Curt Doolittle

Category: Personal Reflections and Diary

  • Disagreeableness. 😉 (diary) I treated college as a purely commercial exercise a

    Disagreeableness. 😉

    (diary)

    I treated college as a purely commercial exercise and couldn’t have cared less about grades, homework, professors’ opinions, or anything other than whether I was learning something I thought was interesting and valuable. I loved my education in the arts. I still do. its precious to me. I loved contract law. I found political science immoral. I found engineering obvious and tedious. And my only major mistake was not moving into literature when the department asked me. If I’d taken philosophy and literature I would have excelled more so than in the arts – where my primary concern was technique theory and history. I never had any intention of doing anything other than running a business. Education was purely ‘for me’. But I might have had a very different life if someone had said “you know, when a department asks you to join you don’t say no unless you have a very good reason”. I didn’t have a reason to say no. I loved college. I only realized much later that my health problems started early – probably when I got that damned flu. I kept take classes in something or other until the dot com era, where it was simply too impossible to make time. Founding Ascentium was just a dead heat from day one and between that and health I didn’t have anything left. I was pretty ill I think by the time I left college. I just didn’t feel right. And so began a lifetime of doctors without letting anyone know I was having health problems because it’s damaging to your career. That said, founded or built one company after another until illness convinced me that it was do or die so to speak, and that if I didn’t start working full time on it I wouldn’t have time for it.

    What’s the lesson here? I dunno. i certainly wouldn’t have taken the AI->Law -> Hayek->Popper -> economics route if I’d done it otherwise, so it’s a choice between two worlds one of which exists and one of which is only imagined.

    Best advice from an older family member: “You never want to be forty and say ‘I wish I had….’. I took it. I didn’t. I don’t. Not because this path has been other than fulfilling, but that I simply wonder what that other path might have led to. I think I might have been a lot happier in some ways and not in others.

    Source date (UTC): 2019-10-21 21:48:00 UTC

  • THE ZONE REQUIRES FREE ASSOCIATION WITHOUT EXTERNAL “INFECTION” —“A man of imm

    THE ZONE REQUIRES FREE ASSOCIATION WITHOUT EXTERNAL “INFECTION”

    —“A man of immense creativity and endless ideas, Balzac was yet a creature of habit; indeed, a fixed routine was a large part… https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=489723268291235&id=100017606988153

    Source date (UTC): 2019-10-21 19:32:34 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1186364672611700736

  • DEFENSE AGAINST AD HOMS (ART) 0) I started writing fiction in first grade. I rea

    DEFENSE AGAINST AD HOMS (ART)

    0) I started writing fiction in first grade. I read … a lot. I never went anywhere without books (plural).

    1) I wrote my first 100+ page book at 13. (it was interesting but formulaic and terrible. I did a lot of drawing (very good) in pencil. And then pen and ink. I did a weekly comic (esoteric) in college ridiculing the college. lol.

    2) I have years of one of the best art theory schools in the world behind me. I was taught by full time practicing NY based artists, most of some note, during the end of the minimalist period and the re-transition to craftsmanship. The oddities that might interest you is that the staff chose Rand’s art theory as the basis of the program. I still think it’s her most important work, no matter how brief.

    3) In our university you could take creative writing every semester – I did. I’ve studied literature, fiction (yes they are different), and film. (Ya think I wasn’t just as obsessive about the writing discipline as I am about everything else?)

    4) I’ve been teaching the creative process for years. There are good books on it. They all say the same thing. I just explain what’s going on in your brain to legitimize the explanatory evidence. In other words, we know why the authors of those books are correct.

    5) the art of writing is pretty much a science at this point. We vary in our ability to sentence-make, and I use Hemmingway (a sequence of photos), and dickens (every sentence a balanced aphorism – almost impossible to imitate), King (good characters) and Heinlein bad characters) as myth makers; flemming; macdonald, and clancey as modern hero makers; pynchon and mccarthy as ‘literature’, and Herbert and now Martin as World Makers. (I avoid the 20th socialist authors entirely.)

    6) Pretty much every successful author works today by the same methods. It’s much easier when you know what it is you need to accomplish next and only need to help your characters and the reader get there. (I have the two main writer’s apps but I find I don’t really need them except for outlining because i write arguments instead of scenes and there is no art to organizing them. I prefer to write in a text editor with indent capability. )

    I don’t do painting because I lack the color facility (badly). I don’t do sculpture because it’s all but financially impossible today, and the marxists and pomos have destroyed the art. I don’t do movies ’cause the biz is skeevy and all but the writers shallow – seriously so. (writers tend to be interesting.) And I don’t write reviews of art because most of what I would say would be negative and it would be repetitious and tedious for for the reader. I have occasionally written about some of the arts, and will teach a class at the institute in art history and theory – I have it outlined, but I have to get ‘adapted’ to my new situation a bit more, and finish the Foundations Course before I produce it – and the military and the economic courses…. But I’ll go toe to toe with any critic on the arts no problem.

