The task is simple. Tell me what career’s you would like to have if you lived three lives. It does not matter if you possess the skill or talent for your desired career, follow your heart and tell me what you would like to do. Here are my three lives….

Music.  I can’t think of anything quite like the feeling of playing in an orchestra, and even though I gave up any hope of this dream being a reality a few years ago it’s still something I’d love to do.  I don’t think my tastes in music have changed fundamentally from when I was much younger, so I’d still stick with strings.  Part of it is the unbelievable effect that music has on me; people who wield that subtle power will always be an inspiration to me, no matter how stupid or naive that is.  To be part of the one thing I hold most dear would be exactly what I’d do with a second life or two.

I like this question because it doesn’t specify whether you change subtle parts of your own life or re-imagine a whole new life to be born in to.  I imagine most people will make an assumption about the question without even thinking about it; I did, Kayley did.

I’m not sure if there’s anything in my own history that I’d change.  Sure, there’s a few things I wish didn’t happen, or happened differently, but there’s no single event inseparable from the whole which I could remove without causing permanent damage to my present self.  And my present self could be a lot worse.

One thing I would change: keeping my options open, in terms of career / academic expectations.  It’s one thing to know you can still change form your planned path, another to truly believe it.  So much unnecessary worry and just time spent thinking has been caused by not accepting life’s volatility.  Our interests and aspirations are to a large extent uncontrollable.  Message to younger self: Just accept straight away that your goals have changed rather than clinging on to your own projected model for the sake of reliability. It’ll fall apart sooner or later, might as well take control before it gets out of hand.

While I would also love to be an Auror from Harry Potter[...]

Yes, of course this as well.

The best fantasy career for me would be magician I think.  I’m thinking a cross between the magicians of D&D and those of Terry Pratchett.  A slightly less capable Wizard in other words.  I’d perfect some crazy invisibility spell and make money off sales on deviantart, using my invisibility to photograph people unobtrusively, perfectly.  Just think, you could stand in front of a couple with your finger poised on the shutter for 10 minutes.  In my mind this isn’t creepy…

Of course, there’s always the lighthouse operator.  I’ve linked to this comic before in this blog, but no matter.  It’s worthy of a double post :)

~

It doesn’t take a close friend to tell I suck at following through with projects. The way I see it, there are three responses to this.

1. Finish the damn thing; finish any outstanding projects as though they are ‘to-do’ items.
2. Stop trying to do different things…
3. Carry on; business as usual.

Even though I’ve pushed option one, I’m probably headed for 3…

I do plan on finishing that touch typing course eventually though, and doing parts 3 and 4 of the Alan Watts thing…hey this blog is still going after 18 months!

Anyway. C. I made a half-hearted attempt to learn Python a few months ago, following some huge book promising to be easier and more innovative than all the rest. Got a little bored of that by the time it started introducing variables.

I believe this time it will be different, though, because I’m more interested in learning at least the basics of programming and the course I’m on is considerably better.

It all started here…

I’m on lesson 30 at the moment, of about 130 so far with many more to come.

A comprehensive real-time course on programming for everyone from total beginner to experienced programmer.

The creator of this site is amazing, he explains things clearly and is focused on first-principles, something that always helps.  I’m a big fan of K.I.S.S. as well, and coding in C fits this system better than higher level languages like Python.

Anyway I’m not that far into the course yet, but it’s already been a lot of fun.  Here’s to hoping I have the wherewithal and determination to get far enough for another blog post to be necessary

~

~

It’s not so much looking at the keys which makes this frustrating, but the clumsy positions my hands sometimes get themselves into with the weird eight-finger technique I’ve stumbled upon.  It also takes a lot of concentration to decide the best way to type ‘Aesop’, whereas typing with some kind of formulated technique makes all words more or less as easy to type.  Handy if it’s important to keep your train of thought, for example when essay writing.

I’ve tried to learn how retrospectively, but it’s hard.  I tend to get stuck on letters like ‘e’ and ‘r’ which I’m used to using two hands for when in succession.

Anyway I thought I’d try again.  I didn’t think much of Mavis Beacon, and there’s a few online ones but they’re not so fantastic either.

So having settled with TypingMaster Pro, I did a quick test to measure my current error-prone keyboard bashing:

Duration: 5 mins
Gross Speed: 72 wpm
Accuracy: 90%
Net Speed: 65 wpm

I think it will take me some time to get higher than 70 words per minute with a new technique, but it will definitely be more accurate and less difficult.

If I can get typing to be mostly muscle memory, it will make essay writing and note taking much easier.

And damn my school(s) for not including teach us this in the first place!

Ben Wilson paints 2cm icons on pavements, using chewing gum as his canvass.

“I’m just going to keep going and see how far I get,” said Mr Wilson, who started his quest at the Hadley end of High Street, Barnet. “I use acrylic paint and varnish, then I’ve got a little burner to dry it. I’ve done different pictures: cups of tea, elephants, flowers. I do requests as well. Often I just draw whatever takes me on that day.”

[..]

“I’m not defacing the pavement, it is more sensitive than that. I don’t want to get in people’s faces I’m not a graffiti artist. You get so many reactions from people, their reactions are so different, but rarely are they negative.”
www.thisislocallondon.co.uk/news/topstories/556654.painting_a_gum_trail/

Jimmy O’Neill from Wigan happened to have his camera when he spotted the colourfully spotted pavements:

“I observed these blobs changing colour from white when it rained to sticky black almost moving blobs in the summer time”. But the work speaks best for itself. The following documentary was shot by University of Leeds student Mariel Kaplan:

A couple of photographers have compiled sets on Flickr, documenting some of Ben’s creations:

www.flickr.com/photos/stefz/sets/72157594196035794/
www.flickr.com/photos/rahid1/sets/286517/

Ben gets a kick out of being able to paint the streets free from criminal prosecution. Policemen peer disapprovingly over his shoulder in some Youtube videos, and he was probably picked up as ‘feel good’ end pieces in the mainstream media. But Ben takes his job seriously.

“I love people. It’s just a way of…um. We’re so… – It’s just sad in many ways, the times that we live in. I like to do something positive. [...]This one’s taken about 3 hours. If it’s a complex one it could take all day, 2 days, 3 days…”

Tim Adams writes eloquently about Ben in The Observer, but unless you’re particularly interested in the history of gum skip down to the paragraph beginning “John Carey, Merton professor of English at Oxford…”

I thought it might fun to try and answer them all in less than 160 characters.  Yeah I might need to work on my definition of ‘fun’…

~

If I borrow a million pounds am I a millionaire?
Everything devalues with time, including money.  Therefore ‘millionaire’ must refer to immediate access to funds, >1million.  So yes, you are.

If you were identified as being genetically inclined to do bad things should you be locked up before you do them?
Everyone is inclined to do bad things; they had to say ‘inclined’ because certainty implies a hard determinism, and places too much emphasis on genetics.  No.

