A rather expansive little interview with the late Christopher Hyatt, author of Undoing Yourself With Energized Meditation, To Lie Is Human and The Psychopath’s Bible; all of which, at the very least, come off as jaggedly interesting reading, if you’re at all into in self-transformation/ self-overcoming/ amoralist autonomy and the ilk…..
A chunky interview, to be sure, but packed full of enough interesting points to sustain the attention – view it at one’s own leisure…..
(Though I wonder – given his agreement with life extension, wealth accumulation, experimentation and self-interest – why he didn’t put himself up for a cryonics program upon his cancer diagnosis…..)
~MRDA~
What a silly mofo this guy is. He talks about people being monkeys and obviously thinks he is above the fray…as his fat ass sits around drinking booze. Seriously. I’m sure he would find a way to rationalize being fat and drinking as he simultaneously says things suggesting that people ought to be more “rational” and improve themselves. Yeah god forbid some rich dude chases a woman when he should instead be on some quasi-rational journey to raise his IQ….wtf???
Also, he sounds like a blast from the past…talking so much about being “rational”. You need desires and emotions to have ENDS. It doesn’t make sense for the means(cortex) to dominate the brain at the expense of the ends(mammilian brain). (this is probably a huge simplification, but still)
Because he refuses to recognize many of his own desires and tries to replace them with “rational” ones…it’s as evident as with even the hairiest of monkeys that this guy is spooked to high heaven.
He does come off as the Homer Simpson of egoism in his manner – heheh!
That said, I doubt he’s talking about rationality in some capital R, externally-imposed for all all time; rather, I reckon he was on about people developing their own awareness of their needs and desires. I don’t think he meant pure *logic* – more an all-encompassing meta-view of the self that takes logic and emotion into account.
Well, I didn’t make my judgments on an assumption of Rationality. I made them on evidence of what he said. He spoke lowly of rich men chasing women..wha? He thinks he has better things to do! I doubt it, I doubt it. To me, he means capital R…at least somewhat so. And by Rationality I don’t mean pure logic..I mean a religion of Rationality..that is..a spook. Everything he says suggests capital R. Capital R is at the basis of his view of the social order. His body and behavior suggest otherwise, but from the horses mouth I’m hearing a lot of dissonance. It could be purposeful irony, but if it is I’m not especially impressed.
I’d like to point out that he explicitly said that he thought the reasoning centers should have more control in the brain. Why?(sounds spooky) I think my own have too much goddamn control, and his probably don’t need any more! He says little or nothing about them being mere tools or means..he acts like they are ends in themselves. They may be to some extent(or not), but to focus too much on that side of things is a mistake and it’s not clear what one would gain from doing so.
So what if people entertain themselves in petty ways…so what if their bodies are “wasting away”,unlike his youthful herculean frame(so handsome). No doubt it’s funner to look down on them for it, but it doesn’t really make any sense other than for some expensive(other people hate him for it) self-satisfaction.
This guy can puff my ass-pipe any day.
I kinda agree with him about the reasoning center thing – the way I see it, there’d be less sitting around, indulging in the emotional indulgence of the moment and more time spent trying to develop one’s deeper emotional wants into something resembling a reality. Make the move, get the girl, self-overcome, raise one’s power level to OVER 9000 – BECOME!!!
I agree with your call-out on his physical condition though; the guy seems to possess an extraordinary blind spot in that regard and ends up coming off as a grade-A hypocrite.
You’re saying reasonable things, but they aren’t quite the same things he says. His non-philosophical advice might be sound, but it’s also pretty much..obvious. When he tries to talk philosophically(ie…exposes his pretense) he makes a fool of himself. Any old dude can sit around and say go after the good stuff..and most will if you ask them for advice. What else would they say? And that’s really the only useful stuff he says.
I also see absolutely nothing wrong with just shitting time away. That’s all perspective. It’s really all a silly game anyway. I’ve been there and back with the thinking and in the end I just realized that there’s nothing really better one way or the other(from)..that people just form beliefs and habits and stay within them and use them as guides. I spose I’ll write an entry about it since itll require some space.