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Ashim Shanker Books

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“Here in Alpha City, we have a common saying: “What we call ‘sky’ is merely a figment of our narrative.” The most dreamy-eyed among us seem to adorn themselves and their aspirations in that proverb and you’ll see it everywhere: in advertisements on the sides of streetcars and auto-rickshaws, spelled out in studs and rhinestones on designer jackets, emblazoned in the intricate designs of facial tattoos—even painted on city walls by putrid vandals and inspiring street artists. There is something glorious about kneading out into the doughy firmament the depth and breadth of one’s own universe, in rendering the contours of a sky whose limits are predicated only upon the bounds of one’s own imagination. The fact of the matter is that we cannot see the natural sky at all here. It is something like a theoretical mathematical expression: like the square-root of ‘negative one’—certainly it could be said to have a purpose for existing, but to cast eyes upon it, in its natural quantity, would be something akin to casting one’s eyes upon the raw elements comprising our everyday sustenance. How many of us have even borne close witness to the minute chemical compounds that react to lend battery power to our portable electronics? The sky is indeed such a concealed fixture now. It is fair to say that we have purged our memories of its true face and so we can only approximate a canvas and project our desires upon it to our heart’s dearest fancy. The most cynical among us would ostensibly declare it an unavoidable tragedy, but perhaps even these hardened individuals could not remember the naked sky well enough to know if what they were missing was something worthwhile. Perhaps, it’s cynical of me to say so! In any case, we have our searchlights pointed upwards and crisscrossing that expanse of heavens as though to make some sensational and profane joke of ourselves to the surrounding universe. We beam already video images of beauty pageants and dancing contests with smiling mannequins who look like buffoons. And so, the face of space cloaks itself behind our light pollution—in this respect, our mirrored sidewalks and lustrous streets do little to help our cause—and that face remains hidden from us in its jeering ridicule, its mocking laughter at this inexorable farce of human existence.”

ImaginationSkyNarrativeProjectionAbsurdismTechnological ProgressSolipsismSelf Importance
Author:Ashim Shanker
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“[He] seemed to possess, beneath it all, an immutable sense of self-assurance, but in addition to that, the look of a man ensnared by what he perceived to be his own Duty. A Duty that effervesced inside of him impatiently, dry at the mouth, shaking feverishly, and holding its breath in anticipation for—not his action, but in fact—the fruits of his actions, however distant these may have been. The goal was to satiate its thirst in as few moves as possible, instilling each action with an almost implied necessity for having a motive by which it must exist, which is to say that no action was to be wasted for anything, but only for that which was rooted in some definable and clear-cut purpose...Every action had to be a step in some direction and there could be no dillydallying, for Duty bubbling in the bloodstream for too long brought with it a kind of sickness...from which it was difficult to recover. Neither could there be any reconsideration, for the values to which one has sworn were unassailable and beyond the powers of one individual to reassess. And so, Duty, once instilled, must be allowed to carry on unabated, diverting sustenance away from other aspects of one’s character—driving them to a weakened state, brow-beaten by circumstances beyond their immediate control and relegated to their own downtrodden acquiescence to the bravado of the Parasitic Superego, and, as such, cognizant of their growing superfluity.”

DutyObedienceIndividualismSelf DeceptionSelfless ServiceBlind FaithParasiteSuperegoIntellectual LazinessMilgramParasitic SuperegoBrowbeaten
Book:Don't Forget to Breathe
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“The ones to fear are those who cannot realize it: the ones who just see the structure and bind themselves to it because they are otherwise afraid. They look at the structure, and they just see no other way. They cannot seek anything beyond it or do not want to. Yet, they will also vehemently deny that they are unable to venture beyond the structure and castigate others they perceive to have that inability so as to make themselves feel superior. They will even delude themselves into assuming that they are free of structural influence and will violently oppose any who say otherwise. They will say that the structures are a pragmatic necessity for social cohesion, but that they, even as willing participants in it, remain capable of acknowledging external terms and associations. They just choose not to—that’s the line they go with. They choose the structure for a lack of any better alternative and will not go without one. Perhaps they are naïve, in that sense, and it is easy for them to believe that those who seek to negate their structures are either unscrupulous, foolish, or ego-driven.”

InsecurityIndividualismSuperioritySelf DeceptionSocial StructureSocial Cohesion
Book:trenches parallax leapfrog
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“This naked moment may well be apprehended with greater acuity in retrospect, but how can we know if what we view in hindsight will ever have truly been? The uncertainty of it is frightening—but maybe, at the same time, we need not look upon it as a crisis of the human condition. Assimilating this irresoluteness may indeed be our greatest capacity. To live in this perpetual bewilderment and without respite is to be honest, even genuine, with oneself. Perhaps we must embrace the disinterested nature of our anxiety even if we know that it is contrastingly woven from competing threads of self-interest. It is sad that we cannot trust what our senses tell us, trust the information we are given. Or maybe it is beautiful if you see an aesthetic to the indecipherable, to the very thought that even the tiniest shard of logic may pierce at us whilst yet eluding us.”

DoubtLogicMemoryUnknownMoment Of Being
Author:Ashim Shanker
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“It would be both foolish and cumbersome to continue our everyday existences in bliss without first denying to ourselves, for the sake of excusing our own repugnance, the inherent cruelty from which modern civilization was conceived...And there can be no other path by which a fiercely competitive, yet social species, as humanity, can afford its members the level of safety, prosperity and stability—such that we enjoy now— without its initial pangs of cannibalism, brutality, dominance and cruelty to forge the foundations, very much like the lava which formed the ground upon which we now stand. Lava still erupts from the core. Brutality, Dominance, and Cruelty similarly erupt from ours; and they are no less prevalent now than in early human history.”