If I say ‘I have a pound’ (because I felt a pound in my pocket) but when I take it out it’s actually a button, but then I found a pound (in another pocket), was I right or wrong in saying ‘I have a pound’ in the first place?
Question of semantics.  Depends on what you meant by ‘I have a pound’.  Better to ask; “What matters most, intent or interpretation?” They are both the same.

Could you invent a time machine that moved you forward in time at one minute per minute?
Time is an arbitrary measurement of causality.  Time travel means to subjectively  slow or quicken.  A machine which doesn’t change things in this way?  Toaster.

Does your dog/cat/horse love you the way you love it?
‘It’! No.  ‘ “I love you” is a clumsy shorthand for many things that I do not know how else to word’. Love is never the same, even if you happen to be a horse.

A wise man once said “Love, and do as you wish”. Would that be a good way to lead your life?
If ‘love’ equals compassion absolutely.  It’s not perfect, but morality based on compassion is fairly indisputable.  It’s not possible of course, rather an aim.

Could you pretend to love someone? If you were good at it, would they ever no you were pretending?
No and yes.  Let’s not cry deception though, but misjudgment. There isn’t much difference between the pretense and the actuality anyway.

What would be worse, a world without love or a world full of hate (or are they the same thing)?
Of course neither is possible, a world without love more so.  The hate will dissolve over time, but ‘nothing from nothing comes’.

~

This is getting boring.  The next 3 will be answered with (terrible) haikus

~

Could a fly cause an aeroplane to crash?
Wings beat on wings span,
Prismed clouds chop and flutter-
Bang, crash, “Hello John…”

Is there more future or past?
Sticky wax dribbles,
Melting today, maybe
Morning or evening.

Can you be ‘best friends’ with more than one person? If so, what is the maximum number of best friends you can have?
Monkey-sphere blossoms,
Facebook request accepted
Bored of your status.

~

The next section is disrespectful of the Zen Kōan tradition…

~

Can you have a friend you don’t like?
Every flower befriends bees and Victorian maidens.

Would you rather be a brave fool or a clever coward?
John Stewart Mill just wanted Socratic Capitalization; the fools and cowards outsmart, scare each-other.

Which is more important, being right or being nice?
A pretty cloud is both right and nice.

~

Bored.

~

Is a wooden table still a tree?
Insofar as I’m the sun, why naturally. But it’s so hard to see, we rarely feel like the air from which we come.  A little less collective scoffing is needed…

Apart from the issues of digital rights, the concept of the netizen also demands discussion of how national identity functions  online.  ‘Nations’ here can mean web communities, often under a single domain.  Let’s look at the Reddit community as an example.

What is reddit?

Reddit is a source for what’s new and popular on the web.
Users like you provide all of the content and decide, through voting, what’s good () and what’s junk ().
Links that receive community approval bubble up towards #1, so the front page is constantly in motion and (hopefully) filled with fresh, interesting links.

The website was created with the above description in mind, summed up by the title: “What’s new online!” But it’s not just a catchy name, a tool for accessing new information like Google.  Reddit can be described as a nation state because it has laws and law enforcement, referred to as rediquette; culture, demonstrated through memes, jokes and a dlaiect which is specific to the community; disparate communities within the reddit umbrella, i e. subreddits; and is both influenced and influences it’s neighboring ‘nations’.  More importantly though, its members frequently discuss what it means to be a redditor, and the various strengths and weaknesses of the community.

The most obvious difference between, say, Reddit and France is that you can’t live in Reddit.  Can you?  I think the creation and development of internet usernames creates a new sort of citizen.  When we speak of netizenship, who is it we refer to, the person behind the computer or the person online?

~

When you see a flower in a field, it is really the whole field which is flowering.

The flower couldn’t exist in that particular place without the special surroundings of its field. You only find flowers in surroundings that will support them. So in the same way you only find human beings on a planet of this kind, with an atmosphere and temperature supplied by a convenient neighboring star.

Just as the flower is a flowering of the field, I feel myself as a peopling of the whole universe.  In other words, I seem like everything else.  To be a center – a sort of vortex – at which the whole energy of the universe realizes itself and comes alive.  A sort of aperture through which the whole universe is conscious of itself.  In other words I go with it as a center to a circumference.

Five windows light the cavern'd Man; thro' one he breathes the air; Thro' one, hears music of the spheres; thro' one, the eternal vine Flourishes, that he may recieve the grapes; thro' one can look.

You know astrologers, in theory at least, may not be so far wrong.  In trying to draw a picture of a human mind or soul, they drew a very crude map of the whole universe, centered on the time and place of the birth of that particular person.  It’s not a bad idea, but I don’t think the astrologers know how to read their maps, because the maps are too crude. But the essential point is obvious – that each one of us, not only human beings but every leaf, every weed!  – exists in the way it does only because everything around it does.

In other words, there’s a relationship between the center and the circumference, which is rather like the relationship between the poles of a magnet – without the center no circumference, without the circumference no center.  And although we say of poles that they’re ‘poles apart’, there’s something between them, just as the north and south poles of a magnet are united by the magnet. So, the individual and the universe are inseparable.  But the curious thing is, why that’s rather easy to see in theory, very few people are aware of it in an important strong way like one is aware of blue in blue sky. Or the heat in fire.  Its more an idea than it is a realization.

"The unattainability of that becoming one, the inadequacy of his own I, is the perpetual source of man's dissatisfaction and pain." ~ Tarkovsky, 'Sculpting in Time', p. 37.

And so, it struck me more and more, that our failure to feel at home in this astonishing brain which we live, is the result of a basic initial mistake in our thinking about the world.  This is in turn the cause of what is beginning to look like the failure of our technology – of the fact that everything we’re doing to try and improve the world was a success in the short run, made amazing initial improvements, but in the long run we seem to be destroying the planet in our very efforts to control and improve it. And it struck me that this is because we are really too simple minded, to understand what we’re doing when we interfere with the natural world strongly and on a vast scale.

"The world's mega-cities are merging to form vast "mega-regions" which may stretch hundreds of kilometres across countries and be home to more than 100 million people." ~ The Guardian, March 22 2010.

We don’t really interfere with it, because that would suggest we’re something different from it, something outside.  But, i think what we’re doing is we are understanding it.  We are understanding it in terms of languages, numbers…in terms of a logic which is too simple for the job, too crude for the job.

To begin with, we understand everything in terms of words and numbers.  They’re stretched out in rows and lines and our eyes have to scan those lines in order to understand them.  But when I scan this view, I dont do it line by line by line, I see the whole thing at once.  I take it in, as it were, as a wide-angle lens.  But when I try to understand the world through literature and mathematics, I have to scan lines.  That’s why it takes us so long to get educated in schools, because our minds have to scan and organise miles and miles of print.  But life happens, changes go on too rapidly for that.

