Strange Juxtapositions #1 from
Waymaking (Hold the Paradox)
Strange Juxtapositions #1
On water and choppelgangers
Andrea Hiott and Love and Philosophy
Jan 23, 2026
Water is taught by thirst
—Emily Dickinson
Water, is taught by thirst.
Land—by the Oceans passed.
Transport—by throe—
Peace—by its battles told—
Love, by Memorial Mold—
Birds, by the Snow.
Some collaborators asked me to do a series where I name one thing that matters and one thing that doesn’t. There are some embarrassing videos being released about that, but I also decided to write about this here via juxtaposition.
Calibration w the way-making approach: In the navigability framework, mind is what we move through and co-create via landscapes of regularities based on what we prioritize for one another. Our prioritization of the visual has gotten out of hand such that we derive a lot of our feelings of power and worth from visual mediums and the judgements we make based on them. Will this really matter when we look back at our lives? Or is there something else that we can move into sensually beyond the visual?
“As we write, so we build: to keep a record of what matters to us.”
― Alain de Botton, The Architecture of Happiness
Strange Juxtapositions
The challenge = name one thing that matters and one thing that doesn’t, and do it beyond either/or.
What Matters = the kind of thing you’ll be glad to have done on your deathbed
What Doesn’t = the kind of thing you’ll later recognize as a waste of life force
Strange Juxtaposition #1: WATER and CHOPPELGANGER.
This term choppelganger (which I explain below) is a stand-in for all the comparative traps which so many of us (even those of us who do not subscribe to them) spend so much time and energy on these days. The juxtaposition is in how crucial and even magical water really is if you take a minute to just think about it…
…and how we rarely think about it. The juxtaposition is also in how unhealthy and soul-numbing comparative traps like choppelganging and mogging are if you really think about them (real terms I explain below, though I’m making choppelganger into a verb here). Still, a big chunk of our economies have somehow gotten oriented towards them and their many variants and offshoots. There is a place for humor and competition and looking good, but we have let these things turn into societal illness that we now treat as if they are normal. The only real point I am want to get across here is that they aren’t. Yes, kids have always made fun of kids, but bars have been pushed beyond what we really seem to comprehend right now. How might we better comprehend it without blaming anyone for it?
But back to the Strange Juxtaposition for this week: water and choppelganging.
What would it mean to care less about comparison via image and more about water? That’s a strange question, and that strangeness is the point of this thought experiment.
One of these words (water) is taken for granted. It may even seem quaint. And yet all of life springs forth from it. The other (choppleganger), a comparative trap, is very trendy and gets called ‘the best Gen Z word ever’ though I think the spirit of it should be the new definition of cringe. I’m not saying this is true for everyone, but there’s definitely something strange going on here that I hope we can notice and reorient together through the following juxtaposition.
GLOSSARY
Water:
The molecular substance (H₂O) that constitutes approximately 60% of the human body and sustains all known life. Beyond its chemical composition, water serves as the medium through which consciousness emerges, the substance that enables memory formation, the literal material basis of thought itself (if you want to get really literal about what a body is).
Often water is philosophically understood as the fundamental substrate connecting all living beings. It’s what Thales called the arche of existence.
Water flows through our cells, our cultures, and our cognitive processes as both their conditions and contents. And yet it’s strange to say we ‘care’ for water. It’s pretty normal, however, to hear that we ‘care about our appearance’ or ‘care how others see us’. Gen Z and Alpha basically grew up hearing phrases like that constantly. And so we come to…
Choppelganger
(which I’m making into Choppelganging):
This is a portmanteau (great word I could not help using; basically just means ‘blend of two words’, like ‘motel’ or ‘brunch’); it’s a blend of ‘chopped’ (slang for unattractive) and ‘doppelganger’ (somebody’s double). So ‘choppelganger’ basically refers to someone who resembles another person but is perceived as a less attractive version. The term emerged very recently and represents the harsh comparative judgment that dominates digital culture, where people are constantly evaluated as superior or inferior versions of each other. In this clip from Live with Kelly and Mark, people seem to think this term is funny. I think it is a sign we are all a bit ill and we need to help one another reorient some of our assumptions and ‘light’ conversations.
