Not much to write except that I wanted to express my deepest gratitude for all the work you've done. Your philosophy has helped me understand myself and the world far better than any other work I've read. Sincerely thank you.
By way of an update, I and a girl from my uni are madly, madly in love, though neither of our families knows it still. Can you believe that she was head over heels for me for two months last summer while I was oblivious, even while I bashfully plotted to ask her out? I have no idea what to do with all this happiness; I am a river to her, and she to me.
We still think of you somewhat often. I have given her The Fire Sermon and The Book of Love; while reading the latter, she was so frequently tickled by your man-bashing words that she has taken to calling you "girls' girl" ever since.
No doubt we'll marry, and I have you, my dear sir, to thank for all this. Had I not found your works (by chance, in late 2018, from a now-deleted post in the Anarchism subreddit), I might still not have been man enough to tend this romance of a lifetime, let alone able to give meaningful expression to what was happening. Oh, what a difference your pen has made!
Hi Darren, I came to your work via James at Hermitix. Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to listen to the two of you talk before that episode came down...bummer. I don't have any specific questions or comments, but just wanted to take the opportunity to say thank you for your work. Lots of good grist for the mill!
Following a week or two of having to deal with low-lying anxiety (I thought I was surely about to get fired... again), and not having spent enough time outdoors, I had a moment of "derealization", as I think it’s called: for the first time I felt deeply disturbed by the Kantian/Schopenhauerian notion that everything I see, hear, taste and feel is merely a representation of something else, that I'm a prisoner in my own skull (though even a prisoner can dream of escape, while we take our prison cells with us wherever we go). Not a very pleasant sensation. Fortunately I was able to meditate the feeling away— and I'm not too worried about my sanity— but I was nevertheless left with a lingering question of whether we ought to be disturbed by the fact — and, unless you're an idealist or a naïve realist, I think it must be accepted as a fact—that "We are such stuff as dreams are made on". Does it matter whether our experiences are "real" or not? Does it make any difference at all that these hands I'm typing this question with are, in fact, unreal? Ultimately, I think, whether we find the dreamlike nature of experience a good or a bad think depends on what "flavour" of dream we find ourselves immersed in...
Any thoughts?
Also, do you (Darren or others) have any good bad movies/books/songs/paintings to recommend? What do you think of “so bad it's good“ cinema in genereal? It’s a bit of a strange phenomenon, isn’t it? The Schadenfreudist would enjoy, surely.
This ‘derealization’ sounds schizoid to me, the fruit, as you say, of derealized anxiety and virtuality. Yes, it is all a dream, and that makes a huge difference to the dreamer, who, if he perceives it aright, then loses attachment to dream victories and fear of dream failures; but the dream is not separate from the reality of the dreamer, which unifies the separate elements, and holds them together in miraculously ordinary materiality. To paraphrase Dogan; Before one studies Zen, mountains are mountains; after a first glimpse into the truth of Zen, mountains are Kantian/Schopenhauerian representations of something horribly disturbing projected onto the inside of your skull; after enlightenment, mountains are once again mountains.
In my experience ‘so bad it’s good’… is bad. There’s a kind of grim SF enjoying something like ‘The Room’, but it’s a pretty shoddy artistic experience. The Schadenfreudist (in my telling; William has another version) transcends his state into selbst-schadenfreudism - the glory of laughing at your self. This demands, and generates, genius.
Ah yes, youve reminded me of the superb concluding section of the Apocalypedia (titled "Asleep". I checked). I'll read it again. And yes, it was a schizoid experience, disturbing since I'm more familiar, if I do say so myself, with the more pleasant variety of the experience; the wonderful "oceanic" experience, which I find is also highly dreamlike.
You are right, the Schadenfreudist is a nobler character than that. I apologize. I'm not a big fan of "so bad it's good" either, though I'm quite familiar with the subculture through the many YouTube review videos I used to (and sometimes still do, I admit) watch.
I'll go and have a good laugh at my self now. Where's the mirror?
