New blog post up (Sept 1)

[82_28]

I have gotten a number of mentions of "fantastic" and "awesome", not to mention just pure excitement that you had written again, in that ill described place these days between meatspace and social networking, you know -- over email -- from people I have turned on to you, lurk and then tell me about it. That was a most fabulous write-up.

You're amazing, Jeff. . .

Thanks for writing an essay again to be read. I need to read it another five or six times to let it sink in. But that was just an amazing tour through our shared brains.

I gotta lot of work to do, but I have some other thoughts -- not that anyone should care. I just wanted to chime in and say "fucking awesome".

Nobody can do it like you do, Jeff!

[8bitagent]

I have gotten a number of mentions of "fantastic" and "awesome", not to mention just pure excitement that you had written again, in that ill described place these days between meatspace and social networking, you know -- over email -- from people I have turned on to you, lurk and then tell me about it. That was a most fabulous write-up.

You're amazing, Jeff. . .

Thanks for writing an essay again to be read. I need to read it another five or six times to let it sink in. But that was just an amazing tour through our shared brains.

I gotta lot of work to do, but I have some other thoughts -- not that anyone should care. I just wanted to chime in and say "fucking awesome".

Nobody can do it like you do, Jeff!

I definitely been linking this article to people. I love how Jeff doesn't even mention 9/11 or any of the shit going on...as ultimately, we're six dimensions past that with what's going on.
At almost 34, I sadly could barely wrap my head around some of this...I guess a sign of how dumbed down I've become.

Btw, 82_28, you're one of my absolute favorite writers on here...while I love the more laid back writing people do echoing Mckenna, I love your punk rock style of writing...raw, unfiltered, un spelling corrected, fuck heavy rants. Do you have a regular blog?

[8bitagent]

dubstep "music"

C'mon now - what's wrong with dubstep? It seems like a perfectly servicable artform to me, even if it does lend itself to the robot.



Please don't use quotemarks against it. You sound like my dad talking about punk.

Well I mean, I often poke fun of or highlight things I'm apart of like everyone else. I go to electro clubs all the times with friends, I'm on facebook more than I should. I always have my smart phone on me ready to text respond, and I have spent a lifetime looking at random youtube videos.

I guess if I'm gonna check out dubstep, it's gonna be the apocalyptic kind:)

[Joe Hillshoist]

For some reason reminds me of this:



And obviously its the sort of thing you need to read several times before you can process it ll.

[82_28]

I have gotten a number of mentions of "fantastic" and "awesome", not to mention just pure excitement that you had written again, in that ill described place these days between meatspace and social networking, you know -- over email -- from people I have turned on to you, lurk and then tell me about it. That was a most fabulous write-up.

You're amazing, Jeff. . .

Thanks for writing an essay again to be read. I need to read it another five or six times to let it sink in. But that was just an amazing tour through our shared brains.

I gotta lot of work to do, but I have some other thoughts -- not that anyone should care. I just wanted to chime in and say "fucking awesome".

Nobody can do it like you do, Jeff!

I definitely been linking this article to people. I love how Jeff doesn't even mention 9/11 or any of the shit going on...as ultimately, we're six dimensions past that with what's going on.
At almost 34, I sadly could barely wrap my head around some of this...I guess a sign of how dumbed down I've become.

Btw, 82_28, you're one of my absolute favorite writers on here...while I love the more laid back writing people do echoing Mckenna, I love your punk rock style of writing...raw, unfiltered, un spelling corrected, fuck heavy rants. Do you have a regular blog?

That's a very nice thing to say, 8bit. And I, me you. But I did run a website for a bit but it's sadly all gone. I am, however one of the researchers and editors of www.classifiedhumanity.com (that's the only blog I contribute to now other than posting here).

Yet, since you asked, I once solely ran the "fabled" dunneiv.org. Long gone. Here's the wayback machine's first capture if you're interested. . .

http://web.archive.org/web/200306230231 ... nneiv.org/

Running that website along with a constellation of Seattle area gnosticish, peace blogs is how I ran into Jeff Wells. All in the power of the "blogroll". I now have many good friends due to simply starting that site in 2003 and how we found one another was, in today's parlance, totally organic -- just word of digital mouth. In other words, the algorithms back then were all ours, in our own heads and totally dedicated to the weird, but most importantly anti-war.

When I was introduced to Jeff's writing, is when shit changed for sure. I really hate to say it, as it comes off as pompous and I don't know whether Jeff would even appreciate me saying so, but Jeff's latest piece, the one in question, leaves me, in my own mind wondering where Jeff's mind ends and mine begins -- in my own mind. That is how powerful and utterly moving Jeff's efforts have always been. That is a mark of a great writer. I used to think that Jeff's writing and his insights and rigorous intuition were so powerful that they would be illegal in another time and place. And perhaps they will someday prove to be -- and they were once -- time does not pass. However, Jeff's mind is so goddamned honest, so fucking brilliant, that it has proven that the "legality" of thinking such thoughts doesn't matter. We must persist with the time we have been given. Jeff Wells does that and I have learned a great many things from him and by way of him and his philosophy of openness and fairness, I have learned so much from all of you as well, through the RI board.

