I suppose it's not that uncanny exactly. Call it a syncrhoincidence. Because Obviously, we're working together in a sense, distantly, but in parallel. Nevertheless, all the various overlaps between the two essays are still somehow a little shocking. I was starting to quote the places that oddly overlapped -- everything from the small surprises (we both mentioned "sky god") to fairly obscure and intricate observations for most people -- calling attention to limits of thought, how the map "lures us into an interior prison." The mention of function as a contrast to the content of thought. Focus on "conflation", how to handle cosmology. I only differed in not saying "thought and creativity are antithetical." I was mainly doing something else here, altering my relationship to thought, so that it can still serve its limited purpose. And you know I also don't feel that political evil is always 50/50. I mean, this is still to me a far worse turn in politics than the usual fascism. The perversions of political thinking never stay perfectly 50/50, bendingr this way and that in overreach. But that's a side issue to this essential synchroincidence, and the fun in reading something so well said, enriched by the idiosyncratic differences that are also there. It's not a copy, it's not the same, it's resonating unusually closely. Thanks.
Thanks Jeff. The synchronization even reaches the fact that while you were posting to beat a "deadline" to get it out before the Kastrup/Sheldrake conversation. I had gone back to a draft I'd started months ago and felt it was time to post it.
When I said 50/50, that was a figure of speech. Clearly there are more and less malignant positions. What I do stand by is that situations like this one don't arise without a shared complicity by anyone who maintains that their version of horror, their favorite lie, is less harmful than another's.
At the end of the day, yesterday, they were all celebrating together in what no one can any longer see as a "Hall of the People."
I suppose it's not that uncanny exactly. Call it a syncrhoincidence. Because Obviously, we're working together in a sense, distantly, but in parallel. Nevertheless, all the various overlaps between the two essays are still somehow a little shocking. I was starting to quote the places that oddly overlapped -- everything from the small surprises (we both mentioned "sky god") to fairly obscure and intricate observations for most people -- calling attention to limits of thought, how the map "lures us into an interior prison." The mention of function as a contrast to the content of thought. Focus on "conflation", how to handle cosmology. I only differed in not saying "thought and creativity are antithetical." I was mainly doing something else here, altering my relationship to thought, so that it can still serve its limited purpose. And you know I also don't feel that political evil is always 50/50. I mean, this is still to me a far worse turn in politics than the usual fascism. The perversions of political thinking never stay perfectly 50/50, bendingr this way and that in overreach. But that's a side issue to this essential synchroincidence, and the fun in reading something so well said, enriched by the idiosyncratic differences that are also there. It's not a copy, it's not the same, it's resonating unusually closely. Thanks.
Thanks Jeff. The synchronization even reaches the fact that while you were posting to beat a "deadline" to get it out before the Kastrup/Sheldrake conversation. I had gone back to a draft I'd started months ago and felt it was time to post it.
For those who haven't seen Jeff's essay:
https://negativegeography.com/2025/01/20/neither-materialism/
When I said 50/50, that was a figure of speech. Clearly there are more and less malignant positions. What I do stand by is that situations like this one don't arise without a shared complicity by anyone who maintains that their version of horror, their favorite lie, is less harmful than another's.
At the end of the day, yesterday, they were all celebrating together in what no one can any longer see as a "Hall of the People."
Yes, definitely, the shared complicity is tremendously clear and of bigger importance than anything else. You're right.
Uncanny yet again. Tremendous. Weill re-read later more carefully and comment better.
There will be an answer, only if it comes to you. This has happened a few times in my life.