Mogging
Internet slang derived from “AMOG” (Alpha Male of Group), meaning to outclass or visually dominate someone, especially in terms of physical appearance or attractiveness. This term and all the worlds in which it lives have had a big influence on the world, whether we talk about it directly yet or not. Originally used in fitness and manosphere communities since 2016, the term has expanded to describe any situation where one person appears significantly more attractive, successful, or accomplished than another. To ‘mog’ a person is to make them fade into the background by comparison. It pains me honestly to even write all this out like this, as if this is somehow a good way to be alive. It’s really not.
More on the Strange Juxtaposition
Water is a biological necessity. There’s no getting around our need for it.
Water is also the foundation upon which consciousness, cognition, and culture are built.
But how many of us think about water? How many of us care for it in our daily lives?
If you happen to be one of the 2.1 billion people (according to Unicef data) that do not have access to safe drinking water, you probably think about it a lot. If you are not in that sort of situation, you probably don’t. You likely expect clean healthy water will always be all around you and you probably don’t look at your body very often and contemplate that it’s more than half water and constantly changing through the water it takes in from all sorts of sources.
Is it weird to care about water? It shouldn’t be, because it’s the same as caring about our bodies and the bodies of others and the planet. If that’s strange, then it’s time we start thinking strange as soon as we can.
I get that it might sound strange to say we care for water. To be honest, when I saw this video where I answered the question like this, I felt strange, too. Strange, and a little worried about it for all sorts of reasons, because everywhere we turn, we are being told to cultivate and care for our image and to worry about how others react to it and people do all sorts of tricks now to attract us; this is really hard not to do.
I would much rather think about water. I love water. Anyone who knows me knows this. I am always drinking it; it’s always near, and has been since I was young. I’ve always thought a perfect philosophy would be a philosophy of water, though I can’t quite tell you what that would mean. But it has to do with care, everywhere.
Be like water making its way through cracks… adjust to the object, and you shall find a way around or through it. —Bruce Lee
Many philosophers have loved water though. As mentioned earlier, Thales of Miletus, considered the first Western philosopher by some, proposed that water is the fundamental substance from which all things originate—the arche of existence. Thales recognized that water exists in multiplicities and that it transforms continuously, and that it also appears essential to all of life. Water is a super power we stopped noticing.
Thales insight presaged modern biology’s understanding that life emerged from primordial seas and that every organism carries an internal ocean within it as cells and whatnot. Basically the idea is that there is a common substrate within all living things, something I wrote about a bit in the Nondual post. Water without beginning or end. Water as transformative movement.
This philosophical thread weaves through spiritual traditions that we discuss sometimes on L&P too. In the Tao Te Ching, for example, Lao Tzu says:
The highest good is like water. Water gives life to the ten thousand things and does not strive. It flows in places men reject and so is like the Tao.
Adaptability, persistence, humility, strength. Water is the expert at holding paradox, and does it by not holding anything.
The spiritual and scientific converge in our relationship with water. When we drink water (especially if we really care for it), we participate in an ancient cycle that has sustained life for billions of years. The water in our bodies first fell as rain, or flowed through a river. In some other time and place, it may have sustained countless organisms. Now it sustains and even animates our thoughts and memories. Water is literally some part of all our consciousness. It cannot be separate from who we are because it is the medium from which self comes to be, and it is (again, literally) what we are made of as we think, move, remember, live.