How do i overcome fear? It has seeped into every part of my life, like a bad smell slowly filling an entire house. My best way of dealing with it is escaping from myself into apathy, but this has caused my life to become meaningless and unfulfilling, while at the same time my attempts to live more fully are curbed by fear of change, fear of negative emotions, fear of confrontation and criticism, fear of being lonely, and so on. What can I do to gain more courage, or at least more power to push through?
You’re not living right sir! Only people who are not living are afraid of dying, and all fear comes down to death. Changing your ideas won’t work, replacing one feeling for another, chasing enlightenment, none of that works. No belief, no truth, nothing I or anyone else can say can possibly help. Nothing you can read, nothing you can learn. Nothing! The only thing that actually works is your own experiential knowledge that nothing can ever, ever go wrong. And the only way to get that knowledge, like the only way to get any knowledge, is to live as if it were already true. If you don’t do this, life will do it for you — it will take away everything you fear losing until you realise that, even if everything changes, even if you are savagely criticised, even if you lose your arms and legs, nothing can ever, ever go wrong. Better to live before life finds you, or, as Barry Long used to say, find death before it finds you — which is the same thing.
A while back, we talked about Scots dialect after you'd written a piece, and you showed a bit of interest in it. I was reading Lewis Grassic Gibbon a couple of months back and meant to email you to recommend. He writes beautifully. Not Dickens, but nice. Perhaps you or your subscribers might enjoy.
Just wanted to mention how helpful your book "The Book of Love" has been for me. It came to me at a time when I really needed it and ultimately steered me towards meaningful action. Please keep up the great work.
I am wondering if you have ever encountered the work of Jed Mckenna and, if you have, what you think of him?
Haven’t read JM for many, many years I’m afraid. I remember enjoying his no-nonsense demolition of rancid ‘spirituality’ which so many people inclined that way ‘resonate’ to.
Young Sophie, who I think I've shared with you before, has taken up diabetes as a lifetime pursuit. She has been fitted with a sensor and a pump, and so is now fully automated. My wife is social mediaing the fuck out of it to imagine her future cure, or injected nanobots or AI or whatever. I am looking backwards to see how they tackled it a hundred years ago, without the plastic supply chain. What's your experience of dealing with these real life scenarios, where friend or relative's view of the future is so far from what you perceive to be reality that there really is no overlap except the present? Other than just staying in the present, of course, which is fine for me. There seems to be an expectation that I should get excited for a future that I don't believe could possibly exist. Would you attempt to manage expectations or offer a worst case? Or just smile politely?
Problems will arise with your wife if there is not enough love between you. Does she *actually* feel in love? Are you making splendid love together all the time? If not, she’ll fret about something else. Of course it could *be* something else, not knowing you both I couldn’t say, but it always comes down to love one way or another.
More generally, only two things work, action and acceptance. And when things get difficult, radical action and radical acceptance. Which one, only you can say.
That was just a joke, for the avoidance of doubt. It's clear that diabetes was on the cards from the moment I asked you to dedicate my copy of the fire sermon to me and not her!
Thanks for your replies.
It's great to have your writings back in the Inbox. I was in the depths of Bleak House when your Dickens piece dropped, and it chimed perfectly with what I was feeling (although I couldn't put it in writing). I hope all is well with you and your continued work is very much appreciated.
There's a wonderful chap I recommend for Darren and its readers, Troy Southgate, he's active here on substack. Known for his polemic "National-Anarchism".
You and Robert Anton Wilson seem to me to be counterweights of a kind.
Both underground philosophers informed by consciousness. Both also fiction writers on top. Both tentative "anarchists". Both critical of a vast range of things that warp people's reality, often the same targets. You both blew my mind at different stages in my life, maybe I'm projecting or grasping.
However, your differences are huge, verging on opposite (opposame?).
Where you point towards a fall from consciousness RAW points towards an evolution towards it. Where RAW appears filled with an optimism, only Americans seem capable of, about "the world" you present a British cynicism towards it.He was radically pro-tech, you are anti.Where RAW was suspicious of anything being capital T True, you write about what is True.
