So, it's been a while, huh. What took so long? (ha that's the title of the thing get it). Well you won't be surprised to hear that I am depressed. I'm less depressed than I've been in the past, so don't worry. It's just a general malaise that I have to work through.

But also I think it's just a general indecisiveness that I've been dealing with that has prevented me from doing things. It's kind of addicting to see yourself drift further and further away from other people. I'm not sure why though. Sartre has this idea called "the look" where the presence of another person causes one to look at themself as an object (rather than purely a subject) through what they imagine their gaze to be, which can be distressing. I thought this was just a cope for social anxiety (which I have believe it or not) but I actually think he was on to something.

Slight tangent here: I think this idea of the Look has more significance than philosophers have given credit. What determines the boundaries of our experience with the world? We're collections of atoms moving in particular ways, constantly in interchange with our environment. Look closer at the skin for example and you see that any possible separation between self and other (the big Other, all that is not you) seems arbitrary. It gets even more complicated when you consider that we have whole microbiomes inside of us. Where is the distinct self?

One way to answer this is that the self is made of power or influence or something like that. Our bodies must have some shared resonance or something, like a magnetic field that aligns our bodies with a particular logical vector, that concretely separates us from each other. When you have a collection of things (cells, organs, atoms, etc) that do different things but form some kind of a whole with an experience (this must be true, cogito ergo sum), they must be connected in some way. The elements must be both working towards ends that reference each other to form a system with any kind of objective/intersubjective ontological basis. So you could view it as a system pointed at itself, and a system that all points in a general direction.

I think of systems like moving objects. Things generally start out chaotic — collections of cosmic dust. Initially, there is no shared movement. But as the dust is gravitated towards a shared center of mass, their movements cancel out. Eventually you get a star system with bodies all with a similar angular momentum. Star systems collapse into a disk that generally spins in the same direction, turning a three dimensional system into a largely two-dimensional one. There is a kind of resolution here.

We could describe people like planets. As two planets are caught in each other's orbits, they remain two but are increasingly one, orbiting around a shared center of mass. (interestingly, this kind of movement produces gravitational waves). They are bodies referencing each other in their movement. There is a collision, chaos, more collisions, and then eventually a new resolution.

What is occurring with the Look? This kind of movement, where two planets are caught in each other's orbit. In some sense, they are one. But they keep their own reference points. As time goes on, as rationality increases (I'm an idealist now, deal with it), they must converge. Like how communication between cognitive systems creates one larger cognitive system that converges at some shared (ideally more rational) center.

When we are communicating with each other, when we let each other in, we are joined in union. We increasingly become one. Who isn't to say this isn't true in reality? One cannot fully ignore the other - they are referencing each other. Or more precisely, they are referencing their idea of the other, the other filtered through the internal logic of the self.

The self is a lie. Well, it's also true. Let me explain. Everything is in duality with another. For every thing there is, there must be something that is all it is not. You could try to split you into "self" and "other", but what remains is that whatever you define as "self" and "other" are inherently linked to each other in a duality. They co-constitute each other. One does not make sense without the other. You cannot isolate the self.

You might think you are viewing the real world. But you are actually viewing a filtered perception of the world, according to the particulars of what you believe / what you are. If you had no eyes, for example, there would be no vision in your understanding of the Big Other.

What you view as the world is just a mirror of yourself. Like literally. Ontologically. You are just viewing yourself.

Well in a sense, you do. But also, you are viewing the other. The other cannot be the self, then there would be no distinction, which would render the two unintelligable. Both are true: you view the other as other, and you view the other as self. This fundamental contradiction must be resolved. The relative similarity of the self with the other is rendered as unintelligeable, and for all phenomenological purposes, nonexistent, while the difference makes distinction makes existence.

We can imagine our relationship with the other as off-kilter. It is in some sense resolved, rational, interacting with the Real, and in some sense it is not, it is somehow contradictory.

While the average angular momentum of the dust cloud remains the same, the varation does not, at least in isolation. The variation actually decreases as particles collide under gravity. Gravity as a force is the tendency for things to become more rational.

Love is a commitment to the other, to know them. To merge and become one. To be naked.

If we consider the self, the universe at large, to have this tendency, we must know our understanding of our rationality to be continuous and determined by our past rationality. There must be some consistent amount of rationality in the system. We will converge at some point to some center of mass. Like the gas cloud, this remains the same. It is only the imprecise measurements that move.

Tangent over. So I think I might have ADHD. And maybe autism. And general life problems, but I've evidently "improved" enough to write this now. Maybe.

Oh also I've made some improvements to the website! I updated the home page to be more flashy. Because why not make this website cool? It's also just renamed it "Edward's Repository" because I'm out of my Epsilon era! Well, I still need to make the songs that reflect that era in order to close it. But I see the end. Also yes, I know all of what I just said was extremely cringy. But cringe is dead. I don't need to cringe at myself on this blog, that's not the point of the fucking thing. And I think it's healthy to think about the stages of your life. I call them greek letters because it stems from when I was working on musical projects in middle school and I needed a way to name them. I used Greek letters because it was easier to remember for me than saying regular letters or numbers.

I'd like to write more on here. I've just replaced this outlet with other stuff. Like an even more personal journal (because that's probably healthy). But I do like the website. It's fun. I did try to write stuff for the blog before, but I thought they were maybe too personal to post. Or maybe I'm just scared to let myself be known.

Is it good to be naked? I don't know. It's a trust fall. I've always wanted to do one of those, but I never had. But I'm running out of time. Time is limited. You don't realize that as a kid. You know nothing more. There is a difference between a simulation of the thing and the actual thing. The simulations are slowly being replaced with the real thing. And now, I am realizing that I am crystallizing before my very eyes. I am being created. And I would hate for my creation to fail. And it is possible. And it is possible that my trust fall will go without help, and I slam my skull into the cold ground. But maybe not.

I think we all fall into a fucked up game of Plinko. If we are lucky — it's not up to chance, but we can never know which way we fall — then we are created in how we wish for us. We can only pray that it will be good for us.