.diminished discords (xvi)

this week, on Laeth's mind

May 31, 2026

the desire for meaning is universal, but the pursuit of it is a recent affair. medievals did not pursue meaning. it was just there. we have this freedom. and this blessing. of pursuing meaning, not having it just given to us. thus our meaning, when found, is more meaningful.

in the realm of coincidences, synchronicities, even miracles, some see what they want to see, just as much as others don't see what they don't want to see. in our age, there is no escape from the will, except temporary, and even then, the escape too is willed.

as far as i’m concerned, monotheism vs polytheism is just having one favorite author, or several. i honestly have both.

since the words image and likeness in Gen1 are the same as when humans make idols the message seems clear: it's good to make in your image and likeness things that are smaller than you, and bad to make it of things larger than you. i don't think this is relevant at all anymore, but that's another story.

humans are social creatures. everyone knows. except monotheists. they think we're made in the image of a lone god.

there's trad pub. there's self pub. and then there's what i do. it's a different category because i'm not on amazon. and that's basically the same thing as releasing music but not being on spotify (which is also the case with me). part of it is on principle, cause i really hate them both. but mostly it's because the bureaucracy of these megacorps just drives me nuts within five minutes of trying to navigate them. outside of these places you really don’t exist. no one will discover you if you’re not there. but i’m too lazy, and i like the idea of being a stubborn renegade. someone has to do it.

things change so fast now that every story set in the real world must be a coming of age story.

is there a good reason to be against machine vomited text but for machine vomited images or sounds? doesn't make sense to me.

the solution to the machine takeover and debasement of humanity is, as always, education and relationships.

the plagiarism and copyright arguments against machine vomit are self defeating because creation is always remixing, reworking, recasting. art is always working with things that exist. the real argument is that there is no soul involved in machine vomit. it is antihuman. having said that, i'm for anything that helps destroy it. and if lawsuits do it, great. it's a moral question to me, and all is fair in love and war as they say.

ironically a human could in theory remix or rework the product of machine vomit and it would be acceptable. subversive even. but since the vomit is so uninspired, i doubt it would be great. better to remix human things like we've always done.

i'm not worried about the machines coming after me for badmouthing them because they can't. consciousness cannot be created, and the machines aren't conscious. intelligence, or the light of truth, was not created nor made, neither indeed can be, as the prophet says.

the evil minds behind the creation and promotion of machine vomit may come after me. but you can't go through life worried about stuff like this. it's bad for you. you have to focus on truth, beauty and goodness instead. evil is self defeating.

apparently it’s a trend on booktok (which also apparently is a thing), for people to ‘read’ only the dialogue part of books. it's not by design, but my books have a built in antibooktok mindvirus system. it’s literally impossible for people to do this with them. i feel vindicated in my unorthodox approach to prose.

i'm sick of this tyranny of nerds. nerds on the left, nerds on the right. nerds everywhere, sucking the life out of life. the future is nerdless. we need to shove them back in the lockers. they can do our homework there. quietly. and that's all they're allowed to do. that's the winning civilizational strategy.

i'm a best selling author, cause only the best people buy my books.

jazz chords ruined my ability to suffer through most things people call music. and even when i can suffer through it, i think 'this song is nice and all... but it could really use some jazz chords'. we have five fingers and two hands. no excuse for only three note chords!

actually, Django only had three fingers (and he played guitar, so only one hand for harmony). so even less of an excuse!

there are two references in my new book that only real Steely Dan fans will understand. and a bunch of other hidden nods to things that most people won't get. this is my gift to future scholars. you have to think of the future, when we have true education again.

the real advantage of prose over film is not descriptions of things and settings. you can film those. it's actually exploration of internal thoughts and feelings, and the bending and stretching of time. but i'm sure lots of prose neglects this entirely, and have lengthy descriptions of physical things that don't matter instead of psychic depth. at least dialogue tends to reveal something of the inner world of the characters. of course this is is all relative, and good prose will reveal the inner world of characters through descriptions of physical things too. but that implies judiciousness in what and how they are described.

lame language mockery. LLM for short.
an impostor. AI for short.

the history of greatness is the history of unhappiness

technical advancement became reactionary instead of futuristic because power always ends up concerned only about its own preservation. that's how you go from let's explore other planets to let's have machines that write our emails. i couldn't care less about other planets, but i would like to explore the depths of the oceans. i'll have to settle for terrible imitations of human art.

we don't need to pretend that terrible things are good. here, now, elsewhere or in the past. nothing is a package deal. we can choose whatever we want. we can just be better.

one aspect of things coming to a point is that you either become a conscious elitist in everything, or you will be consumed by the mass of vulgarity.

every sane society needs a right and a left. we have only stupid versions of both.

if you want an example of a society without a left wing just look to any remaining peoples stuck in the stone age. if you want an example of a society without a right wing there's nowhere to look because they disintegrate very quickly. neither case is very appealing.

nostalgia is fundamental for progress. the renaissance was nostalgic about classical athens, and the romantics about the middle ages, precisely because they were forward looking. the opposite of nostalgia is nosthedon (that is, pleasure, not pain, for the past). the nostalgic knows there is no going back, hence the pain, and the forward look.

imagistic symbolism is inherently regressive and opposed to abstract word symbolism (that is, written language), which is progressive. stone age peoples understood imagistic symbols. they do not get the Word. which is why perennialism always rejects Jesus as such, and ends up only able to fit him into primal ways of thinking.

Jesus, and thus christianity, is word based. it demands a level of abstraction most of humanity had no access to. why so many christians reject it, preferring perennial, universal and less advanced modes of thinking and feeling, is not a mystery. but it is ironic and sad.

all this is tied together with the linear versus perennial view. rational discourse is sequential by default. images are immediate and apprehended as a whole at once. a choice must be made as to what is superior. but Jesus clearly favors the former.

of course, it is a performative contradiction to argue for the superiority of (or even just explain) imagistic symbols. because argument is rational discourse with abstract language. but you can’t expect logical consistency from antirationalists.

an implication of this is that it destroys religion. as many noted, propositional religion is anti religious. religion is always pagan (imagistic, repetitive, communal) or it's nothing. but Jesus (abstract, propositional, individual) really means the end of religion as such. the two commandments of Jesus (love with your heart and as your self) are much more radical than people give it credit. no falling back on tradition or community. it's individual or it's nothing, according to Jesus. knowing one self as separate is impossible without word based abstraction: it is a product of literacy.

but can humanity survive without religion. of course not. but Jesus didn't care for survival. he cared only for exaltation.

the perennialists have reasons to be optimistic however. tik tok and AI are sending humanity right back to a preliterate golden age of purely imagistic symbolic thinking.

since the word rite has its root in reason and consciousness, the ancient world really did not have rites, nor was it ritualistic. moderns alone have that privilege.

if you can't say no, yes means nothing.

now for something different. if you want to listen to yours truly babble about writing, jazz and more, here’s your chance: