How everything arises from the formless (but ever moving towards coherent order?!) randomness. Given a span of billions of years...randomness is like creative potential. Infinitely flexible in producing forms. Limitless in that it is not confined to any form. Even apparently finite forms (such as us, tables, particles, etc.) have their being, as it were, in the limitlessness of randomness. Randomness is empty because it is not really any of its forms. But true emptiness is in the fact that randomness so conceived is just form, while in reality it is anything but that which can be conceived of. And inconceivable is indeed what the experience of crossing the abyss of randomness to NowHere (nowhere/now here) is.

Psychedelic Prayers, Timothy Leary

"...But that crucial non-game terror-reverence aweful moment comes...
There comes a time when the ecstatic cry is called for.
At that time, you must be ready to pray.
To go beyond yourself. To contact energy beyond your game.
At that time you must be ready to pray.
When you have lost the need to pray....
Your are a dead man in a world of dead symbols.
Pray for life.
Pray for life."

Happy Birthday

This is a conversational process. Only in this way will we ever get anywhere with this. 
You get what you put in.

I embrace ordinary consciousness and everyday life.
What I loathe is normality. Normality is banality. It's a sickness of the constriction of the imaginative faculties.
Ordinary consciousness is mythic. It is the stuff of life. A life that is nothing special and just ordinary. This is magical.
But a life that is devoid of good wholesome ordinariness is a gray wasteland of for the walking dead.

Sublime Flow

Connect with God or nature.
Chapter Four and Chapter Ten of the 50th Law. Bring them together, and it's what I'm trying to tell you.
If you experience the sublime then you will not only flow with your own talents but with the flow outside you. I'm not thinking about your talents. I'm thinking about the flow of your business, your connection with everyone around, the path of your career.
Like a surfer becoming one with the ocean, it must be like.
You've mastered everything else. Watch from 2:30

Wisdom

Perhaps It's Best to Put It In Religious Terms

We must accept Him as our Lord and savior. 
There can be no other way. Through the grace of God we are then lifted out of our darkness and we are changed from the inside-out.
Before the Lord we must give up our life. Not one drop shall go to waste.
If only we have the courage of our conviction, then will God bestow upon us His grace.
We must therefore submit to Him completely. For it is not our will, but His that is to be done. 
Forever and ever. Amen.

Stochasticism

Stochastic process is the process of discovering/creating order out of random chaos.
I think broadly speaking we can say that our brains are good for two things: To experience chaos, and to discover/create order.
I think this is the future of intelligence intensification. People speak of synergy, syntropy, consciousness expansion, and intelligence intensification. I think it is a call to discover/create higher and higher coherence. Self-awareness is central to this process.

The cultural conversation I'm proposing is for this purpose of realizing higher and higher coherence.

To Start With

Equilibrium is the basis of work. The Ancients spoke of four basic elements: earth, water, air, and fire.
Earth corresponds to the body. The body is the temple. It is the foundation of all work. Water is emotions. Air is the intellect. And fire, will.
The qualities of the four elements themselves can have corresponding aspects in the body. Earth is the heavy sensation, the bones, etc. Water is the fluidity. Air is the lighter aspect. Fire is body heat and energy. All of these must be balanced in the body. There are some exercises to do this. I can dig it up upon request. But it's not that important here.
First thing first. The body and its immediate environment should be purified, kept clean.

And then there's emotional foundation. To discuss virtues is essential to building an emotional foundation. The art of life is to navigate through chaos. Cybernetics literally means steersman. Life steers itself through chaos via continuous feedback. High quality conversation is therefore vitally important to survival and success.

So in chaos I say there are no guarantees. Therefore it makes sense to go for the most bounty yielding goal and that is self-becoming. No guarantees, only probabilities. Become who you really are then.
Then as Leary says, harmonize external success with internal achievements.
He also said, grow with the flow.
What flow? The flow of chaos!

Arete

So as I said, Socrates said have people around whom you can discuss virtue with everyday.
To do this you have to participate in the conversation. It can't be a passive activity like reading a book. Why is this necessary? Because we have to consciously make a decision everyday about what to be and do. It's not enough to be aware of some values.
Are there eternally valid values? Even if there are, are there any formulaic approach that allows us to understand how to apply values correctly in every situation? I argue both are not possible. We hence must examine, re-examine are values everyday.
And this is what the intellectual conversation is doing on a large scale. It's not that there is a God that oversees the affairs of men. In the pragmatist view, the best we can hope for is to continuously come up with better suggestions as to what kind of future we want. It works as a cybernetic organism. We develop ourselves through continual feedback.

We must choose wisely everyday of our lives. To build up cultures we must intensify feedback loops. Yet how many companies really invest in this process?
Virtue is the foundation of life in society. Without it we become lost, unstable, failures.
Again, it's not enough to read books. Every moment is unique. Therefore we must continually feed ourselves with feedback and actively engage with it. So then, let us discuss virtue.

Power

Don't be a turkey to complexity.

Feeling good and having fun is the greatest sin.

Balance Saturn and the death instinct with Jupiter.

We must humble our intellects before complexity. That does not mean we should suppress our appetite for life.
On the contrary, we need to become more aggressively creative problem solvers. We need to be able to identify real threats and work on them. Avoid being a turkey.

If you're curtailing your quality of life and condemn yourself for being a greedy little animal, you've already allowed yourself to be brainwashed by religions worshiping scarcity, slavery and misery.

Instead we ought to go for abundance, intelligence, pleasure, stochastic experimentation, and power.

What we should perhaps curtail is intellectual arrogance, gullibility, dogma, being quick to judge things.

Gaia Philosophy: The future of humanity upon this Earth and beyond, the Holy Trinity, and the new consciousness of Jupiter rising

Genius shall be the meaning of Gaia!

This is my magickal motto. A magickal motto is the highest expression of an aspirant's aspiration. For Aleister Crowley it was, "I shall endure unto the end". For Nietzsche it was, "The overman shall be the meaning of the earth!". The nature of the motto is as Da Vinci put it, "There is no higher mastery than self-mastery." Amen.

Let me explain the terms. Genius is what the Greeks called daemon. It is divine inspiration. I correspond this to the Christian son of the holy trinity. In my chaotopia the Lord is known as Felix. Gaia is then the holy spirit. Gaia and Felix implies the relationship between the human being and the solar system. To realize this knowledge and conversation is self-mastery. This is the purpose of the Great Work.

Then there is Chaos. In Greek cosmogony Chaos is the formless void before all creation. Gaia is the daughter of Chaos. I correspond Chaos with the ineffable and eternal Tao, and Gaia with the Tao that can be spoken and the mother of the ten-thousand things. To realize Chaos is to be the Ipsissimus. To realize the knowledge and conversation with Gaia is to attain the grade of Magus. The Magus is the one who can utter the Logos. Thus I consider Terence McKenna and Derrida to have been tapping into the insights of the Magus. In yoga this would be the Ajna chakra. Chaos would be the Sahasrara, as Jung rightly understood.

Ralph Abraham presented his Holy Trinity: Chaos, Gaia, Eros.
Eros for me corresponds to Felix. It is the fuller understanding of the sacred nature of human sexuality rather than the very limited concept of the Id.

The issue of correspondence is difficult and I can only sketch out very briefly the mythological connections.

The issue I have today is with poverty consciousness, or Saturn consciousness. In the face of environmental catastrophe many people have been advocating Saturn consciousness of contraction. Basically people are saying we should consume less, live with less, that there is something wrong with materialism and capitalism. There is something wrong indeed. But I think poverty consciousness is dangerous now. We in fact need more Jupiter consciousness. Jupiter is expansion, whereas Saturn is contraction. We have been living with excess Saturn consciousness for far too long.
Living humbly does not mean living with material impoverishment. On the other hand I think that debauchery and baby-boomer style consumerism is also a manifestation of impoverished consciousness. The only thing that expanded were options, not people's consciousness.
If humanity is to live in harmony with Gaia, and eventually perhaps out into space then what we need is more Jupiter consciousness. This I call wealth consciousness. And true wealth consciousness is not blind consumerism but intelligent mastery of co-existence with the environment. I've argued elsewhere that the human brain evolved to do  just this. Think evolution, in a general overview manner. Life proliferates on Earth. One of the principle process of evolution of course is natural selection. Natural selection says that it is not the strongest but the fittest that survives. Is it any wonder then that humans have thrived to become 7 billion strong for thousands of years thus far? The most adaptable shall inherit the Earth.
Intelligence is flexibility, adaptability. We are problem solvers. Saturn consciousness provides the necessary rigid discipline to survive. But it is Jupiter consciousness that actually solves problems.Curtailing human appetite is counter-productive and dangerous. If we don't solve problems now, there may be no future for humanity. Abundance is intelligent living with the environment. We need better technology, better trade systems, more and more solutions. Big solutions. Greater stochastic tinkering should be called for.
More intelligence, more solutions.

Pandaemonaeon

There is no joy in the ego-mania of the singular self in the Kali Yuga of the Pandaemonaeon.
There is no honor in simply being the socially conditioned self. Power and freedom lies in our ability to create ourselves.
Simplicity is a necessary illusion. It is fragile and extremely limited in domain. In fact simplicity is always an implicit lie in that we must suppress a limitless number of information.
Complexity, disorder, and chaos are always larger, so much larger that in fact simplicity appears as an illusion in its wake. But don't be deceived here...chaos too is an illusion. Both order and disorder are illusions.
We are the blind Fool who falls blindly into the pits of Chaos. We are the illusionist who conjures forth infinite worlds.
Infinite humility and infinite exaltation are not mutually exclusive. Health and disease are not mutually exclusive. Everything is an aspect of the great stream of Chaos. Chaos, or God itself is an illusion we've conjured up. Plunge into Chaos and the illusion is dispersed. So happy Halloween!

Dale Carnegie

Your heart pumps enough blood through your body every day to fill a railway tank car. It exerts enough energy every twenty-four hours to shovel twenty tons of coal onto a platform three feet high. It does this incredible amount of work for fifty, seventy, or maybe ninety years. How can it stand it? Dr. Walter B. Cannon, of the Harvard Medical School, explained it. He said “Most people have the idea that the heart is working all the time. As a matter of fact, there is a definite rest period after each contraction. When beating at a moderate rate of seventy pulses per minute, the heart is actually working only nine hours out of the twenty-four. In the aggregate its rest periods total a full fifteen hours per day.

Clean Air

People used to come into my room and complain about the moldy smell. When Aki used to visit me, her atopic condition got worse. Mold of course is dangerous to your health. Ever since I started using the air purifier no one smells the mold anymore. And the room is dust free. Dust is not good for lung health either, especially as we sleep on the floor in Japan. We breathe in a lot more dust than we do on beds. 

There are all kinds of hazardous contaminants in the air. On top of that, at the office people are smoking. 

If you go to cafes and restaurants in Japan where smoking is allowed, you'll almost always find that they have an air purifier. I sometimes check out what type they have. They usually have a more powerful type than mine, but I don't smoke in my room so it makes sense. 

We shouldn't take air quality for granted, especially in Tokyo. And once the cafe is running it'll make sense to invest in a purifier anyhow. 

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/89/Air_purifier.JPG

Felix's Post-Foundationalist, Pragmatist Ideas of Progress and Wealth

Many people are afraid of knowledge, power, wealth and riches, extreme experiences and behaviors. The masses of the people are generally conservative. But knowledge, power, wealth, etc. are what is necessary for mastering our environments and circumstances. We have evolved a large brain for these purposes. 

Of course we have to become more aware of the interconnected nature of our existence, the inseparability of opposites, the continuum of cause and effect, etc. This interconnected, interpenetrating, interdependent, continuous phenomenon of existence is the larger context within which we must seek and utilize greater knowledge, power, and abundance. 

In our cultural dialogues, I want to steer our conversations in these directions more. Let our futures be the intelligent living with the environment. Poverty is a stupid and outmoded way of thinking. Let us steer away from it. We have wallowed long enough in poverty. And there is no stopping to human stochastic tinkering. It is in our nature. We are homo sapiens...tool users. We have evolved to tinker. So let us do it intelligently. This is true wealth. 

Integration

Get a great PR. Integrate Y-san. Use various tactics to minimize her damage, yet keeping her happy, and helping her communicate better.

Magic - Prometheus

Jupiter

"Wealth is not to be measured in terms of assets, but rather in terms of how much control over people and material, and thus ultimately one's own experiences, one achieves by economic activities. Money is an abstract concept used to quantify economic activity, thus wealth is a measure of how well you control your experiences with money. Assuming that varied, exciting, unusual and stimulating experiences are preferable to dull ones, and that they tend to be expensive for this reason, then the main problem for most people is to find a highly efficient form of money input which has the above agreeable qualities. The aim of wealth magic is to establish a large turnover of money which allows agreeable experiences at both the input and output stages. This demands what is called Money Consciousness.
Money has acquired all the characteristics of a "spiritual" being. It is invisible and intangible, coinage, notes and electronic numbers are not money. They are merely representations or talismans of something which economists cannot coherently define. Yet although it is itself intangible and invisible it can create powerful effects on reality. Money has its own personality and idiosyncratic tastes, it avoids those who blaspheme it, and flows towards those who treat it in the way it likes. In a suitable environment it will even reproduce itself. The nature of the money spirit is movement, money likes to move. If it is hoarded and not used, it slowly dies. Money thus prefers to manifest as turnover rather than as unexploited assets. Monies surplus to immediate pleasure should be re-invested as a further evocation, but the truly money conscious find that even their pleasures make money for them. Money consciousness gets paid to enjoy itself. Those in money consciousness are by nature generous. Offer them an interesting investment and they will offer you a fortune. Just don't ask for small cash handouts.
The attainment of money consciousness and the invokation of the Wealth-self consists of the acquisition of a thorough knowledge of the predilections of the spirit of money and a thorough exploration of personal desires. When both of these have been understood, real wealth manifests effortlessly.
Such invocations must be handled with care. The blue gnosis of wealth and desire creates demons as easily as gods. Many contemporary success and sales seminars concentrate on creating an hysterical desire for money coupled with an equally hypertrophied desire for the mere symbols of wealth rather than the experiences the punters actually want. To work like a possessed maniac all day for the questionable pleasure of drinking oneself into near oblivion on vintage champagne every night, is to have missed the point entirely and to have a entered a condition of anti-wealth.
However, the majority of those who are poor in relatively free societies where others are rich, owe their poverty either to a lack of understanding of how money behaves, or to negative feelings which tend to repel it. Neither intelligence nor investment capital are required in any great degree to become wealthy. The popularity of tales about the misery and misfortunes of the rich is testimony to the ridiculous myth prevalent amongst the poor, that the rich are unhappy. Before beginning works of blue magic it is essential to seriously examine all negative thoughts and feelings about money and to exorcise them. Most of the poor people who win in lotteries, and only the poor regularly enter them, manage to have nothing to show for it a couple years later. It is as if some subconscious force somehow got rid of something they felt they did not really deserve or want. People tend to have the degree of wealth that they deeply believe they should have. Blue magic is the modification of that belief through ritual enactment of alternative beliefs."
--P.C.

Orate, don't debate.

Holy shit, yesterday I had to get off at Meidaimae. Spewed out vomit and filth.

Suffering is a curious thing. At some point too much suffering makes you humble because you just don't give a fuck about anything anymore. Life is too short and it motivates me to realize my ambitions all the more. 

On Duty

We each have a path that is unique unto us. We must respect that uniqueness. We must find our voice, and then inspire others to find their voice. But in trying to inspire others to find their voice, we must take utmost care not to interfere in their path with our own vision. Each person has an orbit that is necessary and unique unto them.

Thus to an artist arrogant enough to impose his worldview upon others a salaryman may seem immoral and disgusting. Why waste your life away with work? So what if you have a family, what is good about family anyway? But then to the salaryman an artist may seem lazy, decadent, disrespectful of family values, social values, corporate values.

This is all limiting.

A good artist is indeed lazy. He needs abundant sensuality. The libertine deliberately shunned family values and social responsibility. So do Buddhist monks and Hindu sadhus. 

A good doctor is on time, responsible, honest, ethical, clean. He must inspire trust.

A good philosopher is self-critical, self-doubting, self-reflecting. His specialty is world-weary humor and wisdom. 

A good entrepreneur is able to shut out self-doubt, yet open to criticism from time to time. He leads an active life and has a high sense of responsibility for others. 

For me, my moral sensitivity has led me from an intense individualistic ethic (I was a budding libertine when I was 20, 21yrs old) to a more relaxed morality. Intensity is good. But intensity also tends to shut out certain aspects of the chaos that I don't want to miss. Any ethical system is just an interpretation of the chaos of existence. In doing so it separates chaos from that which is moral and that which is immoral. Inside and outside. I find great value, a very humanizing value, in relaxing my morals and feel out the chaos with loose boundaries between good and evil. 

Interestingly Markus seems to be like this. He does it well. But somehow I feel safer with you. People on the long run I think trust you, Proteus, more because of your intense convictions. Your integrity will not be compromised so easily when the going gets hard. I'll be interested to see how Markus will act in times of trouble. 

Moral frameworks shift according to individual fitness.
Ethics evolve through social dialogues. 
Moral dilemmas can not be resolved. But we can gain a higher sensitivity to moral issues through conversations.
There are no moral absolutes. Life is open-ended. Chaos is amoral.
Kantian imperative and utilitarianism are just options. Faced with a moral dilemma, the best we can opt for is to meet it with moral sensitivity.
Moral dilemmas provide valuable examples for discussions. Exploring them yields higher moral sensitivity.
No moral absolutes means morality is fragile. But the fragility of the moral life makes it worthwhile to live a moral life. 

The Week

This week is about opening up vast channels of communication between all of us.
This means creating communication synergies.
So let's talk a lot this week.

Write here for me in concrete terms the objectives of this week.

Let me say some things about me. We have to talk about personal issues too. This is how we create synergies and trust, fast.
I need to be understood that I'm not out of touch with the business realities as much as I may seem. Last we talked on Skype I felt inspired to take part in the meetings for this week from the start. I saw concretely what the future may hold...with Marono, with the office, etc.
I fully understand the dire implications of this week.
When I talk about my art, it's important too. I fully intend to participate as much as I can this week. I don't even think about what might happen to me next month. Look, I've always considered that our fates are interlocked. My art, when it manifests it will be the result of all that we've done together.

Since nobody has really seen my art before it remains something only I can keep alive. Of course you keep it alive economically. I have to keep it afloat. This week it means just a few hours is enough for me to keep the flow going. It's not a problem at all. The only thing is it's in the overall interest for all of us that I insist on its integrity. So I just need you to understand how seriously I take my artistic process. It's like a delicate alchemy process...and eventually I'll produce the gold, the philosopher's stone.

So this week let's do something special. I talk to you about my life, you talk to me about your life. Personal stuff. It'll create deeper synergies and shall show up in our work this week. You, me, Dominic, Yasuko, the trend scouts...

Nature Loves Courage

scent of a woman - frank slade's final speech

Educating the Trendscouts

Education is not the filling of a bucket with water, but the kindling of the creative fire.

Time and again you've asked me if I believe in you. Yeah I believe in you, what's the big deal? so I thought. But it's struck me that maybe other people have a harder time believing. Why?

Because maybe they haven't been exposed to the literature that I've exposed myself to. I've read about what makes great people by writers throughout history. So it's easy for me to identify greatness. Or relatively easier, I think. And I have a handful of people that I'm acquainted with who I regard as great and is easy for me to believe in them. I make a list: Helge, Akari, Jinen, Jinen's teacher, Florian. The last two guys I hardly know them personally. 

The Century of the Self

Finding the Right Questions

Daniel Dennett thinks of philosophers more as experts on questions than answers. It's about finding the right questions to ask. Therefore it is always somewhat informal and no clear rules as to how to find the right questions.

good example of business negotiation language.

be crafty with words.

in buddhism one of the eight fold paths is to practice being mindful of words.

I like how in S.o.t.L. Hannibal Lecter kills Miggs in the next cell just by words. So be mindful of psychological effects.

note

As much as I like D., considering his psychology I have to say, you have to make sure that he always feels grateful to you. Don't ever let him take you for granted.

Absolute Genius!!! A Must Watch!

Touch people lightly at first. Then you can begin to go back and forth between depth and lightness.

Quotes by Dale Carnegie

Men of age object too much, consult too long, adventure too little, repent too soon, and seldom drive business home to the full period, but content themselves with a mediocrity of success. 



Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all. 


Most of us have far more courage than we ever dreamed we possessed. 


Only the prepared speaker deserves to be confident.


Our fatigue is often caused not by work, but by worry, frustration and resentment.


If you believe in what you are doing, then let nothing hold you up in your work. Much of the best work of the world has been done against seeming impossibilities. The thing is to get the work done.


Instead of worrying about what people say of you, why not spend time trying to accomplish something they will admire.


People rarely succeed unless they have fun in what they are doing. 


Speakers who talk about what life has taught them never fail to keep the attention of their listeners.


Tell the audience what you're going to say, say it; then tell them what you've said. 


The royal road to a man's heart is to talk to him about the things he treasures most. 


You can close more business in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get people interested in you. 


Your purpose is to make your audience see what you saw, hear what you heard, feel what you felt. Relevant detail, couched in concrete, colorful language, is the best way to recreate the incident as it happened and to picture it for the audience. 


There are always three speeches, for every one you actually gave. The one you practiced, the one you gave, and the one you wish you gave.


There are four ways, and only four ways, in which we have contact with the world. We are evaluated and classified by these four contacts: what we do, how we look, what we say, and how we say it. 


When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but creatures of emotion.

Grand Strategic Vision

Grand Strategic Vision

Our whole lives are realized in the immense neural networks of the brain. Consequently the Grand Strategic Vision is the totality of our lives, past, present and future, being created in the brain. Our experience of our lives is always reflective of this Grand Strategic Vision realized physically in the brain.

So thus it is effective to view our lifetimes as an organic fractal unfolding. We must come to see that the past, present and future is an unfolding in the present.

Therefore do not be anxious for the morrow, for it is unfolding in your life already. Relax and collapse the future into the present.

Now the problem with most of us is that our vision of the future is rather vague. Even with a clear goal in mind, our vision of our futures is not sufficiently connected in our brains to the vision of the present. We must envision in detail how each step on our path connects to the present. We ought to strive to make as many neural connections of the detailed visions of the future with the visions of our present lives.

If we can accomplish all of this, not only will we live in the moment, we will be living our futures, indeed we will live experiencing the integrity of our whole lives in each moment as it unfolds ever again.

Jupiter

Become! Become! Become!
To really be successful you have to become more fully yourself.
To succeed, and then to hold on to power, you have to truly be a powerful person. We neglect the most obvious steps. We're so foolish, in such a rush to get somewhere we lose sight of the most basic, intuitive principles of life.

Feel your body. Your body is the gateway to self-knowledge.
Your body has a different sense of time than your clock-work thoughts.
Go into the body. Deeply. Inhale. Until you realize that you are a mammal. You are breathing automatically. How easily your body does it. How strange.

Go into your imagination. Enjoy the mindscape. It is not you who is producing the images, the sounds, the tastes. Your brain is God. So set yourself aside and explore the imagination of God.
Society is afraid of the real power of imagination. That is because imagination is God's doing, and if you realize that your brain is God then society can't control you. Your brain is wise. Society tries to keep that a secret from you. Ignore society for a while. Go into the strange realms. You have to brave the ridicule of others. Fuck them. Your Godhood is your birth right. Your brain is the greatest gift in the universe.

Take back your brain. Sacrifice it no longer to the collective. They will waste it. They will waste your years. Fight them. Better, ignore them.
Go into your body and imagination. Gateways to the miraculous life. The divine path.

We are robotized! Don't bullshit yourself on this point. YOU ARE A ROBOT.
Robot means slave (look it up). We are under the influence of the most potent psychedelic of all: the culture programming. Nothing is as potent as this. It takes over your brain through sheer numbers.
But the tide of history is, I believe, against this! Freedom, liberation is the real force of history. This is our ultimate evolutionary trajectory.
But first, undo yourself. Decondition yourself. Get rid of your mechanical social conditioning. You truly have been had.

Disassemble your ego. It's a leash that keeps you in line. Your brain is struggling the wiggle out of the robotic body.

We fear so much. I feel sorry for ourselves, for this miserable species. Dig up all your fears. Terminate them. Now and forever! We can be children once again, innocent and uncontaminated by the fear of the ages.

Do you even remember biological reality anymore? Have you not, I inquire!, have you not been wrapped up in your cultural mind?!!!!
All these years...

Go into your body! Go into your imagination!
Do it now! Try it for 15 minutes. No excuses, do it now. I have done it. Now it's your turn.

Then we can continue...




Remove all unwanted experiences from the past that keeps you imprisoned. Destroy yourself.
If you want joy and freedom, go into your body, go into your imagination. Deeply. Fear and restriction shall drop away like rotten rags off of our divine body. You have not truly known your body yet. Listen to your body. It knows better than you do. It knows all your hidden desires, your true desires. You can bullshit your friends, you can bullshit your family, but you can't bullshit your body. Now listen, shhhh.....


"IF YOU WANT TO IMPROVE YOURSELF           GET RID OF YOURSELF FIRST"

You must come to know the joys of destroying and recreating yourself, or selfs...

To do this you must realize the true depths of your imagination. Like stepping into a lake that was deeper than you ever expected...

Decondition yourself. Undo yourself. Undo yourself. Undo yourself.

You must know terror. Then your terror will turn into exhilaration.

"To throw off these clothes and these naked bones--to leave my emotions in the dust--to cast my mind into the darkness of space--burning my habits in the demon's fire. When this is done, falling blindly into the abyss--only then do I begin."












Stop. Lay down. Go into your body again. Again, no excuses. Do it for 30 minutes. Surely you can afford 30 minutes. Feel your body deeply. Don't fall asleep. Set an alarm if necessary. Do it NOW.












Change, change, change. Your mind is flowing with the whole universe.

















1. Get rid of yourself. Get rid of all the programming. Wipe the disk clean. Do not fear----your brain is what matters, not you.

2. Now you can begin to re-program your brain, God willing.

Your brain is God. Your ego is merely a program.

Your freedom is not to be found in your conditioned ego, in your oh-so-wonderful personality. Real freedom is to be found in the brain's ability to change itself.

The fountainhead of power and love is the great STILLNESS

Be still.

