found this wonderful paper, on the value of drunkenness in plato’s laws. some highlights:

“shame” (probably an imperfect translation) is an important feeling to the greeks. their “shame” was a desire to not look stupid in front of others, and this desire created a feeling that prevented indulgence in excess pleasure. cultivating this feeling (which may or may not feel like what we think is shame) built cultivated restraint and temperance.

drinking increases the desire to indulge. and so restraining yourself while drunk is kind of like training with the weights on. if you can restrain yourself sloshed you can restrain yourself sober, no matter how great and how tempting the pleasure.

the Laws recommends supervised drinking parties (symposiums). these are employed strategically to cultivate shame in citizens, and to also reveal who is shameless. knowing who is shameless is said to be the most important thing a city can learn.

children are loud and spirited because they have fire in the soul

alcohol “pours fire in the soul” and makes adults like children, singing and dancing freely.

musical education is very important to plato. if an old person is musically mis-educated (for example, they listened to too much indie rock and are now a softboi unfit to the defend the state), it is difficult to retrain him, because he is too dry and embarassed to let loose and sing a new song (for example, spartan death metal)

so plato recommends he get drunk. and while he is drunk, a wise teacher should make him sing more noble songs. basically, drunkenness makes you more musically neuroplastic so you can re-educate your spirit.

People who like to rewatch movies know the ending, and this freedom from plot tension helps them savor the details. People who don’t like to rewatch movies lose interest without the plot tension, the details do not touch them.

Constant mindfulness of death help some enjoy the everyday. But causes others to see the everyday as pointless, and want for more.

For those who don’t care about plot or endings at all– none of this matters. They only ask: “what is going on right now?”

I’m trying to relax my desire to know and to predict.

“asti nāsti kathaṁ brūyāṁ vismayaḥ pratibhāti me”

We give our energy to “creating good memories” then reminisce to fill ourselves.

We give our energy to idols then contemplate them to fill ourselves.

They both feel like batteries. And because we share some collective mind, mystical cultures have dedicated idol-smiths who create and charge idols for the benefit of us all. And I think they create and charge them with feelings, insights, energy levels that are foreign to our individual conscious experience. So, like art, they allow us to download the experience of someone who had a deeper conscious experience of life.

New age magick that uses pop-culture is harnessing forms and pop culture idols that have already taken our energy, usually in childhood when we were not conscious of this exchange, and using them consciously to reclaim that energy.

Causality is not as strict as we think it is. “If I do this, I will get this.” Nothing is this simple. God often makes it this simple so we do not go insane. But he doesn’t have to. It’s said the planets choose to move in a regular motion, out of their own freedom, because they enjoy the rhythm and perfection.

The causalities described in the Vedas is maybe close to “law”. Newton is close to law. But most of our cause-effect ideas are largely God’s gifts and lessons. And God can break his own laws at any time, as al-Ghazali might say. Close to law means God enjoys the constraint and chooses, like the planets, to follow it, for his own joy. Miracles are proof that he can deviate from them at any time.

Original (pre-19th century) definition of “Baroque”: absurd, grotesque

Baroque disregarded the ancient rules of composition. Baroque painters like Frans Hals “knew how to attain the impression of balance without appearing to follow any rule” (Story of Art, 311).

With the baroque, art moves from the serene Middle Ages and Renaissance portraits of the Virgin Mary, to the painful ecstasies of Saint Teresa pierced by the golden arrow.

To me, baroque art looks like a wild and effortless balance. The balance of a jungle as opposed to the well organized home. The diagonals are invigorating. They cut you open. They strike, they impose. They imply that Heaven is glorious and ecstatic. That the Earth, though chaotic, is still ordered under God, still sensical.

There is passion in procrastination. It makes every impractical “what if” superficially fascinating and overstimulating.

The antidote is dispassionate work. It sobers me up, and then I look around, as if waking up from a bender, surrounded by impulse purchase woodworking tools I bought when intoxicated by distraction.

God wills through me, I just need to clear the way. “Lord, give me only what you will and in the way that you will.”

If this doesn’t lead to insight, then usually I have an obvious duty, chore, or task I’m neglecting out of lack of virtue.

complex or unorthodox purpose (e.g Jonah, Isaiah, Abraham) -> harder to reason about -> more dependence on surrender