Ep 18 - McKenna's Timewave, Duncan Trussell, Joe Rogan and Jack Kornfield

Source: www.viewzone2.com

A long overdue episode of the podcast. I talk about recent episodes of Duncan Trussell and Joe Rogan's respective podcasts, McKenna's Time Wave theory, as well as some wise ideas from Jack Kornfield, along with my struggles being down-voted on Reddit. 


There are a few ways you can be a hero and support AJ. Free things are: try Audible or AmazonPrime for 30 days, link to us a social network like Twitter, Facebook or Reddit, or download and rate the podcast in iTunes. If you have a little spare money you can send a Paypal donation to ajsnookauthor@gmail.com, buy one of AJ's Kindle eBooks, or buy anything on Amazon by going through the site. Thanks so much for your support, AJ

The Cause For Empathy

I was listening to the latest Joe Rogan Experience podcast and heard a common theme arise: empathy. His guest, Stefan Molyneux, a political philosopher and blogger, stated that the two biggest ways to deviate a kid from the capacity for empathy is 1) to take away his father and 2) to take away his freedom to play.

He didn't cite a source but as a teacher I find it easy to believe his claim. Parents out there, do what he called the best solution: sacrifice your time for your kids. Live a simple life while your kids are young. Do as little work as possible without ruining your career. Be home for more than dinner and a bath. A book at night is nice, but it doesn't cut it. It's important to remember that kids need interaction. Kids need role models and role models do more than dictate words on a page. Role models need to show what they're made of. They need to move their bodies, display attitudes and actions to be replicated, and express opinions.

I'm getting a bit off subject, but empathy is at the core of my heart lately. It's at the core of my book, too. Today at work I displayed anger publicly for the first time in at least a year, maybe more. Actually, I can't remember the last time I got angry in public. I'm a bit embarrassed about it and want to blame it on my lapse in meditation lately, but there's something more to it. I failed to empathize with the person that my anger was directed toward. My mind became simple. My mind became small.

But then I realized without regret something that I heard recently from Jim Carrey of all people. He said, "Every moment is pregnant with the next moment of your life." We have to move on and we have to move on with clear heads.

He was talking about creativity and how we are all born creators, intellectually evolving through our own efforts. What that really means to me is that when we have a down moment (like we all do), the sooner we can both learn from that bummer and move on, the better we are setting ourselves up for the future. We need to both remember and forget simultaneously in order to live our dreams. We need to take chances. We need to dream big. And we need to assume that everyone else is dreaming big too. We need to assume that they are all going through ups and downs.

So, basically, those of us with the worst short-term memories and the best long-term ones will have the best chance at shaping the future that we want. To have the empathy needed to get through tough situations -- to realize that the people causing our anger might be hurting more than we are -- is the best way for us to keep our eyes on the prize of creation and stepping into the next moment of reality with clear and focused minds.
 
There are a few ways you can be a hero and support AJ. Free things are: try Audible or AmazonPrime for 30 days, link to us a social network like Twitter, Facebook or Reddit, or download and rate the podcast in iTunes. If you have a little spare money you can send a Paypal donation to ajsnookauthor@gmail.com, buy one of AJ's Kindle eBooks, or buy anything on Amazon by going through the site. Thanks so much for your support, AJ

Sex at Dawn's Dr. Chris Ryan: Laziness As A Virtue

In the recent Tangentially Speaking with Dr. Chris Ryan (the author of the popular Sex at Dawn) there is a lot of talk about laziness and why we should embrace it. Why spend our time working hard simply for the sake of working hard? This could be one of the biggest problems of society today, and it's driven by an economy that without ethics. I don't mean ethics as in BP oil spills, predatory loans, and the raping of the landscape for cheap knick-knacks (though that kind of ethic is definitely important). This time I mean ethics as in the morality of rigidity in thinking and in action.

Too much of the way we work is stuck in the days of Ford's assembly line. For example, take any job (an investor, a teacher, a sewage worker, or a doctor) and there is bound to be protocol to follow. Be here this many of hours. If X goes wrong always do Y. Sacrifice quality for the bottom line. Things like that.

