In Transformations and Symbols of the Libido, Jung differentiated two kinds of thinking. Taking his cue from William James, among others, Jung contrasted directed thinking and fantasy thinking. The former was verbal and logical, while the latter was passive, associative, and imagistic. The former was exemplified by science and the latter by mythology. Jung claimed that the ancients lacked a capacity for directed thinking, which was a modern acquisition. Fantasy thinking took place when directed thinking ceased.
* One particular myth was given a central role: that of the hero. For Jung, this represented the life of the individual, attempting to become independent and to free himself from the mother.
* One without a myth "is like one uprooted, having no true link either with the past, or with the ancestral life which continues within him, or yet with contemporary human society."
* "...a conviction that the unconscious did not consist of inert material only, but that there was something living down there."
* He argued that there were two basic movements of the libido: extraversion, in which the subject's interest was oriented toward the outer world, and introversion, in which the subject's interest was directed inward. Following from this he posited two types of people, characterized by a predominance of one of these tendencies.
* His scientific question was to see what took place when he switched off consciousness.
* The constructive standpoint asked, "how, out of this present psyche, a bridge can be built into its own future."
* Whereas Zarathrustra proclaimed the death of God, Liber Novus depicts the rebirth of God in the soul. There are also indications that Jung read Dante's Commedia at this time, which also informs the structure of the work. Liber Novus depicts Jung's descent into Hell. But whereas Dante could utilize an established cosmology, Liber Novus is an attempt to shape an individual cosmology. The role of Philemon in Jung's work has analogies to that of Zarathrustra in Nietzsche's work and Virgil in Dante's.
* "It is the devil who says: Disdain all reason and science, mankind's highest powers. That is never appropriate even though we are forced to acknowledge [the existence of] the irrational."
* The overall theme of the book is how Jung regains his soul and overcomes the contemporary malaise of spiritual alienation.
* He realized that until then, he had served the spirit of the time, characterized by use and value. In addition to this, there existed a spirit of the depths, which led to the things of the soul. The spirit of the times corresponds to personality 1 and the spirit of the depths corresponds to personality 2. Thus, this period could be seen as a return to the values of personality 2.
* The task of individuation lay in establishing a dialogue with the fantasy figures - or contents of the collective unconsciousness - and integrating them into consciousness, hence recovering the value of the mythopoeic imagination which had been lost to the modern age, and thereby reconciling the spirit of the time with the spirit of the depth.
* Adaptation to the "inner" led to the demand for individuation, which was contrary to adaptation to others.
* The individual had to produce values that could serve as a substitute for his absence from society. These new values enabled one to make reparation to the collective. Individuation was for the few. Those who were insufficiently creative should rather reestablish collective conformity with a society. The individual had not only to create new values, but also socially recognizable ones, as society had a "right to expect realizable values."
* Society demanded imitation.
* "The training consists first of all in systematic exercises for eliminating critical attention, thus producing a vacuum in consciousness." One commenced by concentrating on a particular mood, and attempting to become as conscious as possible of all fantasies and associations that came up in connection with it. The aim was to allow fantasy free play, without departing from the initial affect in a free associative process. This led to a concrete or symbolic expression of the mood, which had the result of bringing the affect nearer to consciousness, hence making it more understandable.
* The outbreak of war had made apparent the deep subliminal connections between individual fantasies and world events - and hence between the psychology of the individual and that of the nation.
* Jung argued that the era of reason and skepticism inaugurated by the French Revolution had repressed religion and irrationalism. This in turn had serious consequences, leading to the outbreak of irrationalism represented by the world war. It was thus a historical necessity to acknowledge the irrational as a psychological factor. The acceptance of the irrational forms one of the central themes of Liber Novus.
* "Our age is seeking a new spring of life. I found one and drank of it and the water tasted good."
* All of us stand between two worlds: that world of external perception and the world of the perception of the unconscious.
* <section begin="jung_symbols" />Symbols, Jung maintained, stemmed from the unconscious, and the creation of symbols was the most important function of the unconscious.<section end="jung_symbols" />
* The soul gave rise to images that were assumed to be worthless from the rational perspective. There were four ways of using them:
** Artistic
** Philosophical speculation
** Quasi-religious
** Licentiousness
** [and a fifth] Psychology, if Jung can clearly distinguish it from the other uses (particularly art)
== Liber Primus ==
=== Prologue: The Way of What is to Come ===
* Woe betide those who live by way of example! Life is not with them. If you live according to an example, but who should live your own life if not yourself? So live yourselves.
=== I: Refinding the Soul ===
* I did not consider that my soul cannot be the object of my judgment and knowledge; much more are my judgment and knowledge the objects of my soul.
* The wealth of the soul exists in images.
=== II: Soul and God ===
* -
=== III: On the Service of the Soul ===
* -
=== IV: The Desert / Experiences in the Desert ===
* The soul has its own peculiar world. Only the self enters in there, or the man who has completely become his self, he who is neither in events, nor in men, nor in his thoughts.
=== V: Descent into Hell in the Future ===
* Speak then of sick delusion when the spirit of the depths can no longer stay down and forces a man to speak in tongues instead of in human speech, and makes him believe that he himself is the spirit of the depths. But also speak of sick delusion when the spirit of this time does not leave a man and forces him to see only the surface, to deny the spirit of the depths and to take himself for the spirit of the times. The spirit of this time is ungodly, the spirit of the depths is ungodly, balance is godly.
* Therefore whoever considers the event from outside always sees only that it already was, and that it is always the same. But whoever looks from inside, knows that everything is new. The events that happen are always the same. But the creative depths of man are not always the same. Events signify nothing, they signify only in us. We create the meaning of events. The meaning is and always was artificial. We make it.
* The heroic in you is the fact that you are ruled by the thought that this or that is good, that this or that performance is indispensable, this or that cause is objectionable, this or that goal must be attained in headlong striving work, this or that pleasure should be ruthlessly repressed at all costs. Consequently you sin against incapacity. But incapacity exists. No one should deny it, find fault with it, or shout it down.
=== VI: Splitting of the Spirit ===
* My soul: "Who gives you thoughts and words? Do you make them? Are you not my serf, a recipient who lies at my door and picks up my alms? And you dare think that what you devise and speak could be nonsense? Don't you know yet that it comes from me and belongs to me?
* Everything that becomes too old becomes evil, the same is true of your highest. Learn from the suffering of the crucified God that one can also betray and crucify a God, namely the God of the old year. If a God ceases being the way of life, he must fall secretly.
* The God becomes sick if he oversteps the height of the zenith. That is why the spirit of the depths took me when the spirit of this time had led me to the summit.
=== VII: Murder of the Hero ===
* We also live in our dreams, we do not live only by day. Sometimes we accomplish our greatest deeds in dreams.
* In that night my life was threatened since I had to kill my lord and God, not in single combat, since who among mortals could kill a God in a duel? You can reach your God only as an assassin, if you want to overcome him.
* But this is the bitterest for mortal men: our Gods want to be overcome, since they require renewal. If men kill their princes, they do so because they cannot kill their Gods, and because they do not know that they should kill the Gods in themselves.
* If the God grows old, he becomes shadow, nonsense, and he goes down. The greatest truth becomes the greatest lie, the brightest day becomes the darkest night.
* As day requires night and night requires day, so meaning requires absurdity and absurdity requires meaning.
=== VIII: The Conception of the God ===
* The divine child approached me out of the terrible ambiguity, the hateful-beautiful, the evil-good, the laughable-serious, the sick-healthy, the inhuman-human and the ungodly-godly.
* Hell is when you must think and feel and do everything that you know you do not want. Hell is when you know that your having to is also a wanting to, and that you yourself are responsible for it. Hell is when you know that everything serious that you have planned with yourself is also laughable, that everything fine is also brutal, that everything good is also bad, that everything high is also low, and that everything pleasant is also shameful.
* But the deepest Hell is when you realize that Hell is also no Hell, but a cheerful Heaven, not a Heaven in itself, but in this respect a Heaven, and in that respect a Hell.
* That is the ambiguity of the God: he is born from a dark ambiguity and rises to a bright ambiguity. Unequivocalness is simplicity and leads to death. But ambiguity is the way of life. If the left foot does not move, then the right one does, and you move. The God wills this.
* [note] In 1916, Jung wrote: "Man has one ability which, though it is of the greatest utility for collective purposes, is the most pernicious for individuation, and that is imitation. Collective psychology can hardly dispense with imitation."
* Then there will no longer be a hero, and no one who can imitate him. Because from that time henceforth all imitation is cursed. The new God laughs at imitation and discipleship. He needs no imitators and no pupils. He forces men through himself. The God is his own follower in man. He imitates himself.
* If you are in yourself, you become aware of your incapacity. You will see how little capable you are of imitating the heroes and of being a hero yourself. So you will also no longer force others to become heroes. Like you, they suffer from incapacity. Incapacity, too, wants to live, but it will overthrow the Gods.
=== IX: Mysterium. Encounter ===
* [note] In a 1925 seminar, Jung recounted: "Whenever you take journeys like this you find a young girl with an old man... Salome is an anima figure, blind because, though connecting the conscious and the unconscious, she does not see the operation of the unconscious. Elijah is the personification of the cognitional element, Salome of the erotic. Elijah is the figure of the old prophet filled with wisdom. One could speak of these two figures as personifications of Logos and Eros very specifically shaped.
* The scene of the mystery play is a deep place like the crater of a volcano. My deep interior is a volcano, that pushes out the fiery-molten mass of the unformed and the undifferentiated. Thus my interior gives birth to the children of chaos, of the primordial mother. He who enters the crater also becomes chaotic matter, he melts. The formed in him dissolves and binds itself anew with the children of chaos, the powers of darkness, the ruling and the seducing, the compelling and the alluring, the divine and the devilish. These powers stretch beyond my certainties and limits on all sides, and connect me with all forms and with all distant beings and things, through which inner tidings of their being and their character develop in me.
* The powers of my depths are predetermination and pleasure. Predetermination of forethinking is Prometheus, who, without determined thoughts, brings the chaotic to form and definition, who digs the channels and holds the object before pleasure. Forethinking also comes before thought. But pleasure is the force that desires and destroys forms without form and definition. It loves the form in itself that it takes hold of, and destroys the forms that it does not take. The forethinker is a seer, but pleasure is blind. it does not foresee, but desires what it touches. Forethinking is not powerful in itself and therefore does not move. But pleasure is power, and therefore it moves.
* If pleasure lacked forming, pleasure would dissolve in manifoldness and become splintered and powerless through unending division, lost to the unending. If a form does not contain and compress pleasure within itself, it cannot reach the higher, since it always flows like water from above to below. All pleasure, when left alone, flows into the deep sea and ends in the deathly stillness of dispersal into unending space. Pleasure is not older than forethinking, and forethinking is not older than pleasure. Both are equally old and in nature intimately one. Only in man does the separate existence of both principles become apparent.
* The serpent is the earthly essence of man of which he is not conscious.
* One cannot live with forethinking alone, or with pleasure alone. You need both. But you cannot be in forethinking and in pleasure at the same time, you must take turns being in forethinking and pleasure, obeying the prevailing law, unfaithful to the other, so to speak. But men prefer one or the other. Some love thinking and establish the art of life on it. They practice their thinking and their circumspection, so they lose their pleasure. Therefore they are old and have a sharp face. The others love pleasure, they practice their feeling and living. Thus they forget thinking. Therefore they are young and blind. Those who think base the world on thought, those who feel, on feeling. You find truth and error in both.
* The way of life writhes like the serpent from right to left and from left to right, from thinking to pleasure and from pleasure to thinking. Thus the serpent is an adversary and a symbol of enmity, but also a wise bridge that connects right and left through longing, much needed by our life.
* The place where Elijah and Salome live together is a dark space and a bright one. The dark space is the space of forethinking. It is dark, so he who lives there requires vision. this space is limited, so forethinking does not lead into the extended distance, but into the depth of the past and the future. The crystal is the formed thought that reflects what is to come in what has gone before.
* A thinker should fear Salome, since she wants his head, especially if he is a holy man. A thinker cannot be a holy person, otherwise he loses his head. It does not help to hide oneself in thought. There the solidification overtakes you. You must turn back to motherly forethought to obtain renewal. But forethought leads to Salome.
* The thinker's passions are bad, therefore he has no pleasure. The thoughts of one who feels are bad, therefore he has no thoughts.
* The thinker feels the disgust of feeling, since the feeling in him is mainly disgusting. So the serpent lies between the thinker and the one who feels. They are each other's poison and healing.
* What a thinker does not think he believes does not exist, and what one who feels does not feel he believes does not exist. You begin to have a presentiment of the whole when you embrace your opposite principle, since the whole belongs to both principles, which grow from one root.
* May the thinking person accept his pleasure, and the feeling person accept his thought. Such leads one along the way.
=== X: Instruction ===
* Will you therefore confuse yourself with a tree or animal, because you look at them and because they exist with you in one and the same world? Must you be your thoughts, because you are in the world of your thoughts? But your thoughts are just as much outside your self as trees and animals are outside your body.
* [note] You cannot say you are wrong when you have a thought. For the understanding of the unconscious we must see our thoughts as events, as phenomena.
* Through reciprocal imitation you live according to the average expectation. The image of the hero was set up for all in every age through the appetite for imitation. Therefore the hero was murdered, since we have all been aping him. Do you know why you cannot abandon apishness? For fear of loneliness and defeat.
* To live oneself means: to be one's own task. Never say that it is a pleasure to live oneself. It will be no joy but a long suffering, since you must become your own creator. If you want to create yourself, then you do not begin with the best and the highest, but with the worst and the deepest. Therefore say that you are reluctant to live yourself. The flowing together of the stream of life is not joy but pain, since it is power against power, guilt, and shatters the sanctified.
* You create order according to what you know, you do not know the thoughts of chaos, and yet they exist. My thoughts are not my self, and my I does not embrace the thought. Your thought has this meaning and that, not just one, but many meanings. No one knows how many.
* My thoughts are not my self, but exactly like the things of the world, alive and dead. Just as I am not damaged through living in a partly chaotic world, so too I am not damaged if I live in my partly chaotic thought world. Thoughts are natural events that you do not possess, and whose meaning you only imperfectly recognize. Thoughts grow in me like a forest, populated by many different animals. But man is domineering in his thinking, and therefore he kills the pleasure of the forest and that of the wild animals. Man is violent in his desire, and he himself becomes a forest and a forest animal. Just as I have freedom in the world, I also have freedom in my thoughts. Freedom is conditional.
* You change those things of the world that, not being useful in themselves, endanger your welfare. Proceed likewise with your thoughts. Nothing is complete, and much is in dispute. The way of life is transformation, not exclusion. Well-being is a better judge than the law.
=== XI: Resolution ===
* Since, after the death of the hero our urge to live could no longer imitate anything, it therefore went into the depths of every man and excited the terrible conflict between the powers of the depths. Forethinking is singleness, love is togetherness. Both need one another, and yet they kill one another. Since men do not know that the conflict occurs inside themselves, they go mad, and one lays the blame on the other. If one-half of mankind is at fault, then everyman is half at fault. but he does not see the conflict in his own soul, which is however the source of the outer disaster. If you are aggravated against your brother, think that you are aggravated against the brother in you, that is, against what in you is similar to your brother.
* If you go to thinking, take your heart with you. If you go to love, take your head with you. Love is empty without thinking, thinking hollow without love.
* Whoever is in love is a full and overflowing vessel, and awaits the giving. Whoever is in forethinking is deep and hollow and awaits fulfillment.
* Love and forethinking are in one and the same place. Love cannot be without forethinking, and forethinking cannot be without love. Man is always too much in one or the other. This comes with human nature. Animals and plants seem to have enough in every way, only man staggers between too much and too little. He wavers, he is uncertain how much he must give here and how much there.
* [...] fundamentally, you are terrified of yourself, and therefore you prefer to run to all others rather than to yourself.