Comparative Technologies
On the other side, we have comparison. And right now, comparison feels just about as ubiquitous. To keep with the water metaphor, we might even say we are drowning in a crisis of comparison. Many report feeling anxious or depressed after using social media, many report that it negatively affects their self-esteem. Flipping through images on screens is terrible for us, and yet that is the place where most feel they have to get attention and the way to do that is often to shock or be extreme. To be so tough you don’t mind crushing your cheekbones, for example, or to be so tough you do insanely unhealthy things to your body or say really terrible things. This is just not okay. We are not okay if we think this sort of violence is funny or fascinating.
“For whatever we lose (like a you or a me),
It's always our self we find in the sea.”
― e.e. cummings
“Owners of dogs will have noticed that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they will think you are god. Whereas owners of cats are compelled to realize that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they draw the conclusion that they are gods.”
― Christopher Hitchens,
This is not okay, and it is not the fault of the incel community or any of the people participating but rather it is a whole environment of judgement that came from trying not to be vulnerable (and wanting to be liked) that we have all let go for too long without noticing or speaking out clearly when it happens.
We need to notice it and care for one another again. We need to care for one another like we’re water. Because we are.
And because feeling so judged that you have to become violent and extreme towards yourself and others is illness, collectively. we can feel it when we really think about words like ‘choppelganger’ and ‘mogging’ because those words are part of a vocabulary built entirely around ranking human worth by appearance, by image. And that has become a power game of judgement that is not real power at all.
What we don’t realize is that this is a choice. A choice we have let crowds make for us. What is beautiful and attractive is not what that crowd generalizes because very few people in it have actually decided this, instead they’ve been ‘herded’ into it without even thinking they had a choice. And if you look at individuals, the reality of what is sexy is not this chiseled image. I can tell you from experience (and from many conversations) that these perfect chiseled faces as described in these communities are actually really pretty boring, especially when everyone tries to look the same like that. Some of the guys with the most SMV in real life are actually not the ones that look like chiseled wolf eyes and ‘enhanced’ faces, so something is really way off here. What is likely happening is just that (the extreme parts of) all this ‘looksmaxxing’ stuff is giving guys a way to feel some control and that makes them feel more attractive, so they come off as more attractive. The real strong ones can do it (be the attractive already in them) without crushing their bodies. But I know it’s tough, sometimes excruciatingly so. The real question is: why do we make this so tough?
Still, ‘image’ in the comparison technology sense is not really what attracts. And it is not what we feel in attraction. Enhancement when overdone just feels fake, which is way worse than the real you.
What is really exciting is when the water in us gets to vibrating because of voice and the way a person moves and smells; it’s when we meet an interesting person who really cares about something in the world and has found a way to really like themselves, no matter the flaws. Because no matter how much we chop ourselves or others with scalpels or words, there will ALWAYS be something that you can compare negatively to someone in the land of images.
Just get off that treadmill. Do it fast. Care about water instead, if that helps.
Get out of that mindset where every encounter becomes an opportunity to be outclassed or to outclass others. It’s a soul killer. Disengage from the trajectory! Get off that path, the one where you get your dopamine hits (another misunderstood word, but that will have to wait for another day) through meanness. I get why that seems like power. I get how you might look around and think these sorts of jerks are powerful, but it’s not real power. What is real power? It’s doing something that you will be happy you did at the end of your life. Most of the mean bullying and bullshit that is taken as power is actually, if you really think about it, a sign of weakness and an inability to sit and hold the tensions of life. Which is sad, because holding that tension is the way to open the portal of real power and care that we all actually crave and that is actually motivating most of that meanness.
Competition is good. Taking care of your body and exercising is excellent. But this choppleganger mogging lookmaxxing stuff has become illness, not health. We’re poisoning our inner wells, neglecting outer ones. We’re teaching ourselves to obsess over digital reflections instead of how to care for ourselves as vital resources.
Care for water, then you start seeing water everywhere.
When we’re on our deathbeds, we will remember the people who loved us for who we really are and the moments we were able to show ourselves and feel that love and give it to others. It really is as simple as that, and as difficult. How can we help one another experience more of it?
Maybe we can start by caring about water. Strange as that sounds.
What if we tried to find ways to care for water, to make all this water we are vibrate and move us better through all these spaces of our lives and days? What if we reoriented all this money and time we put into comparative technologies towards caring for water and finding ways to make it hum and vibrate with love as bodies and planets? Wouldn’t that be increasing our powers?
We are not merely passive recipients navigating a predetermined landscape. We are co-creating it, just like the water we drink becomes us, just like we eventually become the earth. The tragedy of our current moment is that we’ve inherited an orientation toward comparison and digital performance without recognizing it as merely one possible way of navigating, and of all our landscaping in all our multiple dimensions of time and space, be those geographical, social, or virtual.
We engage with water with all our senses. We can immerse ourselves fully in it, let it wash over us. We float. Water is a literal, physical, sensory encounter that offers radically different affordances than does any glowing screen. When we think about maintaining, connecting, caring for and expanding life’s sensuality and potential, we point toward the possibility of reorienting our way-making toward encounters that genuinely nourish us and increase potency.
Water doesn’t choose to flow. It doesn’t decide to form clouds. Yet water makes its way through every obstacle, shapes every landscape, sustains every form of life. Minds are water. Thoughts are navigations through electrochemical flow. We are liquid worlds, making our way through encounters we did not choose but learning now that we can choose what ways we make, and what really matters.
What really matters to you?
“Have you also learned that secret from the river; that there is no such thing as time?" That the river is everywhere at the same time, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the current, in the ocean and in the mountains, everywhere and that the present only exists for it, not the shadow of the past nor the shadow of the future.”
― Hermann Hesse
💫You matter to me, and it’s fine if anyone wants to make fun of me for saying that, because when I die (hopefully a long time from now), I’ll still be glad I said it.💫
Photo from the week:
Beyond Nondual: Not one, Not two.
·
27 December 2025
There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it’s going to be a butterfly. Buckminster Fuller
Pure Consciousness with Thomas Metzinger
the voluntary suspension of habitual responses into awareness…
24 days ago · 11 likes · 9 comments · Love and Philosophy
Posting each Wednesday (or as close as possible) about real life way-making. A look at the navigational approach to cognition through everyday words and experiences. Sometimes with rumination on recent Love and Philosophy conversations. This is an experiment and an invitation. The hope is to find more clarity and connection between the lofty and the lived.
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Waymaking (Hold the Paradox) is a reader-supported publication. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber of Waymaking, or (even better) of Love & Philosophy, which is more than just me. Both are part of my life project (in the philosophy of mind). I’ve had a very unusual route to becoming a ‘public philosopher’. That means making my own economic way, even when affiliated with prestigious universities and the rich and famous. And that often means working really hard at numerous jobs at once and receiving a whole lot of help from people both near and far. Love to all ❣️
Conversations beyond dichotomy. Nurturing care in public life. Thinking kaleidoscopically. Philosophy as a verb.
Discussion about this post
Really thought-provoking contrast between water as fundamental and these comparative traps as destructive. The point about how we're drowning in comparision while taking actual sustenance for granted really stuck with me. I've noticed how exhausting that constant ranking mindset becomes, and reframing it as choosing where to direct care makes alot more sense than just trying to ignore social media entirely.
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Ecological Motoring Initiative
Desirable Unknown3dEdited
Comparative technologies is a good coin. I had yet to hear of any of these terms. A bit shocked some of this is 'normal' for many of the younger generations.
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The challenge = name one thing that matters and one thing that doesn’t, and do it beyond either/or.
What Matters = the kind of thing you’ll be glad to have done on your deathbed
What Doesn’t = the kind of thing you’ll later recognize as a waste of life force
Juxtaposition: WATER and CHOPPELGANGER.
This term choppelganger (which I explain below) is a stand-in for all the comparative traps which so many of us (especially Gen Z and younger) spend so much time and energy on these days. The juxtaposition is in how crucial and even magical water really is if you take a minute to just think about it…
…and how we rarely think about it. The juxtaposition is also in how unhealthy and soul-numbing comparative traps like choppelganging and mogging are if you really think about them (real terms I explain below, though I’m making choppelganger into a verb here). Still, a big chunk of our economies have somehow gotten oriented towards them and their many variants and offshoots.
What would it mean to care less about comparison via image and more about water? That’s a strange question, and that strangeness is the point of this thought experiment.
One of these words (water) is taken for granted. It may even seem quaint. And yet all of life springs forth from it. The other (choppleganger), a comparative trap, is very trendy and gets called ‘the best Gen Z word ever’ though I think the spirit of it should be the new definition of cringe. I’m not saying this is true for everyone, but there’s definitely something strange going on here that I hope we can notice and reorient together through the following juxtaposition.
GLOSSARY
Water:
The molecular substance (H₂O) that constitutes approximately 60% of the human body and sustains all known life. Beyond its chemical composition, water serves as the medium through which consciousness emerges, the substance that enables memory formation, the literal material basis of thought itself (if you want to get really literal about what a body is).
Often water is philosophically understood as the fundamental substrate connecting all living beings. It’s what Thales called the arche of existence.
Water flows through our cells, our cultures, and our cognitive processes as both their conditions and contents. And yet it’s strange to say we ‘care’ for water. It’s pretty normal, however, to hear that we ‘care about our appearance’ or ‘care how others see us’. Gen Z and Alpha basically grew up hearing phrases like that constantly. And so we come to…
Choppelganger
(which I’m making into Choppelganging):
This is a portmanteau (great word I could not help using; basically just means ‘blend of two words’, like ‘motel’ or ‘brunch’); it’s a blend of ‘chopped’ (slang for unattractive) and ‘doppelganger’ (somebody’s double). So ‘choppelganger’ basically refers to someone who resembles another person but is perceived as a less attractive version. The term emerged very recently and represents the harsh comparative judgment that dominates digital culture, where people are constantly evaluated as superior or inferior versions of each other. In this clip from Live with Kelly and Mark, people seem to think this term is funny. I think it is a sign we are all a bit ill and we need to help one another reorient some of our assumptions and ‘light’ conversations.
Mogging
Internet slang derived from “AMOG” (Alpha Male of Group), meaning to outclass or visually dominate someone, especially in terms of physical appearance or attractiveness. This term and all the worlds in which it lives have had a big influence on the world, whether we talk about it directly yet or not. Originally used in fitness and manosphere communities since 2016, the term has expanded to describe any situation where one person appears significantly more attractive, successful, or accomplished than another. To ‘mog’ a person is to make them fade into the background by comparison. It pains me honestly to even write all this out like this, as if this is somehow a good way to be alive. It’s really not.
More on the Strange Juxtaposition
Water is a biological necessity. There’s no getting around our need for it.
Water is also the foundation upon which consciousness, cognition, and culture are built.
But how many of us think about water? How many of us care for it in our daily lives?
If you happen to be one of the 2.1 billion people (according to Unicef data) that do not have access to safe drinking water, you probably think about it a lot. If you are not in that sort of situation, you probably don’t. You likely expect clean healthy water will always be all around you and you probably don’t look at your body very often and contemplate that it’s more than half water and constantly changing through the water it takes in from all sorts of sources.
Is it weird to care about water? It shouldn’t be, because it’s the same as caring about our bodies and the bodies of others and the planet. If that’s strange, then it’s time we start thinking strange as soon as we can.
I get that it might sound strange to say we care for water. To be honest, when I saw this video where I answered the question like this, I felt strange, too. Strange, and a little worried about it for all sorts of reasons, because everywhere we turn, we are being told to cultivate and care for our image and to worry about how others react to it and people do all sorts of tricks now to attract us; this is really hard not to do.