Politics are the same. A liberal is expected to make only liberal decisions. No room for fluctuation. Bigger government is always good. Strict gun laws everywhere. Abortions for all. Things like that.

In fact, the politician and the CEO are no different. The politician has to worry about his own stock holders called voters. He can't support legal weed because on the whole it might hurt the value of his brand, otherwise known as his party.

To end the ramble and bring it back to the issue at hand, there's really no escaping the fact that we spend our time not on what's best for us and the people around us, but instead on trying to keep our image elevated and our status in "our party" respected (whether that's the group of scotch drinking investor buddies, the teaching staff you have nothing in common with, the sewage workers labor union, or the head surgeon). When we engage in this attitude we do nobody favors. Not the world at large, not the individuals on the receiving end of our skills, and especially not ourselves.

So what can we learn from this? Simple. Learn to shift gears. Learn to put it into fifth only when necessary. But please also learn to be intelligently lazy. Learn to love the slow hum of first, too, for when we're in first gear we can relax, we can look off into the distance and appreciate the world around us. We can come up with the next big idea that went buzzing by the folks locked into high gear, nothing more than a blur.

There are a few ways you can be a hero and support AJ. Free things are: try Audible or AmazonPrime for 30 days, link to us a social network like Twitter, Facebook or Reddit, or download and rate the podcast in iTunes. If you have a little spare money you can send a Paypal donation to ajsnookauthor@gmail.com, buy one of AJ's Kindle eBooks, or buy anything on Amazon by going through the site. Thanks so much for your support, AJ

Know Thy Critic

Critics are my friends. Say it with me. Critics are my friends. Again. Critics are my friends.

This is my mantra when I'm in "editing mode," and it should be yours too.

I have one caveat, however. Find someone you've met in the flesh to be your critic. Meet with them and hear the words they are critiquing rolling off of their lips. Feel the emotions that they are evoking when they read your work back to you. Hear the chunkiness. Cringe at the awkwardness. Don't be afraid to see your writing through another's eyes. You will blossom. You will improve organically this way.

To parallel, athletes are forced to watch themselves on video, to labor over their mistakes with a fine tooth comb. Sports are all about agility, fluidity and not wasting any movement. Being efficient with the skills that you have is the name of the game. The same can be said about writing, the only difference being that writing is made to be read, not watched. Therefore, you must hear your work.

One critic recently told me this not long ago:

As with any critique it is personal but I don't like it when the description: a) Treats me like an idiotb) The images are unclearc) Halts the story 

I appreciated her critique (even though I felt like the first piece of advice on the list was a bit too blunt, but thankfully she said my writing only made her feel b and c). It was very kind of her to spend her own time helping me. And I really do think I have a level head and am ready to be told what is good and what sucks about my writing, and to learn and grow from that information. But something kept bothering me about accepting the advice of a complete stranger. I couldn't put my finger on it but I knew the answer was right there in front of my face like a dangling carrot.

It took me until today, until I got down to this paragraph, actually (another miracle of writing -- slow down the whirlwind of thoughts to the speed of the keys and we learn mountains about ourselves), to understand what it is that bothered me about that girl (lady?) critiquing me. What bothered me was I didn't know her. I couldn't see, smell, touch, or hear her (or taste her for that matter). I didn't know if she was part of MY audience. I need to be with my critics to know whether or not they are my audience. In short, I don't want people outside of my target audience critiquing me and I want them to look me in the eye when they say something of mine is awful. Only then will I truly believe them. What do you think about this new rule of mine?

There are a few ways you can be a hero and support AJ. Free things are: try Audible or AmazonPrime for 30 days, link to us a social network like Twitter, Facebook or Reddit, or download and rate the podcast in iTunes. If you have a little spare money you can send a Paypal donation to ajsnookauthor@gmail.com, buy one of AJ's Kindle eBooks, or buy anything on Amazon by going through the site. Thanks so much for your support, AJ

Tim Pool, The Journalism Revolution, and the Branches of Inquiry, Consumption, Creation, and Reflection

I've been working on my novel as much as possible lately which sadly leaves little time for writing blog entries. I forced myself to sit down and write one this afternoon, though, since I have an extra 45 minutes to kill (not enough to get into a writing groove). I'm holed up in my school's library and pondering the idea of inquiry (and reflection for that matter) and how they can define a person. This was all inspired by Tim Pool and his participation in the citizen journalist revolution that's taking place in society today.