Human NatureCivilizationCrueltyHuman HistoryBrutalityDominanceLavaEarly ManSpecies Proliferation
Book:Only the Deplorable
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“There are ribbons that ensnare, it seems, though I cannot feel these restraints: a tangle of shared understandings, expectations, values, and obligations that demarcate sentient boundaries and frame the articulation of essence. Yet, there is also something rather arbitrary and inadequate about these ribbons and their juxtaposition.”

SelfEnvironmentAwarenessEssenceRibbonsNature Vs NurtureSentientTangleEnsnareDevelopment Of Self
Book:trenches parallax leapfrog
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“The...act of surrender—or devotion, as the case may be—was, to him, a kind of lifeline for those who sought a quick answer and didn’t want to stick around long enough to see their doubt through to its ultimate conclusion. A conclusion, which, of itself, was a bittersweet paradox—for how could doubt simply cease to exist by any stretch of the imagination? Doubt was, nonetheless—from his own perspective—the only inclusive insight into the nature of a Truth exclusive of conditions.”

TruthDoubtSurrenderDevotionParadoxBlind FaithEpistemologySelf DelusionEasy AnswersFallible
Book:Don't Forget to Breathe
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“What shall they say about this moment if there is anything to say at all? And not just this moment we experience, but this period of history. What shall they say about it? And tracing this vast arc to 10,000 years from now, what will matter of all of this? Will it be what we take now as trivial—that faint aroma of petrichor, perhaps—but what, by their archivists, by their categories of prominence, they take to be as quintessential of this holy now? The herald of a cleansing rain, perhaps! How will this story be told and will it do these fleeting seconds justice? Will it betray what we know as now, or will it indeed be truer to the experience of now-then than now-now?”

JusticeEssenceExperienceNostalgiaPhenomenologyHistorical AccuracyThen And NowLost MomentsHoly Moment
Book:Inward and Toward
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“There is a lonesome field of tall grasses within which one might pass a warm dusk eve and watch the stars and fireflies bring new illumination against the periwinkle sky and amidst the faint symphony of crickets and marsh frogs. A breeze whisks over and nearly flattens the fibrous stalks, and there is a sense of renewing peace that fills the form on this eve that one might wish to carry forward into all moments thereafter—a resplendent sense of contentment. All is finally and lastingly to one’s satisfaction. And yet, right now, this notion of satisfaction seems illusory and unattainable. At these depths, it seems too like a childish game.”

MeditationSkyIllusionDivingUnderwaterBeauty And Distraction
Book:trenches parallax leapfrog
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“It seemed a ruse that fear of death should be the sole motivation for living and, yet, to quell this fear made the prospect of living itself seem all the more absurd; to extend this further, the notion of living one’s life for the purposes of pondering the absurdity of living was an even greater absurdity in and of itself, which thus, by reductio ad absurdum, rendered the fear of death a necessary function of life and any lack thereof, a trifling matter rooted in self-inflicted incoherence.”

ParadoxAbsurdityFear Of DeathAbsurdismReductionismIncoherenceFear Of UnknownReason For LivingCircular Reasoning
Book:Only the Deplorable
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“Sound waves, regardless of their frequency or intensity, can only be detected by the Mole Fly’s acute sense of smell—it is a little known fact that the Mole Fly’s auditory receptors do not, in fact, have a corresponding center in the brain designated for the purposes of processing sensory stimuli and so, these stimuli, instead of being siphoned out as noise, bypass the filters to be translated, oddly enough, by the part of the brain that processes smell. Consequently, the Mole Fly’s brain, in its inevitable confusion, understands sound as an aroma, rendering the boundary line between the auditory and olfactory sense indistinguishable. Sounds, thus, come in a variety of scents with an intensity proportional to its frequency. Sounds of shorter wavelength, for example, are particularly pungent. What results is a species of creature that cannot conceptualize the possibility that sound and smell are separate entities, despite its ability to discriminate between the exactitudes of pitch, timbre, tone, scent, and flavor to an alarming degree of precision. Yet, despite this ability to hyper-analyze, they lack the cognitive skill to laterally link successions of either sound or smell into a meaningful context, resulting in the equivalent of a data overflow. And this may be the most defining element of the Mole Fly’s behavior: a blatant disregard for the context of perception, in favor of analyzing those remote and diminutive properties that distinguish one element from another. While sensory continuity seems logical to their visual perception, as things are subject to change from moment-to-moment, such is not the case with their olfactory sense, as delays in sensing new smells are granted a degree of normality by the brain. Thus, the Mole Fly’s olfactory-auditory complex seems to be deprived of the sensory continuity otherwise afforded in the auditory senses of other species. And so, instead of sensing aromas and sounds continuously over a period of time—for example, instead of sensing them 24-30 times per second, as would be the case with their visual perception—they tend to process changes in sound and smell much more slowly, thereby preventing them from effectively plotting the variations thereof into an array or any kind of meaningful framework that would allow the information provided by their olfactory and auditory stimuli to be lasting in their usefulness. The Mole flies, themselves, being the structurally-obsessed and compulsive creatures that they are, in all their habitual collecting, organizing, and re-organizing of found objects into mammoth installations of optimal functional value, are remarkably easy to control, especially as they are given to a rather false and arbitrary sense of hierarchy, ascribing positions—that are otherwise trivial, yet necessarily mundane if only to obscure their true purpose—with an unfathomable amount of honor, to the logical extreme that the few chosen to serve in their most esteemed ranks are imbued with a kind of obligatory arrogance that begins in the pupal stages and extends indefinitely, as they are further nurtured well into adulthood by a society that infuses its heroes of middle management with an immeasurable sense of importance—a kind of celebrity status recognized by the masses as a living embodiment of their ideals. And yet, despite this culture of celebrity worship and vicarious living, all whims and impulses fall subservient, dropping humbly to the knees—yes, Mole Flies do, in fact, have knees!—before the grace of the merciful Queen, who is, in actuality, just a puppet dictator installed by the Melic papacy, using an old recycled Damsel fly-fishing lure. The dummy is crude, but convincing, as the Mole flies treat it as they would their true-born queen.”