I would much rather think about water. I love water. Anyone who knows me knows this. I am always drinking it; it’s always near, and has been since I was young. I’ve always thought a perfect philosophy would be a philosophy of water, though I can’t quite tell you what that would mean. But it has to do with care, everywhere.
Be like water making its way through cracks… adjust to the object, and you shall find a way around or through it. —Bruce Lee
Many philosophers have loved water though. As mentioned earlier, Thales of Miletus, considered the first Western philosopher by some, proposed that water is the fundamental substance from which all things originate—the arche of existence. Thales recognized that water exists in multiplicities and that it transforms continuously, and that it also appears essential to all of life. Water is a super power we stopped noticing.
Thales insight presaged modern biology’s understanding that life emerged from primordial seas and that every organism carries an internal ocean within it as cells and whatnot. Basically the idea is that there is a common substrate within all living things, something I wrote about a bit in the Nondual post. Water without beginning or end. Water as transformative movement.
This philosophical thread weaves through spiritual traditions that we discuss sometimes on L&P too. In the Tao Te Ching, for example, Lao Tzu says:
The highest good is like water. Water gives life to the ten thousand things and does not strive. It flows in places men reject and so is like the Tao.
Adaptability, persistence, humility, strength. Water is the expert at holding paradox, and does it by not holding anything.
The spiritual and scientific converge in our relationship with water. When we drink water (especially if we really care for it), we participate in an ancient cycle that has sustained life for billions of years. The water in our bodies first fell as rain, or flowed through a river. In some other time and place, it may have sustained countless organisms. Now it sustains and even animates our thoughts and memories. Water is literally some part of all our consciousness. It cannot be separate from who we are because it is the medium from which self comes to be, and it is (again, literally) what we are made of as we think, move, remember, live.
Comparative Technologies
On the other side, we have comparison. And right now, comparison feels just about as ubiquitous. To keep with the water metaphor, we might even say we are drowning in a crisis of comparison. Many report feeling anxious or depressed after using social media, many report that it negatively affects their self-esteem. Flipping through images on screens is terrible for us, and yet that is the place where most feel they have to get attention and the way to do that is often to shock or be extreme. To be so tough you don’t mind crushing your cheekbones, for example, or to be so tough you do insanely unhealthy things to your body or say really terrible things. For examples, see here and here. This is just not okay. We are not okay.
This is not okay, and it is not the fault of the incel community or any of the people participating but rather it is a whole environment of judgement that came from trying not to be vulnerable (and wanting to be liked) that we have all let go for too long without noticing or speaking out clearly when it happens.
We need to notice it and care for one another again. We need to care for one another like we’re water. Because we are.
And because feeling so judged that you have to become violent and extreme towards yourself and others is illness, collectively. we can feel it when we really think about words like ‘choppelganger’ and ‘mogging’ because those words are part of a vocabulary built entirely around ranking human worth by appearance, by image. And that has become a power game of judgement that is not real power at all.
What we don’t realize is that this is a choice. A choice we have let crowds make for us. What is beautiful and attractive is not what that crowd generalizes because very few people in it have actually decided this, instead they’ve been ‘herded’ into it without even thinking they had a choice. And if you look at individuals, the reality of what is sexy is not this chiseled image. I can tell you from experience (and from many conversations) that these perfect chiseled faces as described in these communities are actually really pretty boring, especially when everyone tries to look the same like that. Some of the guys with the most SMV in real life are actually not the ones that look like chiseled wolf eyes and ‘enhanced’ faces, so something is really way off here. What is likely happening is just that (the extreme parts of) all this ‘looksmaxxing’ stuff is giving guys a way to feel some control and that makes them feel more attractive, so they come off as more attractive. The real strong ones can do it (be the attractive already in them) without crushing their bodies. But I know it’s tough, sometimes excruciatingly so. The real question is: why do we make this so tough?
