If you are not paranoid, you are not aware.
By Clif High - February 9, 2024
Why am I so special?
So my email contained this notice from twitter that I had fucked up:
Following the instructions, the offending tweet that had broken the terms of service agreement was deleted. It had simply said that having died from colon cancer, and knowing it to be one of the most painful ways to live and die, it would be something that king chucky deserved (the suffering).
At the time, I pondered its potential to be misunderstood as the intent was to point to chucky deserving pain and suffering. And, it was wrongly understood by the algo, and my account was locked.
The account was actually suspended, for a week to several months. The notice on the account said that this was a particularly egregious Xcrime in that there was harm wished on another human.
No bitching here. I did it, so am prepared to do the time. Ok, my account was suspended. I go off to other things. Pondering the ways of management at X/twitter, and the ideas around ‘punishment’.
One of the other things was to watch the latest Dark Horse podcast by my archetypical normie academics, Brett Weinstein and Heather E. Heying. In this episode, #211, Brett is wrestling with the issue of being called out as ‘controlled opposition’. He is struggling with the ‘no win’ position that he is in relative to his detractors out in the Woo. There is no way, ever, that he can prove he is not controlled opposition. Along the way he brushed up against the cause of his situation, his own, unfortunate, choice of words in his Tucker interview. Though he does not name names, the cognoscenti of the woo world can guess who’s videos he’s been watching. Poor bastard. It’s a real shock to Brett, and to some extent, Heather, as they are not experienced with ‘reputation attacks’. People play nice, according to rules, in the academic world, their environs for most of their adult lives, and are supposed to attack your position, your reasoning, and conclusions, not your motivations.
But they are attacking Brett’s motivations, claiming him to be part of a controlled opposition network (which does exist, and is growing), and Brett finds these forms of attack unsettling enough to spend a good portion of their last few podcasts on his response. Again, even he is noting that it is a futile effort, at best, and at worse, may even contribute to future problems.
Personally, my take is that Brett does not exhibit the personality traits of a controlled opposition agent. Yes, he could, unknowingly, be part of such a network, as his point of view is restricted to those things from his eyes forward, and thus, most usually, does not see himself within the POV. That is, while his thinking is rigorous, and his conclusions (mostly) valid, there is little evidence that his thinking takes in his own awareness and mind, into his analysis. He is not, like 99% of all humans, self-examining.
If one does combat sports, one learns to be self-examining. It starts with analyzing your performance on specifics of the art, and why your efforts failed in the particular, thus causing you pain, but to those minds accepting of the process, the art of self-examining (of one’s mind/awareness) proceeds to ‘evolve’ fairly naturally. My experience with combat arts began at age 10. Such a long time working on it, builds acumen in the process, as well as skills, and a base of experience.
The self-examining mind does well swimming in the Woo, even diving down into the deep end where the bottom of the woo-pool disappears…
Starting so late in life, Brett will encounter very difficult masses of mental ‘crud’ to shift. IMO, as an expert in this process, he will have heavy lifting to do, BUT, first he has to have the ‘shock of the new’ that causes him to become aware of the process, now on-going, in his mind. He will have to shift his self-awareness outside himself, and his actions, in order to include them (his actions, mind, behavior, awareness) in his view, and thinking. This is very difficult, and I wish him well, and progress on this task. It will completely alter his life, and all his relationships. I am watching for signs of his progress in the ‘evolution’ (yes, I love that damn pun with Brett as a subject) of his mind, and skills at self-examination.
The point of being self-examining is to create an awareness profile that includes itself. That is, your awareness not only needs to monitor your actions, your behavior, and your words, but it has to monitor itself, in real time, as it is monitoring the rest of Universe, and the Woo, including itself.
Such self-awareness is a lot of work in the beginning. This is the phase that Brett is at now, he is starting to see himself being reflected back, in its own, always, distorting, always enlightening way, by the Woo.
The Woo always brings it back. The Woo is your personal "yamabushi" or "tokuso." In a Zen meditation session, at your zendo, (the place where the ‘way’ is practiced) this guy, usually an advanced meditator with real skills, is responsible for maintaining discipline, and alertness among the meditators. He carries a stick called a "keisaku" or "kyosaku." that is used to provide a sharp strike to the shoulders (you are wearing your gi so it takes some effort to strike through the thick cloth) that is to bring your awareness back to that instant, this ‘now’. The act of receiving a strike from the keisaku is considered a form of encouragement and is not meant to be punitive. It is used as a tool to help practitioners overcome fatigue or mental distraction and deepen their concentration in meditation. The Woo, being your reflection within our common, shared, reality, is always on point, and provides exactly the strike you need to receive at that moment in your experience of our shared Now.
So my awareness, long trained to the Woo reflection, notes that my X/twitter account is restored after only one, partial day, even though it was quite legitimate in that the tweet did violate their terms. Hmmm? Says the trained paranoid awareness on encountering this latest reflection from Universe. What makes me so special. First it was to be a week (potentially months), and now? What’s changed? What is burbling up in the Universe, unseen, yet, that is coming my/our way?
To bastardize Suzuki, “zen mind, paranoid’s mind”. Or big ki forward, with awareness set to WTF level...
However difficult, even laborious, this period will be for Brett, at least there is the saving grace, that, so far, he is not wrestling with being a clone...
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