Science FictionPataphysicsSurrealismSpeculative FictionCognitive ScienceAuditoryWeird FictionSurrealisticOlfactorySensory ProcessingStimuliMole FliesPuppet Dictator
Book:Don't Forget to Breathe
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“I feel as though dispossessed from the semblances of some crystalline reality to which I’d grown accustomed, and to some degree, had engaged in as a participant, but to which I had, nevertheless, grown inexplicably irrelevant. But the elements of this phenomenon are now quickly dissolving from memory and being replaced by reverse-engineered Random Access actualizations of junk code/DNA consciousness, the retro-coded catalysts of rogue cellular activity. The steel meshing titters musically and in its song, I hear a forgotten tale of the Interstitial gaps that form pinpoint vortexes at which fibers (quanta, as it were) of Reason come to a standstill, like light on the edge of a Singularity. The gaps, along their ridges, seasonally infected by the incidental wildfires in the collective unconscious substrata. Heat flanks passageways down the Interstices. Wildfires cluster—spread down the base trunk Axon in a definitive roar: hitting branches, flaring out to Dendrites to give rise to this release of the very chemical seeds through which sentience is begotten. Float about the ether, gliding a gentle current, before skimming down, to a skip over the surface of a sea of deep black with glimmering waves. And then, come to a stop, still inanimate and naked before any trespass into the Field, with all its layers that serve to veil. Plunge downward into the trenches. Swim backwards, upstream, and down through these spiraling jets of bubbles. Plummet past the threshold to trace the living history of shadows back to their source virus. And acquire this sense that the viruses as a sample, all of the outlying populations withstanding: they have their own sense of self-importance, too. Their own religion. And they mine their hosts barren with the utilitarian wherewithal that can only be expected of beings with self-preservationist motives.”

RealityConsciousnessMetaphysicalDetachmentSelf PreservationSingularityEvent HorizonNeuronsVortexUtilitarianBurroughsExistentialistCollective UnconsciousWildfireSelf ImportanceQuantum RealitySurrealisticFree Verse PoetryJungianHuman ArroganceDispossessionJunk DnaDendritesParasitic SuperegoAxonsCollective Unconscious SubstrataLiving History Of ShadowsShadow VirusSource Virus
Book:Sinew of the Social Species
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“Princess Cookie’s cognitive pathways may have required a more comprehensive analysis. He knew that it was possible to employ certain progressive methods of neural interface, but he felt somewhat apprehensive about implementing them, for fear of the risks involved and of the limited returns such tactics might yield. For instance, it would be a particularly wasteful endeavor if, for the sake of exhausting every last option available, he were even to go so far as resorting to invasive Ontological Neurospelunkery, for this unorthodox process would only prove to be the cerebral equivalent of tracking a creature one was not even sure existed: surely one could happen upon some new species deep in the caverns somewhere and assume it to be the goal of one’s trek, but then there was a certain idiocy to this notion, as one would never be sure this newfound entity should prove to be what one wished it to be; taken further, this very need to find something, to begin with, would only lead one to clamber more deeply inward along rigorous paths and over unsteady terrain, the entirety of which could only be traversed with the arrogant resolve of someone who has already determined, with a misplaced sense of pride in his own assumptions, that he was undoubtedly making headway in a direction worthwhile. And assuming still that this process was the only viable option available, and further assuming that Morell could manage to find a way to track down the beast lingering ostensibly inside of Princess Cookie, what was he then to do with it? Exorcise the thing? Reason with it? Negotiate maybe? How? Could one hope to impose terms and conditions upon the behavior of something tracked and captured in the wilds of the intellect? The thought was a bizarre one and the prospect of achieving success with it unlikely. Perhaps, it would be enough to track the beast, but also to let it live according to its own inclinations inside of her. This would seem a more agreeable proposition. Unfortunately, however, the possibility still remained that there was no beast at all, but that the aberration plaguing her consciousness was merely a side effect of some divine, yet misunderstood purpose with which she had been imbued by the Almighty Lord Himself. She could very well have been functioning on a spiritual plane far beyond Morell’s ability to grasp, which, of course, seared any scrutiny leveled against her with the indelible brand of blasphemy. To say the least, the fear of Godly reprisal which this brand was sure to summon up only served to make the prospect of engaging in such measures as invasive Ontological Neurospelunkery seem both risky and wasteful. And thus, it was a nonstarter.”

ConsciousnessPataphysicsFairy TalesSurrealismBlasphemyAberrationBlack HumorExorcismAbsurdismMetafictionNeuroscience Of Free WillOntological NeurospelunkeryEcumenical PsychofragmentismSpiritual PlaneWilds Of The Intellect
Book:Only the Deplorable
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“Let us, thusly, embrace the assumption that to each advocate of a respective paradigm within his respective bubble, the phenomenological gaps between himself and those in neighboring bubbles are insurmountable. The resident of a given bubble has become so inured to the echoes of his own ‘truth’ as to abandon all terms of commonality with the ‘truths’ of others outside his bubble. The internal terms, concepts, definitions and assumptions underlying each paradigm are different and incommensurate with those of their external counterparts. And so, to debate them would be tantamount to speaking through one another without much mutual understanding. In their communities, they speak different words, abide by different sets of logic, axioms and propositions from those of other communities; they, thusly, do not understand the terminology upholding other paradigms beside their own, and many attempts at translation have become lost in circular discourse for there exists no equivalency of terms. Thus, any gaps between bubbles of paradigm are beyond traversal; all arguments between them remain perplexing and irreconcilable. There, then, evolves, among them, a strong tendency to seek out information that only serves to confirm their own biases, and, in the process, to otherize any alien paradigms as hotbeds of disinformation.”