You see, in the world everything is happening all together everywhere at once.  And meanwhile we with our myopic little minds are working it out step by step.  Of course we are greatly assisted by the rapidity of the computer, but even so the computer is still looking at things in rows, it’s still all going along in a single track.

We have lamentably one-track minds, in an infinitely many-track universe.

We may have to come to the alarming conclusion that the universe is smarter than we are.

—

It’s astonishing – all this is only 20 or 30 minutes from the heart of San Francisco:

Light strikes through the trees in Muir Woods

Not a human habitation in sight. I’ve been living out here for some months, to write and to absorb an atmosphere that is different from the city.  To try and find out: “what is the essential difference between the world of nature and the world of man?”

There’s an obvious difference, like the difference of artistic styles.  No one would confuse a painting by Leonardo with a painting by Picasso, or music by Bach with music by Shostakovitch!  In the same way there seems to be a complete difference of style between the things that human beings do and the things that nature does, even though human beings are themselves part of nature.  Nature is wiggly!  Everything wiggles – the outlines of the hills, the shapes of the trees, the way the wind brushes the grass, the clouds, tracks of streams – it all wiggles.

For some reason or other we find wiggly things very difficult to keep track of.  And you know we say to people: “keep still so I can see you!” “Keep still for the camera”.  And we say, “well let’s get things straightened out”, “let’s get this ironed out”, “lets get it all squared away”.  Somehow we think we understand things when we have translated them into terms of straight lines and squares.  Maybe that’s why we call rather rigid people square ^_^.  But it doesn’t fit nature.

Prickles & Goo; Classicism & Romanticism; Thinking & Feeling

You know, wherever human beings have been around and done their thing you find rectangles.  We live in boxes. Our streets – especially across states like Kansas and Nebraska – are laid out in a grid pattern.  Why, they even dropped a grid pattern on top of San Fransisco!  With all those hills, so that cars run away….

It seems that the human being really has a very simple kind of mind, and all this wiggliness is too complicated.

I don’t think it really is complicated, because after all it’s very simple to move – say to raise something or open and close your hand – is perfectly easy, because we don’t have to think about it.  Things become complicated only when we think about them.  And that’s because we translate them into a form of life which is very much simpler and cruder than the forms of life we’re talking about.  A triangle is very much simpler and cruder than a mountain – even though you may represent a mountain with a triangle.  Human beings are just as wiggly as nature, and our brains are an incredible mess of wiggles!  And that’s the part of ourselves that we understand least of all.

Natural human geometry.

I’m afraid the problem is partly due to Mr. Euclid who invented geometry, because he didn’t really measure the earth.  He measured and gave us ideas about the very simple forms in his own mind.  Perhaps we should come to the conclusion that he really had a rather weak intellect. Because sometimes, when I’m in the middle of all this, I feel as if I were in the middle of an amazing brain. The brain is a network of interconnected neurons – and each one of those neurons is a fairly simple affair, because it either fires or it doesn’t fire.  But, what we call things – the plants, birds and trees – are far more complicated than a neuron, and there are billions of them all living together in a network.  For example, as there is an interdependence between flowers and bees they must really be one organism.  And so in the same way, everything in nature depends on everything else; everything is interconnected. The many, many patterns of interconnections are locked in all together to form a unity.

However, this unity is very difficult for us to think about except in crude ways. But I am part of all this.  I am, as it were, one of the cells in this tremendous brain which I cannot understand, because the part cannot comprehend the whole.

Yet at the same time I don’t feel – like so many people seem to feel – like I’m a foreigner or a stranger in this world.  Its aesthetic forms somehow appeal to me more than most of the aesthetic forms which men produce.

"What, then, is this blue sky, which certainly does exist, and which veils from us the stars during the day? ... And yet this dome does not exist. In a balloon, I myself have risen higher than where the Greek gods were supposed to live without getting to this point, which of course disappears at the same rate in which we approach it"

“Are you progressive or conservative?”
I choose not to think about it.
“Why are you wearing that?”
I don’t know; fashion doesn’t concern me.  Cause it’s comfortable, idk…

I wonder if I’m making a mistake.

It’s impossible to choose freely what to wear, who to ‘be’.  Because every day we stand, walk, talk and act in ways which are patterned from some personal or culturally imposed decision.  So when I say “I don’t decide to act in a masculine or feminine way”, all I’m really doing is ignoring the pre-made decision.

In other words, if you are blind to the distinctions of performance, you are not free but merely unaware of your own entrapment.

~

Of course my ignore-ance is not simply chosen out of personal philosophy – it’s also a lot less scary if you take much of your personality and function as just ‘natural’.  We become free from responsibility. For if you accept the true extent to which our personalities are performative, you are confronted with an overwhelming multiplicity of choices!  All of a sudden even getting up in the morning becomes a tremendous mess of an affair.  The clothes I pick aren’t free from cultural assumptions because I’m not aware of those assumptions in the first place.

The truly free people must worry endlessly about what everything means and implies, before their freedom can be reached.

Perhaps you doubt ‘freedom’ as a concept, and suggest we are always subject to culture and influence. This is true in a way, but better to be aware of it!  At least then we can decide which bits of culture to accept, and which to rebel against.  The question is whether it’s possibly to become, over time, totally aware of all that we represent – not to other people, but to ourselves.  To clarify; the performance is not for the benefit of other people, it’s essentially a personal performance.  To understand “personal performance”, we must look at ourselves as defined by two processes, the ‘performer’ and the ‘critic’. The critic reacts to performance.  To be a balanced person is to perform to your own critic, to act in accordance with your own values.  To be true to yourself.

~

Back on track: That I am unaware of my own assumptions and judgments does not mean they don’t exist.

What happens if we begin to believe that? A flood of anxiety; we become petrified of everything, no longer able to trust out instincts.

The solution might be to become more aware.  To accept that i am no more ‘free’ from culture’s binding than your average hipster, is the first step, the revolution.  The second is a slow awakening, a gradual focusing of the world where I start monitoring my life. (If you are more emotionally developed than I, perhaps this is second nature.)  It sounds pretty unpleasant; a constant awareness of every action.  I guess that’s what results in social awkwardness.  But oh, it’s worth it in the end!  Because after some indeterminate amount of observation and understanding, the mess begins to pattern.

That pattern is culture.  Now the person who partakes in this journey has their own set of values, borne from society yet separate from it.

So we are each of us confronted with a choice.  To make do with the ‘one size fits all’ assumptions of others, or to tailor-make assumptions for ourselves.

So what are the differences between the two, and what are their respective merits and problems?
Personal morality;

• Requires time to mature – maybe the mistakes made during that development are ‘unacceptable’ – best to wear an ill-fitting shoe in the meantime, than forgo shoes altogether.
• Might suggest a world of anarchy, where no group can ever unite because of slight personal differences.
• Is however, the only real choice.

Nobody is happy with someone else’s decisions – equality cannot be maintained on any level whilst we accept that as premise.  The shoe will never fit.  Is it worth the self-sacrifice, to suffer from bad feet for the sake of easier shoe-making?  My own morality and politics suggests nothing is worth the sacrifice of individuality.

