Remember the Name

What am I most passionate about? It's in the name! Insinq. Ins-Inq = Insightful Inquiry.

This is a favourite philosophical concept of mine called a true name, and I even have a specific formula for working out what your true name is. It's simple, but I think it's elegant and incisive in a way that gives the concept power. The formula is that the first name is the name of the mask you are wearing right now, the current manifestation of your inner personality, while the second name is the essence of your identity, the root of who you are and what makes you tick. The first name an individual has can and indeed will change throughout their life many times, while the second name will rarely, if ever, experience a serious alteration - it is the kernel of their personal essence, what makes them unique at its most basic level. So, for me, my second name is Inquiry, because I am so very curious and I love asking questions - I always have - and this leads me to habitually wear a mask of someone who is, or at least likes to think he is, insightful. I love asking questions and I love answering them, and I have a particular knack for framing and reframing questions in such a way that I am able to produce an analytical synthesis of the problem space which intuitively indicates the direction towards a solution.

In other, less pretentious words, what I mean is that I try to compel a question to point me towards its answer through a process of interrogation wherein I talk to myself, or anybody who happens to be close by, about the thing about which I am thinking in an attempt to map the problem space. I reframe the problem space until I am satisfied that I have an accurate representation of what it is that I am trying to ask myself, and in doing so I often find that I am ineluctably drawn towards one conclusion which is, as it were, the synthesis or sum of the others, each partial answer being incorporated during the reframing process such that the question receives the deepest answer I can give it, rather than a merely superficial treatment. Of course, as you may already have noticed that can lead to a degree of verbosity because when I explore a question with my language, such as the question 'What are you most passionate about?', I want to be sure that I am articulating not only the product of my perceptual apparatus but that I am also trying to make the framework I am using transparent to myself and to others so that hidden assumptions and presuppositions might reveal themselves.

My passion is my curiosity, a near limitless talent which has been my guide ever since I was little, and which indeed has guided me well - so well in fact that sometimes I truly feel blessed by some of the things I've been able to experience through my studies of the world and of other people. I am a seeker, through and through, and I always have been; I think that's one reason (among very many) that Harry Potter really resonated with me, because it was like an archetypal overload, a real meta-hero, and there wasn't even any ornamentation visavis his role on the Quidditch team: it is literally called seeker. Then the question becomes, what does the golden snitch symbolize - but I prefer to leave such things up to my reader, or at least until such a time as I can have a conversation with them about the archetypal symbolism more generally that enriches the various stories we tell. What I know about the seeker however, can be summed up in the following phrase: 'The wisdom is hidden only from one who thinks he is above the search.' Or, as a friend of mine might prefer, 'The wisdom hangs in the air everywhere, waiting for he who has learnt how to listen.' Indeed, revelation is a subtle idea.

I am passionately curious about Truth and Transcendence, about mystery and magic, psychology and the psyche, love and language. I love language, it is truly the most mysterious and magical ability humans have ever developed, and it is all the more astonishing in that it so delimits our perceptions of the world that we cannot even begin to appreciate the profound power permitted by the eloquent employment of this sacred science of the silver tongue. In my work as a philosopher I have for years now explored language and the implications of the way we think and speak about our experiences for the experiences that we then go on to have. It was not for nothing that Wittgenstein famously remarked "The limitations of my language are the limitations of my world." I have a different remark about language that I love - 'Language is Magic is Transformation: Transcend your LiMiTations'. And it is in that spirit that much of my studies is conducted, on many subjects that would seem bizarre or absurd to modern men such as alchemy and - what is most certainly one of the most fascinating phenomena known to mankind, and one which is very probably related to what we might call religious phenomenology - synchronicity.

Synchronicity is a concept created by Carl Jung concerning the notion of meaningful coincidence, however what I have learnt about this enigmatic element of reality was not derived from Jung directly, but rather from an exceptionally gifted mentor who had the benefit of 30 years more experience dealing with these phenomena and the associated problem space. What I learnt was not simply about synchronicity, but instead was a set of ideas about how one might be able to tune into such a phenomenon, to track it and to make it happen. Indeed, it was such a dubious subject that for six months the puzzle I was trying to solve was simply how could such a well educated, obviously brilliant and epistemologically rigorous man be telling me such stories which, to my mind, obviously could not have happened.