In this technologically connected age, we are more and more defined by the information we access. Our Facebook and YouTube likes drive the links that are volleyed to us by algorithms beyond our comprehension. The comments that we write affect who follows us and can easily damage (or enhance) our real-world lives. In the olden days, writers chose pen names in order to avoid persecution and to avoid celebrity. The latter is arguably less and less a reason to choose a pen name today, though the former still holds true.

The persecution that one might incur for following a path of inquiry might not lead to outright persecution these days, but the literal stoning has been trans-morphed into a more passive aggressive one. If someone at the office sees that you posted something about drug legalization, though not illegal to write opinions about drugs, and protected under the constitution, that free speech could easily cause you a promotion or at least turn you into the alternative guy or gal in the office, the outcast.

I'm not saying that we should stifle our inquiry or that we shouldn't expose ourselves to unfamiliar sources. We definitely should take risks with our consciousness and think about new things. And if history has taught us anything, it's that the democratization of society continues. There was a time when one man made all of the decisions. Then it spread to a few. Then to few more. Sure, the oligarchs and plutocrats and CEOs still make so many of the world-changing decisions, but now that we are online the shared ideas of the many are reinforced via micro relationships -- a You Tube comment here, a Facebook like there, an email to a group of friends everywhere.

In short, when we consume something that changes us for the better, I believe that it is our duty to share it and/or promote (even if simply through a click). Otherwise our 'selves' are just digital, living inside of an algorithm.

Once we've followed a path of inquiry, consumption and creation for a week, a month, three months, a year, we need not forget to reflect upon that path. Do the branches feel balanced and healthy? Are we nurturing our own growth by balancing our consumption with creativity? Or are we poisoning our own fruit and blackening our roots by making bad choices with our consumption, stifling and sabotaging our own creativity in the process?

What if each of us found our own, unique path not unlike that of Tim Pool in the video below? What if we all became citizen journalists? Even if we only covered the fruitful events of our own micro lives (the seemingly mundane sparks that fly up ever so slightly at unpredictable times each day), we could add a giant fire to the collective ideas that are shared around the world. All of the money and political influence from the top would just burn up and disappear in our blaze, if only we could inquire, consume, create, and reflect...inquire, consume, create, and reflect...inquire, consume, create, and reflect...

...until our branches became copses then woods then forests that could thrive for generations upon generations.

There are a few ways you can be a hero and support AJ. Free things are: try Audible or AmazonPrime for 30 days, link to us a social network like Twitter, Facebook or Reddit, or download and rate the podcast in iTunes. If you have a little spare money you can send a Paypal donation to ajsnookauthor@gmail.com, buy one of AJ's Kindle eBooks, or buy anything on Amazon by going through the site. Thanks so much for your support, AJ

Ep. 17: The Antipathy Series Part I

This is the first audio clip of a series that I've started. I'm going to release about 10,000 words at at time on Amazon along with the audio here on my blog. It's based in my home of Kyoto and is a crime thriller (in the same vein of a superhero comic) about a Yakuza gangster turned Buddhist monk who decides to use his awakened state (along with his expertise of violence) to fight crime. As I write this series, my goal will be to describe the city I live in, along with its underbelly, as accurately as I can. I hope you enjoy.

There are a few ways you can be a hero and support AJ. Free things are: try Audible or AmazonPrime for 30 days, link to us a social network like Twitter, Facebook or Reddit, or download and rate the podcast in iTunes. If you have a little spare money you can send a Paypal donation to ajsnookauthor@gmail.com, buy one of AJ's Kindle eBooks, or buy anything on Amazon by going through the site. Thanks so much for your support, AJ