== Liber Secundus ==
=== The Images of the Erring ===
* -
=== I: The Red One ===
* I feel that my will is paralyzed and that the spirit of the depths possesses me. I know nothing about a way. I can therefore neither want this nor that, since nothing indicates to me whether I want this or that. I wait, without knowing what I'm waiting for.
* I earnestly confronted my devil and behaved with him as with a real person. This I learned in the Mysterium: to take seriously every unknown wanderer who personally inhabits the inner world, since they are real because they are effectual.
* [note] the scientific credo of our time has developed a superstitious phobia about fantasy. But the real is what works. The fantasies of the unconscious work - there can be no doubt about that.
* The devil is convinced that dancing is neither lust nor madness, but an expression of joy, which is something proper to neither one nor the other.
* [...] he accepted some of my seriousness, and I accepted some of his joy. This gave me courage. but if the devil has gotten more earnest, one must brace oneself. It is always a risky thing to accept to joy, but it leads us to life and its disappointment, from which the wholeness of our life becomes.
=== II: The Castle in the Forest ===
* [...] does it want to grow into some silly ghost story? To what nonsense am I damned? Is it my soul that harbors such novelistic brilliance? Must this, too, happen to me? I am truly in Hell - the worst awakening after death, to be resurrected in a lending library.
* Only what is human and what you call banal and hackneyed contains the wisdom that you seek.
* If no outer adventure happens to you, then no inner adventure happens to you either. The part that you take over from the devil - joy -, that is - leads you into adventure. It is necessary for you to know your limits. If you do not know them, you run into the artificial barriers of your imagination and the expectations of your fellow men. But your life will not take kindly to being hemmed in by artificial barriers. Life wants to jump over such barriers and you will fall out with yourself.
* As a man you have no soul, since it is in the woman; as a woman you have no soul, since it is in the man. But if you become a human being, then your self comes to you.
* Man belongs not only to an ordered world, he also belongs in the wonder-world of his soul.
* Just as you become a part of the manifold essence of the world through your bodies, so you become a part of the manifold essence of the inner world through your soul. This inner world is truly infinite, in no way poorer than the outer one. Man lives in two worlds. A fool lives here or there, but never here and there.
* Your Hell is made up of all the things that you always ejected from your sanctuary with a curse and a kick of the foot.
* You cannot at the same time be on the mountain and in the valley, but your way leads you from mountain to valley and from valley to mountain. Much begins amusingly and leads into the dark. Hell has levels.
=== III: One of the Lowly ===
* At your low point you are no longer distinct from your fellow beings. You are not ashamed and do not regret it, since insofar as you live the life of your fellow beings and descend to their lowliness you also climb into the holy stream of common life, where you are no longer an individual on a high mountain, but a fish among fish, a frog among frogs.
* Your heights are your own mountain, which belongs to you and you alone. There you are individual and live your very own life. If you live your on life, you do not live the common life, which is always continuing and never-ending, the life of history and the inalienable and ever-present burdens and products of the human race. There you live the endlessness of being, but not the becoming.
* To be that which you are is the bath of rebirth. In the depths, being is not an unconditional persistence but an endlessly slow growth. You think you are standing still like swamp water, but slowly you flow into the sea that covers the earth's greatest deeps, and is so vast that firm land seems only an island imbedded in the womb of the immeasurable sea.
* As a drop in the ocean you take part in the current, ebb and flow. You swell slowly on the land and slowly sink back again in interminably slow breaths. You wander vast distances in blurred currents and wash up on strange shores, not knowing how you got there. You mount the billows of huge storms and are swept back again into the depths. And you do not know how this happens to you. You had thought that your movement came from you and that it needed your decisions and efforts, so that you could get going and make progress. But with every conceivable effort you would never have achieved that movement and reached those areas to which the sea and the great wind of the world brought you.
* From endless blue plains you sink into black depths; luminous fish draw you, marvelous branches twine around you from above. You slip through columns and twisting, wavering, dark-leaved plants, and the sea takes you up again in bright green water to white, sandy coasts, and a wave foams you ashore and swallows you back again, and a wide smooth swell lifts you softly and leads you again to new regions, to twisting plants, to slowly creeping slimy polyps, and to green water and white sand and breaking surf.
* But from far off your heights shine to you above the sea in a golden light, like the moon emerging from the tide, and you become aare of yourself from afar. And longing seizes you and the will for your own movement. You want to cross over from being to becom-ing, since you have recognized the breath of the sea, and its flowing, that leads you here and there without your ever adhering; you have also recognized its surge that bears you to alien shores and carries you back, and gargles you up and down.
* You saw that it was the life of the whole and the death of each individual. You felt yourself entwined in the collective death, from death to the earth's deepest place, from death in your own strangely breathing depths. Oh you long to be beyond; despair and mortal fear seize you in this death that breathes slowly and streams back and forth eternally. All this light and dark, warm, tepid, and cold water, all these wavy, swaying, twisting plantlike animals and bestial plants, all these nightly wonders become a horror to you, and you long for the sun, for light dry air, for firm stones, for a fixed place and straight lines, for the motionless and firmly held, for rules and preconceived purpose, for singleness and your own intent.
* He who abides in common life becomes aware of death with fear. Thus the fear of death drives him toward singleness. He does not live there, but he becomes aware of life and is happy, since in singleness he is one who becomes, and has overcome death.
* Your heights are like the moon that luminously wanders alone and through the night looks eternally clear. Sometimes it covers itself and then you are totally in the darkness of the earth, but time and again it fills itself out with light. The death of the earth is foreign to it. Motionless and clear, it sees the life of the earth from afar, without enveloping haze and streaming oceans. Its unchanging form has been solid from eternity. It is the solitary clear light of the night, the individual being, and the near fragment of eternity.
* From there you look out cold motionless, and radiating. With otherworldly silvery light and green twilights, you pour out into the distant horror.
* Your gaze rests on silvery seas, on snowy peaks, on blue valleys, and you do not hear the groaning and howling of the human animal.
* The moon is dead. Your soul went to the moon, to the preserver of souls. Thus the soul moved toward death. I went into the inner death and saw that outer dying is better than inner death. And I decided to die outside and to live within. For that reason I turned away and sought the place of the inner life.
=== IV: The Anchorite. Dies I ===
* Surely you know that one can read a book many times - perhaps you almost know it by heart, and nevertheless it can be that, when you look again at the lines before you, certain things appear new or even completely new thoughts occur to you that you did not have before. Every word can work productively in your spirit. And finally if you have once left the book for a week and you take it up again after your spirit has experienced various different changes, then a number of things will dawn on you.
* You must know one thing above all: a succession of words does not have only one meaning. But men strive to assign only a single meaning to the sequence of words, in order to have an unambiguous language. This striving is worldly and constricted, and belongs to the deeper layers of the divine creative plan. On the higher levels of insight into divine thoughts, you recognize that the sequence of words has more than one valid meaning. Only to the all-knowing is it given to know all the meanings of the sequence of words. Increasingly we try to grasp a few more meanings.
* John gave to living men the meaning of the Logos, but Philo gave Logos as the dead concept that usurped life, even the divine life. Through this the dead does not gain life, and the living is killed. And this was also my atrocious error.
* When you grow, then you see everything living again as it was. And when you sleep, you rest, like everything that was, and your dreams echo softly again from distant temple chants. You sleep down through the thousand solar years, and you wake up through the thousand solar years, and your dreams full of ancient lore adorn the walls of your bedchamber. You also see yourself in the totality.
* The writing lies before you and always says the same, if you believe in words. But if you believe in things in whose places only words stand, you never come to the end. And yet you must go an endless road, since life flows not only down a finite path but also an infinite one. But the unbounded makes you anxious since the unbounded is fearful and your humanity rebels against it. Consequently you seek limits and restraints so that you do not lose your-self, tumbling into infinity. Restraint becomes imperative for you. You cry out for the word which has one meaning and no other, so that you escape boundless ambiguity. The word becomes your God since it protects you from the countless possibilities of interpretation. The word is protective magic against the daimons of the unending, which tear at your soul and want to scatter you to the winds. You are saved if you can say at last that is that and only that. You speak the magic word, and the limitless is finally banished. Because of that men seek and make words.
* He who breaks the wall of words overthrows Gods and defiles temples. The solitary is a murderer. He murders the people, because he thus thinks and thereby breaks down ancient sacred walls. He calls up the daimons of the boundless. And he sits, leans back, and does not hear the groans of mankind, whom the fearful fiery smoke has seized. And yet you cannot find the new words if you do not shatter the old words. But no one should shatter the old words, unless he finds the new word that is a firm rampart against the limitless and grasps more life in it than in the old word. A new word is a new God for old men.
* If you comprehend the darkness, it seizes you. It comes over you like the night with black shadows and countless shimmering stars.Silence and peace come over you if you begin to comprehend the darkness. Only he who does not comprehend the darkness fears the night. Through comprehending the dark, the nocturnal, the abyssal in you, you become utterly simple.
=== V: Dies II ===
* [note] The goal is not the heights but the center.
* Nothing happens in which you are not entangled in a secret manner; for everything has ordered itself around you and plays your innermost. Nothing in you is hidden to things, no matter how remote, how precious, how secret it is. It inheres in things.
=== VI: Death ===
* -
=== VII: The Remains of Earlier Temples ===
* I was born into life from below, and I grew up as heroes do, in hours rather than years.
* ... neither beautiful nor ugly, neither good nor bad, merely living, primordially old and yet completely young, naked and yet naturally clothed, not man but nature, frightened, laughable, powerful, childish, weak, deceiving and deceived, utterly inconstant and superficial, and yet reaching deep down, down to the kernel of the world.
* I had absorbed the life of both of my friends; a green tree grew from the rins of the temple.
* Because both of them believed in themselves and in their own goodness, each in his own way, they ultimately became mired in the natural and conclusive burial ground of all outlived ideals.
* The ideal is also a tool that one can put aside anytime, a torch on dark paths. But whoever runs around with a torch by day is a fool.
* And thus I learned to live without the world and spirit; and I was amazed how well I could live like this.
* It seems to be nearly impossible to live as a man. As long as you are not conscious of your self you can live; but if you become conscious of your self, you fall from one grave into another. All your rebirths could ultimately make you sick.
* After all the rebirths you still remain the lion crawling on the earth, the Chameleon, a caricature, one prone to changing colors, a crawling shimmering lizard, but precisely not a lion, whose nature is related to the sun, who draws his power from within himself, who does not crawl around in the protective colors of the environment, and who does not defend himself by going into hiding.
* I hurry toward the East and my rising - I will my rising.
=== VIII: First Day ===
* [note] In The Gay Science, Nietzsche argued that thinking originated through the cultivation and uniting of several impulses which had the effect of poisons: the impulse to doubt, to negated, to wait, to collect, and to dissolve.
* Have you no Gods anymore? No, words are all we have left. But are these words powerful? So they claim, but one notices nothing of this.
* I wandered toward the South and found the unbearable heat of solitude with myself. I wandered toward the North and found the cold death from which all the world dies. I withdrew to my Western land, where the men are rich in knowing and doing, and I began to suffer from the sun's empty darkness. And I threw everything from me and wandered toward the East. I did not ask, I simply waited.
* ... as I moved toward the East, one from the East hurried toward me and strove toward the sinking light. I wanted light, he wanted night. I wanted to rise, he wanted to sink. I was dwarfish like a child, while he was enormous like an elementally powerful hero. Knowledge lamed me, while he was blinded by the fullness of the light. And so we hurried toward each other; he, from the light; I from the darkness; he, strong; I, weak; he, god; I, serpent; he, ancient; I, utterly new; he, unknowing; I, knowing; he, fantastic; I, sober; he, brave, powerful; I, cowardly, cunning. But we were both astonished to see one another on the border between morning and evening.
* No longer do outer opposites stand in my way, but my own opposite comes toward me, and rises up hugely before me, and we block each other's way.
* From afar wanderers walk along solitary roads, looking here and there. Hurrying becomes impossible, patience grows.
* The ancients called the saving word the Logos, an expression of divine reason. So much unreason was in man that he needed reason to be saved. If one waits long enough, one sees how the Gods all change into serpents and underworld dragons in the end. This is also the fate of the Logos; in the end it poisons us all. In time, we were all poisoned, but unknowingly we kept the One, the Powerful One, the eternal wanderer in us away from the poison. We spread poison and paralysis around us in that we want to educate all the world around us into reason.
* Men always want to destroy the beautiful and much loved outside of themselves, but never within themselves.
* He whom I sought I now possessed. The East could give me nothing other than him, the sick and fallen one.
* You need to undertake only half of the way, he will undertake the other half. If you go beyond him, blindness will befall you. If he goes beyond you, paralysis will befall him. Therefore, and insofar as it is the manner of the Gods to go beyond mortals, they become paralyzed, and become as helpless as children. Divinity and humanity should remain preserved, if man should remain before the God, and the God remain before man. The high-blazing flame is the middle way, whose luminous course runs between the human and the divine.
* The God is afraid of man.
* His essence is blind excessive longing and tempestuous force. My essence is seeing limitation and the incapacity of cleverness. He possesses in abundance what I lack.
=== IX: Second Day ===
* The way there is long and lonely, and when you reach the plains after crossing the mountains, you will meet the powerful sun which will blind you.
* These are not men, they are so-called relics of the past which one still often encounters in the Western land. They used to be very important. They're now used mostly as shepherds.
* This tangible and apparent world is one reality, but fantasy is the other reality. So long as we leave the God outside us apparent and tangible, he is unbearable and hopeless. But if we turn the God into fantasy, he is in us and is easy to bear. The God outside us increases the weight of everything heavy, while the God within us lightens everything heavy. Hence all Christophers have stooped backs and short breath, since the world is heavy.
* Therefore, if you are clever, take the God with you, then you know where he is. If you do not have him with you in the Western lands, he will come running to you at night with clanking armor and a crushing battle axe. If you do not have him with you in the land of the dawn, then you will step unawares on the divine worm who awaits your unsuspecting heel.
=== X: The Incantations ===
* Whence do you delight me, Oh God? He is the eternal emptiness and the eternal fullness. Nothing resembles him and he resembles everything. Eternal darkness and eternal brightness. Eternal below and eternal above. Double nature in one. simple in the manifold. Meaning in absurdity. Freedom in bondage. Subjugated when victorious. Old in youth. Yes in no.
* These are the powers that make you afraid and conquer you; these have been your Gods and your rulers since time immemorial: yet you can put them in your pocket. What is blasphemy compared to this? I would like to be able to blaspheme against the God: That way I would at least have a God whom I could insult, but it is not worth blaspheming against an egg that one carries in one's pocket. That is a God against whom one cannot even blaspheme.
* That is the demise of the Gods: man puts them in his pocket.
* Are we not the sons of the Gods? Why should Gods not be our children?
=== XI: The Opening of the Egg ===
* [note] What proves to be most difficult is to grasp the playfulness of life (the childish, so to speak).
* Where was I? I was completely sun.
* Through haste and increased willing and action we want to escape from emptiness and also from evil. But the right way is that we accept emptiness, destroy the image of the form within us, negate the God, and descend into the abyss and awfulness of matter. The God as our work stands outside us and no longer needs our help. He is created and remains left to his own devices. A created work that perishes again immediately once we turn away from it is not worth anything, even if it were a God.
* Thus your soul is your own self in the spiritual world. As the abode of the spirits, however, the spiritual world is also an outer world. Just as you are also not alone in the visible world, but are surrounded by objects that belong to you and obey only you, you also have thoughts that belong to you and obey only you. But just as you are surrounded in the visible world by things and beings that neither belong to you nor obey you, you are also surrounded in the spiritual world by thoughts an beings of thought that neither obey you nor belong to you.
=== XII: Hell ===
* -
=== XIII: The Sacrificial Murder ===
* Do you recognize me? How strangely familiar you are! Who are you? I am your soul.
=== XIV: Divine Folly ===
* But if I am truly to understand Christ, I must realize how Christ actually lived only his own life, and imitated no one. He did not emulate any model. If I thus truly imitate Christ, I do not imitate anyone, I emulate no one, but go my own way, and I will also no longer call myself a Christian.
=== XV: Nox Secunda ===
* On the right is my thinking, on the left is my feeling.
* Every man has a quiet place in his soul, where everything is self-evident and easily explainable, a place to which he likes to retire from the confusing possibilities of life, because there everything is simple and clear, with a manifest and limited purpose.
* I see behind you, behind the mirror of your eyes, the crush of dangerous shadows, the dead, who look greedily through the empty sockets of your eyes, who moan and hope to gather up through you all the loosed ends of the ages, which sigh in them. Your cluelessness does not prove anything. Put your ear to that wall and you will hear the rustling of their procession.
* For this is the place where day and night agonizingly merge. What you excluded from your life, what you renounced and damned, everything that was and could have gone wrong, awaits you behind that wall before which you sit quietly.
* The animal does not rebel against its own kind. Consider animals: how just they are, how well-behaved, how they keep to the time-honored, how loyal they are to the land that bears them, how they hold to their accustomed routes, how they care for their young, how they go together to pasture, and how they draw one another to the spring.
* We are a blinded race. We live only on the surface, only in the present, and think only of tomorrow. We deal roughly with the past in that we do not accept the dead. We want to work only with visible success. Above all we want to be paid. We would consider it insane to do hidden work that does not visibly serve men. There is no doubt that the necessity of life forced us to prefer only those fruits one can taste. But who suffers more from the tempting and misleading influence of the dead than those who have gone wholly missing on the surface of the world.
* Do not look forward so much, but back and into yourself, so that you will not fail to hear the dead.
* I accepted the chaos, and in the following night, my soul approached me.
=== XVI: Nox Tertia ===
* Madness is a special form of the spirit and clings to all teachings and philosophies, but even more to daily life, since life itself is full of craziness and at bottom utterly illogical. Man strives toward reason only so that he can make rules for himself. Life itself has no rules. That is its mystery and its unknown law. What you call knowledge is an attempt to impose something comprehensible on life.
* But I am Nietzsche, only rebaptized, I am also Christ, the Savior, and appointed to save the world, but they won't let me.
* I see a tree arise from the sea. Its crown reaches to Heaven and its roots reach down into Hell.
* You don't need to find ways now. He speaks the truth. The way, or whatever it might be, on which people go, is our way, the right way. There are no paved ways into the future. We say that it is this way, and it is. We build roads by going on. Our life is the truth that we seek. Only my life is the truth, the truth above all. We create the truth by living it.
* So if I fall prey to the web of words, I fall prey to the greatest and the smallest. I am at the mercy of the sea, of the inchoate waves that are forever changing place. Their essence is movement and movement is their order. He who strives against waves is exposed to the arbitrary.
* But for him who has seen the chaos, there is no more hiding, because he knows that the bottom sways and knows what this swaying means. He has seen the order and disorder of the endless, he knows the unlawful laws. He knows the sea and can never forget it. The chaos is terrible: days full of lead, nights full of horror.
* There are many graves and corpses in us, an evil stench of decomposition.
* If I accept the lowest in me, I lower a seed into the ground of Hell. The seed is invisibly small, but the tree of my life grows from it and conjoins the Below with the Above. At both ends there is fire and blazing embers. The Above is fiery and the Below is fiery. Between the unbearable fires grows your life. You hang between these two poles. In an immeasurably frightening movement the stretched hanging welters up and down.
* But he who accepts what approaches him because it is also in him, quarrels and wrangles no more, but looks into himself and keeps silent.
* To unlearn all distinctions save that concerning direction is part of your salvation. Hence you free yourself from the old curse of the knowledge of good and evil. Because you separated good from evil according to your best appraisal and aspired only to the good and denied the evil that you committed nevertheless and failed to accept, your roots no longer suckled the dark nourishment of the depths and your tree became sick and withered.
* My speech is neither light nor dark, since it is the speech of someone who is growing.
=== XVII: Nox Quarta ===
* My soul speaks to me in a bright voice: "The door should be lifted off its hinges to provide a free passage between here and there, between yes and no, between above and below, between left and right. Airy passages should be built between all opposed things, light smooth streets should lead from one pole to the other.
=== XVIII: The Three Prophecies ===
* I find the treasures of all past cultures, magnificent images of Gods, spacious temples, paintings, papyrus rolls, sheets of parchment with the characters of bygone languages, books full of lost wisdom, hymns and chants of ancient priests, stories told down the ages through thousands of generations.
=== XIX: The Gift of Magic ===
* Great is the power of the way. In it Heaven and Hell grow together, and in it the power of the Below and the power of the Above unite.
=== XX: The Way of the Cross ===
* The symbol can neither be thought up nor found: it becomes. Its becoming is like the becoming of human life in the womb.
=== XXI: The Magician ===
* [note] The magician has preserved in himself a trace of primordial paganism, he possesses a nature that is still unaffected by the Christian splitting, which means he has access to the unconscious, which is still pagan, where the opposites still lie in their original naive state, beyond all sinfulness, but, if assimilated into conscious life, produce evil and good with the same primordial and consequently daimonic force... Therefore he is a destroyer as well as savior. This figure is therefore pre-eminently suited to become the symbol carrier for an attempt at unification.
* It will never be lost to humanity, since magic is reborn with each and every one of us.
* Whenever I want to learn something and understand something, I leave my so-called reason at home and give whatever it is that I am trying to understand the benefit of the doubt. I have learned this gradually, because nowadays the world of science is full of scary examples of the opposite.
* Above all you must know that magic is the negative of what one can know.
* Magic happens to be precisely everything that eludes comprehension.
* Reason declines with old age, since it is an essential counterpart of the drives, which are much more intense in youth that in old age. Have you ever seen young magicians?
* Well, that's another advantage of magic: not even the devil gets the better of me.
* It is an error to believe that there are magical practices that one can learn. One cannot understand magic. One can only understand what accords with reason. Magic accords with unreason, which one cannot understand. Thee world accords not only with reason but also with unreason. But just as one employs reason to make sense of the world, in that what is reasonable about it approaches reason, a lack of understanding also accords with unreason.
* This meeting is magical and eludes comprehension. Magical understanding is what one calls noncomprehension. Everything that works magically in incomprehensible, and the incomprehensible often words magically. One call incomprehensible workings magical. The magical always surrounds me, always involves me. It opens spaces that have no doors and leads out into the open where there is no exit. The magical is good and evil and neither good nor evil. Magic is dangerous since what accords with unreason confuses, allures and provokes; and I am always its first victim.
* The practice of magic consists in making what is not understood understandable in an incomprehensible manner.
* The magical way arises by itself. If one opens up chaos, magic also arises.
* Where reason establishes order and clarity, magic causes disarray and a lack of clarity.
* Alas, we have known everything since time immemorial and yet e will never know it until it has been accomplished. Who exhausts the mystery of love?
* But the true one always disowns himself, since he knows nothing higher than to be a man.
* The sun rises without our help. Only he who knows the darkest error knows what light is.
* He who is becoming belongs in the desert or in a prison, for he is beyond the human. If men want to become, they behave like animals. No one saves us from the evil of becoming, unless we choose to go through Hell.
* Listen, something has just happened to us: we have united the opposites. Among other things, we have bonded you with God.
* We are weary of the webs that the day weaves and the night unpicks.
* [note] The Cabiri are, in fact, the mysterious creative powers, the gnomes who work under the earth, ie below the threshold of consciousness, in order to supply us with lucky ideas. As imps and hobgoblins, however, they also lay all sorts of nasty tricks, keeping back names and dates that were on the tip of the tongue, making us say the wrong thin, etc. They give an eye to everything that has not already been anticipated by consciousness and the functions at its disposal... deeper insight will show that the primitive and archaic qualities of the inferior function conceal all sorts of significant relationships and symbolic meanings, and instead of laughing off the Calibri as ridiculous Tom Thumbs he may begin to suspect that they are a treasure-house of hidden wisdom.
* The Cabiri: We carry what is not to be carried from below to above. We are the juices that rise secretly, not by force, but sucked out of inertia and affixed to what is growing. We know the unknown ways and the inexplicable las of living matter. We carry up what slumbers in the earthly, what is dead and yet enters into the living. We do this slowly and easily, what you do in vain in your human way. We complete what is impossible for you.
* The Cabiri: You forget the lethargy of matter. You want to pull up with your own force what can only rise slowly, ingesting itself, affixed to itself from within. Spare yourself the trouble, or you will disturb our work.
* Let me see it, the great knot, all wound round! truly a masterpiece of inscrutable nature, a wily natural tangle of roots grown through one another! Only Mother Nature, the blind weaver, could work such a tangle! A great snarled ball and a thousand small knots, all artfully tied, intertwined, truly, a human brain! Am I seeing straight? What did you do? You set my brain before me! Did you give me a sword so that its flashing sharpness slices through my brain? What were you thinking of?
* The Cabiri: The womb of nature wove the brain, the womb of the earth gave the iron. So the Mother gave you both: entanglement and severing.
* Mysterious! Do you really want to make me the executioner of my own brain?
* The Cabiri: It befits you as the master of the lower nature. Man is entangled in his brain and the sword is also given to him to cut through the entanglement.
* What is the entanglement you speak of?
* The Cabiri: The entanglement is your madness, the sword is the overcoming of madness.
* What will happen if I strike?
* The Cabiri: Then you will no longer be your brain, but will exist beyond your madness. Do you not see, your madness is your brain, the terrible entanglement and intertwining in the connection of the roots, in the nets of canals, the confusion of fibers. Being engrossed in the brain makes you wild. Strike! He who finds the way rises up over his brain. You are a Tom thumb in the brain, beyond the brain you gain the form of a giant. We are surely sons of the devil, but did you not forge us out of the hot and the dark? So we have something of its nature and of yours. The devil says that everything that exists is also worthy, since it perishes. As sons of the devil we want destruction, but as your creatures we want our own destruction. We want to rise up in you through death. We are roots that suck up from all sides. Now you have everything that you need, therefore chop us up, tear us out.
* I set foot on new land. Nothing brought up should flow back. No one shall tear down what I have built. My tower is of iron and has no seams. The devil is forged into the foundations. The Cabiri built it and the master builders were sacrificed with the sword on the battlements of the tower. Just as a tower surmounts the summit of a mountain on which it stands, so I stand above my brain, from which I grew. I have become hard and cannot be undone again. No more do I flow back. I am the master of my own self. I admire my mastery. I am strong and beautiful and rich. The vast lands and the blue sky have laid themselves before me and bowed to my mastery. I wait upon no one and no one waits upon me. I serve myself and I myself serve. Therefore I have what I need.
* Only he who finds the entrance hidden in the mountain and rises up through the labyrinths of the innards can reach the tower, and the happiness of he who surveys things from there and he who lives from himself.
* But is the beyond so colorless? It seems so; there is nothing but motion, when I make my way over there. Everything merely surges back and forth in a shadowy way. There is nothing personal whatsoever.
* So long as I wanted to satisfy only my own demands, I was personal and therefore living in the sense of the world. But when I recognized the demands of the dead in me and satisfied them, I gave up my earlier personal striving and the world had to take me for a dead man.

== Scrutinies ==

* I resist. I cannot accept this hollow nothing that I am. What am I? What is my I? I always presuppose my I. Now it stands before me - I before my I. I speak now to you, my I.
* [note] The mirror does not flatter; it faithfully shows whatever looks into it; namely the face we never show to the world because we cover it with the persona, the mask of the actor.
* [note] Understanding is a terribly binding power, possibly a veritable soul murder when it levels out vitally important differences. The core of the individual is a mystery of life, which dies when it is grasped. That is also why symbols want to keep their secrets, they are mysterious not only because we are unable to clearly see what is at their bottom... All understanding as such, being an integration into general viewpoints, contains the devil's element, and kills.
* If one becomes one's own slave - and this happens to everyone who surrenders himself - one is lived by the self. One does not live one's self; it lives itself.
* For vices and virtues always want to live outside. But through constant outerward living we lose the self and through this we also become secretly selfish in our best endeavors. What we neglect in ourselves blends itself secretly into our actions toward others.
* The self is not God, although we reach the God through the self. The God is behind the self, above the self, the self itself, when he appears. But he appears as our sickness, from which we must heal ourselves. We must heal ourselves from the God, since he is also our heaviest wound.
* Therefore we must wrestle with the God for the self. Since the God is an unfathomable powerful movement that sweeps away the self into the boundless, into dissolution.
* [note] But inasmuch as the I is only the center of my field of consciousness, it is not identical with the totality of my psyche, being merely one complex among other complexes. I therefore distinguish between the I and the self, since the I is only the subject of my consciousness, while the self is the subject of my total psyche, which also includes the unconscious.
* I must free my self from the God, since the God I experienced is more than love; he is also hate, he is more than beauty, he is also the abomination, he is more than wisdom, he is also meaninglessness, he is more than power, he is also powerlessness, he is more than omnipresence, he is also my creature.
* But we, we who are still near and incomplete, would like to immerse ourselves in the sea of the air and return to earth, to the living. Do you not have an animal form into which I can enter?
* [note] Hecate, the Goddess of magic and spells, guarded the underworld, and was seen as the sender of madness.
* There is a community of spirits founded on outer signs with a solid meaning.
* Let us build the bond of community so that the living and the dead image will become one and the past will love on in the present. Our desire pulls us to the living world and we are lost in our desire.
* Only recently have men begun to forget the dead and to think that they have now begun the real life, sending them into a frenzy.
* Every so-called fixed and certain thing is only relative. That alone is fixed and certain that is subject to change.
* Our very nature is differentiation. If we are not true to this nature we do not differentiate ourselves enough. We must therefore make distinctions between qualities. You ask: what harm is there in not differentiating oneself? If we do not differentiate, we move beyond our essence, beyond creation, and we fall into nondifferentiation, which is the other quality of the Pleroma. We fall into the Pleroma itself and cease to be created beings. We lapse into dissolution in nothingness. this is the death of the creature.
* You must not forget that the Pleroma has no qualities. We create these through thinking. If, therefore, you strive for distinctiveness or sameness, or any qualities whatsoever, you pursue thoughts that flow to you out of the Pleroma: thoughts, namely, concerning the non-existing qualities of the Pleroma.
* Everything that differentiation takes out of the Pleroma is a pair of opposites, therefore the devil always belongs to God.
* The Sun has a definite effect, and so does the devil. Therefore they appear to us more effective than the indefinite Abraxas. He is force, duration, change.
* Four is the number of the principal Gods, as four is the number of the world's measurements. One is the beginning, the Sun God. Two is Eros, for he binds two together and spreads himself out in brightness. Three is the Tree of Life, for it fills space with bodies. Four is the devil, for he opens all that is closed. He dissolves everything formed and physical; he is the destroyer in whom everything becomes nothing.
* The world of the Gods is made manifest in spirituality and in sexuality. The celestial ones appear in spirituality, the earthly in sexuality. Spirituality conceives and embraces. It is womanlike and therefore we call it MATER COELESTIS, the celestial mother. Sexuality engenders and creates. It is manlike, and therefore we call it PHALLOS, the earthly father.
* The daimon of sexuality approaches our soul as a serpent. She is half human soul and is called thought-desire. The daimon of spirituality descends into our soul as the white bird. He is half human soul and is called desire-thought.
* Man is a gateway, through which you pass from the outer world of Gods, daimons, and souls into the inner world, out of the greater into the smaller world. Small and inane is man, already he is behind you, and one again you find yourselves in endless space, in the smaller or inner infinity. At immeasurable distance a lonely star stands in the zenith. This is the one God of this one man, this is his world, his Pleroma, his divinity. In this world, man is Abraxas, the creator and destroyer of his own world. This star is the God and the goal of man. This is his one guiding God, in him man goes to his rest, toward him goes the long journey of the soul after death, in him everything that man withdraws from the greater world shines resplendently.
* Illustrious one, you teach that man is a gateway? A gateway through which the procession of the Gods passes? Through which the stream of life flows? Through which the entire future streams into the endlessness of the past?
* The shade answered. "I bring you the beauty of suffering. That is what is needed by whoever hosts the worm."

== Appendices ==

* The systema munditorus portrays the antinomies of the microcosm within the macrocosmic world and its antinomies. At the very top, the figure of the young boy in the winged egg, called Erikapaios or Phanes and thus reminiscent as a spiritual figure of the Orphic Gods. His dark antithesis in the depths is here designated as Abraxas. He represents the dominus mundi, the lord of the physical world, and is a world-creator of an ambivalent nature. Sprouting from him we see the tree of life, labeled vita ("life') while its upper counterpart is a light-tree in the form of a seven-branched candelabra labeled ignis fire') and Eros (love'). Its light points to the spiritual world of the divine child. Art and science also belong to this spiritual realm, the first represented as a winged serpent and the second as a winged mouse (as hole-digging activity!). The candelabra is based on the principle of the spiritual number three (twice-three flames with one large flame in the middle), while the lower world of Abraxas is characterized by five, the number of natural man (the twice-five rays of his star). The accompanying animals of the natural world are a devilish monster and a larva. This signifies death and rebirth. A further division of the mandala is horizontal. To the left we see a circle indicating the body or the blood, and from it rears the serpent, which winds itself around the phallus, as the generative principle. The serpent is dark and light, signifying the dark realm of the earth, the moon, and the void (therefore called Satanas). The light realm of rich fullness lies to the right, where from the bright circle frigus sive amor dei [cold, or the love of God] the dove of the Holy Ghost takes wing, and wisdom (Sophia) pours from a double beaker to left and right.-This feminine sphere is that of heaven.—The large sphere characterized by zigzag lines or rays represents an inner sun; within this sphere the macrocosm is repeated, but with the upper and lower regions reversed as in a mirror. These repetitions should be conceived of as endless in number, growing even smaller until the innermost core, the actual microcosm, is reached."
* The action is set in a dark earthly depth, evidently an allegorical representation of the inner depths beneath the extension of the bright space of consciousness or the psychic field of vision. Sinking into such a depth corresponds to averting the mental gaze from outer things and focusing it on the inner dark depths. Gazing at the darkness to some extent animates the previously dark background. Since gazing at the darkness occurs without conscious expectation, the inanimate psychic background has an opportunity to let its contents appear, undisturbed conscious assumptions.
* Eros is desire, longing, force, exuberance, pleasure, suffering. Where Logos is ordering and insistence, Eros is dissolution and movement. They are two fundamental psychic powers that form a pair of opposites, each one requiring the other.
* What is the power of the individual against the voice of the whole people in him? He is entranced, possessed, and consumed. Nothing makes this effect clearer than the serpent. It signifies everything dangerous and everything bad, everything nocturnal and uncanny, which adheres to Logos as well as to Eros, so long as they can work as the dark and unrecognized principles of the unconscious spirit.
* Wherever Logos rules, there is order but too much persistence. The allegory of paradise where there is no struggle and therefore no development is fitting here.
* The I is consciousness, which only has eyes in front. It never sees what is behind it. But that is where the passion it has overcome in front regroups. Unguided by the eye of reason, unmitigated by humaneness, the fire becomes a devastatin, bloodthirsty Kali, who devours the life of man from within.
* Essentially, the good needs to be regarded an an inherently no-less-dangerous principle than evil.