Silent.

Shhhh....

Shut your rambling head. Listen to the silence.

Listen closely...to the most distant sound you can hear....take 5 minutes to do this....................












Shhhhhh.......










Whisper to yourself, STOP.
Can hear the silence?












Feel the body.











Go into the imaginings of God












This is the first step.

Ramblings

On selling yourself.
The rock band Kiss have been criticized for being abashedly commercial whores. Love them or hate them, they are one of the most successful rock bands ever. They lack the depths of many of the bands from the late sixties but if you consider them as entertainers more than as artists, they make more sense. Artists can only sacrifice their pride so much. Entertainers are whores. But then I have a special place in my heart for whores.
Advertising yourself is an art form in and of itself. I think it's the way of nature. Nature is always advertising. The peacock's brilliant feathers is a grand advertising example: Sex sells.

Most people are emotionally and sensationally simple, devastatingly simple. It takes a lot of training to become emotionally and sensationally sophisticated. Takes years of practice. They're so easily swept away by sensationalism. The most vigilant of us are constantly lured by so many signals...even if we don't follow them, we are sufficiently distracted. And while we're distracted, we are duped by sleight of hand techniques by politicians, con-artists, marketers, media....

I think you have to change yourself constantly in this world. Stop that and you will not get far in this world. It's okay not to get far, but for some of us it's really painful.
Gandhi said, be the change you want to see in the world.
I think to accomplish miracles, you have to become a miracle. Everyone is special enough to every once in a while cause some miracle to happen. But a truly miraculous person can consistently produce miracles.
And further, I think if you truly integrate all the multi-dimensional selves, then I think you will go into the effortless flow state. And that's how you become a miracle. To flow with the whole movement of existence. A force of nature. All these words and teachings are cluing us in. Heed to them.
A miraculous person is child-like, supple, subtle, sublime, powerful and loving, integrated, knows himself intimately, flows unobstructed, is like a dancing star.

The Neglected

Background.
In any field of inquiry, I generally mean the framework, the context, the implicit space of an event or view. or perhaps a historic background. It's often what we ignore. So we might talk about planets but it is more difficult to talk about the space surrounding them. Or we might talk about a love affair but neglect the environmental factors that determined the course of a love affair.

Backlash.
I mean the social pendulum swing due to imbalance. It's a social reaction. If liberals take over the media and for years you see Lisa Simpson make a fool out of Homer Simpson, the macho conservative types will come back for payback (like Fox News). Or Tom Leykis types to Women's Liberation.
Like the background, the backlash is often ignored, and it occurs when people are not aware of the consequences of their behaviors. ("people will tire of the quantity, and will start to go for quality." this is a backlash in the market).

Inherent Contradiction.
All concepts have binary opposites. The presence of their opposite is already present in the concept. It's the tiny embryonic seed of the opposite embedded in the concept, as you can observe in the Yin-Yang symbol.
It's the implicit opposite. Like when you say 'i love you' and she senses the inherent selfishness in that statement. It's the absurdity of life philosophers talk about. Normality already implies there's something strange going on.
Again, like the backlash or background it is what is generally ignored. Like when we want a girl so much, we fail to see her imperfections, her inherent contradictions. You need to integrate the inherent contradiction into your desires. In desire manifestation it's about integrating the inherent contradiction to make your desires more realistic. It's the difference between an infatuation and a mature love affair. You recognize all the shit that a relationship can bring.



As we explore areas that are neglected, we make discoveries that others can't. Looking behind the headlines, the obvious, beneath the surface, the too complex, the depths, the frightening, the confusing. 

The son of Flynn

The solution was much more obvious. I had to do it. There was no pathetic excuse, no reason, no feeling of loneliness or non-appreciation that could have kept me from it. It was neither important that anyone understood, nor that you attain immediate gratification, not even delayed.

I have the capability, to go deeper, further, than anyone before. Juggling personalities, becoming a pretender, becoming anyone I want to be. When lost in my mind, I can see things clearly. As much as that is possible and desirable. It is hard to accept the fact that people leave your path because they are not capable to see what you can see. It is natural. Even though the same argument can be used to justify a strong ego that lusts for delayed gratification and indirect acceptance, getting over this desire, controlling it, nurturing your thought by being deprived of the feeling of intimacy, all this holds the key to something more. Something I wanted since I was 6 years old. I could always feel the desire but could never comprehend it.

You will all see me again. Later. I have to go on a journey. And even though your hand may touch mine as we greet casually in the lobby of the high class hotel, even though I sit right in front of you in the bar and smile when you recite your stories of life, reality, when you demonstrate street smarts and common sense, even though you can feel my skin on yours and hear my voice echoing in your brain, it does not change the fact.

I am simply not there.

I will decide to return on my own terms. My own timeline.

The outlands.
Their vehicles were not made for that terrain.

Ours?
Obviously, yes.

Hermes. I welcome you to get a glimpse of my journey. You are the only one who knows.
I would be honored to catch glimpses of your genius occasionally.

No strings attached.



 

new concept design _ double page layout

Working like it should be ... my books have arrived

Did not like the design after all. Revised it 5 times. Coming closer to what I want it to be. Damn, why can't I work without having the layout first?

My new books, most of them used. As you can see, besides Taleb, Mandelbrot!!

Have to take a rest. I work since weeks without a real break. I love my work, that is why I can't feel my exhaustion. But now I feel it. Need a break of one day. So I will read Taleb. Shit, that's no real break either, right?

new design concept - high class sketch avantgarde

women should stop working after marriage X a handbag shows the social status of a woman

personality matrix

The problem (structural) and how to counter it (a concept)

The main problem in a nutshell:
- Agencies are most of the time judged by reputation, also of their methods, by the collective WOM within business networks
- not competence alone, but a successful track record influence this most
- in order to attain a successful track record, agencies have to get projects that the system (that does not understand their relevance yet) allows them to perform. The resources are dependent on the project size
- corporations decision making is influenced by conservative and classical structures. Thus agencies without track record and proven methods tend to not get the project
- this forces on the long run, agencies to adapt their methods. They have to present something that people "want to hear", results and methods that can be integrated into the present best practice. If they don't, then they will run out of business pretty fast
- THE RESULT: big corporations have the resources that are needed to create such a system and legitimize it, small corporations have the capabilities but will loose them over time in order to fit in
- THE SOLUTION: you have to attain a high level of legitimacy from the start that legitimizes your methods. This can be done by WOM, positive one. In order to get this, it has to be artificially induced, not only as the result of natural reactions to the projects. This would be too slow

---> big agencies and small agencies have to share capabilities and resources. The small ones have access to deeper information and networks, the big one to business networks and financial resources. Together they can create value
- The deal, big agency helps small one to finance the time until legitimacy is gained. In return the big agency gets the capabilities of the small agency, aslo long-term and acces to networks, exclusively, gaining competitive advantage
- Connecting networks

