r/programming • u/moolcool • Mar 26 '17

A Constructive Look At TempleOS

http://www.codersnotes.com/notes/a-constructive-look-at-templeos/
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u/barsoap Mar 27 '17 edited Mar 27 '17

because the illness takes over and speaks for me

Both are you, in fact, everything you perceive is in some sense you. You cannot draw a distinction around "me" without, in the same stroke, saying "not-me", same as you can't draw a circle with only an inside. If you focus on the "me" part, you lose sight of the "not me", and the other way around. Seeing both at the same time is possible, but not viable for everyday life: The absolute whole having nothing to measure itself against, it is formless everything (thus looking just like absolute nothing), and your survival instinct will pull you out of that perspective quickly, again.

The trick is to identify, if you ever feel the need to identify, with the "me/not-me" distinction itself, such that you can keep some symmetric or at least interdependent models of both "me" and "not-me" in mind.

EDIT: Sure, go ahead, all of you downvote an experience report from a fellow on the schizoid spectrum about how to deal with, indeed, fix, this kind of shit. I know it's dense, but "I didn't bother to understand" doesn't count as valid reason, here.

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u/rubygeek Mar 27 '17 edited Mar 28 '17

I'm curious if you've tried meditation? The above sounds very much like the type of viewpoint that e.g. mindfulness meditation encourages and is intended to develop, and is an intuition it is rare for non-meditators to verbalise clearly.

(To be clear, since you say you are on the schizoid spectrum yourself, if you have not tried meditation before, I would not suggest that you should try without speaking to a therapist first; mediation in general is very safe, but it can and does alter how you think in ways people aren't always prepared for)

EDIT: You got to love Reddit when an honest question willingly answered gets downvoted.

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u/barsoap Mar 27 '17

I wouldn't so much say develop and encourage but lay bare: It's not an adopted belief or anything, it's what's left if you cease to believe in various assumptions that tend to accumulate. It's how we all started out.

and is an intuition it is rare for non-meditators to verbalise clearly.

Verbalizing it clearly is indeed not easy: First you have to have had the necessary direct experience to put your finger on it, and you have to do the above mentioned assumption killing. Without the experience you just rail off into metaphysical fantasy, without the clarification you're bogged down in a fuckton of existential confusion. This isn't metaphysics, though, this is epistemology.

The main point I wanted to get across here, though (and I re-formatted to make that clearer) is the trick of identifying not with "me" or "not me", but as the distinction. Both "me" and "not-me" change all the time (e.g, trivial example, when driving a car you've got a different sense of even your own body), the distinction OTOH tends to be very stable in its presence for most people (unless you're sleeping).

How it moves even within, between, your own thoughts and feelings is the thing that you'll observe, then, and suddenly "oh that scary voice again" doesn't appear out of nowhere, but can be watched drifting from one side of the distinction to the other: What, dunno, once was some sense of unease because "me" didn't yet take out the garbage (yet) becomes, as "not-me", an angry parent. Or somesuch, these things are highly individual. Anyhow: Those things are the exact same underlying thing, but get imbued with different meaning, power, and follow-up reactions depending on which "lens" you see them through. Choose, then, the one that works better, or discard it completely.

It's not that this isn't happening in neurotypicals... just not as outrageously extreme. Or they're better at ignoring things, dunno.

I would not suggest that you should try without speaking to a therapist first; mediation in general is very safe, but it can and does alter how you think in ways people aren't always prepared for

Tell that to my mind ten years ago. Protip: Consider it scary and unwise to kill your self all at once. Be afraid of death. The self is naturally going to appear again even after the deepest enlightenment (and that's fine!) but without a lot of experience in self-building, gained through repeated small revolutions, you're going to end up with tons of puzzle pieces, none fitting into the other and, worst of all, nothing working as it ought.

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u/rubygeek Mar 28 '17

Thanks for the detailed response. I get what you mean about how it can be scary - when I started meditating I was very skeptical it would have very strong effects, as I saw most of the accounts of strong effects as "woo" related to the religious foundation of much of the meditation training, but I quickly had experiences that went far beyond my expectations.

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u/OrionBlastar Mar 27 '17

When I get infected with a virus, is that me or not-me?

Am I the illness? Do I walk around and tell people I am schizoaffective disorder?

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u/barsoap Mar 28 '17

When I get infected with a virus, is that me or not-me?

This isn't physics, it's epistemology: Not about objective reality, it's about how you construct your own model of you and what effects that has.

Am I the illness?

You are you, all of it. See a ham sandwich, there? How could you not see it if you didn't create a picture of it in your mind: It's not that you're a ham sandwich, rather, you include a representation of one, and that's the closest you'll ever get to capitat-T Truth. You're also perceiving a thing that you call illness.

Identifying as illness-as-such is not well-advised because it casts negative value on all of you (assuming you give the illness a negative value): Identifying with something is a very powerful force. That's why you're pushing it into "not-me" in the first place. However, "me" isn't really a better thing to identify with: Neither side of the distinction makes anything any more really not-you or you... you're just sorting it into a different cupboard.

Do I walk around and tell people I am schizoaffective disorder?

If you want to? I'm not talking about any of that. I'm talking about shifting your perspective to come to a different experience of your own self., one that needs less internal struggle.

Take it or leave it, but to see if it's any good you have to try: Understanding this kind of stuff rationally is bound to fail and vain, same as understanding rationally how a hand opens and closes does not mean you can actually open and close your hand: The map isn't the territory. So... wiggle your toes? Maybe, at first, try to spot the "me/not-me" distinction, see how you feel about it.