John Vervaeke: Awakening from the Meaning Crisis - Ep. 8 -The Buddha and "Mindfulness" & Ep. 9 - Insight

Optimising attention, insight, concentration, Buddah. Modal confusion, the having mode & being mode, and how they have been hijacked in many ways by the attention economy latterly, and previously and currently by marketers. The episodes also cover; cognitive unison and meditation. The cognitive understanding of the processes as well as the spiritual/ephemeral (bad words, but the best we have). There is also some really good descriptive language on the techniques for mediation from a psychophysiological perspective. Or put another way: if you struggle to understand the mechanics of meditation and the point of it, you will find some understanding here, and in doing so will, if you so wish be able to engage with the process without thinking those immortal words to yourself “What the fuck am I doing.”

These two episodes really need to be seen back-to-back and a few times. There is a great deal of information here. Personally, I need to go back and watch them all over again one after the other. I have had at least three weeks when fitting in time for these videos has been lacking, due to a myriad of reasons.

The reason for watching these episodes back-to-back is that they are actually easier to digest as a whole, rather than as two separate entities. And clearly, once you have a good grasp of the concepts, mechanics and structure, you will be better prepared for the next episode which covers consciousness. 

Middle East: Peace Beckons | David Friedman | Jordan B Peterson Podcast S4 (2022) : E279

A fascinating hour and twenty minutes that not one word is heard about in the mainstream/legacy media. There is real hope that the Middle East which I have never heard a good word about in my fifty-odd years of watching the news, is on the verge of widespread peace.

Cometh the Horsemen: Pandemic, Famine, War | Michael Yon and Dr Jordan B Peterson

Let's hope that they are delusional and wrong, as they hope they are too. If they aren't, then the last three to six years would be nothing compared to what could materialise at the upper end of the spectrum, and even the better end of the spectrum is pretty terrible. And that the pretty terrible aspect is already baked in, because of the previous two years is very disconcerting. 

This is an uncomfortable watch, and you sit there thinking "naaa ya wrong, you're going too far, that won't happen." The problem being you have two expert observers with years of experience telling you stuff you want to be confined to the make-believe of dystopian movies. You decide what you think, and in the future we will have the observation data that will bare out what is said or allow us a look back and think "thank fuck they were wrong."

Marine cranes “Gulliver” and “Rambiz” in Bridgwater Bay.

Marine cranes “Gulliver” and “Rambiz” in Bridgwater Bay to lower the intake heads for the new nuclear power station Hinckley C. Gorse, Heather, Horse fly bites, and self-pruning of leaves by trees in localized drought conditions.

Burnham-on-sea.com/news

John Vervaeke, Ep. 7 - Awakening from the Meaning Crisis - Aristotle's World View and Erich Fromm

Having mode and Being mode, existential confusion, via Aristotle and others. This episode moves us towards mindfulness and how "Having mode and Being mode" have in some ways been weaponised (I don't think that's too strong a metaphor) to make us seek meaning in things. This episode is getting into the granularity of "us" and how we have lost sight of how great thinkers and philosophers in bygone times laid the foundations for the process of civilising ourselves and looking beyond brute survival to satisfy our Having Needs and our Being Needs without out confusing the two (see line one above).