Morality from culture;

• Is more easily explicable and understood.

In other words, can be assimilated into a single person’s control and thesis.  The only system academics will ever accept is one which they mentally own – who would dare stand for a system they cannot understand?

This is why the fight against patriarchal totalitarianism – on a global political and personal emotional level – must be a fight against reason and understanding.  To understand something is to reduce it to an impositional framework of morality.

In accepting this, what results is a curious mentality which rejects any system that appears understandable. If this sounds stupid, think about it for a second: A political system should include everyone.  Therefore, belief in that system implies an understanding of each individual encompassed by it.  Do you claim to understand everyone?

~

Scientists say; “okay so we may be wrong in some respects, but it’s an improvement on knowing nothing at all”

All this talk of understanding and knowing is based on thinking.  Well how about a politics and philosophy based on feeling?  Is that a contradiction in terms?

To be really audacious; the enlightenment gave men freedom to think for themselves, what we need now is freedom to feel.

Because just as thinking was underestimated before – or seen as something only suitable for the upper classes, the men – now feeling has been neglected to ‘Art’, to ‘women’.

Nobody takes feeling seriously anymore.  Listen to a politician respond to natural disasters.  Their speeches have been carefully thought over, checked and approved and performed to the world.

“What’s the use in feeling bad about something?  What matters is action, to respond promptly and efficiently”
That practicality has its place.  At the moment, it threatens to consume everything.  Obama couldn’t stand up and cry as a political response – because this is “useless”.  Ahh, useless…

We truly are IF’s in an ET world.

Nevertheless, the nerdy “oh yeah I get it…” makes some of these fantastic.  They’re SO TRUE.

Introverts expend energy in social situations, as opposed to extroverts who are energized by them.  Connie spends a lot of time in isolation, and she quickly tires of Clifford’s company.

Intuition favors the future over the present, and tends to result in broad prospective theories rather than sensing what’s in front of their eyes.  Although she reacts against Clifford’s irritating stagnant intellectualism, her rebellion is one based in theory.  She postulates a world where people care less about words and more about sensation – itself a worded, abstract argument.

Feeling is opposed to thinking, and accounts for her boredom at the detached debates had by Clifford and his associates.  INFPs would sooner respond emotionally – feeling that it is more ‘true’ to the matter than dressing and “ravishing” it with words.

‘P’ stands for perception.  Connie doesn’t judge Clifford, instead chooses to try and work out why he acts in the way he does.  She is eventually sickened by her entrapment in Clifford’s ’soul’, but this decision is long in the making.

~

I was recently given an extensive description of the INFP personality type, from Lenore Thompson’s Personality Type: An Owners Manual.

In a show of introversion and egoism, here’s how accurately I think each point Thompson makes described my own experience. *gulp*

~

INFPs are the type of whom people say, “Still waters run deep”. Oriented by Introverted Feeling and extraverted Intuition, they’re both highly idealistic and quietly tolerant of others’ ideas.

Quiet on the surface, passionate within. Yeah sounds true. I see it as part defense – protect the emotion within with passivity – and part being non-judgmental. Wouldn’t want to reveal passions without being totally sure it’s genuine…

Although Feeling always determines a form of idealism, the values determine by Introverted Feeling are different from the Extraverted sort. Extraverted Feeling presides over social values – current ideas about how relationships in the communities are best conducted. Introverted Feeling determines subjective values – convictions about how life is best lived.

Yes, I don’t really have opinions on the ‘best’ kind of social relationships. I often feel selfish, because I’m unable to really think (or feel, rather) about other people. I have to work from my own convictions outwards.

Such values are trained by direct experience of good and bad behaviors, and they claim us from within. But relationship gradually teaches us that some of them transcend our individual circumstances, linking us irrevocably with other human beings.

Absolutely. Specific events act as ‘case studies’ in developing inner moral frameworks. I’m not entirely sure what the second sentence means. I think it means that sometimes the values which we assume to be internal, end up being shared with another person and thus become detached from our own physicality – ascending into a temporal realm of morality. That sounds way too fanciful – but I think my meaning is clear.

Found in only 1 percent of the population, the INFP’s understanding of reality is quite nearly like the one described by mystics, who believe spiritual energy descends to earth by way of eternal ideals – structural patterns that bring order out of material chaos. By aligning their behaviors with these ideals, mystics can, presumably, bring life into harmony with its divine potential.

I love mysticism. I think it’s interesting how she links a mystical outlook with a mystical objective. 1) The world is constructed from spiritual patterns 2) Our task is to act in accordance with those glimpsed-at spiritual ideals. Sounds very Platonic. It’s the only method of describing the world which has any meaning to me as well, though I understand it’s flaws…

INFPs may not describe their approach in metaphysical terms, but it’s a rare INFP who doesn’t see in nature’s underlying pattern intimations of a larger purpose. Whether they write, teach, nurture, conduct research, make art, or devote their lives to spiritual service, their work becomes the agency through which they can grasp those “distant deeps and skies” in which “fearful symmetries” are framed.

Blake quote….ilu. So appropriate. It’s become almost taboo to speak of ‘larger purpose’ in pop-culture, because you get scorned as a ‘believer’ – one of those fools who thinks the bible is the literal word of God and they can’t see past their own noses, HAHAHAHA….. *sigh*

INFPs yearn to experience oneness with their circumstances, but Intuition prevents them from satisfying this longing as ISFPs do, by losing themselves in a physical activity. Intuition doesn’t push INFPs to act. It pushes to interpret; to see the potential of their thoughts and behaviors in terms of their ideals.

Interesting comparison with INSP – i think this sheds light on the almost arrogant “still waters run deep” comment earlier. There’s a conflict, because this visionary abstract world-view must be continually assessed. And yeah, I rarely feel pushed to act on a thought.

Because their ideals are holistic, INFPs feel responsible not only for their actions but for their desire to take action, and they have a nearly karmic idea of balance. If they betray their ideals in either deed or feeling, they try to make restitution. When good things happen, they may worry about paying a price.

This is extremely true. It’s not quite the same as guilt – which is how many people interpret this faculty I think. If i desire to do something which goes against a principle, that is almost as bad as the action itself. I would deny the concept of ‘Karma’ – because when it’s packaged as a word like that, we are trained to dissect it and pull it apart “like good students do”….but in fact I act as though Karma is law. Any happiness must be paid for with unhappiness, because both of these states are an imbalance. I don’t feel guilty for being happy though – more like, feel responsible for making other people feel as I do.

It’s instructive to compare these types to ENFPs, who share the same two functions but understand life very differently. ENFPs rely on Intuition to gauge the nature of an external context and Feeling to recognize the values of the people in it. The best illustration of how this works is President Clinton’s unrivaled ability to identify with an audience and sympathize with their aspirations. ENFPs generally believe that people will recognize their good intentions, even if their behavior falls short of them.

