Axioms and Observations

A look at the world through the eyes of a 20-something Law Student

[axiomaticabsurdities]

Falling from a High Place

What is anger without passion?

What is love without feeling?

A man can, in his fashion.

But what is life without meaning?

[axiomaticabsurdities]

Fantastic lecture, very lucid and considered. A wonderful audiobook that I would recommend highly.

[axiomaticabsurdities]

What To Do?

I was sitting at my dinner table, green tea & ginger in an warm mug and my kindle sat before me. 

I had stopped reading.

A malaise had come over me, having started not a few days ago I know.

It had started with a video – a document short to be precise – whereby a reporter flew over the barren stretches of Greenland, pointing to the bare rock and rough grasslands reaching from horizon to horizon. 

“All this was ice last year, part of the glacier now a few kilometres away” he declared sadly through the static of a headset and steady whoomp whoomp of the rotator blades. The ice cap, it turned out, had lost nine metres due to melt in the last year.

My roommate had commented only the night before how, in Spain, they hear about global warming as much as we do, but “it is always hot in the south of Spain, so…” he shrugged. He had spoken to a few Danish fellows at the university who had commented that they were upset as this had been their first Christmas without a drop of snow.

A tear came to my eye then. The realisation was profound and horrifying. I had grown up with many a white Christmas back home, but hadn’t seen more than four days of snow in the last six years.

“Six years…” I said aloud, just to hear the words myself.

And yet, each year we decorate our homes and buy cards with snowy motifs as if a sad reminder of what used to be. 

My mind turned then to the generations of others who would come after us, who would know nothing of the profound change – of what we had done to ourselves and our planet.

I sat staring at my cup. It grew cold in my hand before I took another lethargic swig.

“What to do, what to do…”

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Musiks – Rhinestone Eyes, Gorillaz

[axiomaticabsurdities]

It is often said that before you die your life passes before your eyes. It is in fact true. It's called living.

Terry Pratchett

[axiomaticabsurdities]

Do or do not, there is no try.

Yoda

[axiomaticabsurdities]

The Book List - Round Two

Feral - George Manbiot

Antifragile - Nassim Taleb*

Critical Mass - Philip Ball*

Letters from a Stoic - Seneca*

Meditations - Marcus Aurelius

Economics - Ha-Joon Chang

Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

The Joyous Cosmology - Alan Watts

Dreams - C.G. Jung

Woodsman - Ben Law

The Rise of Superman - Steven Kotler

Mastery - Robert Greene

The Green Self-Build Book - Jon Broome

Zero to One - Peter Thiel

The Rig Vedas - Various Authors, Penguin Classics (or other publisher)

[To be read in order and as an in-depth study into Taoist Alchemy]

Tao Te Ching - Lao Tzu

Chuang Tzu - Chuang Tzu

The Seal of the Unity of the Three - Author debated, Fabrizio Pregadio (Trans.)

Cultivating the Tao - Liu Yiming, Fabrizio Pregadio (Trans.)

The Tao of Tai-Chi Chuan, way to Rejuvenation - Jou, Tsung Hwa

The Root of Chinese Qigong - Dr. Yang, Jwing-Ming

[These are listed from oldest to newest texts - I would highly recommend reading them from new to old and back again or the inverse as each reading gives new meaning to the text before it...]

The Sacred Pipe - Black Elk

Black Elk Speaks - John G. Neihardt

What I Learned Losing a Million Dollars  - Jim Paul and Brendan Moynihan

The Book of Five Rings - Miyamoto Musashi

The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance  - Robert Pirsig

On The Road - Jack Kerouac

Bushido, The Soul of Japan - Inazo Nitobe

Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term Travel - Rolf Potts

*Excellent reads if read together! Wonderful melding of ideas and concurrent thought patterns...

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Theme Song - Darkside, Paper Trails

[axiomaticabsurdities]

The amplification of our lives by technology grants us a power over the natural world which we can now longer afford to use. In everything we do we must now be mindful of the lives of others, cautious, constrained, meticulous. We may no longer live as if there were no tomorrow.

George Manbiot - Feral

[axiomaticabsurdities]

Psychedelics are illegal not because a loving government is concerned that you may jump out of a third story window. Psychedelics are illegal because they dissolve opinion structures and culturally laid down models of behaviour and information processing. They open you up to the possibility that everything you know is wrong.

Terence McKenna

[axiomaticabsurdities]

Philosophical Philandering, or Psychological Progressiveness?

I came to a sudden and abrupt realisation not moments ago.

Some background for an idea of the forethought:

I have done many many things in my short 20-odd years, felt like I have lived many life times that took me from sea to sea and across the face of the planet, experiencing intense small happenings and large events on this earth.

My experience has a crippling downside - an innate explorer and curioso, but hampered by profound needs to see and know. Elsewhere.