    I choose philosophy as my art, because it suits me – no materials other than a laptop internet connection and time. I’m an entrepreneur to fund my social science experiments and information gathering – and because working for others when I was younger was exasperating. I’m an artist because I practice the creative method as my primary skill. I like to fight because I was raised in a period where one had to. 😉

    -hugs )

    Source date (UTC): 2019-10-21 15:10:00 UTC

  • Updated Oct 21, 2019, 12:51 PM

    Updated Oct 21, 2019, 12:51 PM

    Source date (UTC): 2019-10-21 12:51:00 UTC

  • (health update) (personal) (for close followers) As most followers know I have a

    (health update) (personal) (for close followers)

    As most followers know I have a rather obsessive thought pattern common to the autism spectrum. Aside from reduced empathy and exaggerated systematizing it’s really the only symptom I have to deal with. But, this ‘talent’ makes it extremely difficult for me to switch contexts, and switching contexts is somewhere between frustrating and aggravating’ because it’s so difficult – My mind wants to constantly work on (obsess on) one problem or another. And for most of my life this has been extremely advantageous as you can imagine. Collecting reams of information isn’t work. Learning isn’t work. Working isn’t work. Not collecting information, not learning and not working is work. It’s like having a gravity well for your attention that’s relentless as being in a loud steam powered factory, and you have to feed it constantly to keep it at peace. It can be useful especially in the current era. And I’m sure it was also useful as a hunter-gatherer, and we are clearly adapted to long winters, in cramped quarters with others indoors. I would have no problem working away on whatever winter crafts in communal space in a Scandinavian long house, or Saxon hut. None at all. Watching my sister, mother, grandmother, its pretty easy to see her extremely happy in that environment.

    But over the past two years (since I’ve come back to the states to care for family) my productivity has suffered because in my current environment I’m not able to insulate myself from stimulation and get ‘into the zone’ very often, and when I do it’s for short time periods. I’ve managed huge progress on the grammars, on religion, and on the operational description of human consciousness because it’s just information consumption and contemplation. But when I move from problem solving to ‘authoring’ it’s like pulling teeth. So this summer I’ve been trying everything in order to up my productivity to previous levels despite the ‘environment’.

    My daughter Caitlin manages drug field trials for medical research, and has the same behavior (as did my grandmother, my mother (less so), my sister, and my niece, my other daughter (who is classified as mildly autistic), and my niece. My son manifests it slightly differently.) She suggested that I ask my doctor to try migration from OCD treatment (reduce resistance) to ADHD treatment (stimulation), because it would allow me to work, and switch contexts without depending upon coffee.

    The effect has been rather immediate and obvious, in that context changes, and cognitive tunneling seem to have been radically reduced; my need to use physical motion or talking to myself to break out of the ‘cognitive well’ seems eliminated; with the only side effect being that ‘what comes to mind comes out of the mouth’ a bit more rapidly. And given my plentiful and hyperbolic sense of humor I might have to be careful.

    Everyone in family and extended family has noticed, immediately and they say something along the lines of “you’re here” or “you’re present” rather than constantly detached (focused on whatever I’m thinking). Yet I can easily switch topics and return to work, break from work, and return to it again, easily.

    So cross fingers, think good wishes, or say a prayer that this works and I can get more of this done before the boogaloo happens.

    Hugs all. Thanks for your participation, encouragement, support, and most of all – patience.

    Revolution Comes.

    -Curt

    Source date (UTC): 2019-10-21 12:42:00 UTC

  • photos_and_videos/TimelinePhotos_dJ9jhts2Ng/73322572_489593608304201_42853800700

    photos_and_videos/TimelinePhotos_dJ9jhts2Ng/73322572_489593608304201_4285380070001868800_o_489593601637535.jpg (humor)(humor)

    Source date (UTC): 2019-10-21 11:53:00 UTC

  • photos_and_videos/TimelinePhotos_dJ9jhts2Ng/74338960_489585334971695_55234414242

    photos_and_videos/TimelinePhotos_dJ9jhts2Ng/74338960_489585334971695_5523441424281894912_o_489585328305029.jpg photos_and_videos/TimelinePhotos_dJ9jhts2Ng/74693483_489587804971448_1582958579747389440_o_489587801638115.jpg photos_and_videos/TimelinePhotos_dJ9jhts2Ng/74381420_489673134962915_8908204158398496768_o_489673131629582.jpg DISAMBIGUATING “PROPERTARIANISM” INTO ITS CONSTITUENT COMPONENTS

    1. P – Method

    2. P – Method to Politics

    3. P- Politics to Western Civ.

    Source date (UTC): 2019-10-21 11:38:00 UTC

  • Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn and cauldron bubble. Cool it with a d

    Double, double toil and trouble;

    Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

    Cool it with a dim-fool’s blood,

    Then the charm is firm and good.

    O well done! I commend your pains;

    And every one shall share in the gains;

    And now about the cauldron sing,

    Live elves and fairies in a ring,

    Enchanting all that you put in.

    … (pause)…

    Now, By the pricking of my thumbs,

    Something wicked this way comes.

    Source date (UTC): 2019-10-20 22:46:00 UTC

  • Updated Oct 20, 2019, 1:37 PM

    Updated Oct 20, 2019, 1:37 PM

    Source date (UTC): 2019-10-20 13:37:00 UTC

  • Updated Oct 20, 2019, 1:36 PM

    Updated Oct 20, 2019, 1:36 PM

    Source date (UTC): 2019-10-20 13:36:00 UTC