ParadigmPostmodernismEpistemologyPhenomenologyConfirmation BiasPost TruthTheory Of KnowledgeEcho ChamberInsularityInformation BubblesPlurality Of Truth
Author:Ashim Shanker
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“The passage that he had found in the book had been riddled with ambiguities and contradictions only reserved for those most valiant in overriding their legalistic forbearance into a necessary frenzy that would allow them to suitably work up a case for one side or the other on how the Law, without the possibility of misinterpretation, states If ABC, then DEF—or for the sake of acknowledging the counterargument first as a courtroom tactic, the case might also be made that the Law states the antithesis of the aforementioned If ABC, then DEF, but gives allowance within reasonable parameters for a provisional XYZ to be granted in exceptional cases. And thus, it was a matter not so much of making one’s case in a clear and logical sense, but one for the lawyers to battle out in the arena of pathos, as it was clearly the emotional pleas that could evoke a sense of sympathy in the courtroom and overturn otherwise painstaking endeavors at using the tools at hand to make pleas based upon incontrovertible facts.”

Common GoodPathosMisinterpretationLaw And JusticeContradictionsMoral RelativismAshim ShankerAmbiguitiesIncontrovertibleHollow Systems Of JurisprudenceLegalistic Forbearance
Book:Don't Forget to Breathe
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“Naturally there was the notion of private property as a pragmatic concept, for individuals or groups have a proclivity to tend to their own possessions with greater care and reverence than they would to common property...in such cases, the notion of ownership would underscore a relationship existing between distinct people, rather than a legal association between a person and that which is said to be possessed, which is to say that ownership was, in its strictest definition, the societal distinction between the owner and the non-owner with respect to the property in question. Beyond this, the concept of ownership varied further from society-to-society according to their respective derivations of natural law, legal positivism and legal realism. Some societies—the indigenous Itako tribes...for example—railed against their governments’ initiatives for private ownership in favor of maintaining equal access to available resources (in the case of the Itako, this was due primarily to the fact that theirs were kin-based tribes whose membership sought to live communally). All the same, even this notion of common possession seemed to me rather arrogant, for the necessitated existence of a public domain was rooted in the shared human dominance over the objects or organisms in question. And so, in my dizzying contemplation, I began to yearn for a greater law that stretched to vast limits beyond that which governed humanity alone. The voice in my mind spoke earnestly of the need for a unifying jurisprudence which could preside over all of Nature’s manifestations in a manner either probabilistically fair or mathematically arbitrary. And perhaps, still, this would not be enough.”

NatureJusticePropertyCommunismManifestationMaterialismProperty RightsNatural LawTribalismEgalitarianismJurisprudencePublic DomainEntitlementsCommon PropertyHuman ArroganceArbitrarinessChattelPrivate OwnershipHuman DominanceKin Selective AltruismLegal PositivismLegal Realism
Book:Only the Deplorable
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“Their quarry had been cornered in his defenses and their bloodlust was such that they were likely to pay top Julep to watch him escape, so that he might be brutalized and killed before their very eyes, as this was much more gratifying to them than simply watching justice be enacted. They, too, understood that societal constructs for justice were moderate gratification, at best, as they were empty and subject to contradictions and compromises steeped in moral relativism and an unconditional dependence upon overblown semantics that made the law a mockery of itself. As for the ideologies that these hollow systems of jurisprudence sought to define and uphold: these could easily be subjugated through a meticulous analysis of the trivial components of one statute or another. The rule of law had failed them. What the people wanted, in its stead, was rather simple: moral absolutes. Good versus evil. And evil was not to be simply prevailed over. Evil was to be dominated and effectively eliminated, because as long as it was able to while away the time somewhere—in some sweaty prison cell, far away, staring out the barred window with a wry smile, as it plotted its next offensive on the Common Good, a sense of wholeness could not be achieved.”

JusticePrisonGood And EvilBrutalityCommon GoodNatural LawContradictionsMoral RelativismQuarryJurisprudenceBloodlustCompromisesDualitiesHollow Systems Of JurisprudenceMoral AbsolutesOverblown SemanticsSocietal Contructs For JusticeSubjugation Of Law
Book:Don't Forget to Breathe
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“In my mind, I could sense their roots under the soil, creeping in helical tangles of ever-increasing complexity outward and in all directions—out beyond the perimeter of the Helsingør Wood, out below Yami’s Under City, out along the banks of the river, out to the nearest coast and thereupon out into the sea; the roots crept down further along the continental shelf, downward into the abysses, downward into the ocean floor, burrowing under the corals and under trenches, and then back up again to sprout in the darkened forest on a foreign continent: all the trees of the world now had conjoined roots, for they were now of one conjoined consciousness!”

