Articles Published

Secret Principles of Immortality, Edition 7

Secret Principles of Immortality, Edition 8

Technology, Prophecy, and Interactivity

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Hints on Paradigms and Scaffolds

It has been an eerie year for me in terms of intellectual progression. I have literally invented several disciplines to navigate what seemed to be very difficult territory. In some ways I'm still lost in the specificity of my project, even though the subject in its most meaningful form is highly general, and yet  capable of insight. What began as a Unity Project dealing with subjectivity, God, objectivity, and the soul has morphosed into, first, a book of knowledge which has not been published, secondly my Theses folder which is mostly devoted to literature for which I cannot claim credit, although much of it I have not discovered in print, and thirdly my Dimensional Encyclopedia, the volumes of which will sometimes include disciplines which do not yet exist in the same sense with which I intend them.

One of my encyclopedias is devoted to Paralogy, the philosophy of fractions, in a sense that builds on earlier volumes concerning such subjects as Philosophy, Psychology, Biology, Phenomenology, Aesthetics, and Criticism.

I have continued my sometimes disappointing encounters with the published literature, where entire books frequently lack a strong thesis statement or fail to propound the wealth of insights that a strong thesis might suggest.

As the year wears on (comfortably and uncomfortably), I muse on the strength of my own theses, theses which I have so far been approaching in the individual contexts of each encyclopedia. Yet the titles of future volumes meaningfully weigh into some of the content considerations. Paralogy has a meaningful presence in the beginning of my Phenomenology Toolkit (Dimensional Encyclopedia, Volume Four).

It has been meaningful to address subjects which others have not cared to consider, and to ponder on combinations of subjects which yield meaningful variables.

For example, in Psychology, it seems to me that the work of Freud on dreams, Otto Rank on Beyond Psychology, and Carl Rogers on individualized therapy offer inadequate concepts of meaning, even though meaning is a relatively fertile concept for study.

Taking philosophy as an example of the completeness of knowledge, psychology gains an aura of incompleteness, but in providing this kind of sketch, meaningful holistics concur in the prediction of the ends and middles of theory; where pragmatics is not obvious, theory becomes more obvious; where the therapist and the patient are isolated in 'one booth', the psychology of both becomes more evident, and a few telling details become more extraordinary. While I have avoided some of the generality present in my first volume---which was notable for such---I have also re-introduced the categorical method as a foundation for the admittedly sketchy methodology of past therapists. Where therapists tend to be more socially adept and knowledgeable on the subject of individual therapy, I have also made a point of not overlooking all of their faults. This process has provided a significant groundwork for knowledge of therapy, and perhaps psychology in general, if it is adequate to reach for a social theory.

The way I have earlier reached for a Paroxysmic shift (in the Dimensional Philosopher's Toolkit), conversely I am currently struggling with the limitation of such categories as History and Politics, topics which I intend to eventually creatively address within later volumes of the encyclopedia. It requires a certain amount of psychic motivation to see that these subjects are still relevant to individual study. Why not go mad, as in the first volume, or become sane, as in the second volume, or acquire moodlessness, as in the third volume? Or transcend perspective, as in the fourth volume? Something of these subjects and their implied varaibles will remain to investigate in the later subjects, I promise.

What about the scaffolds I connoted? I have provided hints. Dimensional Psychology is my current subject, the topic of my present work to be published next year. In the future, I will have an opportunity to apply psychology to such subjects as biology, phenomenology, aesthetics, criticism, and paralogy. The concept is an endless ladder.

An Article Has Been Published

Secret Principles of Immortality, Edition 6 has been published at Ezinearticles.Com:

http://ezinearticles.com/?Secret-Principles-of-Immortality,-Edition-6&id=7574510

Progress in Categories

A PARTIAL DISPLAY OF THE DIAGRAM CALLED 'POND LOGIC OF PSYCHOLOGICAL PARADIGMS' FROM THE DIMENSIONAL PSYCHOLOGIST'S TOOLKIT (TO BE PUBLISHED IN 2014).

This and other examples have emerged recently, explaining such subjects as Future Psychology, Experimental Psychology, and Paradigms within psychology.

Those who are interested in psychology and therapy may take interest in my book, which will be available on Amazon, and hopefully bookstores.

Occasional Quotidian Post

Thinking of switching to Amazon publishing with Create Space for my two forthcoming books.

Those books are The Dimensional Psychologist's Toolkit (2014) and the Tractatus in Couplets.

Since Amazon is cheaper I can pay for a Kirkus (objective) review to supplement marketing.

The Tractatus in Couplets will receive no review unless I find a major source of income in the next few years.

If I have a low period in book production, I will spend extra money on reviewing the first volume of my encyclopedia---The Dimensional Philosopher's Toolkit, which has already been published with Authorhouse. But my hope is that the reviews I have arranged for free this year will pay off as a recommendation to stock the first volume at Barnes & Noble bookstores. I'm not sure about that yet, but it would be great if it worked.

