StevenFranssen.com

Tag: self knowledge

  • The Personality Submerged In Mysticism

    The blanket of nothingness envelops.

    I am really not a fan of mysticism.

    Mysticism is the inability to articulate an argument through reason and evidence alone.

    I have been doing philosophy since 2007. One of my early undertakings was to undo all of the mystical programming I had been put through by my upbringing. The clarity this provided me was astounding. Only until the past few years, maybe since 2022, have I realized just how much that essential early work saved me from insanity.

    The thing with mysticism is that anyone who practices it inevitably leans on it more and more as they get older.

    When you’re a young, wide-eyed pup, you take for granted your ability to grasp The Argument. You haven’t eroded your reasoning abilities, by choice, yet. As you get older, you have lived through more and more forks in the road where you either chose reason-and-evidence or mysticism.

    The more you lean into mysticism, the more you rely on it and it devours you. Then you live in this permanent kind of cope where you’re forever looking to some person out there that is proof of concept for your mysticism. A strange veneration of mystics of the past sets in, too. There’s a guilty tone to it. You lose your creativity.

    As I approach my fifth decade on the planet, I have come to appreciate how little people actually register on the plane of philosophy. Meaning, people don’t exist philosophically. By my reckoning, it amounts to maybe 2% of the people I have ever interacted with – and that’s coming from me, who has been highly specialized and fairly vocal and gregarious and active in the field of philosophy.

    Philosophy or mysticism – that’s the fundamental choice for any thinker. There is no mixing of the two. It’s impossible. Anyone telling you otherwise is lying.

    Across the West there has been a tremendous re-uptake with mysticism. You see it from just about every two-bit influencer concerned with “saving the West”. It’s mysticism up and down the line with them. Mysticism unlocks earthly power. If you want influence and influence is power, you go to mysticism. But then you live in insanity. Articulating the veracity if your insanity to you becomes more and more impossible as you age and double down.

    Few will walk the Lonesome Valley.

    There is a tremendous pride and hubris that has followed the West’s re-uptake of mysticism. And more subtly, a murderous rage that threatens to wipe everything out – from within. The incredible spite of people who turned away from reason and evidence is only contained by reason and evidence.

    I have watched so many people now in my years who have turned to mysticism and had their personalities completely enshrouded in greyness and misery. It’s a perfect 1-to-1 input. Adopt mysticism → become enshrouded.

    I cannot abide!

    I will remain free.

    I am not afraid to lose “The West”.

    If the price of keeping it is to be a slave to conformity, forget the West.

    Reason and evidence will bloom something better, anyway. It’s only a matter of time. Why fight math itself? The math is firmly with The Argument.

    You cannot claim to love me and then pepper me with non-arguments. I would like to be treated with curiosity!

    You are not my keeper.

    I banish all the gatekeepers from my midst!

    Go somewhere else.

    Time to stand up.

  • The Cult of Forgetting

    Does time heal all wounds?

    To be timeless…

    There’s a clever trick that society plays on us.

    It’s called, “Why can’t you move on? I have!”

    The truth is that people don’t move on from their wrongs. They simply plow them under and move forward. But whatever you plow under will eventually spring up.

    In this way, people’s personalities become ugly, hardened, and embittered.

    This is why they have no problem asking you, rhetorically, why you can’t move on.

    That’s why they can stomach playing such a shitty trick on a person they’ve wronged.

    There’s a massive uptick in “nostalgia posting” on the timeline.

    As everything goes to utter hell and back, the worst demons among us unleashed, there is a growing contingent of people who long for when times were better.

    This phenomena is captured by this meme:

    These guys, at the time, had it so bad. Life was rough!

    But in hindsight, there’s an innocence they had that has since been spoiled.

    This is not unlike bad parenting’s effects on a person.

    Once upon a time, you were an untroubled, un-cudgeled, un-browbeaten individual who had a plucky enthusiasm and a zest for life. You have some go-off energy.

    This was ground out of you by unhappy, mean parents.

    Little by little, the light went out. The twinkle was snuffed out.

    And you’re not allowed to remember.

    The world is set up to grind you down. The world will remove from you your ability to empathize with previous mood and hormonal states where you were much brighter, more innocent, and alive.

    And if you spend any amount of time trying to remember or recapture these previous states, you will be treated as a kook.

    Abusive parents will edge away from you like you’ve done something wrong.

    An ax-murderer, establishmentarian society will call you sentimental, “conservative”, feckless, weak, cowardly, feminine, etc.

    All manner of abuse must be heaped on you to keep you from questioning why things went so wrong – or how they could be improved.

    Instead you’re supposed live in a highly reactive state of yowling at the latest outrage.

    Forever on a hamster wheel of escalation.