Not sure i know of any ENFPs.

INFPs approach reality from the other way around. Introverted Feeling prompts them to hold unconditional human values, and they use Intuition to figure out what that means in terms of their existential context. Asked whether he had ever had an extramarital affair, President Carter said no but allowed that he had experienced “lust in his heart.” This is quintessential INFP perspective. Such types feel responsible for their hidden intentions, even if their behaviors exceed people’s expectations.

This is perhaps the reason why I’m most reluctant to support MBTI – this whole typology thing. It paints a picture of INFPs being glowing saints of morality – when in fact I continually transgress morality in thought. It doesn’t even occur to me that some people only judge their morality by their actions, not their thoughts…

Given their focus on what it is to be human, INFPs are not always easy to recognize as types. Their outward behaviors vary widely. Some are reserved and prefer one-to-one conversations, but a surprising number of INFPs enjoy performing and may be singers, actors and comedians. In all cases, however, INFPs need a fair amount of time to themselves.

If I wasn’t so damn scared i think ‘d be capable of performing in that way. I think it would require more of a ‘Clintonesque’ ENFP type though than i possess.

Although they identify strongly with expressions of joy, sorrow, pain, and vulnerability in others and respond compassionately to people who need them, they’re accessible only up to a point. Once that point is reached, they’ve genuinely depleted their social capital and need to recoup.

I think this is true. The compassion and empathy is instinctive, but also energy-consuming. There comes a point when enough is enough, regardless of other people. Retreat!

It’s easy to misunderstand INFPs in this regard, because they relate to others in the same low-key, easygoing way that characterizes ISFPs. They’re often wry, and if they’re comfortable, they’ll contribute a running patter of perceptive remarks and observations. Thus, it surprises people when the INFP abruptly winds down and wants to be alone.

Another cool comparison – from what I’ve read, INSPs are actual ‘artists’ – who create the worlds they dream and sense. It’s frustrating when people get confused when you just want to leave and get away…..i love you all, just – yeah i just want to be alone after a while.

Moreover, these types are sympathetic listeners, genuinely interested in what others do and believe, which encourages people to anticipate a more extensive relationship than the INFP may have bargained for. Until they recognize what’s happening, INFPs may be constantly obliged to extricate themselves from situations they got into simply by virtue of warmth and goodwill.

I read this to a friend and couldn’t stop laughing. Oh, yes this has happened xD. I guess where most people would clearly decide not to interact or understand someone, it’s nice to empathize and feel for people….but no, no that does not mean we are friends :P

Along the same lines, these types have high romantic ideals, and express this aspect of their personality somewhat tentatively. This can lead people to believe they’re shy or not interested in physical intimacy. In actuality, INFPs long for communication of mind, body, and spirit, and they envision a partner who can appreciate the nature of their inner world and give them access to it in sexual terms.

I want to discuss this more on AVEN. I think this is perhaps one of the hardest sticking points in our society…..it’s heartbreaking to read magazines which use sex as just another method to judge and belittle people.

However, like all P types, they don’t want to set goals for their relationships; they want good things to happen naturally, to grow out of the situation as it exists. Moreover, their finely tuned Intuitive skills lead them to believe that the right person would see through all the surface nonsense to the inchoate potential within, read it in their body language, their musical tastes, the images that move them, the underlying meaning of their words.

This is not a good thing. Just ASSUMING that the other person should know innate personal details and preferences, and if they don’t they’re not worthy of a relationship. It’s not fair, and a little hypocritical. Still though, we can dream….

This ideal picture is also a consequence of their wholistic point of view. INFPs have a hard time articulating who they are inside, and they keep hoping the objective situation will give them enough reference points to express themselves in a way that feels true and right. Indeed, INFPs can have a hard time figuring out what they’re called to do in life.

I don’t think it means much to agree with this – having a hard time figuring out what you’re called to do in life is hardly an unusual problem for 19 year-olds…

Unlike Extraverts, whose primary self-image is tied up with their outward behaviors, INFPs may get at their self-experience only when it conflicts with their external choices. Even those INFPs who have plugged themselves into a career that allows them to do something meaningful and good may not feel sure they’re doing enough. They’re nagged by an impression that something else is supposed to happen, something that will tell them what they’re really meant to do.

Yep. Even on a short term scale, this is a difficult thing to come up against. Feeling happy yet expecting more, it’s like a greed of the soul.

Al Capp used to draw a syndicated cartoon called Long Sam, in which a grizzled, pipe-smoking mountain woman dispensed hard-won wisdom about life. When it came to human values, however, all she could say was, “Being nice is better – because it’s nicer.” INFPs can find themselves in the position of saying something very much like that when they try to articulate what they believe and why. Their values have no predictable reference points in law and social convention. They cut through all that to the heart of the matter.

I often get very hung up on trying to explain these inexplicable values – the problem is people aren’t happy with “just because”. I try, to whatever extent I can, to make the other person feel how i feel, so that they might experience the moral necessity better.

In order to actualize their certainties and ideals, INFPs generally find a place for themselves in the prevailing social system that allows them to focus on human potential. But given the fact that their values are more fundamental than institutional priorities, they’re constantly frustrated with the time and energy they spend on structural maintenance – society’s “edifice complex.”

My position on this is largely similar to Cook’s from Skins (Season 3, 4). “We don’t play by nobody’s rules, do we?” I’m probably a less moral person than someone who adopts the teachings of a government or religion, but I’m all for the enlightenment. It’s better to do a bodge-job of your own personal morals than blindly following someone else’s. And yes, there seems to be a disunity between that which actually helps the community, and actions which feel like they do moral justice.

So they’re in a quandary. Because, apart from jobs of this sort, they don’t have a clear idea of what it would mean to act on their values. The right-brain character of their Feeling goals suggest a life spent in pilgrimage, free from objective attachments – even a sense of home.

Absolutely. I wasn’t lying on Facebook, my life goal is truly to become a hermit. Pilgrimage sounds good though….unfortunately I don’t think my pathetic body would be up to the exertion.

And some INFPs do, in fact, give their lives to missionary work or the priesthood or a spiritual community. But most INFPs, by the time they’re wrestling with this question, have established a home and family and/or a place for themselves in the community, and they’re not inclined to hurt the people they love for the sake of an ideal they can’t quite define.

The problem with priesthood is that it entails belief in one of the big religions…and I’m not sure i believe in that. Maybe when I do, I’ll be one of those people who have too many dependencies to do anything about it….ahh well, what will be will be.

So frustration gradually pushes INFPs into using their Intuition defensively, to protect what feels like their “true” self against the imperfect outer situation they’re living in. They feel guilty about this, too, because they think they ought to be satisfied with what is, after all, a perfectly decent life course.

INFPs who are relying on their Intuition this way usually take one of two directions. Either they become permanent seekers – good at many things but disinclined to stick with any for long – or they become somewhat passive, unable to articulate what they want but dissatisfied with what they they’re doing.