SeaRootsPropertySoilOwnershipTreesRiverForestInterconnectednessOntologyTrenchesCollective ConsciousnessPerimeterAshim ShankerHelixTanglesConjoinedCorals
Book:Only the Deplorable
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“There are underwater cables that seem to emerge and interweave the various objects drifting and rotating in space. I can imagine their intersections and junction points and synapses ~ the remote hosts out in the fringes. The control stations on terrain that re-route incoming impulses. A flood of light information is passing between domains, all of it insulated within these submerged cables unseen to those on the surface. There is something unsettling about this. Even the sharks seem to steer clear of the cables as though in instinctual protest to the coded impulses passing throughout and beyond, evading the frequencies that comprehensively register and reflexively influence all conceptualization, inclination, and movement.”

SharksInformation TechnologyConnectednessOntologyCategorizationConceptualizationCodesImpulsesRemote HostUnderwater Cable
Book:trenches parallax leapfrog
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“It is amazing how dispiriting it can be to enter a learning environment and to be made immediately to suppress your own exploratory inclinations. So many learning environments in the world are still like this. Don’t question what you are taught! Just listen and get good marks on the test! It conditions us to be slaves. The minute we abandon our inquisitive nature, we cede our consciences to the whims of tyrants. We are capable of better. We owe it to ourselves and each other to create better opportunities that enhance human potential. Education is the externality that allows for this, but our methods of education must promote self-guidance and self-reliance.”

EducationSelf HelpTyrannyOppressionEducational PhilosophySelf RelianceSelf GrowthSuppressionDronesHuman PotentialHegemonySlavesEducational ReformExploratory LearningExternalityInquistive NatureSelf GuidanceSpirit Breaking
Book:Sinew of the Social Species
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“If we were to trace the arc of this resplendent moment to its uncertain trajectory, we might arrive at a time 10,000 years hence in which our story is likely to be told, albeit in the past tense, with the requisite degree of speculation and inconsistency and according to the values, perceptions and prevailing paradigms swirling about its storyteller—who, most certainly, would be just as alien and unseemly to us as we, in our primitive ways, would seem to him... Of course, we can suppose there to be some level of idealization in the storytelling—even if he...were to examine fastidiously all records of our associations, contracts, interactions, transactions and endeavors, he would still come away with his own set of presumptions, in a manner, no different than the sort to be drawn away through the course of taking epistemological preference. Certain facts, agreements and events will unduly be assigned a preponderance of emphasis whilst others, though critical in their own time and to its chief actors, will be glossed over for their lack of sexiness to the keen observer of historical fact. Certain moments will be lost and others manufactured in their place, and these conscripted fabrications will define future idealizations of this moment of time—this, as you are sure to find, deeply critical moment in the history of our species.”

PropagandaSpeculationEpistemologyInconsistencyConfirmation BiasIdealization Of The PastHistorical Inaccuracy
Book:Inward and Toward
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“But what is identity really? What is it to ‘belong’ when we cast ourselves in the mold of a social group? I ask this, in spite of my implicit allegiance to one; yet, it is a worthwhile question. I mean, really, what does it even mean to share a commonality of blood or language or religion or heritage or context or economy or trade—and what value does this sharing of common traits, values and experiences truly have when there exists already a larger model of connection and commonality enveloping these disparate identities whole...? Do we pout at our inadequacies in the face of a “something” that is slightly more heterogeneous in its model of belonging? Sometimes, we simply must let go and chalk up all these movements to an inveterate (and arbitrary) sense of pride.”

IdentityBelongingPolitical CorrectnessCultural DiversityHuman ConnectionCultural RelativismEgocentrismEthnocentrismHuman ArrogancePhenomenological ExistentialismCultural Insecurity
Author:Ashim Shanker
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“Of course, there is no way to avoid being a hypocrite, even when seeking to remove oneself from the falseness of this material existence. And perhaps, this attribution of ‘falseness’ is not sufficiently accurate as a descriptor either; yet, how else is it to be articulated if something of it seems inauthentic and insincere as though existence itself were mediated through codes and objects and structures that constrained the domain of possibility, or rather relegated the notion of free will as becoming a reaction to prompts and the construct of independent action as having emerged from latent subsets of choices that presented themselves according to the dynamic interplay of obligation, code, preservation and groupthink?”

HypocrisyOntologyMaterial WorldImposterFalsityGroupthinkSpectacleSignifiers
Book:Inward and Toward
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“Was it possible to feel nostalgic about something that had never happened to him, possible for nostalgia to be taken in by the body as a free pathogen to infect the consciousness with stray sentiments? Perhaps, in his dreams, he had traveled back in time, or even drifted into another dimension of space-time and inhabited the body, experiences, and nostalgia of another. To even envisage so allowed the trauma of those lost moments, though not his own, to draw from him a certain envy for the entity in whose memories he had basked vicariously. . .Perhaps, nostalgia was a microorganism. . .the bacterium that infected. . . Yes. . .maybe he was sick.”

ConsciousnessEnvyNostalgiaTime TravelEntityPlagueInfectionMultiple PersonalitiesLost TimeMicroorganismsRemembrance Of Things PastPathogenMultiple UniversesVicarious ExperienceAilmentBacterium
Book:Only the Deplorable
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“I can hear the nettlesome wails of these rowdy children arguing over whether some object in a crayon rendering is, in fact, the sun or the moon or otherwise simply a lopsided sky egg. I wonder briefly at the intention behind manifestation, but then resign myself to an understanding that all of this work is arbitrary. There will always be the indelible contradiction that introduces doubt, and this will serve to overwhelm the purpose. And so, no decisive answers can be had with respect to this rendering, and I cannot help but feel rather sad myself at this.”