Companies decide to employ people not only because they need them for a special project, but in order to enhance their HR capital. This includes both a long-term and abstract element. It will not be clear what exactly that person will be doing, but he/she will provide value that will exceed the salary. When it comes to agencies, on the contrary, companies engage services of agencies not in order to enhance HR or create synergies, but only for clear cut projects with a determined outcome. Even though they know that HR and synergies are most essential inside a company, they only integrate people on an employment basis. This brings two problems:
- people working for the company will be socialized on the long-run to adapt to a corporate culture that will be aligned with the corporate mind-set. They will tend to start to think like the people around them and will be flooded by the same messages, integrated into the same systems of thought and incentive structures. This makes thinking completely outside the box nearly impossible.
- the people employed have to be used "economically", efficiently, which excludes in most cases actions that are not ordered from above, top-down. Google introduced the 20% rule, this is a start, but not enough to create real out.the box innovation

What we propose is to look at small boutique agencies in a purely utilitarian way. An investment is justified if the money spend on it over time is less than the return on the investment. So if you spend 2,000 dollars on an agency each month for whatever reason (the reason is not important, you do not have to associate this with any clear cut project) and the agency produces more VALUE than this on average per month, then the investment is justified and should be made.
- The only question that counts, is, can the person employed or the agency engaged, produce VALUE to the company that exceed the costs spent on them.
- If you now calculate the value that our proposal wants to create over the course of one year, you will get a picture where we want to go with this. The VALUE is created predominantly through synergy effects, access to networks and consulting, and exposure in networks. Further, a competitive advantage in all pitches related to consumer networks, the ability to advertise this advantage and to openly associate yourself with the partner companies.
- to each of the above points, an economical value can be assigned that unfolds over the course of one year.
- the cost is calculated as a retainer that is much lower than the value, for one year. The build-up phase.
- what you get: access. Access to 30-50 magazines read continuously, student, OL and other consumer networks, creative input, etc ...
- This business plan is also a proposal for the agencies involved.
- magazine report, HNWI report, HNWI travel report
- costs, 8,000 Euro retainer per month. You can use our services for one year, means consulting from the side of Japan Access (senior and junior consultant). Our expertise can be integrated in any way possible
- access to interviews has to be charged extra. But not the access to our expertise
- you could integrate Masubuchi and Japan Access into any pitches. We would help to prepare material that enhances the competitiveness of Euro RSCG

like Philipp said, focus on synergies. And value created. Social value, access to networks that they are interested in accessing. We cover the social costs, decrease transaction costs. Make diagrams.
focus on new social media. We monitor it

Christianity is the religion of transcending Earth. Buddhism, science is naturalistic. The latter is the trend.
Our sense of the sacred and thus luxury along with it comes down to earth...to materialism. This begins to mingle the sacred sense with the profane sense. For both luxury and mass marketing. The dialogue of the sacred and the profane is at issue.

Mystics find the beauty, God, buddha nature in the most ordinary things. The duality of sacred-profane is thus annihilated. We are near home. To reconcile the duality yields great power. It is to be at home everywhere.

This natural universe is our home. Always has been.

Sex is spiritual. Our flesh is divine. Our body is our soul. The universe is our soul in its entirety.

People long for this reconciliation. People want their bodies, animal selfs validated. There is no original sin. We are forever innocent. We were just lost. Confused, exiled into history. Thrown into turmoil.

All of this yields a new aesthetic: The beauty of the Earth. 

Matter is good. The ills of materialism, blind consumerism is the result of confusion. If the perception, the ages old guilt trip is taken away then we can properly respect matter. All things on Earth is good. The Earth is our sacred ground. We find tangible beauty in this world. There are no other worlds. No heaven. No hell.

New values follow the new aesthetic. Nietzsche's life affirming values. Respecting the Earth, matter. Real human values, not transcendental bullshit of sacrificing life on Earth for some hereafter. Characters of depth, of salvation on Earth, of the human touch. Honesty, integrity, being alive now, kind, sharing, loving all humans. Love of all life. The innocent child open to all things. People will respond. They thirst for the new gospel, the good news. Enjoy life now.

What's fascinating for me to think about is the difference between luxury markets and mass marketing. They intersect. They are so different.

For luxury marketing it's about finding more novelty, adapting to new wealth, keeping up standards and creating new concepts of quality, etc. Luxury I think moves from the religious realm to the secular technological realm. It's about how to carry over the quality of sacredness (Agenda, Inc. here we go) from the religious to the secular. How do we extend luxury into virtual realities we are beginning to create without falling into the pits of hyper-reality. It is also about going deeper into the appreciation of materialism, alternatively or parallel to virtual realities and technology. Is this where Proteus is heading? Luxury...to realize beauty as yet unimaginable.

Mass marketing is equally fascinating. I saw a movie recommended by Phillip recently. Into the Void. What fascinated me about the movie was that it mingled the most sacred things about human existence with the most base and profane humanity. Beautiful DMT visions interlaced with ugly human suffering. But this creates fascination! It is a more Tantric attitude to life. I think the masses are heading this way. They seek quality, but they seek to devour the whole of life.

The monkey and the angel in me are fascinated by both, the depths and the heights.

Courtiers. Guerrillas.

The thing about competition in the marketplace is that the war is implicit. It resembles more of the medieval court situation (which of course Robert Greene recognizes the similarity in the supposed democratic climate we live in) where brands compete against each other behind the scenes.

What Greene says about individuals hold true for brands as well. We are mesmerized by the supposed democratic fairness and civilized atmosphere and are trained all our lives for peace. But we are not at all prepared for war. This insight alone yields advantages to the brands who do realize this reality, or are lucky enough to hire a marketing agency who understands this. Civilization is skin deep.
This is an arena where the subtlest, most flexible, the cleverest survives.

The system within a system is like a guerrilla unit. Or perhaps more like guerrilla strategy. Guerrillas make friends with complexity. They use it to maximum efficacy. The more chaotic the environment, the more power to the guerrillas and less to corporate giants.

Quotes from Guevara's Guerrilla Warfare

When we analyze more fully the tactic of guerrilla warfare, we will see that the guerrilla fighter needs to have a good knowledge of the surrounding countryside, the paths of entry and escape, the possibilities of speedy maneuver, good hiding places; naturally, also, he must count on the support of the people.


The China of Mao begins as an outbreak of worker groups in the South, which is defeated and almost annihilated. It succeeds in establishing itself and begins its advance only when, after the long march from Yenan, it takes up its base in rural territories and makes agrarian reform its fundamental goal. The struggle of Ho ChiMinh is based in the rice-growing peasants, who are oppressed by the French colonial yoke; with this force it is going forward to the defeat of the colonialists.