Over those six months, however, I found that simply by talking about it and opening my eyes to see if it might be there, it started happening - and what's more it started happening specifically around the content of the dialogue, such that sometimes the events of the dialogue later that day were prefigured in some small event in the morning which only became obvious in retrospect. This is, of course, a superficial example, but what I experienced while trying to explore this material is not something I can communicate to you in any convincingly simple fashion, nor would I dirty the integrity of the work I do by trying to do so. The only suggestion I can give for the incredulity this topic inevitably inspires in the intelligent and critically minded is that attention amplifies this phenomenon - it seems silly but there really is something to that formulation of it - and that exploring it might reveal a blindness in your perceptual structure which, once rectified by consciously intending to open yourself up, rather than allowing your prejudice to dictate your energy investment, would permit the collection of a series of anomalies which you would eventually begin to regard as a stack of evidence, a series of your experiences and the experiences of those you trust which are, in your worldview, impossible, yet which demand reconciliation with that intellectual perspective because they are facts of our experience.

This is something my curiosity compelled me to investigate, and I found that the evidence stacked up for me to such a degree that I had to accept it was real, and I have since taught the material to other individuals who didn't believe in it, and just by opening themselves up to it and talking about it, they have experienced unbelievable things - things that, as I said, are rationally not possible and which one discounts as soon as one hears or reads it. This same material on psynchronicity (which is the spelling I prefer, for reasons I disclose in my lecture series) forms the basis for a lecture series I am in the process of writing, two lectures of which are completed and two more of which are in the process of being written. These materials can be found on my personal youtube channel, if you want to learn more, and I think this is a great way for me to segue into a brief answer to the second clause of the question which was posed (I love this by the way, writing to a cool little prompt that stimulates my imagination and curiosity - it reminds me of my glory days on Quora. Which, by the way, if you enjoy my writing style I would definitely recommend checking out - Matt Acutt on Quora) which was: "Why do people follow you, read your stories, or want to hear what you have to say?"

The answer to this would be obvious by now I hope, but I suppose it couldn't hurt to elucidate more clearly what I think my appeal is for the people who follow my work across various platforms. I ask great questions, and I am as dedicated as anyone you could find to the philosophical dream of Truth, which not only makes me an ideal partner in a dialectic exchange but also means that the thoughts I produce in response to questions tend to be both eloquent and concise - despite my tendency towards verbosity. Of course, there are a great many things that I do in my work - I am a skilled poet (if I do say so myself - though if you want to judge for yourself, you're welcome to check out my original work on tumblr.com/insinqronicity or, to a lesser degree, here on my Vocal profile - darn vocal policies) and a gifted speaker, which perfectly suits my role managing my 3000+ member debate server on Discord because it means I can step in and arbitrate potentially counterproductive disagreements, helping to facilitate a common ground that moves the conversation forward. In this respect, I have characterized my gift as an ability to create a bridge between different people, primarily by translating between their slightly different dialects in order to prevent the miscommunication which is so commonly at the root of disagreement.

I think a lot of the people who follow my work and like to listen to me speak have a respect for the way that I am able to bring perspective to a conversation and maintain a sense of charity which then upholds the integrity of the dialectic. I also happen to be quite savage sometimes if I think someone is engaged in toxic behaviour consciously, so to speak, and I have an extraordinary personality profile which I suppose makes me interesting to listen to - I am at the same time incredibly open, intensely disagreeable and remarkably un-conscientious (all in psychometric terms, based on a big 5 analysis which I repeated after two years with minimal change). I am a very original person who strives to understand myself and other people, and who is constantly pushing other people to question themselves and indeed to answer the questions that I ask them myself. I also have diverse interests and a strong, stable epistemology while nonetheless maintaining a relatively fluid phenomenology.

All of this adds up to make me what most people would call interesting, even if not always likeable. I think that many of the people who follow my work can simply see my talents and my virtues and believe in me and my ability to go somewhere with my work, which I very much intend to do. And it is not just about me: my work speaks for itself, and many of them are following it because they can see that I am onto something with my work on synchronicity, while more and more people come to me in appreciation of my earlier work called DMTheory (though the actual original paper I wrote is an atrocity). In short form, people follow my work because they can see that I have potential, and that in addition to my potential, I also have a strong will oriented firmly in the direction of the realization of that potential, a notion the Greeks knew as entelechy. Also, as an impartial observer, my work is, quite simply, damn interesting :P

Another way to perhaps answer this question is that when people look at me and look at my work (which spans many platforms and types of media - you can find, for instance, a plethora of recordings that involve me up on the 'Nameless Debates Radio' Youtube channel, or on Spotify under the same name) they see that I am going somewhere, and that I seem to know where I am going. In reality, this is only half true - I do know vaguely where I am going, but in a more meaningful sense my experience is of being guided by the world towards what the ancients would have called my destiny by the most profound guide of all: my curiosity. The first half of the statement however, that I am going somewhere and that my work is going somewhere, seems quite clear to me especially when it manifests itself in stories like this one - this is the story I mentioned before, of a friend to whom I taught this material being guided in an incredible way during one of her days at work.

