Ummagumma

I started my slow aging practice in the 1990s.  I did not call it a practice or really even think of it that way. The whole idea of cultivating your life by combining “practices” just wasn’t there holistically. Back then there was this rather nebulous idea that something called “ the Singularity” might happen about 4 decades in the future. 2032 was the year, supposedly . This Singularity was going to arises as a combination of different technologies and disciplines co-mingled into something larger. A kind of utopia was predicted by certain fringe scientists. Biotechnology and nanotechnology were converging into something that looked, from a distance, like it might rewrite what a human body could be. I had no evidence this would happen on any particular timeline, or at all. I was already in decent physical and mental shape in my mid-30’s. So the assumption was straightforward. Fine tune. Perpetuate. Back then there was a large school of thought that free radicals were the main cul...

When you combine practices — when you actually connect the things you do, the skills you've built, the interests you've cultivated — something additional appears. Not just the sum. Something beyond the sum. That's not a story you tell about your life. That's something happening in your life. I call it harmonious generation. Harmogenics for short. The word is new. The phenomenon is not. In fact, it is everywhere . It shows up in physics, in biology, in neuroscience, in psychology, in ecology, in aging research, in philosophy, in religion, in craft, in athletics, in ordinary kitchens and ordinary lives. It has been running in the background of human experience for as long as there have been humans combining practices. And nobody has named it as a single thing. Everybody keeps finding pieces of it and filing those pieces under different headings. Hydrogen is a flammable gas. Oxygen is a flammable gas. Combine them and you get something that puts out fires. Wetness belongs...

It was about this time last year I started writing what I thought would be one book entitled Harmogenics . That turned into three books with the last, Raucous Reckonings , completed in October. I was late in the “final” revision of the text when I came across Albert Camus and his remarkable affinity with what I have in mind by "cosmic indifference." Short version: don’t slit your wrists. I have known of Albert Camus's philosophy as long as I have known Jean-Paul Sartre. Decades. But while I read and studied Sartre at different times of my life, I never studied or read Camus. I just knew he originated, more or less, contemporary philosophy of the "absurd." Camus gets designated an "existentialist," which annoyed him while he was alive, and then reduced to a single slogan about Absurdity. That reduction misses the point in a very human way. Camus wasn't trying to depress anyone. He was trying to keep people honest without lying to themselves for c...

Well, I've published (kind of) three books inside of a year.  Raucous Reckonings is finally published. The entire Harmogenics series is complete. This book is wilder than the previous ones. Recklessly bold in places. One of the most shocking claims I make is that everyone should live a guilt-free life. Moral guilt is worthless. I do live a guilt-free life. WTF? Psychopath! Narcissist! Moral monster! Yeah, I know. That's the reflex. And I understand it. Guilt feels so deeply woven into morality that suggesting we drop it sounds like suggesting we drop morality itself. It sounds dangerous, antisocial, maybe even evil. But that reflex is exactly the problem. And here's why. There's nothing wrong with religion. Religion wasn't a mistake. It wasn't mass delusion. It did real work for human beings living in conditions we can barely imagine now. One of the things it did, very effectively, was bind moral guilt to behavior and, in turn, into the human psyche as an emot...

  At the conclusion of our chat I asked the AI to "draw an image representing this chat." What follows is a chat I had this morning with ChatGPT, which I have been using since early 2023 .  I am presently working with the AI on about a half dozen projects, one of which is my work on harmogenics .  This chat pertains to my project on religion.  I have not edited it at all because I want to share the entire interaction. ChatGPT is identified in italics .   Keith: You know I respect Dr. Andrew Huberman. Short answer, yes. Largely the same. And that fact is doing a lot of quiet work in your argument. When you strip prayer down to what it is rather than what it’s about , the brain doesn’t care whether the name on the envelope says Jesus, Krishna, Allah, Yahweh, or no name at all. Focused attention is focused attention. Emotional surrender is emotional surrender. Repetition is repetition. Silence is silence. The nervous system responds to the act , not the theo...