Any thoughts of comments on him (or Crowley, Leary and the like), and/or this cobbled together comparison?
Thank you ‘Subjectiv’. I’m afraid I have not read Wilson, Crowley or Leary, but I have no interest in the occult, howsoever arrived at. I certainly don’t deny the reality of strange, psychic realms-within-realms, nor of magic that rises from the ground up, so to speak, but occultism as it comes through (usually middle-class) minds farting around in the subconscious is a huge dead-end for mediocre spirits. Oh, so you’ve reached the seventh realm? Very nice — what does your wife make of it? your children? your postman? And where is that funny smell coming from?
Arnav,here from India man the collapse is coming faster than expected it is weird knowing about the collapse sphere to now being in one the old world is gone permanently which existed before March 2026 and now we have entered into a new world. In a collapsing world what literature do you think is worth reading i know this seems vague and bit generic but i don't know how to really phrase it but what do you think one needs to read to face through this collapsing time(i know things take time and it won't happen all at once but Iran War has been an irreversible path out of modernity)
Books? Apart from mine and Barry Long’s (which are superior to mine), I can’t think of any that help you face death. Henry Miller has a lovely, reckless, poverty-embracing spirit, and the Christian tradition has a few masterpieces, if you can sidestep their body-hating biases. I have picked up Thomas Á Kempis in times of darkness. But really, I think the Indian tradition is the right place to go for an Indian man.
Well in India we are on the spectre of a huge reckoning in terms of energy lockdowns,supply shock in every sector of the economy and with the forecast of having the worst rainfall since 2009(due to El Nino) it will not be good what is going to happen from now onwards most people are oblivious that would make things way worse than any good. So all in all rough times ahead.
Just to again thank you for introducing me to Barry Long like Greg above it is amazing to say the least.
In the past few months I've begun working my way through Barry Long's tapes and books, and thank you for introducing me to his teachings. They are changing my life and bringing more consciousness into it. I'm surprised to find how little discussion or interest there seems to be at least online about him given his (in my experience) unparalleled presence. But maybe that's also not surprising... I'm also in the middle of re-reading Self and Unself and I'm on the section where you describe the ways self defends itself from perceived criticism, and I'm seeing some of those come up around Barry's teachings, which has been fascinating to watch.
Anyway, I recently listened to his "How to Stop Thinking" tape, and I wanted to briefly share, first off, that I'm having a hard time describing the impact this has had on me. It's so simple and yet every time I try to put words to it here, it comes out trite. The gist is, that I saw with great clarity the link between thoughts an emotion, and I also watched with great clarity, in a specific instance, how consciousness dissolved both by cutting off one's source of nourishment to the other.
I've also recently had the recurring thought, "Why did we start thinking in the first place?" And then I laugh at the irony of it...
And finally, I'll reiterate, because it keeps being true, that your work and your writing has made me a more conscious, loving man, and I'll be forever grateful for it. Thank you. I'm sure my partner, her horse, and my cat would also thank you if they wrote here.
Thank you Greg. You, your woman, her horse and your cat are all most welcome! I love to see real heartfelt gratitude, not because I’m getting my dues, but because it’s a sign of greatness of spirit. And so rare!
I had the same experience with that very tape, which I listened to about a thousand times in my twenties. I was living in Valencia at the time and an angry neighbour come round to complain about ‘that man’s voice.’
It’s faultless, but there is one aspect to it which is slightly misleading. Barry makes a distinction between ‘thinking’ and ‘looking’ (i.e. looking within). He’s quite right to use those terms, which work well, but course this latter activity IS thinking, and it is why we started doing it. The difference is between thoughts that you have, and the thoughts that have you.