Sometimes when I feel bad, it manifests in a total inability to express anything. I become so unsure of even the most basic assumptions that nothing is left. I don’t trust / believe in my ability to see things for what they are, so I lazily settle with “who knows? nobody knows, damn it all…” which isn’t good.

These latter types generally feel that they don’t have enough initiative, but they don’t get much accomplished apart from others’ routines and structural expectations. Left to their own devices, they tend to procrastinate or do unnecessary tasks to avoid more important ones.

Hehe….did someone say procrastinate? (Mind you, this epic post is being done after work, and before 9pm so there!)

When INFPs spend most of their energy protecting their inner realm from attachment to an imperfect outer situation, their least-developed functions, Extraverted Thinking, doesn’t get very conscious. Such types are often excellent at managing time and resources for others but have a harder time structuring and organizing their own lives. In fact, they may become romantically involved with a strong J type, who can anchor them to the objective world, but can’t provide what they actually crave: something to pull them to the surface of their own personality.

No comment?

INFPs need to use their Intuition in a genuinely Extraverted way. They’re accustomed to using Intuition to figure out how to deal with an existing context; they need to apply it, instead, to the task of defining what an objectively good situation would be like.

Righteyo. I haven’t reached that zenith yet. Sounds nice, having a clue what the hell might result from actions…where do I start?

This is by no means easy for INFPs to do. When they stop using Intuition to defend themselves, their first instinct is to assert the importance of their Feeling goals. They challenge people, question the aspects of the situation that strike them as problematic. This “feels” like Extraverted behavior, but it isn’t. Extraversion moves us to take the objective world for granted. It’s Introversion that strives to adapt the objective situation to itself.

Man, personal development is hard. When i have “really good weeks” this is what I do i think, become quite aggressive and challenging – assertive of feeling.

Meanwhile, the Extraversion these types actually require goes underground. Extraverted Thinking becomes so profoundly unconscious that it floods them with impulses directly opposed to their Feeling aims.

Eh? Examples, please……hmm. It’s definitely true that when i start seriously ‘getting things done’ in my life it is because i start trusting my intuition to tell me which is the best prospective plan. And yes, often this trust is in direct conflict with what i ‘feel’ is an approrpiate response.

Like all types, INFPs don’t recognize this internal pressure as an opportunity to grow. They feel the influence of their Thinking function, but they mistake it for an outward problem. They feel increasingly thwarted and boxed in, false to their real selves, and they’re sure the reason is their accommodating spirit. Thus, they go back to using Extraverted Intuition as a defense, but more aggressively, because the stakes are higher. They decide to fight some of the things that are hemming them in.

Boxed in, absolutely. It’s like something has taken over myself, something is controlling me and making me act in a bizarre assertive condition. I do try and fight this, it’s true. So what should I do instead? Allows the ‘other’ to possesses me, and take it as my own?

INFPs don’t like conflict, so their rebellion is often subtle and passive-aggressive in form. They grab their feet when someone pushes them to do something they don’t want to do, sometimes until the person gives up, or they “yes” people, then do as they like. None of this helps INFPs to find their own truth; it actually takes them away from the quest, concentrating their attention on all the wrong things.

Oh dear, many a time have i “yes”ed people only to do whatever…mm. And yep, I’m stubborn like that.

One might consider, in this respect, the characters in the movie The Big Chill – friends from the sixties who come together, twenty years later, for the funeral of their compatriot, Harold. Harold had been a role model for them, a free spirit guided entirely by Introverted Feeling ideals. His suicide makes them realize how far afield subsequent choices have taken them from the values he inspired.

Thus, they each attempt to prove that they’re not locked into the social roles that appear to define them: the unmarried lawyer decides to get pregnant; the upscale franchise king gives his friends illegal stock information; the society matron has an extramarital affair.

INFPs under the influence of Extraverted Thinking are not unlike these characters. They’re self-conscious rather than idealistic. Their actions aren’t being guided by an inner code, leading them to positive action, but by a need to defend themselves against others’ priorities.

I’ve lost track of thinking whether these feel specific to INFP or just generally true statements on personality….but oh my god yes, this is how i behave.

In fact, such types usually find that ignoring others’ expectations doesn’t give them enough protection, and they turn to Introverted Sensation, their tertiary function, to keep their Feeling values intact. They literally avoid situations that don’t accord with their primary self-experience, forfeiting relationships rather than experience inner conflict.

Yes – I’d sooner deny myself an opportunity or relationship than expose a value to scrutiny.

Ironically, the more unconscious Extraverted Thinking becomes, the more INFPs call attention to themselves in their attempt to keep their environment congenial to their values. Their objective preferences become idiosyncratic, forcing others into unusual accommodations in order to relate to them. Given the fact that they’ve projected their STJ impulses on to the impersonal structure of society, they feel morally vindicated. What can they do to change a whole system? What’s important is to be true to themselves; others have to take responsibility for their own choices.

I get like this in arguments, or when times are particularly bad (relatively speaking, as always).

It should be emphasized that INFPs aren’t wrong about this. They do need to be “true to themselves.” However, Introverted Sensation doesn’t help them do this. It keeps them locked into things as they are. It turns their ideals into an external value system that defines some situations as congenial to their needs and others not, leaving them no choice but to stay out of the ones that aren’t.

…

When INFPs develop sufficient Intuition, they stop focusing on things as they are and begin to see new possibilities for action. One might consider, again, the characters in The Big Chill. Among the mourners at the funeral is a young woman who was living with Harold when he committed suicide. She strikes the old friends as shallow, a silly adolescent, unable to appreciate who Harold really was.

I’m not there yet.

When INFPs first make contact with the Extraverted character of their Intuition, they see it in the same terms – as a shallow approach to life, without meaning. It invites them to give up their expectations, live in perceptual harmony with anything that happens. This strikes them as irresponsible. As the song says, “If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.”

Read some more Blake, maybe?

The more they wrestle with this perspective, however, the more they see that their values have nothing to do with their comfort or discomfort in any situation. They constitute a way of seeing life, a way of relating to any situation. When INFPs use their Intuition to figure out how to make this relationship manifest, they see that they have many options to take positive action.

To disassociate values from enjoyment or dissatisfaction with an event – yes, that’s where I want to be heading, my aims and the aims it outlines here are in alignment.

It may be noted that at the end of The Big Chill, one of the friends, the one who had been resisting a social definition, decides to help the young girl finish a house Harold has been building in the wilderness. This is the sort of thing that happens to INFPs who wake up to the wholistic nature of their inner life. They realize that being responsible to their values isn’t about fighting what exists; it’s about building, recognizing that they can do things, want to do things, that might not even occur to others.

Cool.