I suppose this is in fact the best way to give an answer to the questions - both of what I am most passionate about (and the nature of my work) and why people follow my work and listen to what I have to say: to tell you a story which might give you a sense of the kind of experience which can become accessible if you are able to cultivate the right state of mind in relation to the world, something which I teach in my lecture series on the subject of Stalking Psynchronicity. Perhaps, upon hearing this story, you will simply write it off and so too write me off as some kind of woo-woo airhead daydreamer who believes in fairytales and magic, but perhaps - and this is what I am hoping for - you, like me, have a nascent curiosity about such things - perhaps the remnants of a childhood dream that such things might yet be possible - and this is a prompt for you to explore, in your own life, what kinds of experiences and stories your friends and loved ones tell you which simply do not fit into any kind of rational box you have ever come across.

The material I teach is a way to get into contact with such experiences, how to understand them, how to integrate them, and how to use said knowledge to perceive the ontic signs in realtime and transform yourself in response to them in the dynamic cycle of death and rebirth symbolized in the alchemical symbol of the phoenix. I completely understand that some of the words I use might inspire skepticism, but I can assure you that I am all about reality; but reality is subtle, and so are metaphors.

Having discussed the nature of my work and the potential I and others like me see in it, in closing I'd like to briefly touch on how I might monetize the work that I do, in an ideal world - or, perhaps, even in this world one day soon. The philosophical work that I most enjoy doing is group work, wherein a variable number of intelligent and authentic individuals gather together for the purposes of co-operating in order to establish a common ground, or a group understanding, and then working systematically to elevate the group understanding through the discussion of resonant experiences and anomalous phenomena.

On one of the more private Discord servers I own, I do a variety of work weekly with certain members of my communities, such as a reading group wherein we go through ancient philosophical texts together and try to establish a clear interpretation of what is being put forth within the text, as well as a weekly hang-out session which I called 'resonance n chill' where people just come along and vibe together, to use the language of a hippy. In addition, there is a movie night every few weeks wherein we pick by consensus a popular movie and stream it for the group and then pause it periodically and work together to bring the themes to life through the evocative power of our language. I would love to get more people involved in this kind of activity and the thing about this kind of work is that it often requires the group to help an individual work through their own problems conceptually and verbally at times, which is an understood part of the process in which we engage.

If I were able to get more support through Memberful, Vocal or other platforms which support creators then a lot of the content I produce and the work I do could be a lot more dedicated and focused (I would have much more time to devote to it, that is), which would potentially mean a more stable upload schedule on the Nameless Debates Youtube channel (for which we have months and months of content backlogged, and close to 150 videos uploaded to the channel as it is) as well as a clearer and more committed timeline with respect to my lecture series and DMTheory: Reloaded, which is the rewrite I am doing of my original paper (currently at thirty thousand words, which I estimate is just under a third).

This work, DMTheory (I realize now I didn't actually speak much about this during this meandering story I have been telling you about myself) is a work in the field of metaphysics which I completed with the help of a brilliant colleague of mine, Chris Mackinga, at the age of about 22 years old. In addition to this, I have five or six books planned, with three of them being a more expansive and well referenced form of the lecture series, on the topic of psynchronicity, one being on the topic of psychedelic drugs and the psychedelic experience, one or perhaps two composing a series of my philosophical ideas and an exploration of the existential framework implied by DMTheory as well as my thoughts on a variety of perennial questions.

Some kind of small scale but regular financial support from those who follow my work would permit me to give more undivided attention to the various projects which will occupy my future and indeed one of the options which occurs to me is that I could provide sneak previews of material I am working on to those supporters, or a series of three to five questions weekly that have been occupying my mind. Overall though the commitment that I make to those who follow my work, with or without financial support, is that I will make consistent progress with respect to producing my work, namely my lecture series and my books, a situation which can only be helped by the most meagre of funding from each of my most devoted fans (all two of them LOL). The key for me is finding a way so that you can contribute to my cognition of these matters and we can begin to work together in the kind of group work which is the very pinnacle of my dream employment. Perhaps, with your help, we can get there.

I hope you enjoyed reading this story, feel free to drop a heart reacc if something I said resonated with you! Also, if I've piqued your curiosity and you'd like more information on my work, check out this article I've written on it: The Ancient Art and Sacred Science of Stalking Synchronicity.

Have a great day!