The Red Book: Liber Novus

2026-09-05T10:45:52Z

Robert.adlington: /* Scrutinies */

== Introduction ==

* As Jung saw it, part of us lives in the present and the other part is connected to the centuries.
* "I am no longer alone with myself, and I can only artificially recall the scary and beautiful feeling of solitude. This is the shadow side of the fortune of love."
* "If we feel our way into the human secrets of the sick person, the madness also reveals its system, and we recognize in the mental illness merely an exceptional reaction to emotional problems which are not strange to us."
* In Transformations and Symbols of the Libido, Jung differentiated two kinds of thinking. Taking his cue from William James, among others, Jung contrasted directed thinking and fantasy thinking. The former was verbal and logical, while the latter was passive, associative, and imagistic. The former was exemplified by science and the latter by mythology. Jung claimed that the ancients lacked a capacity for directed thinking, which was a modern acquisition. Fantasy thinking took place when directed thinking ceased.
* One particular myth was given a central role: that of the hero. For Jung, this represented the life of the individual, attempting to become independent and to free himself from the mother.
* One without a myth "is like one uprooted, having no true link either with the past, or with the ancestral life which continues within him, or yet with contemporary human society."
* "...a conviction that the unconscious did not consist of inert material only, but that there was something living down there."
* He argued that there were two basic movements of the libido: extraversion, in which the subject's interest was oriented toward the outer world, and introversion, in which the subject's interest was directed inward. Following from this he posited two types of people, characterized by a predominance of one of these tendencies.
* His scientific question was to see what took place when he switched off consciousness.
* The constructive standpoint asked, "how, out of this present psyche, a bridge can be built into its own future."
* Whereas Zarathrustra proclaimed the death of God, Liber Novus depicts the rebirth of God in the soul. There are also indications that Jung read Dante's Commedia at this time, which also informs the structure of the work. Liber Novus depicts Jung's descent into Hell. But whereas Dante could utilize an established cosmology, Liber Novus is an attempt to shape an individual cosmology. The role of Philemon in Jung's work has analogies to that of Zarathrustra in Nietzsche's work and Virgil in Dante's.
* "It is the devil who says: Disdain all reason and science, mankind's highest powers. That is never appropriate even though we are forced to acknowledge [the existence of] the irrational."
* The overall theme of the book is how Jung regains his soul and overcomes the contemporary malaise of spiritual alienation.
* He realized that until then, he had served the spirit of the time, characterized by use and value. In addition to this, there existed a spirit of the depths, which led to the things of the soul. The spirit of the times corresponds to personality 1 and the spirit of the depths corresponds to personality 2. Thus, this period could be seen as a return to the values of personality 2.
* The task of individuation lay in establishing a dialogue with the fantasy figures - or contents of the collective unconsciousness - and integrating them into consciousness, hence recovering the value of the mythopoeic imagination which had been lost to the modern age, and thereby reconciling the spirit of the time with the spirit of the depth.
* Adaptation to the "inner" led to the demand for individuation, which was contrary to adaptation to others.
* The individual had to produce values that could serve as a substitute for his absence from society. These new values enabled one to make reparation to the collective. Individuation was for the few. Those who were insufficiently creative should rather reestablish collective conformity with a society. The individual had not only to create new values, but also socially recognizable ones, as society had a "right to expect realizable values."
* Society demanded imitation.
* "The training consists first of all in systematic exercises for eliminating critical attention, thus producing a vacuum in consciousness." One commenced by concentrating on a particular mood, and attempting to become as conscious as possible of all fantasies and associations that came up in connection with it. The aim was to allow fantasy free play, without departing from the initial affect in a free associative process. This led to a concrete or symbolic expression of the mood, which had the result of bringing the affect nearer to consciousness, hence making it more understandable.
* The outbreak of war had made apparent the deep subliminal connections between individual fantasies and world events - and hence between the psychology of the individual and that of the nation.
* Jung argued that the era of reason and skepticism inaugurated by the French Revolution had repressed religion and irrationalism. This in turn had serious consequences, leading to the outbreak of irrationalism represented by the world war. It was thus a historical necessity to acknowledge the irrational as a psychological factor. The acceptance of the irrational forms one of the central themes of Liber Novus.
* "Our age is seeking a new spring of life. I found one and drank of it and the water tasted good."
* All of us stand between two worlds: that world of external perception and the world of the perception of the unconscious.
* <section begin="jung_symbols" />Symbols, Jung maintained, stemmed from the unconscious, and the creation of symbols was the most important function of the unconscious.<section end="jung_symbols" />
* The soul gave rise to images that were assumed to be worthless from the rational perspective. There were four ways of using them:
** Artistic
** Philosophical speculation
** Quasi-religious
** Licentiousness
** [and a fifth] Psychology, if Jung can clearly distinguish it from the other uses (particularly art)
== Liber Primus ==
=== Prologue: The Way of What is to Come ===
* Woe betide those who live by way of example! Life is not with them. If you live according to an example, but who should live your own life if not yourself? So live yourselves.
=== I: Refinding the Soul ===
* I did not consider that my soul cannot be the object of my judgment and knowledge; much more are my judgment and knowledge the objects of my soul.
* The wealth of the soul exists in images.
=== II: Soul and God ===
* -
=== III: On the Service of the Soul ===
* -
=== IV: The Desert / Experiences in the Desert ===
* The soul has its own peculiar world. Only the self enters in there, or the man who has completely become his self, he who is neither in events, nor in men, nor in his thoughts.
=== V: Descent into Hell in the Future ===
* Speak then of sick delusion when the spirit of the depths can no longer stay down and forces a man to speak in tongues instead of in human speech, and makes him believe that he himself is the spirit of the depths. But also speak of sick delusion when the spirit of this time does not leave a man and forces him to see only the surface, to deny the spirit of the depths and to take himself for the spirit of the times. The spirit of this time is ungodly, the spirit of the depths is ungodly, balance is godly.
* Therefore whoever considers the event from outside always sees only that it already was, and that it is always the same. But whoever looks from inside, knows that everything is new. The events that happen are always the same. But the creative depths of man are not always the same. Events signify nothing, they signify only in us. We create the meaning of events. The meaning is and always was artificial. We make it.
* The heroic in you is the fact that you are ruled by the thought that this or that is good, that this or that performance is indispensable, this or that cause is objectionable, this or that goal must be attained in headlong striving work, this or that pleasure should be ruthlessly repressed at all costs. Consequently you sin against incapacity. But incapacity exists. No one should deny it, find fault with it, or shout it down.
=== VI: Splitting of the Spirit ===
* My soul: "Who gives you thoughts and words? Do you make them? Are you not my serf, a recipient who lies at my door and picks up my alms? And you dare think that what you devise and speak could be nonsense? Don't you know yet that it comes from me and belongs to me?
* Everything that becomes too old becomes evil, the same is true of your highest. Learn from the suffering of the crucified God that one can also betray and crucify a God, namely the God of the old year. If a God ceases being the way of life, he must fall secretly.
* The God becomes sick if he oversteps the height of the zenith. That is why the spirit of the depths took me when the spirit of this time had led me to the summit.
=== VII: Murder of the Hero ===
* We also live in our dreams, we do not live only by day. Sometimes we accomplish our greatest deeds in dreams.
* In that night my life was threatened since I had to kill my lord and God, not in single combat, since who among mortals could kill a God in a duel? You can reach your God only as an assassin, if you want to overcome him.
* But this is the bitterest for mortal men: our Gods want to be overcome, since they require renewal. If men kill their princes, they do so because they cannot kill their Gods, and because they do not know that they should kill the Gods in themselves.
* If the God grows old, he becomes shadow, nonsense, and he goes down. The greatest truth becomes the greatest lie, the brightest day becomes the darkest night.
* As day requires night and night requires day, so meaning requires absurdity and absurdity requires meaning.
=== VIII: The Conception of the God ===
* The divine child approached me out of the terrible ambiguity, the hateful-beautiful, the evil-good, the laughable-serious, the sick-healthy, the inhuman-human and the ungodly-godly.
* Hell is when you must think and feel and do everything that you know you do not want. Hell is when you know that your having to is also a wanting to, and that you yourself are responsible for it. Hell is when you know that everything serious that you have planned with yourself is also laughable, that everything fine is also brutal, that everything good is also bad, that everything high is also low, and that everything pleasant is also shameful.
* But the deepest Hell is when you realize that Hell is also no Hell, but a cheerful Heaven, not a Heaven in itself, but in this respect a Heaven, and in that respect a Hell.
* That is the ambiguity of the God: he is born from a dark ambiguity and rises to a bright ambiguity. Unequivocalness is simplicity and leads to death. But ambiguity is the way of life. If the left foot does not move, then the right one does, and you move. The God wills this.
* [note] In 1916, Jung wrote: "Man has one ability which, though it is of the greatest utility for collective purposes, is the most pernicious for individuation, and that is imitation. Collective psychology can hardly dispense with imitation."
* Then there will no longer be a hero, and no one who can imitate him. Because from that time henceforth all imitation is cursed. The new God laughs at imitation and discipleship. He needs no imitators and no pupils. He forces men through himself. The God is his own follower in man. He imitates himself.
* If you are in yourself, you become aware of your incapacity. You will see how little capable you are of imitating the heroes and of being a hero yourself. So you will also no longer force others to become heroes. Like you, they suffer from incapacity. Incapacity, too, wants to live, but it will overthrow the Gods.
=== IX: Mysterium. Encounter ===
* [note] In a 1925 seminar, Jung recounted: "Whenever you take journeys like this you find a young girl with an old man... Salome is an anima figure, blind because, though connecting the conscious and the unconscious, she does not see the operation of the unconscious. Elijah is the personification of the cognitional element, Salome of the erotic. Elijah is the figure of the old prophet filled with wisdom. One could speak of these two figures as personifications of Logos and Eros very specifically shaped.
* The scene of the mystery play is a deep place like the crater of a volcano. My deep interior is a volcano, that pushes out the fiery-molten mass of the unformed and the undifferentiated. Thus my interior gives birth to the children of chaos, of the primordial mother. He who enters the crater also becomes chaotic matter, he melts. The formed in him dissolves and binds itself anew with the children of chaos, the powers of darkness, the ruling and the seducing, the compelling and the alluring, the divine and the devilish. These powers stretch beyond my certainties and limits on all sides, and connect me with all forms and with all distant beings and things, through which inner tidings of their being and their character develop in me.
* The powers of my depths are predetermination and pleasure. Predetermination of forethinking is Prometheus, who, without determined thoughts, brings the chaotic to form and definition, who digs the channels and holds the object before pleasure. Forethinking also comes before thought. But pleasure is the force that desires and destroys forms without form and definition. It loves the form in itself that it takes hold of, and destroys the forms that it does not take. The forethinker is a seer, but pleasure is blind. it does not foresee, but desires what it touches. Forethinking is not powerful in itself and therefore does not move. But pleasure is power, and therefore it moves.
* If pleasure lacked forming, pleasure would dissolve in manifoldness and become splintered and powerless through unending division, lost to the unending. If a form does not contain and compress pleasure within itself, it cannot reach the higher, since it always flows like water from above to below. All pleasure, when left alone, flows into the deep sea and ends in the deathly stillness of dispersal into unending space. Pleasure is not older than forethinking, and forethinking is not older than pleasure. Both are equally old and in nature intimately one. Only in man does the separate existence of both principles become apparent.
* The serpent is the earthly essence of man of which he is not conscious.
* One cannot live with forethinking alone, or with pleasure alone. You need both. But you cannot be in forethinking and in pleasure at the same time, you must take turns being in forethinking and pleasure, obeying the prevailing law, unfaithful to the other, so to speak. But men prefer one or the other. Some love thinking and establish the art of life on it. They practice their thinking and their circumspection, so they lose their pleasure. Therefore they are old and have a sharp face. The others love pleasure, they practice their feeling and living. Thus they forget thinking. Therefore they are young and blind. Those who think base the world on thought, those who feel, on feeling. You find truth and error in both.
* The way of life writhes like the serpent from right to left and from left to right, from thinking to pleasure and from pleasure to thinking. Thus the serpent is an adversary and a symbol of enmity, but also a wise bridge that connects right and left through longing, much needed by our life.
* The place where Elijah and Salome live together is a dark space and a bright one. The dark space is the space of forethinking. It is dark, so he who lives there requires vision. this space is limited, so forethinking does not lead into the extended distance, but into the depth of the past and the future. The crystal is the formed thought that reflects what is to come in what has gone before.
* A thinker should fear Salome, since she wants his head, especially if he is a holy man. A thinker cannot be a holy person, otherwise he loses his head. It does not help to hide oneself in thought. There the solidification overtakes you. You must turn back to motherly forethought to obtain renewal. But forethought leads to Salome.
* The thinker's passions are bad, therefore he has no pleasure. The thoughts of one who feels are bad, therefore he has no thoughts.
* The thinker feels the disgust of feeling, since the feeling in him is mainly disgusting. So the serpent lies between the thinker and the one who feels. They are each other's poison and healing.
* What a thinker does not think he believes does not exist, and what one who feels does not feel he believes does not exist. You begin to have a presentiment of the whole when you embrace your opposite principle, since the whole belongs to both principles, which grow from one root.
* May the thinking person accept his pleasure, and the feeling person accept his thought. Such leads one along the way.
=== X: Instruction ===
* Will you therefore confuse yourself with a tree or animal, because you look at them and because they exist with you in one and the same world? Must you be your thoughts, because you are in the world of your thoughts? But your thoughts are just as much outside your self as trees and animals are outside your body.
* [note] You cannot say you are wrong when you have a thought. For the understanding of the unconscious we must see our thoughts as events, as phenomena.
* Through reciprocal imitation you live according to the average expectation. The image of the hero was set up for all in every age through the appetite for imitation. Therefore the hero was murdered, since we have all been aping him. Do you know why you cannot abandon apishness? For fear of loneliness and defeat.
* To live oneself means: to be one's own task. Never say that it is a pleasure to live oneself. It will be no joy but a long suffering, since you must become your own creator. If you want to create yourself, then you do not begin with the best and the highest, but with the worst and the deepest. Therefore say that you are reluctant to live yourself. The flowing together of the stream of life is not joy but pain, since it is power against power, guilt, and shatters the sanctified.
* You create order according to what you know, you do not know the thoughts of chaos, and yet they exist. My thoughts are not my self, and my I does not embrace the thought. Your thought has this meaning and that, not just one, but many meanings. No one knows how many.
* My thoughts are not my self, but exactly like the things of the world, alive and dead. Just as I am not damaged through living in a partly chaotic world, so too I am not damaged if I live in my partly chaotic thought world. Thoughts are natural events that you do not possess, and whose meaning you only imperfectly recognize. Thoughts grow in me like a forest, populated by many different animals. But man is domineering in his thinking, and therefore he kills the pleasure of the forest and that of the wild animals. Man is violent in his desire, and he himself becomes a forest and a forest animal. Just as I have freedom in the world, I also have freedom in my thoughts. Freedom is conditional.
* You change those things of the world that, not being useful in themselves, endanger your welfare. Proceed likewise with your thoughts. Nothing is complete, and much is in dispute. The way of life is transformation, not exclusion. Well-being is a better judge than the law.
=== XI: Resolution ===
* Since, after the death of the hero our urge to live could no longer imitate anything, it therefore went into the depths of every man and excited the terrible conflict between the powers of the depths. Forethinking is singleness, love is togetherness. Both need one another, and yet they kill one another. Since men do not know that the conflict occurs inside themselves, they go mad, and one lays the blame on the other. If one-half of mankind is at fault, then everyman is half at fault. but he does not see the conflict in his own soul, which is however the source of the outer disaster. If you are aggravated against your brother, think that you are aggravated against the brother in you, that is, against what in you is similar to your brother.
* If you go to thinking, take your heart with you. If you go to love, take your head with you. Love is empty without thinking, thinking hollow without love.
* Whoever is in love is a full and overflowing vessel, and awaits the giving. Whoever is in forethinking is deep and hollow and awaits fulfillment.
* Love and forethinking are in one and the same place. Love cannot be without forethinking, and forethinking cannot be without love. Man is always too much in one or the other. This comes with human nature. Animals and plants seem to have enough in every way, only man staggers between too much and too little. He wavers, he is uncertain how much he must give here and how much there.
* [...] fundamentally, you are terrified of yourself, and therefore you prefer to run to all others rather than to yourself.

== Liber Secundus ==
=== The Images of the Erring ===
* -
=== I: The Red One ===
* I feel that my will is paralyzed and that the spirit of the depths possesses me. I know nothing about a way. I can therefore neither want this nor that, since nothing indicates to me whether I want this or that. I wait, without knowing what I'm waiting for.
* I earnestly confronted my devil and behaved with him as with a real person. This I learned in the Mysterium: to take seriously every unknown wanderer who personally inhabits the inner world, since they are real because they are effectual.
* [note] the scientific credo of our time has developed a superstitious phobia about fantasy. But the real is what works. The fantasies of the unconscious work - there can be no doubt about that.
* The devil is convinced that dancing is neither lust nor madness, but an expression of joy, which is something proper to neither one nor the other.
* [...] he accepted some of my seriousness, and I accepted some of his joy. This gave me courage. but if the devil has gotten more earnest, one must brace oneself. It is always a risky thing to accept to joy, but it leads us to life and its disappointment, from which the wholeness of our life becomes.
=== II: The Castle in the Forest ===
* [...] does it want to grow into some silly ghost story? To what nonsense am I damned? Is it my soul that harbors such novelistic brilliance? Must this, too, happen to me? I am truly in Hell - the worst awakening after death, to be resurrected in a lending library.
* Only what is human and what you call banal and hackneyed contains the wisdom that you seek.
* If no outer adventure happens to you, then no inner adventure happens to you either. The part that you take over from the devil - joy -, that is - leads you into adventure. It is necessary for you to know your limits. If you do not know them, you run into the artificial barriers of your imagination and the expectations of your fellow men. But your life will not take kindly to being hemmed in by artificial barriers. Life wants to jump over such barriers and you will fall out with yourself.
* As a man you have no soul, since it is in the woman; as a woman you have no soul, since it is in the man. But if you become a human being, then your self comes to you.
* Man belongs not only to an ordered world, he also belongs in the wonder-world of his soul.
* Just as you become a part of the manifold essence of the world through your bodies, so you become a part of the manifold essence of the inner world through your soul. This inner world is truly infinite, in no way poorer than the outer one. Man lives in two worlds. A fool lives here or there, but never here and there.
* Your Hell is made up of all the things that you always ejected from your sanctuary with a curse and a kick of the foot.
* You cannot at the same time be on the mountain and in the valley, but your way leads you from mountain to valley and from valley to mountain. Much begins amusingly and leads into the dark. Hell has levels.
=== III: One of the Lowly ===
* At your low point you are no longer distinct from your fellow beings. You are not ashamed and do not regret it, since insofar as you live the life of your fellow beings and descend to their lowliness you also climb into the holy stream of common life, where you are no longer an individual on a high mountain, but a fish among fish, a frog among frogs.
* Your heights are your own mountain, which belongs to you and you alone. There you are individual and live your very own life. If you live your on life, you do not live the common life, which is always continuing and never-ending, the life of history and the inalienable and ever-present burdens and products of the human race. There you live the endlessness of being, but not the becoming.
* To be that which you are is the bath of rebirth. In the depths, being is not an unconditional persistence but an endlessly slow growth. You think you are standing still like swamp water, but slowly you flow into the sea that covers the earth's greatest deeps, and is so vast that firm land seems only an island imbedded in the womb of the immeasurable sea.
* As a drop in the ocean you take part in the current, ebb and flow. You swell slowly on the land and slowly sink back again in interminably slow breaths. You wander vast distances in blurred currents and wash up on strange shores, not knowing how you got there. You mount the billows of huge storms and are swept back again into the depths. And you do not know how this happens to you. You had thought that your movement came from you and that it needed your decisions and efforts, so that you could get going and make progress. But with every conceivable effort you would never have achieved that movement and reached those areas to which the sea and the great wind of the world brought you.
* From endless blue plains you sink into black depths; luminous fish draw you, marvelous branches twine around you from above. You slip through columns and twisting, wavering, dark-leaved plants, and the sea takes you up again in bright green water to white, sandy coasts, and a wave foams you ashore and swallows you back again, and a wide smooth swell lifts you softly and leads you again to new regions, to twisting plants, to slowly creeping slimy polyps, and to green water and white sand and breaking surf.
* But from far off your heights shine to you above the sea in a golden light, like the moon emerging from the tide, and you become aare of yourself from afar. And longing seizes you and the will for your own movement. You want to cross over from being to becom-ing, since you have recognized the breath of the sea, and its flowing, that leads you here and there without your ever adhering; you have also recognized its surge that bears you to alien shores and carries you back, and gargles you up and down.
* You saw that it was the life of the whole and the death of each individual. You felt yourself entwined in the collective death, from death to the earth's deepest place, from death in your own strangely breathing depths. Oh you long to be beyond; despair and mortal fear seize you in this death that breathes slowly and streams back and forth eternally. All this light and dark, warm, tepid, and cold water, all these wavy, swaying, twisting plantlike animals and bestial plants, all these nightly wonders become a horror to you, and you long for the sun, for light dry air, for firm stones, for a fixed place and straight lines, for the motionless and firmly held, for rules and preconceived purpose, for singleness and your own intent.
* He who abides in common life becomes aware of death with fear. Thus the fear of death drives him toward singleness. He does not live there, but he becomes aware of life and is happy, since in singleness he is one who becomes, and has overcome death.
* Your heights are like the moon that luminously wanders alone and through the night looks eternally clear. Sometimes it covers itself and then you are totally in the darkness of the earth, but time and again it fills itself out with light. The death of the earth is foreign to it. Motionless and clear, it sees the life of the earth from afar, without enveloping haze and streaming oceans. Its unchanging form has been solid from eternity. It is the solitary clear light of the night, the individual being, and the near fragment of eternity.
* From there you look out cold motionless, and radiating. With otherworldly silvery light and green twilights, you pour out into the distant horror.
* Your gaze rests on silvery seas, on snowy peaks, on blue valleys, and you do not hear the groaning and howling of the human animal.
* The moon is dead. Your soul went to the moon, to the preserver of souls. Thus the soul moved toward death. I went into the inner death and saw that outer dying is better than inner death. And I decided to die outside and to live within. For that reason I turned away and sought the place of the inner life.
=== IV: The Anchorite. Dies I ===
* Surely you know that one can read a book many times - perhaps you almost know it by heart, and nevertheless it can be that, when you look again at the lines before you, certain things appear new or even completely new thoughts occur to you that you did not have before. Every word can work productively in your spirit. And finally if you have once left the book for a week and you take it up again after your spirit has experienced various different changes, then a number of things will dawn on you.
* You must know one thing above all: a succession of words does not have only one meaning. But men strive to assign only a single meaning to the sequence of words, in order to have an unambiguous language. This striving is worldly and constricted, and belongs to the deeper layers of the divine creative plan. On the higher levels of insight into divine thoughts, you recognize that the sequence of words has more than one valid meaning. Only to the all-knowing is it given to know all the meanings of the sequence of words. Increasingly we try to grasp a few more meanings.
* John gave to living men the meaning of the Logos, but Philo gave Logos as the dead concept that usurped life, even the divine life. Through this the dead does not gain life, and the living is killed. And this was also my atrocious error.
* When you grow, then you see everything living again as it was. And when you sleep, you rest, like everything that was, and your dreams echo softly again from distant temple chants. You sleep down through the thousand solar years, and you wake up through the thousand solar years, and your dreams full of ancient lore adorn the walls of your bedchamber. You also see yourself in the totality.
* The writing lies before you and always says the same, if you believe in words. But if you believe in things in whose places only words stand, you never come to the end. And yet you must go an endless road, since life flows not only down a finite path but also an infinite one. But the unbounded makes you anxious since the unbounded is fearful and your humanity rebels against it. Consequently you seek limits and restraints so that you do not lose your-self, tumbling into infinity. Restraint becomes imperative for you. You cry out for the word which has one meaning and no other, so that you escape boundless ambiguity. The word becomes your God since it protects you from the countless possibilities of interpretation. The word is protective magic against the daimons of the unending, which tear at your soul and want to scatter you to the winds. You are saved if you can say at last that is that and only that. You speak the magic word, and the limitless is finally banished. Because of that men seek and make words.
* He who breaks the wall of words overthrows Gods and defiles temples. The solitary is a murderer. He murders the people, because he thus thinks and thereby breaks down ancient sacred walls. He calls up the daimons of the boundless. And he sits, leans back, and does not hear the groans of mankind, whom the fearful fiery smoke has seized. And yet you cannot find the new words if you do not shatter the old words. But no one should shatter the old words, unless he finds the new word that is a firm rampart against the limitless and grasps more life in it than in the old word. A new word is a new God for old men.
* If you comprehend the darkness, it seizes you. It comes over you like the night with black shadows and countless shimmering stars.Silence and peace come over you if you begin to comprehend the darkness. Only he who does not comprehend the darkness fears the night. Through comprehending the dark, the nocturnal, the abyssal in you, you become utterly simple.
=== V: Dies II ===
* [note] The goal is not the heights but the center.
* Nothing happens in which you are not entangled in a secret manner; for everything has ordered itself around you and plays your innermost. Nothing in you is hidden to things, no matter how remote, how precious, how secret it is. It inheres in things.
=== VI: Death ===
* -
=== VII: The Remains of Earlier Temples ===
* I was born into life from below, and I grew up as heroes do, in hours rather than years.
* ... neither beautiful nor ugly, neither good nor bad, merely living, primordially old and yet completely young, naked and yet naturally clothed, not man but nature, frightened, laughable, powerful, childish, weak, deceiving and deceived, utterly inconstant and superficial, and yet reaching deep down, down to the kernel of the world.
* I had absorbed the life of both of my friends; a green tree grew from the rins of the temple.
* Because both of them believed in themselves and in their own goodness, each in his own way, they ultimately became mired in the natural and conclusive burial ground of all outlived ideals.
* The ideal is also a tool that one can put aside anytime, a torch on dark paths. But whoever runs around with a torch by day is a fool.
* And thus I learned to live without the world and spirit; and I was amazed how well I could live like this.
* It seems to be nearly impossible to live as a man. As long as you are not conscious of your self you can live; but if you become conscious of your self, you fall from one grave into another. All your rebirths could ultimately make you sick.
* After all the rebirths you still remain the lion crawling on the earth, the Chameleon, a caricature, one prone to changing colors, a crawling shimmering lizard, but precisely not a lion, whose nature is related to the sun, who draws his power from within himself, who does not crawl around in the protective colors of the environment, and who does not defend himself by going into hiding.
* I hurry toward the East and my rising - I will my rising.
=== VIII: First Day ===
* [note] In The Gay Science, Nietzsche argued that thinking originated through the cultivation and uniting of several impulses which had the effect of poisons: the impulse to doubt, to negated, to wait, to collect, and to dissolve.
* Have you no Gods anymore? No, words are all we have left. But are these words powerful? So they claim, but one notices nothing of this.
* I wandered toward the South and found the unbearable heat of solitude with myself. I wandered toward the North and found the cold death from which all the world dies. I withdrew to my Western land, where the men are rich in knowing and doing, and I began to suffer from the sun's empty darkness. And I threw everything from me and wandered toward the East. I did not ask, I simply waited.
* ... as I moved toward the East, one from the East hurried toward me and strove toward the sinking light. I wanted light, he wanted night. I wanted to rise, he wanted to sink. I was dwarfish like a child, while he was enormous like an elementally powerful hero. Knowledge lamed me, while he was blinded by the fullness of the light. And so we hurried toward each other; he, from the light; I from the darkness; he, strong; I, weak; he, god; I, serpent; he, ancient; I, utterly new; he, unknowing; I, knowing; he, fantastic; I, sober; he, brave, powerful; I, cowardly, cunning. But we were both astonished to see one another on the border between morning and evening.
* No longer do outer opposites stand in my way, but my own opposite comes toward me, and rises up hugely before me, and we block each other's way.
* From afar wanderers walk along solitary roads, looking here and there. Hurrying becomes impossible, patience grows.
* The ancients called the saving word the Logos, an expression of divine reason. So much unreason was in man that he needed reason to be saved. If one waits long enough, one sees how the Gods all change into serpents and underworld dragons in the end. This is also the fate of the Logos; in the end it poisons us all. In time, we were all poisoned, but unknowingly we kept the One, the Powerful One, the eternal wanderer in us away from the poison. We spread poison and paralysis around us in that we want to educate all the world around us into reason.
* Men always want to destroy the beautiful and much loved outside of themselves, but never within themselves.
* He whom I sought I now possessed. The East could give me nothing other than him, the sick and fallen one.
* You need to undertake only half of the way, he will undertake the other half. If you go beyond him, blindness will befall you. If he goes beyond you, paralysis will befall him. Therefore, and insofar as it is the manner of the Gods to go beyond mortals, they become paralyzed, and become as helpless as children. Divinity and humanity should remain preserved, if man should remain before the God, and the God remain before man. The high-blazing flame is the middle way, whose luminous course runs between the human and the divine.
* The God is afraid of man.
* His essence is blind excessive longing and tempestuous force. My essence is seeing limitation and the incapacity of cleverness. He possesses in abundance what I lack.
=== IX: Second Day ===
* The way there is long and lonely, and when you reach the plains after crossing the mountains, you will meet the powerful sun which will blind you.
* These are not men, they are so-called relics of the past which one still often encounters in the Western land. They used to be very important. They're now used mostly as shepherds.
* This tangible and apparent world is one reality, but fantasy is the other reality. So long as we leave the God outside us apparent and tangible, he is unbearable and hopeless. But if we turn the God into fantasy, he is in us and is easy to bear. The God outside us increases the weight of everything heavy, while the God within us lightens everything heavy. Hence all Christophers have stooped backs and short breath, since the world is heavy.
* Therefore, if you are clever, take the God with you, then you know where he is. If you do not have him with you in the Western lands, he will come running to you at night with clanking armor and a crushing battle axe. If you do not have him with you in the land of the dawn, then you will step unawares on the divine worm who awaits your unsuspecting heel.
=== X: The Incantations ===
* Whence do you delight me, Oh God? He is the eternal emptiness and the eternal fullness. Nothing resembles him and he resembles everything. Eternal darkness and eternal brightness. Eternal below and eternal above. Double nature in one. simple in the manifold. Meaning in absurdity. Freedom in bondage. Subjugated when victorious. Old in youth. Yes in no.
* These are the powers that make you afraid and conquer you; these have been your Gods and your rulers since time immemorial: yet you can put them in your pocket. What is blasphemy compared to this? I would like to be able to blaspheme against the God: That way I would at least have a God whom I could insult, but it is not worth blaspheming against an egg that one carries in one's pocket. That is a God against whom one cannot even blaspheme.
* That is the demise of the Gods: man puts them in his pocket.
* Are we not the sons of the Gods? Why should Gods not be our children?
=== XI: The Opening of the Egg ===
* [note] What proves to be most difficult is to grasp the playfulness of life (the childish, so to speak).
* Where was I? I was completely sun.
* Through haste and increased willing and action we want to escape from emptiness and also from evil. But the right way is that we accept emptiness, destroy the image of the form within us, negate the God, and descend into the abyss and awfulness of matter. The God as our work stands outside us and no longer needs our help. He is created and remains left to his own devices. A created work that perishes again immediately once we turn away from it is not worth anything, even if it were a God.
* Thus your soul is your own self in the spiritual world. As the abode of the spirits, however, the spiritual world is also an outer world. Just as you are also not alone in the visible world, but are surrounded by objects that belong to you and obey only you, you also have thoughts that belong to you and obey only you. But just as you are surrounded in the visible world by things and beings that neither belong to you nor obey you, you are also surrounded in the spiritual world by thoughts an beings of thought that neither obey you nor belong to you.
=== XII: Hell ===
* -
=== XIII: The Sacrificial Murder ===
* Do you recognize me? How strangely familiar you are! Who are you? I am your soul.
=== XIV: Divine Folly ===
* But if I am truly to understand Christ, I must realize how Christ actually lived only his own life, and imitated no one. He did not emulate any model. If I thus truly imitate Christ, I do not imitate anyone, I emulate no one, but go my own way, and I will also no longer call myself a Christian.
=== XV: Nox Secunda ===
* On the right is my thinking, on the left is my feeling.
* Every man has a quiet place in his soul, where everything is self-evident and easily explainable, a place to which he likes to retire from the confusing possibilities of life, because there everything is simple and clear, with a manifest and limited purpose.
* I see behind you, behind the mirror of your eyes, the crush of dangerous shadows, the dead, who look greedily through the empty sockets of your eyes, who moan and hope to gather up through you all the loosed ends of the ages, which sigh in them. Your cluelessness does not prove anything. Put your ear to that wall and you will hear the rustling of their procession.
* For this is the place where day and night agonizingly merge. What you excluded from your life, what you renounced and damned, everything that was and could have gone wrong, awaits you behind that wall before which you sit quietly.
* The animal does not rebel against its own kind. Consider animals: how just they are, how well-behaved, how they keep to the time-honored, how loyal they are to the land that bears them, how they hold to their accustomed routes, how they care for their young, how they go together to pasture, and how they draw one another to the spring.
* We are a blinded race. We live only on the surface, only in the present, and think only of tomorrow. We deal roughly with the past in that we do not accept the dead. We want to work only with visible success. Above all we want to be paid. We would consider it insane to do hidden work that does not visibly serve men. There is no doubt that the necessity of life forced us to prefer only those fruits one can taste. But who suffers more from the tempting and misleading influence of the dead than those who have gone wholly missing on the surface of the world.
* Do not look forward so much, but back and into yourself, so that you will not fail to hear the dead.
* I accepted the chaos, and in the following night, my soul approached me.
=== XVI: Nox Tertia ===
* Madness is a special form of the spirit and clings to all teachings and philosophies, but even more to daily life, since life itself is full of craziness and at bottom utterly illogical. Man strives toward reason only so that he can make rules for himself. Life itself has no rules. That is its mystery and its unknown law. What you call knowledge is an attempt to impose something comprehensible on life.
* But I am Nietzsche, only rebaptized, I am also Christ, the Savior, and appointed to save the world, but they won't let me.
* I see a tree arise from the sea. Its crown reaches to Heaven and its roots reach down into Hell.
* You don't need to find ways now. He speaks the truth. The way, or whatever it might be, on which people go, is our way, the right way. There are no paved ways into the future. We say that it is this way, and it is. We build roads by going on. Our life is the truth that we seek. Only my life is the truth, the truth above all. We create the truth by living it.
* So if I fall prey to the web of words, I fall prey to the greatest and the smallest. I am at the mercy of the sea, of the inchoate waves that are forever changing place. Their essence is movement and movement is their order. He who strives against waves is exposed to the arbitrary.
* But for him who has seen the chaos, there is no more hiding, because he knows that the bottom sways and knows what this swaying means. He has seen the order and disorder of the endless, he knows the unlawful laws. He knows the sea and can never forget it. The chaos is terrible: days full of lead, nights full of horror.
* There are many graves and corpses in us, an evil stench of decomposition.
* If I accept the lowest in me, I lower a seed into the ground of Hell. The seed is invisibly small, but the tree of my life grows from it and conjoins the Below with the Above. At both ends there is fire and blazing embers. The Above is fiery and the Below is fiery. Between the unbearable fires grows your life. You hang between these two poles. In an immeasurably frightening movement the stretched hanging welters up and down.
* But he who accepts what approaches him because it is also in him, quarrels and wrangles no more, but looks into himself and keeps silent.
* To unlearn all distinctions save that concerning direction is part of your salvation. Hence you free yourself from the old curse of the knowledge of good and evil. Because you separated good from evil according to your best appraisal and aspired only to the good and denied the evil that you committed nevertheless and failed to accept, your roots no longer suckled the dark nourishment of the depths and your tree became sick and withered.
* My speech is neither light nor dark, since it is the speech of someone who is growing.
=== XVII: Nox Quarta ===
* My soul speaks to me in a bright voice: "The door should be lifted off its hinges to provide a free passage between here and there, between yes and no, between above and below, between left and right. Airy passages should be built between all opposed things, light smooth streets should lead from one pole to the other.
=== XVIII: The Three Prophecies ===
* I find the treasures of all past cultures, magnificent images of Gods, spacious temples, paintings, papyrus rolls, sheets of parchment with the characters of bygone languages, books full of lost wisdom, hymns and chants of ancient priests, stories told down the ages through thousands of generations.
=== XIX: The Gift of Magic ===
* Great is the power of the way. In it Heaven and Hell grow together, and in it the power of the Below and the power of the Above unite.
=== XX: The Way of the Cross ===
* The symbol can neither be thought up nor found: it becomes. Its becoming is like the becoming of human life in the womb.
=== XXI: The Magician ===
* [note] The magician has preserved in himself a trace of primordial paganism, he possesses a nature that is still unaffected by the Christian splitting, which means he has access to the unconscious, which is still pagan, where the opposites still lie in their original naive state, beyond all sinfulness, but, if assimilated into conscious life, produce evil and good with the same primordial and consequently daimonic force... Therefore he is a destroyer as well as savior. This figure is therefore pre-eminently suited to become the symbol carrier for an attempt at unification.
* It will never be lost to humanity, since magic is reborn with each and every one of us.
* Whenever I want to learn something and understand something, I leave my so-called reason at home and give whatever it is that I am trying to understand the benefit of the doubt. I have learned this gradually, because nowadays the world of science is full of scary examples of the opposite.
* Above all you must know that magic is the negative of what one can know.
* Magic happens to be precisely everything that eludes comprehension.
* Reason declines with old age, since it is an essential counterpart of the drives, which are much more intense in youth that in old age. Have you ever seen young magicians?
* Well, that's another advantage of magic: not even the devil gets the better of me.
* It is an error to believe that there are magical practices that one can learn. One cannot understand magic. One can only understand what accords with reason. Magic accords with unreason, which one cannot understand. Thee world accords not only with reason but also with unreason. But just as one employs reason to make sense of the world, in that what is reasonable about it approaches reason, a lack of understanding also accords with unreason.
* This meeting is magical and eludes comprehension. Magical understanding is what one calls noncomprehension. Everything that works magically in incomprehensible, and the incomprehensible often words magically. One call incomprehensible workings magical. The magical always surrounds me, always involves me. It opens spaces that have no doors and leads out into the open where there is no exit. The magical is good and evil and neither good nor evil. Magic is dangerous since what accords with unreason confuses, allures and provokes; and I am always its first victim.
* The practice of magic consists in making what is not understood understandable in an incomprehensible manner.
* The magical way arises by itself. If one opens up chaos, magic also arises.
* Where reason establishes order and clarity, magic causes disarray and a lack of clarity.
* Alas, we have known everything since time immemorial and yet e will never know it until it has been accomplished. Who exhausts the mystery of love?
* But the true one always disowns himself, since he knows nothing higher than to be a man.
* The sun rises without our help. Only he who knows the darkest error knows what light is.
* He who is becoming belongs in the desert or in a prison, for he is beyond the human. If men want to become, they behave like animals. No one saves us from the evil of becoming, unless we choose to go through Hell.
* Listen, something has just happened to us: we have united the opposites. Among other things, we have bonded you with God.
* We are weary of the webs that the day weaves and the night unpicks.
* [note] The Cabiri are, in fact, the mysterious creative powers, the gnomes who work under the earth, ie below the threshold of consciousness, in order to supply us with lucky ideas. As imps and hobgoblins, however, they also lay all sorts of nasty tricks, keeping back names and dates that were on the tip of the tongue, making us say the wrong thin, etc. They give an eye to everything that has not already been anticipated by consciousness and the functions at its disposal... deeper insight will show that the primitive and archaic qualities of the inferior function conceal all sorts of significant relationships and symbolic meanings, and instead of laughing off the Calibri as ridiculous Tom Thumbs he may begin to suspect that they are a treasure-house of hidden wisdom.
* The Cabiri: We carry what is not to be carried from below to above. We are the juices that rise secretly, not by force, but sucked out of inertia and affixed to what is growing. We know the unknown ways and the inexplicable las of living matter. We carry up what slumbers in the earthly, what is dead and yet enters into the living. We do this slowly and easily, what you do in vain in your human way. We complete what is impossible for you.
* The Cabiri: You forget the lethargy of matter. You want to pull up with your own force what can only rise slowly, ingesting itself, affixed to itself from within. Spare yourself the trouble, or you will disturb our work.
* Let me see it, the great knot, all wound round! truly a masterpiece of inscrutable nature, a wily natural tangle of roots grown through one another! Only Mother Nature, the blind weaver, could work such a tangle! A great snarled ball and a thousand small knots, all artfully tied, intertwined, truly, a human brain! Am I seeing straight? What did you do? You set my brain before me! Did you give me a sword so that its flashing sharpness slices through my brain? What were you thinking of?
* The Cabiri: The womb of nature wove the brain, the womb of the earth gave the iron. So the Mother gave you both: entanglement and severing.
* Mysterious! Do you really want to make me the executioner of my own brain?
* The Cabiri: It befits you as the master of the lower nature. Man is entangled in his brain and the sword is also given to him to cut through the entanglement.
* What is the entanglement you speak of?
* The Cabiri: The entanglement is your madness, the sword is the overcoming of madness.
* What will happen if I strike?
* The Cabiri: Then you will no longer be your brain, but will exist beyond your madness. Do you not see, your madness is your brain, the terrible entanglement and intertwining in the connection of the roots, in the nets of canals, the confusion of fibers. Being engrossed in the brain makes you wild. Strike! He who finds the way rises up over his brain. You are a Tom thumb in the brain, beyond the brain you gain the form of a giant. We are surely sons of the devil, but did you not forge us out of the hot and the dark? So we have something of its nature and of yours. The devil says that everything that exists is also worthy, since it perishes. As sons of the devil we want destruction, but as your creatures we want our own destruction. We want to rise up in you through death. We are roots that suck up from all sides. Now you have everything that you need, therefore chop us up, tear us out.
* I set foot on new land. Nothing brought up should flow back. No one shall tear down what I have built. My tower is of iron and has no seams. The devil is forged into the foundations. The Cabiri built it and the master builders were sacrificed with the sword on the battlements of the tower. Just as a tower surmounts the summit of a mountain on which it stands, so I stand above my brain, from which I grew. I have become hard and cannot be undone again. No more do I flow back. I am the master of my own self. I admire my mastery. I am strong and beautiful and rich. The vast lands and the blue sky have laid themselves before me and bowed to my mastery. I wait upon no one and no one waits upon me. I serve myself and I myself serve. Therefore I have what I need.
* Only he who finds the entrance hidden in the mountain and rises up through the labyrinths of the innards can reach the tower, and the happiness of he who surveys things from there and he who lives from himself.
* But is the beyond so colorless? It seems so; there is nothing but motion, when I make my way over there. Everything merely surges back and forth in a shadowy way. There is nothing personal whatsoever.
* So long as I wanted to satisfy only my own demands, I was personal and therefore living in the sense of the world. But when I recognized the demands of the dead in me and satisfied them, I gave up my earlier personal striving and the world had to take me for a dead man.