Opensource thought with a view towards peace, freedom, spirit, fairness and justice hopefully will one day take hold. Not today, but we are giving it our effort. However, it's all in the effort, as far as life itself goes. There are no shangri las unless we cease imagining and allowing others and encouraging others to do the same in an unfettered environment where all are protected by the community. That is RI.

Hat's off, Jeff and all the rest!

[justdrew]

FYI... see this movie...

[bks]

Jeff appears to have a reader in Tibor Machan. From the comments:

Tibor said...

I am just commenting on the alleged link between Ayn Rand and Herbert Spencer. It doesn't exist. There is no evidence of Rand having even read Spencer. In any case, Rand's is a normative defense of individualism, having nothing to do with evolutionary theory (though it doesn't conflict with it). Rand's predecessors are Aristotle and John Locke. (For more, check my book, Ayn Rand [Peter Lang, 2001].)
9/01/2011 10:12:00 AM

Anonymous thirtyseven said...

The link is normative, not formative. Spencer made Rand's particular brand of sociopathy seem rational - he prepared the ground.
9/01/2011 10:39:00 AM

[Jeff]

Jeff appears to have a reader in Tibor Machan.

I'd be shocked if he was a regular. He was probably drawn by this:

In his introduction to Spencer's The Principles of Ethics, Libertarian academic Tibor R Machan explains that "what Spencer did for libertarianism is what Marx did for communism - provide it with what was to be a full-blown scientific justification, on the model of proper science prominent in his day." Without Spencer, Ayn Rand might be best known, if at all, as a pedantic hack with a pathological crush on serial killer William Hickman. ("A wonderful, free, light consciousness.... He does not understand, because he has no organ for understanding, the necessity, meaning, or importance of other people.") Without Spencer or Rand, John Stossel might be just another selfish prick talking shit to his drinking buddies, rather than "Americas favorite investigative reporter." ("We grow up learning that some things are just bad: child labor, ticket scalping, price gouging, kidney selling, blackmail, etc. But maybe they're not.") Without the easy victory of these sociopathic influences, we might merely be living in an oligarchy. As it is, welcome to the sociopatholigarchy.

And thanks all for your critical reading and kind words.

[Seamus OBlimey]

11,000 words!? Oh well, I suppose I've got all weekend...

Nice start tho

[overcoming hope]

Jeff,
Thank you for the new post. Out of curiosity do you read more fiction, or non-fiction, and do you wish you read more or less of either?

[Stephen Morgan]

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.
-- HP Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu

[Jeff]

Jeff,
Thank you for the new post. Out of curiosity do you read more fiction, or non-fiction, and do you wish you read more or less of either?

Almost exclusively non-fiction, and not enough. Though maybe stylistically I'm still a novelist.

[gnosticheresy_2]

Firstly, thanks Jeff. You are, after all, the reason we're all here. And I like the contextual style - maybe that suits what you were getting at here:

We know well enough now, by study and experience, how the Web's interruption system impairs focus, and compounds the cognitive switching cost of our online distractions

The only way out is up a level and broad in scope. I'm not so pessimistic though, I think we're experiencing a change in consciousness similar to our shift to the bicameral mind 3k years ago, which was brought on by stress, so it's not all going to be fun

dubstep "music"

C'mon now - what's wrong with dubstep? It seems like a perfectly servicable artform to me, even if it does lend itself to the robot.



Please don't use quotemarks against it. You sound like my dad talking about punk.

Someone mention dance music? must...resist...urge...to...derail...thread

[operator kos]

Quite a trip as usual. A poetic restatement of many things that have been on my own mind lately. Enjoyed learning about the Aquatic Ape Theory, which I hadn't heard of before. Are you still selling autographed books? I still don't have one I'm afraid.

[Skunkboy]

Jeez Jeff... I was going to submit a post this week and ask when/if you were ever going to post something. I'm glad I procrastinated.


Nordic said:

this President too is a Celebrity Apprentice to the Criminals Without Borders

I just got to there, and had to come running over here and tell you that I have a serious man crush on the mind of Jeff Wells.

Or maybe I was just distracted.

ditto that


82_28 said

When I was introduced to Jeff's writing, is when shit changed for sure. I really hate to say it, as it comes off as pompous and I don't know whether Jeff would even appreciate me saying so, but Jeff's latest piece, the one in question, leaves me, in my own mind wondering where Jeff's mind ends and mine begins -- in my own mind. That is how powerful and utterly moving Jeff's efforts have always been. That is a mark of a great writer. I used to think that Jeff's writing and his insights and rigorous intuition were so powerful that they would be illegal in another time and place. And perhaps they will someday prove to be -- and they were once -- time does not pass. However, Jeff's mind is so goddamned honest, so fucking brilliant, that it has proven that the "legality" of thinking such thoughts doesn't matter. We must persist with the time we have been given. Jeff Wells does that and I have learned a great many things from him and by way of him and his philosophy of openness and fairness, I have learned so much from all of you as well, through the RI board.

ditto that also.

Jeff, thank you. You've been greatly missed.