Second it Greg truly Darren's writings are a gift to all of us and to be fair it is a difficult tummy aching gift which one has to endure to understand the true meaning of it but it is truly worth it
Hi Darren, where do fossil fuels sit in the history and future of mankind. They were like some deus ex machina that radically changed the story, why do they even exist? I love your article https://expressiveegg.substack.com/p/the-myth-of-scarcity?sort=community. But are we not entering a period of genuine scarcity? Cf Tim Morgan's SEEDS, also https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/. I agree the abundance of fossil fuels has always been a period of manufactured scarcity. How could it have been any different? It would have required some theological guardian class managing the Earth's resources, vs the wasteful lassez-faire attitude of history. Both would be problematic?
Absence of scarcity is a natural state. We don’t live in a natural society which is why everything is scarce here, not just fossil fuels. Everything. Or everything but the only thing you ever really need.
We *had* a ‘theological guardian class managing the Earth's resources’—which is, at least partly, how we found ourselves in this mess.
I don’t know. I’m not sure even Barry knew, or at least it went far beyond knowledge. I seem to remember that it was John who said *his* soul was being pummelled, but in any case he turned up at one of Barry’s events ‘a different man from the John we had known. By his answers I could tell he had gone far beyond me, not beyond what I could experience but beyond what I had experienced’.
Beyond what I have experienced too, so I can say no more. If you read Barry’s autobiography, which is bananas, you’ll get a better idea than I can give.
Hello Darren,
Not much to write except that I wanted to express my deepest gratitude for all the work you've done. Your philosophy has helped me understand myself and the world far better than any other work I've read. Sincerely thank you.
Thank you Martjin. You are most welcome.
Hello Darren,
By way of an update, I and a girl from my uni are madly, madly in love, though neither of our families knows it still. Can you believe that she was head over heels for me for two months last summer while I was oblivious, even while I bashfully plotted to ask her out? I have no idea what to do with all this happiness; I am a river to her, and she to me.
We still think of you somewhat often. I have given her The Fire Sermon and The Book of Love; while reading the latter, she was so frequently tickled by your man-bashing words that she has taken to calling you "girls' girl" ever since.
No doubt we'll marry, and I have you, my dear sir, to thank for all this. Had I not found your works (by chance, in late 2018, from a now-deleted post in the Anarchism subreddit), I might still not have been man enough to tend this romance of a lifetime, let alone able to give meaningful expression to what was happening. Oh, what a difference your pen has made!
Yours,
Rammy
Rammy this is wonderful! I’ll write to you soon.
Hi Darren,
I just returned from a trip to Japan. Have you been and if so, what do you like the most?
Hi Darren, thanks for showing me what it means to love again.
Have cried into the arms of my girlfriend a few times since. That vulnerability wasn’t being kindled before.
Lovely stuff! You’re welcome Tom.
Hi Darren, I came to your work via James at Hermitix. Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to listen to the two of you talk before that episode came down...bummer. I don't have any specific questions or comments, but just wanted to take the opportunity to say thank you for your work. Lots of good grist for the mill!
Following a week or two of having to deal with low-lying anxiety (I thought I was surely about to get fired... again), and not having spent enough time outdoors, I had a moment of "derealization", as I think it’s called: for the first time I felt deeply disturbed by the Kantian/Schopenhauerian notion that everything I see, hear, taste and feel is merely a representation of something else, that I'm a prisoner in my own skull (though even a prisoner can dream of escape, while we take our prison cells with us wherever we go). Not a very pleasant sensation. Fortunately I was able to meditate the feeling away— and I'm not too worried about my sanity— but I was nevertheless left with a lingering question of whether we ought to be disturbed by the fact — and, unless you're an idealist or a naïve realist, I think it must be accepted as a fact—that "We are such stuff as dreams are made on". Does it matter whether our experiences are "real" or not? Does it make any difference at all that these hands I'm typing this question with are, in fact, unreal? Ultimately, I think, whether we find the dreamlike nature of experience a good or a bad think depends on what "flavour" of dream we find ourselves immersed in...
Any thoughts?