PurposeDoubtCreationEgoPerceptionManifestationIntentionalitySubjectivity And Objectivity
Book:trenches parallax leapfrog
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“What indeed is the half-life of a mortal consciousness? What is the half-life of a memory of that mortal consciousness? Of course, this is purely an academic question and of no immediate concern to those of us existing in the world of the living, for we possess already a memory, in its stead, which serves as a basis of our perception of the past. Accurate or not, this nature of memory allows us to understand the past according to the positions occupied by the flesh about which we seek to know, but, unfortunately, not in a way relative to the flesh itself—that flesh stripped of identity and circumstance, that flesh which, in its most rudimentary capacity, had once collided, interacted, fought, competed, negotiated, cooperated, and mated with other flesh: there is no history of this kind, thoroughly naked and telling enough, which is accessible to us, for we are composed of the very same substance, the very same flesh, and sadly incapable of stepping outside of it, even momentarily.”

ConsciousnessRolesFleshSubstanceMortalitySublimeImpermanenceHalf LifeMemory And ImaginationAshim ShankerImagined ExperienceInsubstantialHistory Of Material SubstanceTangible Versus Intangible
Book:Only the Deplorable
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“Doubt has become the veritable wellspring of my creative process and my philosophic explorations. It has equipped me with the temerity and wherewithal to question certain truths deemed ‘fundamental’ by my betters. Defiance has made me stubborn—possibly even arrogant—enough to shrug off rejection and all fears thereof, no matter how lacerating to the self-esteem these could be. It has given me the will to seek only to satisfy myself.”

FearDoubtSelf EsteemArroganceCreative ProcessDefianceSelf GrowthSelf ConsciousnessQuestioning MindFundamental TruthTemerityLacerations
Book:Sinew of the Social Species
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“Bunnu was no amateur when it came to escape. And even in his drowsiest moments, he understood implicitly that to forget his circumstances, even for a short while, meant first to forget himself. Who he was and why he was—to strip it all bare and start from scratch, as it were. In his nearly 250 years of life and, now, as an old emaciated man completely estranged from his family and closest friends—albeit more by circumstance than by choice—he understood the importance of this process and revered it, for there were far greater things to be done and achieved in the dark, uncertain areas of existence than in those circumscribed—and thereby strained—by comprehensibility.”

DreamExistenceUncertainSurrealUnconscious MindMemory LossEscape From RealityLoss Of SelfComprehensibilityOntological Neurospelunkery
Book:Only the Deplorable
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“He paused as his eyes went Elsewhere. His mouth hung open uncharacteristically in an odd moment of hesitation. But then he spoke: “I dreamt one night that I stood before the Conjurer of All. I do not know if this Conjurer was God, per se , but let us entertain the possibility that there exists, at least encoded in the patterned mechanisms of the human mind, a necessary and indelible embodiment therein that is simultaneously the Creator of the Universe and the Forger of All Things Within It The Knower of All there is to Know, to say the least. I stood uncomfortably before such an entity and this Conjurer spoke thus, ‘Seeker of Truth!’ His words were oppressive, yet assuring, ‘Now it can all be told! Now you may have all the answers you seek. All the answers of the Universe!’ This proclamation only satisfied me briefly, for I almost immediately found myself responding, ‘Dear Conjurer, I do not wish to sound ungrateful, but instead of all the answers, may I not have more questions? An endless supply even? For all else would seem insufficient. I could never face a world that lacked mystery.’ The Maker laughed as though I had told the only joke in the Universe in which he could find humor. I awoke immediately, out of breath, for I, too, had been laughing.”

TruthDoubtDreamsAbsurdismNo AnswersSkepticism And ReligionMystery Of CreationBeautiful Questions
Book:Inward and Toward
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“Between concentric pavement ripples glide errant echoes originating from beyond the Puddled Metropolis. Windowless blocks and pickle-shaped monuments demarcate the boundaries of patternistic cycles from those wilds kissed neither by starlight nor moonlight. Lethal underbrush of razor-like excrescence pierces at the skins of night, crawls with hyperactive sprouts and verminous vines that howl with contempt for the wicked fortunes of Marshland Organizers armed with scythes and hoes and flaming torches who have only succeeded in crafting their own folly where once stood something of glorious and generous integrity. There are familiar whispers under leaves perched upon by flapping moths. They implore the spirit again to heed the warnings of the vines and to not be swayed by the hubris of these organizing opportunists. One is to stop moving at frantic zigzags through gridlocked streets, stop climbing ladders altogether, stop relying on drainage pipes where floods should prevail, stop tapping one’s feet in waiting rooms expecting to be seen and examined and acknowledged. Rather, one is to eschew unseemly fabrications and conceal oneself beneath the surface of leaves—perhaps even inside the droplets of dew—one is, after all, to feel shameful of the form, of all forms, and seek instead to merge with whispers which do not shun or excoriate, for they are otherwise occupied in the act of designating meaning. Yet, what meaning stands beyond the rectitude of angles and symmetry, but rather in wilds among agitated insects and resplendent bogs and malicious spiders and rippling mosses pronouncing doom upon their surroundings? One is said to find only the same degree of opportunism, and nothing greatly edifying that could serve to extend beyond the banalities of self-preservation. But no, surely there is something more than this—there absolutely must be something more, and it is to be found! Forget what is said about ‘opportunism’—this is just a word and, thusly, a distraction. The key issue is that there are many such campaigns of contrivance mounted by the taxonomic self-interest of categories and frameworks ‘who’ only seek primacy and authority over their consumers. The ascription of ‘this’ may thusly be ascribed also with that of ‘this other’ and so it cannot be ‘that precisely’ because ‘this’ contradicts another ‘that other’ with which ‘this other’ surely claims affiliation. Certainly, in view of such limiting factors, there is a frustration that one is bound to feel that the answers available are constrained and formulaic and insufficient and that one is simply to accept the way of things as though they are defined by the highest of mathematics and do not beget anything higher. One is, thusly, to cease in one’s quest for unexplored possibility. The lines have been drawn, the contradictions defined and so one cannot expect to go very far with these mathematical rules and boundaries in place. There are ways out: one might assume the value of an imaginary unit and bounce out of any restrictive quadrant as with the errant echoes against the rippling pavement of this Puddled Metropolis. One will then experience something akin to a bounding and rebounding leap—iterative, but with all subleaps constituting a more sweeping trajectory—outward to other landscapes and null landscapes, inward through corridors and toward the centroid of circumcentric chamber clusters, into crevices and trenches between paradigms and over those mountain peaks of abstruse calculation.”