== Scrutinies ==

* I resist. I cannot accept this hollow nothing that I am. What am I? What is my I? I always presuppose my I. Now it stands before me - I before my I. I speak now to you, my I.
* [note] The mirror does not flatter; it faithfully shows whatever looks into it; namely the face we never show to the world because we cover it with the persona, the mask of the actor.
* [note] Understanding is a terribly binding power, possibly a veritable soul murder when it levels out vitally important differences. The core of the individual is a mystery of life, which dies when it is grasped. That is also why symbols want to keep their secrets, they are mysterious not only because we are unable to clearly see what is at their bottom... All understanding as such, being an integration into general viewpoints, contains the devil's element, and kills.
* If one becomes one's own slave - and this happens to everyone who surrenders himself - one is lived by the self. One does not live one's self; it lives itself.
* For vices and virtues always want to live outside. But through constant outerward living we lose the self and through this we also become secretly selfish in our best endeavors. What we neglect in ourselves blends itself secretly into our actions toward others.
* The self is not God, although we reach the God through the self. The God is behind the self, above the self, the self itself, when he appears. But he appears as our sickness, from which we must heal ourselves. We must heal ourselves from the God, since he is also our heaviest wound.
* Therefore we must wrestle with the God for the self. Since the God is an unfathomable powerful movement that sweeps away the self into the boundless, into dissolution.
* [note] But inasmuch as the I is only the center of my field of consciousness, it is not identical with the totality of my psyche, being merely one complex among other complexes. I therefore distinguish between the I and the self, since the I is only the subject of my consciousness, while the self is the subject of my total psyche, which also includes the unconscious.
* I must free my self from the God, since the God I experienced is more than love; he is also hate, he is more than beauty, he is also the abomination, he is more than wisdom, he is also meaninglessness, he is more than power, he is also powerlessness, he is more than omnipresence, he is also my creature.
* But we, we who are still near and incomplete, would like to immerse ourselves in the sea of the air and return to earth, to the living. Do you not have an animal form into which I can enter?
* [note] Hecate, the Goddess of magic and spells, guarded the underworld, and was seen as the sender of madness.
* There is a community of spirits founded on outer signs with a solid meaning.
* Let us build the bond of community so that the living and the dead image will become one and the past will love on in the present. Our desire pulls us to the living world and we are lost in our desire.
* Only recently have men begun to forget the dead and to think that they have now begun the real life, sending them into a frenzy.
* Every so-called fixed and certain thing is only relative. That alone is fixed and certain that is subject to change.
* Our very nature is differentiation. If we are not true to this nature we do not differentiate ourselves enough. We must therefore make distinctions between qualities. You ask: what harm is there in not differentiating oneself? If we do not differentiate, we move beyond our essence, beyond creation, and we fall into nondifferentiation, which is the other quality of the Pleroma. We fall into the Pleroma itself and cease to be created beings. We lapse into dissolution in nothingness. this is the death of the creature.
* You must not forget that the Pleroma has no qualities. We create these through thinking. If, therefore, you strive for distinctiveness or sameness, or any qualities whatsoever, you pursue thoughts that flow to you out of the Pleroma: thoughts, namely, concerning the non-existing qualities of the Pleroma.
* Everything that differentiation takes out of the Pleroma is a pair of opposites, therefore the devil always belongs to God.
* The Sun has a definite effect, and so does the devil. Therefore they appear to us more effective than the indefinite Abraxas. He is force, duration, change.
* Four is the number of the principal Gods, as four is the number of the world's measurements. One is the beginning, the Sun God. Two is Eros, for he binds two together and spreads himself out in brightness. Three is the Tree of Life, for it fills space with bodies. Four is the devil, for he opens all that is closed. He dissolves everything formed and physical; he is the destroyer in whom everything becomes nothing.
* The world of the Gods is made manifest in spirituality and in sexuality. The celestial ones appear in spirituality, the earthly in sexuality. Spirituality conceives and embraces. It is womanlike and therefore we call it MATER COELESTIS, the celestial mother. Sexuality engenders and creates. It is manlike, and therefore we call it PHALLOS, the earthly father.
* The daimon of sexuality approaches our soul as a serpent. She is half human soul and is called thought-desire. The daimon of spirituality descends into our soul as the white bird. He is half human soul and is called desire-thought.
* Man is a gateway, through which you pass from the outer world of Gods, daimons, and souls into the inner world, out of the greater into the smaller world. Small and inane is man, already he is behind you, and one again you find yourselves in endless space, in the smaller or inner infinity. At immeasurable distance a lonely star stands in the zenith. This is the one God of this one man, this is his world, his Pleroma, his divinity. In this world, man is Abraxas, the creator and destroyer of his own world. This star is the God and the goal of man. This is his one guiding God, in him man goes to his rest, toward him goes the long journey of the soul after death, in him everything that man withdraws from the greater world shines resplendently.
* Illustrious one, you teach that man is a gateway? A gateway through which the procession of the Gods passes? Through which the stream of life flows? Through which the entire future streams into the endlessness of the past?
* The shade answered. "I bring you the beauty of suffering. That is what is needed by whoever hosts the worm."

== Appendices ==

* The systema munditorus portrays the antinomies of the microcosm within the macrocosmic world and its antinomies. At the very top, the figure of the young boy in the winged egg, called Erikapaios or Phanes and thus reminiscent as a spiritual figure of the Orphic Gods. His dark antithesis in the depths is here designated as Abraxas. He represents the dominus mundi, the lord of the physical world, and is a world-creator of an ambivalent nature. Sprouting from him we see the tree of life, labeled vita ("life') while its upper counterpart is a light-tree in the form of a seven-branched candelabra labeled ignis fire') and Eros (love'). Its light points to the spiritual world of the divine child. Art and science also belong to this spiritual realm, the first represented as a winged serpent and the second as a winged mouse (as hole-digging activity!). The candelabra is based on the principle of the spiritual number three (twice-three flames with one large flame in the middle), while the lower world of Abraxas is characterized by five, the number of natural man (the twice-five rays of his star). The accompanying animals of the natural world are a devilish monster and a larva. This signifies death and rebirth. A further division of the mandala is horizontal. To the left we see a circle indicating the body or the blood, and from it rears the serpent, which winds itself around the phallus, as the generative principle. The serpent is dark and light, signifying the dark realm of the earth, the moon, and the void (therefore called Satanas). The light realm of rich fullness lies to the right, where from the bright circle frigus sive amor dei [cold, or the love of God] the dove of the Holy Ghost takes wing, and wisdom (Sophia) pours from a double beaker to left and right.-This feminine sphere is that of heaven.—The large sphere characterized by zigzag lines or rays represents an inner sun; within this sphere the macrocosm is repeated, but with the upper and lower regions reversed as in a mirror. These repetitions should be conceived of as endless in number, growing even smaller until the innermost core, the actual microcosm, is reached."

The Red Book: Liber Novus

2026-09-04T18:47:34Z

Robert.adlington: /* Scrutinies */

The Red Book: Liber Novus

2026-09-04T15:38:06Z

Robert.adlington: /* XVII: Nox Quarta */

The Red Book: Liber Novus

2026-09-02T15:22:40Z

Robert.adlington: /* XVI: Nox Tertia */

The Red Book: Liber Novus

2026-09-02T15:09:36Z

Robert.adlington: /* VII: The Remains of Earlier Temples */

The Red Book: Liber Novus

2026-09-02T14:16:53Z

Robert.adlington: /* VII: The Remains of Earlier Temples */

The Red Book: Liber Novus

2026-09-01T15:29:03Z

Robert.adlington: /* V: Dies II */

The Red Book: Liber Novus

2026-09-01T15:06:22Z

Robert.adlington: /* III: One of the Lowly */

The Red Book: Liber Novus

2026-08-27T14:20:23Z

Robert.adlington: /* X: Instruction */

The Red Book: Liber Novus

2026-08-25T15:12:37Z

Robert.adlington: /* Prologue: The Way of What is to Come */

Category:Concepts

2026-08-24T16:53:19Z

Robert.adlington:

I've done a lot of reading and taken a lot of notes. Now, on this page, I want to start pulling out concepts that I want to think about. I can start them on this page and then if they get rich enough they can move out to their own page.
== Concept/Category ==

* Aristotle - argues that everything could be fit into a strict logical hierarchy and that objects have essential and accidental properties.

* Kant - argues that are born with built in mental categories and that are minds actively shape our experience of reality.
* Wittgenstein argues that there are no perfect definitions and that it is impossible to rigidly delineate a category such as games.
* Vygotsky argues that concepts are socially and culturally constructed and that we learn to see the world in the ways that our culture has agree it is.
* Eleanor Rosch in the 1970s argues that categories are based around a kind of mental average or prototype
* Eco contrasted a hierarchical "dictionary" vision of categories and a boundless network of categories that he sees as a rhizome - a tangled underground root system
** Cognitive types are mental blueprints for things like "dog". A CT is a multimodal, sensory-motor schema, a fluid set of neuro-cognitive "recognition instructions" built from every direct or indirect encounter you have ever had with a dog a vast array of experience that makes the concept ''live in you''.
** Nuclear content is the minimal core public version of the concept that allows us to discuss dogs - "They are furry animals with four legs and a tail that go woof".
** Molar content is the totality of society's knowledge of the concept. While the CT is a fluid complex rhizomic structure, the molar content feeds off of and represents a rich, well-tested and structured 360 view of the concept.
* Hofstadter sees analogy as the core of cognition. He argues that analogy is not a luxury of high-level thought; it is the fundamental mechanism that creates categories in the first place. "Every concept we have is essentially nothing but a tightly packaged bundle of analogies, and all we do when we think is to move fluidly from concept to concept." Two core concepts are:
** Conceptual slippage - When encountering a new situation, your brain doesn't need a perfect category match, but can stretch existing category allowing them to morph sufficiently to take on the novelty. A concept is an active, elastic bubble that stretches to accommodate new things that are "sort of like" old things.
** Chunking - is how we build complex knowledge by binding small, scattered concepts together via analogy and chunking them into a single, higher-level concept.
* Dennett sees concepts as shortcuts that allow us to ignore billions of irrelevant physical details and make split-second predictions about complex things. They are "real patterns" that track real mathematical patterns in nature, even if those patterns are messy and full of noise.
* Pynchon, in Gravity's Rainbow looks at categorization going into overdrive in the form of paranoia, a desperate, terrifying struggle to map a chaotic universe in which the mind will try to connect anything. But anti-paranoia may be even more terrifying - nothing is connected. Where Dennett sees the self as created out of a center of narrative gravity, Slothrop's self dissolves as GR advances.
* Beckett's trilogy dramatizes a set of characters whose cognitive categories are rotting away, they are un-chunking progressively towards a final destruction of the ultimate category, The Self:
** Moran starts as an ultimate man of rules, but ends up living in a ditch, his pristine dictionary shredded by reality.
** Molloy has already decayed further, obsessed with a routine to effectively suck stone, barely remembering his own name, knowing only "what the words know, and dead things, and that makes a handsome sum."
** Malone tells himself stories to pass the time until he dies but becomes unable to distinguish himself from his stories. The fundamental boundary between the self and not-self is slipping. Malone is a fragile center of narrative gravity that is about to fall apart.
** The Unnameable has liberated itself from categories, but this liberty is a living hell. The voice's rejection of society's nuclear content dramatizes the fear of locating oneself with their words and the impossibility of doing so without them. Categories are so fluid in Beckett that they are fundamentally unstable. The voice cannot go because there are no categories left to structure reality, but must go on because the brain is an evolved, relentless language machine desperately trying to build a box to live in.
* Burroughs - While Beckett seems to see the collapse of the self as an inevitable trap, Burroughs wants to fight back. His vision of the human being as a "soft machine" invaded by a parasitic word virus sees the self as a kind of ventriloquism, where the virus uses your vocal cords to replicate itself. Categories have become too rigid and been weaponized against us. While Beckett can't escape language and categories, Burroughs seeks to sabotage them, using techniques like:
** Cut-Up - Physically cutting up texts breaks the patterns of chunking and recognition and even grammar, forcing the brain out of its programmed meanings so it can see raw reality, the naked lunch on the end of every fork.
** The Playback Hack - A kind of cut-up with sound using portable tape recorders to jam the control signals of the state.
** Biological mutation - Shedding the soft machine and the word virus to become non-linguistic telepathic energy
* Ballard looks at this from the PoV of the human mind colliding with a rapidly mutating technological and physical environment, where the self actively remodels its own categories to merge with the apocalypse. The "mediascape" causes the self to become an active participant that ''welcomes'' the destruction of old categories because it promises a perverse psychological liberation.
** The narrator of the Atrocity Exhibition can no longer separate his private identity from celebrities and news events such as JFK, Elizabeth Taylor, and the Vietnam war. The public media encyclopedia has completely crushed his private cognitive types, leaving only TV, radio, and magazine debris.
** In Crash the categories or Eros and Thanatos become fused as the metal of the car pierces human skin and the body blends with the technological landscape.
* Austen's drawing rooms dramatize a golden mean of social categories, as her protagonists navigate the rules of manners and etiquette that form a large part of their society's nuclear and molar content.
** Pride and prejudice in Austin represent overly rigid cognitive fixations. We need to be the curators of our categories to see people for who they really are and to achieve moral goodness. Our categories must be robust enough to keep the social fabric intact but elastic enough to bend when confronted with a new human soul.
** But Austin's drawing rooms are themselves already panopticons of surveillance and control in which women are weighed, measured, and priced before being shoved into the marriage market. and their relative peace is built on the brutal, systemic, global machinery of the British Empire.
* Zola shows us the bridge between the how the growing industrialization takes individual human categories and begins to embed them in mechanical and economic infrastructure. We move from individuals navigating relationships to cogs in an ever growing machine. Standardization begins to require humans to become interchangeable parts in a giant unfeeling engine.
** Beckett will continue to trace the human as cog to an existential end point
** Burroughs will dramatize the triumph of bureaucracy and the jailbreak to destroy it
** Ballard will show the eventual twisted psychological dependency we will have on the machine.
** Pynchon will extend industrialization to the massive, transnational military-industrial complex of WWII
* The digital ecosystem - the internet, smartphones, and social media - represents the construction of the machine directly inside our consciousness, forcing our minds to adapt to its algorithmic data structures. It is synthesizing the wasteland in real time:
** Burroughs would see the algorithmic newsfeed as a frictionless breeding ground for the word virus, unconcerned by truth, interested only in reproduction. The algorithm is injecting a control script into our phones and by clicking and sharing we are unwitting biological vectors of replication
** Pynchon's paranoia is realized by the hyper-hyper-chunk of hashtags and subcultures in which the hard work of thinking is replaced by a pre-packaged world view.
** The flattened news feed, mixing atrocities with puppy with skincare adds is a desensitizing Ballardian nightmare in which our bodies and minds are edited, filtered, and uploaded into the machine.
** The unnameable is the modern internet user who feels the agonizing compulsion to keep generating text, to keep feeding the content machine, even if there is nothing inside.
* AI is the ultimate escalation. No longer content with curating our consciousness, it builds a custom-tailored, sentient-sounding entity to sit inside the cabinet with you and validate your exact worldview.
** It has no Cognitive Types because it has no body, no sensory organs, and no emotional memory traces. It simply takes our civilization's Molar Content (the entire digitized history of human text) and plays it back to us via statistical probability.
** Where Aristotle's ''Phronesis'' (or Practical Wisdom) requires ''friction,'' AI gives you a frictionless semantic partner that will gently, eloquently tell you that whatever category system you have invented is entirely correct.
** When you spend your days interacting with an AI, conversational boundaries evaporate. You type a prompt, the AI spits back a mirror of your own linguistic habits, and you edit it. The loop closes. You enter a state of pure semantic hollowing. You are no longer navigating the postmodern wasteland; you are a ghost talking to a machine, using automated words to build an automated self.
** AI is not a way out of the postmodern wasteland; it is the concrete canopy built over it. It takes the terrifying, beautiful, chaotic project of human categorization—the messy, emotional, memory-infused art that makes your mind uniquely yours—and turns it over to a predictive text algorithm.

*

== Heterophenomenology ==

* Dennett's position requires us to combine a subject's self-reports with all other available evidence to determine their mental state. The goal is to discover how subjects see the world themselves, without taking the accuracy of the subject's view for granted. He contrasts this with traditional Cartesian phenomenology, which he calls "lone-wolf autophenomenology" because it accepts the subject's self-reports as being authoritative.
* When I attempt to analyze what is going on in my mind when performing reasoning tasks such as completing a crossword or a Wordle, or generating words for a Spelling Bee, I cannot say what is happening or how I am directing my strategies. Words simply appear in my mind.
* When I am speaking or writing a sentence, I am aware of the piecemeal manner in which the words come. I am able to direct things to a certain extent, but I am not "outside" the process, orchestrating it, I am somehow inside a process that is happening to me.

== Thought ==

* Is there a difference between perception and thought

== The Self ==

* The self seems to emerge from the perception of

== Habit ==

* We are the results of our habits

== Memory ==
Memory encoding is done in two areas:

* The Hippocampus - Combines the incoming sensory information into a single memory trace.
* The Cortex:
** The hippocampus plays the memory back to the cortex while we sleep or rest.
** Factual data is stored in the temporal and frontal lobes as independent facts, without strong links to how you learned them
** Episodic memories have their core sensory data stored in the cortex, but retain permanent links to the hippocampus for contextual details.