Also, do you (Darren or others) have any good bad movies/books/songs/paintings to recommend? What do you think of “so bad it's good“ cinema in genereal? It’s a bit of a strange phenomenon, isn’t it? The Schadenfreudist would enjoy, surely.
This ‘derealization’ sounds schizoid to me, the fruit, as you say, of derealized anxiety and virtuality. Yes, it is all a dream, and that makes a huge difference to the dreamer, who, if he perceives it aright, then loses attachment to dream victories and fear of dream failures; but the dream is not separate from the reality of the dreamer, which unifies the separate elements, and holds them together in miraculously ordinary materiality. To paraphrase Dogan; Before one studies Zen, mountains are mountains; after a first glimpse into the truth of Zen, mountains are Kantian/Schopenhauerian representations of something horribly disturbing projected onto the inside of your skull; after enlightenment, mountains are once again mountains.
In my experience ‘so bad it’s good’… is bad. There’s a kind of grim SF enjoying something like ‘The Room’, but it’s a pretty shoddy artistic experience. The Schadenfreudist (in my telling; William has another version) transcends his state into selbst-schadenfreudism - the glory of laughing at your self. This demands, and generates, genius.
Ah yes, youve reminded me of the superb concluding section of the Apocalypedia (titled "Asleep". I checked). I'll read it again. And yes, it was a schizoid experience, disturbing since I'm more familiar, if I do say so myself, with the more pleasant variety of the experience; the wonderful "oceanic" experience, which I find is also highly dreamlike.
You are right, the Schadenfreudist is a nobler character than that. I apologize. I'm not a big fan of "so bad it's good" either, though I'm quite familiar with the subculture through the many YouTube review videos I used to (and sometimes still do, I admit) watch.
I'll go and have a good laugh at my self now. Where's the mirror?
How do i overcome fear? It has seeped into every part of my life, like a bad smell slowly filling an entire house. My best way of dealing with it is escaping from myself into apathy, but this has caused my life to become meaningless and unfulfilling, while at the same time my attempts to live more fully are curbed by fear of change, fear of negative emotions, fear of confrontation and criticism, fear of being lonely, and so on. What can I do to gain more courage, or at least more power to push through?
You’re not living right sir! Only people who are not living are afraid of dying, and all fear comes down to death. Changing your ideas won’t work, replacing one feeling for another, chasing enlightenment, none of that works. No belief, no truth, nothing I or anyone else can say can possibly help. Nothing you can read, nothing you can learn. Nothing! The only thing that actually works is your own experiential knowledge that nothing can ever, ever go wrong. And the only way to get that knowledge, like the only way to get any knowledge, is to live as if it were already true. If you don’t do this, life will do it for you — it will take away everything you fear losing until you realise that, even if everything changes, even if you are savagely criticised, even if you lose your arms and legs, nothing can ever, ever go wrong. Better to live before life finds you, or, as Barry Long used to say, find death before it finds you — which is the same thing.
A while back, we talked about Scots dialect after you'd written a piece, and you showed a bit of interest in it. I was reading Lewis Grassic Gibbon a couple of months back and meant to email you to recommend. He writes beautifully. Not Dickens, but nice. Perhaps you or your subscribers might enjoy.
Just wanted to mention how helpful your book "The Book of Love" has been for me. It came to me at a time when I really needed it and ultimately steered me towards meaningful action. Please keep up the great work.
I am wondering if you have ever encountered the work of Jed Mckenna and, if you have, what you think of him?
Thank you Gretchen.
Haven’t read JM for many, many years I’m afraid. I remember enjoying his no-nonsense demolition of rancid ‘spirituality’ which so many people inclined that way ‘resonate’ to.
Young Sophie, who I think I've shared with you before, has taken up diabetes as a lifetime pursuit. She has been fitted with a sensor and a pump, and so is now fully automated. My wife is social mediaing the fuck out of it to imagine her future cure, or injected nanobots or AI or whatever. I am looking backwards to see how they tackled it a hundred years ago, without the plastic supply chain. What's your experience of dealing with these real life scenarios, where friend or relative's view of the future is so far from what you perceive to be reality that there really is no overlap except the present? Other than just staying in the present, of course, which is fine for me. There seems to be an expectation that I should get excited for a future that I don't believe could possibly exist. Would you attempt to manage expectations or offer a worst case? Or just smile politely?