AuthorityParadigmTranscendentalismOpportunismTaxonomyTangibilityMathematics And PoetryCentroidLimiting Factors
Book:Inward and Toward
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“He remembered a version of himself untrammeled by expectation, unimpeded by Ego. He had suffered in the many years since then, seeking to return to that original self, if, in fact, it ever existed. And yet, he was helpless but to regard that unmistakable fear that gripped him in his dream as a sign that his unevenness lent him now to utter incongruity with this specter of past.”

SufferingEgoLiberationPurityEmancipationSymmetryPast And PresentLoss Of InnocenceIncongruityRemembrance Of Things PastSpecter
Book:Sinew of the Social Species
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“The Coach’s head was oblong with tiny slits that served as eyes, which drifted in tides slowly inward, as though the face itself were the sea or, in fact, a soup of macromolecules through which objects might drift, leaving in their wake, ripples of nothingness. The eyes—they floated adrift like land masses before locking in symmetrically at seemingly prescribed positions off-center, while managing to be so closely drawn into the very middle of the face section that it might have seemed unnecessary for there to have been two eyes when, quite likely, one would easily have sufficed. These aimless, floating eyes were not the Coach’s only distinctive feature—for, in fact, connected to the interior of each eyelid by a web-like layer of rubbery pink tissue was a kind of snout which, unlike the eyes, remained fixed in its position among the tides of the face, arcing narrowly inward at the edges of its sharp extremities into a serrated beak-like projection that hooked downward at its tip, in a fashion similar to that of a falcon’s beak. This snout—or beak, rather—was, in fact, so long and came to such a fine point that as the eyes swirled through the soup of macromolecules that comprised the man’s face, it almost appeared—due to the seeming thinness of the pink tissue—that the eyes functioned as kinds of optical tether balls that moved synchronously across the face like mirror images of one another. 'I wore my lizard mask as I entered the tram, last evening, and people found me fearless,' the Coach remarked, enunciating each word carefully through the hollow clack-clacking sound of his beak, as its edges clapped together. 'I might have exchanged it for that of an ox and then thought better. A lizard goes best with scales, don’t you think?' Bunnu nodded as he quietly wondered how the Coach could manage to fit that phallic monstrosity of a beak into any kind of mask, unless, in fact, this disguise of which he spoke, had been specially designed for his face and divided into sections in such a way that they could be readily attached to different areas—as though one were assembling a new face—in overlapping layers, so as to veil, or perhaps even amplify certain distinguishable features. All the same, in doing so, one could only imagine this lizard mask to be enormous to the extent that it would be disproportionate with the rest of the Coach’s body. But then, there were ways to mask space, as well—to bend light, perhaps, to create the illusion that something was perceptibly larger or smaller, wider or narrower, rounder or more linear than it was in actuality. That is to say, any form of prosthesis designed for the purposes of affecting remedial space might, for example, have had the capability of creating the appearance of a gap of void in occupied space. An ornament hangs from the chin, let’s say, as an accessory meant to contour smoothly inward what might otherwise appear to be hanging jowls. This surely wouldn’t be the exact use that the Coach would have for such a device—as he had no jowls to speak of—though he could certainly see the benefit of the accessory’s ingenuity. This being said, the lizard mask might have appeared natural rather than disproportionate given the right set of circumstances. Whatever the case, there was no way of even knowing if the Coach wasn’t, in fact, already wearing a mask, at this very moment, rendering Bunnu’s initial appraisal of his character—as determined by a rudimentary physiognomic analysis of his features—a matter now subject to doubt. And thus, any conjecture that could be made with respect to the dimensions or components of a lizard mask—not to speak of the motives of its wearer—seemed not only impractical, but also irrelevant at this point in time.”

