I'm indeed here after your charisma essay and I enjoyed this one just as much :)
Synchronicity is a funny thing, I just made a new year resolution to limit screen time to the truly useful activities as I found myself wasting more and more time in the algorithmic black hole and part of that was the strong feeling that something was feeding of my energy by making me repeat the same behavior again and again. Honestly the idea of psychic entities lashing on to you to control your actions does not seem that far fetched when you spend even a moment on the subway with a car full of people swiping endlessly with the same look on their face as all the zombies in a Romero movie...
For a future post, maybe you could make a recommendation for what you would consider a healthy spiritual diet of media or practice? You did mention a few things but I would be curious what left the biggest impression on you personally.
Anyway thank for sharing your thoughts and happy new year, in whatever time zone you happen to be!
Thank you for reading and happy new year! I probably won't do a post dedicated to media diet stuff, but I have thought about it a lot. I've found it helpful to notice how I feel during/immediately after scrolling certain content. For example, after scrolling IG Reels I usually feel uglier and less good about myself because it bombards me with stimuli of perfect looking fantasy humans. And over time I start using more slang and "not speaking like myself". After scrolling Twitter (I'm very picky about my feed but For You page will push all sorts of stuff) I feel unsettled from watching people dunk on others for engagement or discussing the drama of the day. After noticing this I try to curate my feed so there's less unhealthy stuff and more positive, growth-oriented, intentional stuff. I also try to only put out stuff that *I'd* want to see more of, even if it totally goes against what others are doing. On Twitter, I started posting entire essays in single long posts, and people actually read and deeply engage with them! I'm doing what I can to nudge people in that direction because these platforms are, after all, what we make of them. Oh and I'm not monetized (I don't get enough impressions for that, and I don't want to modify my behavior to get enough to qualify for monetization) — I find this aligns incentives.
Nice piece Carmen :) I feel the mind virus thing a lot with music. Sometimes after emerging out of a rut I’ll relisten to the music I’d been listening to and notice for the first time how sad it is! In the moment it had just seemed normal, accurately reflecting reality. But in a clearer headspace I see how it was pretty depressing and serving the purpose of keeping me in a low mood which felt safe. I still like some melancholic music during certain moods but mostly when I feel the artist is articulating their darkness as well as their striving toward light too.
Same! Hard to tell when I'm going through a funk but when I look back it's so obvious what kind of emotional relief I was seeking without being consciously aware of it. I also have trouble with music that's solely depressing; usually the stuff I'm drawn to has an undercurrent of hope and optimism even in the midst of despair.
This makes a lot of sense and could be why it is said that you are the culmination of the 5 people you spend the most time with. Energy is certainly transferable.
Came through the Charisma article, staying because of this. Thank you. I am a public librarian and always try to do my best to issue a gentle verbal warning when people (young people especially) borrow The Bell Jar, for exactly this reason. It took me a long time to get over the hold that book had on me when I read it. It’s a wonderful book but, as you say, the mind virus it carries is strong. Especially if you already find yourself treading lightly down the psychological path Plath was on when writing.
I don’t deny nor reject your claim of mind viruses, demons, and us being programmable.
In one analogy, only being exposed to “good” and not the “bad” is like trying to live like never exposing the immune system to pathogens. It will be catastrophic if/when a serious infection ever comes. And looking at the history of human life and even life in nature, life is rife with suffering and catastrophe.
You might say that analogy is not quite right. That meta and love and clarity is like a 100% force field against the bad or an antibiotic. I’ll even grant you that. Do you think there is no value in the negative states of mind? To me they are potentially like error messages. Getting rid of the error message doesn’t resolve the root issue. One can extract value from “poison”. Look at the botulinum toxin used for Botox or nuclear radiation used for xray.
And even say we can get value and be immune without being exposed to the “demons”. How deep can one’s metta really be if one doesn’t even deep dive to the kind of reality many people live their lives in. It’s easy to be “loving” when you are in heaven’s ivory tower while the poor souls are burning and rotting in the hells below. Repressing my shadow under my consciousness has never turned out well - only worse. The right circumstances will surface it or it will operate under consciousness. I would say a tree can only go as high as its roots go below. And at the final level, I find the “good” and “bad” inseparable. One really has no meaning or existence without the other.
What I can grant is that you need to be exposed to demons. Or that you should. Certainly not. I wouldn’t want to be exposed to certain demons if I couldn’t “survive” or grow from it. Maybe one day I can. And maybe I never will be. And perhaps I don’t need to. And that’s all ok. But to eradicate such demons forever from creative works and just express and promote the “good” so people can be bliss junkies? First that won’t even eradicate the source of the demons inherent in our mind-reality and second, being a bliss junkie is really just a hedonistic or coping strategy. Better than most addictions and the way people live no doubt, but it’s not what I would say is the final destination/way and not even the ideal destination/way, at least for me and folks like me who prefer minimal gap between my model of reality and reality (as impossible of a task to get right and know that one is even right).
Good points, some people on Twitter commented on the value of bad mind viruses as a sort of vaccine (so people know how to deal with it) and also necessary in a larger sense of being a part of the range of experiences that exist to balance out the "good". I agree it shouldn't be repressed. Ideally you can face negative experiences without flinching, but that doesn't mean all should be promoted equally at scale.
Yes, i definitely agree that we need not to promote everything equally at scale. I’m personally hesitant to promote anything let alone the more insidious viruses like the one you mentioned here.