INFPs who reach this point don’t ignore the problems of society or betray commitments they’ve already made. They simply play from their strengths. For example, an INFP social worker of my acquaintance, after much reflection, left his position to design a unique company of his own, which helps corporations restructure their organizations in terms of human values. He no longer feels quite at home in the world, but he’s at peace with himself, working on things that truly drive him.

It all sounds very sensible, grown-up, mature. I shall do my best, heh heh :P

Sometimes INFPs simply need to make room in their lives to give their strengths a chance to grow. For example, they may take up creative pursuits – writing, composition, design art: something that allows them to give their ideals material form. Sometimes they volunteer their services to take care of homeless animals.

I’m planning on working with the Samaritans soon – sounds about right. And yes, I enjoy creative writing (all here, just hidden from your gaze <_<…..>_>

In general, however, well-developed INFPs live lives that don’t look much different from anyone else’s. What’s different is their perspective. They strike others as unassuming, even deferential, because they treat people with unconditional love and compassion. In consequence, their actions, their choices, their way of life can awaken others to human values the community has not acknowledged.

This is where I want to be.

For example, a small Midwestern church has hired a pastor from the New York area, and there were many discussions on the church board about the difficult transition for the congregation. An INFP board member saw the situation from the other way around, empathizing with the minister and his family, uprooted from their home and friends in the East to make a new life for them.

When the family arrived, a day ahead of the moving truck, picturing themselves eating pizza on a bare floor, they walked into the parsonage and found a table set with flowers and good china, a refrigerator full of dinners and staples, and soap and towels in the bathrooms. Such actions see through external distinctions of role, background, and status to focus on our common human links.

Such a touching story, I should really go out of my way to make these gestures more. I always think of them, I’m just too afraid to assert myself I guess.

INFPs sometimes underestimate their strengths because there are so many problems in the world that they can’t be solved by changing people’s hearts. But they shouldn’t. the effects of their decisions are often incalculable, renewing people’s faith in human nature.

I’ve been told that my influence on people was more than i imagined, maybe it was true after all. I agree that the effects of all decisions are incapable – and if they are positive, can have global consequences :)

~

Wow. That was a lot of introspection for one sitting. I hope this is helpful / interesting to someone else, but if not at least it gave me a chance to figure out where I should be heading next.

<3

This film is music. Its theme is music, its principle character is music.  The colour blue recurs like symphonic motifs.  The film’s soundtrack holds much of the power in the film, and the soprano part is an abridged version of 1 Corinthians 13, printed below. As the finale overwhelms the end of the film, we witness fragments of bodies intertwined, pressed against glass and filtered through translucent objects…

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.

If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.

If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.

It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.

Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.

It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.

For we know in part and we prophesy in part,

but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears.

When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.

Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociology_of_the_Internet

Sociologists study society.  With a mandate as broad as that, of course they are interested in how internet functions within human interaction.

I like to think there’s more to it than that, though.  There’s so much more to be said, which should not be restricted to the social sciences.  Given that the internet allows self-publication, the traditional model for distribution of art has radically changed.  Witness the problems the music industry is having with illegal downloads.

There is now even less distinction between ‘art’ and text.  The World Literature course I’m taking uses the phrase creative practice in place of ‘Art’, referring to any creative endeavor – this is probably explained much better elsewhere, but it’s appropriate here. Every action online is a work of creative practice, when formulated in the traditional sense.

I think the entries on Wikipedia are a good indicator of how widely talked about an issue is online.  The article “Sociology of the Internet” still misses the point: (emphasis added)

The Internet has made possible [1] entirely new forms of social interaction, activities and organizing, thanks to its basic features such as widespread usability and access.

Social networking websites such as Facebook and MySpace have created a new form of socialization and interaction. Users of these sites are able to add a wide variety of items to their personal pages, to indicate common interests, and to connect with others. It is also possible to find a large circle of existing acquaintances, especially if a site allows users [2] to utilize their real names, and to allow communication [3]among large existing groups of people.

Sites like meetup.com exist to allow wider announcement of groups which may exist mainly for face-to-face meetings, but which may have a variety of minor interactions [4]over their group’s site at meetup.org, or other similar sites.

This is all very true, and very interesting.  But it is examining ‘the internet’ as something apart from society that has allowed new ways of communication to take place.

[1]
What I’m trying to say is that sentences which are constructed like this treat internet as an external imposition or tool on a ‘fixed’ humanity.  In reality the internet is a collective development of human consciousness; it’s not just about the cables and wires, internet is thought.

[2]
This is very interesting.  Is a ‘user’ a person, a type of person, a particular persona….we have never had ‘users’ before.  This is an entirely new construct, yet exists in the vocabulary of almost everyone. Does a ‘user’ have the same rights as a person? Is a user connected or disconnected from the person sitting at the desk, typing on the tube…

[3]
Communication itself has changed.  What does it mean to communicate now?  Something which you posted a year ago is suddenly picked up by some program / algorithm online, split up and displayed uniquely on someone else’s home page.  At what point did you ‘talk’ to them?  When were the words ’said’ and who do they belong to?  Many, many other questions exist.

[4]
The article is forgivable vague because we have no way of discussing these small interactions.  We must resort to saying ‘interactions’, because it is not even clear if the communication is speech, text or thought.

Internet is not a noun, it is the method through which our ‘collective unconscious’ manifests.  This is internet.

It doesn’t have to be mystical (meaning irrational), however.  I find it useful and appropriate to talk about internet in terms of spirituality, but these effects can also be accounted for in more academic terms.

I’m not sure I’m quite up to the task. Firstly, I’m no proponent of scientific rationalism.  Secondly, there isn’t yet a dialect which allows us to speak of internet in objective, methodological terms.

~

In short, the mistake current studies of internet are making is to view it in terms of how it expands on previous methods of communication and interaction.  I believe internet itself is so fundamentally new that it has changed people – totally altered how we conceptualize ourselves and interaction.  For this to be true, internet has to be an awakening of that which humans have longed for – a kind of telepathy or collective unconscious that on the surface appears irrational.

How this theory is proved depends on the field of study – I have no clue for example how neuroscience might reveal changes in cognitive response when someone spends hours at a time on message-boards or chat rooms.

~

Dan Brown made the audacious claim that all the world’s problems can be solved using the internet.  I’m looking forward to seeing how he realizes that dream.

There is a growing attitude amongst our generation, a demand expressed through disillusionment with education or even ‘adult society’ as a whole;

Why is internet not at the very center of debate in every theoretical academic discipline?

wot? wot? wot?

Err, i said are you taking all of those bananas?

wot? wot?

Ah nevermind, it doesn’t matter. Don’t worry, it’s fine – really. Nothing…

/man gives me banana.

Umm – thanks! Thank you :)

…

/other_man from the same table menacingly gives me a banana, as we motion to sit down somewhere else…

*nonplussed*

~

I hope I haven’t started some kind of banana warfare. It’s like when the Mafia spare your life – they’re not being kind, they’re just being manipulative. Well whatever, I only wanted the one banana so I eat that and left the other on the tray. Interesting stuff, right?

