29 April, 2005

Babel: Castles in the Sky

I've been told that my speech is difficult to understand, and my posts are, in the best cases, obscure and cryptic. Pondering on the reasons of this I came to understand that I've build upon ideas on my own way, not only going further ahead, but also sideways. Jung, Campbell, Tesla, all Tzus (see? cryptic again, Tzu is "Master" in chinese, thou referencing to Lao Tzu, Mo Tzu, Kung Tzu...), Pirsig, Brucato (Mage: the Ascension developer) and the occasional Wachosky have made me look in different directions from mostly everyone else.

I've bee told to not mix work and life, to leave Procterian at Procter. But I just can't, although I don't like to mix my food, my brain is a totally different matter. I have to mix things up, since it's the only way I can find meaning for them, relating and comparing it's mandatory for me. That's why I can't stand dogma, that's why I talk about soap and Anima on the same sentence, that's why I can hear A-Teens on minute and switch to Marylin Manson withou flinching.

It's just so fun to use procterian on day-to-day basis...

So you see, after knowing, learning, understanding and comprehending ideas (more on that someday I talk to you about my take on the types of knowledge), I incorporate them in myself, thus forgetting most of the time about others who are walking different paths from mine.

This is my babel, my castle in the sky and I better step down before it crumbles (or at least to remember to leave it time to time).

Now let's talk about my ego...

28 April, 2005

Differences of opinions

Jung's disagreement with Freud started over the latter's emphasis on sexuality alone as the dominant factor in unconscious motivation. "Every form of addiction is bad," Jung later said, "no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol or morphine or idealism." Freud fainted twice in Jung's presence but the ties were broken with the publication of Jung's Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido (1912, Symbols of Transformation), full of mythological images and motifs, and with his acts as the president of the International Congress of Psycho-Analysis. In a letter to Freud he wrote: "If ever you should rid yourself entirely of your complexes and stop playing the father to your sons, and instead of aiming continually at their weak spots took a good look at your own for a change, then I will mend my ways and at one stroke uproot the vice of being in two minds about you." (Jung on December, 18, 1912). The end of his father-son relationship with Freud had a profoundly disturbing effect on Jung. He withdrew from the psychoanalytic movement and suffered a six-year-long breakdown during which he had fantasies of mighty floods sweeping over northern Europe - prophetic visions of World War I. His inner experiences Jung recorded in the "Red Book", illustrated with his own works in the art nouveau style. His first mandala Jung constructed in 1916. He interpreted the form as a symbol of the self, the wholeness of the personality.

Following his emergence from this period of crisis, Jung developed his own theories systematically under the name of Analytical Psychology. His concepts of the collective unconscious and of the archetypes led him to explore religion in the East and West, myths, alchemy, and later flying saucers. Jung gathered material for his studies by visits to the Pueblo Indians and the Elgonies in East Africa. Although Jung travelled quite extensively during his life, he never went to Rome. The omission was deliberate; he felt that the associations the place would evoke were too strong. When Jung visited New Mexico in 1925, one of the Publos told him: "The whites always want something; they are always uneasy and restless. We do not know what they want. We do not understand them. We think they are mad." In India Jung the Taj Mahal, and called it "the secret of Islam."
- from http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/cjung.htm

27 April, 2005

The Friend Zone

There's a space in relationships that geeks fear, a space of uncertainty, sadness and loneliness, this space is called:

The Friend Zone.

Today I hit the friend wall, I saw it coming, I saw the signs, I been there before, but anyway I went I knocked at it. I should have known better, but here I am anyway.

But since in the whole self-learning thing, I decided to learn from this, so since bullshitness and reclusion just got me a three-month obsession with a Swedish pop singer, I did something different this time:

I asked for some honesty.

I cut the flirting, the innuendo, the insinuation and the outright lying and went for the throat, I directly asked for a response, not a sign, not a "you should understand if I do this", not a quick change of topic, not a nice letdown, specially not a nice letdown.

I think I deserve it (even if I don't).

Let's see where this takes me, I don't expect much, neither should you.