offering 5 - pulse

Hear ye, hear ye! Your humble host returns with a fresh batch of c o n t e n t. This was week 3 of isolation for yours truly. Can’t say that things are terribly different, still trying to figure out how I can organize locally and be of use to the community. Spending maybe a bit too much time at the computer, but that’s the usual suspect. Keeping work and research up with a pulse.

Offering number 5 is on the dense side - so much so that I’ve been considering switching to 3 items per offering, for your convenience - but I hope it is appetizing nonetheless. This week we have insights on how to learn from history and fight civilizational collapse, an introduction to the Hermetic tradition, a flexible theory of individuality, trashy art rap, and a baroque painter born in 1978. (check out past weekly offerings at the altar)

Civilization: Institutions, Knowledge and the Future - Samo Burja

• Samo Burja writes on history, institutions, and strategy and has a grat  underrated youtube channel .
• The video linked is kinda long but basically he uses the  Bronze Age Collapse , to motivate talking about the loss of knowledge across time and how that affects the functioning of institutions. Most people don’t know how our systems and institutions function. Someone does, presumably, but what if such people stop existing? He introduces the concept of intellectual dark matter, knowledge that we know is there and exists (or existed), even if we don’t know what it is. Samo gives the example of the 87% of ancient Greek authors we know about but don’t have their works.

• This is something I think about a lot, how information and wisdom can be propagated through time, and it’s a hard problem.
• There’s also a 2m one called  How I Learn History  which resonated with me, since I’m guilty of falling in the trap of thinking I’m learning by consuming tons of history youtube and wikipedia. Basically he points out that learning from history should happen on the basis of case studies. Only when you understand the mechanics of what happened and have theories about how that might generalize, do you have practical knowledge of history. Because of this, he stresses the importance of reading primary sources and deciding for yourself.

The Hermetic Tradition

• Hermeticism represents a non-Christian lineage of  Gnosticism , which is the name for a variety of ancient religious ideas and systems dating back to the 1st and 2nd centuries A.D. It focuses on the pursuit of _Gnosis _ — meaning the pursuit of empirical knowledge pertaining to spiritual mysteries through personal experience, rather than from authority and teachings.
• The tradition owes its name to one of those characters in history that blend the mythical with the actual. Hermes Trismegistus, who is credited with authoring the  Hermetic Corpus  was probably a great ancient Egyptian sage, but it’s impossible to separate him from associations with Thoth and Hermes, who were both gods of writing and magic in their respective cultures.

• Terrence McKenna often lectured  on Magic and the Hermetic Tradition . He discussed the hermetic corpus - the tradition’s main texts - on an  epic 4h lecture . A second important book is  The Kybalion , a book only published 1908, claiming to be the essence of the teachings of Hermes Trismegistus. It details the “7 Hermetic Principles”. I won’t go into them now, but I do have interpretations for each.
• I bring this up because I’ve been rubbing up against these ideas in my researches into the the phenomenology of the self. In magic, in psychedelics, in psychology. It strikes me as a very “modern” school of ancient philosophy and I see it embedded in much of current religions, spirituality, self-help, and art.

Information Theory of Individuality

• This is an updated 2020 version from a paper from 2014 by researchers from the Santa Fe institute and the Max Planck IMS.
• What is an individual? No really, the concept isn’t very well formally defined. How do we identify individuals without basing ourselves on boundaries like cell membranes which may be particular instances of separation rather than fundamental properties?
• The theory presented allows the concept of individuality to be continuous rather than dual, nested, possible at any level, and not necessarily spatially coherent. Think of ant colonies as individuals, humans (which are aggregates of trillions of cells), or cultures.
• The fundamental property of individuals, according to the theory, is that information can be propagated forward through time, meaning individuality is about the reduction of temporal uncertainty.
• The distinction between basing analysis on elementary constituents vs working up through levels of aggregation is captured by the terms reductionism and emergence. These are good words to add to the ol’ vocab.

• Conway’s game of life , exemplifying an emergent individual.
• I’ve been thinking about emergent individuality and firm boundaries for a while. Especially in the context of AI services, but also lately in the form of meme complexes and egregores. Super happy that this exists. Makes me wonder how i can make it my job to think about these topics.
• Another week, another nerd-exclusive.

DJ LUCAS - “STRANGE ART RAP DECISIONS” (PROD DOG RIBS)

• Suburban hometown vibes. Clown around not giving a fuck but still make it go hard. Lo-fi, “swamp yankee” careless aesthetic.
• The trajectory from parody to art is now more common than ever and I think he’s ready to rise. DJ LUCAS has been on his own hero’s journey and it’s a beautiful sight to see.
• “They used to think our music’s fake but we continued having fate And it’s kinda funny now, because they copy what we make”
• Props for smoking a blunt rolled on what looks like a tree leaf on every single video.  Check out his new EP on soundcloud .

Roberto Ferri , barroque occult painter from 1978

• Roberto Ferri , an italian baroque painter born in 1978. Sensual, mystical, and heavy with symbolism. Dark and violent at times but always with a placid beauty that draws you in. Something about the vitality of the bodies in his pieces keeps me from looking away for ages. Really powerful. That in conjunction with the esoteric themes in most of his works takes it to sublime.

Thanks for reading!