He sounds like someone who learned to think for himself, at the price of living a life like Diogenes. And that inner freedom is so important to him, that everything else comes second. He wrote a few books, but didn’t try too hard to be a guru. He’s rather live as a slacker, rather than risk losing sight of truth.
He’s like a wise kindly hobo. He may offer perspective to the people who happen to run into him, but in important ways he has retired from the arena of life. He’s not being a leader or assisting someone who is a leader. There are probably many many more people like him than you realize.
Disclaimer: I’ve never heard of him before, I know nothing about his actual circumstances, I’m just sharing the picture I got of him.
Meaningness is a great example of the art of deferral. Chapman promises much, but always there are preliminaries he has to explain first, and preliminaries to those preliminaries, and the promised meat course never shows up. I have to wonder if the endless hors d’oeuvres and pre-banquet entertainments are the whole of it, and the promises are just the carrot on the stick, jam tomorrow to get people to keep reading.
I have found him illuminating on the history of Buddhism and meditation.
I think he writes well (unlike OP, sorry :D) and gets to his point with relatively little text. I think his STEM-fluidity-postmodernism idea is on the more useful side, out of those I’ve seen in the whole rationality scene.
He sounds like someone who learned to think for himself, at the price of living a life like Diogenes. And that inner freedom is so important to him, that everything else comes second. He wrote a few books, but didn’t try too hard to be a guru. He’s rather live as a slacker, rather than risk losing sight of truth.
He’s like a wise kindly hobo. He may offer perspective to the people who happen to run into him, but in important ways he has retired from the arena of life. He’s not being a leader or assisting someone who is a leader. There are probably many many more people like him than you realize.
Disclaimer: I’ve never heard of him before, I know nothing about his actual circumstances, I’m just sharing the picture I got of him.
You’re assessment seems very accurate!
It didn’t occur to me that there are probably many more people like him than I realize. I’m not sure I’ve met any. Have you?
I’ve met at least one person who was just giving away their independent writings on the nature of enlightenment.
You might also want to look at “Meaningness”, which has been influential among “post-rationalists”.
I took a look at meaningness a few months ago but couldn’t really get into it. It felt a bit too far from rationality and very hand wavy.
Did you find Meaningness valuable? I may take another look
Meaningness is a great example of the art of deferral. Chapman promises much, but always there are preliminaries he has to explain first, and preliminaries to those preliminaries, and the promised meat course never shows up. I have to wonder if the endless hors d’oeuvres and pre-banquet entertainments are the whole of it, and the promises are just the carrot on the stick, jam tomorrow to get people to keep reading.
I have found him illuminating on the history of Buddhism and meditation.
Yea I like the way you describe it.
I’ll check out his writings on the history of Buddhism and meditation, thanks.
No, I couldn’t get into it either.
I think Meaningness has some interesting discussion on what “post-modernity” can mean in terms of epistemology and (scientific) thinking https://metarationality.com/stem-fluidity-bridge
I think he writes well (unlike OP, sorry :D) and gets to his point with relatively little text. I think his STEM-fluidity-postmodernism idea is on the more useful side, out of those I’ve seen in the whole rationality scene.