Problems will arise with your wife if there is not enough love between you. Does she *actually* feel in love? Are you making splendid love together all the time? If not, she’ll fret about something else. Of course it could *be* something else, not knowing you both I couldn’t say, but it always comes down to love one way or another.
More generally, only two things work, action and acceptance. And when things get difficult, radical action and radical acceptance. Which one, only you can say.
Yes, we're reasonably good in that respect. Although we probably love our daughter more! I'll have a good think about it though.
If you love your daughter more than each other you’re in trouble, and so is she.
Do you think that's why she got diabetes?
No. Can’t rule it out. But, no.
That was just a joke, for the avoidance of doubt. It's clear that diabetes was on the cards from the moment I asked you to dedicate my copy of the fire sermon to me and not her!
Thanks for your replies.
It's great to have your writings back in the Inbox. I was in the depths of Bleak House when your Dickens piece dropped, and it chimed perfectly with what I was feeling (although I couldn't put it in writing). I hope all is well with you and your continued work is very much appreciated.
There's a wonderful chap I recommend for Darren and its readers, Troy Southgate, he's active here on substack. Known for his polemic "National-Anarchism".
Interesting ideas
Stellar work, Darren. Thank you.
You and Robert Anton Wilson seem to me to be counterweights of a kind.
Both underground philosophers informed by consciousness. Both also fiction writers on top. Both tentative "anarchists". Both critical of a vast range of things that warp people's reality, often the same targets. You both blew my mind at different stages in my life, maybe I'm projecting or grasping.
However, your differences are huge, verging on opposite (opposame?).
Where you point towards a fall from consciousness RAW points towards an evolution towards it. Where RAW appears filled with an optimism, only Americans seem capable of, about "the world" you present a British cynicism towards it.He was radically pro-tech, you are anti.Where RAW was suspicious of anything being capital T True, you write about what is True.
Any thoughts of comments on him (or Crowley, Leary and the like), and/or this cobbled together comparison?
Cheers.
Thank you ‘Subjectiv’. I’m afraid I have not read Wilson, Crowley or Leary, but I have no interest in the occult, howsoever arrived at. I certainly don’t deny the reality of strange, psychic realms-within-realms, nor of magic that rises from the ground up, so to speak, but occultism as it comes through (usually middle-class) minds farting around in the subconscious is a huge dead-end for mediocre spirits. Oh, so you’ve reached the seventh realm? Very nice — what does your wife make of it? your children? your postman? And where is that funny smell coming from?
If you don't take any interest in the occult, as you say you don't, then how did you know that the seventh realm is the one where I shat myself?
Hi, Darren
Arnav,here from India man the collapse is coming faster than expected it is weird knowing about the collapse sphere to now being in one the old world is gone permanently which existed before March 2026 and now we have entered into a new world. In a collapsing world what literature do you think is worth reading i know this seems vague and bit generic but i don't know how to really phrase it but what do you think one needs to read to face through this collapsing time(i know things take time and it won't happen all at once but Iran War has been an irreversible path out of modernity)
Hi Arnav,
Tell us about what’s happening in India.
Books? Apart from mine and Barry Long’s (which are superior to mine), I can’t think of any that help you face death. Henry Miller has a lovely, reckless, poverty-embracing spirit, and the Christian tradition has a few masterpieces, if you can sidestep their body-hating biases. I have picked up Thomas Á Kempis in times of darkness. But really, I think the Indian tradition is the right place to go for an Indian man.
Well in India we are on the spectre of a huge reckoning in terms of energy lockdowns,supply shock in every sector of the economy and with the forecast of having the worst rainfall since 2009(due to El Nino) it will not be good what is going to happen from now onwards most people are oblivious that would make things way worse than any good. So all in all rough times ahead.
