20 Comments

I think I'm a schizo householder

am I the ubermensch buddha?

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Well yes you are but technically all of us are ubermensch buddhas so that's not really big news. The piece of information here that I find actually exciting is that you might have a life that's happy and fulfilled in a way that I have yet to figure out.

How did you do it, any advice you'd give younger you?

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1- dammit

2- Lots, but mainly about leaning more into skizo and making my skills more legible. But this isn't the advice most skizos need. My advice would be to find a stable community and work there, instead of working with other schizos. Like be the local shaman for a few churches/workplaces/scenes of normies. (this is not cus I know it works, but i think being the exclusive skiz in my rl has helped me balance things better

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Excellent framing. Though with that framing I suspect the half life of various exploit buttons keeps getting shorter.

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Yah that's why my current vertigo of "Alright I'm ready to press 'exploit' but ooops where are the actually viable options?!"

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Beautiful article

If I understood correctly, the answer almost always seems like "The Middle Path." Just enough exploration and exploitation. Just enough craziness and stability

Re: "will be for nothing, because they find themselves to be utterly and completely useless as far as being actual members of society is concerned."

what percent truth vs. exaggeration is this? (My mind is screaming. False alarm. Stop using the "that was useless" to beat yourself up again. Noooo nooo nooo)

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As in so many other things, I like the Sufi take: the worldly life is the world of play, and it's ultimately of very little importance how you go through it.

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Good post!

I'm definitely in the schizo cluster -- I wrote about this realisation here:

https://darkarchipelago.substack.com/p/adventure

I wrote most of that SStack during a one-month period, where I basically had to rapidly figure out how I was going to compress my schizo nature into something resembling a functional adult citizen.

Venkat Rao's article on the 'Mask' and the 'Demon' touches on the same idea.

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Love it, thanks for the leads!

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Do you have links to Venk Rao's stuff? I'm so far new to Ribbonfarm.

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Figure out inter-schizo cooperation, solve small problems for proof of concept and momentum, recruit agentic normies, solve problems, attract pragmatists across the spectrum (filter out sociopaths), get paid, repeat ?

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My natural proclivity is towards being an advisor rather than a leader or coordinator, so I'm not gonna do that. But I'm happy to be a sounding board for anyone who does!

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as a schizo, i was very excited reading your description and looking forward to you sharing the miraculous solution to this problem hahaha

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One answer I got is that life is generally more an open world game than structured in discrete levels and there's infinite alternative storylines if you hit a wall somewhere. Which is something my framing of the problem hides.

That doesn't seem entirely viable to me personally though because I'm feeling inexplicably baby crazy and have the hunch that some bits and bops need bolting down soon so they don't explode into my face when things become more baby-shaped. Whence the question...

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ahhhh yes. checks out!

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"Because who’s gonna make the cheese?" - I'm curious. Is this a genuine worry? Do you see a possible future where so many folks are like this that they're actually a significant proportion of society and exerting noticeable drag?

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What I'm saying is that the guru business is a ponzi scheme and I don't see any way how it can be transmuted into something that's actually wholesome and serves society rather than being a parasitic structure grafted on top

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Well, you run a Substack that covers personal development, so you're a guru in a sense too =P. Sucks, I know.

It's important to be skeptical of gurus if you're considering following their advice or paying for their services, but that doesn't mean that there aren't folk out there who are actually helping people.

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I currently feel like the only versions of playing the guru game worth betting on are

a) doing it as a hobby horse and getting positively surprised if it one day pays your rent, and

b) getting actual psychotherapist training.

I'm kiinda coming to terms with a) right now. (As this post shows. What is made conscious can't hurt you so much.) And, I keep thinking about how to do b) without getting really bored due to all the upfront reading and self-dev I've done.

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