Encountering your own flame

Discuss any topics related to metaphysics (the philosophical study of the principles of reality) or epistemology (the philosophical study of knowledge) in this forum.
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Papus79
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Encountering your own flame

Post by Papus79 »

Admittedly I've been a bit a bit on the bold side with chasing down my own internal resource. That started with psychedelics in my 20's, moved on to esotericism in my 30's and then other things equally taboo.

It seems like what I'm getting the sense of - I'm not sure that there's a name for this that would accurately draw it together for most people, I think I like the way Daniel Schachtenberger talked about genes as generator functions rather than schematics and what I'm looking at is a bit more like a core reaction that has certain rules of logic, and it's also really the seat of power in a lot of ways - ie. that dynamo somewhere around your pelvic region that seems to be the seat of many if not most things sexual and/or violent.

it seems like my life and a lot of the struggles of surviving through the last few years at work pushed me in closer contact with this than I otherwise would have been. My take - a good analogy for might be that it's a bit like a fusion reactor, it seems to push out a lot of effect but it in and of itself doesn't seem to carry a moral valance one way or another - indeed some of what it pushes out can be terrifying but I think that's also understanding that the energy that it's pushing out runs into conditions - both unconscious/genetic and environmental, and what's there takes on more energy both for good or for evil (and apologies for using the word 'energy' loosely - translate that to neurochemical cascades as needed). Maybe the sun is a good analogy as well as it shines on and gives things light indifferent to their qualities.

My goal with this brush has been a bit like Cassini getting close to Saturn or New Horizons capturing Pluto, ie. that if I'm getting pushed back on it that I should at least observe it as analytically and impartially as I can.

Ideally the goal would be figuring out how to 'steal fire' without catching fire, and when you get that close to it things really can go any which way apparently if you're not careful. I *think* my sense of self has been steadied by enough hardship in my life not to get thrown in the air but with enough centrifugal force anything's possible.
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Re: Encountering your own flame

Post by Angel Trismegistus »

Papus79 wrote: September 4th, 2020, 9:11 pm Admittedly I've been a bit a bit on the bold side with chasing down my own internal resource....
Ideally the goal would be figuring out how to 'steal fire' without catching fire, and when you get that close to it things really can go any which way apparently if you're not careful. I *think* my sense of self has been steadied by enough hardship in my life not to get thrown in the air but with enough centrifugal force anything's possible.
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Re: Encountering your own flame

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Re: Encountering your own flame

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Angel Trismegistus wrote: September 5th, 2020, 3:01 am Remember Prometheus. Promote liver health. Eschew the mythology of self. Become a triple threat to rampant narcissism and swell guy all at once.
In my case no, the alternative is getting buried alive in apesh**. I live in a world that truly, deeply, genuinely doesn't give an f' about me and in that case - almost anywhere I go I find myself being the perfect person in the Rene Girard sense for people to pile their incompetence on and send off into the desert - which doesn't help me pay my bills. When you're in this situation and you're trying to survive savages at every turn you have to get a bit maverick, otherwise you don't survive.
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Re: Encountering your own flame

Post by Terrapin Station »

Papus79 wrote: September 5th, 2020, 7:01 am
Angel Trismegistus wrote: September 5th, 2020, 3:01 am Remember Prometheus. Promote liver health. Eschew the mythology of self. Become a triple threat to rampant narcissism and swell guy all at once.
In my case no, the alternative is getting buried alive in apesh**. I live in a world that truly, deeply, genuinely doesn't give an f' about me and in that case - almost anywhere I go I find myself being the perfect person in the Rene Girard sense for people to pile their incompetence on and send off into the desert - which doesn't help me pay my bills. When you're in this situation and you're trying to survive savages at every turn you have to get a bit maverick, otherwise you don't survive.
No family, friends to offer at least moral support, Papus79? If not, why not work on building some relationships?
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Re: Encountering your own flame

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Terrapin Station wrote: September 5th, 2020, 9:46 am No family, friends to offer at least moral support, Papus79? If not, why not work on building some relationships?
I do have family, just that they live in their own world - lovely people but they're not in the position. I have friends, a core group that goes back to late high school, it's just that many if not most of them live two hours away right now and even there - they're a bit lost in their own clouds as well.