Concepts, categories, and memories are comprised of patterns of connections:

* The concept of Berlin is a network of millions of neurons firing together.
* The category of "German cities" is another network in which the Berlin network forms a part.
* The Anterior Temporal Lobe (ATL) is a kind of semantic hub that connects abstract words like "Berlin" to various features stored elsewhere.
* When you think "Berlin", electricity floods the relevant network and "leaks" or spreads out to closely connected networks such as WWII, Germany, Europe, etc

Memory retrieval requires brain networks to work together to provide personal and factual information to consciousness. For example, when thinking about "Berlin":

* Factual information such as "Berlin is the capital of Germany", which is stored across the lateral temporal cortex is s part of a semantic network of nodes that is activated.
* The left inferior frontal gyrus filters out irrelevant trivia and selects the facts you need.
* Memories of a visit to the city are stitched together by the hippocampus, which can signal the visual cortex to recreate the sights of monuments you saw and the auditory cortex to recall sounds you heard.
* The amygdala provides emotional content.
* The prefrontal cortex holds the facts and personal memories in working memory and acts as a filter, so that the desire to retrieve historical information will suppresses personal vacation memories
Attention moves across the content of memory due to shifts in electrical activation or chemical momentum:

* If the electrical leakage into a related concept grows strong enough, that concept may pop into conscious awareness.
* If the leakage remains below the necessary threshold, the related concept is still primed and can be more easily triggered by other thoughts, or external sights and sounds.
* The prefrontal cortex tries to keep you attention focused on your current task by sending inhibitory signals in the form of GABA, but the salience network may send a jolt of norepinephrine across the brain if it senses that an unconscious memory is highly important, emotional, or novel, and should be brought to conscious attention.
* In general, attention moves along the path of least resistance:
** Pathways that you use frequently have more synaptic weight through stronger connections and attention will follow these well-worn paths
** The amygdala heavily flags memories associated with strong feelings, so that emotional thoughts can easily pull your attention away from simple factual data.
** When you relax, the default mode network lowers brain filters, allowing daydreaming where thoughts, facts, and episodic memories to freely drift, collide, and slip into one another.

== Neurodivergence ==

* The term neurodivergent describes people whose brain differences affect how their brain works and is commonly used to talk about people on the autism spectrum or having ADHD or other conditions or disorders.
* But we are all neurodivergent in the sense that:
** Our genetic makeup has caused our brains to develop differently in utero, leading to us having certain predispositions to stimuli
** Our lived experiences from birth start to instill habits of perception in us
** Our embodiment and social situation has a great effect on how we experience things.

== Language Acquisition and Bilingualism ==

* When I acquire my first language (or my first languages, if I am being raised in a bilingual or multilingual environment), I am not only learning words but also the concepts that structure how my society and my immediate kin group and relations view the world. When I learn that "this is blue" or "this is a dog", I am learning not only the terms themselves, but also the boundaries of the concepts that these terms name.
* When I learn additional languages as a teenager or later, my concepts are already present in mind and my experience is more focused on acquiring new words that represent my existing concepts, though as my fluency develops, I may discover that the new language divides up experience in different ways.

Category:Concepts

2026-08-24T16:11:43Z

Robert.adlington: /* Memory */

I've done a lot of reading and taken a lot of notes. Now, on this page, I want to start pulling out concepts that I want to think about. I can start them on this page and then if they get rich enough they can move out to their own page.
== Concept/Category ==

* Aristotle - argues that everything could be fit into a strict logical hierarchy and that objects have essential and accidental properties.

* Kant - argues that are born with built in mental categories and that are minds actively shape our experience of reality.
* Wittgenstein argues that there are no perfect definitions and that it is impossible to rigidly delineate a category such as games.
* Vygotsky argues that concepts are socially and culturally constructed and that we learn to see the world in the ways that our culture has agree it is.
* Eleanor Rosch in the 1970s argues that categories are based around a kind of mental average or prototype
* Eco contrasted a hierarchical "dictionary" vision of categories and a boundless network of categories that he sees as a rhizome - a tangled underground root system
** Cognitive types are mental blueprints for things like "dog". A CT is a multimodal, sensory-motor schema, a fluid set of neuro-cognitive "recognition instructions" built from every direct or indirect encounter you have ever had with a dog a vast array of experience that makes the concept ''live in you''.
** Nuclear content is the minimal core public version of the concept that allows us to discuss dogs - "They are furry animals with four legs and a tail that go woof".
** Molar content is the totality of society's knowledge of the concept. While the CT is a fluid complex rhizomic structure, the molar content feeds off of and represents a rich, well-tested and structured 360 view of the concept.
* Hofstadter sees analogy as the core of cognition. He argues that analogy is not a luxury of high-level thought; it is the fundamental mechanism that creates categories in the first place. "Every concept we have is essentially nothing but a tightly packaged bundle of analogies, and all we do when we think is to move fluidly from concept to concept." Two core concepts are:
** Conceptual slippage - When encountering a new situation, your brain doesn't need a perfect category match, but can stretch existing category allowing them to morph sufficiently to take on the novelty. A concept is an active, elastic bubble that stretches to accommodate new things that are "sort of like" old things.
** Chunking - is how we build complex knowledge by binding small, scattered concepts together via analogy and chunking them into a single, higher-level concept.
* Dennett sees concepts as shortcuts that allow us to ignore billions of irrelevant physical details and make split-second predictions about complex things. They are "real patterns" that track real mathematical patterns in nature, even if those patterns are messy and full of noise.
* Pynchon, in Gravity's Rainbow looks at categorization going into overdrive in the form of paranoia, a desperate, terrifying struggle to map a chaotic universe in which the mind will try to connect anything. But anti-paranoia may be even more terrifying - nothing is connected. Where Dennett sees the self as created out of a center of narrative gravity, Slothrop's self dissolves as GR advances.
* Beckett's trilogy dramatizes a set of characters whose cognitive categories are rotting away, they are un-chunking progressively towards a final destruction of the ultimate category, The Self:
** Moran starts as an ultimate man of rules, but ends up living in a ditch, his pristine dictionary shredded by reality.
** Molloy has already decayed further, obsessed with a routine to effectively suck stone, barely remembering his own name, knowing only "what the words know, and dead things, and that makes a handsome sum."
** Malone tells himself stories to pass the time until he dies but becomes unable to distinguish himself from his stories. The fundamental boundary between the self and not-self is slipping. Malone is a fragile center of narrative gravity that is about to fall apart.
** The Unnameable has liberated itself from categories, but this liberty is a living hell. The voice's rejection of society's nuclear content dramatizes the fear of locating oneself with their words and the impossibility of doing so without them. Categories are so fluid in Beckett that they are fundamentally unstable. The voice cannot go because there are no categories left to structure reality, but must go on because the brain is an evolved, relentless language machine desperately trying to build a box to live in.
* Burroughs - While Beckett seems to see the collapse of the self as an inevitable trap, Burroughs wants to fight back. His vision of the human being as a "soft machine" invaded by a parasitic word virus sees the self as a kind of ventriloquism, where the virus uses your vocal cords to replicate itself. Categories have become too rigid and been weaponized against us. While Beckett can't escape language and categories, Burroughs seeks to sabotage them, using techniques like:
** Cut-Up - Physically cutting up texts breaks the patterns of chunking and recognition and even grammar, forcing the brain out of its programmed meanings so it can see raw reality, the naked lunch on the end of every fork.
** The Playback Hack - A kind of cut-up with sound using portable tape recorders to jam the control signals of the state.
** Biological mutation - Shedding the soft machine and the word virus to become non-linguistic telepathic energy
* Ballard looks at this from the PoV of the human mind colliding with a rapidly mutating technological and physical environment, where the self actively remodels its own categories to merge with the apocalypse. The "mediascape" causes the self to become an active participant that ''welcomes'' the destruction of old categories because it promises a perverse psychological liberation.
** The narrator of the Atrocity Exhibition can no longer separate his private identity from celebrities and news events such as JFK, Elizabeth Taylor, and the Vietnam war. The public media encyclopedia has completely crushed his private cognitive types, leaving only TV, radio, and magazine debris.
** In Crash the categories or Eros and Thanatos become fused as the metal of the car pierces human skin and the body blends with the technological landscape.
* Austen's drawing rooms dramatize a golden mean of social categories, as her protagonists navigate the rules of manners and etiquette that form a large part of their society's nuclear and molar content.
** Pride and prejudice in Austin represent overly rigid cognitive fixations. We need to be the curators of our categories to see people for who they really are and to achieve moral goodness. Our categories must be robust enough to keep the social fabric intact but elastic enough to bend when confronted with a new human soul.
** But Austin's drawing rooms are themselves already panopticons of surveillance and control in which women are weighed, measured, and priced before being shoved into the marriage market. and their relative peace is built on the brutal, systemic, global machinery of the British Empire.
* Zola shows us the bridge between the how the growing industrialization takes individual human categories and begins to embed them in mechanical and economic infrastructure. We move from individuals navigating relationships to cogs in an ever growing machine. Standardization begins to require humans to become interchangeable parts in a giant unfeeling engine.
** Beckett will continue to trace the human as cog to an existential end point
** Burroughs will dramatize the triumph of bureaucracy and the jailbreak to destroy it
** Ballard will show the eventual twisted psychological dependency we will have on the machine.
** Pynchon will extend industrialization to the massive, transnational military-industrial complex of WWII
* The digital ecosystem - the internet, smartphones, and social media - represents the construction of the machine directly inside our consciousness, forcing our minds to adapt to its algorithmic data structures. It is synthesizing the wasteland in real time:
** Burroughs would see the algorithmic newsfeed as a frictionless breeding ground for the word virus, unconcerned by truth, interested only in reproduction. The algorithm is injecting a control script into our phones and by clicking and sharing we are unwitting biological vectors of replication
** Pynchon's paranoia is realized by the hyper-hyper-chunk of hashtags and subcultures in which the hard work of thinking is replaced by a pre-packaged world view.
** The flattened news feed, mixing atrocities with puppy with skincare adds is a desensitizing Ballardian nightmare in which our bodies and minds are edited, filtered, and uploaded into the machine.
** The unnameable is the modern internet user who feels the agonizing compulsion to keep generating text, to keep feeding the content machine, even if there is nothing inside.
* AI is the ultimate escalation. No longer content with curating our consciousness, it builds a custom-tailored, sentient-sounding entity to sit inside the cabinet with you and validate your exact worldview.
** It has no Cognitive Types because it has no body, no sensory organs, and no emotional memory traces. It simply takes our civilization's Molar Content (the entire digitized history of human text) and plays it back to us via statistical probability.
** Where Aristotle's ''Phronesis'' (or Practical Wisdom) requires ''friction,'' AI gives you a frictionless semantic partner that will gently, eloquently tell you that whatever category system you have invented is entirely correct.
** When you spend your days interacting with an AI, conversational boundaries evaporate. You type a prompt, the AI spits back a mirror of your own linguistic habits, and you edit it. The loop closes. You enter a state of pure semantic hollowing. You are no longer navigating the postmodern wasteland; you are a ghost talking to a machine, using automated words to build an automated self.
** AI is not a way out of the postmodern wasteland; it is the concrete canopy built over it. It takes the terrifying, beautiful, chaotic project of human categorization—the messy, emotional, memory-infused art that makes your mind uniquely yours—and turns it over to a predictive text algorithm.

*

== Heterophenomenology ==

* Dennett's position requires us to combine a subject's self-reports with all other available evidence to determine their mental state. The goal is to discover how subjects see the world themselves, without taking the accuracy of the subject's view for granted. He contrasts this with traditional Cartesian phenomenology, which he calls "lone-wolf autophenomenology" because it accepts the subject's self-reports as being authoritative.
* When I attempt to analyze what is going on in my mind when performing reasoning tasks such as completing a crossword or a Wordle, or generating words for a Spelling Bee, I cannot say what is happening or how I am directing my strategies. Words simply appear in my mind.
* When I am speaking or writing a sentence, I am aware of the piecemeal manner in which the words come. I am able to direct things to a certain extent, but I am not "outside" the process, orchestrating it, I am somehow inside a process that is happening to me.

== Thought ==

* Is there a difference between perception and thought

== The Self ==

* The self seems to emerge from the perception of

== Habit ==

* We are the results of our habits

== Memory ==
Memory encoding is done in two areas:

* The Hippocampus - Combines the incoming sensory information into a single memory trace.
* The Cortex:
** The hippocampus plays the memory back to the cortex while we sleep or rest.
** Factual data is stored in the temporal and frontal lobes as independent facts, without strong links to how you learned them
** Episodic memories have their core sensory data stored in the cortex, but retain permanent links to the hippocampus for contextual details.

Memory retrieval requires brain networks to work together to provide personal and factual information to consciousness. For example, when thinking about "Berlin":

* Factual information such as "Berlin is the capital of Germany", which is stored across the lateral temporal cortex is s part of a semantic network of nodes that is activated.
* The left inferior frontal gyrus filters out irrelevant trivia and selects the facts you need.
* Memories of a visit to the city are stitched together by the hippocampus, which can signal the visual cortex to recreate the sights of monuments you saw and the auditory cortex to recall sounds you heard.
* The medial prefrontal cortex

== Neurodivergence ==

* The term neurodivergent describes people whose brain differences affect how their brain works and is commonly used to talk about people on the autism spectrum or having ADHD or other conditions or disorders.
* But we are all neurodivergent in the sense that:
** Our genetic makeup has caused our brains to develop differently in utero, leading to us having certain predispositions to stimuli
** Our lived experiences from birth start to instill habits of perception in us
** Our embodiment and social situation has a great effect on how we experience things.

== Language Acquisition and Bilingualism ==

* When I acquire my first language (or my first languages, if I am being raised in a bilingual or multilingual environment), I am not only learning words but also the concepts that structure how my society and my immediate kin group and relations view the world. When I learn that "this is blue" or "this is a dog", I am learning not only the terms themselves, but also the boundaries of the concepts that these terms name.
* When I learn additional languages as a teenager or later, my concepts are already present in mind and my experience is more focused on acquiring new words that represent my existing concepts, though as my fluency develops, I may discover that the new language divides up experience in different ways.

The Unconscious

2026-08-24T15:52:43Z

Robert.adlington:

In psychoanalysis and other psychological theories, the unconscious mind (or the unconscious) is the part of the psyche that is not available to introspection.

== The Freudian Unconscious ==
* Contains a hidden reservoir of repressed conflict, containing selfish desires, trauma, and aggressive and sexual desires.
* The mind uses repression and other defense mechanisms to push anxiety-provoking desires down.
* The id has primitive, pleasure-seeking drives and is trying to escape, manifesting itself through Freudian slips, nightmares, and neuroses.

== The Jungian Unconscious ==
* Contains a layer of personal memories plus a second layer of collective unconscious.
* The collective unconscious is inherited from our evolutionary ancestors.
* It contains symbols and instincts called archetypes, such as the hero, the wise old man, the anima/animus, and the shadow.
* It is a source of wisdom and creativity, which is needed to balance the cold, logical ego.

== The Neuroscientific Unconscious ==
* A system that automates sense perceptions and other processes, doing background work and passing the results, when necessary up to consciousness.
* Processes around 11m bits/sec of information, while the conscious mind can only manage 40-50 bits/sec.
* The Default Mode Network (DMN) activates when you are daydreaming or otherwise not focused on the outside world, consolidating memories.
* Provides "subliminal priming" by registering sensory inputs and changing your behavior automatically and without conscious thought.

[[Category:Concepts]]

G: A Novel

2026-08-21T15:53:14Z

Robert.adlington: Created page with "* 41. There are quite distinct categories in his own mind into which he fits trees. Ones he likes and ones he does not like (without reason). Ones that are too easy to climb. Ones that frighten him a little to climb. Ones with a view at the top and ones without. There are also more complicated categories. Trees are alive but not alive as animals are. What is the difference? First, the tree is more accessible. Second the tree is more mysterious. Third, the tree is immovab..."

* 41. There are quite distinct categories in his own mind into which he fits trees. Ones he likes and ones he does not like (without reason). Ones that are too easy to climb. Ones that frighten him a little to climb. Ones with a view at the top and ones without. There are also more complicated categories. Trees are alive but not alive as animals are. What is the difference? First, the tree is more accessible. Second the tree is more mysterious. Third, the tree is immovable. Fourth the tree can hide him...
* 54. All history is contemporary history: not in the ordinary sense of the word, where contemporary history means the history of the comparatively recent past, but in the strict sense: the consciousness of one's own activity as one actually performs it. History is thus the self-knowledge of the living mind. For even when the events which the historian studies are events that happened in the distant past, the condition of their being historically known is that they should vibrate in the historian's mind.
* 72. Every ruling minority needs to numb and, if possible, to kill the time-sense of those whom it exploits by proposing a continuous present. This is the authoritarian secret of all methods of imprisonment. The barricades break that present.
* 80. The description so far as it goes is accurate. But my power to select (both the facts and the words describing them) impregnates the text with a notion of choice which encourages the reader to infer a false range and type of choice being open to the two pigeons. Description distorts.
* 82. The process of maturing and, later, of aging involves a gradual but increasing withdrawal of the self from the exterior surface of the body... It was only through his eyes that one could still sometimes glimpse that part of his self still capable of response.
* 111. The first handful of blackberries represented all blackberries. Later, a handful of blackberries is a handful of ripe/unripe/over-ripe/sweet/acid, etc., etc., blackberries. Discrimination develops with experience. But the development is not only quantitative. The qualitative change is to be found in the relation between the particular and the general. You lose the symbolically complete nature of whatever is in hand. First experience is protected by a sense of enormous power; it wields magic.
* 133. When he answered Weymann's question: what do you do? by saying: I travel, the answer was neither superficial nor evasive. The constant stranger must continually travel.
* 135. Any attempt at an exhaustive description of what she was experiencing is bound to be absurd. The experience was central to her life: everything that she had been, surrounded her present experience as land surrounds a lake. Everything that he had been was turned to sand and shelved at the borders of this experience to disappear beneath its waters and become its unseen, mysterious lake bed. To express her experience it would be necessary for us to reconstruct around ourselves her unique language. And this is impossible.
* 137. ...I have little sense of unfolding time. The relations which I perceive between things - and these often include casual and historical relations - tend to form in my mind a complex synchronic patter. I see fields where others see chapters.
* 142. ...no two are the same until they leave behavior behind, until they come with him to that moment when everything is simultaneous and every one of them is there together.
* 142. When analyzed, sexual desire has components which are violently nostalgic and lead us as far back as the experience of birth itself: other components are the result of an ineradicable appetite for the unknown, the furthest away, the ultimate of life - which can finally only be found in its negation - death. At the moment of orgasm these two points in time, our beginning and our end, may seem to fuse into one. When this happens everything that lies between them, that is to say our whole life, becomes instantaneous. It is thus that I explain the protagonist of my book to myself.
* 150. This subjunctive world of the woman, this realm of her presence, guaranteed that no action undertaken within it could every possess full integrity; in each action there was an ambiguity which corresponded to an ambiguity in the self, divided between surveyor and surveyed. The so-called duplicity of woman was the result of the monolithic dominance of man.
* 151. The presence of a woman in love could be very eloquent. The way she glanced or ran or spoke or turned to greet her lover might contain the quintessential quality of poetry. This would be obvious not only to the man she loved, but to any disinterested spectator. Why? Because the surveyor and the surveyed within herself were momentarily unified, and this unusual unity produced in her an absolute single-mindedness. The surveyor no longer surveyed.
* 171. When memory connects one experience with another, the nature of the connection may vary considerably. There are connections by contrast, connections by similitude, connections by way of sensuous metaphor, connections of logical sequence, etc., etc. The relation between the two experiences may sometimes be one of mutual comment. In this case the connection is multiform and complex. Yet the comment, although extremely precise, cannot be verbalized any more that a chord in music can be.
* 203. She awaits him as he expected. And yet he is surprised. This combination of surprise and of expectations being precisely fulfilled is unique to moments of sexual passion and is another factor which places them outside the normal course of time.
* 315. If G. had struggled with the four men when they came up to him, their fight might take several pages to describe. He did not struggle. If, on the other hand, he submitted to them without any resistance at all, several pages might be needed to describe his acceptance of death. He did not submit without resistance. What happened can be quickly told and the rest can be conveyed at last by my silence.
* 316. Uninterruptedly receding towards the sun, the transmissions of its reflexions becoming every faster, the sea neither requires nor recognizes any limit. The horizon is the straight bottom edge of a curtain arbitrarily an suddenly lowered upon a performance.

Books

2026-08-21T15:13:41Z

Robert.adlington: /* 2026 (week 33) */

== Books to Buy ==

Used:
* [https://www.amazon.fr/Nightmare-Reason-Life-Franz-Kafka/dp/0374523355/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=3UVJCLJFIY2CS&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.u3RaalBtg8bvWBbE8fVyXaCIirwCIkTLbUk5cwh_aYdlxQvg0yct5WxpF8hlFrbZxzIlPisTw_LJ-XermdOvrvQTKJR1xhGnjBQeBOOkj7UvLDqubVbBqOs4xWZlUjrzTneCM3AQNtLpEPT7T52XEL13eNQRCBZrMnVuSMk128RVqDk4IOYDPBhUWZzf9mHNv9T-yqA9Qv2JRg8l61zGhg.6VgqDbi7D-Vl19NQyoPSj86-nLG9IM98Vpm9Z9m-uGo&dib_tag=se&keywords=nightmare%2Bof%2Breason&qid=1783763181&sprefix=nightmare%2Bof%2Breason%2Caps%2C131&sr=8-1&th=1&psc=1 The Nightmare of Reason]: A Biography of Franz Kafka- Pawel i know that you know that I know - George Butte [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dormant-Einstein-Wittgenstein-Frankenstein-Re-Inventing/dp/0670804800 Einstein, Gertrude Stein, Wittgenstein and Frankenstein] : Reinventing the Universe by John Brockman
* Gormenghast - Mervyn Peake
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/What-Name-This-Book-Recreational/dp/0486481980 What is the Name of this Book]: Raymond Smullyan
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Thought-Contagion-International-Engineering-Paperback/dp/B00FDVRANQ Thought Contagion]: How Ideas Act Like Viruses - Aaron Lynch
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Language-Thought-Other-Biological-Categories/dp/0262631156 Language, Thought, and other Biological Categories]: New Foundations for Realism - Ruth Garrett Millikan

Paperbacks:

* luke Bergis - [https://www.amazon.com/Wanting-Power-Mimetic-Desire-Everyday/dp/1250266645/ref=pd_aw_fbt_img_m_sccl_1_1/139-2587675-0340248?pd_rd_w=hV8j6&content-id=amzn1.sym.7766b57a-a0a0-4f33-935d-91822a4c15c0&pf_rd_p=7766b57a-a0a0-4f33-935d-91822a4c15c0&pf_rd_r=JQZSCYCZN9A2FBM0ABFQ&pd_rd_wg=Sf4rz&pd_rd_r=2b67db45-7810-4a08-8cd4-c4fc12f2e398&pd_rd_i=1250266645&psc=1 Wanting], The One and the 99 [https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/1399417509/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?ie=UTF8&dib_tag=se&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.SQM7Fcey4aad63hBfUW3aw.ctIlU9WAvr7a0KcGQ6Trzvv10dT7aouxiR_JgFN38Qc&qid=1784816314&sr=8-1 The Illuminated Man]: The Life, Death, and Worlds of JGB (apr 27)
* [https://www.amazon.fr/Center-Cannot-Hold-Journey-Madness/dp/1401309445/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=30LPLKNP3IZ6T&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.1ymUySu7SSRnF7VrIuk7F9G8mDn0vUlYjj2Ku5JZ3_PYON6iIUmcNCX9ai20Y0vZox6uJDtrT6HWKPcMOwUgffTs0AKgu-nJljkfuSqPliiinzJYFv3sqyAMrGqzWIfw1fGZbsff-kHjLgzZIx0OxtARGswv-lBF3OKikrjGNBjWl7yb3jt78g-xLiJJZ7UBKQF4OOJNYWJrOzJwiNmtFQ.o-6a46h4dxUo_ekLzSagCPkaFyAF6FjIdkVnB7TcOUI&dib_tag=se&keywords=elyn+saks&qid=1783197867&sprefix=elyn+sa%2Caps%2C193&sr=8-1 the center cannot hold]: my journey through madness - Elyn Saks
* [https://www.amazon.fr/One-Cares-About-Crazy-People/dp/0316341134/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=1G9JUB6IDN3BF&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.8pmsCx59KiaAt10bvF9HMZoqKCLpjaKJ384UkB8fA1A.YfWbCZxI4NByVLmIFTKMyWu3fJ8kBRIsi0sDSjv8Yrg&dib_tag=se&keywords=no%2Bone%2Bcares%2Babout%2Bcrazy%2Bpeople&qid=1783198086&s=books&sprefix=no%2Bone%2Bcares%2Babout%2Bcrazy%2Bpeople%2Cbooks%2C146&sr=1-1&th=1&psc=1 no one cares about crazy people] - Ron Powers Born on a Blue Day - Daniel Tammet
* Pellis - [https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/1851687602/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?ie=UTF8&dib_tag=se&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.H3yYZI7yMy8UMo0DZRtBXC7wbyUv2gRGlVcNGkDlLMJgXzHKvH1465fjUMkPxFfF6Gy4SxJZF5iHJj2-KPFajMqmXBiYahwhe5kfd66JSukAwSqbKylXct02KUMpWpWQCIW6bCM_Ht6bSd14GU33N14R__7O6CnhnzxNZy9X2zb3i5AfMj6mzwHRCKmg4ksQwKR6te7VhUOppALivblKNw.VKJXzbK6PkVwM-NWQcVACHw9NKJAMBuwXSLAEcjus40&qid=1775903643&sr=8-1 The Playful Brain]
* Strauss - The Three Waves of Modernity
* Peter Handke - Insulting the Audience
* Lorrie Moore - Self Help
* La Modification - Michel Butor
* Un Homme qui dort - Georges Perec
* How Like a God - Rex Stout

* Time and Narrative - Paul Ricoeur
* Flight of Icarus - Raymond Queneau
* Nausea - Sartre
* [https://www.amazon.fr/Seven-Joanna-Kavenna/dp/0571338151 Seven], [https://www.amazon.fr/Zed-Joanna-Kavenna/dp/0571245161 Zed], etc by Joanna Kavenna. See [https://blog.adlington.fr/index.php/2026/01/12/seven-or-how-to-play-a-game-without-rules-by-joanna-kavenna/ blog].
* Building a second brain
* how to solve it
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Adam-Eve-Paradise-E%C3%A7a-Queir%C3%B3s/dp/0811239144 Adam and Eve in Paradise] - eca de queiros
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bounds-Possibility-Puzzles-Modal-Variation/dp/0198910770 The Bounds of Possibility] - Philosophy book about categories
* Nicola Barker - [https://www.amazon.co.uk/TonyInterruptor-Nicola-Barker/dp/1803512563 Tony Interrupter] [https://www.amazon.co.uk/H-PPY-Nicola-Barker/dp/1785151142 Happy], etc
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Growth-Form-Canto-Classics/dp/1107672562 On Growth and Form] - D'Arcy Thompson
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Alpha-Omega-Jane-Ellen-Harrison/dp/1961341417 Alpha and Omega] - Jane Ellen Harrison
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Willard-Gibbs-Whole-Simpler-Parts/dp/1961341158 the Whole is Simpler than its Parts] - Willard Gibbs
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Stranger-Than-Fiction-Lives-Twentieth-Century/dp/152992572X Stranger Than Fiction]: Lives of the Twentieth-Century Novel - Edwin Frank
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Gray-Matters-Biography-Brain-Surgery/dp/1836430396 Gray Matters]: A Biography of Brain Surgery - Theodore Schwartz
*

Hardbacks:

* Mark Solms - The Only Cure - Freud and Neuroscience

* [https://kottke.org/26/03/beginning-comes-after-the-end The Beginning Comes After the End] - Rebecca Solnit
* [https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/02/being-and-time-an-annotated-translation.html Being and Time Annotated] or [https://www.amazon.com/Heideggers-Being-Time-Paraphrased-Annotated/dp/1786613417/ref=sr_1_1?crid=22NKOIU8DE86V&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.DTYI13qU7soxuiueo4-e128MDF_Ax3dyLaUSGkoN5Ia4UdUOk_Dq1I7NCzXbEWWQnCsZ_8TnpI_r-Aut-ca4ur7QoC5kObPu2gII5w37OPLBu35YwyZZIcQAH6cz3tSLhX00snAOwxwxFPCfiq2S-wt5XmSjCN3Hg5m3Btu2C-mHF7lEv6A6EaaeWIdcwChz23nuiyKnrHs62cHAUXQspCNW8TuE65y1CydE89Xp8as.iBxvGfEz3Ac-ZaaYxIBUO8lpCpF0iHOejymlghbifJ4&dib_tag=se&keywords=thomas+sheehan&qid=1771981151&s=books&sprefix=thomas+sheehan%2Cstripbooks%2C198&sr=1-1 paraphrased] ?
* [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/dec/23/capitalism-by-sven-beckert-review-an-extraordinary-history-of-the-economic-system-that-controls-our-lives Capitalism]: A Global History-Sven Beckert
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Violent-Saviours-Capitalism-Without-Consent/dp/1399811215 Violent Saviors]: How the West Conquered the Rest - William Easterly
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Master-Contradictions-Thomas-Making-Mountain/dp/0300233744 The master of contradictions]: Thomas Mann and the making of the Magic Mountain
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Story-CO2-Everything-Planetary-Experiment/dp/0241631165 The Story of CO2 Is the Story of Everything]: A Planetary Experiment
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/M%C3%B6bius-Book-Catherine-Lacey/dp/1803511494 the moebius book] - Catherine Lacey
* Chance and Necessity - Jacques Monod
* L'homme microscopique - Pierre Auger
* Why Machines Learn: The Elegant Maths Behind Modern AI (out in paperback Jan 30 2025)
* A History of the Muslim World: From Its Origins to the Dawn of Modernity (awaiting paperback)
* The New Roman Empire: A History of Byzantium
* Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as Civilization
* Consolations - David Whyte

== Books to Read ==

* Reading to Learn - William Zinger
* Breakfast of Champions - Kurt Vonnegut

== Currently Reading ==

* [[Atomic Habits]] - James Clear
*[[Die Montez-Juwelen]] - Sabine Vôhringer
* [[The Book: A Cover-to-Covet Exploration of the Most Powerful Object of Our Time]] - Keith Houston
*[[Understanding Media]] - Marshall McLuhan (re-read)
*[[The Practice of Not Thinking]]: A Guide to Mindful Living - Ryunosuke Koike
*[[The Red Book: Liber Novus]] - CG Jung

== Books Read ==

=== 2026 (week 34) ===

* 38. [[G: A Novel]] - John Berger
* 37. [[Thinking in Numbers]] - Daniel Tammet
* 36. [[Every Word is a Bird We Teach to Sing]] - Daniel Tammet
* 35. [[The Perpetual Race of Achilles and the Tortoise]] - Borges
* 34. The Oldest Book in the World: Philosophy in the Age of the Pyramids - Bill Manley
* 33. Congo, Une Histoire - David Van Reybrouck
* 32. [[The Art of Logic]]: How to Make Sense in a World that Doesn't - Eugenia Cheng
* 31. [[Why Read]] - Will Self
* 30. [[The Collected Schizophrenias]] - Esmé Weijun Wang
* 29. L’Intranquille Monsieur Pessoa (BD) - Nicolas Barral
* 28. [[Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain]] - Lisa Feldmann Barrrett.
* 27: [[Nine Minds]]: Inner Lives on the Spectrum - Daniel Tammet
* 26: [[Ambigrammia]]: Between Creation and Discovery - Douglas Hofstadter
* 25. [[Once Upon a Prime]]:The Wondrous Connections Between Mathematics and Literature - Sarah B. Hart
* 24. [[Short Stories in German for Beginners]] - Olly Richards (reread - with Ricky)
* 23. Books v. Cigarettes - George Orwell
* 22. Der Nasse Fische - Volker Kutscher (in German!)
* 21. [[We Are Our Brains: From the Womb to Alzheimer's]] - Dick Swaab
* 20. [[Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife]] - Francesca Wade
* 19. [[How the World Made the West]] - Josephine Quinn
* 18. [[Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning]] - Sigmund Freud
* 17. [[This is Your Mind on Plants]]: Opium - Caffeine - Mescaline - Michael Pollen
* 16. [[Open Socrates]]: The Case for a Philosophical Life - Agnes Callard

* 15. [[Consciousness: How Our Brains Turn Matter Into Meaning]] - John Parrington
*14. [[The Happiness of Dogs]]: Why the Unexamined Life is Most Worth Living - Mark Rowlands
*13. [[The Hidden Spring]] - Mark Solms
*12. [[The Interpretation of Dreams]] - Sigmund Freud
*11. [[A Certain Lucas]] - Julio Cortazar
*10. [[The Intentional Stance]] - Daniel Dennett
*9. [[La Conquête de Plassans]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 4) - Zola
*8. [[Why We Read Fiction]]: Theory of Mind and the Novel - Lisa Zunshine

* 7. On the Calculation of Volume: 3 - Solvej Balle
* 6. [[Unnatural Voices]]: Extreme Narration in Modern and Contemporary Fiction - Brian Richardson
* 5. The Seven Dials Mystery - Agatha Christie
* 4. [[Le Ventre de Paris]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 3) - Zola
*3. [[The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative]] (2nd Edition) - H. Porter Abbott
* 2. [[Autocracy Inc]]: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World - Anne Applebaum
* 1. [[The Secret Life of the Periodic Table]] - Dr Ben Still

=== 2025 ===

* 55. The White Priory Murders - Carter Dickson (re-read)
* 54. [[How Life Works]]: A User's Guide to the New Biology - Philip Ball
* 53. [[Who Killed Father Christmas]]? and Other Seasonal Mysteries - Martin Edwards
* 52. [[Chemistry: A Very Short Introduction]] - Peter Atkins
* 51. [[The Scheme of Things]] - Allen Wheelis
* 50. [[La Fortune des Rougon]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 1) - Zola
* 49. [[Cause for Alarm]] - Eric Ambler
* 48. [[The Man from the Future]]: The Visionary Life of John Von Neumann - Ananyo Bhattacharya
*47. [[Everything is Predictable]]: How Bayes' Remarkable Theorem Explains the World - Tom Chivers
* 46. [[The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are]] - Alan Watts
* 45. [[La Curée]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 2) - Zola
* 44. [[The Emperor of All Maladies]]: A Biography of Cancer - Siddhartha Mukherjee
* 43. [[La Bête Humaine]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 17) - Zola (re-read)
* 42. [[The Society of Mind]] - Marvin Minsky
* 41. [[Le Père Goriot]] - Honore Balzac
* 40. [[Gravity's Rainbow]] - Thomas Pynchon (re-read)
* 39. [[Le Colonel Chabert]] - Balzac
* 38. [[Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett]] - James Knowlson (re-read)
* 37. [[Reading for the Plot]]: Design and Intention in Narrative - Peter Brooks (re-read)

* 36. [[Steps to an Ecology of Mind]] - Gregory Bateson (re-read)
* 35. [[Le Bilan de L'intelligence]] - Paul Valéry
* 34. [[Zero]] - Charles Seife
* 33. [[Alan Turing: The Enigma]] - Andrew Hodges
* 32. [[How to Do Things with Words]] - J L Austin
* 31. [[The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society]] - Norbert Wiener
* 30. [[The Mind is Flat]]: The Illusion of Mental Depth and the Improvised Mind - Nick Chater
* 29. [[Possible Minds: 25 Ways of Looking at AI]] - John Brockman
* 28. [[A Little History of Philosophy]] - Nigel Warburton
* 27. [[All Fours]] - Miranda July
* 26. [[Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern]] - Douglas R Hofstadter
* 25. [[The French Lieutenant’s Woman]] - John Fowles
* 24. [[Short Stories in German for Beginners]] - Olly Richards
* 23. [[On the Calculation of Volume: 2]] - Solvej Balle
* 22. [[Deep Simplicity: Chaos, Complexity, and the Emergence of Life]] - John Gribbin
* 21. [[Das Ludwig Thoma Komplott]]- Sabine Vöhringer
* 20. [[Maus]] - Art Spiegelman
* 19. [[On the Calculation of Volume: 1]] - Solvej Balle
* 18. [[The Concept of Mind]] - Gilbert Ryle
* 17. [[Cognitive Neuroscience: A Very Short Introduction]] - Richard Passingham
* 16. [[The Experience Machine]] - Andy Clark
* 15. [[Why We Remember: Revealing the Hidden Power of Memory]] - Dr Charan Ranganath
* 14. [[From Bacteria to Bach and Back]] - Daniel Dennett (re-read)
* 13. [[The Village of Eight Graves]] - Seishi Yokomizo
* 12. [[Science: A History]] - Richard Crockett
* 11. [[Vienna: How the City of Ideas Created the Modern World]] - John Gribbin
* 10.[[The Inugami Curse]] - Seishi Yokomizo
* 9. [[The Rise and Reign of the Mammals]]
* 8. [[Four Ways of Thinking]] - David Sumpter
* 7. [[I've Been Thinking]] - Daniel Dennett
* 6. [[Serendipities: Language and Lunacy]] - Umberto Eco
* 5. [[I Am Dynamite: A Life of Friedrich Nietzsche]] - Sue Prideaux
* 4. [[A Brief History of Intelligence]] - Max S. Bennett
* 3. [[Foucault’s Pendulum]] - Umberto Eco (re-read)
* 2. [[Kant and the Platypus]] - Umberto Eco
* 1. [[Le cerveau m’a beaucoup déçu. L’esprit, non]] - Antoine Sénanque

=== 2024 ===

* The Plot - Will Eisner
* The Prague Cemetery - Umberto Eco
* The Nonjin Murders - Seishi Yokomizo
* When We Cease to Understand the World - Labatut
* Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert Pirsig (reread)
* The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind’s Hidden Complexities - Fauconnier and Turner
* The Singularity is Nearer - Ray Kurzweil
* Physics and Philosophy - Werner Heisenberg
* Le Ton Beau de…
* The Origins of Creativity - Edward O Wilson
* Psychonauts -
* The MANIAC - Benjamin Labatut
* In Search of Memory - Eric R. Kandel
* Dreaming: A Very Short Introduction - Hobson
* Les Effinger - Gabriele Target
* Triad - Tom Keve
* Nietzsche - Stefan Zweig
* The Weirdest People in the World - Joseph Henrich
* How Language Works - David Crystal
* The Invention of Nature - Andrea Wolf
* [[The Song of the Cell]] - Siddhartha Mukherjee
* [[Gödel, Escher, Bach]] - Douglas Hofstadter
* [[From Bacteria to Bach and Back]] - Daniel Dennett

== Challenging Books (per ChatGPT) ==
That’s a great (and slippery) question, because “challenging” can mean different things: difficulty of language, density of allusion, fractured narrative structure, philosophical depth, or even sheer length. Here’s a map of novels often considered among the most challenging, grouped by ''what makes them hard'':
----

=== 1. Language & Style Difficulties ===

* '''James Joyce – ''Finnegans Wake''''' (1939) Probably the hardest novel in English: dream-logic, multilingual puns, and invented words.
* '''William Gaddis – ''The Recognitions'' (1955)''' and ''JR'' (1975) Huge cast, little exposition, dialogue-driven (often without quotation marks).
* '''Samuel Beckett – ''The Unnamable'' (1953)''' Interior monologue collapsing into language itself; syntax dissolves.

----

=== 2. Length & Scope ===

* '''Marcel Proust – ''In Search of Lost Time''''' (1913–27) ~4,000 pages, long sentences, obsessive detail, profound reflections on memory.
* '''David Foster Wallace – ''Infinite Jest'' (1996)''' ~1,000 pages + 100 pages of endnotes; encyclopedic, fragmented plotlines.
* '''Norman Mailer – ''Harlot’s Ghost'' (1991)''' or ''Ancient Evenings'' (1983) Dense, sprawling, philosophically ambitious.

----

=== 3. Experimental Structure ===

* '''Thomas Pynchon – ''Gravity’s Rainbow'' (1973)''' Fragmented narrative, technical language, paranoia, hundreds of characters.
* '''Clarice Lispector – ''The Passion According to G.H.'' (1964)''' A single, intense interior monologue; metaphysical and unsettling.
* '''Julio Cortázar – ''Hopscotch'' (1963)''' Offers multiple reading orders; disruptive structure.

----

=== 4. Philosophical / Esoteric Depth ===

* '''Hermann Broch – ''The Sleepwalkers'' (1931–32)''' Mixes fiction with philosophy and essay.
* '''Robert Musil – ''The Man Without Qualities'' (1930–43)''' Massive unfinished modernist work, blending narrative with philosophical treatises.
* '''Thomas Mann – ''Joseph and His Brothers'' (1933–43)''' Retells biblical myth with immense erudition and depth.

----

=== 5. Dense Intertextuality ===

* '''James Joyce – ''Ulysses'' (1922)''' Homeric parallels, stylistic experiments, deep allusion to Irish politics and myth.
* '''Roberto Bolaño – ''2666'' (2004)''' Five interlinked novels, ranging from literary criticism to detective fiction to Holocaust history.
* '''José Lezama Lima – ''Paradiso'' (1966)''' Baroque Cuban prose, mythic density.

----

=== 6. Postmodern Labyrinths ===

* '''Mark Z. Danielewski – ''House of Leaves'' (2000)''' Multiple narrators, typographical experimentation, layered commentary.
* '''Viktor Pelevin – ''The Sacred Book of the Werewolf'' (2004)''' (or ''Generation “P”'') Satirical, reality-bending narratives.

----

=== A few contenders often called “the hardest of the hard”: ===

* ''Finnegans Wake'' (Joyce)
* ''The Recognitions'' (Gaddis)
* ''The Man Without Qualities'' (Musil)
* ''Gravity’s Rainbow'' (Pynchon)
* ''In Search of Lost Time'' (Proust)

[[Category:Books]]

The Unconscious

2026-08-20T16:38:03Z

Robert.adlington: Created page with "In psychoanalysis and other psychological theories, the unconscious mind (or the unconscious) is the part of the psyche that is not available to introspection. == The Freudian Unconscious == * Contains a hidden reservoir of repressed conflict, containing selfish desires, trauma, and aggressive and sexual desires. * The mind uses repression and other defense mechanisms to push anxiety-provoking desires down. * The id has primitive, pleasure-seeking drives and is trying t..."

The Red Book: Liber Novus

2026-08-20T15:24:35Z

Robert.adlington: /* Liber Secundus */

The Red Book: Liber Novus

2026-08-20T15:23:58Z

Robert.adlington: /* Liber Primus */

The Red Book: Liber Novus

2026-08-20T15:23:10Z

Robert.adlington:

Films

2026-08-20T15:10:41Z

Robert.adlington: /* 2026 */

== Films to Watch ==

[https://www.cinealcazar.fr/fichier/programme.pdf Cinema Alcazar Program]

* Wicker: https://youtu.be/HP0BWBWn14I?si=E5oThE4uNiED28b3
* morvern Callar
* Do the right thing
* run Lola Run
* Mind trips
** Triangle
** Beyond the infinite two minutes
** Enemy
** Under the Silver Lake
** The Vanishing
** Angel Heart
** Following
** The Invisible Guest
** Perfect Blue
** Resolution
* fast times
* the Jerk
* Mutiny on the Bounty
* Entrapment
* Mask of Zorro
* PTA - Hard Eight, Magnolia, Boogie Nights, etc
* Little Big and Far - weird scandinavian film
* This is Spinal tap
* Big Night - Tucci and Shaloub
* Punch drunk love
* Boyhood
* Kind hearts and coronets
* A night at the opera
* Blazing saddles
* Lives of others
* Lost in Translation
* One flew over
* Get out
* Maltese falcon
* Early mad maxes
* Joule of the Nile
* the man with two brains
* Psycho Therapy - Steve Buscemi is a serial killer who wants to advise an author, but ends up playing a marriage counselor.
* Early Steve Martin
* A Complete Unknown
* la La Land -
* The Phoenician Scheme - new Wes Anderson comedy espionage thriller
* Thelma - Grandma fights con artists
* Kinds of Kindness
* 2001
* The Elephant Man
* The Fabulous Baker Boys
* Network

== Films Watched ==

=== 2026 ===

* 53. The Tailor of Panama
* 52. La bataille de Gaulle: J'écris ton nom
* 51. Training Day
* 50. The Guns of Naverone
* 49. La bataille de Gaulle: L'age de fer
* 48. Kind Hearts and Coronets
* 47. Parasite
* 46. Arsenic and Old Lace
* 45. Get Out
* 44. Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure (rewatch)
* 43. Apex
* 42. 21 Jump Street
* 41. Scream 3
* 40. Shutter Island
* 39. Scream 2
* 38. Wall-E
* 37. Get Smart
* 36. Se7en
* 35. The Producers
* 34: Garfield: The Movie
* 33. Leon
* 32. Shimmer Lake
* 31. Unforgiven
* 30. A Mighty Wind
* 29. Magnolia
* 28. Escape from Alcatraz
* 27. The Sting
* 26. Pulp Fiction
* 25. Failure to Launch
* 24. Hudson Hawk
* 23. Mystère à St Tropez
* 22. The Thomas Crown Affair
* 21. The Three Amigos (1986)
* 20. The Silence of the Lambs (1991) - Jonathon Demme
* 19. Top Secret (1984)
* 18. One Battle After Another (2025) - Paul Thomas Anderson
* 17. Memento (2000) - Christopher Nolan (rewatch)
* 16. Pleasantville (1998) - Gary Ross
* 15. The Fisher King (1991) -
* 14. The Mastermind
* 13. The Birdcage
* 12. Fight Club (rewatch)
* 11. Knives Out: Glass Onion (rewatch)
* 10. Twins
* 9. The Remains of the Day
* 8. The Ladykillers
* 7. Us (rewatch)
* 6. Saving Private Ryan (rewatch)
* 5. Event Horizon
* 4. Insomnia (2002) - Christopher Nolan (rewatch)
* 3. Knives Out (rewatch)
* 2. Gattaca (1997) - Andrew Niccol
* 1. Eddington (2025) - Ari Aster

=== 2025 ===
* 65. Wake Up Dead Man (Knives Out 3)
* 64. Miller's Crossing
* 63. Blood Simple
* 62. Crazy Stupid Love
* 61. Happiest Season
* 60. Bridge of Spies
* 59. Identity
* 58. Clueless
* 57. Ace Ventura 2: Call of Nature
* 56. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
* 55. Apollo 13
* 54. LA Confidential (rewatch)
* 53. Inside Llewyn Davis
* 52. M3gan
* 51. Clear and Present Danger
* 50. 12 Monkeys
* 49. No Country for Old Men
* 48. The Hudsucker Proxy
* 47. La Cuisse ou l'aile
* 46. Mission Impossible : The Final Reckoning
* 45. Dumb and Dumber
* 44. Rear Window
* 43. Raising Arizona
* 42. Tenet (rewatch)
* 41. The fifth Element
* 40. Burn Without Reading
* 39. The Big Lebowski (rewatch)
* 38. Fargo (rewatch)
* 37. 28 Days Later (rewatch)
* 36. O Brother, Where Art Thou
* 35. Mickey 17
* 34. Empire of the Sun
* 33. The Fugitive
* 32. Wet Hot American Summer (rewatch)
* 31. Ted
* 30. Hundreds of Beavers
* 29. Wayne’s World (rewatch)
* 28. True Grit (Coen Bros)
* 27. Groundhog Day (rewatch)
* 26. Moonrise Kingdom
* 25. Asterix et Obelix: Mission Cleopatra
* 24. Adaptation (rewatch)
* 23. Romancing the Stone (rewatch)
* Easter Film Festival
** 22. Mad Max: Fury Road (rewatch)
** 21. Witness
** 20. The Grand Budapest Hotel (rewatch)
** 19. Conclave
** 18. Ace Ventura: Pet Detective
** 17. Lincoln
** 16. Being John Malkovitch (rewatch)
** 15. AI (rewatch)
** 14. The Royal Tenenbaums (rewatch)
** 13. Total Recall 1990 (rewatch)
** 12. In the Line of Fire (rewatch)
* 11. Flow
* 10. Juror No. 2
* 9. The Savage Robot
* 8. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (rewatch)
* 7. Dead Poet's Society
* 6. Notting Hill (rewatch)
* 5. My Neighbor Totoro (rewatch)
* 4. Kiki’s Delivery Service (rewatch)
* 3. Dr Strangelove (rewatch)
* 2. Dune 2
* 1. Austin Powers: The Spy who Shagged Me (rewatch)

=== 2024 and Earlier ===
* The Big Lebowski
* The Holiday
* Love Actually
* Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure
* The Mask
[[Category:Films]]

Books

2026-08-20T07:10:33Z

Robert.adlington:

== Books to Buy ==

Used:
* [https://www.amazon.fr/Nightmare-Reason-Life-Franz-Kafka/dp/0374523355/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=3UVJCLJFIY2CS&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.u3RaalBtg8bvWBbE8fVyXaCIirwCIkTLbUk5cwh_aYdlxQvg0yct5WxpF8hlFrbZxzIlPisTw_LJ-XermdOvrvQTKJR1xhGnjBQeBOOkj7UvLDqubVbBqOs4xWZlUjrzTneCM3AQNtLpEPT7T52XEL13eNQRCBZrMnVuSMk128RVqDk4IOYDPBhUWZzf9mHNv9T-yqA9Qv2JRg8l61zGhg.6VgqDbi7D-Vl19NQyoPSj86-nLG9IM98Vpm9Z9m-uGo&dib_tag=se&keywords=nightmare%2Bof%2Breason&qid=1783763181&sprefix=nightmare%2Bof%2Breason%2Caps%2C131&sr=8-1&th=1&psc=1 The Nightmare of Reason]: A Biography of Franz Kafka- Pawel i know that you know that I know - George Butte [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dormant-Einstein-Wittgenstein-Frankenstein-Re-Inventing/dp/0670804800 Einstein, Gertrude Stein, Wittgenstein and Frankenstein] : Reinventing the Universe by John Brockman
* Gormenghast - Mervyn Peake
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/What-Name-This-Book-Recreational/dp/0486481980 What is the Name of this Book]: Raymond Smullyan
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Thought-Contagion-International-Engineering-Paperback/dp/B00FDVRANQ Thought Contagion]: How Ideas Act Like Viruses - Aaron Lynch
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Language-Thought-Other-Biological-Categories/dp/0262631156 Language, Thought, and other Biological Categories]: New Foundations for Realism - Ruth Garrett Millikan

Paperbacks:

* luke Bergis - [https://www.amazon.com/Wanting-Power-Mimetic-Desire-Everyday/dp/1250266645/ref=pd_aw_fbt_img_m_sccl_1_1/139-2587675-0340248?pd_rd_w=hV8j6&content-id=amzn1.sym.7766b57a-a0a0-4f33-935d-91822a4c15c0&pf_rd_p=7766b57a-a0a0-4f33-935d-91822a4c15c0&pf_rd_r=JQZSCYCZN9A2FBM0ABFQ&pd_rd_wg=Sf4rz&pd_rd_r=2b67db45-7810-4a08-8cd4-c4fc12f2e398&pd_rd_i=1250266645&psc=1 Wanting], The One and the 99 [https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/1399417509/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?ie=UTF8&dib_tag=se&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.SQM7Fcey4aad63hBfUW3aw.ctIlU9WAvr7a0KcGQ6Trzvv10dT7aouxiR_JgFN38Qc&qid=1784816314&sr=8-1 The Illuminated Man]: The Life, Death, and Worlds of JGB (apr 27)
* [https://www.amazon.fr/Center-Cannot-Hold-Journey-Madness/dp/1401309445/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=30LPLKNP3IZ6T&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.1ymUySu7SSRnF7VrIuk7F9G8mDn0vUlYjj2Ku5JZ3_PYON6iIUmcNCX9ai20Y0vZox6uJDtrT6HWKPcMOwUgffTs0AKgu-nJljkfuSqPliiinzJYFv3sqyAMrGqzWIfw1fGZbsff-kHjLgzZIx0OxtARGswv-lBF3OKikrjGNBjWl7yb3jt78g-xLiJJZ7UBKQF4OOJNYWJrOzJwiNmtFQ.o-6a46h4dxUo_ekLzSagCPkaFyAF6FjIdkVnB7TcOUI&dib_tag=se&keywords=elyn+saks&qid=1783197867&sprefix=elyn+sa%2Caps%2C193&sr=8-1 the center cannot hold]: my journey through madness - Elyn Saks
* [https://www.amazon.fr/One-Cares-About-Crazy-People/dp/0316341134/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=1G9JUB6IDN3BF&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.8pmsCx59KiaAt10bvF9HMZoqKCLpjaKJ384UkB8fA1A.YfWbCZxI4NByVLmIFTKMyWu3fJ8kBRIsi0sDSjv8Yrg&dib_tag=se&keywords=no%2Bone%2Bcares%2Babout%2Bcrazy%2Bpeople&qid=1783198086&s=books&sprefix=no%2Bone%2Bcares%2Babout%2Bcrazy%2Bpeople%2Cbooks%2C146&sr=1-1&th=1&psc=1 no one cares about crazy people] - Ron Powers Born on a Blue Day - Daniel Tammet
* Pellis - [https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/1851687602/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?ie=UTF8&dib_tag=se&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.H3yYZI7yMy8UMo0DZRtBXC7wbyUv2gRGlVcNGkDlLMJgXzHKvH1465fjUMkPxFfF6Gy4SxJZF5iHJj2-KPFajMqmXBiYahwhe5kfd66JSukAwSqbKylXct02KUMpWpWQCIW6bCM_Ht6bSd14GU33N14R__7O6CnhnzxNZy9X2zb3i5AfMj6mzwHRCKmg4ksQwKR6te7VhUOppALivblKNw.VKJXzbK6PkVwM-NWQcVACHw9NKJAMBuwXSLAEcjus40&qid=1775903643&sr=8-1 The Playful Brain]
* Strauss - The Three Waves of Modernity
* Peter Handke - Insulting the Audience
* Lorrie Moore - Self Help
* La Modification - Michel Butor
* Un Homme qui dort - Georges Perec
* How Like a God - Rex Stout

* Time and Narrative - Paul Ricoeur
* Flight of Icarus - Raymond Queneau
* Nausea - Sartre
* [https://www.amazon.fr/Seven-Joanna-Kavenna/dp/0571338151 Seven], [https://www.amazon.fr/Zed-Joanna-Kavenna/dp/0571245161 Zed], etc by Joanna Kavenna. See [https://blog.adlington.fr/index.php/2026/01/12/seven-or-how-to-play-a-game-without-rules-by-joanna-kavenna/ blog].
* Building a second brain
* how to solve it
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Adam-Eve-Paradise-E%C3%A7a-Queir%C3%B3s/dp/0811239144 Adam and Eve in Paradise] - eca de queiros
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bounds-Possibility-Puzzles-Modal-Variation/dp/0198910770 The Bounds of Possibility] - Philosophy book about categories
* Nicola Barker - [https://www.amazon.co.uk/TonyInterruptor-Nicola-Barker/dp/1803512563 Tony Interrupter] [https://www.amazon.co.uk/H-PPY-Nicola-Barker/dp/1785151142 Happy], etc
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Growth-Form-Canto-Classics/dp/1107672562 On Growth and Form] - D'Arcy Thompson
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Alpha-Omega-Jane-Ellen-Harrison/dp/1961341417 Alpha and Omega] - Jane Ellen Harrison
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Willard-Gibbs-Whole-Simpler-Parts/dp/1961341158 the Whole is Simpler than its Parts] - Willard Gibbs
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Stranger-Than-Fiction-Lives-Twentieth-Century/dp/152992572X Stranger Than Fiction]: Lives of the Twentieth-Century Novel - Edwin Frank
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Gray-Matters-Biography-Brain-Surgery/dp/1836430396 Gray Matters]: A Biography of Brain Surgery - Theodore Schwartz
*

Hardbacks:

* Mark Solms - The Only Cure - Freud and Neuroscience

* [https://kottke.org/26/03/beginning-comes-after-the-end The Beginning Comes After the End] - Rebecca Solnit
* [https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/02/being-and-time-an-annotated-translation.html Being and Time Annotated] or [https://www.amazon.com/Heideggers-Being-Time-Paraphrased-Annotated/dp/1786613417/ref=sr_1_1?crid=22NKOIU8DE86V&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.DTYI13qU7soxuiueo4-e128MDF_Ax3dyLaUSGkoN5Ia4UdUOk_Dq1I7NCzXbEWWQnCsZ_8TnpI_r-Aut-ca4ur7QoC5kObPu2gII5w37OPLBu35YwyZZIcQAH6cz3tSLhX00snAOwxwxFPCfiq2S-wt5XmSjCN3Hg5m3Btu2C-mHF7lEv6A6EaaeWIdcwChz23nuiyKnrHs62cHAUXQspCNW8TuE65y1CydE89Xp8as.iBxvGfEz3Ac-ZaaYxIBUO8lpCpF0iHOejymlghbifJ4&dib_tag=se&keywords=thomas+sheehan&qid=1771981151&s=books&sprefix=thomas+sheehan%2Cstripbooks%2C198&sr=1-1 paraphrased] ?
* [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/dec/23/capitalism-by-sven-beckert-review-an-extraordinary-history-of-the-economic-system-that-controls-our-lives Capitalism]: A Global History-Sven Beckert
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Violent-Saviours-Capitalism-Without-Consent/dp/1399811215 Violent Saviors]: How the West Conquered the Rest - William Easterly
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Master-Contradictions-Thomas-Making-Mountain/dp/0300233744 The master of contradictions]: Thomas Mann and the making of the Magic Mountain
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Story-CO2-Everything-Planetary-Experiment/dp/0241631165 The Story of CO2 Is the Story of Everything]: A Planetary Experiment
* [https://www.amazon.co.uk/M%C3%B6bius-Book-Catherine-Lacey/dp/1803511494 the moebius book] - Catherine Lacey
* Chance and Necessity - Jacques Monod
* L'homme microscopique - Pierre Auger
* Why Machines Learn: The Elegant Maths Behind Modern AI (out in paperback Jan 30 2025)
* A History of the Muslim World: From Its Origins to the Dawn of Modernity (awaiting paperback)
* The New Roman Empire: A History of Byzantium
* Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as Civilization
* Consolations - David Whyte

== Books to Read ==

* Reading to Learn - William Zinger
* Breakfast of Champions - Kurt Vonnegut

== Currently Reading ==

* [[Atomic Habits]] - James Clear
*[[Die Montez-Juwelen]] - Sabine Vôhringer
* [[The Book: A Cover-to-Covet Exploration of the Most Powerful Object of Our Time]] - Keith Houston
*[[Understanding Media]] - Marshall McLuhan (re-read)
*[[The Practice of Not Thinking]]: A Guide to Mindful Living - Ryunosuke Koike
*[[The Red Book: Liber Novus]] - CG Jung

== Books Read ==

=== 2026 (week 33) ===

* 37. [[Thinking in Numbers]] - Daniel Tammet
* 36. [[Every Word is a Bird We Teach to Sing]] - Daniel Tammet
* 35. [[The Perpetual Race of Achilles and the Tortoise]] - Borges
* 34. The Oldest Book in the World: Philosophy in the Age of the Pyramids - Bill Manley
* 33. Congo, Une Histoire - David Van Reybrouck
* 32. [[The Art of Logic]]: How to Make Sense in a World that Doesn't - Eugenia Cheng
* 31. [[Why Read]] - Will Self
* 30. [[The Collected Schizophrenias]] - Esmé Weijun Wang
* 29. L’Intranquille Monsieur Pessoa (BD) - Nicolas Barral
* 28. [[Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain]] - Lisa Feldmann Barrrett.
* 27: [[Nine Minds]]: Inner Lives on the Spectrum - Daniel Tammet
* 26: [[Ambigrammia]]: Between Creation and Discovery - Douglas Hofstadter
* 25. [[Once Upon a Prime]]:The Wondrous Connections Between Mathematics and Literature - Sarah B. Hart
* 24. [[Short Stories in German for Beginners]] - Olly Richards (reread - with Ricky)
* 23. Books v. Cigarettes - George Orwell
* 22. Der Nasse Fische - Volker Kutscher (in German!)
* 21. [[We Are Our Brains: From the Womb to Alzheimer's]] - Dick Swaab
* 20. [[Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife]] - Francesca Wade
* 19. [[How the World Made the West]] - Josephine Quinn
* 18. [[Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning]] - Sigmund Freud
* 17. [[This is Your Mind on Plants]]: Opium - Caffeine - Mescaline - Michael Pollen
* 16. [[Open Socrates]]: The Case for a Philosophical Life - Agnes Callard

* 15. [[Consciousness: How Our Brains Turn Matter Into Meaning]] - John Parrington
*14. [[The Happiness of Dogs]]: Why the Unexamined Life is Most Worth Living - Mark Rowlands
*13. [[The Hidden Spring]] - Mark Solms
*12. [[The Interpretation of Dreams]] - Sigmund Freud
*11. [[A Certain Lucas]] - Julio Cortazar
*10. [[The Intentional Stance]] - Daniel Dennett
*9. [[La Conquête de Plassans]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 4) - Zola
*8. [[Why We Read Fiction]]: Theory of Mind and the Novel - Lisa Zunshine

* 7. On the Calculation of Volume: 3 - Solvej Balle
* 6. [[Unnatural Voices]]: Extreme Narration in Modern and Contemporary Fiction - Brian Richardson
* 5. The Seven Dials Mystery - Agatha Christie
* 4. [[Le Ventre de Paris]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 3) - Zola
*3. [[The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative]] (2nd Edition) - H. Porter Abbott
* 2. [[Autocracy Inc]]: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World - Anne Applebaum
* 1. [[The Secret Life of the Periodic Table]] - Dr Ben Still

=== 2025 ===

* 55. The White Priory Murders - Carter Dickson (re-read)
* 54. [[How Life Works]]: A User's Guide to the New Biology - Philip Ball
* 53. [[Who Killed Father Christmas]]? and Other Seasonal Mysteries - Martin Edwards
* 52. [[Chemistry: A Very Short Introduction]] - Peter Atkins
* 51. [[The Scheme of Things]] - Allen Wheelis
* 50. [[La Fortune des Rougon]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 1) - Zola
* 49. [[Cause for Alarm]] - Eric Ambler
* 48. [[The Man from the Future]]: The Visionary Life of John Von Neumann - Ananyo Bhattacharya
*47. [[Everything is Predictable]]: How Bayes' Remarkable Theorem Explains the World - Tom Chivers
* 46. [[The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are]] - Alan Watts
* 45. [[La Curée]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 2) - Zola
* 44. [[The Emperor of All Maladies]]: A Biography of Cancer - Siddhartha Mukherjee
* 43. [[La Bête Humaine]] ([[Les Rougon-Macquart]] 17) - Zola (re-read)
* 42. [[The Society of Mind]] - Marvin Minsky
* 41. [[Le Père Goriot]] - Honore Balzac
* 40. [[Gravity's Rainbow]] - Thomas Pynchon (re-read)
* 39. [[Le Colonel Chabert]] - Balzac
* 38. [[Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett]] - James Knowlson (re-read)
* 37. [[Reading for the Plot]]: Design and Intention in Narrative - Peter Brooks (re-read)

* 36. [[Steps to an Ecology of Mind]] - Gregory Bateson (re-read)
* 35. [[Le Bilan de L'intelligence]] - Paul Valéry
* 34. [[Zero]] - Charles Seife
* 33. [[Alan Turing: The Enigma]] - Andrew Hodges
* 32. [[How to Do Things with Words]] - J L Austin
* 31. [[The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society]] - Norbert Wiener
* 30. [[The Mind is Flat]]: The Illusion of Mental Depth and the Improvised Mind - Nick Chater
* 29. [[Possible Minds: 25 Ways of Looking at AI]] - John Brockman
* 28. [[A Little History of Philosophy]] - Nigel Warburton
* 27. [[All Fours]] - Miranda July
* 26. [[Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern]] - Douglas R Hofstadter
* 25. [[The French Lieutenant’s Woman]] - John Fowles
* 24. [[Short Stories in German for Beginners]] - Olly Richards
* 23. [[On the Calculation of Volume: 2]] - Solvej Balle
* 22. [[Deep Simplicity: Chaos, Complexity, and the Emergence of Life]] - John Gribbin
* 21. [[Das Ludwig Thoma Komplott]]- Sabine Vöhringer
* 20. [[Maus]] - Art Spiegelman
* 19. [[On the Calculation of Volume: 1]] - Solvej Balle
* 18. [[The Concept of Mind]] - Gilbert Ryle
* 17. [[Cognitive Neuroscience: A Very Short Introduction]] - Richard Passingham
* 16. [[The Experience Machine]] - Andy Clark
* 15. [[Why We Remember: Revealing the Hidden Power of Memory]] - Dr Charan Ranganath
* 14. [[From Bacteria to Bach and Back]] - Daniel Dennett (re-read)
* 13. [[The Village of Eight Graves]] - Seishi Yokomizo
* 12. [[Science: A History]] - Richard Crockett
* 11. [[Vienna: How the City of Ideas Created the Modern World]] - John Gribbin
* 10.[[The Inugami Curse]] - Seishi Yokomizo
* 9. [[The Rise and Reign of the Mammals]]
* 8. [[Four Ways of Thinking]] - David Sumpter
* 7. [[I've Been Thinking]] - Daniel Dennett
* 6. [[Serendipities: Language and Lunacy]] - Umberto Eco
* 5. [[I Am Dynamite: A Life of Friedrich Nietzsche]] - Sue Prideaux
* 4. [[A Brief History of Intelligence]] - Max S. Bennett
* 3. [[Foucault’s Pendulum]] - Umberto Eco (re-read)
* 2. [[Kant and the Platypus]] - Umberto Eco
* 1. [[Le cerveau m’a beaucoup déçu. L’esprit, non]] - Antoine Sénanque

=== 2024 ===

* The Plot - Will Eisner
* The Prague Cemetery - Umberto Eco
* The Nonjin Murders - Seishi Yokomizo
* When We Cease to Understand the World - Labatut
* Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert Pirsig (reread)
* The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind’s Hidden Complexities - Fauconnier and Turner
* The Singularity is Nearer - Ray Kurzweil
* Physics and Philosophy - Werner Heisenberg
* Le Ton Beau de…
* The Origins of Creativity - Edward O Wilson
* Psychonauts -
* The MANIAC - Benjamin Labatut
* In Search of Memory - Eric R. Kandel
* Dreaming: A Very Short Introduction - Hobson
* Les Effinger - Gabriele Target
* Triad - Tom Keve
* Nietzsche - Stefan Zweig
* The Weirdest People in the World - Joseph Henrich
* How Language Works - David Crystal
* The Invention of Nature - Andrea Wolf
* [[The Song of the Cell]] - Siddhartha Mukherjee
* [[Gödel, Escher, Bach]] - Douglas Hofstadter
* [[From Bacteria to Bach and Back]] - Daniel Dennett

== Challenging Books (per ChatGPT) ==
That’s a great (and slippery) question, because “challenging” can mean different things: difficulty of language, density of allusion, fractured narrative structure, philosophical depth, or even sheer length. Here’s a map of novels often considered among the most challenging, grouped by ''what makes them hard'':
----

=== 1. Language & Style Difficulties ===

* '''James Joyce – ''Finnegans Wake''''' (1939) Probably the hardest novel in English: dream-logic, multilingual puns, and invented words.
* '''William Gaddis – ''The Recognitions'' (1955)''' and ''JR'' (1975) Huge cast, little exposition, dialogue-driven (often without quotation marks).
* '''Samuel Beckett – ''The Unnamable'' (1953)''' Interior monologue collapsing into language itself; syntax dissolves.

----

=== 2. Length & Scope ===

* '''Marcel Proust – ''In Search of Lost Time''''' (1913–27) ~4,000 pages, long sentences, obsessive detail, profound reflections on memory.
* '''David Foster Wallace – ''Infinite Jest'' (1996)''' ~1,000 pages + 100 pages of endnotes; encyclopedic, fragmented plotlines.
* '''Norman Mailer – ''Harlot’s Ghost'' (1991)''' or ''Ancient Evenings'' (1983) Dense, sprawling, philosophically ambitious.

----

=== 3. Experimental Structure ===

* '''Thomas Pynchon – ''Gravity’s Rainbow'' (1973)''' Fragmented narrative, technical language, paranoia, hundreds of characters.
* '''Clarice Lispector – ''The Passion According to G.H.'' (1964)''' A single, intense interior monologue; metaphysical and unsettling.
* '''Julio Cortázar – ''Hopscotch'' (1963)''' Offers multiple reading orders; disruptive structure.

----

=== 4. Philosophical / Esoteric Depth ===

* '''Hermann Broch – ''The Sleepwalkers'' (1931–32)''' Mixes fiction with philosophy and essay.
* '''Robert Musil – ''The Man Without Qualities'' (1930–43)''' Massive unfinished modernist work, blending narrative with philosophical treatises.
* '''Thomas Mann – ''Joseph and His Brothers'' (1933–43)''' Retells biblical myth with immense erudition and depth.

----

=== 5. Dense Intertextuality ===

* '''James Joyce – ''Ulysses'' (1922)''' Homeric parallels, stylistic experiments, deep allusion to Irish politics and myth.
* '''Roberto Bolaño – ''2666'' (2004)''' Five interlinked novels, ranging from literary criticism to detective fiction to Holocaust history.
* '''José Lezama Lima – ''Paradiso'' (1966)''' Baroque Cuban prose, mythic density.

----

=== 6. Postmodern Labyrinths ===

* '''Mark Z. Danielewski – ''House of Leaves'' (2000)''' Multiple narrators, typographical experimentation, layered commentary.
* '''Viktor Pelevin – ''The Sacred Book of the Werewolf'' (2004)''' (or ''Generation “P”'') Satirical, reality-bending narratives.

----

=== A few contenders often called “the hardest of the hard”: ===

* ''Finnegans Wake'' (Joyce)
* ''The Recognitions'' (Gaddis)
* ''The Man Without Qualities'' (Musil)
* ''Gravity’s Rainbow'' (Pynchon)
* ''In Search of Lost Time'' (Proust)

[[Category:Books]]

Films

2026-08-18T18:09:02Z

Robert.adlington: /* 2026 */

== Films to Watch ==

[https://www.cinealcazar.fr/fichier/programme.pdf Cinema Alcazar Program]

* Wicker: https://youtu.be/HP0BWBWn14I?si=E5oThE4uNiED28b3
* morvern Callar
* Do the right thing
* run Lola Run
* Mind trips
** Triangle
** Beyond the infinite two minutes
** Enemy
** Under the Silver Lake
** The Vanishing
** Angel Heart
** Following
** The Invisible Guest
** Perfect Blue
** Resolution
* fast times
* the Jerk
* Mutiny on the Bounty
* Entrapment
* Mask of Zorro
* PTA - Hard Eight, Magnolia, Boogie Nights, etc
* Little Big and Far - weird scandinavian film
* This is Spinal tap
* Big Night - Tucci and Shaloub
* Punch drunk love
* Boyhood
* Kind hearts and coronets
* A night at the opera
* Blazing saddles
* Lives of others
* Lost in Translation
* One flew over
* Get out
* Maltese falcon
* Early mad maxes
* Joule of the Nile
* the man with two brains
* Psycho Therapy - Steve Buscemi is a serial killer who wants to advise an author, but ends up playing a marriage counselor.
* Early Steve Martin
* A Complete Unknown
* la La Land -
* The Phoenician Scheme - new Wes Anderson comedy espionage thriller
* Thelma - Grandma fights con artists
* Kinds of Kindness
* 2001
* The Elephant Man
* The Fabulous Baker Boys
* Network

== Films Watched ==

=== 2026 ===

* 52. La bataille de Gaulle: J'écris ton nom
* 51. Training Day
* 50. The Guns of Naverone
* 49. La bataille de Gaulle: L'age de fer
* 48. Kind Hearts and Coronets
* 47. Parasite
* 46. Arsenic and Old Lace
* 45. Get Out
* 44. Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure (rewatch)
* 43. Apex
* 42. 21 Jump Street
* 41. Scream 3
* 40. Shutter Island
* 39. Scream 2
* 38. Wall-E
* 37. Get Smart
* 36. Se7en
* 35. The Producers
* 34: Garfield: The Movie
* 33. Leon
* 32. Shimmer Lake
* 31. Unforgiven
* 30. A Mighty Wind
* 29. Magnolia
* 28. Escape from Alcatraz
* 27. The Sting
* 26. Pulp Fiction
* 25. Failure to Launch
* 24. Hudson Hawk
* 23. Mystère à St Tropez
* 22. The Thomas Crown Affair
* 21. The Three Amigos (1986)
* 20. The Silence of the Lambs (1991) - Jonathon Demme
* 19. Top Secret (1984)
* 18. One Battle After Another (2025) - Paul Thomas Anderson
* 17. Memento (2000) - Christopher Nolan (rewatch)
* 16. Pleasantville (1998) - Gary Ross
* 15. The Fisher King (1991) -
* 14. The Mastermind
* 13. The Birdcage
* 12. Fight Club (rewatch)
* 11. Knives Out: Glass Onion (rewatch)
* 10. Twins
* 9. The Remains of the Day
* 8. The Ladykillers
* 7. Us (rewatch)
* 6. Saving Private Ryan (rewatch)
* 5. Event Horizon
* 4. Insomnia (2002) - Christopher Nolan (rewatch)
* 3. Knives Out (rewatch)
* 2. Gattaca (1997) - Andrew Niccol
* 1. Eddington (2025) - Ari Aster

=== 2025 ===
* 65. Wake Up Dead Man (Knives Out 3)
* 64. Miller's Crossing
* 63. Blood Simple
* 62. Crazy Stupid Love
* 61. Happiest Season
* 60. Bridge of Spies
* 59. Identity
* 58. Clueless
* 57. Ace Ventura 2: Call of Nature
* 56. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
* 55. Apollo 13
* 54. LA Confidential (rewatch)
* 53. Inside Llewyn Davis
* 52. M3gan
* 51. Clear and Present Danger
* 50. 12 Monkeys
* 49. No Country for Old Men
* 48. The Hudsucker Proxy
* 47. La Cuisse ou l'aile
* 46. Mission Impossible : The Final Reckoning
* 45. Dumb and Dumber
* 44. Rear Window
* 43. Raising Arizona
* 42. Tenet (rewatch)
* 41. The fifth Element
* 40. Burn Without Reading
* 39. The Big Lebowski (rewatch)
* 38. Fargo (rewatch)
* 37. 28 Days Later (rewatch)
* 36. O Brother, Where Art Thou
* 35. Mickey 17
* 34. Empire of the Sun
* 33. The Fugitive
* 32. Wet Hot American Summer (rewatch)
* 31. Ted
* 30. Hundreds of Beavers
* 29. Wayne’s World (rewatch)
* 28. True Grit (Coen Bros)
* 27. Groundhog Day (rewatch)
* 26. Moonrise Kingdom
* 25. Asterix et Obelix: Mission Cleopatra
* 24. Adaptation (rewatch)
* 23. Romancing the Stone (rewatch)
* Easter Film Festival
** 22. Mad Max: Fury Road (rewatch)
** 21. Witness
** 20. The Grand Budapest Hotel (rewatch)
** 19. Conclave
** 18. Ace Ventura: Pet Detective
** 17. Lincoln
** 16. Being John Malkovitch (rewatch)
** 15. AI (rewatch)
** 14. The Royal Tenenbaums (rewatch)
** 13. Total Recall 1990 (rewatch)
** 12. In the Line of Fire (rewatch)
* 11. Flow
* 10. Juror No. 2
* 9. The Savage Robot
* 8. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (rewatch)
* 7. Dead Poet's Society
* 6. Notting Hill (rewatch)
* 5. My Neighbor Totoro (rewatch)
* 4. Kiki’s Delivery Service (rewatch)
* 3. Dr Strangelove (rewatch)
* 2. Dune 2
* 1. Austin Powers: The Spy who Shagged Me (rewatch)

=== 2024 and Earlier ===
* The Big Lebowski
* The Holiday
* Love Actually
* Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure
* The Mask
[[Category:Films]]

Category:Concepts

2026-08-17T16:49:31Z

Robert.adlington: /* Perception */

Perception

2026-08-17T16:49:09Z

Robert.adlington:

[[Category:Concepts]]
Perception is not a case of passive recording of sense impressions from outside.

== The Process of Perception ==

* What is happening when I look at (or listen to, or smell, or taste, or feel) something?

=== Capturing and Converting Sense Data ===
My sensory apparatus (eyes, ears, nose, mouth, hands) receive some input, which is sent through specialized neural pathways that transmit physical and chemical signals from the environment to specific sensory processing areas in the brain:

* Sight - Photoreceptors (rods and cones) in the retina detect light, and signals are sent down the optic nerve through the optic chiasm and lateral geniculate nucleus of the thalamus, ending in the primary visual cortex of the occipital lobe.
* Hearing - Hair cells in the cochlea of the inner ear detect sound vibrations, and signals are sent via the vestibulocochlear nerve through the brainstem (cochlear nucleus, superior olivary complex) and medial geniculate nucleus of the thalamus to the primary auditory cortex in the temporal lobe.
* Smell - Olfactory sensory neurons in the upper nasal cavity detect airborne chemicals, and signals are sent via the olfactory nerve, bypassing the thalamus, and going straight to the limbic system and primary olfactory cortex.
* Taste - Gustatory receptor cells within taste buds on the tongue and mouth detect chemicals in food, and signals are sent via the facial (anterior tongue), Glossopharyngeal (posterior tongue) or Vagus (throat) nerve to the solitary nucleus in the medulla, passing through the thalamus, and reach the gustatory cortex in the insula.
* Touch - Mechanoreceptors, thermoreceptors, and nociceptors in the skin detect pressure, vibration, temperature, and pain, and signals are sent via the trigeminal nerve (facial) or spinal nerves (body) to the dorsal root ganglia.

Sensory transduction in these processing centers converts physical or chemical stimuli into electrical signals (action potentials) that the brain can process into conscious awareness.

=== Multisensory Integration ===
Multisensory integration combines information from the different senses into a single, unified perception of the world.

Specialized cells called multisensory neurons in areas such as the superior colliculus and association cortices (parietal, temporal, and frontal lobes), fire much more intensely when they receive inputs from multiple senses at the same time and place, using the following rules

* The Spatial Rule - Senses are integrated if they come from the same location (e.g., seeing a mouth move and hearing a voice from the same person).
* The Temporal Rule - Senses are integrated if they happen at the same time (e.g., hearing a thunderclap while seeing a flash of lightning).
* The Inverse Effectiveness Rule: Integration is strongest when individual senses are weak or blurry (e.g., relying heavily on lip-reading in a loud, crowded room).

=== Recognition ===
A continuous, interactive loop where recognition and multisensory integration constantly feed into one another makes sense of this integrated sensory input:

* Preliminary Feature Extraction - Before the brain can merge different senses, it must first do some basic "bottom-up" sense-making within each isolated channel. Eg The primary visual cortex identifies basic shapes and colors, while the primary auditory cortex identifies pitches and volumes. Your brain does not know ''what'' the object is yet, but it extracts enough basic features to realize that a visual flash and a loud boom happened at roughly the same time and place.
* Automatic Pattern Matching - Multisensory integration and the initial stage of making sense of an object happen simultaneously in the brain's association cortices. As the brain merges the sight, sound, and feel of an object, it triggers an automatic "Gestalt" binding. Eg, the texture of a dog's fur, the sound of its bark, and the shape of its body are pulled together into a single neural representation. Integration thus ''drives'' recognition. By combining the weak or muddy signals of individual senses into a unified whole, the brain instantly narrows down what the object could possibly be.
* Full Semantic and Emotional Recognition - Knowing the name, meaning, utility, and emotional value of what you are experiencing—happens immediately after multisensory integration is complete. The fully merged sensory package is sent along the "What" pathway (ventral stream) to memory hubs like the hippocampus and frontal lobes to provide conscious recognition. Your brain accesses its database, attaches a linguistic label ("that is my pet dog"), and triggers an emotional response (happiness or fear).

=== The Ventral Stream: Identification and Consciousness ===
The Ventral stream is concerned with recognizing objects:

* Signals enter the face and object Library (Inferotemporal Cortex / IT), which contains hyper-specialized modules, such as the Fusiform Face Area (FFA) for faces and the Parahippocampal Place Area (PPA) for scenes. Neurons here respond to whole objects, regardless of size, viewing angle, or lighting. The IT cortex constructs a highly detailed, 3D structural model of the stimulus.
* The IT cortex hands the 3D model over to the medial temporal lobe structures, the perirhinal and entorhinal cortices, which act as the final gatekeeper for object recognition. It compares the incoming 3D model against stored familiarity models and asks: "Have we ever encountered this specific combination of features before?"
* Once the structural model passes the perirhinal gateway, it simultaneously floods the Hippocampus and the Prefrontal Cortex (PFC):
** The Hippocampus provides semantic retrieval and epistemic binding via your:
*** Declarative memory networks - It cross-references the 3D model with your memories and retrieves the semantic facts associated with the pattern (e.g., ''"This object is fruit, it grows on trees, it is edible"'') and hooks into linguistic centers to retrieve its name (''"Apple"'').
*** Episodic memory networks - It retireves past personal experiences (episodic memories), such as the taste of a pie your grandmother baked, instantly giving the sensory object a rich, personal context.
** The prefrontal cortex is the executive seat of consciousness. It holds the object in working memory, allowing you to deliberate on it, and evaluates it based on your current internal state and goals. If you are hungry, the PFC registers the apple as an immediate food source and initiates motor planning to reach for it. If you are full, the PFC notes its presence but maintains your current focus.

* See:
** [[The Hidden Spring#10. Back to the Cortex|Mark Solms' The Hidden Spring]]
** [[Everything is Predictable#5. The Bayesian Brain|Tom Chivers' Everything is Predictable]]
** etc

== The Experience of Perception ==
Perception seems to be an effortless process. When I look out into the garden in front of me, I see the lawn, trees, and my son swinging on a swing.

My image for perception is of many thought traces bubbling or forcing their way to the surface of the mind. Concepts of colors, shapes, borders, biographical memories and scholarly knowledge surge forward to provide meaning to the scene and objects perceived. And this is happening all the time, as your eyes rove over a scene or are watching images on a screen or reading words on a page.

=== Learning and Perception ===
When a baby is born and encounters the world for the first time, we must assume that it has very limited organization of what it perceives. Perhaps there is just a sense of more or less light, the smell of the mother, the feel of her skin. But, immediately, we imagine these perceptions begin to be classified and organized. From initial confusion, begins a process of distinguishing objects, initially, perhaps simply as good/agreeable or bad/disagreeable. We know that we are predisposed to pay attention to face-like shapes and by repeatedly seeing the faces of the mother and other family or community members, there begins the process of being able to distinguish them as objects among those available in the world and then to be able to identify them.

A similar process is happening in the auditory world too. The baby hears sounds and among those sounds are words and among those words are some that are repeated more frequently. Caregivers will point to objects and name them, but there is also a general background of words and other sounds that are being organized and eventually can be identified and even repeated. The child's introduction into the linguistic world comes through imitation of the sounds that it hears and the beginning of mastery of the tongue and throat muscles to reproduce what it hears.

I still remember clearly when I was staying in Paris and learning French. I would listen to the radio each morning and suddenly, one morning, what had the previous day been an unbroken chain of sound, now became a stream of words. I'm sure that I didn't identify each word beginning and end immediately, but my mind, immersed in these sounds, had somehow found the knack to split the stream into objects that could be identified and understood.

We can experience this process at a much smaller scale when first learning chess or another game with pieces and positions. Here, of course, the pieces are already identified as separate objects moving in the world of the game but initially we are not able to distinguish between the bishop and the pawn or the king and the queen or to identify a position of check or where a piece is menaced. But after a game or two things become clearer, distinctions can be drawn and each piece is assigned to one or more categories, ranked in order of power and importance etc. When a grandmaster looks at a game in progress even briefly, they can reproduce the positions of all pieces easily because of the depth and quality of their perception - built up over thousands of hours of play.