Still, ‘image’ in the comparison technology sense is not really what attracts. And it is not what we feel in attraction. Enhancement when overdone just feels fake, which is way worse than the real you.
What is really exciting is when the water in us gets to vibrating because of voice and the way a person moves and smells; it’s when we meet an interesting person who really cares about something in the world and has found a way to really like themselves, no matter the flaws. Because no matter how much we chop ourselves or others with scalpels or words, there will ALWAYS be something that you can compare negatively to someone in the land of images.
Just get off that treadmill. Do it fast. Care about water instead, if that helps.
Get out of that mindset where every encounter becomes an opportunity to be outclassed or to outclass others. It’s a soul killer. Disengage from the trajectory! Get off that path, the one where you get your dopamine hits (another misunderstood word, but that will have to wait for another day) through meanness. I get why that seems like power. I get how you might look around and think these sorts of jerks are powerful, but it’s not real power. What is real power? It’s doing something that you will be happy you did at the end of your life. Most of the mean bullying and bullshit that is taken as power is actually, if you really think about it, a sign of weakness and an inability to sit and hold the tensions of life. Which is sad, because holding that tension is the way to open the portal of real power and care that we all actually crave and that is actually motivating most of that meanness.
Competition is good. Taking care of your body and exercising is excellent. But this choppleganger mogging lookmaxxing stuff has become illness, not health. We’re poisoning our inner wells, neglecting outer ones. We’re teaching ourselves to obsess over digital reflections instead of how to care for ourselves as vital resources.
Care for water, then you start seeing water everywhere.
When we’re on our deathbeds, we will remember the people who loved us for who we really are and the moments we were able to show ourselves and feel that love and give it to others. It really is as simple as that, and as difficult. How can we help one another experience more of it?
Maybe we can start by caring about water. Strange as that sounds.
What if we tried to find ways to care for water, to make all this water we are vibrate and move us better through all these spaces of our lives and days? What if we reoriented all this money and time we put into comparative technologies towards caring for water and finding ways to make it hum and vibrate with love as bodies and planets? Wouldn’t that be increasing our powers?
We are not merely passive recipients navigating a predetermined landscape. We are co-creating it, just like the water we drink becomes us, just like we eventually become the earth. The tragedy of our current moment is that we’ve inherited an orientation toward comparison and digital performance without recognizing it as merely one possible way of navigating, and of all our landscaping in all our multiple dimensions of time and space, be those geographical, social, or virtual.
We engage with water with all our senses. We can immerse ourselves fully in it, let it wash over us. We float. Water is a literal, physical, sensory encounter that offers radically different affordances than does any glowing screen. When we think about maintaining, connecting, caring for and expanding life’s sensuality and potential, we point toward the possibility of reorienting our way-making toward encounters that genuinely nourish us and increase potency.
Water doesn’t choose to flow. It doesn’t decide to form clouds. Yet water makes its way through every obstacle, shapes every landscape, sustains every form of life. Minds are water. Thoughts are navigations through electrochemical flow. We are liquid worlds, making our way through encounters we did not choose but learning now that we can choose what ways we make, and what really matters.
What really matters to you?
💫You matter to me, and it’s fine if anyone wants to make fun of me for saying that, because when I die (hopefully a long time from now), I’ll still be glad I said it.💫
Beyond Nondual: Not one, Not two.
27 December 2025
There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it’s going to be a butterfly. Buckminster Fuller
Pure Consciousness with Thomas Metzinger
the voluntary suspension of habitual responses into awareness…
22 days ago · 11 likes · 9 comments · Love and Philosophy
Posting each Wednesday (or as close as possible) about real life way-making. A look at the navigational approach to cognition through everyday words and experiences. Sometimes with rumination on recent Love and Philosophy conversations. This is an experiment and an invitation. The hope is to find more clarity and connection between the lofty and the lived.