Taking account of the possibilities of development of guerrilla warfare, which is transformed with the increase in the operating potential of the guerrilla band into a war of positions, this type of warfare, despite its special character, is to be considered as an embryo, a prelude, of the other. The possibilities of growth of the guerrilla band and of changes in the mode of fight, until conventional warfare is reached, are as great as the possibilities of defeating the enemy in each of the different battles, combats, or skirmishes that take place. Therefore, the fundamental principle is that no battle, combat, or skirmish is to be fought unless it will be won. There is a malevolent definition that says: "The guerrilla fighter is the Jesuit of warfare." By this is indicated a quality of secretiveness, of treachery, of surprise that is obviously an essential element of guerrilla warfare. It is a special kind of Jesuitism, naturally prompted by circumstances, which necessitates acting at certain moments in ways different from the romantic and sporting conceptions with which we are taught to believe war is fought.

War is always a struggle in which each contender tries to annihilate the other. Besides using force, they will have recourse to all possible tricks and stratagems in order to achieve the goal. Military strategy and tactics are a representation by analysis of the objectives of the groups and of the means of achieving these objectives. These means contemplate taking advantage of all the weak points of the enemy. The fighting action of each individual platoon in a large army in a war of positions will present the same characteristics as those of the guerrilla band. It uses secretiveness, treachery, and surprise; and when these are not present, it is because vigilance on the other side prevents surprise. But since the guerrilla band is a division unto itself, and since there are large zones of territory not controlled by the enemy, it is always possible to carry out guerrilla attacks in such a way as to assure surprise; and it is the duty of the guerrilla fighter to do so.

"Hit and run," some call this scornfully, and this is accurate. Hit and run, wait, lie in ambush, again hit and run, and thus repeatedly, without giving any rest to the enemy. There is in all this, it would appear, a negative quality, an attitude of retreat, of avoiding frontal fights. However, this is consequent upon the general strategy of guerrilla warfare, which is the same in its ultimate end as is any warfare: to win, to annihilate the enemy.

Thus, it is clear that guerrilla warfare is a phase that does not afford in itself opportunities to arrive at complete victory. It is one of the initial phases of warfare and will develop continuously until the guerrilla army in its steady growth acquires the characteristics of a regular army. At that moment it will be ready to deal final blows to the enemy and to achieve victory. Triumph will always be the product of a regular army, even though its origins are in a guerrilla army.

This popular work should at first be aimed at securing secrecy; that is, each peasant, each member of the society in which action is taking place, will be asked not to mention what he sees and hears; later, help will be sought from inhabitants whose loyalty to the revolution offers greater guarantees; still later, use will be made of these persons in missions of contact, for transporting goods or arms, as guides in the zones familiar to them; still later, it is possible to arrive at organized mass action in the centers of work, of which the final result will be the general strike.

All this presupposes an increase in the territory included within the guerrilla action, but an excessive increase of this territory is to be avoided. It is essential always to preserve a strong base of operations and to continue strengthening it during the course of the war. Within this territory, measures of indoctrination of the inhabitants of the zone should be utilized; 

When the guerrilla band has reached a respectable power in arms and in number of combatants, it ought to proceed to the formation of new columns. This is an act similar to that of the beehive when at a given moment it releases a new queen, who goes to another region with a part of the swarm. The mother hive with the most notable guerrilla chief will stay in the less dangerous places, while the new columns will penetrate other enemy territories following the cycle already described.

The fundamental characteristic of a guerrilla band is mobility. This permits it in a few minutes to move far from a specific theatre and in a few hours far even from the region, if that becomes necessary; permits it constantly to change front and avoid any type of encirclement. As the circumstances of the war require, the guerrilla band can dedicate itself exclusively to fleeing from an encirclement which is the enemy's only way of forcing the band into a decisive fight that could be unfavorable; it can also change the battle into a counter- encirclement (small bands of men are presumably surrounded by the enemy when suddenly the enemy is surrounded by stronger contingents; or men located in a safe place serve as a lure, leading to the encirclement and annihilation of the entire troops and supply of an attacking force). Characteristic of this war of mobility is the so-called minuet, named from the analogy with the dance: the guerrilla bands encircle an enemy position, an advancing column, for example; they encircle it completely from the four points of the compass, with five or six men in each place, far enough away to avoid being encircled themselves; the fight is started at any one of the points, and the army moves toward it; the guerrilla band then retreats, always maintaining visual contact, and initiates its attack from another point. The army will repeat its action and the guerrilla band, the same. Thus, successively, it is possible to keep an enemy column immobilized, forcing it to expend large quantities of ammunition and weakening the morale of its troops without incurring great dangers.

a great amount of firing on the part of the regular army, sporadic and accurate shots on the part of the guerrillas.

Another fundamental characteristic of the guerrilla soldier is his flexibility, his ability to adapt himself to all circumstances, and to convert to his service all of the accidents of the action. Against the rigidity of classical methods of fighting, the guerrilla fighter invents his own tactics at every minute of the fight and constantly surprises the enemy.

The surviving enemy, resting, believes that the attacker has departed; he begins to relax, to return to the routine life of the camp or of the fortress, when suddenly a new attack bursts forth in another place, with the same characteristics, while the main body of the guerrilla band lies in wait to intercept reinforcements. At other times an outpost defending the camp will be suddenly attacked by the guerrilla, dominated, and captured. The fundamental thing is surprise and rapidity of attack.

The second conclusion is that if guerrilla fighting must include the extremely important factor of work on the masses, this work is even more important in the unfavorable zones, where a single enemy attack can produce a catastrophe. Indoctrination should be continuous, and so should be the struggle for unity of the workers, of the peasants, and of other social classes that live in the zone, in order to achieve toward the guerrilla fighters a maximum homogeneity of attitude. This task with the masses, this constant work at the huge problem of relations of the guerrilla band with the inhabitants of the zone, must also govern the attitude to be taken toward the case of an individual recalcitrant enemy soldier: he should be eliminated without hesitation when he is dangerous. In this respect the guerrilla band must be drastic. Enemies cannot be permitted to exist within the zone of operations in places that offer no security.

Inspiration from War

Deep knowledge of the terrain will let a brand process information faster than their competitors, a tremendous advantage. This allows brands to get a feel of the consumers from the inside. Tactics will then tend to flow forth much more naturally.

page 53 of 33 Strategies of War
Marketing strategy is about creating a powerful internal dynamic in the brand's company or marketing team as much as it is about influencing the market. If the house is divided, then it can not hope to effectively influence consumers and the market at large. Proteus must act as the general. The client maybe the commander in chief, the person who gives the ultimate authority. But it is the general who understands the war of marketing. First and foremost the general must understand the structure of his own army. The general must not be too authoritarian nor too easy going. Make yourself look like a paragon of fairness, but never relinquish unity of command. This in itself is a work of art. To command an army is much like riding a horse. The rider and the horse relationship.
"Understand: the future belongs to groups that are fluid, fast, and nonlinear."