Hi,
I'm indeed here after your charisma essay and I enjoyed this one just as much :)
Synchronicity is a funny thing, I just made a new year resolution to limit screen time to the truly useful activities as I found myself wasting more and more time in the algorithmic black hole and part of that was the strong feeling that something was feeding of my energy by making me repeat the same behavior again and again. Honestly the idea of psychic entities lashing on to you to control your actions does not seem that far fetched when you spend even a moment on the subway with a car full of people swiping endlessly with the same look on their face as all the zombies in a Romero movie...
For a future post, maybe you could make a recommendation for what you would consider a healthy spiritual diet of media or practice? You did mention a few things but I would be curious what left the biggest impression on you personally.
Anyway thank for sharing your thoughts and happy new year, in whatever time zone you happen to be!
Thank you for reading and happy new year! I probably won't do a post dedicated to media diet stuff, but I have thought about it a lot. I've found it helpful to notice how I feel during/immediately after scrolling certain content. For example, after scrolling IG Reels I usually feel uglier and less good about myself because it bombards me with stimuli of perfect looking fantasy humans. And over time I start using more slang and "not speaking like myself". After scrolling Twitter (I'm very picky about my feed but For You page will push all sorts of stuff) I feel unsettled from watching people dunk on others for engagement or discussing the drama of the day. After noticing this I try to curate my feed so there's less unhealthy stuff and more positive, growth-oriented, intentional stuff. I also try to only put out stuff that *I'd* want to see more of, even if it totally goes against what others are doing. On Twitter, I started posting entire essays in single long posts, and people actually read and deeply engage with them! I'm doing what I can to nudge people in that direction because these platforms are, after all, what we make of them. Oh and I'm not monetized (I don't get enough impressions for that, and I don't want to modify my behavior to get enough to qualify for monetization) — I find this aligns incentives.
Nice piece Carmen :) I feel the mind virus thing a lot with music. Sometimes after emerging out of a rut I’ll relisten to the music I’d been listening to and notice for the first time how sad it is! In the moment it had just seemed normal, accurately reflecting reality. But in a clearer headspace I see how it was pretty depressing and serving the purpose of keeping me in a low mood which felt safe. I still like some melancholic music during certain moods but mostly when I feel the artist is articulating their darkness as well as their striving toward light too.
Same! Hard to tell when I'm going through a funk but when I look back it's so obvious what kind of emotional relief I was seeking without being consciously aware of it. I also have trouble with music that's solely depressing; usually the stuff I'm drawn to has an undercurrent of hope and optimism even in the midst of despair.
Wishing you a wonderful new year!
This makes a lot of sense and could be why it is said that you are the culmination of the 5 people you spend the most time with. Energy is certainly transferable.
Came through the Charisma article, staying because of this. Thank you. I am a public librarian and always try to do my best to issue a gentle verbal warning when people (young people especially) borrow The Bell Jar, for exactly this reason. It took me a long time to get over the hold that book had on me when I read it. It’s a wonderful book but, as you say, the mind virus it carries is strong. Especially if you already find yourself treading lightly down the psychological path Plath was on when writing.
Thank you for reading! And for warning young people about Plath – it's so famous and easy to find they might not know what they're signing up for.
I don’t deny nor reject your claim of mind viruses, demons, and us being programmable.
In one analogy, only being exposed to “good” and not the “bad” is like trying to live like never exposing the immune system to pathogens. It will be catastrophic if/when a serious infection ever comes. And looking at the history of human life and even life in nature, life is rife with suffering and catastrophe.
You might say that analogy is not quite right. That meta and love and clarity is like a 100% force field against the bad or an antibiotic. I’ll even grant you that. Do you think there is no value in the negative states of mind? To me they are potentially like error messages. Getting rid of the error message doesn’t resolve the root issue. One can extract value from “poison”. Look at the botulinum toxin used for Botox or nuclear radiation used for xray.
And even say we can get value and be immune without being exposed to the “demons”. How deep can one’s metta really be if one doesn’t even deep dive to the kind of reality many people live their lives in. It’s easy to be “loving” when you are in heaven’s ivory tower while the poor souls are burning and rotting in the hells below. Repressing my shadow under my consciousness has never turned out well - only worse. The right circumstances will surface it or it will operate under consciousness. I would say a tree can only go as high as its roots go below. And at the final level, I find the “good” and “bad” inseparable. One really has no meaning or existence without the other.
What I can grant is that you need to be exposed to demons. Or that you should. Certainly not. I wouldn’t want to be exposed to certain demons if I couldn’t “survive” or grow from it. Maybe one day I can. And maybe I never will be. And perhaps I don’t need to. And that’s all ok. But to eradicate such demons forever from creative works and just express and promote the “good” so people can be bliss junkies? First that won’t even eradicate the source of the demons inherent in our mind-reality and second, being a bliss junkie is really just a hedonistic or coping strategy. Better than most addictions and the way people live no doubt, but it’s not what I would say is the final destination/way and not even the ideal destination/way, at least for me and folks like me who prefer minimal gap between my model of reality and reality (as impossible of a task to get right and know that one is even right).
Curious about your thoughts on this.
Good points, some people on Twitter commented on the value of bad mind viruses as a sort of vaccine (so people know how to deal with it) and also necessary in a larger sense of being a part of the range of experiences that exist to balance out the "good". I agree it shouldn't be repressed. Ideally you can face negative experiences without flinching, but that doesn't mean all should be promoted equally at scale.
Yes, i definitely agree that we need not to promote everything equally at scale. I’m personally hesitant to promote anything let alone the more insidious viruses like the one you mentioned here.