Scratchpad

• Most criticism hardly engages with foundational premises

• Extreme intensity does not equal instability

  • Despite my writing, I am quite content and okay with life, and I feel stable.
  • I do have moments of intense spiritual and personal crisis, but I always emerge from being fractured more whole. Likewise, I have a good job, maintain friendships, go outside, etc.
  • It is why I can write "Lightning In My Veins".
  • This implosion and reconstruction has happened to me at least 30+ times now, so I am not bothered by it.
• We must confront criticism on its own with rigor and empathy, because it does come from a good place (mostly).

• Well-meaning criticism holds incredible latent value; logical errors, inconsistencies, etc.

  • The undertones are more valuable than the surface-level criticism.
• I must be willing to discard my thoughts, even those crafted over decades (if such come to be), without a care. Seneca would silently approve.
• If someone wishes to construct criticism for the sake of doing so, they will create imaginary problems regardless of rigor.

• There are undoubtedly many mental illnesses that do destroy a person and their ability to function. But sometimes it feels like any healthy deviation from normal is considered unhealthy and must be fixed. Surely this is a fallacy and we may find balance?
• I care for people above all as the guiding principle of my life. But some people I see cast away as ill just make wonder if they see the world more clearly than I do. I can hold this thought against wanting to provide mental health support to those that need it.
• Clarity and dysfunction sometimes coexist

• To be whole in modern life is either a secret or a miracle.
• Urgent things are scarcely urgent outside of government obligations.
• Survival is common; living is rare. But how does anyone know if they are living?
• Maybe living is nothing more than knowing that surviving is not enough.
• Paradox is not contradiction, and to be human is to be breathe paradox. This is humanity.
• Knowing the frequency of our wrongs precedes living.
• Death is a fiction of the future tense.
• Philosophy is centered around application to life, not abstract ideas.

• Network calls require reluctant acceptance. The portals to hell.
• I must bonk any junior engineer who argues we should introduce a network dependency rather than using an in-process tool, especially for our small scale of operations…
• Corporate engineering is 99% maintaining facades, 1% technical skill
• The bar for interviews is in heaven, the bar for avoiding termination in hell.
• I believe state is a constructed idea, and that we are missing a programming language that is truly event sourced at its core. OTP enables event-based architecture, but what about event sourcing in the language itself?

• We should love difficult people, for they are human.
• Sometimes the manifestation of love is distance.
• If you must go no contact with family to molt into yourself, do it with love and care and grace, even if only in mind and spirit.

• We demand deviations from the normal to reduce themselves while alive

• Yet we romanticize these same figures when dead

  • Nietzsche
  • Weil
• Dead figures can not challenge hierarchies and structures
• The distinction of genius and madness is of physical, mental, and moral distance
• Society commodifies the neutralized

• Most try to hide behind palatable ideas, avoiding discourse
• The most influential are those who, sometimes unfortunately, are bold and decisive with their ideas. Courage.
• Are you willing to die for your ideas? If not, why do you have them?

• Power is creation, the will to incarnate a new reality
• What is mistaken for power - military force, oppression - is a process, not the output

• There is no restoration to the original state of things in the face of affliction
• Only grace is the antidote.

• Clarity is the highest human good
• To attend to something in stillness is the most pure form of love. This could be for another human, a subject, a book, etc.

• P1. If a person reveals they are capable of deeply violating emotional safety, they are now unsafe.
• P2. If a person is unsafe, then openness is no longer possible.
• P3. If a person denies their harm or fails to show deep remorse, they are likely to repeat the behavior.
• P4. If I continue to engage with a person who may repeat harm, I am placing myself in unnecessary danger.
• P5. Safety is a prerequisite for love, vulnerability, and continued connection.
• P6. Most people do not possess the introspective or ethical depth to genuinely transform after harm.
• P7. If someone reveals their inner structure (e.g., by lashing out, saying something cruel, or projecting frustration), that reveals what they are fundamentally capable of.
• P8. I cannot unknow or unsee what someone has shown me they are capable of.
• P9. Apologies do not reverse capability.

Someone performs an action A that harms me.

I analyze A to determine whether it reveals fundamental information about that person’s moral architecture.

If A reveals cruelty, dehumanization, dishonesty, or emotional volatility, then:

• R1. That person is now unsafe (from P1)
• R2. They are now lower in my internal trust ranking

I attempt to determine if the harm was accidental, superficial, or reparable.

• R3. If they are unable to express sincere, reflective remorse, I infer they will likely do it again (from

Because I cannot unsee what they’ve revealed, and I no longer feel emotionally safe, I must exit. (from P8 + P4)

Silence is chosen not to punish, but to preserve safety and truth. (From P2 + P5)

• C1. I withdraw emotionally and socially from that person.
• C2. I do not express forgiveness unless I actually feel it.
• C3. I may remain cordial or polite, but inner access is closed.
• C4. I accept that I will likely never trust that person again, even if I wish I could.
• C5. I no longer express unfiltered emotional or intellectual vulnerability with them.
• C6. I do not try to convince them or fix them. They have shown me what they are.

• H(x) = x harms me

• U(x) = x is unsafe

• T(x) = x cannot be trusted

• R(x) = x shows remorse

• S(x) = I stay silent toward x

• W(x) = I withdraw from x

• F(x) = I forgive x

Then:

1. ∀x: H(x) → U(x) (from P1)
2. ∀x: U(x) → ¬T(x) (from P2)
3. ∀x: ¬R(x) → likely(H(x) again) (from P3)
4. ∀x: H(x) ∧ ¬R(x) → W(x) (from P4, P8)
5. ∀x: W(x) → S(x) ∧ ¬F(x) (from P5, P6, P9)

• The fervor of darkness, the joy of the corrupted whom corrupt
• Philosophy and contemplation is the preparation to die rightly