Yeah so anyway it occurred to me later that he probably wasn’t stealing all that fruit for himself. I assumed that he was an aggressive alpha-male, selfishly taking whatever he could. Since we witnessed the great yogurt heist (another story – interested?), I’ve come to expect this individualistic opportunism.

I bet he was just taking the fruit for the rest of his friends on the table – the success of their large friendship group depends upon individuals ‘unluckily’ being picked to sacrifice their time or effort for the many. When it’s your turn, you have to man up and humiliate yourself. Normally though, you get to order people around to do your bidding. I think that’s how those power-hungry social circles operate.

So it may be ‘more likely’ in your eyes that he was just hungry for some extra fruit, but that’s not how I see it.

This could have been avoided if I’d only perceived properly first time around, and saw his actions for what they were. Or at least withheld judgment until I could properly assess his motives.

~

I think this ties into what makes happy and unhappy INFPs. I’ve recently lapsed into judging people as unpleasant by default. Apart from being pretty arrogant, this isn’t fair on the complexity of peoples’ intentions. People are great, unmoved movers in this beautiful cosmic mess. I’m people too.

If I’ve correctly understood the INFP personality type, we function best when we are conscious of our extroverted intuition. This basically means to acknowledge and encourage that sense of just ‘feeling’ what is going on in a situation, and trusting that feeling.

Further, we feel guilty when not seeing the best in people. I don’t mean guilty in a moral sense, which would perhaps be detrimental. Just an overall perception that we are not acting in accordance with our own internal set of absolute moral truths.

Anyway, I’ll stop before this gets even more introspective and self-obsessed.

<3

Let us suppose that I am the patient and you are the students and doctors. I suffer from what you would call a delusion that I’m God. Therefore, you might want to ask me questions. I’m perfectly willing to submit to your examination and your treatment, and invite you to help yourselves.

When did you become god?
Now.

Will you marry me?
No. [prolonged, unanimous, growing laughter]

Do you sleep on your stomach or your back?
Sleeping is like politics. One sleeps on the right side, and when you’re tired of that you sleep on the left. When you’re tired of that you sleep on your back, and when you’re tired of that you sleep on your stomach. And it is thus that the world goes round. [amused, approving applause]

If you were God now what were you yesterday?
Now.

How did you become God?
You don’t become God.

Am I also God?
Yes.

Are we then the same person?
No. Remember three persons but one God [laughs].

Could you tell us a little about Satan?
Yes, although the matter is a little esoteric. I told you all about it in the book of Job, where you will see that in the court of heaven Satan is the district attorney. He is not, as Christians imagine, the enemy of heaven and mankind. Satan is merely the person who sees the bad side of things and carries out the dirty work. He saw Job and wondered whether Job really was as great a guy as he seemed to be, and suggested that God should appoint a committee of investigation to find out. The committee did its work very thoroughly, but the case went against Satan because it was proved in the end that Job was an honorable man. Now you notice that although we pay the salary of the district attorney, whenever there’s a great criminal case before the public eye people begin to take the side of the underdog. The prosecutor always has less public sympathy than the defendant (except in political trials). On the right hand of God – and you know that the defense is always on the right hand of the judge in court – is our only mediator and advocate, which is a phrase referring to Jesus Christ our Lord. So there is the defense, and there is the prosecution. It is the function of Satan to be the prosecutor. There is a good deal more to it than that, because before all this started – lies in a stage play – there was an arrangement in the green room, in which certain things were understood but that are only to be revealed when the curtain goes down at the end of the play.

Is Job God too?
Yes, but he doesn’t know it.

Why do you hide from the sight of so many?
Why do you hide? It’s for the same reason you’re hiding!

Does man have free will?
Man has free will to the extent that he knows who he is. Not otherwise.

Where does he get free will from?
Where I got it from. [laughs]

Does woman have free will too?
Yes. To the extent that she knows who she is, yes.

So, you are no more or less God than the rest of us?
That is correct, I am no more God than any of you.

So you only have the power of knowing who you are?
Well, that is saying quite a bit. Yes.

What is not God?
There is nothing that is not God.

How do you learn who you are?
It’s like waking up from a dream. After a while one’s experience begins to have what I would call a “haven’t we been here before?” feeling. Going round and round and round…and then you begin wondering: “where am I going?” And to answer that question you have to try and find out what you want. So I went into that very thoroughly. What do I want to happen? Of course, as soon as you ask yourself that you begin to fantasize. Our amazing technology is an expression of human desire for power, for what we want to achieve. So I simply set myself to thinking through how far we could go. I soon found myself at a great push-button place where I had a fantastic mechanism, with buttons available for every conceivable thing I could wish! I spent quite a bit of time playing with those. You know, you go “going” like that and here is Cleopatra. And so on – you know press this button; symphonic music in – ahh…4 channel sound, 16 channel sound – anything! All possible pleasures are available. And when you’re like everybody’s dream of the sultan in the palace, you suddenly notice there’s a button labeled “surprise”. You push that. And here we are.

Is boredom a problem?
Yes boredom is of course the problem. Boredom is the other side of creativity. The energy of creation – that is the Yang. The Yin side of that energy is called boredom. Everything is of course fundamentally Yang and Yin. If you understand that you really don’t need to understand anything else.

If we are all supposed to love each other, love will cease to exist because there is no hate to contrast it.
Correct, but that’s not a teaching it’s a kōan. A kōan is a Japanese word for a spiritual problem, used in Zen Buddhism, such as ‘what is the sound of one hand?’ And these problems are given to those who ask questions concerning their spiritual development. And sometimes, as St. Paul pointed out, commandments are given not in the expectation that they will be obeyed, but in the expectation that they will reveal something to those who hear them. That was St. Paul’s comment on the whole Mosaic law.

Is there a heaven, is there a purgatory, is there a hell?
The hereafter is of course now, because if you examine it closely there is no-when else than now. And if you want to make hell of it, you can make hell of it – if you want to make a heaven of it, you can make a heaven of it – purgatory, purgatory. It’s all here. Always was, always will be.

What is death?
Death is an undulation in consciousness. How would you know you’re alive unless you’d once been dead?

Why were material possessions unnecessary for Jesus – yet necessary for you?
It wasn’t unnecessary for him to have material possessions. They said of St. John The Baptist that he was an aesthetic – but of Jesus, this man consorts with gluttoners and wine bibbers and comes eating and drinking. When the Lady Mary poured precious ointment on his feet and anointed him, they said the same thing that the members of the vestry say to the ministers today – why this great expense? Couldn’t it all have been sold for much less money and given to the poor?

…but this is a problem…
It is a problem, sure. You see in many ways when you get down to these very deep ethical problems, where there sure is no easy decision one way or the other, you must look at the problem from the point of view of an artist. Which way of doing this is in some sense greater? It may be better to go off with a bang than with a wimper.”