I really enjoyed this book, and also this post! I don’t think I was able to apply the lessons from the book after reading it, despite the fact that it felt very impactful, so I guess I had the same issues as you. You mentioned that a version with somatic work would be better, and honestly… I sort of think that is sort of attempted by Existential Kink, which I also read, very recently, on your recommendation, even, I think, and really enjoyed, in fact it thrilled me and left me with a sort of electric vibe afterwards, but...
It didn’t really stick— I mean, I liked a lot of the lessons and I felt like it was really smart and helpful and make me feel like a cool kink-powered left hand path witch of equanimity and manifestation, but… ultimately left me with maybe 10% more ‘menschness’.
I’d be very interested in a book (or post, tool, ai, app whatever) that combines core philosophies of EK, Courage to be Disliked, etc, into a more compact, easier to read, more ‘battle tested’ and pragmatic set of tools people can use to apply these lessons in a longer term way. And I think that tendency to hit certain triggers- the way EK and Courage both discuss trauma and other bad things happening, and EK’s fascination with describing the shadow work involved as literally clit-twitchingly sexually empowering left-hand-path witchery manifestation, despite it basically boiling down to ‘situations that you experience and describe as ‘bad’ may in fact be self inflicted, and that’s okay, and you’ll be happier and more likely to escape those situations if you accept that’ — Claim #3 from your list.
The other biggest self-helpy life lesson that has been the most useful for me, lately, is the simple fact that things that ‘feel good’ lead to a snapback of bad feelings in the future, and things that are difficult lead to a snapback of a sort of centeredness, equanimity, and joy in the future. We know this through the obvious hangover effect of alcohol and other drugs, but many people ignore or underestimate it in the context of things like scrolling feeds, masturbation, gambling, gaming, oversleep, sugar, catchy music, etc etc. And are entirely unaware of or downplay the ‘positive hangover’ from exercise, difficult work, cleaning, meditation, etc.
I think we’re inching closer, as a society, to having clear and concise sources for people to non-dogmatically explore these concepts, but there’s a lot of noise, a lot of potential moments for people to get turned off or triggered before discovering the wisdom. I think some very effective and very smart people see this stuff as common sense, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t millions out there who could be helped a lot by gaining deeper insights into their brain and personality from stuff like this.
Edit: I was mistaken in thinking that you’d written about Existential Kink, it seems to have been Evan Erickson at Emframes refereencing a post by Sasha Chapin, so my bad on that.
I really enjoyed this book, and also this post! I don’t think I was able to apply the lessons from the book after reading it, despite the fact that it felt very impactful, so I guess I had the same issues as you. You mentioned that a version with somatic work would be better, and honestly… I sort of think that is sort of attempted by Existential Kink, which I also read, very recently, on your recommendation, even, I think, and really enjoyed, in fact it thrilled me and left me with a sort of electric vibe afterwards, but...
It didn’t really stick— I mean, I liked a lot of the lessons and I felt like it was really smart and helpful and make me feel like a cool kink-powered left hand path witch of equanimity and manifestation, but… ultimately left me with maybe 10% more ‘menschness’.
I’d be very interested in a book (or post, tool, ai, app whatever) that combines core philosophies of EK, Courage to be Disliked, etc, into a more compact, easier to read, more ‘battle tested’ and pragmatic set of tools people can use to apply these lessons in a longer term way. And I think that tendency to hit certain triggers- the way EK and Courage both discuss trauma and other bad things happening, and EK’s fascination with describing the shadow work involved as literally clit-twitchingly sexually empowering left-hand-path witchery manifestation, despite it basically boiling down to ‘situations that you experience and describe as ‘bad’ may in fact be self inflicted, and that’s okay, and you’ll be happier and more likely to escape those situations if you accept that’ — Claim #3 from your list.
The other biggest self-helpy life lesson that has been the most useful for me, lately, is the simple fact that things that ‘feel good’ lead to a snapback of bad feelings in the future, and things that are difficult lead to a snapback of a sort of centeredness, equanimity, and joy in the future. We know this through the obvious hangover effect of alcohol and other drugs, but many people ignore or underestimate it in the context of things like scrolling feeds, masturbation, gambling, gaming, oversleep, sugar, catchy music, etc etc. And are entirely unaware of or downplay the ‘positive hangover’ from exercise, difficult work, cleaning, meditation, etc.
I think we’re inching closer, as a society, to having clear and concise sources for people to non-dogmatically explore these concepts, but there’s a lot of noise, a lot of potential moments for people to get turned off or triggered before discovering the wisdom. I think some very effective and very smart people see this stuff as common sense, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t millions out there who could be helped a lot by gaining deeper insights into their brain and personality from stuff like this.
Edit: I was mistaken in thinking that you’d written about Existential Kink, it seems to have been Evan Erickson at Emframes refereencing a post by Sasha Chapin, so my bad on that.