PataphysicsSurrealismConjectureAbsurdismPhysiognomyVeilWeird FictionMetafictionSurreal QuotesDisproportionateProsthesisRemedial SpaceMacromoleculesStealth Surrealism
Book:Don't Forget to Breathe
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“...imagine that you hold in one hand an oddly shaped stone. You keep this hand closed into a fist, but still you can feel the stone’s curvature and the pointed edges, the roughness—of course, you know the relative size and weight and might even have a mental image of the color of this stone, even if you have not yet laid eyes upon it. Imagine that stone in your hand. Imagine what it is like to know everything about the way it feels, but nothing of how it looks. Hold that in mind for a moment. Now, imagine that there is a person standing next to you who tells you that she also holds a stone in her hand. You look down and see the clenched fist and she sees yours and you confess the same. Neither of you, it seems, has yet opened the hand and seen the stone. Still, you can only trust each other’s proclamations. Standing together with your stones in hand, the two of you theorize about whether or not your respective stones are similar to one another. You discuss mundane details about your stones (not the special ones—you hesitate to make mention of the sharp point in the northern hemisphere or the flat area on the bottom). Your neighbor finally notes similarities between her stone and yours and you nod with relief and acknowledge that your stones indeed share reasonable commonalities. Over the course of your discussion, you and your neighbor finally conclude, without bothering to open your hands, that the stones you hold must indeed be quite similar. Are they? It is only suitable to say that they are. At the same time, and in spite of your desire not to offend, there is no doubt in your mind that the stone you hold bespeaks a greater prominence than that of your neighbor. You are not sure how you know this to be true, but it must be so! And I do not mean that this stone simply holds a greater subjective prominence. It has something of the universal, for it is, indeed, an auspicious stone! Silently, you hypothesize in what ways it must be special. It is possibly different in shape, color, weight, size and texture from the other, but you cannot confirm this. Perhaps, it is special by substance? Still, you are unsure. The very fact of your uncertainty begins to bother you and unleashes within you a deep insecurity. What if you are wrong and your stone is actually inferior to the other…or inferior even to some third stone not yet encountered? Meanwhile, your neighbor is silently suffering in the same agony. Both of you tacitly understand that, without comparing the two visually, it is absurd to proclaim the two stones similar. Yet, your fist remains clenched, as does your neighbor’s and so you find yourselves unable to hold out the stones before you and compare them side-by-side. Of course, this is possible, but the mutual curiosity is outstripped by an inveterate pride, and so you both become afraid of showing (and even seeing) what you have, for fear that your respective stones will be different in appearance from the model that you have each conceptualized in mind. Meekly your eyes meet and you smile to one another at your new comradeship, but, all the while, remain paralyzed by a simultaneous shame and vanity.”

FormPrideShameVanitySubstanceInsecurityMetaphysicsUnseenIneffableQuirksIdiosyncrasiesIdealRough EdgesPurity Of Essence
Author:Ashim Shanker
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“...it was only natural that this mutual connection between sea and observer be forged: they were kindred spirits. The same, however, could not be done with the implacable moon: that imperious stalwart, which agitated the currents and spurned its beholder. This aloof satellite was formidable, yet neurotic, and so in spite of its ferocity, its movements were simple to predict, thereby granting this fearsome creature a veil of placidity. Its magnitude of torque was easily outmatched by that forceful heave of fear portending any misalignment with its anticipated schedule of phases. It cycled through these on time and without hesitation, experiencing, all the while, a wide array of emotions in response to the dissatisfied countenance of the Master it served. And yet, these changes in mood remained prosaic and careful, dutiful to its Patron; thusly, betraying nothing of its own resentments or intentionality either to its dismissed observer or to its demanding Patron, divulging nothing even of the influence which it potentially wielded over the Patron Planet, but which, in its lunar insecurity, never reached full expression save for the idle touslings of liquid fur. Perhaps it was diffident or bashful—otherwise, it was simple and had little prevailing ambition. Its motives were immaterial, in fact, for its aspirations were easily eclipsed and often countermanded and so one could not help but anticipate in its withered mien a certain resignation, a retreat to introspection away from the gazes of those who mistook its surrender to deterministic forces as a duty held most solemn. To be sure, it was a specter oft-romanticized by dullard poets and priests who admired it for its calming reserve, its gentle wisdom in juxtaposition with the histrionic impatience of the sea: like a tired guardian and a screaming toddler with primacy afforded counterintuitively to the guardian. What mattered more, in fact, was the subject of its influence: the willful and disobedient medium which spurned that hands that molded it. The moldings were more like jostles really and for a time they felt just and reasonable, but soon they came to confine and until verily there was no movement available that was not otherwise preordained by the will of the master. The accursed moon!”

ControlRomanticismDisillusionmentIdealizationMoon And Sea
Book:Inward and Toward
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“A bracing wind swirls about the boy and alights gently upon his shoulder to gape frightfully at droplets of fate joined infirmly to a sweep of atmospheric and lunar forces far beyond their capabilities to resist. He takes a long, deep breath of air—cleansed through its migration—and he closes his eyes. Scattered waves roll back in to the sea.”

DestinyFateOceanBreatheMigrationAtmosphericLunarDon T Forget To Breathe
Book:Don't Forget to Breathe
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“The feeling filters in for an instant, then rushes out, leaving lasting watermarks of nostalgia. Neurotransmitters will only impart tired old platitudes of common structure: trite anecdotes with predictable elements. No doubt the perception of this Moment will recede back in with the waves and leave me once again looking to symbols for recollection. But then, perhaps it is wrong of me to think of it this way. It is, yes.”

MemoryIntuitionSymbolismPerception Of RealityNeurotransmittersFeeling And Thought
Book:trenches parallax leapfrog
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“At one moment, his eyes sparkled in the light and in the next they were enshrouded in shadow. What connected those bands of light and dark? Could they indeed have been distinct entities?”

PhilosophyLightDarkExistenceCreationMoralityPerceptionShadowGood And EvilEntityMetaphysicsDualityCognitionOntologyPluralismFaith And DoubtMigrationsIllusion Of SelfAshim ShankerChaos And OrderDon T Forget To Breathe
Book:Don't Forget to Breathe
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“He had given himself over to endless wanderings, a life of migration from life-to-life, albeit not necessarily a set of migrations one must view as physical, but rather a set of migrations between circumstances, a set of migrations where the players surrounding him were just as likely to move as he, but nonetheless, a set of migrations calling forth a life unalterable only by its lack of permanence. Along with this came the slow, but dawning realization that he had relinquished his claim over those new memories he could have created alongside the friends and relatives closest to him; and that he had, furthermore, ceased to exist in such people’s minds, except as a faint and indistinct silhouette of what he had once been, situated seamlessly against the vivid and oddly memorable backdrops of spaces and moments which shall never be again.”

MigrationsAshim Shanker
Book:Only the Deplorable
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