1/ Origin Myths all share quite a bit in common if you read a lot of them together. For example, Eve was seen to bring down humanity by eating the apple of knowledge. Robert Anton Wilson in "Ishtar Rising" recounts:
2/ "In the Greek story, Zeus slights Eris (the Goddess of Chaos) by not inviting her to a banquet on Olympus and she gets her revenge by manufacturing a golden apple inscribed KALLISTI ("To the prettiest one") and rolling it into the banquet hall.
3/ Immediately all the goddesses begin squabbling, each claiming to be the prettiest one and entitled to the apple; this quarrel worsens until men as well as gods are drawn into it and eventually the Trojan War results.
4/ Eris became known as the goddess of chaos and the golden apple is called the apple of discord."

To this day, a "religion." apparently started as a gag by Gregory Hill and Kerry Wendell Thornley, called Discordianism, which "worships" Eris, the Goddess of Chaos,
5/ "Discordianism is centered on the idea that both order and disorder are illusions imposed on the universe by the human nervous system, and that neither of these illusions of apparent order and disorder is any more accurate or objectively true than the other."
~@Wikipedia
6/ Wilson goes on to note "The similarities here — the role of the female, the presence of the apple, the sequence of supernatural calamities — suggest that there might be a common origin to these myths.
7/ Such is indeed the case, according to Joseph Campbell's monumental four-volume study, "The Masks of God."

🤔Ah, now where have we seen Campbell before? Things just get curiouser and curiouser... Image

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More from @jposhaughnessy

16 Oct
1/I've often urged people to keep written records of things because our memories are unreliable narrators.

Just found another great example--I was telling a friend about a painting we own and was certain we had visited the artist's studio in the late 1980s, before we moved
2/ to the East Coast in 1991.

I wanted to relay the experience we had listening to her life's story which I knew I had recorded in my journal, so I was diligently going through my journals from that period.

Nothing, nada, zip.
3/ And while I found some great stuff (28 year old Jim was a thoughtful son-of-a-bitch 😜) but nothing about her.

I was so convinced that the visit was in the 80s that I went through them twice. Still nothing.

Then, I reminded myself of my own advice 🤦🏻‍♂️and started going
Read 6 tweets
13 Oct
1/ For those joining me later today for this @interintellect_ salon with @bronwynwilliams some quotes to ponder to frame why it's so important that we have clowns that can act as "Holy Fools."

interintellect.com/salon/clowns-a…
2/ “In Russian folklore there is an archetype called yurodivy, or the “Holy Fool.” The Holy Fool is a social misfit—eccentric, off-putting, sometimes even crazy—who nonetheless has access to the truth...The Holy Fool is a truth-teller because he is an outcast.”
~@Gladwell
3/ "Against the assault of Laughter nothing can stand.
"
~Mark Twain
Read 16 tweets
13 Aug
1/ Why You Should Write Letters to Your Kids as They Grow--A thread

I've noticed a lot of FinTwiters having babies. Congratulations! I'd like to recommend you get into a habit early, and start writing letters to them that you can give them at some milestone, like turning 21.
2/ “Letters are among the most significant memorial a person can leave behind them.”
~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I’ve always believed in the written word. Having to put your thoughts in writing helps you understand if you clearly understand what—and how—you want to say something
3/ And if you keep written journals, there is simply no way to let hindsight bias take over, for there, in your own hand, is what you thought about something at the time, with revisions through selective memory impossible.

Writing clarifies. It illuminates. It helps you follow
Read 25 tweets
12 Jul
1/ Another reason to keep journals--A thread

I've been going through many of my old journals which stretch back to 1979, when I was 19 years old. As I've said elsewhere, our memories are often unreliable narrators, and it can be illuminating to see the many ways this is so
2/ for example, someone asked me recently if I still remembered and practiced anything I learned from studying neurolinguistic programming (NLP) which was developed and popularized in the 1970s by Richard Bandler and John Grinder. I said I thought not, but wasn't really sure
3/ but would check my notes. I found them, and realized that a lot of my later work on understanding systems thinking and structures actually began when I read the book "The Structure of Magic, Vol. 1: A Book About Language and Therapy" by Bandler and Grinder.
Read 30 tweets
2 Jul
1/ When I was a teen, I was a professional magician (really) and I did several effects that were examples of 'mind reading' and other 'psychic' abilities. I had read several books about how to do "cold reads" of people by noting the person's age, sex, clothing, manner of speech,
2/ where they lived or went to school, etc. All of these were essentially based on high probability guesses that I would then watch the person's reaction for an indication if I was right or wrong and then go to the path of correct guesses that made the person actually believe I
3/ had psychic powers. I eventually became so disturbed by one common reaction that I stopped doing a few of the effects--even if I went out of my way to explain afterward (the people who volunteered were, I see now, a self-selected sample who shared a belief in psychic power)
Read 10 tweets
27 Jun
1/Saw this article, and decided to play around with GPT-J

towardsdatascience.com/cant-access-gp…
2/ I trained it on a single piece of my writing, this piece on why you should write letters to your kids:

jimoshaughnessy.tumblr.com/post/174184874…
3/ Some the output was pretty interesting:

GPT-J: "I try to avoid being judgmental, but, rather, strive for understanding and understanding comes through empathy, compassion, and, perhaps most of all, just listening, to truly know yourself."
Read 6 tweets

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