A fluid army is decentralized, operates in segmented groups, expands options for mobility.

Once you get the job you must act as the leader, and be responsible for creating the army's morale. Personal example is the best way to set the proper tone and build morale.

Tactics-strategy--Perhaps the biggest mistake brands make is mistaking tactics for strategy?

Intelligent war is sublime.

Tactics are important details. Brands probably lack both strategy and tactics. Marketing for them is just blind experimentation, that is not scientific nor for that matter even artistic. It's tactless money-wasting busily putting on an appearance of doing something.

Of course qualitative changes are not new. What is novel here is the depth of the change. 

It's a backlash of the Hyper-reality, of postmodern nihilism. 

A beast is in the making...a new quality, more complexity and unpredictable markets, a new society. 

We take cues from the world around us...corporate empire, globalization, technology, social networking, etc. 

There will be a counter force.

Quality, Integrity, Character

High quality, integrity and depth of character are what people want. This is what will sell in the future I believe, and not just in luxury industry but on a mass scale.

It's a pendulum swing. Think America voting for Obama after 8years of Bush.
Everything under the sun has been tried in marketing (or actually in everything). This causes a backlash psychologically. People begin to look for substance.

Check out the case of Dominoes Pizza recently. They went for brutal honesty in their TV ads. People were saying terrible things about their pizza and they said they got the point, they will change and would like the customers to try their new pizzas. It worked. It remains to be seen if they can keep up the numbers but.

I've been telling my friend Morizumi for years about this. There will be a paradigm shift in the market, politics, sex, etc. People will start to look for something authentic, real, high quality, etc.
That means instead of flirtations, people will look for courtships. Brands that are willing to go through the process of wooing and seducing their customers will win the day.

War, Seduction

Tokyo...on the surface everything looks peaceful. But beneath the surface we find brands competing for attention. This is the battlefield. How do you take over key points in the social networks? Japan Access is the general, the strategist that will win over the territories for the client brand (the king, the emperor). Or it's like seduction. How to become the most popular guy (brand) in the room at a party full of ladies (consumers) and rivals (other brands).

Proteus must become a master strategist.

"Strategy is more than a science: it is the application of knowledge to practical life, the development of thought capable of modifying the original guiding idea in the light of ever-changing situations; it is the art of acting under the pressure of the most difficult conditions." --Helmuth von Moltke

First, in war never underestimate randomness.

A brand's marketing should be subtle and hard to trace. A woman is vanquished by a seducer who is not too obvious in his maneuvers. Of course he's seducing her but never obvious.

Appearance is everything! Dirty work must be done undercover.

Brutal marketing is costly! Highly sophisticated, subtle, strategic marketing win wars with the least amount of casualties.

Sun-tzu's art of war is about winning without bloodshed.

The funny thing is Japanese people love this ideal! This is what I find so sublime about some characters in Japanese culture. They love the hero who can subdue the bad guy without hurting him. Like aikido. The top 3 mangas I love have this running theme also. They know how to fight so well that they can subdue enemies without killing them. Musashi says...if you've already won before the fight has begun, is there a need to fight?

War Metaphor

Biology, evolution, etc. these metaphors worked and should be kept, but it's too complex. There's a metaphor that strikes at the heart of the issue, and that is War.
Of course this is not novel in marketing. Just combine it with other metaphors.
War is complex. But in order to make the enemy fall, you take over certain key points. The field is complex so you find various chinks in the armor. Marketing is like this. The territory is complex. You are warring in foreign land, foreign soil, Japan. You need informants, native guides, trend scouts.

This is just a start. I'll go over 33 Strategies of War, Greene again, and come up with more metaphors.

A System Within a System

I wasn't thinking in the direction you mentioned but I suppose Taleb would nod in agreement. 

For boutique companies, they have to come up with something more controlled right? Small companies I imagine have a different dynamic in relation to random circumstances. Boutique co. are navigators. Guided missiles. They wade through the complex territory and tell the big ship (client companies) to adjust directions as the marketing campaign progresses. This is fine-tuning. There's no guarantee but it's a sophisticated advantage over other companies who only launch linear missiles.

---

From: helge.fluch@gmail.com
Subject: Re: u
Date: Sat, 21 May 2011 20:01:12 +0200
To: devilishlemondrop@hotmail.com

hey. you remember that. cool.

by the way. I get the point now from your Twitter feed.

Marketing as evolution.

We increase mutations, we increase complex interactions.

Thus, we accelerate evolution and open the possibilities for advanced "species" in marketing. In order to accelerate evolution in marketing and idea generation, you have to increase randomness, random interactions, and uncertainty. This will create more exposure to positive black swans for companies.

something like this?  

We can share ideas here. This blog is private right? Just your therapist knows?
We can use this blog like a forum.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVOTdheq5eU

Pragmatism, especially neo-pragmatism is what I view as the complimentary force to post-modernism and deconstruction.

Post-modernism is generally anti-foundational (deconstructs fundamental assumptions that hold up whole worldviews, narratives, etc.). But so is pragmatism. It's empirical and skeptical. So we come full circle back to Taleb! Skeptical empiricism is anti-foundational, it does not cling to some ultimate notion of something. It begins with empirical observation. Patently scientific. Also pragmatism says don't worry about ultimate justification and just take action! (it's a bit more complicated than this but don't worry about it). Very roughly speaking I suppose you can say that Taleb's empirical skepticism finds itself corresponding in the following way: empirical=pragmatism, skepticism=deconstruction.

This is a very very crude way of explaining pragmatism but ok for starters. It's sometimes called American pragmatism. But don't be fooled by the name: it's very deep, sophisticated and scientific. Like Taleb, it goes to the very heart complexity. Especially evolution. It's no accident that fractals, Black Swans, pragmatism are so illuminated by biological evolution. Biological evolution is the story of how complex life forms evolved out of simpler ones. 

One very illuminating example is how animals evolved minds to package and handle the environment. This is precisely what pragmatism is! It's our ability to handle and package the environment. This ability of ours is not then about realizing some ultimate truth. It's the product of our biological evolution. This is actually an astonishing way of looking at our intellect. Indeed like Taleb it is anti-platonic. It is empiricism pitted against platonicity.

Prometheus - the return

The hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.

So the hero ascended to the heights of heaven, to steal the fire from the gods. The he descended. 

The really creative acts are represented as those deriving from some sort of dying to the world, to come back, filled with creative power.

So here we are.

Let us venture deep.