The job I have right now did come by way of a friend, the way I've been getting buried for the last three years is the way he's been getting buried for the last twelve, we're hoping to turn this around but we have to fight like hell for our opportunities. While our boss is a really nice guy he's also made a lot of mistakes on recent projects that set us up to fail, and I had to work over 100 hours per week (literally waking up working till I go to sleep, seven days a week, for about two months - before that I had maybe a few hours to myself per day). It's a bit like pulling a Chris Angel stunt of walking on a tight rope between two buildings 30 stories up, no safety net, and this is an 'entry-level' position, meaning that if I didn't pull it off (thankfully I am) I'd have no future in programming - which has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not I can code, it has more to do with switching career fields and being told at my first job 'Ah, you want to learn to code? We've got a project to completely rewrite PNC's internal system in line with international standards - we think you can fly by the seat of your pants and get this done in nine months while you learn C# and Angular'.

My understanding - either your parents are plugged into a socioeconomic patronage network, of the kind Ayaan Hirsi Ali's husband Niall Ferguson often talks about, and if your parents aren't plugged in to that sort of network (my parents were technically from blue collar families, made it into semi-white collar, but had no connections) then the world seems to have an unspoken term for that - ie. you're a 'socioeconomic bastard', meaning they can put you wherever you want and grind you to paste because, clearly, if no one gave an f' about you then your fit for anything. The symbols of 'socioeconomic bastard' will also be written across your forehead as well, almost like the proverbial Mark of Cain, when women size you up and read your history from your body language - it's an instant 'low-status male' marker, which beyond just not helping you get dates lends even more friction to any interaction your forced to have with them. I almost think of Leonardo DiCaprio's character in 'The Departed' and what he had to go through to get an opportunity all the while being treated like a canonical loser - it's that kind of thing.
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Re: Encountering your own flame

Post by Terrapin Station »

Papus79 wrote: September 5th, 2020, 10:37 am
Terrapin Station wrote: September 5th, 2020, 9:46 am No family, friends to offer at least moral support, Papus79? If not, why not work on building some relationships?
I do have family, just that they live in their own world - lovely people but they're not in the position. I have friends, a core group that goes back to late high school, it's just that many if not most of them live two hours away right now and even there - they're a bit lost in their own clouds as well.

The job I have right now did come by way of a friend, the way I've been getting buried for the last three years is the way he's been getting buried for the last twelve, we're hoping to turn this around but we have to fight like hell for our opportunities. While our boss is a really nice guy he's also made a lot of mistakes on recent projects that set us up to fail, and I had to work over 100 hours per week (literally waking up working till I go to sleep, seven days a week, for about two months - before that I had maybe a few hours to myself per day). It's a bit like pulling a Chris Angel stunt of walking on a tight rope between two buildings 30 stories up, no safety net, and this is an 'entry-level' position, meaning that if I didn't pull it off (thankfully I am) I'd have no future in programming - which has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not I can code, it has more to do with switching career fields and being told at my first job 'Ah, you want to learn to code? We've got a project to completely rewrite PNC's internal system in line with international standards - we think you can fly by the seat of your pants and get this done in nine months while you learn C# and Angular'.

My understanding - either your parents are plugged into a socioeconomic patronage network, of the kind Ayaan Hirsi Ali's husband Niall Ferguson often talks about, and if your parents aren't plugged in to that sort of network (my parents were technically from blue collar families, made it into semi-white collar, but had no connections) then the world seems to have an unspoken term for that - ie. you're a 'socioeconomic bastard', meaning they can put you wherever you want and grind you to paste because, clearly, if no one gave an f' about you then your fit for anything. The symbols of 'socioeconomic bastard' will also be written across your forehead as well, almost like the proverbial Mark of Cain, when women size you up and read your history from your body language - it's an instant 'low-status male' marker, which beyond just not helping you get dates lends even more friction to any interaction your forced to have with them. I almost think of Leonardo DiCaprio's character in 'The Departed' and what he had to go through to get an opportunity all the while being treated like a canonical loser - it's that kind of thing.
I don't know what country you're in, but in some U.S. cities, such as New York City, you can get work pretty easily if you can program at all, and if you have a problem with one place of employment, you can find another fairly easily. There always seems to be a shortage of programmers, because they're always looking for them. My wife (she's a business consultant with an economics and international trade/finance background) works with a lot of those companies. If you're not already in the U.S. this might not be so easy at the moment--because of both Trump's policies and during this coronavirus mess, but once either of those things are cleared up it might be easy to get a work Visa again--it was very easy four years ago.
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Re: Encountering your own flame

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Terrapin Station wrote: September 5th, 2020, 10:48 am I don't know what country you're in, but in some U.S. cities, such as New York City, you can get work pretty easily if you can program at all, and if you have a problem with one place of employment, you can find another fairly easily. There always seems to be a shortage of programmers, because they're always looking for them. My wife (she's a business consultant with an economics and international trade/finance background) works with a lot of those companies. If you're not already in the U.S. this might not be so easy at the moment--because of both Trump's policies and during this coronavirus mess, but once either of those things are cleared up it might be easy to get a work Visa again--it was very easy four years ago.
I'm really doing two things at the moment:
1) Doing whatever I have to in order to make my cv work (in this case making a rough situation work regardless of it being rough).
2) Trying to make sure that my professional and programming skills are up to snuff sufficiently to survive even the most hostile work environment.

There's some possibility, not sure how large I'd gauge it, that being I'm working at a small company I might get so much independence and freedom once I dig us out of the mess we're in that my current place of employment might be worth staying with. It's really about making sure I have a big enough body of knowledge tucked away based on the trial and error that I've been able to accrue so far and then figuring out how we can leverage scalability. So far we've been doing custom software, for of all things small companies, mom and pop shops, etc. which is good for PR but it's a lot of stress for very little financial return and I'd go so far as to say we're 'doing things' to people - like putting them through the process of needing to consciously know enough about their own company and how the business logic works - to supervise our production of software for them which in many cases hasn't been a good fit.
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Re: Encountering your own flame

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Papus79 wrote: September 5th, 2020, 1:35 pm 2) Trying to make sure that my professional and programming skills are up to snuff sufficiently to survive even the most hostile work environment.

I think the answer to this one is to seek out an employer who offers a supportive working environment. It's not easy, but I believe it can be done (although I never managed it 😢). Software design is a vocation, IMO, and should not be stifled or damaged by a "hostile work environment". With the right employer, your skills will be nurtured and expanded automatically. Don't waste them trying to learn how to survive the wrong employer. Good luck! 👍
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Re: Encountering your own flame

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Pattern-chaser wrote: September 6th, 2020, 7:36 am With the right employer, your skills will be nurtured and expanded automatically. Don't waste them trying to learn how to survive the wrong employer. Good luck! 👍
Ty. I think the trouble right now is looking at my past - I've either been treated great at utterly dead-end jobs or just about grabbed by my arms and legs and bounced on my head out the door. Whatever it is a large part of why I've been back at home and haven't left is because because I never know when or what will bring a Girardian storm of crowd madness down on my head. I suppose this is why I'm willing to try to force an 'every man for himself' company to work - even if it's been crap I don't have enough faith in people's basic sanity to believe that chancing another place (until I'm unsinkable) is wise. The best way to put it - since my early or mid 30's I've pretty much figured that every new job is like a click in the barrel of Russian roulette where you just don't know what idiot or group of idiots with authority you may run into who'll be willing to burn you in order to keep themselves afloat.

My best read of a chain of work environments like that - it makes me think of Eric Weinstein discussing the 'sharp minds' vs. 'sharp elbows' and it seems like what I'm running into are largely the people who are cutting paintings out of the walls or shoving all of the silverware into their pockets. Who knows - maybe it's just that our culture is in a particular moment where that's what's happening and to do something otherwise cuts against the grain, my thought on that though - I've always been a creative type, I've always been the kind of person who'd rather build something new and interesting rather than vampirize what's dying, so the hope might be that my life will really spring into action once the raiding parties have picked the bones clean on a lot of these bloated holding companies. That return of cycles is perhaps worth me keeping in mind when I feel like I'm fighting my way through carnage or feeling like work has John Wick flavors to it (though a movie or series of movies as crap as those getting such appeal - it has to be the case that they're striking a nerve on some level for people, it makes me really doubt that I'm alone in feeling like holding a job is like surviving some sort of assassin's ball).
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Re: Encountering your own flame

Post by h_k_s »

Papus79 wrote: September 4th, 2020, 9:11 pm Admittedly I've been a bit a bit on the bold side with chasing down my own internal resource. That started with psychedelics in my 20's, moved on to esotericism in my 30's and then other things equally taboo.