So now:

Each time I have taken a huge turn in my life - reckless or courageous, both and neither - dropped everything and moved or taken great leaps in opposite directions (to the dismay of many). But I realise now that what had changed, what had spurred me to these things was not a latent need or want or depression (although that often came with it).

It was an immense change in my philosophy.

My personal philosophy and constant drive for perspective has been the most prevailing subject in my life. But the fundamental -enormity- of changes over the last 5 years has developed and moved drastically from my starting pointing.

A child of science (and always returning to it) but animistic in belief, 'Zaoist' (Zen and Taoist) in philosophical tendencies and shamanic in practice. This through a journey along Jung, Freud, Plato, Descarte, Heidigger, to the Middle-Eastern dogmas, South-American spiritualism, Australian animism and of course - Asia, Buddhism,Jainism, Hindu believes, Chan/Zen, Shintoism and Bushido.

So am I an ADD riddled weirdo, who can't sit still and flit from place to place? Or merely following the change in what I consider to be most important thing to me, that which surrounds my every moment?

Conclusion:

Both. Its definitely both.

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Melodic Noise Makings: Yoshida Brothers - Ibuki

[oupacademic]

For me, field work means going to a cafe, having a double espresso and thinking and writing some unreadable thoughts on scraps of paper.

Dale Jamieson has a very silly laugh. (via oupacademic)

Yes. Indeed.

[tipsforarchitectureschool]

Found this picture on one of my old hard drives. 

So good!! :) I wonder when schools will find out that these are far more important….

[axiomaticabsurdities]

Indeed!

[axiomaticabsurdities]

Person [pur-suh n]

Greek Origin: from per and sona - 'that from which comes sound' *originally a special mask worn in theatres to project sound across to the audience.

[axiomaticabsurdities]

Fantastic recording and lecture. It is by putting yourself in a philosophical and profound conundrum, they you can take the first steps to get out and look at what you are doing. And what is that? Is it good? Is it virtuous? Do you really enjoy it? I swear humans are the only creatures to get themselves caught up in their own minds and their own ideas and abstractions.

All we can really do is laugh :)

[vicemag]

The Tao of Terence: Beyond “Existentialism”

I learned of Terence McKenna (1946-2000) on September 14, 2012, when I was 29 years old. It was the day after I had completed the main final draft of Taipei, my first book to include psychedelics and which ends with a scene in which a character wonders if he has died after eating psilocybin mushrooms. I was in my room, zombielike and depressed after a period of time embodying a “whatever it takes” attitude regarding amphetamine use and completing my book. I had somewhat randomly clicked a YouTube video in which Joe Rogan (whom I was vaguely aware of as the host of Fear Factor, the TV show, a long time ago) was aggressively, excitedly talking about DMT, a neurotransmitter-like, illegal, psychedelic compound found in human (and other animal) brains and in at least ~50 species of plants worldwide. I did not have firsthand experience with DMT at the time, and had only read about it online.

At one point Joe Rogan began referencing someone in a “if you think I sound crazy, listen to this other guy” manner. He was talking about Terence McKenna, a person who would smoke DMT and, after ~15 seconds, without fail, find himself in an “unanticipated dimension” infested with “self-transforming machine elves”—also called “fractal elves,” “self-dribbling jeweled basketballs,” or “little self-transforming tykes”—that spoke English and a kind of visible language while jumping into and out of his body, “running around chirping and singing.” These entities, which McKenna described in a word as “zany,” were maybe either “dead people” in “an ecology of souls,” “human beings from the distant future,” or things with their own hopes, fears, problems that inhabit a parallel universe.

Continue

[axiomaticabsurdities]

Not all those who wander are lost

J.R.R. Tolkien

[axiomaticabsurdities]

Found this on the outskirts of the City - that's mcdonalds in the background. Made me laugh!

[axiomaticabsurdities]

Aquí, usaré Español (¡es necesario!) Una película muy muy importante, por la perspectiva. Precioso, profundo y espectacular. Antes, yo sabía casi nada sobre Ernesto Guevara. Pero ahora mis ojos es abiertos. El hombre de la medicina con un grande corazón. Viaje es un transformación para gente. Quiero viajar todo del mundo y hago un transformación para mi. (pero sin la motocicleta!). Por favor, ver esta película en Español (original) con subtítulos - original es mejor! Here, I will use Spanish (its necessary!)

A very very important film, for perspective. Beautiful, profound and spectacular. Before, I knew almost nothing about Ernesto Guevara. But now my eyes are open. The man of medicine with a big heart. Travel is a transformation for people. I want to travel around the world and make changes for myself. (but without the motorcycle!)

Please, watch this film in Spanish (original) with subtitles - original is better!

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Apologies for the awful spanish to those who speak it, but loving learning at the moment! Enjoy!