    Society heaps its greatest accolades on those who best help us forget.

    Once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

  • The Thing About Phoning It In

    Showing up is 80% of life.

    To begin to view yourself accurately, think of the most competent person you’ve ever met. Now empathize with their experience of you. How do you measure up? Would they be proud of the standards you keep? Would they be satisfied with your progress? Do you exhibit a “grind” they would appreciate?

    If not, what kind of frustration would they experience at being saddled with your lack of effort?

    Think of a man who’s led a tremendously productive life but he’s struck down by a mystery illness that robs him of his sleep – his vitality engine (wink, wink, nod nod).

    He’s so accustomed to traction but then it’s gone.

    What kind of life is that for him?

    If you have crud levels of effort and he has to live within those bounds, he would feel tremendously oppressed. He would resent these arbitrary, irrational limits. He would feel caged. He would gnash his teeth to try and get loose somehow. But you’d be there, just keeping a foot stamped down on his tail. He’s a wild squirrel and you’re keeping him pinned. He wants to go and let er’ rip but you’re there with your big fat stupid foot just breathing in fatty fat boy air.

    There’s something just so heavy about people who phone it in.

    They’re taking liberties.

    Sometimes I think of the absurdity of passport bros.

    This kind of behavior is just so wildly inappropriate, gross, and pathetic that it boggles the mind how many legions of European men normalize it.

    I go back and forth on the bully question and this instance, I say we need more bullies.

    Allow me to proceed.

    You were born with a genetic jackpot of potentiality and you’re just going and slumming it because your attitude got jacked up by going through the public schools and being on the Internet alone for too long with your own worst tendencies.

    You couldn’t discipline yourself to get your teeth straightened.

    You couldn’t be bothered to read a book every other week in order to become a literate person.

    You had to go National Geographic mode because your brain is too fried to be interested in science or math or philosophy.

    I always chuckle at this delightful mental sandwich Stefan Molyneux once served up about Whitey going and getting in these 1st World/3rd World mixed marriages: White liberal women would be jealous of the anticommunist streak of the resulting children. It’s one of the most Molyneux-finger-trap, hyper-thought-out narrow scope gotchas I’ve ever heard. I’ve mentioned it before and rebutted it.
    You know you have to live with the 3rd worlder and share her company beyond just when her downstairs feels like a young teenager’s, right? I am trying to keep that as PG-13 as possible but we all know that’s 80% why these men do it. Couldn’t get action in high school. You know you’re inheriting a genetic defect-challenged lower IQ person from a poisoned environment, right? There are no environmental standards in these places. They don’t test their drinking water. They wouldn’t even know where to start.

    People are programming. Let’s not pretend that highly self-knowledgeable men are rushing off to deliberately create anticommunists or something like this. The vast majority of 1st World/3rd World pairings feature a White man who let himself go, got too lonely, and bombed out into the slums somewhere.

    White women are just so mean!

    Never mind that your forefathers were making babies before the Ruskies poured in and slaughtered every one.

    Never mind that your forefathers slammed and banged their way to a future IN THE MIDDLE OF THE BLACK PLAGUE.

    Grow a spine.

    The theme here is that low effort is incredibly burdensome on people who are high effort if we have to share commons. This is why billionaires want to abscond and get as far away as possible from the great rabble.

    Get lazy enough and you lose your humanity.

    I’ve never seen this said anywhere ever.

    As a competent, high effort person, I want to highlight this line of thinking. It’s a line of thinking that upholds the great entrepreneurs, innovators, artists, and philosophers. Men who built thought upon thought. Men who systemized their thinking. Men who integrated knowledge into systems. Men who, through their great effort, have pulled us into new vistas of possibility.

    I try to not have contempt for the lazy. I try to have understanding, empathy, a willingness to help but…

    I also do feel a need for separation on a regular basis.

    How does it not drive you completely nuts to lose your edge for even a single day?

    Stay hungry.

    Socialism is defined as State policy of wealth redistribution.

    Get too close to someone who phones it in and they will suck you down into their lazy excuse-making – no government needed. Personality is contagious. Sometimes it is better to be at odds with the entire world to pursue excellence than to sit around, reacting to things.

    Sure, the bar is being raised for family formation. Life is more expensive than ever before. Boomers just keep their fat asses parked on overpriced real estate and the whole economy is waiting for these miserable shits to pass on. And when they do, they’ll pass it all on to private equity and corporations right next to the Fed Reserve money printer – like Blackrock. These useless demons.

    The bar goes higher. So get a running start! Move! Move your butt. Rip and tear at the bootheel on your tail. Make them bleed for what they do to you.

    It’s okay to feel tremendous anger at the men in the environment who take their liberties.

    Fuck em’.

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