It seems like what I'm getting the sense of - I'm not sure that there's a name for this that would accurately draw it together for most people, I think I like the way Daniel Schachtenberger talked about genes as generator functions rather than schematics and what I'm looking at is a bit more like a core reaction that has certain rules of logic, and it's also really the seat of power in a lot of ways - ie. that dynamo somewhere around your pelvic region that seems to be the seat of many if not most things sexual and/or violent.

it seems like my life and a lot of the struggles of surviving through the last few years at work pushed me in closer contact with this than I otherwise would have been. My take - a good analogy for might be that it's a bit like a fusion reactor, it seems to push out a lot of effect but it in and of itself doesn't seem to carry a moral valance one way or another - indeed some of what it pushes out can be terrifying but I think that's also understanding that the energy that it's pushing out runs into conditions - both unconscious/genetic and environmental, and what's there takes on more energy both for good or for evil (and apologies for using the word 'energy' loosely - translate that to neurochemical cascades as needed). Maybe the sun is a good analogy as well as it shines on and gives things light indifferent to their qualities.

My goal with this brush has been a bit like Cassini getting close to Saturn or New Horizons capturing Pluto, ie. that if I'm getting pushed back on it that I should at least observe it as analytically and impartially as I can.

Ideally the goal would be figuring out how to 'steal fire' without catching fire, and when you get that close to it things really can go any which way apparently if you're not careful. I *think* my sense of self has been steadied by enough hardship in my life not to get thrown in the air but with enough centrifugal force anything's possible.
My own vices are more typical.

Alcohol in my teens, twenties, thirties, forties, fifties, and sixties.

Women/Ladies and two 18 year old girls in my preteens, teens, twenties, thirties, forties, and fifties. Finally got over all this though.

Still love alcohol though in all its variations: beers, wines, liqueurs, spirits, and straight pure moonshine.
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Re: Encountering your own flame

Post by Steve3007 »

Terrapin Station wrote:I don't know what country you're in, but in some U.S. cities,...
Papus79 wrote:'Ah, you want to learn to code? We've got a project to completely rewrite PNC's internal system in line with international standards - we think you can fly by the seat of your pants and get this done in nine months while you learn C# and Angular' ... Doing whatever I have to in order to make my cv work
I assumed from your previous posts that you must live in the US. But you said "CV" not "resume" so maybe you don't. Maybe you just have American cultural reference points. Maybe you're British.

I'm British and have worked as a software engineer since 1997. C, C++, C#. There has historically been plenty of work in the software industry in southern England, particularly in hotspots like the Cambridge area. "Silicon Fen". (Etymology: Silicon Valley > Silicon Glen > Silicon Fen). For people with a good degree and C++ skills there has been lots of well paid work in London in finance. Look on Jobserve. Much more difficult at the moment, for obvious reasons, but that will change.

How old are you and what (if any) degree(s) do you have? What experience in what industries? You may think it's hard being thrown in at the deep end as you seem to have described above, but it happens to most people in one way or another at one time or another and it's the quickest way to learn to swim.
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Re: Encountering your own flame

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Steve3007 wrote: September 9th, 2020, 4:09 pm How old are you and what (if any) degree(s) do you have? What experience in what industries?
I got my degree in accounting so that's part of the break, ie. being in the midst of switching professions.
Steve3007 wrote: September 9th, 2020, 4:09 pmYou may think it's hard being thrown in at the deep end as you seem to have described above, but it happens to most people in one way or another at one time or another and it's the quickest way to learn to swim.
I get that enough people generally don't put a lot of effort in unless forced, I know enough people who say they love pressure because it forces them not to procrastinate. I tend to be the reverse - ie. focus on punctuality and accountability more, and so I get infuriated if I get so much coming in so fast that proper accountability is almost impossible. It's one thing to say for example 'I'm amazed I survived that', another thing to be able to say to your employer 'I'm amazed you survived that either'. True, it's competitive out there and everyone ends up eating a healthy plate of concrete from time to time, I'm just thinking there has to be a boundary between hard and stupid. The former builds character, the later burns credibility with customers, keeps you bailing water, and if you really press it you're getting scraped off the pavement when you lay your bike down shirtless while you've got the governance topped out.
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Re: Encountering your own flame

Post by Steve3007 »

Papus79 wrote:I got my degree in accounting so that's part of the break, ie. being in the midst of switching professions.
My degree isn't in a computer science related subject either. Not necessarily a problem.
and if you really press it you're getting scraped off the pavement when you lay your bike down shirtless while you've got the governance topped out.
I get the general idea of this kind of remark but struggle to get the reference. Last scene from "No Country For Old Men"?
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Re: Encountering your own flame

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Steve3007 wrote: September 9th, 2020, 5:35 pm I get the general idea of this kind of remark but struggle to get the reference. Last scene from "No Country For Old Men"?
I've had friends with 1000cc bikes who were trying to figure out if they could top out higher than 187mph, there's a computer on a lot of them that cuts throttle at that point.
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