Therapy Headache

Some of the most infuriating experiences with therapy seem to involve nothing at all. While the therapist will claim that there is 'inner turmoil' / 'a complex interaction of unconscious forces' and other language bites, the client or patient in a therapy session may feel that the therapist is making much of nothing. He or she may even feel that the therapist is going out of the way to create trouble.

Such was the case in one therapy apppointment I attended years ago. The therapist had a mind to try Carl Roger's famous passive approach to therapy, in which the client is encouraged to change and grow with minimal actual influence.

I will report on the dialogue that transpired:

Therapist: "This time, I'm going to try an experiment. In this therapy appointment, I'm going to do absolutely nothing. I'm just going to listen"

Me: "Well, I don't know what to say"

Therapist: "Is something wrong?"

Me: "I just get a kind of terrible hollow feeling. I don't think that it works"

Therapist: "Well, does that mean that you feel like nothing inside?"

Me: [smiling]

Therapist: "Hey, you tricked me"

Me: "I really don't think that it works. If you insist on it, we'll just end the appointment"

Therapist: "Very well, I have no choice"

I was disappointed, like I had swallowed one big zero. In retrospect, it seemed valuable only because the therapist had insisted that it was significant. But since even that seemed debatable, I continue to look back on it as a negative experience. But if nothing else, I did become interested in psychology.

Looking back, it does seem like Carl Roger's therapy supports big hollow feelings, and that isn't what I should have to contend with. What would it do for depression? What would it do for people that don't get a natural high for that matter? His approach seems to assume that the client is happy, or that anything can be solved by just going back to loose ends. On the other hand, it does loosen authority, and as many people know, authority has been cited as one of the problems with capitalism. But should I become a socialist just because I received a certain type of therapy? This has both positive and negative influences. If nothing else, it is an honest approach which asks the client/patient to deal with exactly what his or her issues are, independent of any kind of judgment. Which seems okay, as an idea, but may fail when the specific emotions of inadequacy are involved. Perhaps the only problem was that I didn't feel the empathy that the original guru tried to offer.

I get the feeling that therapists are doing some very basic calculations, and the result is sometimes supportive in the context of authority / lack of authority, and much of everything in therapy comes down to the difficulty of putting it into practice. How overbearing! Or how mistaken! (As Freud might say) yet how 'uncontentious', how 'inspiring'---!

Much seems to cook down to the fulfillment of needs, when many patients really have very little genuine fulfillment. How to synthesize? How to dispute? Hidden facts bear down on us like angry trolls.

I can discover what I want, but it is much more difficult to discover what I need to do to feel better. Drugs are still treated as a karma-band bargain, an awful sacrifice, in which all is lost if there is not equilibrium.

New Article

The Secret Principles of Immortality, Edition 5:

http://ezinearticles.com/?Secret-Principles-of-Immortality,-Edition-5&id=7539447

Articles Published

Secret Principles of Immortality, Edition 4:
http://ezinearticles.com/?Secret-Principles-of-Immortality,-Edition-4&id=7529259

Meaning Interpreted as Water:
http://ezinearticles.com/?Meaning-Interpreted-As-Water&id=7529276

Occasional Quotidian Post, Updated

Still living on Orange St. in New Haven, since September 2011.

Plans are under weigh to publish my fourth and fifth books via Amazon publishing (called CreateSpace) rather than attempting Authorhouse again. Authorhouse has physically better quality books, but the rumor is they're worse at advertising to the main distributors. It's obvious that their name hurts compared to almost anybody else. Amazon might be the next step up from the abyss of the forsaken.

But the good news is, my AuthorRank at Amazon had risen temporarily to 158,787 based on the influence of a very small number of recent sales (plural at least, in the last two months). Anyone with people connections can do better than me with sales. I try to make my book titles public knowledge, but it doesn't always work.

My web pursuits and parsing of statistics continue on a weekly basis.

I visit my mother's family on the weekends.

I have printed several editions of the Everything Papers (a philosophical one-page newspaper), which is sometimes available on Starbucks or other cafes in New Haven.

The Everything Papers may eventually be available as a book volume, for those that are curious. My original plan was to print it in a self-published edition of "collected works" but I now realize the Everything Papers may have 100 editions before it is appropriate to print a collected works.

The detraction is that that newspaper can only be printed on full-size paper, which takes money away from royalties. But, I remind myself, I have been self-publishing, so the royalty amount is, as my father would say, "only an extra something" with none of the connotations of greed.

I've earned little more than 15 dollars so far in over a year of having multiple volumes in print.

But they are good books. They are just not advertised. And they are not yet available in bookstores.

That's it for this quotidian post, on a boring day where I haven't received e-mail for several hours (forget about the female aspect).

Here is a link to my Author Profile: http://www.amazon.com/author/nathancoppedge