Just to again thank you for introducing me to Barry Long like Greg above it is amazing to say the least.
I see, so it’s pretty much as it was, except for the looming tidal wave?
Hi Darren,
In the past few months I've begun working my way through Barry Long's tapes and books, and thank you for introducing me to his teachings. They are changing my life and bringing more consciousness into it. I'm surprised to find how little discussion or interest there seems to be at least online about him given his (in my experience) unparalleled presence. But maybe that's also not surprising... I'm also in the middle of re-reading Self and Unself and I'm on the section where you describe the ways self defends itself from perceived criticism, and I'm seeing some of those come up around Barry's teachings, which has been fascinating to watch.
Anyway, I recently listened to his "How to Stop Thinking" tape, and I wanted to briefly share, first off, that I'm having a hard time describing the impact this has had on me. It's so simple and yet every time I try to put words to it here, it comes out trite. The gist is, that I saw with great clarity the link between thoughts an emotion, and I also watched with great clarity, in a specific instance, how consciousness dissolved both by cutting off one's source of nourishment to the other.
I've also recently had the recurring thought, "Why did we start thinking in the first place?" And then I laugh at the irony of it...
And finally, I'll reiterate, because it keeps being true, that your work and your writing has made me a more conscious, loving man, and I'll be forever grateful for it. Thank you. I'm sure my partner, her horse, and my cat would also thank you if they wrote here.
-Greg
Thank you Greg. You, your woman, her horse and your cat are all most welcome! I love to see real heartfelt gratitude, not because I’m getting my dues, but because it’s a sign of greatness of spirit. And so rare!
I had the same experience with that very tape, which I listened to about a thousand times in my twenties. I was living in Valencia at the time and an angry neighbour come round to complain about ‘that man’s voice.’
It’s faultless, but there is one aspect to it which is slightly misleading. Barry makes a distinction between ‘thinking’ and ‘looking’ (i.e. looking within). He’s quite right to use those terms, which work well, but course this latter activity IS thinking, and it is why we started doing it. The difference is between thoughts that you have, and the thoughts that have you.
Second it Greg truly Darren's writings are a gift to all of us and to be fair it is a difficult tummy aching gift which one has to endure to understand the true meaning of it but it is truly worth it
Hi Darren, where do fossil fuels sit in the history and future of mankind. They were like some deus ex machina that radically changed the story, why do they even exist? I love your article https://expressiveegg.substack.com/p/the-myth-of-scarcity?sort=community. But are we not entering a period of genuine scarcity? Cf Tim Morgan's SEEDS, also https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/. I agree the abundance of fossil fuels has always been a period of manufactured scarcity. How could it have been any different? It would have required some theological guardian class managing the Earth's resources, vs the wasteful lassez-faire attitude of history. Both would be problematic?
Absence of scarcity is a natural state. We don’t live in a natural society which is why everything is scarce here, not just fossil fuels. Everything. Or everything but the only thing you ever really need.
We *had* a ‘theological guardian class managing the Earth's resources’—which is, at least partly, how we found ourselves in this mess.
Thanks, why do you say "is a natural state" not "was a..."? And related, what is the only thing you ever really need?
We will return home soon
I’ll leave those for you to answer Greg.
"nothing can ever, ever go wrong"
Dear Darren.
What did John Hart/Heart know that Barry Long didn’t know, and how do you think he pummelled his soul?
Thanks.
Benjamin
I don’t know. I’m not sure even Barry knew, or at least it went far beyond knowledge. I seem to remember that it was John who said *his* soul was being pummelled, but in any case he turned up at one of Barry’s events ‘a different man from the John we had known. By his answers I could tell he had gone far beyond me, not beyond what I could experience but beyond what I had experienced’.
Beyond what I have experienced too, so I can say no more. If you read Barry’s autobiography, which is bananas, you’ll get a better idea than I can give.
Thank you.