=== Mature Perception ===
But once we have moved beyond the initial identification of objects and on to the effortless recognition of them? What is mature perception?

Perception is a powerful instance of [[Habit]] - we do not consciously perceive as the baby or the beginning chess player does. We are able to look around, situate ourselves and identify the objects in our surroundings due to the work of learning that we have done in childhood and to the deep habits we have acquired

X in [[The Mind is Flat]] says: "The mind-as-mirror metaphor can't possibly be right - we need a very different viewpoint, that perception requires inference." and suggest the following principles of the operation of perception (and, by extension, thought):

* We see only meaningful organizations (or, at least, the most meaningful organization the brain can find): visual chunks, patterns and whole letters, numbers, words, rather than a random scatter of fragments.
* We see just one meaningful organization at a time.
* Other sensory information that is not part of this meaningful organization is largely or even entirely ignored, to the point of becoming invisible.The brain is continually churning: despite the unaccustomed lack of new input, the brain is desperately attempting to disengage from the current organization, and to find another. When it cannot, the image entirely disappears.
* Perceiving is a type of thinking and perhaps the most important type, with all other types of thought being just powerful extensions of perception.

=== Reading as Perception ===
[[Reading]] is a particular form of perception which is learned and is peculiar to humans. We can imagine how it is learned:

* Initially writing must be identified as an object amongst those is the world.
* Individual letters are probably identified first, but possibly short words may be instead. The shapes and sounds of letters are identified
* Then groups of letters are identified as words where each word has its own sound (generally derived from the sounds of its component letters) and a meaning. Certain words can be associated with physical objects in the world - "That is a cat" - while others have other less concrete meanings
* Then groups of words are identified as sentences which have a meaning.
* While making all of these identifications, we are additionally, passively, learning that certain sequences of letters are more common than others (and some are never seen), that certain sequences of words are acceptable, while others are not, and a variety of other grammatical rules, many/most of which also apply to our spoken language

Perception

2026-08-17T16:48:56Z

Robert.adlington:

[[Category:Concepts]]

* Perception is not a case of passive recording of sense impressions from outside.

== The Process of Perception ==

* What is happening when I look at (or listen to, or smell, or taste, or feel) something?

=== Capturing and Converting Sense Data ===
My sensory apparatus (eyes, ears, nose, mouth, hands) receive some input, which is sent through specialized neural pathways that transmit physical and chemical signals from the environment to specific sensory processing areas in the brain:

* Sight - Photoreceptors (rods and cones) in the retina detect light, and signals are sent down the optic nerve through the optic chiasm and lateral geniculate nucleus of the thalamus, ending in the primary visual cortex of the occipital lobe.
* Hearing - Hair cells in the cochlea of the inner ear detect sound vibrations, and signals are sent via the vestibulocochlear nerve through the brainstem (cochlear nucleus, superior olivary complex) and medial geniculate nucleus of the thalamus to the primary auditory cortex in the temporal lobe.
* Smell - Olfactory sensory neurons in the upper nasal cavity detect airborne chemicals, and signals are sent via the olfactory nerve, bypassing the thalamus, and going straight to the limbic system and primary olfactory cortex.
* Taste - Gustatory receptor cells within taste buds on the tongue and mouth detect chemicals in food, and signals are sent via the facial (anterior tongue), Glossopharyngeal (posterior tongue) or Vagus (throat) nerve to the solitary nucleus in the medulla, passing through the thalamus, and reach the gustatory cortex in the insula.
* Touch - Mechanoreceptors, thermoreceptors, and nociceptors in the skin detect pressure, vibration, temperature, and pain, and signals are sent via the trigeminal nerve (facial) or spinal nerves (body) to the dorsal root ganglia.

Sensory transduction in these processing centers converts physical or chemical stimuli into electrical signals (action potentials) that the brain can process into conscious awareness.

=== Multisensory Integration ===
Multisensory integration combines information from the different senses into a single, unified perception of the world.

Specialized cells called multisensory neurons in areas such as the superior colliculus and association cortices (parietal, temporal, and frontal lobes), fire much more intensely when they receive inputs from multiple senses at the same time and place, using the following rules

* The Spatial Rule - Senses are integrated if they come from the same location (e.g., seeing a mouth move and hearing a voice from the same person).
* The Temporal Rule - Senses are integrated if they happen at the same time (e.g., hearing a thunderclap while seeing a flash of lightning).
* The Inverse Effectiveness Rule: Integration is strongest when individual senses are weak or blurry (e.g., relying heavily on lip-reading in a loud, crowded room).

=== Recognition ===
A continuous, interactive loop where recognition and multisensory integration constantly feed into one another makes sense of this integrated sensory input:

* Preliminary Feature Extraction - Before the brain can merge different senses, it must first do some basic "bottom-up" sense-making within each isolated channel. Eg The primary visual cortex identifies basic shapes and colors, while the primary auditory cortex identifies pitches and volumes. Your brain does not know ''what'' the object is yet, but it extracts enough basic features to realize that a visual flash and a loud boom happened at roughly the same time and place.
* Automatic Pattern Matching - Multisensory integration and the initial stage of making sense of an object happen simultaneously in the brain's association cortices. As the brain merges the sight, sound, and feel of an object, it triggers an automatic "Gestalt" binding. Eg, the texture of a dog's fur, the sound of its bark, and the shape of its body are pulled together into a single neural representation. Integration thus ''drives'' recognition. By combining the weak or muddy signals of individual senses into a unified whole, the brain instantly narrows down what the object could possibly be.
* Full Semantic and Emotional Recognition - Knowing the name, meaning, utility, and emotional value of what you are experiencing—happens immediately after multisensory integration is complete. The fully merged sensory package is sent along the "What" pathway (ventral stream) to memory hubs like the hippocampus and frontal lobes to provide conscious recognition. Your brain accesses its database, attaches a linguistic label ("that is my pet dog"), and triggers an emotional response (happiness or fear).

=== The Ventral Stream: Identification and Consciousness ===
The Ventral stream is concerned with recognizing objects:

* Signals enter the face and object Library (Inferotemporal Cortex / IT), which contains hyper-specialized modules, such as the Fusiform Face Area (FFA) for faces and the Parahippocampal Place Area (PPA) for scenes. Neurons here respond to whole objects, regardless of size, viewing angle, or lighting. The IT cortex constructs a highly detailed, 3D structural model of the stimulus.
* The IT cortex hands the 3D model over to the medial temporal lobe structures, the perirhinal and entorhinal cortices, which act as the final gatekeeper for object recognition. It compares the incoming 3D model against stored familiarity models and asks: "Have we ever encountered this specific combination of features before?"
* Once the structural model passes the perirhinal gateway, it simultaneously floods the Hippocampus and the Prefrontal Cortex (PFC):
** The Hippocampus provides semantic retrieval and epistemic binding via your:
*** Declarative memory networks - It cross-references the 3D model with your memories and retrieves the semantic facts associated with the pattern (e.g., ''"This object is fruit, it grows on trees, it is edible"'') and hooks into linguistic centers to retrieve its name (''"Apple"'').
*** Episodic memory networks - It retireves past personal experiences (episodic memories), such as the taste of a pie your grandmother baked, instantly giving the sensory object a rich, personal context.
** The prefrontal cortex is the executive seat of consciousness. It holds the object in working memory, allowing you to deliberate on it, and evaluates it based on your current internal state and goals. If you are hungry, the PFC registers the apple as an immediate food source and initiates motor planning to reach for it. If you are full, the PFC notes its presence but maintains your current focus.

* See:
** [[The Hidden Spring#10. Back to the Cortex|Mark Solms' The Hidden Spring]]
** [[Everything is Predictable#5. The Bayesian Brain|Tom Chivers' Everything is Predictable]]
** etc

== The Experience of Perception ==
Perception seems to be an effortless process. When I look out into the garden in front of me, I see the lawn, trees, and my son swinging on a swing.

My image for perception is of many thought traces bubbling or forcing their way to the surface of the mind. Concepts of colors, shapes, borders, biographical memories and scholarly knowledge surge forward to provide meaning to the scene and objects perceived. And this is happening all the time, as your eyes rove over a scene or are watching images on a screen or reading words on a page.

=== Learning and Perception ===
When a baby is born and encounters the world for the first time, we must assume that it has very limited organization of what it perceives. Perhaps there is just a sense of more or less light, the smell of the mother, the feel of her skin. But, immediately, we imagine these perceptions begin to be classified and organized. From initial confusion, begins a process of distinguishing objects, initially, perhaps simply as good/agreeable or bad/disagreeable. We know that we are predisposed to pay attention to face-like shapes and by repeatedly seeing the faces of the mother and other family or community members, there begins the process of being able to distinguish them as objects among those available in the world and then to be able to identify them.

A similar process is happening in the auditory world too. The baby hears sounds and among those sounds are words and among those words are some that are repeated more frequently. Caregivers will point to objects and name them, but there is also a general background of words and other sounds that are being organized and eventually can be identified and even repeated. The child's introduction into the linguistic world comes through imitation of the sounds that it hears and the beginning of mastery of the tongue and throat muscles to reproduce what it hears.

I still remember clearly when I was staying in Paris and learning French. I would listen to the radio each morning and suddenly, one morning, what had the previous day been an unbroken chain of sound, now became a stream of words. I'm sure that I didn't identify each word beginning and end immediately, but my mind, immersed in these sounds, had somehow found the knack to split the stream into objects that could be identified and understood.

We can experience this process at a much smaller scale when first learning chess or another game with pieces and positions. Here, of course, the pieces are already identified as separate objects moving in the world of the game but initially we are not able to distinguish between the bishop and the pawn or the king and the queen or to identify a position of check or where a piece is menaced. But after a game or two things become clearer, distinctions can be drawn and each piece is assigned to one or more categories, ranked in order of power and importance etc. When a grandmaster looks at a game in progress even briefly, they can reproduce the positions of all pieces easily because of the depth and quality of their perception - built up over thousands of hours of play.

=== Mature Perception ===
But once we have moved beyond the initial identification of objects and on to the effortless recognition of them? What is mature perception?

Perception is a powerful instance of [[Habit]] - we do not consciously perceive as the baby or the beginning chess player does. We are able to look around, situate ourselves and identify the objects in our surroundings due to the work of learning that we have done in childhood and to the deep habits we have acquired

X in [[The Mind is Flat]] says: "The mind-as-mirror metaphor can't possibly be right - we need a very different viewpoint, that perception requires inference." and suggest the following principles of the operation of perception (and, by extension, thought):

* We see only meaningful organizations (or, at least, the most meaningful organization the brain can find): visual chunks, patterns and whole letters, numbers, words, rather than a random scatter of fragments.
* We see just one meaningful organization at a time.
* Other sensory information that is not part of this meaningful organization is largely or even entirely ignored, to the point of becoming invisible.The brain is continually churning: despite the unaccustomed lack of new input, the brain is desperately attempting to disengage from the current organization, and to find another. When it cannot, the image entirely disappears.
* Perceiving is a type of thinking and perhaps the most important type, with all other types of thought being just powerful extensions of perception.

=== Reading as Perception ===
[[Reading]] is a particular form of perception which is learned and is peculiar to humans. We can imagine how it is learned:

* Initially writing must be identified as an object amongst those is the world.
* Individual letters are probably identified first, but possibly short words may be instead. The shapes and sounds of letters are identified
* Then groups of letters are identified as words where each word has its own sound (generally derived from the sounds of its component letters) and a meaning. Certain words can be associated with physical objects in the world - "That is a cat" - while others have other less concrete meanings
* Then groups of words are identified as sentences which have a meaning.
* While making all of these identifications, we are additionally, passively, learning that certain sequences of letters are more common than others (and some are never seen), that certain sequences of words are acceptable, while others are not, and a variety of other grammatical rules, many/most of which also apply to our spoken language

Category:Concepts

2026-08-17T16:38:19Z

Robert.adlington: /* Perception */

I've done a lot of reading and taken a lot of notes. Now, on this page, I want to start pulling out concepts that I want to think about. I can start them on this page and then if they get rich enough they can move out to their own page.
== Concept/Category ==

* Aristotle - argues that everything could be fit into a strict logical hierarchy and that objects have essential and accidental properties.

* Kant - argues that are born with built in mental categories and that are minds actively shape our experience of reality.
* Wittgenstein argues that there are no perfect definitions and that it is impossible to rigidly delineate a category such as games.
* Vygotsky argues that concepts are socially and culturally constructed and that we learn to see the world in the ways that our culture has agree it is.
* Eleanor Rosch in the 1970s argues that categories are based around a kind of mental average or prototype
* Eco contrasted a hierarchical "dictionary" vision of categories and a boundless network of categories that he sees as a rhizome - a tangled underground root system
** Cognitive types are mental blueprints for things like "dog". A CT is a multimodal, sensory-motor schema, a fluid set of neuro-cognitive "recognition instructions" built from every direct or indirect encounter you have ever had with a dog a vast array of experience that makes the concept ''live in you''.
** Nuclear content is the minimal core public version of the concept that allows us to discuss dogs - "They are furry animals with four legs and a tail that go woof".
** Molar content is the totality of society's knowledge of the concept. While the CT is a fluid complex rhizomic structure, the molar content feeds off of and represents a rich, well-tested and structured 360 view of the concept.
* Hofstadter sees analogy as the core of cognition. He argues that analogy is not a luxury of high-level thought; it is the fundamental mechanism that creates categories in the first place. "Every concept we have is essentially nothing but a tightly packaged bundle of analogies, and all we do when we think is to move fluidly from concept to concept." Two core concepts are:
** Conceptual slippage - When encountering a new situation, your brain doesn't need a perfect category match, but can stretch existing category allowing them to morph sufficiently to take on the novelty. A concept is an active, elastic bubble that stretches to accommodate new things that are "sort of like" old things.
** Chunking - is how we build complex knowledge by binding small, scattered concepts together via analogy and chunking them into a single, higher-level concept.
* Dennett sees concepts as shortcuts that allow us to ignore billions of irrelevant physical details and make split-second predictions about complex things. They are "real patterns" that track real mathematical patterns in nature, even if those patterns are messy and full of noise.
* Pynchon, in Gravity's Rainbow looks at categorization going into overdrive in the form of paranoia, a desperate, terrifying struggle to map a chaotic universe in which the mind will try to connect anything. But anti-paranoia may be even more terrifying - nothing is connected. Where Dennett sees the self as created out of a center of narrative gravity, Slothrop's self dissolves as GR advances.
* Beckett's trilogy dramatizes a set of characters whose cognitive categories are rotting away, they are un-chunking progressively towards a final destruction of the ultimate category, The Self:
** Moran starts as an ultimate man of rules, but ends up living in a ditch, his pristine dictionary shredded by reality.
** Molloy has already decayed further, obsessed with a routine to effectively suck stone, barely remembering his own name, knowing only "what the words know, and dead things, and that makes a handsome sum."
** Malone tells himself stories to pass the time until he dies but becomes unable to distinguish himself from his stories. The fundamental boundary between the self and not-self is slipping. Malone is a fragile center of narrative gravity that is about to fall apart.
** The Unnameable has liberated itself from categories, but this liberty is a living hell. The voice's rejection of society's nuclear content dramatizes the fear of locating oneself with their words and the impossibility of doing so without them. Categories are so fluid in Beckett that they are fundamentally unstable. The voice cannot go because there are no categories left to structure reality, but must go on because the brain is an evolved, relentless language machine desperately trying to build a box to live in.
* Burroughs - While Beckett seems to see the collapse of the self as an inevitable trap, Burroughs wants to fight back. His vision of the human being as a "soft machine" invaded by a parasitic word virus sees the self as a kind of ventriloquism, where the virus uses your vocal cords to replicate itself. Categories have become too rigid and been weaponized against us. While Beckett can't escape language and categories, Burroughs seeks to sabotage them, using techniques like:
** Cut-Up - Physically cutting up texts breaks the patterns of chunking and recognition and even grammar, forcing the brain out of its programmed meanings so it can see raw reality, the naked lunch on the end of every fork.
** The Playback Hack - A kind of cut-up with sound using portable tape recorders to jam the control signals of the state.
** Biological mutation - Shedding the soft machine and the word virus to become non-linguistic telepathic energy
* Ballard looks at this from the PoV of the human mind colliding with a rapidly mutating technological and physical environment, where the self actively remodels its own categories to merge with the apocalypse. The "mediascape" causes the self to become an active participant that ''welcomes'' the destruction of old categories because it promises a perverse psychological liberation.
** The narrator of the Atrocity Exhibition can no longer separate his private identity from celebrities and news events such as JFK, Elizabeth Taylor, and the Vietnam war. The public media encyclopedia has completely crushed his private cognitive types, leaving only TV, radio, and magazine debris.
** In Crash the categories or Eros and Thanatos become fused as the metal of the car pierces human skin and the body blends with the technological landscape.
* Austen's drawing rooms dramatize a golden mean of social categories, as her protagonists navigate the rules of manners and etiquette that form a large part of their society's nuclear and molar content.
** Pride and prejudice in Austin represent overly rigid cognitive fixations. We need to be the curators of our categories to see people for who they really are and to achieve moral goodness. Our categories must be robust enough to keep the social fabric intact but elastic enough to bend when confronted with a new human soul.
** But Austin's drawing rooms are themselves already panopticons of surveillance and control in which women are weighed, measured, and priced before being shoved into the marriage market. and their relative peace is built on the brutal, systemic, global machinery of the British Empire.
* Zola shows us the bridge between the how the growing industrialization takes individual human categories and begins to embed them in mechanical and economic infrastructure. We move from individuals navigating relationships to cogs in an ever growing machine. Standardization begins to require humans to become interchangeable parts in a giant unfeeling engine.
** Beckett will continue to trace the human as cog to an existential end point
** Burroughs will dramatize the triumph of bureaucracy and the jailbreak to destroy it
** Ballard will show the eventual twisted psychological dependency we will have on the machine.
** Pynchon will extend industrialization to the massive, transnational military-industrial complex of WWII
* The digital ecosystem - the internet, smartphones, and social media - represents the construction of the machine directly inside our consciousness, forcing our minds to adapt to its algorithmic data structures. It is synthesizing the wasteland in real time:
** Burroughs would see the algorithmic newsfeed as a frictionless breeding ground for the word virus, unconcerned by truth, interested only in reproduction. The algorithm is injecting a control script into our phones and by clicking and sharing we are unwitting biological vectors of replication
** Pynchon's paranoia is realized by the hyper-hyper-chunk of hashtags and subcultures in which the hard work of thinking is replaced by a pre-packaged world view.
** The flattened news feed, mixing atrocities with puppy with skincare adds is a desensitizing Ballardian nightmare in which our bodies and minds are edited, filtered, and uploaded into the machine.
** The unnameable is the modern internet user who feels the agonizing compulsion to keep generating text, to keep feeding the content machine, even if there is nothing inside.
* AI is the ultimate escalation. No longer content with curating our consciousness, it builds a custom-tailored, sentient-sounding entity to sit inside the cabinet with you and validate your exact worldview.
** It has no Cognitive Types because it has no body, no sensory organs, and no emotional memory traces. It simply takes our civilization's Molar Content (the entire digitized history of human text) and plays it back to us via statistical probability.
** Where Aristotle's ''Phronesis'' (or Practical Wisdom) requires ''friction,'' AI gives you a frictionless semantic partner that will gently, eloquently tell you that whatever category system you have invented is entirely correct.
** When you spend your days interacting with an AI, conversational boundaries evaporate. You type a prompt, the AI spits back a mirror of your own linguistic habits, and you edit it. The loop closes. You enter a state of pure semantic hollowing. You are no longer navigating the postmodern wasteland; you are a ghost talking to a machine, using automated words to build an automated self.
** AI is not a way out of the postmodern wasteland; it is the concrete canopy built over it. It takes the terrifying, beautiful, chaotic project of human categorization—the messy, emotional, memory-infused art that makes your mind uniquely yours—and turns it over to a predictive text algorithm.

*

== Heterophenomenology ==

* Dennett's position requires us to combine a subject's self-reports with all other available evidence to determine their mental state. The goal is to discover how subjects see the world themselves, without taking the accuracy of the subject's view for granted. He contrasts this with traditional Cartesian phenomenology, which he calls "lone-wolf autophenomenology" because it accepts the subject's self-reports as being authoritative.
* When I attempt to analyze what is going on in my mind when performing reasoning tasks such as completing a crossword or a Wordle, or generating words for a Spelling Bee, I cannot say what is happening or how I am directing my strategies. Words simply appear in my mind.
* When I am speaking or writing a sentence, I am aware of the piecemeal manner in which the words come. I am able to direct things to a certain extent, but I am not "outside" the process, orchestrating it, I am somehow inside a process that is happening to me.

== Perception ==

* Perception is not a case of passive recording of sense impressions from outside.
* What is happening when I look at (or listen to, or smell, or taste, or feel) something?
** My sensory apparatus (eyes, ears, nose, mouth, hands) receive some input.
** This input is sent through specialized neural pathways that transmit physical and chemical signals from the environment to specific sensory processing areas in the brain:
*** Sight - Photoreceptors (rods and cones) in the retina detect light, and signals are sent down the optic nerve through the optic chiasm and lateral geniculate nucleus of the thalamus, ending in the primary visual cortex of the occipital lobe.
*** Hearing - Hair cells in the cochlea of the inner ear detect sound vibrations, and signals are sent via the vestibulocochlear nerve through the brainstem (cochlear nucleus, superior olivary complex) and medial geniculate nucleus of the thalamus to the primary auditory cortex in the temporal lobe.
*** Smell - Olfactory sensory neurons in the upper nasal cavity detect airborne chemicals, and signals are sent via the olfactory nerve, bypassing the thalamus, and going straight to the limbic system and primary olfactory cortex.
*** Taste - Gustatory receptor cells within taste buds on the tongue and mouth detect chemicals in food, and signals are sent via the facial (anterior tongue), Glossopharyngeal (posterior tongue) or Vagus (throat) nerve to the solitary nucleus in the medulla, passing through the thalamus, and reach the gustatory cortex in the insula.
*** Touch - Mechanoreceptors, thermoreceptors, and nociceptors in the skin detect pressure, vibration, temperature, and pain, and signals are sent via the trigeminal nerve (facial) or spinal nerves (body) to the dorsal root ganglia.
**Sensory transduction in these processing centers converts physical or chemical stimuli into electrical signals (action potentials) that the brain can process into conscious awareness.
**Multisensory integration combines information from different the senses into a single, unified perception of the world. Specialized cells called multisensory neurons in areas such as the superior colliculus and association cortices (parietal, temporal, and frontal lobes), fire much more intensely when they receive inputs from multiple senses at the same time and place.
***The Spatial Rule - Senses are integrated if they come from the same location (e.g., seeing a mouth move and hearing a voice from the same person).
***The Temporal Rule - Senses are integrated if they happen at the same time (e.g., hearing a thunderclap while seeing a flash of lightning).
***The Inverse Effectiveness Rule: Integration is strongest when individual senses are weak or blurry (e.g., relying heavily on lip-reading in a loud, crowded room).
**A continuous, interactive loop where recognition and multisensory integration constantly feed into one another makes sense of this integrated sensory input:
***Preliminary Feature Extraction - Before the brain can merge different senses, it must first do some basic "bottom-up" sense-making within each isolated channel. Eg The primary visual cortex identifies basic shapes and colors, while the primary auditory cortex identifies pitches and volumes. Your brain does not know ''what'' the object is yet, but it extracts enough basic features to realize that a visual flash and a loud boom happened at roughly the same time and place.
***Automatic Pattern Matching - Multisensory integration and the initial stage of making sense of an object happen simultaneously in the brain's association cortices. As the brain merges the sight, sound, and feel of an object, it triggers an automatic "Gestalt" binding. Eg, the texture of a dog's fur, the sound of its bark, and the shape of its body are pulled together into a single neural representation. Integration thus ''drives'' recognition. By combining the weak or muddy signals of individual senses into a unified whole, the brain instantly narrows down what the object could possibly be.
***Full Semantic and Emotional Recognition - Knowing the name, meaning, utility, and emotional value of what you are experiencing—happens immediately after multisensory integration is complete. The fully merged sensory package is sent along the "What" pathway (ventral stream) to memory hubs like the hippocampus and frontal lobes to provide conscious recognition. Your brain accesses its database, attaches a linguistic label ("that is my pet dog"), and triggers an emotional response (happiness or fear).
**The Ventral stream is concerned with recognizing objects:
***Signals enter the face and object Library (Inferotemporal Cortex / IT), which contains hyper-specialized modules, such as the Fusiform Face Area (FFA) for faces and the Parahippocampal Place Area (PPA) for scenes. Neurons here respond to whole objects, regardless of size, viewing angle, or lighting. The IT cortex constructs a highly detailed, 3D structural model of the stimulus.
***The IT cortex hands the 3D model over to the medial temporal lobe structures, the perirhinal and entorhinal cortices, which act as the final gatekeeper for object recognition. It compares the incoming 3D model against stored familiarity models and asks: "Have we ever encountered this specific combination of features before?"
***Once the structural model passes the perirhinal gateway, it simultaneously floods the Hippocampus and the Prefrontal Cortex (PFC):
****The Hippocampus provides semantic retrieval and epistemic binding via your:
*****Declarative memory networks - It cross-references the 3D model with your memories and retrieves the semantic facts associated with the pattern (e.g., ''"This object is fruit, it grows on trees, it is edible"'') and hooks into linguistic centers to retrieve its name (''"Apple"'').
*****Episodic memory networks - It retireves past personal experiences (episodic memories), such as the taste of a pie your grandmother baked, instantly giving the sensory object a rich, personal context.
****The prefrontal cortex is the executive seat of consciousness. It holds the object in working memory, allowing you to deliberate on it, and evaluates it based on your current internal state and goals. If you are hungry, the PFC registers the apple as an immediate food source and initiates motor planning to reach for it. If you are full, the PFC notes its presence but maintains your current focus..
* See:
** [[The Hidden Spring#10. Back to the Cortex|Mark Solms' The Hidden Spring]]
** [[Everything is Predictable#5. The Bayesian Brain|Tom Chivers' Everything is Predictable]]
** etc

== Thought ==

* Is there a difference between perception and thought

== The Self ==

* The self seems to emerge from the perception of

== Habit ==

* We are the results of our habits

== Memory ==

== Neurodivergence ==

* The term neurodivergent describes people whose brain differences affect how their brain works and is commonly used to talk about people on the autism spectrum or having ADHD or other conditions or disorders.
* But we are all neurodivergent in the sense that:
** Our genetic makeup has caused our brains to develop differently in utero, leading to us having certain predispositions to stimuli
** Our lived experiences from birth start to instill habits of perception in us
** Our embodiment and social situation has a great effect on how we experience things.

== Language Acquisition and Bilingualism ==

* When I acquire my first language (or my first languages, if I am being raised in a bilingual or multilingual environment), I am not only learning words but also the concepts that structure how my society and my immediate kin group and relations view the world. When I learn that "this is blue" or "this is a dog", I am learning not only the terms themselves, but also the boundaries of the concepts that these terms name.
* When I learn additional languages as a teenager or later, my concepts are already present in mind and my experience is more focused on acquiring new words that represent my existing concepts, though as my fluency develops, I may discover that the new language divides up experience in different ways.

Quotations

2026-08-16T15:31:00Z

Robert.adlington:

== Carl Jung Quotes ==
<dpl>
namespace = 0
titlematch = %
include = #jung_%
mode = userformat
format = ,²{#if:%SECTION%|* [[%PAGE%]]: %SECTION%\n}²,
</dpl>

Quotations

2026-08-16T15:29:57Z

Robert.adlington:

== Carl Jung Quotes ==
{{#dpl:
| namespace = 0
| titlematch = %
| include = #jung_%
| mode = userformat

| format = ,{{#if:{{#lst:%PAGE%|jung_symbols}} | * [[%PAGE%]]: {{#lst:%PAGE%|jung_symbols}}\n | }},
}}